Ramesh Ponuru has a piece at Tech Central Station debunking some misleading poll numbers on stem-cell research. “Who’s Afraid of Noam Chomsky?” A fair and balanced take on the self-styled American dissident from a “right-libertarian” perspective. Look out! It’s the “Antiwar, Anti-abortion, Pro-Jesus Party”!

John Harris offers us a vitriolic attack on religion in the LA Times today. His criticism seems to consist of two distinct components: a) Religious beliefs are false and/or irrational, and shouldn’t be treated as beyond rational criticism b) Religious beliefs lead people to engage in morally objectionable forms of political action(e.g. suicide bombing, opposing…

[C]owardice involves not only fear of danger to one’s life, but danger to one’s life objectives. The terrorist – disregarding all moral rules protecting innocents and exploiting the trust of others so his project cannot be defeated – is a coward. Cowardice implicates not just how one views one’s own life, but those of others.…

The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden — that…

An interesting idea from Paul Contino, a professor at Pepperdine University, writing in the LA Times: “We can do better. And help is on the way.” When I heard that refrain in Sen. John F. Kerry’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, it reminded me of why I am a Democrat at heart. In…

Many people in the debate about cloning curiously assume that “reproductive” cloning is monstrous and immoral, while “therapeutic” cloning is perfectly fine, or at least less morally objectionable than reproductive cloning. I say “curiously” because it seems to me that the truth of the matter is almost exactly the reverse. Think about it. Reproductive cloning,…

Calvin College has a nice virtual library of Christian Philosophy. In browsing it I came across this article by Richard Mouw, an evangelical philosopher, called “On Letting Chickens Strut Their Stuff.” Mouw rejects the view of the likes of Peter Singer who say that an animal might have greater moral worth than a newborn infant,…

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we…

Earlier I suggested that the moral law is the means God provides us for restoring our broken relationships with him and each other. Let’s explore the implications of this a little more. One consequence is that the moral law is not an end in itself. It is the route we take back to God, but…

Will Saletan has a good article over at Slate debunking some of the myths and half-truths that are being peddled to drum up support for the Democrats’ position on stem-cell research. To wit: The stem-cell movement has become political. “Three years ago, the president enacted a far-reaching ban on stem-cell research,” Kerry asserted in his…