The world was a dark and gloomy place until the Enlightenment came along, after which people began to think for themselves and break free from the shackles of religious authority. So we are told, once again, in The Moral Arc, a book by journalist Michael Shermer. For him, the Enlightenment did not merely accelerate humanity’s moral progress, but rather it reversed the moral regress characteristic of pre-Enlightenment human history. Since then, science and reason have been guiding humanity on a path toward justice, truth, and freedom. Continue Reading »
Why did a British fund manager receive such a stiff penalty for failing to pay for his train tickets? Are we compensating for a truncated understanding of integrity? Continue Reading »
Injury embellishment and related on-field drama always gets a lot of press during the World Cup. Collin Garbarino recently advocated for “flopping” in soccer, arguing that it speeds up the game, boosts scores across the board, and encourages defenders to play up to the technical ability of attackers. His points may carry in part, but I have one reservation which forbids my giving wholehearted assent: I think flopping detracts from the perfection of soccer. Continue Reading »
As exasperating as it is to see self-professed open-minded, tolerant people try to propel out of their orbit anyone they judge intolerant, it is still legal and constitutional. Continue Reading »
(Please read my previous post first, if you haven’t.) Try to follow me here: Christianity, I was arguing, necessarily implies an ambivalence towards any moral-political culture. On the one hand, it reinforces much conventional moral content by declaring it to be the object of a divine . . . . Continue Reading »
The essence of Christianity is to love one another, to have compassion, not to judge, but to forgive, to accept – no? Applied to politics, the implication seems obvious: unlimited tolerance, equality of lifestyles, etc: in a word, extreme liberalism. What’s wrong with this picture? . . . . Continue Reading »
“Luke! Trust your feelings!” As we know, Luke does what he is told, and the galaxy is saved. How fortunate that he did not trust his mind and skill, as he was tempted to, because then the evil empire would have won. The Star Wars movies express a view of how to live, a morality of feeling, . . . . Continue Reading »
Perhaps the enduring subtext in the evolution of moral education in America, and its continuing story to the present, has been a quest for inclusiveness. While the need to provide moral instruction to young people has never been questioned, neither has the impulse to accommodate the ever-growing . . . . Continue Reading »
We live in a time when ethics has become big business: medical schools hire medical ethicists, business schools hire business ethicists. Congress has an ethics committee, and schools and universities are supposed to teach values. As a theologian trained in ethics, I suppose I should be happy about . . . . Continue Reading »
