Isn't there a soul in there?

When a person suffers some sort of total and permanent brain damage, a la Terri Schiavo, people divide up into familiar pro-life/pro-choice groups.

This doesn't make any sense to me. Notionally, religious people claim to be committed to the views of soul-independence and soul-having-ness. That is to say, that the soul is independent of the body, and that humans have souls while they're alive. It also appears that religious folks think the soul is connected to the experiences of the body (i.e. you get to see your loved ones in heaven) in a way that requires the soul to be aware of bodily experiences, even if the mind isn't directly aware of the soul.

So if you believe all that, isn't keeping a vegetative person alive for decades a kind of torture to the soul? The usual sort of Natural Law arguments that are used to justify this bizarre beliefset don't seem to make any sort of sense here, because a vegetative person is undoubtedly being kept alive through the magic of modern science — god's will is clearly to let the person die. Alternatively, if the soul leaves the body when the mind does, then all this energy is being spent to keep unresponsive meat "alive", and that doesn't seem to make sense either.

Other sorts of "No You They Really Think This" theories are well-established, such as the notion that many pro-life activists are really anti-sex or anti-woman activists, or that the most virulent anti-gay bigots are closet cases. Clutching on to a dead person's body after it's clear that their mind is gone, seems to just be a sort of naive unwillingness to deal with reality. This mentality doesn't seem to spring forth from any sort of religious thinking, but it may be the same sort of instinct that also compels religious thinking.

Is being gay a choice?

This question seems to matter to a lot of people, but I can't really see why it does.

That's not true. I know why it matters to some people.

This seems like a clear example of the Deontological/Consequentialist divide in ethics, in a popular ethical discussion.

My position is, obviously, that I don't care why. If being gay is a choice, then choosing to be gay is making someone happy, so they should go for it. Laws should arrange themselves around persons for the maximum amount of happiness possible.

But some people really seem to care if it's a choice.

Of course, I really don't believe in "choices" at all. So there's that.

Religion and Racism

These results:

The authors failed to find that racial tolerance arises from humanitarian values, consistent with the idea that religious humanitarianism is largely expressed to in-group members. Only religious agnostics were racially tolerant.

Should only surprise people who've never met Christians, or never met racists, or both. The primary function of religion in society is to serve as a social community. Morality is at best a fourth-order level of concern, behind social community, metaphysics, and aesthetic appreciation.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Humans are social creatures, and it's nice to have a place to gather once a week with your neighbors. It's nice to know that you've got a place to get married, someone who will be with you when you die, and a place to be buried once you're gone. I suspect many closeted atheists remain that way because the positive benefits of community are so obvious and tangible.

But because so much of the appeal of religion is wrapped up in the in-group/out-group distinction, we shouldn't be surprised that this drive's uglier aspects, like racism, are found in higher proportion as well.