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POPSYou Reap What You Sow What you think you create, energy is never lost only transformed etc. Even quantum physics seems to suggest there is some sort of karma. What exactly IS karma, if it exists at all? Divine retribution / reward of sorts, or just actions / reactions? Hmm...
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POPSMoral Philosopher Questions Memory Manipulation Hurley says while the real threat of developing PTSD might be a good enough reason to use beta-blockers as a preventative measure, she also wants policy makers to consider the ramifications of what such a treatment may mean to a person’s moral well-being. “Beta-blockers do not cause amnesia. Rather they make memories less vivid, detailed and arousing,” explains Hurley, who specializes in bioethics. “They lessen the emotional impact when someone is recalling upsetting events.”
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POPSDo we want a truly liberal society? A liberal society embraces pluralism, in the sense that it does not seek to impose any one vision of what it means to be virtuous or to lead a good life. Within such a society, approval is commonly expressed for John Stuart Mill’s view that “experiments in living” should not be merely tolerated, but actually welcomed and celebrated (Mill 1974: 120). As Max Charlesworth writes, “In a liberal society personal autonomy, the right to choose one’s own way of life for oneself, is the supreme value.” He adds that this includes what he calls ethical pluralism: members of the society are free to hold a wide range of moral, religious, and non-religious positions, with no core values or public morality that it is the law’s business to enforce (Charlesworth 1993: 1). Accordingly, a liberal society makes a sharp distinction between the sphere of personal moral views and that of the law; no one can use the law to impose their beliefs on others (16-20).
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POPSEvolution:24 myths and misconceptions It doesn't matter if people do not understand evolution "Survival of the fittest" justifies "everyone for themselves" Evolution is limitlessly creative Evolution cannot explain traits such as homosexuality Creationism provides a coherent alternative to evolution Creationist myths: Evolution must be wrong because the Bible is inerrant Accepting evolution undermines morality Evolutionary theory leads to racism and genocide Religion and evolution are incompatible Half a wing is no use to anyone Evolutionary science is not predictive Evolution cannot be disproved so is not science Evolution is just so unlikely to produce complex life forms Evolution is an entirely random process Mutations can only destroy information, not create it Darwin is the ultimate authority on evolution The bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex Yet more creationist misconceptions Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics
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POPSChildren taken away because of a breastfeeding photo in Texas The excerpt above is taken from "Oxytocin and breastfeeding - does this hormone make breastfeeding a sexual act?" on http://www.007b.com/breastfeeding_sexual.php I'd like to call attention to the central issue, that, as I suppose, is given in this quotation: "My sister couldn't breastfeed because it felt good. She thought, if it felt good with her baby it must be a sin ...." (Loco citato.) In my humble opinion, it is rather a capital sin to plant such a superstitious crap of false, hostile, self-destructive morality in girls and women.
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POPSWhy We're All Moral Hypocrites The researchers then "constrained cognition" by asking subjects to memorize long strings of numbers. In this greatly distracted state, subjects became impartial. They thought their own transgressions were just as terrible as those of others. This suggests that we are intuitively moral beings, but "when we are given time to think about it, we construct arguments about why what we did wasn’t that bad,"
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POPSTheists Will Deny This! Theists will dust off the oft repeated mantra that without eternal punishment in hell people just can't behave. The law must come from God. Totally baseless and false but they'll drag it out anyway.
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POPSA predetermined morality Surprisingly, our emotions do not appear to have much effect on our judgments about right and wrong in these moral dilemmas. A study of individuals with damage to an area of the brain that links decision-making and emotion found that when faced with a series of moral dilemmas, these patients generally made the same moral judgments as most people. This suggests that emotions are not necessary for such judgments. These studies suggest that nature handed us a moral grammar that fuels our intuitive judgments of right and wrong. Emotions play their strongest role in influencing our actions—reinforcing acts of virtue and punishing acts of vice.