It’s not plausible that morally well-ordered communities will be composed of a population containing a high percentage of morally ill-ordered individuals. One problem is that a morally well-ordered community with even a substantial minority of morally ill-ordered individuals would be a flock of sheep with the wolves living in the flock. But it seems plausible … [Read more…]
For background, I’ll make these three claims without trying to justify them: Human beings don’t come together just to be together or for any other sentimental reason; human beings come together to do things and because they are dependent upon each other, perhaps as a result of doing things together. Most moral behavior is learned … [Read more…]
I’d like to return to an essay I wrote in 2009, Darwin, Einstein, and the Totemic Mind: In the totemic mind of ancient hunters of elk, we see the possibility of modern hunters of the secrets of God’s Creation, hunters who carry out their quest in the acts of shaping their minds to embody the … [Read more…]
Once again, I’ll state a standard Jewish and Christian view of man: man can be usefully and truthfully seen as a creature made of mind and heart and hands. This points to state of unity which is not achieved by men in this mortal realm but might be achieved by the resurrected who share the … [Read more…]
Peter Frost has published a good essay in which he deals with human moral nature. The essay can be found at Does Natural Law Exist?. I vaguely anticipated this discussion in my previous essay, The Interior Richness Which Lies in a Civilized Man. Frost defines natural law as teaching: All people are born with a … [Read more…]
Col Pat Lang (ret), a Green Beret and military intelligence officer, has written another of many short and authoritative commentaries on the current messes which are the US civilian government and US military. Of the two, the military seems to be the far lesser mess, even to the point of being reformable so long as … [Read more…]
In the article, The Cognitive Dissonance of Spying, subtitled It’s Always Illegal and Often Immoral, Philip Giraldi, who has served as an officer of the CIA and also of the DIA (military intelligence), tells us: It is being reported that the attempt by Director of Central Intelligence John Brennan to steer the CIA away from … [Read more…]
Military men, even the warriors or “rough boys”, hold a variety of opinions on political issues, including how to use the military. My readings in history and in the news and blogging sites of the Web have led me to believe their opinions tend to be better founded and better reasoned, in terms of basic … [Read more…]
Eric Michael Johnson posted an essay on empathy at the Scientific American website: We Contain Multitudes: Walt Whitman, Charles Darwin, and the Song of Empathy. In this essay, he notes the confusion which followed the publication of On the Origin of Species when “critics claimed that Darwin’s theory divided moral sentiments from divinity and pitted … [Read more…]
God’s Creation can be described in terms of `mystery’ when we speak in certain modes, poetic or spiritual, but that’s not the truest way for a Christian to speak. It’s not the truest way because Christians, of all human beings, should be faithful to the Creator and open to what He’s telling us through this … [Read more…]