I think it's more appropriate to say we should or should not treat another person a certain way, rather than he/she has a "right" to be treated or not...
There are both. I don't think there is a higher authority who acts as a judge would, though, nor do I think one is required for that purpose. I don't ...
I'm not sure what you mean. There certainly are non-legal rules, i.e. rules of conduct which are generally observed without being law, but I don't thi...
Rights, schmights. The only rights worth speaking of are legal rights; that is to say, those are the only rights which matter, as they are (generally)...
The School of Law at Bologna was founded in 1088, and is by my understanding the oldest in the Western world--one of the many great things brought int...
Well, I wrote in response to a statement by Mariner about Roman persecution of Christians. I couldn't think of a way of responding to that statement b...
The greatly exaggerated persecution of Christians by the Romans was characterized in various respects, depending on the need and circumstances. Someti...
Why read more? To collect more "anecdotes" regarding Christianity or Islam that you'll disregard, being adverse to an "anecdote battle"? Really, thoug...
Ah, I see. We're to ignore the history of the Christian religion, or perhaps history in general, in comparing Christianity and Islam for purposes of t...
Christian intolerance and oppression, not merely of pagans but of others believing themselves to be Christians, began almost immediately as Christian ...
Thinking of me? But I have no "high expectations" of any kind where (organized) religions are concerned, and if that's bigotry, it applies to all of t...
Well, think of it this way. Mohammed died approximately 600 years after Jesus died. Christianity has had a 600 year head start, so to speak; it's had ...
There were nothing like what we know of as law schools at the time of birth of our Great Republic. Harvard and William and Mary claim to have the olde...
If God is not of the universe, God can't be known, yes. If we're frank with ourselves, though, we must acknowledge that God can't be known at all. All...
Ah, I think I see your position now; or at least understand it better than I did before. I tend to think the ancient concept of natural law (and Roman...
It's odd, then, that you keep referring to what you seem to think is incursion of religious ideas into the law (apparently through Aquinas) to our det...
Well, Justinian's Code was, as it were, resurrected during the High Middle Ages, and still influences the civil law jurisdictions of Europe, as modifi...
Well, you seem to be trying to cover a lot of ground. I'm uncertain where to begin. The ancient Greek philosophers, alas, were not lawyers--or perhaps...
Now I'm uncertain what you're addressing. Are you asking whether there is any reason to know (believe?) that we will exist after we die? I think that'...
Well, I'm not sure about that. As C.S. Peirce noted: "Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts." We doubt in life ...
A "thought experiment": You're walking east on Adams St. in downtown Chicago, towards Russian Tea Time, consumed by a longing for the horseradish flav...
Many of the medieval European philosophers were first-rate thinkers, in my opinion, e.g. Abelard, Anselm, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Aquinas. I t...
Yes, I see. And certainly it had its limitations. But it was quite the rage in my college days, even to the extent that most history of philosophy cou...
For all I know, Oxford may have been and might still be the very center of banality, its axis mundi. But it seems to me peculiar to speak of OLP as ba...
In the increasingly far off time when I attended college, we philosophy majors and others read Lovely, Lovely Ludwig's Philosophical Investigations an...
The doctrine of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church on this is relatively simple. Human life is sacred from its beginning because, you may be s...
Well, come now. How is the comparison a slur or misrepresentation? Both were writers of preposterous fiction and little-known screenplays, both were c...
In this, it's the law that matters, and nothing but the law. Behold, the law of South Carolina: SECTION 17-24-10. Affirmative defense. (A) It is an af...
I prefer to have a good reason to doubt the existence of the universe, myself, and the mere possibility it's an illusion doesn't strike me as a good r...
Two things about that. "Absolute reality" would, in that case, not be real. It would be something different from reality, because we're a part of real...
I'm uncertain what you mean by "absolute reality." For me, we're a part of the world; we're not mere observers of the world. We interact with other pa...
Are you asking about epistemology? I'm not sure. I like the pragmatism of Dewey when it comes to epistemology (not to be confused with that of Rorty, ...
It isn't clear to me how the fact that a viewer may be "taken in" by a movie tells us anything at all beyond the fact that the result sought by the fi...
I confess I've always been suspicious of Confessions of the kind written by such as Augustine and Rousseau. Suspicious in the sense that that I suspec...
In what sense, and to whom? This isn't a question to which there is no one, absolute and universally applicable answer. You require too much from phil...
"Natural morality" (as I conceive it) doesn't have its basis in religion as it is and has been commonly practiced. Religion, sometimes and in some way...
Well then, perhaps we're dreaming, perhaps there is no "external world," perhaps there are no "other minds," and perhaps there is no free will. And no...
Well, the Dutch through their East India Company held various parts of what we call Indonesia for quite some time. It may be that they dominated Indon...
The "turn of the thread" came about because I responded to a post in which it was asked whether the French colonized Indonesia. Then, probably because...
I knew a Dutch woman who was amazed to learn the Boers were of Dutch extraction. I thought this odd, as "Boer" is a Dutch word (meaning farmer). The D...
The Dutch were the primary European colonial power. Not many seem to be aware of it, but the Dutch were unusually contemptuous of and cruel to the peo...
But we call virtually anything a war, you know. There's the War against Christmas, the War against Christianity, the good ole War against Poverty, the...
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