About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with…

Bill Keezer has a couple of good posts, both touching on matters that have been much on my mind recently. First, Bill addresses the difficulty of applying moral absolutes in particular instances. Secondly, he has some harsh words for the presiding bishop of his (and my) church, Bp. Mark Hanson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church…

So, the Democrats have been bellyaching for the last 3-and-a-half years about George Bush’s “stolen” election. Well, here in Pennsylvania at least, they’ve decided that turnabout is fair play. Local Democrats are pulling out all the stops to keep independent candidate Ralph Nader off the presidential ballot. Nader’s campaign has reportedly collected over 40,000 signatures,…

As a follow-up to the last post, here are two more counterintuitive political pieces: “The Conservative Case for Voting Democratic” by Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute: Complaints about Republican profligacy have led the White House to promise to mend its ways. But Bush’s latest budget combines accounting flim-flam with unenforceable promises. So how do…

Lotsa good stuff out there: Arnold Kling (who’s rapidly becoming one of my favorite commentators) on the “happiness police.” Peter Hitchens (Christopher’s antiwar Tory brother – weird family I guess) has a provocative essay on the “parental state” and the erosion of the rule of law. The American Enterprise has two items of note from…

Earlier I argued that our intuitive apprehension of certain moral principles justified us in adhering to a form of moral realism. I maintained that most people would assent to certain moral truisms, and that these judgments are independent, epistemologically speaking, of whatever theory about the nature of morality we happen to hold. In other words,…

Hugo Schwyzer says: To be honest, one of the reasons I’m a socialist is because I do think that virtue sometimes needs to be compelled by an external source. Left to my own devices, despite my faith, I will choose expensive clothes and trips over giving money to the poor. I do give a great…

Here’s an interesting piece from Chris Armstrong in Christianity Today that uses the absurd “reality” show Amish in the City as a jumping off point to discuss how the lifestyle of the Old Order Amish offers a telling critique of many aspects of modern life, even – perhaps especially – among Christians. The Amish, according…

This is still a free enough country that no one actually has to vote. Perhaps it is the only freedom we have left: the freedom not to collaborate with any segment of the political class that is destroying the last vestiges of the American republic. Whether you choose to withhold your vote or to throw…

Okay, all this political blogging’s got me down. Let’s take things back to a more abstract level. Sometimes people argue that since there is no universally agreed upon moral theory (say, utilitarianism, Kantianism, divine command theory, or whatever), then we should be moral relativists. That is, if we don’t have a satisfactory second-order theory about…