Posted on 06/03/2006 2:33:40 PM PDT by EternalVigilance
No, it's fine to believe that, but you can't win elections on the national scale making those kind of statements.
I don't know. It is beyond my pay grade to posit what preciptated life, and how the highest form became wired the way it was, other than perhaps natural selection. Villages have a competitive advantage.
In any event, if God did the hormones, we don't need to have any conscious recognition of God. We just react to the hormones God created. It becomes a self executing mechanism.
An honest answer.
It is beyond my pay grade to posit what preciptated life, and how the highest form became wired the way it was...
Well, Thomas Jefferson and the other founders claimed to know:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
...other than perhaps natural selection.
Ah. "Survival of the fittest". Were the Jews of Europe in the 1930's and 40's "unfit"?
Villages have a competitive advantage.
"Might makes right"?
Might is tempered by sympathy and empathy. I think it is in the genes.
A position that is in direct opposition to the Founders' view of human nature. As Christians, they considered mankind to be in a fallen condition, and therefore in need of the restraints of the rule of law.
What else is there, Torie? Butchery, tyranny, larceny? Surely you don't deny the propensity of men for evil?
Secular rationalism dictates the efficacy of the rule of law. That bit is a hanging curve ball. The more difficult bit, is getting individuals to honor it, in a micro sense. As I say, that comes from good habits, which can be taught by either believers or unbelievers, in the existance of a God. I say that from personal experience.
Homo sapiens have a propensity for both good and evil.
Keyes/Rice in '08.
(Drive 'em crazy)
Who made your conscience?
Even little children know right from wrong intrinsically...at least until they get old enough to ignore their conscience until it atrophies...
The biblical analogy is better, though: It refers to consciences that are "seared".
Of course we do.
The real question is the source of the knowledge of what constitutes such.
We Christians amazingly think we know what that source is.
I already told you. Hormones. Good habits, derived from secular rationalism, can help to mitigate that aspect of hormones which leads to objectification of the other, for purposes of short term self gratification. Yes, I think religion is a very useful shortcut to get there for a society, and this near atheist favors the sacred in the public square for prudential reasons. I hope I am not being too abstract in this discussion.
Dr. Keyes is America's greatest living orator, whether you agree with him or not. I have heard him speak in Real Life, and he's so impressive. Beautiful sentences!
An interesting thought, but Alan would never run with her, because of her self-described "pro-choice" stance.
No doubt about it.
I think that is by definition, no?
I think our mutual positions are quite clear to the reader.
"Self-evident". ;-)
Yes, perhaps to a Christian, and even to those who were not, or very distant from it, in the sense that Christianity qua Christianity had any emotional resonance with them, such as well you know, inter alia, Franklin and Jefferson. Those who were not, just had more bridge work to parse, in the sense, if not perhaps the exact sense, of my rather convoluted musings.
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