Morality, Religion & Philosophy: March 2006 Archives
It's interesting to see that, in line with claims I've heard from knowledgable non-Muslims, Zacarias Moussaoui has testified that Muslims are allowed to lie to further their agenda of subjugating the world.
Zacarias Moussaoui testified in Federal District Court here today that he knew of Al Qaeda's plans to fly jetliners into the World Trade Center and that he was to have piloted an airliner into the White House on Sept. 11, 2001. ...Mr. Moussaoui said there were times when a Muslim can lie without being immoral: to reconcile Muslims, to answer "yes" when a wife asks, "Am I beautiful?" and to carry out jihad.
Remember that the next time the Council on American-Islamic Relations or some other such group issues a press release that kinda-sorta condemns the actions of Islamofascist terrorists. Perhaps there are some Muslims who don't believe it's ok to lie for jihad, and if so I think those Muslims should speak up.
Galatians 6:7Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.
And children tend to reap whatever their parents sow, which can be either a curse or a blessing depending on the circumstances. It shouldn't be any surprise that children exposed to sex in the media are more sexually active. With parents increasingly disengaged from their kids -- and parents who allow their kids to "find their own way" without imposing restrictions -- it's only natural that kids pick up values from the sources that are available: television and their friends.
More than 1,000 American children aged between 12 and 15 were asked to identify from a huge list the kinds of media they were exposed to regularly.They also answered questions about their health and levels of sexual activity, including whether they went on dates, kissed, had oral sex or full sex.
Researchers then examined the sexual content of 264 items on the list, which included teen magazines, teen movies and TV programmes.
They looked for examples of romantic relationships, nudity, sexual innuendo, touching, kissing, puberty and sexual intercourse.
The study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health and in Elsevier, found that films, TV programmes, music and magazines usually portrayed sex as "risk-free".
Sex was usually between unmarried couples and examples of using condoms or other contraception were "extremely rare".
Like it or not, television is the common carrier of our culture, the way oral history, church teachings, books, and other forms each were in their respective times. Parents have a right and responsibility to control what their children learn, and society itself has a vested interest.
Just remember that even though life is pretty easy here in the United States, Christians are still being persecuted all over the world. The case of Abdul Rahman in Afghanistan is particularly troublesome, considering the lengths the West went to to eliminate Islamofascism in that country.
An Afghan man is being tried in a court in the capital, Kabul, for converting from Islam to Christianity.Abdul Rahman is charged with rejecting Islam and could face the death sentence under Sharia law unless he recants.
He converted 16 years ago as an aid worker helping refugees in Pakistan. His estranged family denounced him in a custody dispute over his two children.
It is thought to be Afghanistan's first such trial, reflecting tensions between conservative clerics and reformists.
I expect America to prevent such a travesty from continuing forward.
(HT: Reader DD.)
Lionel Shriver has written a fascinating piece of projection that attribues to pro-lifers the same power-mad motivations that drive abortion proponents on the left.
"In the history of the world, the true test of a civilisation is how well people treat the most vulnerable and most helpless in their society," the governor of South Dakota opined on Monday. "The sponsors and supporters of this bill believe that abortion is wrong because unborn children are the most vulnerable and most helpless persons in our society."Lofty rhetoric. But I have studied the eyes of the fanatics who regularly picket abortion clinics in the US and I do not see love of tiny unborn babies. I see hatred.
If there's hatred, is hatred for baby-killers entirely unjustified?
What is really going on here is the same culture war that has been raging in America since I was a kid - the same stand-off between the strait-laced, self-righteous toe-the-line types who wear hats to church, and the grubby, licentious long-hairs brandishing peace signs with whom I grew up. Both factions are still shouting at each other across the cultural divide, and these poor foetuses are just weapons flung like ripe tomatoes. The abortion issue in the US is not about babies. It's about control, about power, about who can tell whom what to do, about who despises whom and their disgusting lifestyle. In short, it's about grown-ups.
Only the pro-abortion crowd sees the issue as being about power and control, and that's always how they phrase their arguments. "Keep your laws off my body" and so forth is about who controls what. However, those on the pro-life side don't want to prevent abortion out of some desire to control women. It's true that many cultures do want to subjugate women, as is seen in the Arab and Muslim worlds, but the American right has no such intention. Many or most of the strongest pro-life proponents are women! If Mr. Shriver sees abortion as a battle over control, then he's merely projecting his own motivations onto his opponents. As hard as it may be for him to believe, we actually do want to save innocent lives.
The term "pro-life" could not be less apt. (Enjoy the irony that many a "pro-lifer" also supports capital punishment.)
Yes yes, and many a "pro-choicer" supports restricting the choice to own guns, etc. It should be pretty obvious to anyone involved in the abortion debate that the meaning of the labels should be kept in context.
Only the abortion rights movement has a genuinely positive agenda, the protection of a woman's right to make her own decision about an admittedly thorny moral issue whose implications are intimate. The emotional force driving pro-lifers is profoundly negative; alas, it is our negative emotions that usually pack the most punch. The anti-abortion movement is fired up with loathing - for permissive, Godless lefties who don't even get nervous when threatened with eternal damnation since they don't believe in it (which must be terribly frustrating).
How are pro-lifers' profoundly negative for wanting to protect what we believe to be innocent babies? That just doesn't make any sense. The implications of abortion are certainly intimate for the mother, but even more intimate for the baby who will be murdered. The crux of the issue is the question of whether or not the unborn child is a baby or "just a fetus". If we can reach agreement about that, even many who don't believe in eternal damnation will agree that murdering babies is wrong. It's clear that at least one side is full of loathing, but it's rarely the pro-lifers who spew the hateful vitriol.
