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Please, no explanations from sociology, Darwinian evolutionary theory, academic psychology, theology, philosophy, etc. Please, no lengthy out-of-context Scripture. I want to hear from inside the depths of your psyche your thoughts and feelings on why it is that the people and events that are...

If rape, murder, stealing, etc. can be shown to increase reproductive success under certain conditions, would they be morally right under those conditions? Increasingly people are asserting that morality is the result of evolution through natural selection. They say things like the prohibition...

I am not much of a sociologist of mass communication, but I think that it is safe to say that before we had this thing we call the internet all mass communication was people speaking with their voices or through written words published in heavily-edited publications. But now that anybody who...

News and commentary about the decline in the quality of higher education in the U.S. and the decline of the liberal arts tradition always get my attention. After just now reading Life in academic poverty as an underpaid university teacher: “They just don’t want to pay” and readers' comments...

I remember reading that the precedent facing the U.S. Supreme Court with respect to same-sex couples was this: the law can treat some people differently than others only when there is a compelling public interest to do so. There was no compelling public interest to treat same-sex couples...

1.) At a press conference, announce your retirement from the NFL. 2.) When asked why you are retiring say that you cannot be associated with a league that refuses to drop the offensive, racist, hurtful Washington Redskins name. We already had a national conversation going about white cops...

On 6/29/16Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted, "Earth needs a virtual country: #Rationalia, with a one-line Constitution: All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence". Is that the ideal political system?

The problem with "Every man is a potential rapist" is that it implies that sexual assault is an explosion waiting to happen in every male member of our species. Just now I was searching through Google for the phrase "Every man is a potential rapist" and found discussions where people, including...

A common theme, no matter what side the argument originates from, in all of this debate over transgender people and restrooms, fitting rooms, showers, locker rooms, etc. is how dangerous men are and keeping men out of women's facilities. It is a variation of the socially acceptable practice of...

How can "beliefs" be one's blueprint for behavior when, according to Wikipedia, "In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time; performs an action that is...

Apparently yesterday was considered the 100th anniversary of Piggly Wiggly and, therefore, the 100th anniversary of the self-service retail store. Reading the part where it describes shopping before the self-service retail store sounds like what is now the future of retail. Increasingly--at...

If you say that this thread does not belong in Ethics & Morality you would probably be right. But I do not know where else to post it productively, so I am doing it here. Speaking of productively, it seems that we are hearing more and more that the fine arts and the non-STEM liberal arts...

On one hand, we spend a large sum of resources trying to discourage and prevent suicide. We make laws authorizing and/or requiring citizens, law enforcement officials, and medical professionals to intervene if we conclude that someone is "a danger to himself". Yet, we say that if a person...

It occurred to me earlier today that, assuming I have the correct facts, in its effort to state its position on transgender rights the NBA punished the people who upheld transgender rights. The way that I understand it, the city of Charlotte passed a law upholding residents' and visitors' right...

Ethics, morality, social justice, politics, etc. get analyzed and debated to death. If you ever need a good illustration of hairsplitting just find a discussion under headings like "ethics", "morality", "the good life", etc. There you will find people arguing back and forth for days over things...

I remember when the most effective--and probably most common--bogeyman and buzzword was "the L word": liberal or liberalism. Now I think that it is safe to say that it is "socialism". The only definition that I have of socialism is from a college introductory class on world politics in the...

Watching Hillary Clinton's acceptance speech last night I noticed what I thought is a huge void. I do not have the ability to watch the speech again right now; I do not have a transcript to read; I do not remember everything perfectly (after working all day--2 jobs--got to a TV set just as she...

In her convention speech tonight Clinton said that she supports science. I do not see what good it does to support and believe in science when local school district by local school district, university by university, governor by governor, the fine arts, humanities and social sciences are being...

A lot of Americans probably do not know either. The Alabama and LSU football teams decide the U.S. presidential election. If you do not believe me, look here: https://fansided.com/2012/11/01/alabama-vs-lsu-has-history-of-predicting-winner-of-presidential-election/

It sure seems like it reading some of the threads here. Objectivity is simple: the observer/investigator tries to make his/her self influence the outcome of the observing/investigation/inquiry as little as possible. In Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction Stephen Gaukroger says, if I recall...