In this 1971 article, Judith Jarvis Thomson suggests that we’ve spent way too much time and emphasis on the issue of whether a developing fetus is fully human. She doesn’t concede this point (she argues that acorns are not oak trees). Yet she prefers to bring the conversation to what…
A conservative federal appeals court harshly rebuked the Bush administration's anti-terrorism strategy Monday, ruling that U.S. residents cannot be locked up indefinitely as "enemy combatants" without being charged. Perhaps not surprisingly, the lone moronic dissenting vote was cast by a Bush appointee, on the bizarre rationale that American residents should be treated as…
As human animals, we are condemned to live with great ignorance in an unpredictably violent world. To compensate, most of us work hard to develop an extraordinary expertise to protect ourselves from considering our precarious existence. We work hard to pre-screen toxic thoughts. We rarely contemplate our own inevitable deaths, for example. We are often successful at protecting ourselves from real-life things that would terrify us if we dared to squarely consider them.
Once in a while, though, we get a terrifying glimpse of unvarnished reality. For instance, we sometimes suddenly realize that we are affixed to that Conveyor Belt of Life, a “belt” that inexorably moves us toward a time when we will be old if we’re lucky, then lifeless. Whenever this terrible thought brings shivers, we quickly change channels to consider something less macabre. Yet we are all strapped onto that Conveyor Belt, even our precious young children. In 150 years, everyone currently living on Earth will be dead. It is difficult to conjure up more disturbing thoughts.
What other toxic thoughts occur when our mental guard is down? How about the thought that we are not meaningfully different from each other. Or that the world is full of mobile intestinal tracts–walking talking intestinal tracts. Or that our bodies are rife with parasites. And that we are animals. Or that we are breathing, thinking meat, a point directly yet elegantly made by a touring entourage of corpses known as BodyWorlds. And here’s another toxic truth most of …
For those of you who waded through my post of last week about my day trekking through the federal bureaucracy on a quest for documents, I have two things to add. First, thanks for taking the time to wade. Second, I got an update from my friend. Remember those records…
Why would God be justified destroying an entire city right now? Because we're bad. How do you know we're bad? Because of lesbian sex. How do we learn all of this? Because when minister John MacArthur says so, James Dobson nods in approval. For more, see Crooks and Liars. Here…