scholarly journals An Exploration of Religiously Based Opposition to Clinical and Scientific Interference with the Embryo

Author(s):  
David Gareth Jones
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Peter Bernholz

Totalitarian regimes and terrorist groups striving to create them are characterized by ideologies with lexicographic preference orderings. This means that they demand that their followers sacrifice everything, if required, including the lives of others and of themselves to reach the aims postulated. More than twenty such regimes have existed, from the Mongolian and Aztec Empires among the first, to much later Nazi Germany and the Communist Soviet Union, and in recent years to the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan and ISIS in Syria and Iraq. This means that the respective ideologies are usually very different, but that all follow a lexicographic preference order. This chapter studies the development, success, and demise of such regimes, which usually persecute, torture, and even kill nonbelievers, and often are engaged in bloody wars of expansion with many victims. This is also the case concerning their secularly or religiously based aims, which, moreover, characteristically control their behavior concerning the lifestyle of their populations, the arts, and their culture. Totalitarian regimes that have reached their aims are called mature ideocracies. They are characterized by the fact that the whole population has accepted (or at least pretends to accept) the ruling ideology.


2020 ◽  
pp. 089590482098303
Author(s):  
Cris Mayo

In recent years, conservative advocates have obscured their transphobia by framing their concerns as religiously-based parental rights claims. They have advocated for limitations on youth rights to gender identity self-determination. This article examines policy debates over transgender-inclusive practices in schools, including conservative demands for parental notification and limitations on healthcare access for transgender youth. I suggest that schools ought to be more concerned with children’s or students’ rights to help enable diverse students to flourish and become who they are in supportive schools. This shift would move schools away from the distractions of conservative parental rights claims and re-focus them instead on the needs of students.


Gersonides ◽  
2010 ◽  
pp. 59-80
Author(s):  
Seymour Feldman

This chapter explains how the existence of God is philosophically provable. It adopts the terminology of Thomas Aquinas about some of the basic beliefs of monotheistic religion. In attempting to delineate the distinct domain of theology, Aquinas distinguished between the “preambles of faith” and the “articles of faith.” This chapter analyzes the underlying assumption that human reason can prove and explain some of the basic beliefs of monotheistic religion. Not only does it discuss the common ground for philosophy and faith, but it explains monotheistic religions without religiously based assumptions. It describes the ontological proof of Anselm of Canterbury and points out various arguments about the world and how they cannot be explained without positing the existence of God.


2019 ◽  
pp. 97-110
Author(s):  
Matthew Stanley

Today the laws of physics are often seen as evidence for a naturalistic worldview. However, historically, physics was usually considered compatible with belief in God. Foundations of physics such as thermodynamics, uniformity of nature, and causality were seen as religiously based by physicists such as James Clerk Maxwell and William Thomson, Lord Kelvin. These were usually interpreted as evidence of design by a creative deity. In the late nineteenth century, John Tyndall and other scientific naturalists made the argument that these foundations were more sympathetic to a non-religious understanding of the natural world. With the success of this approach, twentieth-century religious physicists tended to stress non-material and experiential connections rather than looking for evidence of design. Later parts of that century saw a revival of natural theological arguments in the form of the anthropic principle and the fine-tuning problem. While modern physics is naturalistic, this was not inevitable and there were several alternative approaches common in earlier times.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 329-349
Author(s):  
Richard Moon

Abstract In two recent cases, one in the USA and the other in the UK, courts have considered conscientious objection claims made by cake bakers who objected to providing a cake for the celebration/advocacy of same-sex marriage. I will argue that the issue in these cases is not the reasonable balance between the individual’s religious interests and the interests or rights of others in the community but is instead whether the individual’s religiously based objection should be viewed as an expression of personal religious conscience or as a (religiously grounded) civic position or action that falls outside the scope of religious freedom protection. In determining whether a conscientious objection should be viewed as a personal/spiritual matter or instead as a civic/political position, two factors are relevant. The first is whether the individual is being required to perform the particular act (to which she/he objects) because she/he holds a special position not held by others. The other factor is the relative remoteness/proximity of the act that the objector is required to perform from the act that she/he considers to be inherently immoral. The more remote the legally required action, the more likely we are to regard the objection as a political position.


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