Posted inMorality

Animal lovers don’t eat meat

I usually don’t pay much attention to human interest stories, but the tale in our local newspaper of how Salem residents rallied to protect a mother duck and her brood of 10 ducklings moved me. The duck nest was in a bush next to a downtown office building. Employees from nearby businesses kept the nest safe until the ducklings hatched, then they and other people protected the mother and newborns as they waddled their way across busy streets all the way to the Willamette River. One passerby even let himself be lowered headfirst into a storm drain to rescue two…
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Posted inMorality Radha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Be loyal to yourself, not a group

Most people look upon loyalty as a virtue. We value loyal friends, loyal citizens, loyal workers. But when is loyalty a vice? I’ve been thinking about this question ever since I came across a paper by philosopher Laurie Calhoun, “A Critique of Group Loyalty.” I’m a pretty loyal person. I don’t drop loyalties on a whim. I’ve been getting my hair cut by the same woman, Betsy of Hair Headquarters, for 28 years. My first marriage lasted for 18 years and now I’ve been married to Laurel for 15 years. I’ve had a Casio watch on my wrist for as…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Morality

Thumbs down to the new Pope’s moral absolutism

I have some Catholic qualifications for criticizing newly-elected Pope Benedict XVI’s stance on moral absolutism: I was baptized and had my first communion, after which I flamed out on Catholicism (around the age of ten) before being confirmed. At my first communion I had trouble swallowing the wafer. It stuck to the roof of my mouth and I started coughing. I still remember feeling panicky, wondering what sort of mortal sin it would be to spit the body of Jesus onto the church floor. Eventually I got the wafer down, but God had sent me a message that I’ve never…
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Posted inGod Morality Universe

Evil: made by man or God?

“Evil” is a word much in fashion after 9/11. Bush loves to use it, as in “we will root out the evildoers,” but if he was asked to define the term, I doubt that he’d be able to do it. This isn’t a knock on Bush, because last Thursday three philosophers spent an hour on PBS’s “Philosophy Talk” discussing the nature of evil. Even they didn’t come close to agreeing on an answer. The two hosts of Philosophy Talk were joined by Peter van Inwagen, a philosophy professor at the University of Notre Dame. He said that there is a…
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