Craig Biddle, editor of The Objective Standard has just announced the contents of the upcoming fall issue. With articles and reviews by Biddle, Tara Smith, Eric Daniels, and John Lewis, among others, this promises to be a particularly good issue. I also have it on good authority that this issue should be available in many Barnes & Noble bookstores so look for it there.
Two essays from the fall issue are available right now for free. Biddle's own "McBama vs. America" and Alan Germani's "The Mystical Ethics of the New Atheists". I have now read both.
Biddle's essay is a tightly written, clear argument for the basic altruistic equivalence of both major presidential candidates. I tend to think that there's only a slight difference in the emphasis of the altruism between McCain and Obama, namely that McCain wants to sacrifice for greater things (country, other countries, etc.), whereas Obama wants to sacrifice for littler things (the poor, the sick, etc.). Of course, this is really just a matter of emphasis and neither excludes sacrificing for the other's pet cause. Check out the article and Biddle's recommendation about what to do in this election.
Alan Germani presents us with an eloquent critique of the so-called "new atheists". Included in that category are Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris. In particular Germani focuses on the fact that while most of these intellectuals support basing their views on facts and reason when it comes to the evaluation of religious factual claims, when it comes to the ethical principles held by religions, these supposed secular thinkers are at a loss to come up with anything more than "intuition" or "consensus," and the result is agreement with what religious authorities say on the matter. His dissection of their attempts is well worth reading.
I can't wait to get the print issue!
9/5/2008 Update: Fixed ungrammatical sentence in fourth paragraph.
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