This is the fourth in a series of posts in Q&A format.  It’s an experiment; readers, do you like it or hate it?  Though slightly edited, the questions are from real letters.  By responding to just one letter per post, I can also post more often.  Coming Thursday:  The ITC statement on natural law.  Coming next Monday:  Points of no return.

Professor:

I’m trying out a new format for a few posts.  These are real letters, though slightly edited.

Back from traveling again.  Thanks for your patience.  I think the three conversational situations you describe need different responses.  Let’s talk about them.

Some people believe that sin isn’t so bad if it is done with a good intention.  “After all, he meant well.”  The problem with this view is that every sin is done with a good intention.  Nobody loves evil just because for being evil; the only way an evil can be attractive in the first place is that is good in some respect.

Recently the journal First Things republished an essay of mine which was originally published twenty-one years ago, called “The Illusion of Moral Neutrality.”  Neutralism is the doctrine that

I suggested in another post that if you already know how someone thinks of his group interests, then you can make a pretty good guess about what political views he may find tempting -- but it is a lot harder to guess how he is going to think of his group interests.

I can see why someone who has been reading the last several posts might think so.  I’ve been talking about the motives people have to adopt the opinions they do, and I’ve connected these motives with the groups that they belong to.  Isn’t that just the Marxist theory that ideology is a reflection of class?

People who study bias in mainstream political reporting sometimes reach surprisingly different conclusions about whether there is any and what kind there is.  One obvious reason for the disparity is that in the study of human words, the instruments of measurement are human minds.  But another is that different kinds of bias may cut across each other; the

In case you are just joining in: