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POPSSwiss Government Votes To Ban Minarets 4. Dim-witted, lazy, fit only for physical labor -- but you have to threaten them to get off their butts, because they won't work otherwise; 5. Constitutionally weaker than members of the dominant culture; 6. Complete lack of moral self-control; 7. Bent on world domination. These plans always involve secret conspiracies and special skills known only to the clan; 8. Despite their minority status, they are thought to have far more power than their numbers, and an inordinate influence over the running of the country; 9. Heirs to an inhumanly bloody history that cannot be forgiven, and which they have never moved past (they're "bloodthirsty savages" with no redeeming qualities); and which never created anything meaningful in the way of art, music, science, or architecture (writing them out of history);
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POPSBy imagining many possible worlds fiction can chang our Minds "For more than two thousand years people have insisted that reading fiction is good for bookyou. Aristotle claimed that poetry—he meant the epics of Homer and the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, which we would now call fiction—is a more serious business than history. History, he argued, tells us only what has happened, whereas fiction tells us what can happen, which can stretch our moral imaginations and give us insights into ourselves and other people. This is a strong argument for schools to continue to focus on the literary arts, not just history, science, and social studies. But is the idea of fiction being good for you merely wishful thinking?'
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POPSGoodness! Evolution and the War between Fundamentalist Atheism and Religion
This will settle nothing, but it is a good read. The clip is a 'taster'' of an article focused on debates around evoulution and moral motivation. It ends: <<< Of course, religion doesn’t have a monopoly on awe and inspiration. The story that science tells, the story of nature, is awesome, and some people get plenty of inspiration from it, without needing the religious kind. What’s more, science has its own role to play in knitting the world together. The scientific enterprise has long been on the frontiers of international community, fostering an inclusive, cosmopolitan ethic — the kind of ethic that any religion worthy of this moment in history must also foster. William James said that religious belief is “the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.” Science has its own version of the unseen order, the laws of nature. In principle, the two kinds of order can themselves be put into harmony ...(more follows)
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POPSBy modern conservative standards, Winston Churchill was a Bolshevik
More: As a lifelong conservative with a strong dedication to enterprise and merit (and a host of less admirable right-wing prejudices), Churchill would have bristled at anyone who dared to describe him as a socialist. Why then did he promote and protect the NHS? Partly out of political expediency, no doubt, but also because he felt an ethical obligation that seems not to trouble the contemporary conservatives who profess to admire him.… Whatever the marvels and defects of the NHS may be – and most experts agree that it does a superb job despite inadequate funding -- its importance for the debate over American health care reform may be moral rather than practical. Imagine what kind of country we would inhabit if those who claim to represent conservatism in America possessed even a small measure of the human compassion and political decency of Churchill at his best. It is a standard that they do not even attempt to achieve these days.
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POPSWhy Amy Fears Obamacare Perspective: The "Amy" in the title is a patient with cystic fibrosis--which, in case you didn't know it, is a white folks' disease. CF patients die young--but they live longer in the "heartless" capitalist USA than they do in any other country in the world, bar none. The difference: Socialized medicine elsewhere; private doctors and clinics here. She has every reason to fear that socialized medicine will shorten her life. She's 27 now. Right now, if things are left alone, she's got ten years to live. Under socialized medicine she'll have less than that--as many as three years less. Or worse. Some things, you do need new drugs to help manage. CF is one of them. Does anyone suppose that Amy is going to get those new drugs? They either won't be developed or they will be deliberately withheld. "Not cost-effective." "We have lots of other patients to take care of." Yes, patients in protected groups, which don't include whites.
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POPSChanging Our Minds This is a really terrific article about the benefits of reading fiction. The Greater Good website is full of wonderfully inspiring reads. Worth the browse!
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POPSObama on the abortion debate at Notre Dame Contrast this with the previous post from Alan Keyes. Obama said: "Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature. Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words."
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POPSEverybody lies Signs of Deception: Microexpressions are superquick expressions that cross over people's faces against their will and without their awareness. Another nonverbal sign of lying is a forced smile,cross his or her arms or even move farther away. Liars may noticeably fidget, especially during a pause in the conversation. Since he or she has to invent an answer, a lie-teller will often spend more time searching for the right word in the course of telling a story.To get extra time to think, a liar won't use contractions (opting for "cannot" instead of "can't") and may also repeat questions ("Where was I last night?" or "You want to know what I was doing yesterday?"(Like Now?) How to Lie: -Stay calm -Keep it simple -Remain it steady -Make your listener like you and fed him or her full of horse manure as you go along....Very interesting.
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POPSMike Pence Tap Dance of the Year Another moral coward who is afraid to state unequivocally that he believes in creationism over evolution. He tap dances of 5 minutes and says nothing. What a fraud.
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POPSFreedom without order... Some interesting thoughts... that I tend to agree with. Republicanism seems to rejoice in the abstract: they value "ideas" above their practical implication. While idealism is fine: it must be leavened with pragmatism.
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POPS"Dark Morals" continues: Okay. Let's stop right there and go over some basics. First, we are all moral hypocrites. Studies show this. We judge others more harshly than we judge ourselves. Second, morality leads to unethical acts. Again, science. Okay, back to Haidt's ideas ... Sex and food According to Haidt, Boyle reports, conservatives tend to focus on sex, while "liberals are getting increasingly concerned with food." Haidt's ideas have been floating around a while, and they get a lot deeper. In 2007, he published his thoughts in the journal Science. Here's some of the questions he asks as a way to — let's use a cosmologist's jargon — probe dark morality: "How much money would it take to get you to stick a pin into your palm? How much to stick a pin into the palm of a child you don't know? How much to slap a friend in the face (with his or her permission) as part of a comedy skit?" [Total aside: Researchers will do this for free. Check out the video provi
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POPSLying Dogmatists Has the Vatican contemplated the thousands of deaths it has caused by passing along lies such as these? How can they claim moral justification for such outrageous falsifications? They have no excuse for this!
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POPSObama to Reverse Bush Stem Cell Policy As you can imagine, this move isn't popular among those who think a fertilized cell deserves a social security card and a listing in the phone book. "Taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for experiments that require the destruction of human life," said Tony Perkins of the conservative Family Research Council. "President Obama's policy change is especially troubling given the significant adult stem cell advances that are being used to treat patients now without harming or destroying human embryos." Of course, adult stem cells don't have the protean nature of embryonic stem cells -- which can literally become any kind of cell -- which is why researchers are eager for subsidized embryonic research. As far as the religious right goes, screw 'em. They aren't happy unless they're unhappy. Trust me, they're much happier with something to totally freak out over.
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POPSIlliterate Bible Readers <<<Now, here's the rub: Evolution is, according to this view, inconsistent with the existence of God because it causes a few headaches for biblical literalism. So it's God or Darwin; you can't have both. From there it follows that we'd better be sure that our kids learn about God—or at least not about Darwin. And it isn't enough for me to worry about my own children; I have to worry about yours, too. Because if our kids learn about evolution in high school, they will end up having no moral code to live by. It's Lord of the Flies all over again. That is a classic false dichotomy. Most people of faith don't think that the question of God's existence turns on what some archaeology graduate student uncovers with the next shovelful of sand. And most people don't worry that their neighbor might kill them in their sleep if the Earth is more than 6,000 years old. The Bible and On the Origin of Species both offer insights about the world and our place in it. Religion and science can work tog
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POPSCommon sense Dualism Admittedly, some people wouldn’t be caught dead talking about souls or spirits. But even for those people who would explicitly reject the notion of a body-soul split, dualist assumptions still frame how these issues are thought about. You can see this when people appeal to science to answer the question "When does life begin?" as if this is an empirical question, and an objective answer would settle the moral debate once and for all. But the question is not really about life in any biological sense. It is instead asking about the magical moment at which a cluster of cells becomes more than a mere physical thing. It is a question about the soul. Interesting talk.
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