Category Archives: Philosophy

>Is the right to parenthood absolute?

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>It is fashionable among modern politicians to say that the environment is the biggest problem facing our age. But many environmentalists argue that the planet is overpopulated. In fact one the most popular documentaries to ever be made, ‘Planet Earth’, features a quote saying that we need to limit the number of people to a level far below its current 6 billion in order to achieve a sustainable level of life.

Then there are all the abusive, and just plain bad parents out there. What gives them the right to be a parent? Is a child always better off with the natural parents?

>Do you agree with the Pope?

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>Pope Bennedict XVI attacked equality legislation in the UK for running contrary to “natural law”. It’s been taken as an attack on the Sexual Orientation Regulations that came into effect last January. The regulations forced Catholic adoption agencies to consider gay couples as potential adoptive parents.

Do you agree with the Pope that religious groups should be allowed to discriminate?

>Are we progressing?

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>Many famous theorists and authors have argued, or even presumed, that humanity is inevitably marching forwards. Two of the most famous examples are Hegel and Marx. They argued that human history was split into phases, with each phase giving way to the formation of something better. In other words they said progression occured in a linear and forward direction.

There is some evidence for this. We are making progress in curbing poverty for example. But there are a great many examples of the opposite. There are 27 million slaves in the world today, wheras less than half that number were brought to the Americas throughout the entire history of the slave trade. Happiness has stagnated in the last 60 years throughout the developed world. World opinion about democracy is radically changing, with countries as different as Germany, Congo and Russia all gaining more anti-democratic favour.

What do you think? Is change equivalent to progression?

>Arbotion: For or Against?

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>The origin of the anti-abortion argument displayed in Catholic theology does not come from a desire to protect a life that is believed to already exist. In fact it originates from the Aristotelian philosophy that the true nature of something is in what it has the potential to be. For example the true nature of an acorn is that it will one day become an oak tree. Hence the true nature of a feotus is that it will one day become a person. Is this a valid argument or do you have a better one?

>What’s the purpose of life and existence?

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>Commonly the question asked on films as the one with most importance. Now people are increasingly saying that such a question has easy answers (though be careful to distinguish between the purpose of life and the purpose within life). But with these relatively new answers come significant implications. And of course not everyone will be able to agree. So would it ever be possible to find evidence for such an answer?

>Charity, and what it says about human psychology

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>http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=151763828

This article says that £10 million was donated by the British public in just 24 hours from Friday to Saturday evening (15th-16th Jan). Indeed this was when my wife and I made a donation too. But why not earlier? Outside of this 24 hours Britons only raised £2 million. And I for one did know about the issue before. So is it just that we needed time to process all the information and breach some sort of barrier within us that made us think donating was necessary? Are we so selfish that we are able to delude ourselves into not donating until the evidence is just too strong? If so this has profound implications about the synchronizations of human psychology in that so many people felt that barrier breached at the same time. On the other hand there is a possibility that people simply did not have time to think about the news until they got to the weekend. In this case it is an extremely sad indication of how much pressure and work people are put under that they can’t even find 2 minutes to donate to a good cause.

What do you think?

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