As A Man Believes, So He Will

We Will See That The Greatest Problem Confronting Civilization Is Not Merely Religious Extremism: Rather, It Is The Larger Set Of Cultural And Intellectual Accommodations We Have Made To Faith Itself.

Nothing In Chomsky's Account Acknowledges The Difference Between Intending To Kill A Child, Because Of The Effect You Hope To Produce On Its Parents (we Call This “terrorism”), And Inadvertently Killing A Child In An Attempt To Capture Or Kill An Avowed Child Murderer (we Call This “collateral Damage”). In Both Cases A Child Has Died, And In Both Cases It Is A Tragedy. But The Ethical Status Of The Perpetrators, Be They Individuals Or States, Could Not Be More Distinct For Chomsky, Intentions Do Not Seem To Matter. Body Count Is All.

If Premarital Sex Is A Sin, Who Is The Victim?

What I'm Asking You To Entertain Is That There Is Nothing We Need To Believe On Insufficient Evidence In Order To Have Deeply Ethical And Spiritual Lives.

We Can Either Have A Twenty-first-century Conversation About Morality And The Human Well-being - A Conversation In Which We Avail Ourselves Of All Scientific Insights And Philosophical Arguments That Have Accumulated In The Last Two Thousand Years Of Human Discourse - Or We Can Confine Ourselves To A First-century Conversation As It Is Preserved In The Bible.