tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57670872011-04-21T21:16:59.092-04:00ParablemaniaMusings: philosophy, theology, politics, Christian apologeticsJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comBlogger881100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1075570350434480352004-01-31T12:32:00.000-05:002004-01-31T12:34:07.340-05:00New location I've finally finished transferring all the posts and comments to the new site: http://parablemania.ektopos.com Thanks to Matthew for setting this up and being willing to host this. I haven't yet done much with format and template stuff, but eventually I want to get most of the stuff I've had here over there. I may not worry about changing the look much. From now on all posts willJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1075527890056552562004-01-31T00:44:00.000-05:002004-01-31T12:41:09.873-05:00Favorite husband and wife blogs Sam thinks the best thing about this is being mentioned on Evangelical Outpost. I appreciate the mention itself, but I think I appreciate the award a little more than the mere mention. Of course, the suggestion that we have to fight over a computer is a good deal off. Having three computers on a high-speed connection makes for a lot less computer competition, Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1075527458648596722004-01-31T00:37:00.000-05:002004-01-31T00:39:14.873-05:00A David Kay quote you won't hear on CNN: "Iraq was a very dangerous place. The country had the technology, the ability to produce, and there were terrorist groups passing through the country--and no central control." A fair analysis of what Kay has been saying will take more sensitivity to complexity and nuance than most of the Democratic candidates seem capable of.Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1075500422617123332004-01-30T17:07:00.000-05:002004-01-30T17:10:12.013-05:00On the SC debate: foreign policy I had to miss another debate Thursday (why can't they pick another night?), but I'm looking at the transcript now. This one seems much shorter on substance and much more focused on serious sidestepping of questions and continued repetition of blithe campaign slogans, but there are some moments worthy of comment. I'll take the foreign policy elements first. Tom Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1075420769230703722004-01-29T18:59:00.000-05:002004-01-29T19:01:04.750-05:00Household unions Thanks to a link by Andrew Sullivan, I've found a John O'Sullivan piece that makes the civil union/marriage debate even more complicated. He assumes first that traditional marriage will within ten years be gone. Given that, he proposes household unions, which can be formed by any group of people living together, whether they have any sexual relationship or not. These could be Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1075406202033782152004-01-29T14:56:00.000-05:002004-01-30T11:18:56.090-05:00Wondering about the larger-scale effects of abortion I had a thought today as I listened to someone on NPR discussing how tax cuts are the reason there won't be enough money to cover the growing programs Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as baby boomers start to retire. It's not worth mentioning that we've known about this problem for a long time now, and the Bush tax cuts are pretty Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1075345848073615922004-01-28T22:10:00.000-05:002004-01-30T11:24:49.576-05:00Moving I haven't been writing much lately because someone has graciously offered to host my blog at a new location with Movable Type, so I'm in the process of transferring everything over there. It didn't read the Blogger export information correctly, so I'm doing it by hand, which I would have had to do with the comments anyway. I've gotten to January 2 now, and I hope to have it fully Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1075255111434121222004-01-27T20:58:00.000-05:002004-01-27T21:30:14.250-05:00The libertarian: (i.e. the moral wimp) Andrew Sullivan has a new article in Time. It gives the basic anti-Bush argument from libertarian premises, and he really does make the same fundamental mistake libertarians tend to make. Let's look at Sullivan's complaints: "Where once education was essentially the preserve of states, school principals and parents, this President has expanded the federalJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1075153144100324962004-01-26T16:39:00.000-05:002004-01-26T16:41:09.186-05:00Interpretation and homosexuality passages II This email discussion is continuing. I got a response back, I've sent off a response to that, and I've gotten another one back already. It's venturing into broader issues of interpretation and inerrancy. I've included it in the original file and in the Arguments About Sex and Sexuality collection.Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1075090481544953952004-01-25T23:14:00.000-05:002004-01-25T23:16:55.590-05:00Interpretation and homosexuality passages I received an email from someone who I assume would prefer to remain anonymous, in response to some of what I've said about homosexuality. His basic thrust was that he couldn't understand how I could take passages about homosexuality literally to conclude that there's something bad about homosexuality despite all the evidence against that view, Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074997518439547792004-01-24T21:25:00.000-05:002004-01-24T21:29:03.810-05:00Realized millenialism That's the new name some people are trying to use for what has traditionally been called amillenialism, which is the view that I think does the most justice to the biblical accounts of the end times. I've seen at least two links to this piece in the last week or so (from Andrew Warnock and Discoshaman), and I've finally gotten around to reading it. People often ask me what Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074958374343384682004-01-24T10:32:00.000-05:002004-01-24T13:08:38.873-05:00Head vs. heart? Discoshaman looks at Dean's "heart over head" comments as a symptom of a general trend among Democrats to favor policies that sound nice but end up disastrous. "Sure, they destroyed the black family with inept social engineering, razed inner city neighborhoods and built unlivable human ant farms and created an incompetent public school monopoly. . . But their hearts were in the Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074956723315151442004-01-24T10:05:00.000-05:002004-01-24T10:06:53.403-05:00Inconsistency on states' rights Josh Claybourn has a nice snippet on Democratic candidates' views on states' rights at the end of his comments on Thursday's debate: "It's interesting that the candidates will support States' rights when it suits them, but run from it when it doesn't. For instance Sen. Edwards was firmly in favor of letting States determine what constitutes marriage, and Dean wasJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074914437363584082004-01-23T22:20:00.000-05:002004-01-23T22:25:17.716-05:00A Deeper Notion of Marriage What is supposed to be so harmful about gay marriage? What turns out to be the main reason Christians should want to safeguard the term ‘marriage’ has to do with the biblical concept of marriage, and it’s something almost no one I’ve been reading on the topic mentions. It’s no wonder that Andrew Sullivan can’t find any argument for why Christians are so opposed to gayJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074911143831274742004-01-23T21:25:00.000-05:002004-01-23T21:31:29.140-05:00Blaming the wrong people On NPR today, Diane Rehm and Ken Auletta (media critic and writer for The New Yorker) were ganging up on the media for attaching the "angry" label to Howard Dean. Apparently they saw none of the anger that so many people have seen. Now I don't know who they've been following, but it's hard to watch and hear him when he says "George Bush" without noticing that he Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074908113995455972004-01-23T20:35:00.000-05:002004-01-23T20:36:43.123-05:00NH debate comments: The short of it: I wasn’t able to watch this one, so I have more to say, given that I was looking at a transcript for this. Kerry, as in Iowa, seems presidential but seemed like he’s back to the old-school liberal positions that Bush will have an easier time running agaisnt. Edwards’ reason for voting against the $87 million for Iraq made sense. He looked like a fool on the Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074907611907195182004-01-23T20:26:00.000-05:002004-01-23T20:32:08.170-05:00John Edwards on Iraq John Edwards is in the large group of Democrats who had the same evidence President Bush had and supported the military action to remove Saddam Hussein from power, some of whom have strongly insisted that Bush knew there were no WMDs on the same intelligence they had while supporting him. I hadn't known how strong Edwards' support for this action was. "We know that he has Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074815677824024572004-01-22T18:54:00.000-05:002004-01-22T18:57:02.263-05:00Pacifism I'm teaching on pacifism, war, violence, and related issues in my ethics class right now, and I've just finished a summary of the main arguments for pacifism and the responses to them.Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074721250667049292004-01-21T16:40:00.000-05:002004-01-22T11:22:31.076-05:00Bush's spending Since I've been in the business of defending President Bush against conservatives, I might as well post a link to the conclusions of a non-partisan study of the Democratic candidates' proposed policies and how they compare to the current administration's. This looks as if people voting on this one issue should prefer Bush, despite the rhetoric of some of the Democrats to the Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074645619205983572004-01-20T19:40:00.000-05:002004-01-20T19:41:45.233-05:00Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God? President Bush has gotten in trouble with some of his fellow evangelicals. They don't think he's a real evangelical because of his comments about other religions. He says Islam is a good religion, that Muslims, Jews, and Christians worship the same God, and that the beliefs of other good religions like Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc. will help Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074556897710305672004-01-19T19:01:00.000-05:002004-01-21T17:24:12.793-05:00Pornography, soap operas, and objectification Will Baude considers and rejects the arguments of Catherine MacKinnon and Melinda Vadas that pornography leads to actual treatment of women as objects. (I think it treats the actual women who were photographed as objects, but I assume he's ignoring that fact, probably because he thinks they consented to being photographed nude, though this response Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074528119573140492004-01-19T11:01:00.000-05:002004-01-19T11:05:02.326-05:00Christian Carnival I've just gotten a post accepted to the Christian Carnival, and I was asked to post the following announcement to gather more entries for it: Please send your entries in now to the Christian Carnival, hosted by Patriot Paradox. Here is how: To enter is simple. First your post should be of a Christian nature, but this does not exclude posts that are political (or otherwise) Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074527851898423782004-01-19T10:57:00.000-05:002004-01-19T19:06:07.106-05:00Abortion and violence Antioch Road on the report of two more deaths from abortion via medication: "A drug is supposed to avoid invasive surgical procedures, which almost always carry risk. Aborting a pregnancy, resulting in the death of child being carried in the womb, however, will always be invasive, even if a pill is used. It will thus always be dangerous to the mother." Yes, abortion is Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-107448124306702142004-01-18T22:00:00.000-05:002004-01-19T08:27:06.466-05:00It's wrong simply because someone takes offense? Normally I really appreciate almost every posting at Language Log, an excellent multi-author blog by linguists. An entry by Christopher Potts appeared today that seems to me to have disturbing implications. He refers back to a post by Geoff Nunberg criticizing a September court decision that allowed the Washington Redskins to keep their name. TheJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074475325386646942004-01-18T20:22:00.000-05:002004-01-18T20:35:19.186-05:00How can vampires raise their children? Will Baude has a nice discussion of a tough legal issue that would come up if vampires turned out to be real. If I were a vampire, would I have the right to make my own kid a vampire? One of the reasons this does have a point is because it deals with what parents have the right to do that they believe is in the best interests of their children but most Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074362028308194742004-01-17T12:53:00.000-05:002004-01-17T12:55:10.890-05:00Legalized stealing Venezuela is considering decriminalizing stealing in situations where it can be determined that the thief was "motivated by extreme hunger or need". I understand the motivation to want to help those in extreme hunger or need, and Venezuela certainly has plenty of that. I even understand the notion of showing moral deference because of the impossibility of complete Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074354052575231642004-01-17T10:40:00.000-05:002004-01-18T07:52:21.170-05:00New low for racist left 'Racism' can be defined in two ways. The more common understanding of the term among white people is that a racist is someone who has a demeaning or hateful attitude toward someone of another race. This is called personal racism. The problem with this definition is that it doesn't capture attitudes, policies, or practices that don't stem from personal racism but do have aJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074185505963864592004-01-15T11:51:00.000-05:002004-01-18T16:28:40.110-05:00Social liberalism and legislating morality The biggest complaint I have about social liberalism is not the libertarian attitude about social issues. It's that it's often adopted inconsistently. A true libertarian doesn't necessarily have this problem, and social liberals who don't believe in genuine morality aren't subject to this particular criticism. The problem here is when someone takes Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074183962547770532004-01-15T11:26:00.000-05:002004-01-18T18:15:11.546-05:00War of the Blogs I just discovered that there's a major war between blogs that support Instapundit and those who want to dethrone him from first place in the Ecosystem at Truth Laid Bear. Truth Laid Bear includes a section on alliances, and two of them have formed on each side of this war. The Alliance of Free Blogs sounds like a nice, independent sort of organization until you discover what's Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074116448655749122004-01-14T16:40:00.000-05:002004-01-14T16:42:08.640-05:00Dean cheating? This is a little worrisome. According to David Yepsen of the Des Moines Register, Dean supporters are talking about rigging the Iowa caucuses to put Dean in a better position in NH. How? "There's talk in his campaign of trying to help Kerry win second place here. The gambit goes like this: Once Dean sees he has won the most delegates at a caucus, any extra Dean supporters will beJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074047124299940852004-01-13T21:25:00.000-05:002004-01-13T21:54:52.280-05:00Infrasound and religious experiences Scientists have discovered that feelings of eeriness and religious experiences can correlate with very sounds lower than we can hear. According to NPR today, a man working on a house alone saw what looked like a ghost. The next day he discovered an electric tool buzzing on its own. He investigated and found a fan operating at a very low frequency. When he Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074030465577577452004-01-13T16:47:00.000-05:002004-01-13T19:26:37.750-05:00Stay-home dads I'm not a stay-home dad, but we've considered the possibility of my wife going back to work and me staying home with the kids, wondering whether that would help me make more progress on my dissertation (and my dad was a stay-home dad for a little while when I was in middle school, eventually forming a home-based business and always being around anyway, as I often am because of a Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073964145373530532004-01-12T22:22:00.000-05:002004-01-12T22:24:36.920-05:00Attacks against troops in Iraq down 22% since Saddam's capture Yet another news item I'm not surprised I haven't been hearing about even though the news is on all day around here. I certainly remember people trying to soften the excitement of Saddam's capture by saying it would lead to increased attacks against U.S. soldiers. They seem to have been quite far off in their predictions. Let me Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073943568633034152004-01-12T16:39:00.000-05:002004-01-12T22:25:11.640-05:00Gay gene? There's an excellent discussion going on right now at Josh Claybourn's blog on whether homosexuality is determined or made likely by genetics and whether that's even significant for moral issues. Unfortunately, the direct link keeps closing my browser, so I've just linked the main page, and you'll have to scroll down. I generally don't like to link to things without having anything toJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073886463438816892004-01-12T00:47:00.000-05:002004-01-12T22:26:16.246-05:00Democratic candidates' D&D characters This is the absolutely funniest thing I've seen in a long, long time. Discoshaman lists some highlights, though I don't think he picked all the funniest ones. It's not just that it's brilliant. It's obvious this guy spent a long time working on this.Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073880466778683372004-01-11T23:07:00.000-05:002004-01-11T23:10:49.623-05:00Blackburn: Lust is a Virtue Simon Blackburn thinks lust should not just be removed from the vice list but be added to the virtues. "According to the Sunday Times, Prof Blackburn has defined lust as "the enthusiastic desire for sexual activity and its pleasures for its own sake". The philosopher says that if reciprocated, lust leads to pleasure and "best flourishes when unencumbered by bad Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073873224065729572004-01-11T21:07:00.000-05:002004-01-12T11:49:20.340-05:00The Reveler vs. Mad How Another Democratic presidential debate is on now. Howard Dean just got reamed by Al Sharpton. I have really mixed feelings about this, because it was so fun seeing Dean look so uncomfortable by the things Sharpton was saying about him, but it was such a bad argument. Sharpton's earlier criticism of Dean was that he had no place talking about race because he comes from a Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073685560793218752004-01-09T16:59:00.000-05:002004-01-09T17:00:35.590-05:00Da Vinci Code review Here's an excellent review of Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code by Craig Blomberg, one of the most responsible of contemporary evangelical biblical scholars. It challenges a number of the claims made in the book that even the most liberal biblical scholars would agree are simply invented by Brown. If you're going to read the book, read this review first (and Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073665564567631882004-01-09T11:26:00.000-05:002004-01-10T09:49:11.793-05:00Scientific data on human genetic diversity I haven't seen this described so nicely before. It's been common knowledge among most philosophers of race that our American concept of race has no scientific basis. That doesn't mean there's no reality to race, but it's a social phenomenon, not a scientifically discoverable division within the species. The work on the human genome project has not only Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073657921705025952004-01-09T09:18:00.000-05:002004-01-09T09:24:43.653-05:00Cannibalism and liberal views on sex People often support liberal views on sexual behavior by saying that whatever two people consent to do together is ok. Theodore Dalrymple has evaluated the case of German cannibal Armin Meiwes, according to this principle. Unsurprisingly, this principle gives no reason to oppose Meiwes's behavior, since his victim had responded to an internet ad asking for "aJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073611014852169062004-01-08T20:16:00.000-05:002004-01-08T20:38:23.170-05:00Clark: Life by Maternal Fiat Wesley Clark takes conventionalism about personal identity to the extreme. Many philosophers think what makes someone a person are complex social practices, including language use and moral views. If we used language diferently and had different moral views, we would have a different concept of personhood, and the word 'person' would mean something different. A new Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073587912475707872004-01-08T13:51:00.000-05:002004-01-08T14:05:10.420-05:00Bigoted I looked over the last entry on Schwarzeneggar, and I think my use of the term 'bigoted' needs some explanation. I don't think Trent Lott is a bigot. I may be wrong. I don't think he would have said we'd be better off if Strom Thurmond had been elected president if he'd realized the implications people later drew out of that statement. It would have been political suicide to say such a Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073533971307720962004-01-07T22:52:00.000-05:002004-01-07T22:55:09.966-05:00Governor Schwarzenegger's English Linguist Geoff Pullum confirms what I've been saying for a while now. It's not just that Gray Davis' bigoted comment about Arnold Schwarzenegger's English was false. His English is excellent and far better than most American native English speakers could even hope to have. He even said he'd strangle a kitten to be able to speak a foreign language as well as Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073500554367033702004-01-07T13:35:00.000-05:002004-01-08T21:00:20.200-05:00Collected posts I've decided to collect my posts about sex and sexuality into an ever-expanding file on my website. Each post will still appear here, but new posts will also end up there to have them all in once place. This will help with searching for particular items and with seeing the overall flow of the whole discussion from start to finish. Posts like the immediately previous one that are Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073492124089655382004-01-07T11:15:00.000-05:002004-01-07T11:50:47.560-05:00A new moral dilemma for Christians I've been thinking about an old moral dilemma recently, from Ezra 10, in conjunction with the recent case of the woman who became a Christian, left her lesbian relationship, and then was told by a court that her former partner, who hadn't been in a legal relationship with the now-Christian woman's adopted daughter, had joint custody and that the now-Christian Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073489251137997232004-01-07T10:27:00.000-05:002004-01-07T10:28:44.106-05:00Stem cells without embryos This came out two weeks ago, and it's huge news, I've been spending a lot of time in the internet lately, and this is the first I've heard of it. Scientists at Scripps Research Institute in California have found a way to turn differentiated adult cells into stem-cells using a newly discovered compound called reversine. The primary argument for scientific research on Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073407146887228842004-01-06T11:39:00.000-05:002004-01-06T12:10:55.810-05:00The party of the elite? I don't know how many times I've heard that the Republican party is the party of a snobbish, elitist minority who think condescendingly of everyone else. This article is one piece of evidence among many demonstrating that elitism among liberals, at the very least, is no better. This guy just can't fathom that so many people would like President Bush without being quite Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073351202827081342004-01-05T20:06:00.000-05:002004-01-06T16:24:04.340-05:00Marriage already undermined Andrew Sullivan has a nice, short explanation of something I've had a hard time getting across to most conservatives. Civil marriage as it exists right now has nothing of what conservatives seem so hard-pressed to preserve. Britney's so-called marriage (which now legally never happened) is just an extreme example of this. What conservatives don't seem to see is that Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073249950353264262004-01-04T15:59:00.000-05:002004-01-04T17:19:23.250-05:00Dean's tax for the poor (or: Lies told in today's Democratic debate) No I'm not talking about the lottery. This would be more a outright tax for the poor. The Democratic debate is on right now, and the idiocy is going at full pace. Howard Dean just said "There was no tax cut for the middle class." I make somewhere in the $20,000-$30,000 range. Since my wife has graciously been handling financesJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073180872626893612004-01-03T20:47:00.000-05:002004-01-03T21:08:10.716-05:00Linguist confirms: Bushisms are politically concocted Linguist Mark Liberman, no Bush supporter, has some surprising negative remarks about the campaign to make President Bush look like an dunce through overexamining his speech to find any possible regional accent, slip of the tongue, or nonstandard use, then calling it a Bushism. (I remember when they did the same sort of thing to Dan Quayle Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073141268588035502004-01-03T09:47:00.000-05:002004-01-03T09:54:49.483-05:00 Two more ethics tests This was a interesting test. It basically told me what I already knew. I think something can be morally wrong even if it doesn't harm anyone, but I think most things that don't appear to harm people but are wrong do in fact harm someone -- the person doing them -- simply because doing something wrong harms you. It suggested that there was a tension here, but I don't Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073124528471655302004-01-03T05:08:00.000-05:002004-01-03T10:19:24.746-05:00An Australian forklift driver is the King of England This is hilarious. A British historian has argued that Queen Elizabeth is illegitimate, and so is every monarch since Edward IV (1461-1483), who was fathered by a French archer. During the five-week period that Edward could have been conceived, the man who was supposed to be his father was at war and nowhere near Edward's mother. Therefore, Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073100902595626092004-01-02T22:35:00.000-05:002004-01-02T22:37:48.233-05:00Michael Crichton and Philip Johnson? Almost a year ago, Michael Crichton gave a heated condemnation of the scientific community for beefing up low-standard research with rhetoric, computer models based on equations whose variables we can't even guess at in an educated way, and conducting heresy trials against those who challenged the research. The targets? Carl Sagan's claims about the certaintyJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073077766734258542004-01-02T16:09:00.000-05:002004-01-05T17:42:20.546-05:00J. Michael Straczynski short story Amazon.com has a feature today on J. Michael Straczynski, best known for Babylon 5, the best show in the history of television, but also more recently for his work in comic books, especially The Amazing Spiderman. Unfortunately, it says nothing about the new B5 project that he's working on and won't say anything about, but it does have a new short story by him Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1073058199534598732004-01-02T10:43:00.000-05:002004-01-02T10:49:01.466-05:00Bill Clinton and Howard Dean on race Mickey Kaus has some interesting comparisons between Bill Clinton and Howard Dean on the issue of race. Apparently Dean is using the tired old line that race problems are merely a matter of educating white people about unconscious racism. The far left will hate this classic liberal attitude (that had been drilled into me during freshman orientation at Brown) Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1072996460841054162004-01-01T17:34:00.000-05:002004-01-01T17:47:14.280-05:00Thoughts on LOTR movies Now that I've had a couple weeks to think since having seen the third episode in Peter Jackson's visualization of the best novel in history (Tolkien saw it as one novel), I've finally put together my thoughts on the overall project. I haven't seen every extended scene in The Two Towers extended edition yet (but have seen all the completely new scenes), and the final Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1072710439205933562003-12-29T10:07:00.000-05:002003-12-29T10:08:23.546-05:00MBTI and Philosophers I got David Keirsey's Please Understand Me II for Christmas, so I've been thinking a lot about personality type. Most philosophers I know tend to be ENTP or INTP, with some INTJ or ENTJ. Almost all of the philosophers whose type I know or can guess easily fall into those four types. I, on the other hand, am ISTJ, so I'm been wondering how personality type affects the Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1072366842867674332003-12-25T10:40:00.000-05:002004-01-07T12:26:26.420-05:00Sex and presumption against breaking a relationship This is my rejoinder to Will's reply to my earlier response to him. He says my argument is only slightly fallacious. I'm not sure what that means. I'll have to think about that. If I'm guilty of the fallacy he says I'm guilty of, then it's just plain fallacious, unless he meant something else. Will considers my argument a false binary, meaningJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1072360607362034162003-12-25T08:56:00.000-05:002003-12-25T08:57:47.826-05:00Why take it out on the kid? This isn't new, but I just found out about it. In August, a Catholic pre-school denied admission to a 4-year-old girl because her legal parents are lesbians. Their claim is that they can't teach their view that homosexuality is wrong and admit the existence of lesbian parents. I don't see how this follows. Can I teach stealing is wrong despite the obvious examples of Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1072143722698443302003-12-22T20:42:00.000-05:002003-12-22T20:55:10.640-05:00More bad reporting from The New York Times Here's what they said on the front page: "President Bush had been noncommittal about a constitutional amendment .... But last week Mr. Bush for the first time voiced his support, saying, 'I will support a constitutional amendment which would honor marriage between a man and a woman, codify that.'" Here's what he really said: "If necessary, I will Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1072104168229556392003-12-22T09:42:00.000-05:002003-12-22T20:13:42.700-05:00The Ethical Philosophy Selector Check out the latest web test to determine something about yourself that you should but probably don't already know. It asks you questions about your ethical views and then tells you how much you match up with some of the most influential ethical theorists. I'm wondering how different it would be if the questions were practical rather than theoretical. They even Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1072064495066233792003-12-21T22:41:00.000-05:002003-12-22T20:28:18.860-05:00A response to some arguments against presexual marriage Will Baude has some interesting arguments against presexual marriage. Go ahead and read that again to make sure you got it right. For those having trouble figuring out this concept, he means that he doesn't think you should marry someone without first having sex with them, especially if you have a strong disfavorable attitude toward divorceJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1071853738027145422003-12-19T12:08:00.000-05:002003-12-19T12:10:03.170-05:00Finally some real discussion of Bush's foreign policy? For the first time, someone writes an article discussion the real issues at stake in the foreign policy of the Bush Administration. The conspiracy theory approach and the evil Bush villain but Saddam hero stuff rightly gets dismissed with no argument. The pre-emptive issue gets dodged, without reference to the many decent ways to defend Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1071850022592046972003-12-19T11:07:00.000-05:002003-12-19T14:22:22.356-05:00Comparative violence: Iraq and the U.S. Bad reporting by the major media has gotten worse. A New York Times article, to fabricate numbers making the murder rate in Baghdad look high, includes in its rate all the deaths from automobile accidents, terrorists killed by coalition forces, and other non-murders. The actual murder rate in Baghdad is lower than that of Washington, D.C. I don't want to Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1071499307019800872003-12-15T09:41:00.000-05:002003-12-19T14:40:36.140-05:00Ancestors in the Middle Ages and biblical genealogies Last Wednesday, I posted a link to a fascinating discussion of how many ancestors the average American of European descent would have had in the Middle Ages. The answer was all of them who have living descendants today. Those who missed it should read it. It's fun. What I've been thinking about it what this means for the common claim that Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1071373653477913532003-12-13T22:47:00.000-05:002003-12-14T16:14:20.670-05:00Two race-related but otherwise unrelated items: 1. A mixed-race woman is claiming that Strom Thurmond is her father. As far as I can tell, she's probably right. A former Thurmond aide (who happens to be black) was just on Fox News saying that he definitely had a relationship of some sort with her and that she did believe she was his daughter. He wouldn't confirm that Thurmond was her father, Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1071361466444602422003-12-13T19:24:00.000-05:002003-12-19T14:48:41.936-05:00Shameless plug Those interested in Christian apologetics and theology can can check out my sites on those topics: http://web.syr.edu/~jrpierce/apologetics.htm http://web.syr.edu/~jrpierce/theology.htm There's probably enough there to offend almost anyone.Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1071339047380023862003-12-13T13:10:00.000-05:002003-12-13T13:17:39.326-05:00Howard Dean on abortion Dean seems to have admitted that abortion is not a medical procedure and is something medical doctors qua medical doctors don't perform. "I did not perform abortions. I'm a medical doctor." I've thought that for years, but what can Dean mean by this? He's made it clear that he clearly supports Planned Parenthood, and as far as I can tell he joins my senators Hillary Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1071334711705163692003-12-13T11:58:00.000-05:002003-12-13T12:11:54.450-05:00Halliburton probe for Bush profiteering? Don't give Halliburton that much credit. "Halliburton didn't profit from that differential, officials said. 'This isn't money that went to the company,' said Larry DiRita, the Pentagon's top spokesman. Rather, he said, the money the Pentagon believes was overcharged went to a private Kuwaiti company that is a subcontractor on the contract." I wonder if Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1071332472267829212003-12-13T11:21:00.000-05:002003-12-13T11:22:00.640-05:00How many buried stories can we handle at once? For the third time in a couple days, a story has come to my attention that would have increased the president's public image but got buried by the major news outlets, this time on environmental issues that made the front pages when people were calling Bush to do something about it. Well, he has, and there's hardly a mention in a prominent place. It Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1071249722874785542003-12-12T12:22:00.000-05:002003-12-12T12:36:10.340-05:00Teenage sexual activity and emotional health "Teenagers of both genders who are sexually active are substantially less likely to be happy and more likely to be depressed than are teen­agers who are not sexually active. Teenagers of both genders who are sexually active are substantially more likely to attempt suicide than are teenagers who are not sexually active." http://www.heritage.org/Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1071240225149694962003-12-12T09:43:00.000-05:002003-12-12T09:48:59.500-05:00Economy best in 20 years! Well, the reports are in. Every revised estimate seems to be better than the previous one, but this one takes the cake. The latest Conference Board forecast is that 2003 is the best economic year in 20 years. That's a long time. Given that the recession started before Bush took office and then got worse with 9-11 (which, in the minds of the militant Islamic terrorists, Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1071239524832693372003-12-12T09:32:00.000-05:002003-12-19T22:32:25.076-05:00Dan Rather rolling over in his grave I remember watching an investigative report a couple years ago by Dan Rather. In it, he demonstrated quite clearly that one of the 3-4 missle defense projects at the time had a flawed design and didn't have much chance of hitting the target missles. He didn't quite draw the conclusion that such projects must therefore be hopeless and an evil waste of money Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1071195257618336472003-12-11T21:14:00.000-05:002003-12-19T22:23:22.186-05:00Recent feminist reasons for traditional gender roles? Having taught this semester on feminist ethical theory for the first time, I've been thinking about the various kinds and motivations for feminisms. My recent venture into Ken Wilber's world of color-terms for waves of value change over time has given me some categories for thinking about these (see my Dec 5 posting on Wilber for more on the Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1071190314643467292003-12-11T19:51:00.000-05:002003-12-19T22:25:47.560-05:00Illegitimate President? I knew some studies had been done about who would have won if the recount had gone through, and I knew the answer is that Bush would probably have won anyway, but I didn't know how comprehensive the research supporting this was and how systematic the arguments against the illegitimacy myth really are. http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/lott200312100915.asp This sort Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1071188599003685512003-12-11T19:23:00.000-05:002003-12-19T23:07:54.936-05:00New York Times breaking the silence barrier The New York Times have finally decided to say something about the significant anti-terrorist, pro-democracy rallies in Iraq that are all over the blogs: "In contrast, a heavily policed march in central Baghdad on Wednesday, organized peacefully by the country's major political parties, drew thousands of Iraqis to protest attacks by guerrilla fightersJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1071081447005061872003-12-10T13:37:00.000-05:002003-12-12T12:46:24.200-05:00Rumsfeld: foot in mouth? This has been bugging me for at least a few days, so I have to express my thoughts on it. The Foot in Mouth awards gave first prize to Donald Rumsfeld for saying that there are some things we know we know, and there are some things we know we don't know. That is, we know about our knowledge in the one case, and we know that we're ignorant in the second. The statement Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1071074907621214382003-12-10T11:48:00.000-05:002003-12-10T16:04:05.950-05:00Hell and Vagueness Brian Weatherson has probably the best philosophy blog out there. He recently posted some thoughts about Ted Sider's paper "Hell and Vagueness" in Faith and Philosophy (2003). Ted basically argues that the distinction in goodness between the worst people in heaven and the best people in hell can't be very large, since everyone's goodness is on a continuum. God must have Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1071074345916447422003-12-10T11:39:00.000-05:002003-12-10T11:44:37.403-05:00Open Theism I remember Christianity Today doing an article on open theism (the view that God doesn't know the future because of future human free choices) a few years ago, and I was disappointed at how imbalanced the discussion was, though they say they were just giving tools for people to make their own decision. Most of the points that I thought needed to be said were included in the letters Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1071074097966738482003-12-10T11:34:00.000-05:002003-12-10T11:44:01.403-05:00Who were my ancestors in the Middle Ages? Pretty much everyone (with some important qualifications)! Check it out: http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/002852.html Thanks to Brian Weatherson for the link.Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1071033122012201942003-12-10T00:12:00.000-05:002003-12-10T00:15:39.293-05:00Reagan and AIDS It's amazing how many times I've heard that Reagan just dropped the ball on AIDS. I was always told that he didn't do anything until the last year of his second term, and that was just to get Bush elected (never mind the fact that his 1988 declaration of being HIV-positive as a handicapped status was an unpopular decision that could easily have hurt Bush). Now the the CBS, I meanJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1071030303191045192003-12-09T23:25:00.000-05:002003-12-12T13:01:55.030-05:00Brights: the new euphemism for educated atheists Christian philosopher Michael Rea has posted a very interesting exchange with Daniel Dennett on the issue of naturalism. Dennett is known, among other things, for his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, a discussion of the philosophical implications of evolutionary theory. Dennett recently published an op-ed piece in the New York Times. Apparently the Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1070720383971862422003-12-06T09:19:00.000-05:002003-12-20T09:56:50.360-05:00Eco-imperialists! (See the Worldview Values post below for Ken Wilber's color explanations and analysis. This post has been revised a bit for the sake of clarity.) Here's some strong evidence that those with a green center of gravity tend to have some purple and red mixed in but are in such strong opposition even to healthy blue-orange themes that they end up appearing like Nazis. Wilber says Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1070637673791218792003-12-05T10:21:00.000-05:002003-12-20T09:57:59.796-05:00Ken Wilber part 2: Worldview-Values The second bit that I picked up from Ken Wilber (see Part 1 below for the first) is an insightful analysis of what might be called worldview-values. He calls them waves or memes, and he assigns colors to them for shorthand. Here is his description of the succession of colors on the first level: "beige: instinctual; purple: magical-animistic, tribal; red: Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1070599238877930452003-12-04T23:40:00.000-05:002003-12-09T23:14:36.216-05:00Ken Wilber part 1: An Interestingly Balanced Approach to Political Attitudes I've been reading some Ken Wilber online, because a colleague of mine is really into him, and I wanted to see what he's all about. The guy's really odd in some ways (stuff that looks new agey but is really more like neo-Platonism), but he has some really provoking thoughts on political theory. It's hard to get much out Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1070598404211581572003-12-04T23:26:00.000-05:002003-12-09T23:10:32.450-05:00Marriage Supper of the Lamb? Here's something I've been wondering about this week. In Revelation 19, an angel announces the marriage of the Lamb with his bride, the gathering of believers. Then he rides out on the white horse, and the angel standing in the sun announces the great supper of God, calling the birds to come eat the flesh of all those who defy God and continue in rebellion, gatheringJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1070596656221939822003-12-04T22:57:00.000-05:002003-12-09T23:09:59.733-05:00TULIP: Do the five points stand or fall together? Here's a musing. Take the Calvinist acronym TULIP (Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, Perseverance of the Saints). I've heard some people of the Reformed persuastion claiming that these five points stand or fall together, and that just seems false to me, so I did some pointless speculation to think Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1062672029555700282003-09-04T06:40:00.000-04:002003-09-04T06:40:29.436-04:00I'm not sleeping, so I'm starting a weblog. Musings from my website will end up here, and I probably won't use the website as a forum for this sort of thing anymore. It's too much hassle to update it.Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.com