Admiral,


I agree, I agree, and alas, I agree with you. Were that it was otherwise!

Sorry about the to "vox populi, vox Dei" ref. The allusion I was trying for in the electoral context I used it was that the voice of the people (here represented by their votes) was equivalent to an irresistible command of The Almighty. As you had handled my other English idioms, I assumed that you’d take this one in stride also. Oops. I meant well.

We’ll never find out, but I will always wonder how a President Gore would have responded to the carnage on my 49th birthday.

As and when humans are given to know when life begins, we will know when abortion is and is not appropriate.

There is, at least in my mind, a risk in having too flexible ethics. If it is sufficiently adjustable to fit any situation, then it doesn’t really help much in discriminating right from wrong – and the appropriate action to take in each situation. People who can use religious teachings to assist them in these often difficult situations may be better off than those who pursue a “religion free” theory of ethical conduct.

Jean-Paul Sartre’s existential ethics takes a reasonable whack at doing so, but it really takes a tough individual to live it day in and day out. I guess that is only another way of saying that taking the religious path to ethical behavior is taking the easy path to ethical behavior. But if religion gives answers that are good enough almost all the time, and the alternative is some synthesis between Sartre’s ideal of "integral man" and Nietzsche’s “master morality”, then if I were a betting man, I’d bet that most people would go with God.

__________________
Eudaimonia