This is interesting. According to an article on discovery.com we are hard-wired to react to unfair situations.
Disgust over an unfair or immoral social situation is hard-wired into the human body as strongly as the reaction to a foul taste, according to research published today in the journal Science.
The idea that this study is conclusive is a little difficult, and the problem, especially understanding brain elasticity, is that things that are learned can appear to be hardwired. Is this facet like language? We’re hardwired to learn language, but what language we learn is not necessarily pre-determined. Anyway, I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on this.
Not that this will really be news to anyone but U2 has a new album coming out on Tuesday. From what I’ve heard on Youtube, etc. It is very exciting. I was not initially a fan of Get On Your Boots, but I’ve grown to like it. After seeing this video of Breathe I’m more excited to hear the album when it drops this week. I’m also hoping I’ll get to see them when their tour inevitably brings them through Toronto.
I love G.K. Chesterton. N.T. Wright referred to him on a video I was watching today when being open minded came up. I searched for the direct quote and found this:
Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
G.K. Chesterton
Skepticism is a valid intermediary position. One should be willing to examine evidence, and suspend judgement barring sufficient information. However, sufficient is the key word here. If you spend your entire life waiting to be entirely convinced of everything you will get nowhere. That is the trouble with walking around open-minded; your brains tend to fall out.*
*I realize that last sentence is not original, but I can’t find out who originally said it.
I haven’t had much time to blog, I’m on reading week, which is attempting to live up to its name. I’ve finally gotten around to answering my good friend Matt’s (who should blog) response to my thought’s on torture. I meant to keep it short but it kind of exploded. You can read and add to the discussion here.
Someone brilliant discovered a number of passages from Barack Obama’s reading of “Dreams of my Father” that are of dubious moral character. If you are as easily amused as I am you will get a kick out of hearing the President of the United States saying “you ain’t my bitch.”
For torture to be condemned requires absolute morality.
Atheistic utilitarian ethics eliminates restraint in information gathering provided more lives are at stake than the one being tortured.
As we have seen with nations like China and Soviet Russia, when God is removed from the equation torture becomes a viable option. Torture’s use can be for anything deemed a threat to the state, internal or external.
Deism will not do, the blind watchmaker who disappeared could care less about any of us, much less one of us.
Nations whose constitutions are declared under God, such as Canada or the U.S. must subscribe to absolute morality or forfeit honouring their constitution.
Nations with a constitutional directive to employ absolutes in their ethical processes cannot resort to Torture for information gathering.
This is a loaded question. I spent an entire class last semester discussing this question and I still have yet to come to a conclusion. I had one professor, who was rather nihilistic, describe it as useless, but fun. Sometimes I have a hard time disagreeing. I think Churchill said something along the lines of, “Those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it” The more I look at the world the more I think that history repeats itself, whether we know it or not.
