Recently in Morality, Religion & Philosophy Category

James Taranto -- one of my favorite thinkers and writers -- has published a long and compelling explanation of how the Gosnell infanticide atrocity could fundamentally shift the public's view on abortion.

Welcome to the mushy middle, Roger. This columnist has been here for quite some time, as you can see from this 1999 piece. But we too, when we were very young, were a "pro-choice" libertarian. We came to question, and ultimately rejected, that position, although fully accepting the "pro-life" side of the argument remains a bridge too far for us. ...

The reductio ad absurdum of the pro-abortion side is Kermit Gosnell. That is why the Gosnell case has crystallized our view that the current regime of abortion on demand in America is a grave evil that ought to be abolished. It is murderous, if not categorically then at least in its extreme manifestations. Maintaining it requires an assault on language and logic that has taken on a totalitarian character. And it is politically poisonous.

He also points to recent testimony by Planned Parenthood which believes that doctors should be allowed to murder "abortion survivors".

The "Roger" that Taranto refers to is Roger Simon, who is also in the midst of re-evaluating his previous support for abortion.

I can give you two guinea pigs to prove this point -- my wife Sheryl and me. We were in the kitchen last night, preparing dinner, when we saw a short report of this story on the countertop TV.

Both lifelong "pro-choice" people, after watching only seconds, we embarked in an immediate discussion of whether it was time to reconsider that view. (Didn't human life really begin at the moment of conception? What other time?) Neither of us was comfortable as a "pro-choice" advocate in the face of these horrifying revelations. How could we be?

Yes, Dr. Gosnell was exceptional (thank God for that!), but a dead fetus was a dead fetus, even if incinerated in some supposedly humane fashion rather than left crying out in blind agony on the operating room floor, as was reportedly the case with one of Gosnell's victims. I say blind because this second-trimester fetus did not yet have fully formed eyes. (Think about that one.)

So I don't think I'm "pro-choice" anymore, but I'm not really "pro-life" either. I would feel like a hypocrite. I don't want to pretend to ideals I have serious doubts I would be able to uphold in a real-world situation. If a woman in my family, or a close friend, were (Heaven forbid) impregnated through rape, I would undoubtedly support her right to abortion. I might even advocate it. I also have no idea how I would react if confronted by having to make a choice between the life of a fetus and his/her mother. Just the thought makes my head spin.

This position isn't difficult to understand. The important fact to grasp from Simon's narrative is that he and his wife now concede the evil of abortion. It's no surprise that he -- like many people -- would find it hard to willingly suffer for this new-found principle. Despite this understandable reluctance, the shift in principle that Simon describes is significant. We can only pray that a similar shift will develop in the larger population.

You will be disgusted to watch this Planned Parenthood representative advocate that mothers and doctors should be allowed to murder a baby born alive after a botched abortion.

"So, um, it is just really hard for me to even ask you this question because I'm almost in disbelief," said Rep. Jim Boyd. "If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?"

"We believe that any decision that's made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician," said Planned Parenthood lobbyist Snow.

How horrible is that? This isn't a medical issue, it's a moral issue.

Rep. Daniel Davis then asked Snow, "What happens in a situation where a baby is alive, breathing on a table, moving. What do your physicians do at that point?"

"I do not have that information," Snow replied. "I am not a physician, I am not an abortion provider. So I do not have that information."

How is this even a hard question? Any human being who sees a baby "struggling for life" should do everything possible to connect that baby with the best medical care possible.

Planned Parenthood gets hundreds of millions of dollars every year from your taxes.

"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is the archetypal "fire and brimstone" sermon, a style which is largely rejected by modern preachers but can nevertheless frame the nature of God's hatred of sin and love for humanity in a powerful, and terrifying fashion. Here is an excerpt from "Sinners" on the uselessness the schemes that a man crafts to keep himself out of Hell.

All wicked men's pains and contrivance which they use to escape hell, while they continue to reject Christ, and so remain wicked men, do not secure them from hell one moment. Almost every natural man that hears of hell, flatters himself that he shall escape it; he depends upon himself for his own security; he flatters himself in what he has done, in what he is now doing, or what he intends to do. Every one lays out matters in his own mind how he shall avoid damnation, and flatters himself that he contrives well for himself, and that his schemes will not fail. They hear indeed that there are but few saved, and that the greater part of men that have died heretofore are gone to hell; but each one imagines that he lays out matters better for his own escape than others have done. He does not intend to come to that place of torment; he says within himself, that he intends to take effectual care, and to order matters so for himself as not to fail.

But the foolish children of men miserably delude themselves in their own schemes, and in confidence in their own strength and wisdom; they trust to nothing but a shadow. The greater part of those who heretofore have lived under the same means of grace, and are now dead, are undoubtedly gone to hell; and it was not because they were not as wise as those who are now alive: it was not because they did not lay out matters as well for themselves to secure their own escape. If we could speak with them, and inquire of them, one by one, whether they expected, when alive, and when they used to hear about hell, ever to be the subjects of misery: we doubtless, should hear one and another reply, "No, I never intended to come here: I had laid out matters otherwise in my mind; I thought I should contrive well for myself -- I thought my scheme good. I intended to take effectual care; but it came upon me unexpected; I did not look for it at that time, and in that manner; it came as a thief -- Death outwitted me: God's wrath was too quick for me. Oh, my cursed foolishness! I was flattering myself, and pleasing myself with vain dreams of what I would do hereafter; and when I was saying, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction came upon me."

Alex Tabarrok has an insightful post about how closeness and severity affect the perception of torture. Read it all, but here's his conclusion:

The theory has interesting lessons for entrepreneurs of social change. Suppose you want to change a policy such as prisoner abuse (e.g. Abu Ghraib) or no-knock police raids or the war on drugs or even tax policy. Convincing people that the abuse is grave may increase their belief that the victim is guilty. Instead, you want to do one of two things. Among the patriotic you may want to sell the problem as a minor problem that We Can Fix - making them feel good about both the we and the fixing. Or, you may want to create distance - The problem is bad and THEY are the cause. People in the North, for example, became more concerned about slavery once the US became us and them.

I think research in moral reasoning is important because understanding why good people do evil things is more important than understanding why evil people do evil things.

It's very interesting to consider whether there are really any "good" people in any objective sense. Within the torture context the experiment that Alex describes demonstrates that each participant believes that he is the good guy, even if they think that someone else is acting evil. Christianity resolves this problem by asserting that there is an absolute standard of right and wrong, but absent God is there a humanistic way to examine "why good people do evil things"? Or is it more meaningful to simply ask "why do some people do things I don't like?"

A family that lived isolated for 40 years in the Siberian taiga.

Thus it was in the remote south of the forest in the summer of 1978. A helicopter sent to find a safe spot to land a party of geologists was skimming the treeline a hundred or so miles from the Mongolian border when it dropped into the thickly wooded valley of an unnamed tributary of the Abakan, a seething ribbon of water rushing through dangerous terrain. The valley walls were narrow, with sides that were close to vertical in places, and the skinny pine and birch trees swaying in the rotors' downdraft were so thickly clustered that there was no chance of finding a spot to set the aircraft down. But, peering intently through his windscreen in search of a landing place, the pilot saw something that should not have been there. It was a clearing, 6,000 feet up a mountainside, wedged between the pine and larch and scored with what looked like long, dark furrows. The baffled helicopter crew made several passes before reluctantly concluding that this was evidence of human habitation--a garden that, from the size and shape of the clearing, must have been there for a long time.

It was an astounding discovery. The mountain was more than 150 miles from the nearest settlement, in a spot that had never been explored. The Soviet authorities had no records of anyone living in the district.

Great story, and yet a horrible thing at the same time. Intentionally raising children in the manner described is hard to fathom or justify.

I'll have to admit that I've long been puzzled by the hatred most of the Western world has for Israel, but now Walter Russell Mead has enlightened me by delving into "Just War" theory.

But more moderate critics of Israel (including many Israelis) focus on jus in bello, and in particular they look at the question of proportionality. When the Palestinians flick a handful of fairly crude rockets at random across Israel, these critics say, Israel has a right to a kind of pinprick response: tit for tat. But it isn't entitled to bring the full power of its industrial grade air force and its mighty ground forces into an operation designed to crush Hamas at the cost of hundreds of civilian casualties. You can't fight slingshots with tanks.

For many people around the world, this seems patently obvious: Israel has a right to respond to attacks from Hamas but it doesn't have an unlimited right to respond to limited attacks with unlimited force. Israeli blindness to this obvious moral principle strikes many observers as evidence of hardheartedness and national moral decline, and colors their perceptions of many other Israeli policies.

The whole jus in bello argument sails right over the heads of most Americans. The proportionality concept never went over that big here. Many Americans are instinctive Clausewitzians; Clausewitz argued that efforts to make war less cruel end up making it worse, and a lot of Americans agree. [UPDATED NOTE: Many Americans consider the classic concept of proportionality -- that the violence used must be proportional to the end sought -- as meaningless when responding to attacks on the lives of citizens because the protection of citizens from armed and planned attacks is of enough importance to justify any steps taken to ensure that the attacks end.]

Just War theory really makes the most sense to me in the context of disagreements between individuals. Historically that's what wars have been: one aristocrat fighting against another for personal reasons. Among modern democracies though that paradigm doesn't hold. "You killed five of my peasants so I'm going to kill five of yours" is fine if peasants only have value as pieces of property, but once you start to see those peasants as citizens with inherent value of their own then proportionality goes out the window. Every citizen is immeasurably valuable on his own merit and deserves to be protected, not because of his value to his lord but because of his value to himself.

I'll have to admit that I've long been puzzled by the hatred most of the Western world has for Israel, but now Walter Russell Mead has enlightened me by delving into "Just War" theory.

But more moderate critics of Israel (including many Israelis) focus on jus in bello, and in particular they look at the question of proportionality. When the Palestinians flick a handful of fairly crude rockets at random across Israel, these critics say, Israel has a right to a kind of pinprick response: tit for tat. But it isn't entitled to bring the full power of its industrial grade air force and its mighty ground forces into an operation designed to crush Hamas at the cost of hundreds of civilian casualties. You can't fight slingshots with tanks.

For many people around the world, this seems patently obvious: Israel has a right to respond to attacks from Hamas but it doesn't have an unlimited right to respond to limited attacks with unlimited force. Israeli blindness to this obvious moral principle strikes many observers as evidence of hardheartedness and national moral decline, and colors their perceptions of many other Israeli policies.

The whole jus in bello argument sails right over the heads of most Americans. The proportionality concept never went over that big here. Many Americans are instinctive Clausewitzians; Clausewitz argued that efforts to make war less cruel end up making it worse, and a lot of Americans agree. [UPDATED NOTE: Many Americans consider the classic concept of proportionality -- that the violence used must be proportional to the end sought -- as meaningless when responding to attacks on the lives of citizens because the protection of citizens from armed and planned attacks is of enough importance to justify any steps taken to ensure that the attacks end.]

Just War theory really makes the most sense to me in the context of disagreements between individuals. Historically that's what wars have been: one aristocrat fighting against another for personal reasons. Among modern democracies though that paradigm doesn't hold. "You killed five of my peasants so I'm going to kill five of yours" is fine if peasants only have value as pieces of property, but once you start to see those peasants as citizens with inherent value of their own then proportionality goes out the window. Every citizen is immeasurably valuable on his own merit and deserves to be protected, not because of his value to his lord but because of his value to himself.

I'm a Christian and I go to church every Sunday. My pastor is doing a series now on what it means to be a Christian and a citizen of the United States. He has never endorsed a candidate, and has explicitly said many times that his job isn't to push people to make certain political decisions.

So, "Pulpit Freedom Sunday" is misguided. The participants claim that their free speech rights are being violated because pastors can't endorse political candidates while simultaneously operating their churches tax-free. They want to have both, but why should they expect to? Being exempt from taxes and being able to receive tax-deductible donations is a pretty huge subsidy, so it isn't particularly offensive to me that society asks something in return.

The strongest argument in favor of the "Pulpit Freedom Sunday" protest is the fact that public employee unions are 100% funded from tax dollars (forcibly passed through public employees) and are still allowed to endorse candidates. Why not level the playing field and prevent all taxpayer-funded organizations from political activity?

As for the pastors participating in this protest, I think they'd do best to focus on sharing the gospel and God's Word. Jesus certainly engaged with the political leaders of his day, but he always kept his eye focused on winning spiritual victories.

Everyone knows that Todd Akin made some bizarre and offensive comments about rape and abortion, but no politician (including Akin) wants to talk about the substantive issue.

Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) said in an interview Sunday that pregnancy from rape is "really rare," and doesn't happen in instances of "legitimate rape" because women have "ways to shut that whole thing down."

Glenn Reynold's is right about two things.

First, everyone knows there are such things as "legitimate rapes" and "non-legitimate rapes". It's a clumsy use of words, but presumably Akin was trying to differentiate between rapes and false accusations of rape. Maybe he was also trying to differentiate between forcible rape and statutory rape, in which the victim is willing but is not legally allowed to give consent. Anyway, these distinctions are not insignificant, but they are meaningless when it comes to the discussion of rape and abortion.

Second -- regardless of how you define "rape" -- women do get pregnant from rape. Rape can result in pregnancy, so both pro-choicers and pro-lifers need to address the matter rather than avoid it. Regardless of how rare pregnancy from rape may be, the incidence is non-zero.

Jenni was conceived when her mother was raped by a boyfriend as a teenager. She is a human reminder of an uncomfortable truth denied and minimized by people on all sides of the abortion issue: Rape can result in pregnancy, which means it can create innocent babies.

"A lot of people like to sweep it under the carpet," Jenni told me Wednesday. But, if commonly cited statistics are correct, hundreds of thousands of Americans walking around today were conceived in an act of rape. Jenni, and legions like her, raise a tough question for pro-lifers who don't want to talk about rape cases. Her smiling face and growing family -- she has three kids of her own -- is also damning to pro-choice people who argue that abortion is a necessity for a woman impregnated by rape.

Pro-lifers want to dodge the issue by saying that it's very rare, but that's irrelevant even if true. They don't want to be saddled with accusations of punishing a woman who was the victim of a terrible crime.

Pro-choicers want to dodge the issue because a baby that is the result of rape is no less worthy of life than any other baby. A baby is a baby, regardless of whether the mom was raped or forgot her birth control pill or was trying to conceive.

For my part, I don't think we need special rules for abortions. I think unborn babies are people, and the rules for killing them should be the same as the rules for killing anyone else. Killing can be justified in self-defense, but you can't go around killing people just because they are a huge inconvenience to you or because their father committed a horrible crime against you.

I can barely imagine how difficult it would be for a woman in such a circumstance, but victims of crimes should not ease their own suffering by inflicting suffering on other innocent people.

Dinesh D'Souza helps President Obama's brother while Barack ignores his family's plight.

A few days ago I received a call from a man I recently met named George. He was a bit flustered, and soon informed me that his young son was sick with a chest condition. He pleaded with me to send him $1,000 to cover the medical bills. Since George was at the hospital I asked him to let me speak to a nurse, and she confirmed that George's son was indeed ill. So I agreed to send George the money through Western Union. He was profusely grateful. But before I hung up I asked George, "Why are you coming to me?" He said, "I have no one else to ask." Then he said something that astounded me, "Dinesh, you are like a brother to me."

Actually, George has a real life brother who just happens to be the president of the United States. (George Obama is the youngest of eight children sired by Barack Obama Sr.) George's brother is a multimillionaire and the most powerful man in the world. Moreover, George's brother has framed his re-election campaign around the "fair share" theme that we owe obligations to those who are less fortunate.

This story is utterly damning. President Obama claims to be a Christian, so consider this verse:

1 Timothy 5:8
"Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever."

Will Barack's neglect sit well with Hispanic voters who send billions of dollars in remittances to their international family members?

And remember: Barack isn't a middle-class worker just trying to make sends meet. He's a multimillionaire, and he stands to make hundreds of millions more whenever he leaves the presidency. George Obama is one of Barack's closest living relatives, and Barack could have helped him at very little personal cost. So why didn't he?

Barack Obama Jr. first met George in 1987, when George was five years old. He met George again in 2006 when he visited Kenya as a U.S. Senator from Illinois; George was then in his early twenties. Had Obama helped George along the way, perhaps this young man would not have ended up dirt-poor and living such a degraded life.

Making any decision is often better than analysis paralysis:

The kids with the wealthy, well-educated parents who graduated near the top of their high school class tended to make more money as adults than the blue collar kids who figured out early on that formal school wasn't really their bag.

But Judge and Hurst also looked at something else. This is where things get interesting. A unique subset of people in the study did not follow this pattern. By the time they reached their middle years, some sons and daughters of roofers and plumbers whose grades (ahem) made the top half of the class possible, still ended up making 30-60 percent more money each year than many of their more privileged peers. What this select breed of underdogs had in common was nothing but a unique set of personal beliefs (stemming from emotional stability, internal locus of control, self-efficacy, and self-esteem) about their ability to shape the future. Those beliefs translate into the ability to choose one course of action (entrepreneurship, less prestigious career path, etc.) while quitting others.

Making any decision now is better than making the "right" decision late or never.

(Bonus question: does this bother you? If so, why?)

President Obama labels himself as a Christian but his perspective on sin doesn't line up with what many other Christians believe. From a wide-ranging 2004 interview with the future President:

FALSANI: Do you believe in sin?

OBAMA:
Yes.

FALSANI:
What is sin?

OBAMA:
Being out of alignment with my values.

FALSANI:
What happens if you have sin in your life?

OBAMA:
I think it's the same thing as the question about heaven. In the same way that if I'm true to myself and my faith that that is its own reward, when I'm not true to it, it's its own punishment.

Presumably Obama doesn't mean that it's a sin for any of us to be out of alignment with his values, but even still, it's telling that he thinks that the only standard of morality that applies to him is one that he creates.

(HT: James Taranto/)

Is speeding a sin? No. Just because speeding is a technical violation of the law and you may get ticketed for it does not mean that it's a sin.

"Everyone else does it" is actually a valid defense. America is a democracy in which sovereignty is held by the citizens and limited powers are delegated to the government. As a society we have reached a broad consensus that driving five to ten miles per hour above the posted speed limit, with the flow of traffic, is acceptable when conditions are safe. This consensus has more legitimacy than the traffic laws, and in fact the consensus depends on the posted speed limit being lower than the safe driving speed. We have a safety margin built into the speed limit, and we all agree that under good conditions it is safe to exceed the limit.

A few considerations:

• It is incumbent on us all to drive in a safe manner, regardless of the speed limit. Sometimes conditions are so bad that it isn't safe to drive the posted limit.
• When you exceed the posted speed limit you are accepting additional responsibility. If you cause an accident while speeding then this is strong evidence that you were driving too fast to be safe.
• A good rule of thumb is this: if twelve strangers (e.g., a jury) were to sit in judgement of your driving habits would they condemn you? If you're driving 40 MPH on an empty 35 MPH road on a clear day I think you'd be fine. If you're driving the speed limit while texting and weaving in and out of congested traffic in a construction zone you might be legally in the clear but I bet your peers would happily punish you.

Dalrock ponders the purpose of marriage and rightfully chastises a host of proclaimed Christians who think God created marriage to make people happy. Dalrock's view:

I'll start with my own brief answer. Lifelong marriage is the cornerstone of Christian sexual morality. It is also God's design for the family and the structure in which children should be conceived and raised. If you want to have sex and/or have children, lifelong marriage is the only biblically sanctioned way to go about this.

Love and happiness are benefits which very often come with following God's plan, and there are specific commandments to both men and women as to how they are to treat their spouse. I also have argued strongly that in our current legal and cultural climate it is wrong to marry someone you haven't been able to fall in love with. But making marriage about love and happiness inevitably turns it into something different, especially in a world where the law provides direct incentives to wives who manage to become unhaaaapy.

There are many passages about marriage in the Bible, but 1 Corinthians 7:1-16 is probably the key New Testament passage and it reveals a lot about God's perspective on marriage.

1 Corinthians 7:1-16

1 Now for the matters you wrote about: "It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman." 2 But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. 3 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. 5 Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 6 I say this as a concession, not as a command. 7 I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.

8 Now to the unmarried[a] and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. 9 But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

10 To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. 11 But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.

12 To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. 13 And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. 14 For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.

15 But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace. 16 How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?

Verses 1, 7, 8-9: The best way to live is unmarried and abstinent, because this condition enables a person to focus wholly on serving God. However, God created the excellent institution of marriage for the majority of us who are not gifted in this way.

Verses 2-6, 9: Marriage is about sexual purity. God has given us two acceptable modes of sexuality: single and abstinent, or married and sexually active with your spouse only. "For it is better to marry than to burn with passion".

Verses 10-11: Christians are not to divorce. A Christian who leaves his or her spouse is expected to reconcile the marriage or else remain single and celibate. In Matthew 5:31-32 makes an allowance for divorce in the case of sexual immorality.

Verses 12-16: A Christian must not divorce an unbelieving spouse, but if the unbelieving spouse seeks a divorce then the Christian must let the spouse go. "Let it be so" is a command, and the only instance in the Bible where divorce is commanded. Furthermore, the believing spouse is free from all obligations to the unbelieving spouse. Why? "God has called us to live in peace." Matthew 18:15-17 should also be considered, as Jesus instructs that a person who claims to be a Christian and yet ultimately refuses to submit to church discipline should be treated as an unbeliever ("excommunicated" is a commonly used term).

So, no where is "happiness" mentioned. In Genesis 2 God says "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.", but in what ways is having a companion beneficial? From the 1 Corinthians 7 passage, the only definite benefit is that a marriage partner provides an outlet for the sexuality of those of us who cannot remain celibate.

Rather than looking at the matter quite so narrowly, let's extrapolate a bit and consider Ephesians 5:21-33:

21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing[b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church-- 30 for we are members of his body. 31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."[c] 32 This is a profound mystery--but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

In Ephesians we see marriage used as an illustration of Christ's relationship to the church: love and submission; sacrifice and cleansing; holiness. Combined with the emphasis on sexual purity from 1 Corinthians 7 I think we're starting to form a complete picture here.

God intends for marriage to make us more like Christ. Marriage isn't about "happiness" in any earthly sense, it's about holiness. Holiness might make us happy, or it might make us martyrs. Whether we live or die, holiness will bring us love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. If you don't find God growing those fruits in your life through your marriage, then pray for holiness. God is far more concerned with our holiness than with our happiness.

Most Protestant Christians don't feel the need to use a special ritual to dispose of worn-out Bibles. The books themselves should be treated respectfully (e.g., not used as doorstops or the like) but when they're unusable they can be thrown in the trash, burned, or whatever. However, disposing of worn-out scripture is a very different matter for Muslims and there is some specific guidance on how to dispose of used Qur'ans.

Disposing of Unusable Copies of the Qur'an

As far as old and unusable copies of the Qur'an are concerned, it is not permitted to burn them unless there is no other way to dispose of them. The great Hanafi Imam, Imam Ibn Abidin (may Allah have mercy on him) states:

"If a copy of the Mushaf (qur'an) becomes old and it is difficult to read from it, it should not be burnt in fire. This is what Imam Muhammad (m: student of Imam Abu Hanifa) pointed out and this is what we take. It will not be disliked to bury it. It should be wrapped in a pure cloth, and a Lahd grave (m: grave that has a incision in the side wall, customary in hot climate countries where the earth is solid) should be dug, because if a Shiq grave (m: grave with a straight opening, common in cold climate countries due to the earth being soft) is dug and the copy ofthe Qur'an is buried, it will entail the soil falling on top of the Qur'an which is a form of disrespect, unless a slab is placed as a roof. .. " (Radd al-Muhtar, 5/271)

In light of the above, there are two methods of disposing of an unusable copy of the Qur'an:

(1) Wrapping it in a pure piece of cloth and burying it respectfully in a place where people (normally) do not walk about In cold climate countries (such as the UK), one may dig a Shiq grave, but a slab should be placed first and over it the soil.

(2) Fastening the Qur'an with a heavy object like a stone and then placing it respectfully in flowing water.

However, burning seems to be acceptable as a last resort. Here's some more info:

The burning of the Quran has angered Afghans in the past, sparking deadly protests in 2010 and 2011. But if discarding a Quran is necessary, there are respectful and acceptable ways to do so, scholars say.

It is important to give a Quran a proper burial, says Omid Safi, professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina and author of "Memories of Muhammad." Any text containing the name of God is sacred in Islam. God is revealed through scripture, and anything associated with writing it has a religious significance, Mr. Safi says.

One could literally bury the Quran, ideally in a place with little foot traffic. Another option is to put the book in a flowing body of water, either letting it sink or be carried away. Regardless of the method, treating the book's destruction with respect is paramount. Safi likens it to a poor man's funeral, where the book might be wrapped in a shroud before being placed in the ground and mourned.

Burning the Quran, however, is also an accepted practice.

"People often ask, 'if it's OK for Muslims to burn the Quran, then why isn't it OK for the US military to do it?'" Safi says. "That's where the question of symbolism is important."

Some say erasing the names of God and his messengers prior to burning the Quran makes it acceptable, but Safi says it's even simpler than that. It comes down to context: Burning the text in a dumpster with trash on a US military base feels less respectful than treating the disposal with reverence in a burial or sacred burning.

Robb Willer argues that telling others about liars is useful gossip and shouldn't be condemned.

We've been doing research for several years about the ways in which reputational concerns encourage people to behave. This led us to get interested in gossip because gossip involves diffusing reputational information about people in groups. More specifically, we were interested in an apparent tension between the bad reputation gossiping and gossipers have, but how there's a lot of ways gossip has useful social functions.

We found people very readily warned the next person, passing on socially useful information to them. But what was more interesting was the emotional register of the behaviour. As people saw a person behave in a untrustworthy way, they became frustrated and their heart rate increased. But when they had the opportunity to pass a warning on, that reduced or eliminated their frustration and also tempered their increased heart rate.

It is a subset of gossip that involves warning other people about untrustworthy others. We think it is pretty common. We find generous people are more likely to engage in it and they report doing so out of a motivation to help others. It is very different from malicious gossip, which might be driven by a desire to tarnish another's reputation or advance oneself.

The Bible certainly condemns liars and lying, but is identifying a person as dishonest a proscribed form of gossip? I'd say no, as long as the revelation itself isn't done for malicious or deceitful purposes.

Proverbs 11:13 says "A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy person keeps a secret."

(HT: Gizmodo.)

In 2002 Malcolm Gladwell wrote a profile of Nassim Nicholas Taleb (one of my favorite philosophers, if I can categorize him that way). The profile includes this description of how humans view risk, and I think it's important to digest it so that you can evaluate your own risk biases and how they affect your life.

What Empirica has done is to invert the traditional psychology of investing. You and I, if we invest conventionally in the market, have a fairly large chance of making a small amount of money in a given day from dividends or interest or the general upward trend of the market. We have almost no chance of making a large amount of money in one day, and there is a very small, but real, possibility that if the market collapses we could blow up. We accept that distribution of risks because, for fundamental reasons, it feels right. In the book that Pallop was reading by Kahneman and Tversky, for example, there is a description of a simple experiment, where a group of people were told to imagine that they had three hundred dollars. They were then given a choice between (a) receiving another hundred dollars or (b) tossing a coin, where if they won they got two hundred dollars and if they lost they got nothing. Most of us, it turns out, prefer (a) to (b). But then Kahneman and Tversky did a second experiment. They told people to imagine that they had five hundred dollars, and then asked them if they would rather (c) give up a hundred dollars or (d) toss a coin and pay two hundred dollars if they lost and nothing at all if they won. Most of us now prefer (d) to (c). What is interesting about those four choices is that, from a probabilistic standpoint, they are identical. They all yield an expected outcome of four hundred dollars. Nonetheless, we have strong preferences among them. Why? Because we're more willing to gamble when it comes to losses, but are risk averse when it comes to our gains. That's why we like small daily winnings in the stock market, even if that requires that we risk losing everything in a crash.

At Empirica, by contrast, every day brings a small but real possibility that they'll make a huge amount of money in a day; no chance that they'll blow up; and a very large possibility that they'll lose a small amount of money. All those dollar, and fifty-cent, and nickel options that Empirica has accumulated, few of which will ever be used, soon begin to add up. By looking at a particular column on the computer screens showing Empirica's positions, anyone at the firm can tell you precisely how much money Empirica has lost or made so far that day. At 11:30 A.M., for instance, they had recovered just twenty-eight percent of the money they had spent that day on options. By 12:30, they had recovered forty per cent, meaning that the day was not yet half over and Empirica was already in the red to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars. The day before that, it had made back eighty-five per cent of its money; the day before that, forty-eight per cent; the day before that, sixty-five per cent; and the day before that also sixty-five per cent; and, in fact-with a few notable exceptions, like the few days when the market reopened after September 11th -- Empirica has done nothing but lose money since last April. "We cannot blow up, we can only bleed to death," Taleb says, and bleeding to death, absorbing the pain of steady losses, is precisely what human beings are hardwired to avoid. "Say you've got a guy who is long on Russian bonds," Savery says. "He's making money every day. One day, lightning strikes and he loses five times what he made. Still, on three hundred and sixty-four out of three hundred and sixty-five days he was very happily making money. It's much harder to be the other guy, the guy losing money three hundred and sixty-four days out of three hundred and sixty-five, because you start questioning yourself. Am I ever going to make it back? Am I really right? What if it takes ten years? Will I even be sane ten years from now?" What the normal trader gets from his daily winnings is feedback, the pleasing illusion of progress. At Empirica, there is no feedback. "It's like you're playing the piano for ten years and you still can't play chopsticks," Spitznagel say, "and the only thing you have to keep you going is the belief that one day you'll wake up and play like Rachmaninoff."

Bret Stephens argues that the religion of global warming is dying as its predictions fail and its followers grow bored.

But religions don't die, and often thrive, when put to the political sidelines. A religion, when not physically extinguished, only dies when it loses faith in itself.

That's where the Climategate emails come in. First released on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit two years ago and recently updated by a fresh batch, the "hide the decline" emails were an endless source of fun and lurid fascination for those of us who had never been convinced by the global-warming thesis in the first place. ...

The reply global warming alarmists have made to these dislosures is that they did nothing to change the underlying science, and only improved it in particulars. So what to make of the U.N.'s latest supposedly authoritative report on extreme weather events, which is tinged with admissions of doubt and uncertainty? Oddly, the report has left climate activists stuttering with rage at what they call its "watered down" predictions. If nothing else, they understand that any belief system, particularly ones as young as global warming, cannot easily survive more than a few ounces of self-doubt.

Our children will look back on fear of "climate change" with wry amusement, like the "overpopulation" fears of past decades.

This piece on overconfident predictions is required reading for everyone in any sort of leadership position.

No one in the firm seemed to be aware of the nature of the game that its stock pickers were playing. The advisers themselves felt they were competent professionals performing a task that was difficult but not impossible, and their superiors agreed. On the evening before the seminar, Richard Thaler and I had dinner with some of the top executives of the firm, the people who decide on the size of bonuses. We asked them to guess the year-to-year correlation in the rankings of individual advisers. They thought they knew what was coming and smiled as they said, "not very high" or "performance certainly fluctuates." It quickly became clear, however, that no one expected the average correlation to be zero.

What we told the directors of the firm was that, at least when it came to building portfolios, the firm was rewarding luck as if it were skill. This should have been shocking news to them, but it was not. There was no sign that they disbelieved us. How could they? After all, we had analyzed their own results, and they were certainly sophisticated enough to appreciate their implications, which we politely refrained from spelling out. We all went on calmly with our dinner, and I am quite sure that both our findings and their implications were quickly swept under the rug and that life in the firm went on just as before. The illusion of skill is not only an individual aberration; it is deeply ingrained in the culture of the industry. Facts that challenge such basic assumptions -- and thereby threaten people's livelihood and self-esteem -- are simply not absorbed. The mind does not digest them. This is particularly true of statistical studies of performance, which provide general facts that people will ignore if they conflict with their personal experience.

The next morning, we reported the findings to the advisers, and their response was equally bland. Their personal experience of exercising careful professional judgment on complex problems was far more compelling to them than an obscure statistical result. When we were done, one executive I dined with the previous evening drove me to the airport. He told me, with a trace of defensiveness, "I have done very well for the firm, and no one can take that away from me." I smiled and said nothing. But I thought, privately: Well, I took it away from you this morning. If your success was due mostly to chance, how much credit are you entitled to take for it?

Illusions of validity and skill are certainly not unique to the financial world. I expect that almost any person-versus-person decision-making contest with enough participants will yield essentially random results. (Excluding highly structured games with mathematical constraints and complexity, like chess.)

Lots of international busybodies have their panties in a bunch over the summary execution of Muammar Gaddafi, but let's be adults: justice doesn't always require a courtroom.

Libya's rebel army has been accused of executing both Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his son Mutassim in cold blood as the United Nations suggested their deaths amounted to war crimes.

Human rights groups and Gaddafi's wife Safia called for an independent investigation into the deaths, which robbed victims' families of the chance to see Gaddafi put on trial for his murderous acts.

Both Gaddafi and his son were filmed or photographed alive and relatively uninjured after their capture on Thursday, before both died of multiple gunshot wounds.

Unless there's doubt about the identities of men, there's absolutely no reason that Gaddafi or his sons need to be tried before their are executed. Their evil is well-known, and they reveled in it for decades. If there were trials, everyone knows that the outcomes would be preordained anyway.

Good riddance to some of the most evil people on earth.