Determinism is a pessimistic view of human life. I agree with Nagel when he writes that the concepts presented by determinism (that “everything [he] did was determined by [his] circumstances and [his] psychological condition) makes him feel trapped. There is something comforting to the idea that every day we can create ourselves through new choices as opposed to be the product of our past. One thing I don’t fully understand is when the first action takes place that is the basis for determinism. Does it happen the day a person is born? Or does is happen before that person is even born? And if that is the case, do the actions of our mothers and fathers determine our own actions too? The case for determinism is confusing, but in some ways it also makes perfect sense.

In her Ted Talk, Ruth Chang talks about hard choices. In one example, she talks about comparing the weight of two suitcases and how there are only three options. She claims that the world of value is different than the world of science because a person cannot assign a number to values such as goals or personal fulfillment when comparing two jobs, which makes that decision a hard choice. The University of Michigan admissions committee tried to do just this (assign numerical value to immaterial attributes of the applicants) by implementing a points system for their undergraduate school. While points could be given for GPA and standardized test scores, there were also sections for “Personal Achievement” and “Leadership and Service” both of which lacked concrete definitions. This is an example of how sometimes people try to take the “hard” out of “hard choices” which doesn’t exactly work because the UM admissions process was sued in the Supreme Court which eventually ruled that the process was ruled Unconstitutional.

The Himba are a tribe from Northern Namibia. They do not classify blue and green differently, the way we do in Western Culture, but they do differentiate between many different shades of green. The tribe was tested and had difficulty discerning between blues and greens that Westerners could easily differentiate between, but had no trouble telling the difference between shades of green that are almost identical to Western eyes. Further, the English language has 11 different color categories while the Himba only have 5 different color categories.

This also shows how linguistic differences can affect the way that different people perceive color. While it is hard to quantify the ways that people perceive color, this is one example of a possible explanation for why people perceive color differently.

Researchers at a university in Israel have concluded a study that compared brain scans of new moms, new straight dads, and new gay dads and found that gay dads develop brain patterns that resemble both mothers and fathers. The lead researcher explained that when two fathers are co-parenting, “their brains must recruit both networks, the emotional and the cognitive, for optimal parenting.” While there have been studies that have showed that children raised by homosexual fair no worse than children raised by heterosexual couples, this is the first study that shows why this may be. This is also one of the first steps towards discrediting the argument that a child needs both a mother and father in order to receive a quality upbringing.

For most states, same-sex adoption is made legal case by case by a judge. There are 16 states however that definitely allow same-sex adoption. Some states allow second parent adoption (when one person adopts the child of his partner). There are only two states where same-sex adoption is illegal by law: Mississippi and Utah. Ohio specifically allows single LGBT individuals to petition to adopt, but does not allow a same-sex couple to jointly petition to adopt or second parent adoption. This is surprising considering the shortage of adoptive parents nationwide. According to a study by Rachel Farr of the University of Virginia, same-sex couples are more likely to adopt trans-racially compared to heterosexual couples. Therefore, it only makes sense to allow same-sex couples to ability to adopt nationwide because not only will the number of parents wishing to adopt increase, but more minority children will also be adopted.

International service trips are a good example of a type of charity that is unsustainable. Oftentimes, people who are unqualified to do a certain type of work are sent to a developing country and then expected to complete that work for a community in need. This creates a multitude of problems. Not only is the work they complete not up to par, but it also does not teach the community they are helping the skills needed to complete that work. Take building a library for example. Volunteers can go lay brick for the library, but the bricks that they lay are probably not going to create a sound structure. This is exactly the issue Pippa Biddle seeks to address in her blog post titled “The Problem With Little White Girls, Boys and Voluntourism.” In her post, she says the she paid $3000 to go to Tanzania to build a library with her classmates. She says that each day they would lay bricks for the library and each night men from the community would have to undo their work and rebuild it. She states that it would have been “more stimulative of the local economy” for them to just have donated their money. Another thing to consider is that by going to that community to build the library, volunteers are depriving people of the community the opportunity to learn how to build a school/library so once the volunteers leave they are able to not only maintain the completed building but also build others. By going to the community and then leaving only a school, they are not going to gain any skills. Biddle hopes that before embarking on an international service trip, people evaluate their own abilities and consider if they are implementing a short term solution or a long term one.

In Devah Pager’s 2003 dissertation, “The Mark of a Criminal Record,” the American Sociologist, best known for her work with racial discrimination, detailed the results of an experiment she hosted where she enlisted young men with similar characteristics to pose as job applicants. She found that a black applicant received a call back or job offer half as often as a similarly qualified white applicant. Even further, she found that a black applicant with a clean criminal record received a call back or job offer as often as a white applicant with a felony conviction. I think this research definitely points to the unfair disadvantage being white has in American society. Nobody chooses what race they are born, and with such distinct statistics detailing the importance of race, it is obviously an unfair disadvantage to be born black in America.

In reading Louise M. Antony’s article “Good Minus God,” I found myself agreeing with a lot of what she had to say. I think her distinction between “Divine Command Theory” and “Divine Independence Theory” is clear and easy to understand. Antony draws similarities between the Divine Command Theory and tyranny, believing that if moral actions are only moral because God/some higher power deems them to be moral, it is no different than a tyrant doing the same because there is no basis for that action being moral. I think that Hick would have to disagree with this statement because, according to his reading, he believes that God has his reasons for allowing evil to exist, and he also has reasons for deeming some actions to be moral and other actions to not be moral. Hick would not accept that God frivolously decides what is moral and what is not moral because he believes that there is always a bigger reason behind God’s actions. Despite this, I still have to agree with what Antony is suggesting about morality because I think her argument is thorough and well thought out and supported.

In Haslanger’s video “The Problem of Evil,” she presents the idea of contradictory beliefs. I think this is a great compliment to Rowe’s article “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism” because it helps to simplify some of the ideas that Rowe presents across a visual medium. She supports the idea that no matter what God’s intentions are by allowing there to be evil, it means that he is not omnipotent and benevolent. Even though Hick does make good points, I think the combination of Rowe and Haslanger suggests that theists should concede that God is either omnipotent or benevolent, but not both. Hick uses extreme examples of a world without evil (a knife turning to paper) when somebody could just logically argue that God would prevent the killer from attempting to stab someone in the first place.