Debating out of ignorance...and incoherence

Catholics in the Public Square has an amusing collection of rather inept attempts by Leftist bloggers to critique Christian conservatives.

A Lutheran scholar, Dr. Gene Veith of Concordia University in Mequon, Wisconsin, has written an interesting book arguing convincingly that the central premise of many of these bloggers- that there is no objective criterion of right and wrong, and that therefore these are matters of mere individual taste- while utterly incompatible with the strongly dogmatic assertions about the kind of universe we live in made by, say, Thomas Jefferson (a rationalist and a Deist!) or James Madison as the basis for their assertions on political philosophy, but in fact form the very foundation of the philosophical framework of Adolph Hitler. Hey, dudes... what if I like racism or sexism or "homophobia?" By your own first principles, you have no moral right to condemn that preference!

The interesting thing about these guys is that they don't realize, in their ignorance of the subject matter they're discussing, just how lame their arguments are. Example: somebody really, really needs to speak gently but clearly to anyone misguided enough to attempt to indict just wars (like that in Iraq) or capital punishment- both of which are explicitly endorsed by Scripture- on the basis of the commandment which reads, in Hebrew, not "Thou shalt not kill," but rather "Thou shalt not murder" (war and capital punishment, among other kinds of killing, being specifically excluded by the Hebrew word that is used).

Before it is possible for most of these these folks to discuss the question of religion and values in the public arena intelligently, their ignorance of the subject matter is going to have to be just a little bit less global.

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