1. Is There Sex in Heaven? Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft says "yes." (HT: CounterCulture)
2. The 4 Boneheaded Biases of Stupid Voters
3. Dan Wallace on Pauline Scatology
4. From Bruce Thornton, Plagues of the Mind: The New Epidemic of False Knowledge (p. 11)
Perhaps the most pervasive example of how easily wanton speculation and oversimplifications dressed in the stolen garments of science dupe us into false knowledge, is the instant authority we grant to the "study," the ipse dixit of the modern world. Anytime a sentence is prefaced with the phrase "studies have shown," you can be sure to hear either some truism ponderously restated, or some half-baked oversimplification the authors of the study already believed to be true before they ever began. And when the "study" purports to prove some truth about that intricate, complex, quirky, unpredictable, unique creature that is a human being, then you can be equally sure that its conclusions add one more disease to the syndrome of false knowledge.
(HT: Christian Thinker)
5. 20 Things You Didn't Know About Nothing
#1. There is vastly more nothing than something. Roughly 74 percent of the universe is “nothing,” or what physicists call dark energy; 22 percent is dark matter, particles we cannot see. Only 4 percent is baryonic matter, the stuff we call something.
#15. Creatio ex nihilo, the belief that the world was created out of nothing, is one of the most common themes in ancient myths and religions.
(HT: The Presurfer)
6. thelistuniverse found ten classic films from the 1920s, 30s and 40s that you can watch online: Fritz Lang's M, Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc, Murnau's Nosferatu, Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush, Buster Keaton's The General, Merhige's Begotten, Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front, and three of my favorite films, Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (with Clark Gable), It's a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (both with Jimmy Stewart). (HT: Open Culture)
7. Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time (HT: Neatorama)
8. David Wayne on Horribilzation:
Great saints need a standard to measure themselves by. Most of us understand that we don't meet God's standards, so we instinctively turn to other human beings to give us a standard to measure ourselves by. Saints are a cut above other mortals, so to document their saintliness, they need to document how they are better than others. Hence, they need to horribilize others.
The word "horribilization" describes what we do with the other person. It's the mental and emotional process we go through to convince ourselves that someone else, be it a person or a thing, or maybe even society in general is horrible. It's the blame shifting process - it's the process by which we excuse ourselves and make others responsible for all that is wrong with our lives and the world for that matter.
9. ZIPskinny -- Enter your zip code and the site will find information from the 2000 census report and show comparisons with neighboring ZIPs. (HT: Neatorama)
10. Macht on self-deception, faith, and the New Atheists:
If there is one thing the new atheists are invested in, it is that their view of the world is the most reasonable. If they don't have that, they don't really have anything at all. For them to admit that it can be reasonable to believe in God is to admit defeat. And so the new atheists have a vested interest in maintaining the belief that anything other than atheism is irrational (witness, for example, Dawkins attempts to argue that even agnosticism is irrational). Defining faith as belief without evidence helps the new atheists keep this belief. What better way to "show" that 90% of the world's population believes something irrational than to assert that a main tenet of religion is believing in something without evidence? And then when person after person points out to you that it isn't a main tenet of religion, what better way is there to deal with this information than to ignore it? (If anybody can show me any instance of any "new atheist" talking about "faith" in any other way than "belief without evidence" I would be much obliged, BTW.) Now, it doesn't help that the new atheists actively refuse to read theology books. This just serves as one extra layer of insulation away from the truth on this matter. It would be one thing if Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens actually interacted with Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and other theological writings on this matter, but the fact that they don't suggests even further that they may be suffering from self-deception.
11. Jancee Dunn has images from J.C. Penney's 1975 catalog. (HT: BoingBoing)
12. From a footnote on metaphysics in Augustus De Morgan's Formal Logic:
I would not dissuade a student from metaphysical inquiry; on the contrary, I would rather endeavor to promote the desire of entering upon such subjects: but I would warn him, when he tries to look down his own throat with a candle in his hand, to take care that he does not set his head on fire.
(HT: Siris)
13. Ten Discoveries That Rewrote History
14. Australian Navy Pays for Breast Implants:
DEFENCE spent more than $1.1 million of taxpayer funds last year paying for breast implants, tummy tucks, nose jobs and other cosmetic surgery procedures for service personnel. Official figures show that during the past two years, three defence personnel have had tummy tucks and13 women have had their breasts enlarged.Five operations were conducted after female personnel complained of psychological issues…. A soldier told The Sunday Telegraph he knew of two female colleagues who had had breast enlargements. And he said most of the women who had had breast implants were officers.
"Some of the girls don't feel good about themselves. There's a real culture of looking good and fit.''
(HT: Danger Room)
15. The BBC's Science and Nature section has a quiz called the "Sleep Profiler", an assessment tool to help you figure out how to make the most of your sleep time. (HT: Lifehacker)
16. Jeff Bigler's "Tact Filter" theory:
All people have a "tact filter", which applies tact in one direction to everything that passes through it. Most "normal people" have the tact filter positioned to apply tact in the outgoing direction. Thus whatever normal people say gets the appropriate amount of tact applied to it before they say it. This is because when they were growing up, their parents continually drilled into their heads statements like, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all!"
"Nerds," on the other hand, have their tact filter positioned to apply tact in the incoming direction. Thus, whatever anyone says to them gets the appropriate amount of tact added when they hear it. This is because when nerds were growing up, they continually got picked on, and their parents continually drilled into their heads statements like, "They're just saying those mean things because they're jealous. They don't really mean it."
(HT: 43 Folders)
17. Picture of the Week: A Siberian woman who gave birth to her 12th child was stunned to find that little Nadia weighed in at a massive 17.1 lbs.
"We were all simply in shock," said Nadia's mother, Tatyana Barabanova, 43. "What did the father say? He couldn't say a thing - he just stood there blinking." (HT: Neatorama)
18. World’s Hardest Tongue Twister: "The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick."
19. From National Reviews's review of Francis Beckwith's Defending Life:
Beckwith begins by defusing the “don’t impose your morality” slogan. Everyone, he argues, recognizes the absurdity of being “personally opposed” to murder but refusing to “impose” that view on others. State neutrality is impossible; either the law recognizes the unborn as persons and protects them, or it does not and permits the killing of them. That the fetus is a person with rights is no more religious a claim than the assertion that the fetus is not. Our task is to determine which claim is true.
But Americans’ ability to decide this question was usurped by the Supreme Court’s Roe decision, which — together with its companion case Doe v. Bolton — provided a constitutional right to abortion for practically any reason throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy. Roe allowed states to protect the fetus in the third trimester, but mandated exceptions for the life and health of the mother; Bolton defined health broadly to include “all factors — physical, emotional, psychological,” and so on. Justice Harry Blackmun said that the Court “need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins.” But it did: Life doesn’t begin in a way that merits protection until after birth.
(HT: One Eternal Day)
20. How To Build Muscle: The Definitive Guide (HT: The Presurfer)
21. Liberation theologians claim that God, in Scripture, exhibits a "preferential option" for the poor. After carefully searching the Scriptures, Dan from poserorprophet came up with these other, lesser known, preferential options:
1. Diet Coke
2. Boxers
3. Gay Marriage
4. The Serial Comma
5. Palestinians
6. Rich People Who Feel Kinda, Sorta Guilty About Being Rich
7. PCs
8. Militant Islam
22. From an exchange between Michael Totten and Army Lt. Col. Mike Silverman:
"What's the most important thing Americans need to know about Iraq that they don't currently know?" I said.
"That we're fighting Al Qaeda," he said without hesitation. "[Abu Musab al] Zarqawi invented Al Qaeda in Iraq. The top leadership outside Iraq squawked and thought it was a bad idea. Then he blew up the Samarra mosque, triggered a civil war, and got the whole world's attention. Then the Al Qaeda leadership outside dumped huge amounts of money and people and arms into Anbar Province. They poured everything they had into this place. The battle against Americans in Anbar became their most important fight in the world. And they lost."
(HT: Maggie's Farm)
23. What is the world's longest novel? Richard Grossman has been working on a novel for over 35 years and its currently 3 million pages long; he's planning on printing just 6 copies of the book, each of which will comprise 4000 750-page volumes. (HT: Kottke.org)
24. Friends Make Dates Safe, Study Suggests
The US tops global rankings for rates of teenage pregnancy by a considerable margin, but what is the best way to tackle this problem? Numerous initiatives - from abstinence campaigns to improved sex education - encourage teenagers to take preventative measures, but a study published in the online open access journal BMC Nursing suggests that more work should be done among friendship groups. A teenage girl's friends may help to keep her from harm when dating.
25. LOLCat of the Week
This one reminded me of Steve Bainbridge.
26. Philosophers & Theologians (Part I): From Peter Van Inwagen’s God, Knowledge & Mystery: Essays in Philosophical Theology (via Scholasticus):
One advantage philosophers bring to theology is that they know too much about philosophy to be overly impressed by the fact that a particular philosopher has said this or that. Philosophers of the present day know what Thomas Aquinas and Professor Bultmann did not know: that no philosopher is an authority. Philosophers know that if you want to pronounce on, say, the project of natural theology, you cannot simply appeal to what Kant has established about natural theology. You cannot do this for the very good reason that Kant has established nothing about natural theology. Kant has only offered arguments, and the cogency of these arguments can be (and is daily) disputed.
(HT: A Thinking Reed)
27. Philosophers & Theologians (Part II): William F. Vallicella on The Philosopher and the Religionist
The philosopher and the religionist need each other's virtues. The philosopher needs reverence to temper his analytic probing and humility to mitigate the arrogance of his high-flying inquiry and overconfident reliance on his magnificent yet paltry powers of thought. The religionist needs skepticism to limit his gullibility, logical rigor to discipline his tendency toward blind fideism, and balanced dialectic to chasten his disposition to fanaticism.
28. Clever Uses For Dental Floss: Beyond Teeth
29. Advice for 28-year-olds who believe that they are called to live in the city.
30. Evolution Explains it All: Ladies, if you want to have a lot of babies, marry a man with a deep voice -- Deeper voice pitch predicts reproductive success in male hunter-gatherers, according to a new study from researchers with Harvard University, McMaster University and Florida State University. This is the first study to examine the correlation between voice pitch and child bearing success, and the results point to the role of voice pitch in Darwinian fitness in humans.
31. Do Newspapers Use Economic News to Sway Public Opinion? -- From the abstract of the economic paper, Partisan Bias in Economic News: Evidence on the Agenda-Setting Behavior of U.S. Newspapers
We study the agenda-setting political behavior of a large sample of U.S. newspapers during the last decade, and the behavior of smaller samples for longer time periods. Our purpose is to examine the intensity of coverage of economic issues as a function of the underlying economic conditions and the political affiliation of the incumbent president, focusing on unemployment, inflation, the federal budget and the trade deficit. We investigate whether there is any significant correlation between the endorsement policy of newspapers, and the differential coverage of bad/good economic news as a function of the president's political affiliation. We find evidence that newspapers with pro-Democratic endorsement pattern systematically give more coverage to high unemployment when the incumbent president is a Republican than when the president is Democratic, compared to newspapers with pro-Republican endorsement pattern.
32. Why quitting may be good for you -- In a recent study, psychologists followed teenagers for a full year to examine a possible link between tenacity and physical and mental health. Over that time, individuals who did not persist obtaining hard to reach goals had much lower levels of a protein called CRP, an indicator of bodily inflammation. Inflammation has recently been linked to several serious diseases, including diabetes and heart disease, suggesting that healthy but overly tenacious teens may already be on the road toward chronic illness later in life.
33. Stuck
(HT: Neatorama)
http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/mt/mt-trackback.cgi/3940
1
If there is one thing the new atheists are invested in, it is that their view of the world is the most reasonable. If they don't have that, they don't really have anything at all. For them to admit that it can be reasonable to believe in God is to admit defeat.
Hmmmm, ok so theists are invested in a view that they have unreasonable views? I think by definition everyone thinks their views are the most reasonable. Think about it, if you honestly believed your view on, say, pork chops, was unreasonable why wouldn't you change it?
Most of us are humble enough to acknowledge we are probably wrong in some or even many of our beliefs but we don't know which ones are wrong. Hence for any particular belief we have we are going to feel it is the most reasonable one to hold.
State neutrality is impossible; either the law recognizes the unborn as persons and protects them, or it does not and permits the killing of them. That the fetus is a person with rights is no more religious a claim than the assertion that the fetus is not. Our task is to determine which claim is true.
Actually the question is not as simple as this. There are plenty of cases where the state recognizes a person as a person yet does not protect him, feels no duty or obligation to protect him and failure to protect does not result in any tort (claim for damages). For example, the US gov't certainly recognizes the Buddhist monks in Burma as people yet is under no obligation to protect them. Even inside the US the Fed. gov't is under no obligation to protect you from, say, murder unless you happen to be attacked where the Fed. gov't has exclusive jurisdiction (say on Federal property, on the high ocean etc.).
Even at the state level the gov't is not under an obligation to protect you. It's nice that the local and state gov't patrols the highways with uniformed officers but they aren't required to do so. If you happen to get mugged you cannot normally sue the state for failing to protect you. There are probably circumstances where you could make such a claim, such as if you were mugged in front of a cop who did nothing or if the local gov't didn't patrol the streets of your town because you're town is poorer or less white than the other towns nearby. Likewise if the gov't does arrest your attacker it is under no obligation to you to prosecute him. When the gov't 'cut a deal' with Sammy the Bull many of his victims' family members were horrified that he was essentially getting away with murder yet they had no legal recourse to challenge the gov't's call. At best they could only sue him for money which doesn't do much on behalf of justice (ask Ron Brown's family).
Using the idea of co-equal spheres that Joe presented earlier one has to demonstrate why the obligation to protect an unborn person falls upon a gov't sphere such as the Fed. gov't, state or local rather than an individual sphere such as the mother?
posted on 10.01.2007 10:15 AM2
Sexual SOULS? tell me,are you people actually making a concerted effort to appear utterly clueless? please someone...anyone...when was the last time you encountered a disembodied sexual impulse? whats next...big macs for the soul? sexual activity is biological and thats it. even if the soul does exist,sex would have no possible meaning to a soul that was not part of a biological organism...when they say sex starts in the mind,what they actually mean is that sex starts in the BRAIN...you know...that meaty purple stuff that you all seem to lack...lolloll
posted on 10.01.2007 3:46 PM3
The English sleep quiz doesn't work for Americans. They want you (unless I entirely misunderstand) to give your weight in stone. Does any American know how to figure stone? I know I don't.
posted on 10.01.2007 4:44 PM4
Sexual SOULS??!! Are you kidding me?! There can't be anything sexual about our souls! Ludwig says so!!! I mean, seriously, somebody tell me when they had a disembodied impulse of any kind at all!! Ha. Ha.
posted on 10.01.2007 6:50 PM5
18. I'm sorry, but the king of all English tongue twisters is Peggy Babcock - impossible to say three times fast.
But I also really like Six slit sheets slit by sam the sheet slitter.
posted on 10.01.2007 7:53 PM6
Regarding sex in heaven, if Jesus was correct in saying that there is no marriage in heaven, is all sex then extramarital in heaven?
posted on 10.01.2007 7:56 PM7
Fourteen pounds equals one stone.
posted on 10.01.2007 10:19 PM8
"Sexual SOULS??!! Are you kidding me?! There can't be anything sexual about our souls! Ludwig says so!!! I mean, seriously, somebody tell me when they had a disembodied impulse of any kind at all!! Ha. Ha."
posted on 10.02.2007 7:01 AMfinally!....someone gets it...welcome to the land of rational thought...you re gonna love it here.
9
For example, the US gov't certainly recognizes the Buddhist monks in Burma as people yet is under no obligation to protect them.
The US does recognize a legal and moral obligation to offer asylum to political refugees, so you are wrong. It's also a bit of a non sequitur because the level of protection guaranteed to even US citizens outside the US is pretty limited. Try smuggling opium into Turkey for a first hand demonstration.
posted on 10.02.2007 7:14 AM10
Offering asylum is pretty weak as a counter argument. The US has no duty to help political refugees to get to the US where they can apply for protection. In theory if all of the thousands of Burmese monks showed up in Miami tomorrow the US would have to let them in but the regime is set up so that's almost impossible. As you point out, even in the case of US citizens the US gov't offers only very limited protection when they are outside its borders.
So simply recognizing that a beign is a human person does NOT automatically set into place a protective regime by the government 'sphere'.
posted on 10.02.2007 9:50 AM11
Ludwig;
posted on 10.02.2007 1:12 PMYour use of "you people" and "you all" at the begining and end of your first post seems to assume that Christians reading the "Is There Sex in Heaven?" headline didn't roll their eyes, shake their heads, and move on.
Did you notice that no one wanted to defend Mr. Kreeft's postition? How did it feel to be in agreement with all the Christian readers of this blog on a topic that included heaven in it's title?
12
The only two religions that make a point of teaching there is sex in heaven are Islam and Mormonism. I suspect there are lots of things that I find pleasurable on Earth that will not be available in heaven. No more steaks, bacon or lobster and no more fishing. I guess as long as there is golf and dogs, I'll be pretty happy.
posted on 10.02.2007 1:29 PM13
Offering asylum is pretty weak as a counter argument.
posted on 10.03.2007 6:53 AMSo was offering that because the US can't protect non-citizens halfway around the world, it has no obligation to protect the unborn within the US.
14
Well, I suppose if the only thing associated with sex is 'humping like bunnies' as it is in Ludwig's lexicon, then Kreeft's position would be indefensible. The article is instead saying that males will still be recognizable as males, females will still be recognizable as females, and will most likely be fully capable of engaging in what was once a procreative act. It also goes further and speculates that though we may be capable of humping like bunnies in Heaven, we might not be interested.
posted on 10.03.2007 9:29 AM15
So was offering that because the US can't protect non-citizens halfway around the world, it has no obligation to protect the unborn within the US.
What you missed is that it isn't under any obligation to protect anyone here. The Constitution speaks of no right to be protected by the gov't, it speaks about being protected from the gov't. Joe went crazy (again) when I pointed out he was just wrong when he claimed that Terry Shiavo was denied due process of law because she didn't get a jury trial. The structure of the constitution limits the state's ability to kill it doesn't obligate the state to stop killing. If it did you would have a serious problem because every murder that happens would be a violation of the states 'obligation to protect'. Likewise you have little recourse to sue the state if you're a victim of a crime. Most of the time you can only, at best, sue the person who committed the crime.
posted on 10.03.2007 12:40 PM16
The state is under an implied obligation to protect our inalienable rights. Terry Schiavo's right to life was not protected. The right to life of all the victim's of the abortion holocaust have not been protected (and in point of fact, their right to life has been usurped by the contrived right to an abortion).
posted on 10.03.2007 3:48 PM17
Implied obligation? OK so why can't every victim of a crime sue the state for failing to protect them? You're mistaking a legitimate role of gov't (protecting and promoting the general welfare) with an obligation of gov't (such as not killing people for having dissenting views, not inflicting cruel and unusual punishment etc.)
Lesson one that every conservative should know is that rights are limitations on gov't. There is no 'right to life' anymore than there's a 'right not to be sick' because that is not something gov't can give. Yes in some areas gov't can make it more likely than not you'll live or not be sick but you can't have a 'right to life' in the same sense that you have a 'right not to be killed by the gov't'.
posted on 10.03.2007 4:18 PM18
How about you explain how protecting people's rights is the same as protecting people from crime. Then ask yourself how offended you would be if your local government disbanded all police, dropped all law from the books, and told you to fend for yourself.
posted on 10.03.2007 7:07 PM19
What you missed is that it isn't under any obligation to protect anyone here. The Constitution speaks of no right to be protected by the gov't, it speaks about being protected from the gov't.
So all the consumer protection laws and OSHA laws are unconstitutional? Restraining orders? Seems like you've got another poorly thought out argument that you will defend to the death. Have at it.
posted on 10.04.2007 6:52 AM20
Then ask yourself how offended you would be if your local government disbanded all police, dropped all law from the books, and told you to fend for yourself.
Suppose they did. Show me exactly what amendment you would use in the Constitution to argue such an act would be unconstitutional? The duty of a gov't to provide for the general welfare is not the same thing as a right. An analogy that might help is a corporation. Its purpose is to generate a profit for its shareholders. It's 'Constitution', though, requires that each shareholder be treated equally (one vote per share of common stock etc). A corporation that broke even year in, year out, would not be violating the 'rights' of its shareholders but one that gave extra dividends to certain shareholders would.
So all the consumer protection laws and OSHA laws are unconstitutional? Restraining orders? Seems like you've got another poorly thought out argument that you will defend to the death. Have at it.
No they are not unconstitutional but they are not required by the constitution. Before they existed you couldn't go before the Supreme Court and argue that the Constitution required OSHA. What I'm saying here isn't all that radical, actually it should be pretty much common knowledge for anyone who claims they are intellectually conservative. This 'shock' on your part reminds me of when I told my in-laws that the Chronicals of Narnia was modeled on the story of Jesus and they looked at me like I had just uttered some obscure and pretentious literary theory.
posted on 10.04.2007 7:48 AM21
Do yourself a favor, and go read the Declaration of Independence again.
posted on 10.05.2007 1:20 PM22
Again articulate your argument for why such a move would be unconstitutional. The right to life, liberty and persuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence is a right of protection from gov't taking those things from you. It was not a right to universal healthcare, universal police protection etc. This really isn't anything new, the difference between positive and negative rights isn't as baffling as you seem to make it out.
posted on 10.05.2007 3:06 PM23
I don't think you really read it Boonton. It is the foundation upon which the Constitution is the framework. To secure those rights (you do know what it means to secure something don't you, when you are not being willfully obtuse?), Governments are instituted. But I think you are really more intent on obfuscating the whole issue, blowing smoke to cover up the fact that you cannot reasonably argue that there is not an implied duty of the Government to protect our inalienable rights.
posted on 10.05.2007 5:45 PM24
Back to basics smm. It is recognized as a legitimate duty of gov't to secure the 'big three' mentioned in the Declaration of Independence but rights as understood by the Founders were negative, not positive. The gov't may not take away your life without due process. It is not the duty of the gov't to grant you life.
Yes it's nice if the gov't facilitates a cure for cancer either directly thru R&D or indirectly through encouraging private innovation through patent law. If you are going to die of cancer, though, you cannot sue the gov't because it has failed to find a cure. Even if you could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that certain changes to law or certain types of R&D funding would result in just such a cure you still cannot sue the gov't and win.
On the other hand, if the cops break down your door without a warrant and you suffer a heart attack you (or your estate) could sue.
Likewise if there's a lot of crime in your neighborhood you cannot sue the gov't for failing to hire enough patrol cops. Even if you can prove that their failure to do so will result in your eventual murder the case is still unwinnable. (I'll caution here you could probably find a hypothetical where this would work if you could establish some equal protection violation...like the gov't was patrolling the rich neighborhood but was cutting your neighborhood out because it doesn't like your race or whatnot...but there it only works on a basis of equal protection....if the gov't was equally bad at protecting both neighborhoods your case if over).
The reasoning for this is rather obvious. The gov't can refrain from violating negative rights. It can refrain from taking your property, it can refrain from executing you without cause, it can refrain from all things like that but it cannot grant you positive rights. It cannot guarantee it will always have the resources and wisdom to protect you against all crime, it cannot guarantee it can always ensure you achieve happiness or prosperity.
Hence we come back to where we began. It takes more than just 'recognizing you as a person' to trigger a gov't obligation to protect your life. On the other hand, all it takes to protect you from the gov't taking your life is to be recognized as a person. So yea the debate about abortion would end on that point if we were talking about state mandated abortion like China has. It would have ended over Schiavo if we were talking about the gov't deciding that a feeding tube shouldn't be used and forbade it.
posted on 10.05.2007 9:03 PM25
Your argument is getting more and more ridiculous the more you breathe.
posted on 10.06.2007 5:51 PM26
I see you've given up thinking about this. (not sure if you ever started though). Let's call this thread to an end unless you have something worthwhile to write.
posted on 10.06.2007 8:27 PM27
Personally I would rather not go about misrepresenting the founding fathers as badly as you do, so if that means I've given up thinking about this, then so be it.
Right to life a negative? No wonder you are so willing to throw away other people's right to life. That's pretty sad.
posted on 10.08.2007 9:08 AM28
You're the last one to talk about misrepresenting. Negative rights are things the gov't may not do to you. Positive rights are things you are entitled to get from the gov't.
This has nothing to do with negative and positive in the sense that positive things are 'happy' and negative things are 'sad'. Sorry if this concept is so mindblowing its painful for you.
posted on 10.08.2007 10:52 AM29
You are wrong to assume that I was applying an emotional connotation to the negative and positive adjectives you used in your tortured logic. But I see now why your argument is so screwy. You have equated rights with entitlements. Which again explains why you have no problem throwing away other people's rights. You've reduced them to a level equivalent with a government hand out.
posted on 10.08.2007 1:21 PM30
Incorrect again. If you paid attention you'd notice that negative rights are more important because they ARE NOT entitlements. It's all well and good to have a positive right like "free healthcare" but this is limited by nature. A gov't may simply lack the resources to provide everyone with healthcare. Imagine a gov't being overrun by foreign invasion like Poland was in WWII. How is such a gov't supposed to even begin to provide everyone with healthcare?
A negative right, on the other hand, does not depend on the gov't. For example, you have a right to purchase your own healthcare. This right does not depend on the gov't having or not having resources, manpower or ability. It only depends on the gov't NOT doing something (namely stopping you from providing for your own health). The right to life spoken of in the Declaration is a negative liberty thereby making it more valuable. It doesn't depend on the gov'ts ability to defend your life, rather it stops the gov't from taking your life (except under due process).
The problem with reading the Constitution and Declaration as embedding positive rights is twofold:
1. You're making an absolute right into a relative one. Positive rights can only depend on context. It would be quite cheap and easy for us to "give everyone free healthcare" if you're talking about 1952 healthcare. What is compliant in one context (say 1952) can become a violation in another context (say 2007) even though its the exact same policy.
2. The political language at the time did not assume positive rights but negative ones. Even in areas where the founders would agree gov't had a vital and necessary duty (such as defending against an invasion), the assumption was always that gov't would lean towards doing too much rather than ever lean towards doing too little.
posted on 10.08.2007 4:46 PM31
I am sad that no one picked up on this theological problem with Kreeft's theory.
If, as Jesus said, there is no marriage in heaven, and if intercourse is available, does that mean that all heavenly sex is extramarital? Will it be an orgy? Sex without commitment?
I think Jesus' words on marriage in heaven probably apply to Kreeft's theory as well - "You do not understand the scriptures, nor the power of God."
posted on 10.09.2007 1:30 PM32
BTW, when someone starts putting out errant sexual theology, it is usually just a bit later that it is revealed that they were actually engaged in sexual perversion. Let's hope Kreeft isn't showing signs of such.
posted on 10.09.2007 1:51 PM