In Sunday morning's live broadcast of Philosophy in Action Radio, I'll answer two questions that might be of interest. The first question is about voting for third-party candidates:
Is it moral or practical to vote for third-party candidates? The Founders created a two-party political system. With features like geographic representation, first-past-the-post voting for Congress, and the Electoral College for voting for President, the Founders clearly wanted parties consisting of large umbrella groups of wide geographic and ideological interests. As a result, the United States has always had two and only two dominant political parties. Corrupt election laws, passed by these parties, now guarantee that except in rare instances (such as Jesse Ventura, of all people) only members of these two parties can be elected to office. Given these facts, what is the purpose of voting for a third party candidates? Unlike the two major umbrella parties, all third parties are composed of ideological kooks of many persuasions. Isn't a vote for a third party candidate thus immoral (for supporting kookdom) and impractical (since they can't win)? Wouldn't it be better to try to improve the two existing parties, or not vote at all?
The second question is about bigotry against religion:
Is criticism of and opposition to religion a form of bigotry? In its entry on bigotry, Wikipedia claims that a "bigot" is "a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices, especially one who exhibits intolerance and animosity toward members of a group," and that "bigotry may be directed towards those of a differing sex or sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, nationality, region, language, religious or spiritual belief, political alignment, age, economic status or medical disability." I hear the charge of bigotry bandied about, often reflexively, particularly by theists when atheists criticize their faith-based beliefs as irrational. Is open criticism of and disrespect for religion a form of bigotry? Or is "bigotry" a loaded concept to be used by anyone whose belief system is critically challenged?
Interested? I hope so! Here's what you need to listen to the live broadcast:
The full show will cover voting for third-party candidates, self-interest in parenting, bigotry against religion, intellectually inferior professors, and more. You can review all the questions for this episode here:
Q&A Radio: 26 August 2012.
To join the live broadcast and its chat, just point your browser to
Philosophy in Action's Live Studio a few minutes before the show is scheduled to start. If you attend the live show, you can share your thoughts with other listeners and ask me follow-up questions in the text chat.
If you miss the live broadcast, you'll find the audio from the episode posted here:
Q&A Radio: 26 August 2012.
Philosophy in Action Radio broadcasts every Sunday morning and Wednesday evening. For information on upcoming shows and more, visit the
Episodes on Tap.
I hope that you join us on Sunday morning!
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Bart Ehrman, the fabulous scholar of early Christian history, will be speaking in Colorado Springs on Thursday. I'll be there!
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I'm pleased to announce that Ari Armstrong's and my policy paper "The 'Personhood' Movement Is Anti-Life" is now available in 
