Read the article here.

My son was born at 32 weeks gestation. I watched the "heel pricks", the IV's, the gavage tubes. I said then that babies that little feel pain.

There is a place where we need to go with this information.

The nervous system development of babies is the same whether they are at 32 weeks gestation (inside the womb) or at 32 weeks gestation (and about to be born) or at 32 weeks gestation (and just been born).

They all feel pain.

"Partial birth abortion" is about the most barbaric way for an unborn baby to die. And they can't say anymore that they don't feel pain.

Carnival's here!

Join a few ladies that discovered "The Beauty of Technology". Please stop by these blogs and read (and maybe leave a note).

Barbara at Tidbits and Treasures takes a look at "Tasting Technology" in a Personal Way.

God has given us a powerful tool - the internet. Explore with Iris at Sting My Heart the possibilities to edify each other and reach out to the lost in "What Would Have Happened If..."

Michele at ChasingContentment is counting on technology to help "Bridge the Gap" and keep her friendships alive and well when she and her family move to another area of the country later this year.

Have you glimpsed a humpback whale lately off the coast of Mexico? Eaten curry on Fiji? Swam in the tropics? In her post, "Planes, Trains, Boats and Blogs", Heather at Mom2MomConnection shares her fascination with how technology allows us to travel the world via travel blogs that are updated with new content daily.

Ellen at MzEllen & Co. gives us a peek at her life (and into her heart) with a photo essay on a different kind of technology in "Technology For the Rest of Us".

Join us next week when Carol at SheLives hosts "The Beauty of Aging Gracefully". Clicking here for complete information on Carnival.

Each week for Philosophy class we are required to do a "reflection paper" on a specific question... This is mine for this week:

(let me note: This is philosophy class. The object is not to be "right", it's to earn an "A")

Summarize Hume's critique of rationalistic ethics. Then construct a Humean analysis of some contemporary moral issue. What are the advantages of Hume's approach? The disadvantages?

Hume believed that the ethics/morals are largely rooted in personal passions and experience and that many of what we call “morals” is sentiment based on sympathy for those who are affected by a trait or action.

My “contemporary moral issue” is polygamy.

Reasons that people believe polygamy is morally wrong	Objective reasoning to support (or not)
Relationships do not scale arithmetically but exponentially.	This is a “human issue”, not a moral one.
Mathematically polygamy ends up producing a 'surplus male' problem	There would be a surplus of males, but is this necessarily a problem? It certainly is not a moral problem.
The Bible says that marriage is “one man and one woman”.	But the Bible never says that polygamy is morally wrong.
Since the social benefits do not seem to exceed the social negatives I think the burden is on pro-polygamists to make their case for expanding the law.	This seems to be more of a math problem than a moral one.
There are numerous possible versions of polygamy and if we decided to have it there's no clear 'default'	There would not need to be a “default”

1) Relationships do not scale arithmetically, but exponentially. This is true. With a plural marriage with two wives you have two relationship with the husband and each wife, as well as the relationship between the two women AND the relationship that includes all three.

For example, what happens in a three person marriage if one wants out? Are the two left married or does the whole thing dissolve and the two people have to choose to marry as a couple? What happens if the family cannot agree on some major decision? Suppose a man is sick and cannot make his own medical decisions. What happens if the wives do not agree? Are women allowed to marry multiple men or just men marry multiple women?

However, just because there are different ways for people in the relationship to interact, does not mean the act is morally wrong.

2) Mathematically polygamy ends up producing a 'surplus male' problem. If 1 out of 10 men marry 3 women then that means for the 9 remaining men there are only 7 women. Needless to say the remaining 9 men probably aspire to not one but three wives so there's going to be a core of men who are not able to marry.

Again, this is true. With polygamy, there will be fewer women available for the unmarried men. Although this could cause rioting and other distress, it could also have the effect of forcing young men to be productive in order to compete for the women that are “available”.

3) The Bible says that marriage is “one man and one woman”. Actually, the Bible says that “in the beginning” there was one man and one woman. But very early on, there were polygamous marriage and the Bible (or the Law) never condemned them. The Bible has always been read with one eye on the text and another on tradition. For example, there is no text in the Bible that specifically says Jesus never married. Yet the understanding has been that Jesus never took a wife despite this lack of actual text. We cannot use the Bible (or tradition based on the Bible) to say that polygamy is morally wrong.

4) Since the social benefits do not seem to exceed the social negatives I think the burden is on pro-polygamists to make their case for expanding the law.

Social benefits vs. social negatives may be practical (human) issues, but they are not moral questions.

5) There are numerous possible versions of polygamy and if we decided to have it there's no clear 'default'.

This argument mainly comes from people who fear that allowing homosexual marriage would lead to other formed of marriage that are “outside the norm”. To these people, other versions of polygamy (legal marriage) include “one woman, multiple men”, “multiple same sex partners”, “multiple men, multiple women”, all of unspecified numbers.

Yet again, this argument falls into “human issues” and not moral issues.

To wrap it up, I actually solicited these “arguments” from a variety of people. There are a wide variety of reasons that polygamy would be impractical, unwise, weird or otherwise undesirable, but not objectively immoral.

The benefit to this type of system would be that logic, not passion rules. The disadvantage is that it leaves out one vital component of decision making – God.

I know I have a few people that stop by - I would seriously like some input to give me food for thought.

I have a writing assignment (due tonight).

The question: Summarize Hume's critique of rationalistic ethics. Then construct a Humean analysis of some contemporary moral issue. What are the advantages of Hume's approach? The disadvantages?

My "contemporary moral issuse": polygamy.

In a nutshell, "Hume's position in ethics, which is based on his empiricist theory of the mind, is best known for asserting four theses: (1) Reason alone cannot be a motive to the will, but rather is the “slave of the passions” (see Section 3) (2) Morals are not derived from reason (see Section 4). (3) Morals are derived from the moral sentiments: feelings of approval (esteem, praise) and disapproval (blame) felt by spectators who contemplate a character trait or action (see Section 7). (4) While some virtues and vices are natural (see Section 13), others, including justice, are artificial (see Section 9). There is heated debate about what Hume intends by each of these theses and how he argues for them. They are best understood in the context of Hume's meta-ethical theory and his ethic of virtue and vice."

A couple of years ago I was looking for a new house.

The home that my kids and I were living in no longer "felt right". It was definitely too big, too chilly, to drafty.

We had lived there for 12 years, so moving was not an easy decision to take. It was our home. Yes, there were things that were wrong with it, but at least we knew what they were. There were things that were worse about it - things we couldn't change (money and time were both factors), but hey - how bad could it get?

The "kidlets" were not particularly happy about it (comfort and stability means a lot to teens), but they could see the need for change.

I began preparing to leave my home.

Part of the process was to begin packing. Packing was difficult. It meant parting with some things that I'd grown to love, giving up places that I'd grown to cherish. It meant going through memories - some were beautiful, some were very painful.

It meant preparing to walk away from one old, known home, into a new, unknown one.

It mean looking for a new home.

I knew the things that I needed in a home. Things like 3 bedrooms, plus a place for an office, being close to a bus route, having a small yard (not a big one). It meant having a paved driveway.

I don't remember the order, but I remember some of the "highlights" of the houses we looked at.

One house had children living there and there were signs of love all around. Photos, artwork done by the kids, toys. but...it had "level" problems. The foundation has slipped enough so that you could stand in the basement and see daylight between the cement basement wall and the joists on the floor above. Part of the back yard had fallen into the gully behind the house. There was lots of love, but the foundation had shifted.

Another house was smaller than the old one. It had not been lived in for a while, so there was that "quiet" feeling. There were just as many rooms, but they were way smaller rooms and they seemed to go around and around. The most irritating thing was that there was this wonderful little balconey on the back of the house - the room it was off of would have made a great master-suite. Ok - the irritating thing was that the door to the balconey was inoperable. There was this great area that you could see, but not get into.

Yet another house was very little. The ad said that the house had the right number of bedrooms, baths, etc. But we got there and there was nobody home and there was no keybox. And this nasty little dog had his nose to the picture window throwing an absolute tantrum - growling and carrying on.

Another I remember well. I actually tried to put a bid on it, but somebody beat me to it. There were things wrong with it that would have be solved before I moved there. There were two floors, plus a basement. Three levels, with a bedroom on each level. The furnace was between one of the bedrooms and the only egress. The only thing on the second floor was the master-bedroom area - and it had no door.

Then we came to see this house. The kitchen is "old-feeling", hardwood all over, just enough rooms, not too big, not too small. It's missing a couple of things I would have liked - a garage and a dishwasher. My son and I walked into it and "knew". Yes - for this house, I could live without a dishwasher. I've never in my adult life had a garage, so (while it would be nice) it's not a real issue now.

I put a bid almost immediately. This is our home.

(But What Does This All Mean????) - read on...

Don't worry, I'm not thinking I'm Jesus. I'm just thinking that after I wrote the previous post, you all are thinking "But what does this all mean?" and I'm reminded of the disciples wondering if there really is a message in all that story. (I changed the time stamp so the posts are in the "right" order)

Right now - I'm looking for a new church home. The church that my kids and I are attending no longer feels "right". It's too big (I didn't realize that before) and it's too drafty (things are being let in that shouldn't be in.)

The "kidlets" are not particularly happy about it (comfort and stability means a lot), and this time they don't see the need for a change, but they're willing to go along. The deal is - they still get to go to youth group and college group at the old church.

A while ago, before I even knew I would be looking, I think I was preparing to move.

We're preparing to walk away from one old, known home, into a new, unknown one.

We've visited a few churches (and for the sake of this post, I'm going way back.) I want to make the clear statement that all of these churches have their fans and their congregations that love them dearly. I'm only writing from the standpoint of "what it is that I am looking for" and "where is the church were I fit?"

Today, we visited a church that was like the first house I wrote about. There's lots of friendliness, even warmth. But the foundation is shaky. The message was sort of "devotiony", and although Jesus on the cross was talked about a lot, there was no mention of the WHY, which is the whole point. There was no mention of the "sin" word, no invitation to come to Him. They used "the Message". We had coffee and popcorn in the service and we called it "the Starbucks Church".
The second house reminds me of my previous church. There were a lot of little groups and some of them are very hard to get into. I was told early on that in order to be a part of the music ministry (other than being in the choir), a person has to (very unofficially) be a part of the "right" group. I wasn't a part of that group and I never was able to get into it. That's the balcony. The part you can see into but not get into.

I'm sure that a lot of folks can think of a church that reminds them of the little house with the little dog, protecting its territory. I won't go into that (and I really haven't had that experience in church hunting. But that is something I'm aware of.)

The fourth house brings to mind the church we visited last week. It was nice, I really liked the sermon. It would be ok to attend there. The only thing is...they don't have "their own space". Like the bedroom with no door, this is a church with no building. Again, many people feel very satisfied with this - it is just not what I'm looking for.

I'm still looking for the "right church". I know the things that I need in a church. Things like a choir or a singles group. Those are the "dishwasher" and "garage". They'd be nice, but if I sat through a service and felt "This is the one", I give those things up.

Doctrine
Point to the cross
Use the Bible (not the Message)

Those are the "musts"