Provocative Questions

Fandango’s Provocative Question #36

Fandango14 Comments

FPQWelcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration. By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

For this week’s provocative question, I am asking about means and ends. I have often heard people say that “the end justifies the means.” Conversely, I’ve heard others say that “the means justifies the end.” So what about you?

Do you think the end or the means is more important? Explain.

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

Fandango’s Provocative Question #35

Fandango21 Comments

FPQWelcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration. By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

For this week’s provocative question, I am going to leverage a comment that one of my followers made on one of my posts. He wrote, in response to the lyrics of a song I posted, “You might say that we shouldn’t apply today’s standards to history, but I disagree.”4961E034-9D24-4249-A85C-62E09CA6F6F8This got me thinking about the positions former US Senator, former Vice President, and current Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden took decades ago on issues such as busing, at the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with respect to Anita Hill’s allegation of sexual harassment, on criminal justice laws, etc.

It also called to mind what was just revealed about a telephone conversation that former President Ronald Reagan had with Richard Nixon, in which Reagan said, “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries — damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!”

So the provocative question this week is this:

Do you believe public figures (e.g., politicians, celebrities, athletes, authors) — or anyone, actually — should be judged by today’s standards for their words or actions from decades earlier? Why or why not?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

Fandango’s Provocative Question #34

Fandango14 Comments

FPQWelcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration. By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

For this week’s provocative question, I am going to leverage the social and political upheavals going on all around the globe. So my question for this week is relatively straightforward.

What are the three biggest challenges your country (or, if you prefer, the world) is facing right now?

If you don’t follow current events, you may answer the question from a personal perspective:

What are the three biggest challenges you are facing in your life right now?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

Fandango’s Provocative Question #33

Fandango26 Comments

FPQWelcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration. By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

For this week’s provocative question, I am going to leverage a recent provocative post from Marilyn Armstrong in which she wrote about what it means to have a moral compass.  In her post, Marilyn wrote that she believes the concept of a moral compass is how one defines right and wrong, independent of religious beliefs. She wrote, “I’ve concluded that ‘religiosity’ and ‘morality’ have little to do with each other because you either have a moral compass — or you don’t.” You can read Marilyn’s full post here.

There are also those who believe that morality is a set of definitive laws gifted to humanity by God, where God has determined what is “right” and what is “wrong,” and these determinations are deemed to be unimpeachable. In other words, morality cannot exist without God. Thus “morality” and “religiosity” are inextricably intertwined.

So the question this week is this:

Do you believe that one can be moral without believing in God or being religious, or do you believe that you must believe in God in order to have a moral compass and to live a moral life?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

Fandango’s Provocative Question #32

Fandango18 Comments

FPQWelcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration. By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

For this week’s provocative question, I am going to do something I haven’t before done in my provocative question prompt. I’m going to post something a fellow blogger wrote. In this case, the blogger is Judy Dykstra-Brown, and in one of her recent posts she wrote,

“I do believe that more evil has been done in this world by those absolutely sure of the rightness of their faith and their beliefs.”

So my question is this: do you agree with what Judy wrote? Why or why not?

If you want to read Judy’s full post in which this quote appeared in order to gain context, click here.

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.