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Our money or their lives
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For all of conservatisms evident virtues, it can have one furtive, seedy vice: A justified suspicion of government can degenerate into an anti-government ideology rigid, stingy and indifferent to human suffering. | Topic: | |
text checked (see note) May 2008 |
McCains no fool, just a victim of circumstance
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[...] I remember how truly obnoxious such advice can become. If only the candidate would fire his entire campaign staff and travel the country in a used Yugo, speaking in the parking lots of | Topic: | |
text checked (see note) Oct 2008 |
How religious thought lights up your brain
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Neuroscience cannot tell you if God does or doesnt exist, Newberg states with appropriate humility. But Newbergs research offers warnings for the religious as well. Contemplating a loving God strengthens portions of our brain particularly the frontal lobes and the anterior cingulate where empathy and reason reside. Contemplating a wrathful God empowers the limbic system, which is filled with aggression and fear. It is a sobering concept: The God we choose to love changes us into his image, whether he exists or not. For Newberg, this is not a simple critique of religious fundamentalism a phenomenon varied in its beliefs and motivations. It is a criticism of any institution that allies ideology or faith with anger and selfishness. Note (Hals): end note | Topic: | |
text checked (see note) Apr 2009 |
Cap-and-trade eight are really not traitors
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It is typical that we praise independent judgment and political nerve in our elected officials until they actually show those qualities. | Topic: | |
text checked (see note) Jul 2009 |
A nation of many creeds
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[...] America was not founded as a Christian nation precisely because Americas founders were informed by a Jewish and Christian understanding of human nature. Since humans are autonomous moral beings created in Gods image, freedom of conscience is essential to their dignity. At least where the federal government was concerned, the founders asserted that citizens should be subject to God and their conscience, not to the state. The Founders were not secularists. They assumed that people would bring their deepest moral motivations to political life motivations often informed by religious belief. But they firmly rejected sectariansim. | Topic: | |
So does the Constitution, in Jeffersons gloss, require the separation of church and state? Institutionally, yes. Theologically, yes with one notable exception. Nearly all the most important teachings of faith doctrines on individual salvation or the destination of history have no public role or relevance. But one belief a belief in the nature and rights of human beings is the basis of any political philosophy, including our own. It matters greatly if all men are created equal or not. Religious faith remains one of the main foundations for belief in human equality and dignity as it was in the Declaration of Independence. But this conviction leads in a different direction than some religious people imagine. It is honored by respecting the priority of conscience. | Topic: | |
text checked (see note) Oct 2010 |
Background graphic copyright © 2003 by Hal Keen