Archive for April, 2007
I recently read an article in the New York Times about how our sexual desires are largely genetically determined. An interesting article, and worth a read – but be careful what you read into it.
A line of thought I have heard goes something like this: “Sexuality is genetic/natural; therefore, we ought to do what we are naturally predisposed to do.” This is a convenient argument, perhaps, if you’re trying to justify doing whatever you want. It isn’t good reasoning, though.
Maybe I can highlight the fallacy as follows: I am a naturally selfish person. Not sure if this is in my genes, but it is definitely an inseparable part of who I am. Imagine what would happen if I did what I was naturally predisposed to do. If someone was in line in front of me at the grocery store, I could shove that person out of the way so I could go first. If I wanted to do well in a class, I could sabotage the other students somehow so they would do worse and the curve would favor me. These examples, while morally revolting, are fairly tame compared to some of the possibilities of what would happen if we really followed our nature. (Man rapes woman. Why not? Seeking sexual pleasure is natural. Man holds up store, murders cashier to get money to buy drugs. Why not? The desire for pleasure is natural. Gotta do what it takes to fill that desire.)
To say that we should do what is natural for us ignores the obvious fact that our nature is really, really corrupt. It removes the idea that we are responsible for our actions and replaces it with sort of a fatalistic view that we are completely determined by our genes. It is not only incorrect; it’s extremely dangerous. Imagine if we thought this way about everything!
What I’m getting at is that the connection between genetics and sexuality implies absolutely nothing about the connection between morality and sexuality.
April 27th, 2007
On April 16, I received the following email from Focus on the Family Action:
Dear Joshua,
I have warned you for weeks that the U.S. House would attempt to gag our ability to keep you informed about the mischief in Congress and thus, hinder your ability to let your voice be heard by elected officials.
Well, the day is upon us! In fact, if the U.S. House is successful, future communications from us to you such as this e-mail will be difficult.
You may remember that the tremendous outpouring of opposition by people such as yourself forced the Senate to stop it when they tried the same thing earlier this year.
This week the U.S. House may begin fast-tracking its version of the same bill and all indications are that the provisions to gag grassroots communications will be included.
We can’t sit idly by and allow Congress to silence our voices!
Rumors are that this terrible bill will be hustled along to a full House vote 24 hours after the bill is introduced. These are back-room practices at their worst and we must move fast. To date, this bill has been seen only by radically liberal groups funded by George Soros. I faxed a letter to House Judiciary Committee members today detailing more about this bill. Click here to see my letter.
Why do they want the bill passed? Because they want to keep groups like us from telling you what’s happening in the back rooms, where the deals are cut.
Here is what you need to do.
- First, please forward this e-mail to your friends and family if they haven’t yet signed the Freedom of Speech petition.
- Next, please visit our Action Center and send your representative an e-mail urging him or her to oppose the forthcoming “Grassroots Gag Order Bill” and reject any restrictions on grassroots communications with Congress or Executive Branch officials.
- Finally, please call your representative’s district and Washington offices with the same message; the phone numbers are available in the Action Center.
It is time to stand strong for our right to be informed and be heard.
Sincerely,
Tom Minnery
Senior Vice President
The message looked like one worth paying attention to. Something was a bit fishy, though. For one thing, the whole premise of keeping a political action group from communicating with citizens (”silencing our voices!”) seemed so ridiculous and un-American that I had a hard time believing our government was actually considering it. Then there was the line about the “radically liberal groups” (because all things liberal are evil) and George Soros (second to Satan himself). Generalizations and guilt by association – it looked manipulative to me.
So I dug a little deeper to find out more information about H.R. 984: Executive Branch Reform Act of 2007. If you actually read the bill, you won’t find anything that prohibits political action organizations from communicating with citizens. In fact, the purpose of the bill is to require transparency in government, to stop the very “back-room practices” that Minnery cites. (And yes, we are talking about the same bill – Minnery referred to H.R. 984 in his letter.)
Other helpful pages about this bill were WashingtonWatch.com (the comments at the bottom are telling) and this article from the National Right to Life Committee, another conservative group whose interpretation of H.R. 984 seems to line up a lot better with the facts compared to Minnery’s.
With all that in mind, I don’t think this is a very good law. It looks like something that will hinder communication between citizens and the federal government (although only the executive branch) while tying up government agencies in a lot of red tape. There has got to be a better way to stop shady back-room practices.
I am, however, dismayed with Focus on the Family Action for sending me this email. Being manipulative is one thing; that seems to be how political organizations often get things done. I don’t like it – I think it insults my intelligence – but I can accept it as a reality of the system. Being flat-out wrong is another. I can’t say that they were trying to be deliberately deceptive, but it’s sad that the basic premise of this message could be completely debunked in about two minutes with a simple Google search. I wonder if they think most people won’t even bother to find out what they’re forwarding emails and contacting their representatives about?
The lesson here is don’t believe anything you read so easily, even if it comes from a Christian organization. Scary.
April 19th, 2007
Someone asked me last night whether it was worth my time to recycle plastic bottles. I answered yes, but I didn’t give a very good explanation about why. The following is hopefully a better explanation.
Modern America is living in a way that, to use a buzzword of the day, is not sustainable. By this I mean that our activities consume so much in energy and resources that they cannot continue this way very long. Furthermore, these activities create pollution in various forms, which is harmful not only to plants and animals but to humanity itself. This is not good. This has got to change. What we need is a “green” revolution of sorts - a radical change in our ways of doing things that will better respect each other and the rest of God’s creation.
A revolution takes at least two kinds of people. Consider, for example, the American Revolution. The Revolution had its “heroes” - prominent figures like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry who led the movement. These are the people we read about in the history books. Yet the Revolution would have been impossible without the support of many ordinary people who read Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and decided that it was, well, common sense that the American colonies should not be governed by a faraway imperialist nation that valued them for economic reasons but didn’t even treat the colonists as equal citizens.
The green revolution will have its heroes too - people like Rachel Carson and maybe Al Gore who knew something was wrong and wouldn’t back down until their messages were clearly heard. (I say maybe Al Gore because I don’t think enough time has passed yet to evaluate Gore’s contributions to the environmental movement in the context of history.) But the green revolution, like any revolution, will only happen as you and I get on board. And as ordinary people like us do things like making efficient transportation choices, conserving energy, and recycling, things will change, slowly but surely.
How much difference does it really make whether I recycle one plastic bottle instead of throwing it away? I don’t really know. I know that it means a little less petroleum will be used to make new plastic things, and I know a landfill somewhere will be one bottle short. But I also know that when everyone does this, way bigger things will happen.
Mahatma Gandhi said, “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.” It’s worth my time to recycle because the revolution begins with me. How about you?
April 12th, 2007
My sister has been spending the spring semester studying abroad in Beijing. She’s been keeping a blog called Silly Times in China that details her wild adventures there for the entertainment of her friends and family.
I really should have posted a link to this before; her blog has been consistently fun to read. However, my parents and I agreed that her entry from April 7 is the funniest yet. Part of this is just that my sister is a good writer – you can tell she’s been influenced by Dave Barry and Bill Bryson, among others – and part of it is that China is just a really weird place (at least to our Western eyes) and gives her a lot to write about. This is definitely worth a read.
April 9th, 2007
