It’s not plausible that morally well-ordered communities will be composed of a population containing a high percentage of morally ill-ordered individuals. One problem is that a morally well-ordered community with even a substantial minority of morally ill-ordered individuals would be a flock of sheep with the wolves living in the flock. But it seems plausible … [Read more…]
For background, I’ll make these three claims without trying to justify them: Human beings don’t come together just to be together or for any other sentimental reason; human beings come together to do things and because they are dependent upon each other, perhaps as a result of doing things together. Most moral behavior is learned … [Read more…]
I’d like to return to an essay I wrote in 2009, Darwin, Einstein, and the Totemic Mind: In the totemic mind of ancient hunters of elk, we see the possibility of modern hunters of the secrets of God’s Creation, hunters who carry out their quest in the acts of shaping their minds to embody the … [Read more…]
I’ll beat again on a drum, though perhaps a different region of that large and complex drum. Let’s imagine a Catholic confessional booth with a sign over the entrance: If you feel good about it, it’s not a sin. Don’t bother to enter. This is one of the possible sins against the Holy Spirit: To … [Read more…]
Once again, I’ll state a standard Jewish and Christian view of man: man can be usefully and truthfully seen as a creature made of mind and heart and hands. This points to state of unity which is not achieved by men in this mortal realm but might be achieved by the resurrected who share the … [Read more…]
One of the main themes of my writing has been a tripartite understanding of the human being, individual and communal, as mind and heart and hands. We think and we feel and we do. The triad of mind and heart and hands is like the Real Presence in being somehow a way of speaking of … [Read more…]
In The Return of Fear, Peter Frost, an anthropologist, gives a few facts which don’t argue fully against the current belief among Americans and Europeans that Muslim men are prone to violence and fanaticism; those facts do tell us of the ethnic basis for this inclination. Indonesians—88% Muslim—have low rates of violent crime, as do … [Read more…]
See the article, Notable: Bigger groups make less social time for red colobus, at John Hawk’s website. [I had a problem linking properly to this article but it can be found under “Stories” if it doesn’t come up on the front page. I will adjust my link when possible.] Professor Hawks discusses an article summarizing … [Read more…]
William R Polk has an impressive resume, summed up in the short bio published with his articles at
Peter Frost has published a good essay in which he deals with human moral nature. The essay can be found at Does Natural Law Exist?. I vaguely anticipated this discussion in my previous essay, The Interior Richness Which Lies in a Civilized Man. Frost defines natural law as teaching: All people are born with a … [Read more…]