The beginning and ending of life are deeply controversial moral topics with enormous stakes. Most people agree that it is wrong to kill humans—but are fetuses, or people in a deep coma, fully human?

Concern for others is the basis of human decency; without it, our communities are increasingly degraded by selfishness and corruption.

Drugs and alcohol involve personal habits that have significant social consequences. Some have said that we are a society of drinkers and pill takers; much of this consumption is legal.

Only a few hundred years ago there emerged the ideal of inalienable rights to life, liberty, property, free speech, freedom of conscience and religion, etc.

Popular culture usually represents love in physical or sexual terms; our society has been “liberated” in that premarital sex (and in some cases even adultery) are largely tolerated in practice and in law.

Some think that humans are naturally aggressive and that wars are unavoidable; others believe that morality demands a pacifist condemnation of all forms of violence.