Assad's father (came to power in the early 70s) wasn't exactly the prince of peace. In an effort to suppress the Moslem Brotherhood (perhaps or perhap...
Thanks, Barry, for the feedback. I don't mind being called a grammar nazi or a pedant -- I've been called far worse things. If somebody asks me to rea...
good observations. This isn't a matter of adultery, strictly speaking. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, married to multi-millionaire art heiress Anne Sinclair,...
A note about your text: Be sure to have someone carefully proofread your text before submission. "Home", for instance, is not a verb. It's a noun. We ...
I'd rather discuss adultery with you than with anybody else, sweetheart. Sin is its own punishment, like virtue is its own reward. People who sin sign...
Ad infinitum. Honestly, why don't you demand punishment for all the Seven Wickednesses of pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth?...
It is probably the case that you do, in fact, make philosophical decisions based on what you feel is good. This isn't a bug in you, it's a feature of ...
When Lincoln (not a founding father) wrote the Gettysburg Address, briefly referencing founding documents, Jefferson (a founding father) had been dead...
Videos like this make me trigger happy. The University of Chicago's 2016 welcome letter includes the following paragraph: "Our commitment to academic ...
Muriel Spark wrote a wonderful short, dry comic novel back in the 1960s, "Momento Mori" . It was about some elderly people who started receiving anony...
I am no longer young, but I am what I am doing, what I have done, what I hope I will have done yet, what I did not do, what I would have done, and wha...
The thread title "our life is but a dream" reminds me of a hymn by Isaac Watts (1674-1748), one stanza of which is Death, like an overflowing stream, ...
I too am a consequentialist, but sometimes it is hard to identify the connection between action or inaction and consequence. The consequences of inter...
Of course. What Paracelsus had to say is now a truism. Too much iron, oxygen, water, potassium, salt, and so on are all toxic. So are not enough. Most...
I haven't followed the adultery/mysticism discussion. I did, however, participate in the very long discussion with Agustino in the old Philosophy Foru...
Of course I didn't intend to offend you, and I am glad that your single parent did a good job raising you, and he/she deserves a great deal of credit,...
What contributes to healthy, nurturing families does not vary greatly from left to right. (Marx himself, as you no doubt know, was not exactly a parag...
Agustino did battle on this topic in the old Philosophy Forum. It was lively. This time around, let's spend less time figuring out how to punish peopl...
The pendulum has definitely swung, but I'm not sure it is just "too much individualism" that we are suffering from. Some of what passes for individual...
We could, I suppose, judge them by the sort of fruit they bear. What good is it doing them, or anybody else, that they are ascetics? It Jack finds sal...
I have listened to classical music for many, many hours, trying to insult my fellow citizens. And you know what? It just didn't work. None of them wer...
Not only are not all opinions equal, many of them are not even wrong. Many opinions are just plain stupid. What is important is that you be certain of...
We rabble, bless us, give limited admiration and a wide berth to the ascetic holy man, but we ourselves have no intentions of starving, freezing, or a...
I agree that "sacred" and other words are thought to add weight to airy sentences. However... Luther thought ordinary work was sacred and holy. The di...
The first part of the quotation ("If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by ...
I think idolatry is a key problem too. I just don't think contemporary Christian idolatry is directed toward 'graven images', statuary, and the like. ...
You didn't ask me, but more to the point, the luxuries of the church building for the Christian is better addressed by Mathew 6:19-21, “Do not lay up ...
Oh yeah, the Libertarian candidate who didn't know what or where Aleppo was... He isn't a ruling class candidate either. No doubt (literally) some con...
Stop feeling bad about being trumped. All politicians make promises they will not be able to fulfill. Most politicians are, or will be soon enough, se...
On a day-to-day basis I'm not much worried about a nuclear apocalypse, though post-apocalypse fiction is a favorite genre, if it's well done. It's the...
But "masturbation" isn't French. Masturbate is from Latin masturbatus, past participle of masturbari. If the French had had a French word for jerking ...
The golden rule works because most people are alike. The same is true for subjective morality. We all tend to think the way other people in our societ...
Nuclear war will almost certainly not begin with a considered, thoughtful analysis of the international situation by the central leadership, supplemen...
Oppressors and oppression has been supplied in abundance. But liberation requires two steps, not necessarily in this order: # liberate one's self from...
Divinity, divinity, divinity... drums fingers on table. What place? I've tried several methods of incorporating divinity into the physical system. The...
Yes, change is the only constant. The climate will change. What is significant about THIS climate warming (or changing) is the speed at which it is ha...
Did you get up on the wrong side of the bed? That's a very good question, but the answer is complicated. First, the country was built on the backs of ...
I don't know whether we are on the verge of a major paradigm shift or not, and we might not know it until it has actually shifted. I don't think the c...
Without you, there is no me. It takes other people to be a self. We have to assemble the components of our selfhood, and while some of that comes from...
Reminds me of a scene from Mel Brooks' Twelve Chairs. The character is searching desperately for a chair that has jewels sewn into the upholstery. He ...
Either may be the best approach, depending on the problem and the resources at hand. I suppose I lean towards empiricism. I'm a simple peasant and I l...
Whether Jesus was raised from the dead is a secondary question. The primary question is, "Does God exist?" If God exists, Jesus could have been raised...
Comments