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Modern Art and Visions of Values January 24, 2003 Two weeks ago, the Battalion featured a photo of a life-like ultra-realistic human sculpture in the local gallery.  The model clearly showed great talent in its construction – although I did not see it in detail, I will grant that the artist has better skill in…

1 There have been many “proofs” put forth for the existence of God, and just as many rebuttals of why each one is false. While many skeptics have found the proofs for God’s existence to be less than compelling, they have also acknowledged that the nature of God might be such that any evidence of…

Putting Liberals into Context by David V. January 3, 2003 One of the biggest problems with the rhetoric of today’s liberals is their use of context-dropping whenever it suits their ideological needs. Context-dropping is the over-simplification of ideas to create floating abstractions that ignore relevant distinctions that exist in reality. For example, take the notion…

  Econometrics 463 Term Project: The Relationship Between Economic Freedom and Prosperity Around The World By David V. December 10, 2002 Introduction The collapse of the Soviet Union has been followed by worldwide economic liberalization and increasing international trade. The increase in economic freedom has been followed by a global increase in prosperity, but not…

  Google, Censorship, and the Hostage Dilemma David V. December 9, 2002 On September 8, 2002, the Chinese government blocked Google, one of the Internet’s biggest search engines. The government of China regularly blocks websites that it considers “dangerous” to its regime, but Google.com is a search engine – it only indexes the Internet without…

  A recent incident at University of Texas is indicative of the nature of the pacifists opposing a war with Iraq. After the student government of the University of Texas passed a resolution condemning a U.S. attack on Iraq, the Young Conservatives attempted to engage them in a debate with the “Campus Coalition for Peace…

    I was writing a reply to a post, and thought that my idea was significant enough to merit an essay. Here goes:   Many theists claim that some sort of “spiritual connection” is a universal part of human experience and valid proof of some sort of spiritual realm. Furthermore, some Christians claim that…

[October 15, 2002] After tonight’s meeting I had a debate with a friend of mine (the only other Objectivist on this list) I took the opposite position of the one I held tonight and played devils advocate as he tried to prove why theft is always wrong. Take a look, and skip to the bottom…

  David’s Brief Case for Objective Morality: October 15, 2002   The are two forms of matter in the universe: living and nonliving, distinguished by the fact that living matter is mortal   All lifeforms, including humans must satisfy certain needs (ie food, air, shelter, etc) in order to stay alive These needs are specific…

  What does “atheism” mean? There are many misconceptions about what it means to be “atheist.” Most dictionaries define atheism as “Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods” and it is important to keep in mind that this is all that atheism means. It is not a belief system, or a…