All of morality aims at the same thing but there are several basic ways to get there. If you prefer, each approach is like a different tool—a hammer, a nail, a level. Using the right tool for the right job makes it easier to do your work and increases the chances that you’ll wind up with a quality product.

If you can grasp the basic ideas of each of the different approaches to ethics, you will be in a better position to make a sound ethical decision. There are other ways in which moral philosophy and philosophers can be categorized, but establishing ethical theories into their three schools is a useful way to understand ethics.

The three schools are virtue ethics, consequentialist ethics, and deontological or duty-based ethics. Each approach provides a different way to understanding ethics. An analogy to your personal wellbeing is this: what is the best way to achieve a healthy life? One is through good nutrition, another is through exercise, and a third is through a spiritual discipline, and yet another stresses public health measures. Each is vital but inadequate by itself. It is bringing these—and other—approaches together that you can live to the fullest.

 

Similarly, in ethics, no school answers all the problems raised by social living. In most cases, all three schools need to be considered in order to reach the best ethical decision. (It should also be noted that there are divisions and sub-divisions within each of the approaches.)

 

Virtue Ethics: How to Live Your Life

Key Questions Informing Ethical Decisions:

What kind of person do I want to be?

What virtues bring me closer to this goal; which vices prevent me from achieving it? Is my behavior consistent with being a moral person?

Some Main Principles

Aspiring to a set of virtues.

Avoiding a set of vices.

Integrity is a primary value.

Finding the right balance within and between values.

Philosophers

Aristotle (384-322 BCE)

Alasdair MacIntyre (1929)

 

Consequentialist Ethics: Is It Good?

Key Questions Informing Ethical Decisions:

What impact is my behavior having on the world?

Am I doing more good or harm by my behavior?

Is my behavior making the world a better place?

 

Some Main Goals

Actions aim at bringing about the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

Benevolence is a primary value.

 

Philosophers

David Hume (1711-1776)

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

 

Deontological Ethics: Is It Right?

Key Questions Informing Ethical Decisions:

What are my ethical principles telling me I should do?

What does reason require of me regarding my treatment of others?

What duties do I owe?

How do I decide between conflicting duties?

 

Some Main Principles

Arriving at ethical principles through reason.

Reasons must be consistent and coherent.

Having a duties to others based on ethical principles.

Respecting the autonomy of others is a primary value.

 

Philosophers

John Locke (1632-1704)

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

 

The three schools of ethics are tools for thinking about morality. Seldom do we use one approach exclusively. Each has its limits. You have to consider all three approaches to be a good person and do the right thing.

As an ethical person you may reflect upon your own integrity (the virtue school), or try to do more good than bad (the consequentialist approach), or adhere to ethical principles (the deontological philosophy). We each are inclined to favor one approach over the other. But good ethical judgment often requires finding the right mix for the particular circumstances at hand.

The social world is messy and ethics helps us muddle through.

 

Have you ever had the experience of being part of a community and not knowing anyone's name? This doesn't happen to me much at WES, where it's part of my job to know people's names, but it's the worst at my older daughter's preschool. I know the names of the children in her class, but I just can't seem to retain the names of their parents. It can make for an awkward interaction at the drop-off time. Luckily I have my daughter. She knows everyone's name, and she makes a point of using their names every time. She's been that way since she was little, wanting to know everyone's name--including both parents. And when she draws a picture for us, she never writes "mommy" or "daddy" on it, but instead "Amanda" or "Peter." There's something she recognizes about the importance of your own name. It has me thinking about our names more broadly: how we are called and the importance of being called by our names. And also about how our names change over our lives, the nicknames we choose for ourselves (or have chosen for us), the ones we hang onto and the ones we discard, the names we are called only by certain people and the names we offer to anyone. In science fiction and fantasy books, being called by your "true name" sometimes unlocks special powers...and in many cultures, your name indicates your relationships, your status, your profession. What's in a name? What does your name mean to you?

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NutshellMail logo used with permission of NutshellMail.

An ad for the Audi A6 is more insightful than the company realizes. The copy says: “The roads are underfunded by $450 billion. With the right car, you may never notice.”

The ad is a twist on the adage, Out of sight, out of mind. The idea is that if I don’t know about it, who cares? I’ve gotten mine, and that’s all that matters. Many decent people go through life unmoved by conditions around them because they are riding in cars that smooth out the bumps in the road. If others’ cars aren’t as good and the drivers have to deal with rutted roads, well, that’s their problem.

The thinking often continues along these lines: I am entitled to what I have; if others don’t have what I have it is because they aren’t as deserving. Furthermore, my car costs a fortune and other have clunkers. Why should my money go to building good roads? If those who drive clunkers want smooth rides, no one is stopping them from buying better cars or working harder or saving more so they can afford one, but don’t ask me to underwrite their riding better by raising my taxes.

There is an ancient story that makes the point that only when we confront conditions directly does our sense of compassion expand. One version of the story goes this way: Siddhartha Gautama was a pampered prince who lived his youth behind the walls of his family palace in India. Siddhartha’s attention was focused on palace life. He married and was destined to inherit his father’s kingdom. But just before turning 30, Siddhartha insisted on seeing what the lives of his subjects was like. Despite efforts to dissuade him from venturing into the streets, Siddhartha set out on a brief journey that changed his life and set the course for one of the world’s great religions, Buddhism.

On his venture, Siddhartha was shocked by what he saw, things that had been kept from his view. First, there was an old man, then a very sick person and finally a corpse. What he saw moved him and he identified with the common plight of humanity. The prince realized that he couldn’t continue to live his life has he had and renounced his royal title and changed his life to live fully with compassion.

In The Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith makes a similar point. “As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation.” Adam exhorts the reader to put himself in another’s place. “By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them. His agonies, when they are thus brought home to ourselves, when we have thus adopted and made them our own, begin at last to affect us, and we then tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels.”

This excerpt may come as a surprise to those who know Smith only as the avatar of capitalism. While he was that, he also knew that capitalism worked only as long as people engaged their moral imaginations.

One of the calamities of modern life is how the widening gap between the wealthy of the world and the rest of humanity is insulating the rich from the lives of all the others. Without fellow-feeling, the accumulation of wealth becomes a selfish pursuit, one that turns its back on those who live on the other side of the gated community, those who drive clunkers or can’t afford cars at all.

As Smith points out, without mutual sympathy there are great injustices in the world. The Audi ad makes that clear enough.

There’s an interesting article in the May 1 issue of Scientific American that discusses recent research published in Science.  Two researchers, according to the article, “Will Gervais and Ara Norenzayan of the University of British Columbia found that encouraging people to think analytically reduced their tendency to believe in God.  Together these findings suggest that belief  may at least partly stem from our thinking styles.”

Read the Scientific American article “How Critical Thinkers Lose Their Faith in God.”

Platform: Why Do We Act Like Christians? by Darrell Ray, Ed.D.

In his new book, Sex and God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality, Dr. Darrel Ray discusses the psychological damage and confusion that religion creates and documents how many of our behaviors, ideas, shame and guilt are a result of unnatural religious training. We act like Christians and often don’t even know it. In his talk, he will discuss how religious sexuality pervades our society and show how Christian, Mormon, Catholic, or Baptist sexuality is not human sexuality. In many ways, religious sex is emotionally and physically unhealthy. Religious sexuality is fundamentally based on dishonesty about one’s own sexual expression and condemnation of others.

This talk will challenge you to examine some of the religious myths and attitudes that you may continue to believe, even as a secularist.
11 a.m. Auditorium.

Platform Music: Daniel Dickson, Thomas Winkler and Daniel Kuehler

Colloquy: A guided meditation and discussion on a topic that changes weekly.
9:45 a.m. Boardroom.

Forum: Civic Duty Discussion led by Dalton Baker
9:45 a.m. Hanke Room.

Sunday School:
10 a.m. until noon

Ethical Mindfulness Meditation:
8 – 9:30 a.m. The Foyer.

“It’s the End of the World as We Know It: Should We Feel Fine?,” a platform presented by Kate Lovelady, Leader of the St. Louis Ethical Society is now available on our podcast page.

For Earth Day, Kate Lovelady explores some of the psychological aspects of living in an age of both environmental crisis and great technological possibility. As ethical agents, how can we avoid the traps of despair and complacency to create motivation for ourselves and others? As a humanist community, how can we both enjoy life and be realistic about threats to the environment we rely on?

Also see Kate’s related blog post, It’s the End of the World as We Know It: Should We Feel Fine? Platform Notes.

Every parent has heard the howl: It’s not fair! And on the political level, Occupy Wall Street and the tea party make the same claim: It’s not fair. But what does it mean to be fair? What is fairness, after all?

 

Is it fair that all seniors, regardless of income, get senior discounts? Is it fair that a few spread out in first-class while others sit cramped in economy seats? Is it fair that additional money be spent on specially designed playground equipment for a few handicapped children?

Here are three different ideas about what we mean by fairness:

1. SAMENESS: There is the fairness where everything is equal. So everyone pays the same price for a theater ticket, whether a child, an adult or a senior citizen. No one has more than another. Everyone eats or no one does, for example. Logically, then, an infant and an adolescent will receive the same amount of food. It doesn’t matter that one needs more than the other. Fairness is finding the average and applying it across the board. This is fairness as equality of outcome.

 

2. DESERVEDNESS: In this notion of fairness you get what you deserve. If you work hard, you succeed and keep all that you earn. Fairness means keeping what you deserve and deserving nothing if it isn’t earned. The hardest working, most diligent, smartest and most talented should have more because of their attributes; the lazy, indifferent, stupid and inept deserve to have less. Fairness is a rational calculation. This is fairness as individual freedom.

3. NEED: The third idea of fairness is that those who have more to give should give a greater percentage of what they have to help others who are unable to contribute much, if anything at all. Fairness here takes into account the facts that humans have obligations to one another and the more one has the more is demanded of that person to contribute to the common good. Fairness and responsibility are linked. Compassion plays a role in the calculation of fairness. This is fairness as social justice.

The complexities and differences in definitions of fairness are revealed everyday in school systems. Should schools spend the same on every child, as implied by fairness #1? Or should the budget provide more money and resources for the brightest and most talented, as implied by fairness #2? Another option, one that increasingly dominates spending in education, is to allocate the greatest resources to children with the greatest needs (special education), as implied by fairness #3.

So where should public funds be spent? Should schools be concerned with average children, children with the greatest potential, or those with the greatest need? Arguments can be made for any one of the three approaches to education or for the distribution of any of society’s goods and services, each using the concept of fairness.

As with many critical ethical values, one approach can’t address all relevant concerns. While mix-and-match may drive some philosophers to distraction, it is the right mixture, the constant tinkering, that presents the best chance of arriving at better solutions.

Ideologues believe that only their notion of fairness is correct. And it is that intransigence—the assuredness of ideologues who won’t admit the legitimacy of other definitions—that has so polarized politics today in America.

 

Looking backward we can wonder how anyone could have justified slavery or not granting equal rights to women, but plenty of smart and good people thought that these were justified. There are other examples where we scratch our heads and wonder at the moral opacity of our ancestors.

But what about us? Where will the future find us morally wanting?

Here is my list of what the future will find immoral. Why don’t you add your own items?

Eating animals that feel pain

Executing people

Physically punishing children

Machines that create noise

Earning an excessive amount more than the average person

Forcing people to choose between work and family

I picked up this book with the hope that it would be good bedtime reading with my 3-yr-old and 5-yr-old. They enjoy reading books about space and other aspects of science, so I thought that this one might be a good one to add to the rotation. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit that bill, because there’s a lot more information here than my little ones will be able to enjoy and process.

I’m still really glad I bought it and read it, though, because it’s a gorgeous and interesting book that will be great for them in about five years.

Dawkins covers a dozen general topics of science (“Who is the first person?”, “What is the sun?”), starting almost every chapter with ancient myths regarding the topic and then diving into the real science of the matter. His explanations are in clear, understandable language.

It’s interesting to see when Dawkins the evolutionary biologist is in territory he understands well (“Why are there so many different kinds of animals?”) compared with topics in which he’s admittedly not an expert (some of the physics of “What is a rainbow?”). When he’s not an expert on a topic, he lets us know up front what the limit of his understanding is, which is charming at times, and also gives the book a personal, familiar tone.

The illustrations throughout are fantastic, and they really illuminate the related text content throughout. I’m happy just to turn page after page looking at the brightly colorful pictures.

I can see why some Christians have objected to this book – some of the mythological explanations used in the beginning of chapters come from the Bible. For Dawkins, this makes sense, as he considers Judeo-Christian stories as no more grounded in reality than any mythology. There will definitely be many who read his reluctance to give Christianity special treatment as a targeted attack, but I personally think he’s correct when he treats Christian stories equally with other stories.

Additionally, the final chapter, “What is a miracle?” will be seen by many as an attack on religion. That might be Dawkins’ intent, but it’s more clear that he’s trying to prove his overall point, that the wonder of the real world is more impressive than either stage magic or supernatural stories.

Overall, this is a great general introduction to the wonders of science for preteens to adults.

Note: This review is cross-posted from my personal blog.

Statements in this review do not necessarily express the thoughts or opinions of the Ethical Society of St. Louis or its leadership.

Two distinct traditions from Asia underscore the necessity of virtue. Buddhism begins with the proposition that life is suffering. Look around you and this becomes obvious. Illness, poverty, hunger, and the ravages of age are everywhere and inevitable. You live in an illusion if you think you can escape these deprivations. You only create psychological pain by thinking that you can control all that is fleeting. Yet despite these inescapable facts of life, true happiness is possible.

In one of the Buddhist key teachings, The Discourse on Blessings, Buddha answers the entreaty, “Tell me the greatest blessing!” by saying, “Don’t associate with those who are wicked in thoughts, words, and deeds, and honor those who are worthy of honor.” Being associated with the right people is the prerequisite to a happy life. Why? Because you don’t live alone and either you will be guided down a productive path or a destructive one. Since you can’t escape social influences, you had better choose properly those people who will help mold you into the kind of person you want to become. Find good companions, teachers, and guides to help you reach your goal. They will help you on the path to enlightenment.

The virtuous person, Buddha taught, is the compassionate person, for compassion is what brings happiness to the world. Happiness comes when your thoughts, work, and speech are harmonized and filtered through a prism of virtuous behavior. Freeing the mind of ill will and greed; avoiding untruthful, slanderous and abusive speech; and avoiding killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct-this is righteous conduct and the source of happiness.

Confucianism makes similar points, although its emphasis is more familial and civic than the more personal Buddhist philosophy. In Chinese, jen is the word for the highest of human goods. It is “true personhood.” Jenalso means “human being.” Goodness and humanity are represented with the same ideogram, making the link between what it means to be human and virtue perhaps stronger than it is anywhere else in the world. I think Confucianism gets it right. You realize your own best self as you relate to others in a virtuous way. To be human means to embody virtue. Throughout its long history, this indissoluble link has rested at the center of Chinese civilization, although often abused.

Confucius recognized that human flourishing was possible only within an ethical environment. Individuals should strive for perfection within their set of relations. This means the proper, deferential but reciprocal treatment of family, neighbors, and rulers. No one was exempt from this expectation, especially not rulers. Heaven withdrew its mandate to rule when a king or emperor became corrupt or selfish. The moral order of the universe required that the supreme ruler act in a virtuous way. This was the Mandate of Heaven — the right to rule granted by Heaven. In practice this meant that the role of government was to provide for conditions to allow for the happiness of the common person. This came about through reasonable taxes, peace, and fair punishment for criminals. Failing the public indicated Heaven’s disfavor and therefore undermined the emperor’s moral right to rule. The theory of the Mandate of Heaven also offered a justification for overthrowing corrupt rulers.

For those who reject the idea of a corrupt and incorrigible human nature, which I do, happiness requires being true to the principles of your nature (to be a virtuous person) and applying those principles to others. When this is realized, harmony is achieved. And it is when things are as they should be-when conflict or friction is minimized-people can flourish. That flourishing is what is meant by happiness. And the way to that goal was through the practice of four key virtues: sincerity, benevolence, filial piety, and propriety.

It is the fulfillment of human nature in the context of the social world that leads to a harmonious and therefore happy life. Ultimately, Confucianism became encrusted and inflexible and needed to be subjected to revisions. Filial piety was reduced to obedience to one’s father. But the virtues espoused are still valid and, if adopted, would likely lead to increased happiness in the world.

Platform: Emily Dickinson and the Art of Not Knowing by Kate Lovelady, Leader, accompanied by JD Brooks

Emily Dickinson’s poetry documents her lifelong spiritual and artistic quest to understand human existence, particularly mortality. In humanism, the arts are a major source of meaningfulness and comfort, as well as a medium for asking questions and for expressing doubt, concern, longing, and hope. This platform will use personal narrative, poetry, and song to follow in Dickinson’s footsteps and explore one of the major emotional struggles of being human.
11 a.m. Auditorium.

Platform Music: JD Brooks

Colloquy: A guided meditation and discussion on a topic that changes weekly.
9:45 a.m. Boardroom.

Forum: An American Betrayal: Cherokee Patriots and the Trail of Tears – Author Daniel Blake Smith will discuss his
book
9:45 a.m. Hanke Room.

Sunday School:
10 a.m. until noon

Ethical Mindfulness Meditation:
8 – 9:30 a.m. The Foyer.

“Private Insurance-Induced Stress Disorder,” a platform presented by Dr. Carol Paris is now available on our podcast page.

Dr. Carol Paris, a busy Maryland psychiatrist known on Washington’s Capital Hill as a spirited advocate for single payer health care, will give the 2012 Annual Health Care address. Dr. Paris’ topic is Private Insurance-Induced Stress Disorder or PIISD, a condition she sees daily in her practice.

Dr. Paris was one of 13 health care professionals who were arrested in 2009 for insisting that single payer be included in the U.S. Senate hearings to debate the health care reform bill.

“It was amazingly easy to adapt the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) criteria to describe the symptoms in trying to deal with the bureaucracy of private health insurance or to cope with being sick and uninsured,” Dr. Paris said.

“Each day I see patients whose financial stress and fragmented health care is causing them mental and physical problems,” she said.

To help change our health care system, she often travels to Washington’s Capitol building to brief Congressional staff members. She’s also well-known for talks in her home state of Maryland, and travels to other states under the auspices of the Physicians for a National Health Plan.

Good morning and welcome to our shared home here in the auditorium of the New York Society for Ethical Culture.

Since this is Founder’s Day, and Dr. Felix Adler’s portrait is on display, I’m guessing that you all know him, right? How many of you know something about his good friend, Dr. John Lovejoy Elliott?

Some people who knew them said that Dr. Adler was the head of the Ethical Movement, because he was always thinking and writing about how we should live, and that Dr. Elliott was its heart, because he was a good neighbor and believed that was the best thing you could be.

Dr. Elliott was born in 1868 on a farm in Illinois and raised by his father Isaac, who had served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and his mother Elizabeth, whose childhood home was a station on the Underground Railroad, a safe place where slaves could fine food and shelter on their journey to freedom. His family was neither rich nor poor; their farm provided them with plenty to eat and enough to sell so they could buy books to read. He thought that everyone lived the way they did until one day a neighbor knocked on their kitchen door begging for food. She had several children, and couldn’t feed them. She was crying, and young John was frightened, so he hid in the hallway. He came out when he heard his mother comforting the woman, giving her food, and inviting her to come back.

Many years later Dr. Elliott said, “The Guild began in me then.” What he meant was the Hudson Guild, a settlement house he founded in 1895 that is still active in Chelsea today. Of course, before he could do that, he had to meet Dr. Adler, which he did in 1889 when he was a student at Cornell University and heard him talk about “a new profession, one that endeavors to teach people how to live.” That summer the student John attended the Summer School of Ethics in Plymouth, MA, where he met Jane Addams, founder of Hull House in Chicago, and soon he was on his way to Germany to study for his doctorate.

When John became Dr. Elliott and an Ethical Culture Leader, he moved into a rented room in Chelsea, one of the worst slums in the city at that time, and began his lifelong experiment with “neighborliness.” He started by renting a place for a gang of boys called the Hurley Burlies to hang out. They were a rough bunch who got into all kinds of trouble, and their parents didn’t know what to do with them. But Dr. Elliott saw the good in them and created conditions under which they could make their lives better. Soon there were clubs for girls, too, as well as their parents, who started the first neighborhood council in the country. Hudson Guild started the first all-day summer play school in the city and one of the first mental health clinics.

Some of those Hurly Burly boys kept getting into trouble and landed in prison, so Dr. Elliott wrote to them, visited them, and when they got out of prison, he found them jobs and places to live. As one of his friends said, “His heart ached most and he worked hardest for those boys and girls who had become lost in the mazes of life in our city and had become its victims. They, whom society found it convenient to disown, to punish and then forget, were his children.”

I’m telling you this story to let you know how Dr. John Lovejoy Elliott continues to inspire me and the members of the New York Society for Ethical Culture today. We honor his memory by supporting the Hudson Guild and continuing his work in prison reform, especially helping children who are arrested. Now that the secure facilities in upstate New York are being closed, and incarcerated children are returning home, there is much work for us to do to be good neighbors to their families and create environments in which they can learn and grow. We hope that you and your families will join us.

In 1942, Dr. Elliott caught pneumonia and had to be hospitalized. During his illness, flowers came to him from the First Lady of the White House and the cleaning woman of Hudson Guild. His last words were dictated to a nurse. He signed the page on which she wrote and asked her to give it to his friend Dr. David Beck. Here they are: “The only things I have found in life worth living for and working for and dying for are love and friendship.”

And now it is my great privilege to congratulate the Class of 2012. May you, too, always be good neighbors.

Most of us have a mother or had a mother.  Some of us are mothers, want to be mothers, can't be mothers or choose not to be mothers.

It's not all as simple as Hallmark would have you believe.  Sometimes there is a warm and loving relationship, but from the ones I know about, I wouldn't say they are simple.  This perhaps most profound relationship of our lives is usually rich, complex, and sometimes even mucky.  And sadly, sometimes there is no real relationship there.

We have such high expectations for mothers; for who our mothers should be, for what they should be able to do for us, for how they should prepare us for the world. And if we are mothers, we have such high expectations for ourselves.  We think, or at least I think, "I'll only do the good things my mother did, not the bad.  I'll do all the things I wished my mom had done, but didn't."

What a mixed bag.  I wish my mother had lived long enough to be a grandmother to both of my children instead of dying when my son was 2 1/2.  She loved those years as a grandmother, she had great joy and would have had total delight with her granddaughter who has so many of the same interests as my mother did.

I wish I could have asked my mom for advice, asked her what I was like when I was young, but mostly, I wish I could tell her that while it was easy to think that I'd only do good things for my kids, and none of the bad, that I now know how much it easier it is to think that as a teenager than to actually do it once you have kids.

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limiting-free-speech-50-harassment-of-funeral-mourners

At America’s oldest black church, in Savannah, Georgia, there are holes in the floor. Story has it that these were air holes for runaway slaves who were hidden below the sanctuary of the First African Baptist Church. This was one of the first stops on the Underground Railroad.

And near my home, in Westbury, Long Island, there are two houses that allegedly were northern stops on the same transit system taking slaves to freedom further north. Although slavery was outlawed in New York, runaways were not safe, as the Fugitive Slave Law allowed runaways, wherever they were in the United States, to be returned to their aggrieved “owners.”

The Underground Railroad is part of America’s sad history of oppression. Most stops along the way go unmarked and many never had been known but to a few.

This piece of American history comes to mind by a story halfway around the world. Chen Guangchen’s escape to freedom in China is breathtaking. Forty-year-old Chen is a human rights activist and self-taught lawyer who served four years in prison on bogus charges because he publicly accused the government of compulsory sterilizations and forced abortions. After his release, he was placed under house arrest. Those who tried to visit Chen were turned away or beaten.

Chen’s arrest and detention received international attention. Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience and many human rights groups and individuals took up his cause.

After weeks of pretending to be too weak to get out of bed because of a long-standing stomach ailment, under the cover of darkness, Chen made his way past unsuspecting guards, who took three days to notice that he was no longer in his house. Chen knew the area well. He grew up in the Shandong village where he was under house arrest, so he moved quickly through fields and across rivers. Upon leaving his home area, he was aided by others who assisted him on his way to Beijing where is presumably received shelter in the American Embassy.

Chen is also blind.

But less so than the authorities that arrested him in the first place for speaking the truth. Less so than those who owned slaves or passed laws making it legal to capture escaped slaves in the North to return them to captivity.

The capacity for human cruelty and moral blindness is astounding. More astounding is the courage of a blind man and those who over the span of two centuries and continents have helped oppressed people to find freedom.

Dear Dr. Coyne,

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If you are giving Opening Words at a Sunday Platform, please consider sending them in a Word or text document to the webmaster to post on this blog.  You can send them before or after the Platform.  They will not be posted until after the Platform.

Click on the image to enlarge the flyer. (Flyer by Laurie Fields)

Help raise money for the Ethical Society of St. Louis by donating used books, vinyl records, audio/video tapes and CD/DVDs to the Annual Book Fair. Donations will be accepted on the lower level beginning May 20.

Bargains abound at the June 16 Book Fair! For very little money you can get a lot of good reading, music and movies. Encourage family and friends to come shop. You can also help us promote the Book Fair by mentioning it on your Facebook page. See the pdf version of the Book Fair flyer. For more information on how you can help with this important Society fundraiser, please contact David Brown, (314) 821-3130 or email the Society.