Retributivism and the Similarity Requirement

Is there anything in Feinberg's definition of retributivism that requires, or even recommends any kind of similarity between the crime and the punishment? No.

Retributivism

Discipline: Philosophy

Theory of punishment whereby all or part of the purpose of punishment is the infliction of pain or disadvantage on an offender which is in some sense commensurate with his offence and which is inflicted independently of reform or deterrence.

For a weak theory the commensurate amount need not be inflicted but may be, and a limit is placed up to which reformative or deterrent punishment may go but beyond which it may not.
A strong theory insists that the punishment must be inflicted, but again places a limit beyond which it may not go.

Retributivism opposes excessive harshness as much as excessive leniency, and opposes the violation of the offender's rights in the interests of social expediency or personal spite and so on.
Mitigating circumstances, diminished responsibility, and so on are taken into account before determining the commensurate amount, but there are still problems in determining this, and the strong retributivist, especially, must justify violating the presumed moral ban on inflicting unnecessary pain.

Source:
J Feinberg, 'The Expressive Function of Punishment', Doing and Deserving (1970)

A Question for People Who Combine Substance Physicalism with Property Dualism

Do these properties make a difference in what is caused to occur? If the non-physical properties cause anything, then can the substance that has the properties be a genuinely physical substance? If they don’t make a difference, then does our mental states have anything to do with what we actually do?

The Death Penalty and Retribution

I have brought up some objections to the deterrence argument for the death penalty, and also the expense argument for the death penalty. These, I contended, were undermined by the slowness of the appeals process. A speedier appeals process, however, makes it more likely that innocent people will be executed. So, the death penalty advocate faces a dilemma. A long appeals process makes it less likely that an innocent person will be executed (although the possibility still remains), but it also undermines deterrence and increases expense. A shorter process will increase the risk of executing an innocent person who might otherwise be exonerated, which is already a problem for capital punishment. So my argument had a dilemma structure that I am not sure people picked up on.

However, some have argued that the case for execution isn't primarily a matter of deterrence or even expense, it is a matter of retributive justice. I do accept C. S. Lewis's claim that it is extremely perilous to remove the question of desert from sentencing.

It should be the first consideration, though surely not the only consideration. I am quite sure that Lewis would have also endorsed this comment, which his friend J. R. R. Tolkien put into the mouth of Gandalf:

“Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” 

The retributive theory of punishment requires that we deprive the criminal of happiness to a degree commensurate to the wrongness of their acts. In order to fit the crime, the punishment does not need to resemble the crime. We wouldn't use that principle in the case of rape and torture, so why use it for murder? In order for the argument to go through that the death penalty uniquely meets the requirement of giving a criminal his just deserts, you need an argument other than the argument from resemblance, and I don't know what that would be. Executions are quick and physically painless, which was probably not true of the death of the victim of murder. The person executed knows for a long time that this is coming, which again would not be true of the victim. So, once we are deprived of the argument that a punishment that resembles the crime best fits the crime, how do we show that the death penalty is the best way of exacting retribution? 

We Just Sold Things People Want

From the Hullabaloo blog. 


Selling things people want

David Atkins

The Wall Street Perspective:

To put it bluntly, many on Wall Street still see the events leading up to the financial crisis as a case of banks having legitimately sold something - whether it be mortgages or securities backed by those loans - that someone wanted to buy.

Thomas Atteberry, a partner and portfolio manager with Los Angeles-based First Pacific Advisors, a $16 billion money management firm, says his success "wasn't a gift" and he had to work hard to get where he is. Atteberry says he understands the frustration many feel about income inequality. But he said the problem isn't with those who are successful, but rather our "tax codes and regulations."

There are many products and services in addition to spiking ARM mortgages, naked credit default swaps and BBB tranches of collateralized debt obligations that people want to buy. Also in demand are:

• Professional hitmen
• Professional sex services including underage prostitution
• Animal crush videos
• High grade heroin
• Weapons grade plutonium
• Fire insurance on our rude neighbor's home
• Currency counterfeiting machines

Why does Big Government insist on restricting the flow of goods and services people want to buy with pesky tax codes and regulations? It's so unfair to the successful pimps, drug kingpins, arms dealers, mafia dons and human traffickers who have worked hard to get where they are.


.

Cameron Todd Willingham

Dudley Sharp wrote:

Not suprising, with all that care and time, there is no evidence of an innocent executed since the 1930's.

It looks like about 25 actually innocent people have been sent to death row since 1973, or about 0.3% of the 8100 sent to death row during that time and they were all released on appeal

Really? What about Cameron Todd Willingham?

McGrew on Evidence

This has some discussion of Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence.

Extraordinary Claims and Extraordinary Evidence

Another common slogan, also popularized by Sagan, is that Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Much depends, of course, on what counts as extraordinary, both in a claim and in evidence. It cannot be simply that a claim is unprecedented. At a certain level of detail, almost any claim is unprecedented; but this does not necessarily mean that it requires evidence out of the ordinary to establish it. Consider this claim: “Aunt Matilda won a game of Scrabble Thursday night with a score of 438 while sipping a cup of mint tea.” Each successive modifying phrase renders the claim less likely to have occurred before; yet there is nothing particularly unbelievable about the claim, and the evidence of a single credible eyewitness might well persuade us that it is true.

The case is more difficult with respect to types of events that are deemed to be improbable or rare in principle, such as miracles. It is generally agreed in such discussions that such events cannot be common and that it requires more evidence to render them credible than is required in ordinary cases. (Sherlock 1769) David Hume famously advanced the maxim that No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish (Beauchamp 2000, p. 87), which may have been the original inspiration for the slogan about extraordinary evidence. The proper interpretation of Hume’s maxim has been a source of some debate among Hume scholars, but one plausible formulation in probabilistic terms is that

P(M|T) > P(~M|T) only if P(M) > P(T|~M),

where M is the proposition that a miracle has occurred and T is the proposition describing testimonial evidence that it has occurred. This conditional statement is not a consequence of Bayes’s Theorem, but the terms of the latter inequality are good approximations for the terms of the exact inequality

P(M) P(T|M) > P(~M) P(T|~M)

when both P(~M) and P(T|M) are close to 1. There is, then, a plausible Bayesian rationale for Hume’s maxim so long as we understand it to be an approximation.

It does not follow that the maxim will do the work that Hume (arguably) and many of his followers (unquestionably) have hoped it would. Hume appears to have thought that his maxim would place certain antecedently very improbable events beyond the reach of evidence. But as John Earman has argued (Earman 2000), an event that is antecedently extremely improbable, and in this sense extraordinary, may be rendered probable under the right evidential circumstances, since it is possible in principle that

P(T|M)/P(T|~M) > P(~M)/P(M),

a condition sufficient to satisfy the rigorous condition underlying Hume’s maxim and the slogan about extraordinary events. The maxim is therefore less useful as a dialectical weapon than is often supposed. It may help to focus disagreements over extraordinary events, but it cannot resolve them.

Some clarifications on my death penalty post (originally posted at Triablogue)

My argument is actually somewhat different from what you are describing. As the death penalty is now practiced in America, we take extra precautions with it, in virtue of its irreversibility. As a result, two advantages of the death penalty over life imprisonment are compromised. First, while most people think the state pays less by using the death penalty than it does in life imprisonment, the fact is that when litigation costs are factored in, execution is more expensive. Second, the deterrent effect is diminished, since not only does the criminal expect to get away with it (otherwise, he wouldn't commit the crime), but also, should someone actually be tried and convicted and sentence to death, death is hardly immanent, because the murderer can expect a long appeals process which is going to delay the execution for many years, assuming the execution occurs at all. This is probably the reason why crime statistics in states without the death penalty are no worse than in states with it. Having the death penalty just means that you might be sentenced to death, and then after 20 years or so, after your appeals run out, you may get executed, unless, of course, they decide not to execute you, which they might very well do.

So, it looks like the only way to make the death penalty do what we hope it will do is to "fast-track" it, eliminate the appeals, and make execution immanent for those convicted of capital crimes.

Of course, the irreversibility of the death penalty is an argument against its very existence. However, where we do practice the death penalty, we seem to concede an important point to its opponents, namely, that there should be a lot more appeals when we execute than when we imprison, because we can release exonerated prisoners, but not people we have executed. The result is that the two benefits of a death penalty seem to be either eliminated or greatly weakened.

So, if we have a death penalty that does what we want it to do, we have to accept the risk of executing innocent people and fast-track the death penalty. We have to not only risk executing innocent people, but we also have to increase that risk by curtailing the appeals process.

To do that, I think we have to abandon the idea that the execution of an innocent person is a more tragic failure of justice than the failure to punish a guilty person. I don't want to go there. But in order for the death penalty to have the advantages over life imprisonment that pro-death-penalty people think it has, it seems as if we have to go there.

Execution Without Appeals--A Death Penalty That Gives Us What We Say We Want From It

Two favorable effects of the death penalty that make it seem desirable are that it is less expensive to execute than to imprison, and that it capital punishments deters capital crime better than life imprisonment. Both of these are compromised by the long appeals process, which is more expensive than housing a criminal for life, and also dilutes the deterrent effect, since a murderer probably won't be executed until long after they were initially convicted. Some people say that there is a class of "open and shut cases" which need not be appealed. Thus, we can get a swift execution without the lengthy appeals process.

To get what this suggestion is looking for you have to implement a special threshold of evidence where there really is no possible doubt, and no chance for a future exoneration. While we can, in a retail sort of way, mention cases where this level of evidence was achieved, the problem is that our system has to identify certain characteristics of cases that are so open and shut that we can't imagine an exoneration. The criteria for a conviction is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, but even there we have had exonerations. In the case of Casey Anthony, one theory was that the jury was reluctant to convict because they would then have had to consider a death sentence, and since certain kinds of evidence were lacking, they didn't want to take that risk. And "beyond reasonable doubt" is a threshold of evidence doesn't mean that "beyond possible doubt." I don't think the development of an "open and shut case" category where the appeals process could be circumented is workable, although I understand why it would be appealing to many people.

There was the famous arson case in Texas---guy's name was Willingham, where the fire science of the time proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he had killed his family by arson. Only, the fire science of today contradicts that, but, unfortunately, he was executed and wasn't around to be released.

The question is whether it is the extent we are going to allow the risk of executing an innocent person.  I think that that is a horrible side effect of our system. While the system is run by human beings, I think it will remain fallible. If there is a death penalty, then you can't eliminate the possibility of it being used on an innocent person.

To really have a death penalty that does for us what most death penalty advocates would get from it, what you have to do is accept a higher risk than we already have of executing innocent people. (You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs).  What would really help with the deterrent effect would be getting rid of innocent until proven guilty. That's what they do in some countries. In the People's Republic of China, they would execute the prime suspect within a few weeks, and they did get a real deterrent effect there. 

Who are the most literal readers of Scripture? Atheists, of course!

HT: Bob Prokop.

This was written by Aslan (who is not a tame lion).

Why is investment income taxed less?

On the highest levels people don't earn money from work, they earn money from investments. Unearned income is taxed at 15%, which is a lower rate than what it taxed for the money you work for. Why is this?

Deficits and "Conservatives"

When I was growing up, and Barry Goldwater was my senator, I learned that one thing conservatives were concerned about was budget deficits. They have returned to the charge in response to Obama's budget deficits. However, this is an article written in Business Week in 2004 chronicling the disappearance of deficit hawks from the Republican Party in the Bush years.

In the words of an old Donovan song from when I was a teenager, "First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is."

Or, as John Kerry put it, "I was for it before I was against it."

This is Balfour's Foundations of Belief

This contains an argument very similar to Lewis's AFR.

Cafeteria conservatism and the New Testament

The treatment of wealth and poverty in the New Testament fail to rule out all conservative positions as unChristian, but some versions of it strike me as unacceptable. For example, the ethics of Ayn Rand and the ethics of Christ simply can't be reconciled. Greed is not good.

You can't, as a Christian, say that the wealthy are wealthy because they deserve to be, or that a system that helps the rich get rich and allows the poor to get poorer is acceptable. Eric Cantor, for example said that he thought his role was to help the people on top stay there. That has to be un-Christian.

You can make the argument that helping the poor is perfectly good, but using the coercive powers of government to do so is to do it in the worst way. But it does seem that if you accept the laissez-faire argument, you can't turn around and back out of use the government to help your favorite industry. You can't oppose welfare and the support corporate welfare. I don't even know what disentangling the government from the economy would even look like. IF the government is going to help someone, it has to be the people on the bottom.

What I especially dislike is the kind of cafeteria conservativism that appeals to conservative principle so long as they serve the purposes of the big businesses that fund Republican campaigns. But that is what usually happens when you elect conservative candidates.

Watching the Republican debate last night, the argument seems to be that they kept arguing that markets have a regulating effect on economics, and on that account is should be preferred to government regulation. So, if businesses are profitable, they will create jobs. But, corporations are not national entities, they are international entities. And while workers' rights are guaranteed in America, they are not guaranteed in the Third World. At present, businesses have no incentive to create jobs in America. In fact the tax code actually supports outsourcing. So, as far as I can see, just letting capitalism run its course will NOT create jobs in America. Quite the reverse.

WWJT: Who Would Jesus Tax

This is an article by Chris Giovanazzo.

Do you think the problem of debt could be made better by asking the wealthiest 1% to pay more in taxes? Jesus taught that the rich have a responsibility to help the poor, and sometimes he suggests that they are going to hell for failing to do so.  Shouldn't the teachings of Jesus be reflected in the tax code? Who Would Jesus Tax?

If you think that Obama is a class warrior, he pales in comparison to Jesus. 

An argument against religion: the argument from locality

A true religion, created by God worthy of worship, wouldn't have been started in any particular location. So this argument goes.

The Stanford Encyclopedia Entry on Theological Voluntarism

On the meaning of the term "God"

Is "God" a proper name, or a definite description? If "God" is a definite description, then that definite description is "a being omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good," then whatever God does is right, but it also means that we aren't in a position to pick out God unless we are able to identify what good is, and recognize that God possesses that quality. Or, God could be picked out by his exercise of creative power, and then we could define "good" in terms of something being in accordance with whoever possesses maximal creative power. But, if we do that, then don't we end up saying that might makes right?

Steve Hays on the "Genocide" theodicy problem

The central issue in Steve's post seems to be this: 

Why is an outcome that God commands a different theodicean problem than the same outcome which God permits? If we already have an adequate theodicy to explain what God allows, why do we need a different explanation for what God commands? The end-result is the same. 

Critics of the passage have argued that God's ordering the Hebrews to kill Canaanite children is more deeply problematic than, say, having them all die in a flood, or allowing Joshua to kill them without actually telling him to. 

On the other hand, in end-of-life ethics people frequently argue that "pulling the plug" at the request of the patient is justified, while assisted suicide is not. But, as Steve says, the result is the same.

 

outsider tests (lower case) versus The Outsider Test (TM)

Actually, the underlying idea of the OTF is perfectly legitimate, in that, it is frequently useful to, as a thought experiment, imagine oneself as having started with a different perspective from that which you have in fact started. This is a point that I have argued many times. Where it goes wrong is when Loftus says that to *really* take the outsider test you have to take the perspective of an outsider like himself, a modern, science-oriented materialist. But there are many was of being outside of orthodox Christianity besides being outside of it that way, so why privilege that position? Why consider the results you get from that position to be authoritative or objective?

In short, anyone who thinks seriously takes many outsider tests, but what is questionable is when it is suggested that there is The Outsider Test (TM), the results of which are definitive for the rationality of one's belief. Also, I have argued that directing outsider tests to religious faith, and not to beliefs in general, is question-begging.

An ecumenical Catholic Apologetics Page

There is a great wealth of material that can be linked to from this page.

The Best Skeptical Response to Resurrection Apologetics

There are two sets of evidence that Christians appeal to argue that Christianity is divine rather than human in origin. First, there was the evidence of the empty tomb. The tomb, apparently, was found empty. At least, that is what the early Christians proclaimed, and it was not refuted by those people who would have wanted to see the movement quashed. The second is the fact that various people claim at least to have seen appearances of Jesus following his death. Skeptics typically respond by saying that we have reasons to have doubts about the claim that Jesus was buried in a known tomb. Executed criminals typically had their bodies dumped rather than buried. Second, skeptics typically argue that the disciples hallucinated the risen Jesus. Perhaps there weren't as many people who saw the appearances as the Bible claims. But people tend to hallucinate when they are very depressed, and are experiencing great cognitive dissonance, as must have happened to the disciples when their leader was executed on the cross. So, some people had visions, and the early Christians concluded that he must have been resurrected. 

This, I think, is the best response that skeptics have to the historical case for the Resurrection. While I don't buy the hallucination story, I do think it's the strongest skeptical response.

This is still, I think the best resurrection debate, between William Lane Craig and Keith Parsons.

On what needs to be caused

In order to get the cosmological argument to work, you have to find a set of things that needs to be caused, while God does not need to be caused. William Lane Craig argues that we have good reason to believe that the universe had a temporal beginning, and that the Big Bang theory shows this. What that means is that the Big Bang theory, which in popular culture is presumed to be an atheistic theory, is actually embarrassing for atheism, since it agrees with the Bible that there WAS a beginning. Craig maintains what whatever begins to exist, must have a cause of its existence, and since the universe began to exist, the universe has to have something other than itself cause it to exist. On the other hand, God, according to the definition, never began to exist, so he needs no cause of his existence.

Other versions of the cosmological argument maintain that whatever exists contingently, has to have a cause of its existence. The universe is the sort of thing that might or might not exist, so we have to explain why it exists. God is the sort of being who, if he does exist, has to exist, and needs no further explanation. Therefore God must exist, to explain the existence of the universe. 

Why Atheists Care about Defending Atheism

Bob: A lot of academic atheists, when I was involved with secular philosophy departments, took relatively little interest in their position. They were dismissive of religious belief, but they sometimes complained about having to cover the problem of God in classes. 

But some atheists blame religious belief for 9/11, and they think President Bush's unfortunate response to it (in particular, invading a country in no way responsible for the attacks), was the work of a "praying President" who wore his religious beliefs on his sleeve, and so they see the conflict over terrorism essentially the effect of the damaging effects of religion on the minds of its followers. They also see the rearguard action of religious believers against biological evolution as of a piece with the failure to accept the scientific consensus in the area of global warming, and these are also intellectual tendencies that are damaging to our society. Joe Sheffer once told me that all evolutionary biologists receive a lot of hate mail from Christian fundamentalists. Whether we go forward in civilization, or backwards, according to people like Dawkins, depends on whether we are willing to chuck our antiquated religious beliefs and embrace science as the measure of all things. So I can see why some atheists care about sharing the Four Atheist Laws with believers.

Informal Fallacy Test

This was the Quote of the Day a year ago on Debunking Christianity


Faith is a belief in an unknown or unrealized proposition in spite of evidence that the belief is incorrect. Faith is clearly NOT a belief in an unknown or unrealized proposition that is SUPPORTED by the evidence, because if that belief was supported by the evidence, it ipso facto does NOT REQUIRE Faith.


Which fallacy, if any, is committed in the above passage? 


a. ad hominem
b. begging the question
c. red herring
d. no fallacy

Because I Said So: The Straw Man of Theological Voluntarism

Is the essence of Christian ethics, in the area of sexuality as elsewhere, summed up in the familiar parental phrase "Because I said so?" A Catholic writing in the Stanford Review thinks not.

The Flannagans on the nonliteral reading of the genocide order

The Flannagans are pretty conservative theologically, and this is their anti-literalist response to the genocide problem.

Never Ever Bludgeon Babies? You'll Get an Argument from Peter Singer and Michael Tooley

This links to a paper by Scott Klusendorf on the pro-infanticide positions of Tooley and Singer. Interestingly enough William Lane Craig has debated Tooley on the existence of God.

Amalekites, Canaanites, theo-utilitarianism, and skeptical theism

No, I do not hold that YHWH commanded the slaughter of the Amalekites. I hold that either God didn't do that, or there are unknown reasons why He did. I can see some reason why God might have commanded such a thing, so that in my view the case against it isn't a slam dunk. So I would not call someone a moral monster who thought that God had given such a command, I think it morally possible that God might have done so, but on the other hand treating someone anyone as outside the pale of moral consideration strikes me as problematic and not in accordance with what I know about God in the New Testament. In other words, I don't see how these actions could be justified without putting some limits on who is my neighbor, and the parable of the Good Samaritan says we can't really draw such limits.

I'm not committed to a theory of inspiration that would require me to defend such a thing. In another part of Deuteronomy, the Blessings and the Cursings, it indicates that people will get earthly blessings if they are obedient to the Covenant, and earthly cursings if they are not obedient. But you only have to look as far as Job and Ecclesiastes to see that that's questionable even within the Bible.   People as conservative theologically as the Flannagans don't try to defend the Amalekite/Canaanite ban as morally acceptable.

We are considering the possibility that God had a reason for doing something that seems to go against the grain of morality. Someone who feels committed to a sufficiently high view of inspiration and inerrancy to think that a moral defense of the passages must be available. I think if I were to make such a defense, it would have to be pretty much along the lines of skeptical theism, although, because of the need to preserve monotheism, I can see some of the reasons for it.

Part of this has to do with how much of a consequentialist you are. Does the possibility of good consequences that maybe God can see and we can't justify God in telling someone to slaughter a whole nation of people. I suppose if I were a theo-utilitarian, the possibility would be open that God could command an action, atrocious in itself, which would be justified by its consequences. Never Ever Bludgeon Babies? But what if you know that the baby is Baby Hitler?

I don't concur with Craig's position on this, but I think that it's easy to be too simplistic and glib in criticizing him.

Stephen Law's Debate with William Lane Craig

This debate really did take place. Thrasymachus has mapped the debate at the title's link.

Credit where Credit is Due

Has anybody noticed that, before Christianity, nobody ever dreamed that there were some things you couldn't do to noncombatants and defeated nations. If you conquered in battle, then the people belonged to you to kill, rape, or enslave as you saw fit. What the ban on, say, the Amalekites does is remove the last two options.

As I pointed out in one of the discussions, the just war theory was invented by Christians. Not secular humanists.

I still consider this an insufficient defense of the Amalekite ban. But people who criticize the Bible should recognize where the ideas come from by which they criticize it.

Of course, people like Dawkins help themselves to these moral ideas as if they were somehow obvious, when in fact they were pretty much unheard of before Christians came on the scene.

Why there won't be a Craig-Dawkins debate

Actually, it's Craig that is ducking, according to Paul Manata.

The Dog Delusion

HT: Tim Boyle

The Amalekites, Mr. Spock, and the lesser of two evils

Anon: It's interesting how genocide is the 'lesser of two evils' between it and polytheism. Good to know.

VR1: Yes indeed. In order for God to save the world through Christ, there has to be a nation of people committed to the idea that there is one God who demands righteousness. The Canaanites, et al, if allowed to live, would have seduced the Hebrew people away from the worship of Yahweh. In fact, they did seduce many Hebrew into idolatry.  If all the Hebrews had become idolaters, then God would not have had a nation of people to send Christ to. As Mr. Spock says, the needs of the many (for Christ) outweigh the needs of the few (the Canaanites, Amalekites, etc.), so they had to be slaughtered.

VR2: Why do I not like saying this sort of thing? After all, according to a well-known secular ethical theory, utilitarianism, an act of any type can be right if it maximizes the total balance of pleasure over pain, up to and  including genocide. Nevertheless, my reply seems a little glib.

The Amalekites, the Creation Hymn, and the Hebrew Learning Curve

I'm redating my post on difficult passages in the Old Testament. I would just add that the what is being referred to as the chaos argument is one that I would be inclined to resist, but has to be taken seriously.

Wagner said: Victor, it seems that you believe in some form of inerrancy.But how do you reconcile inerrancy and a "evolving moral consciousness"? Could you please recommend some essential reads about this problem?

With respect to inerrancy, I start by saying I don't especially like the term, and am not sure quite what is supposed to count as an error. I've covered the Amalekite massacres before here, and my view is that they strike me as morally unacceptable per se from a moral standpoint, suggesting that either there is something I don't understand about the situation, or the actions are wrong, and Scripture reflects what we now know to be an inadequate moral awareness.


It could turn out that, given where the Hebrews were on the moral learning curve, and given their proneness to be influenced by the more agriculturally sophisticated Canaanites, the best thing for God to tell them was to kill everybody in those tribes, even though someone with a better developed moral sense could not be told to do such a thing. It was an essential part of God's plan to sustain a nation of people dedicated to monotheism, and perhaps, under the circumstances, that's what God had to do. It is hard for me to imagine that someone who absorbed the message of the Good Samaritan, which teaches us essentially that there are no national boundaries on neighborness and hence no national limits in the requirement to love our neighbors, could engage in that type of conduct. What is worrisome to us about this is partly the fact that, even if the Amalekites and Canaanites were immoral people, God orders children to be killed, who could not possibly be responsibe for the evils of the tribes. But even the notion of individual moral responsibility doesn't come out of the chute immediately for the ancient Hebrews. It gets clearly articulated in Ezekiel 18, but I am not sure where before that.

The link didn't work about my holding to some version of inerrancy, so I'm not sure what I said. I think there is a lot of vagueness attached to the term. Interpreted broadly enough, I'm sure it's true, but I know those who use it have a more precise meaning in mind, and some, in the name of inerrancy, impose hermeneutical constraints that proscribe interpretations that I would accept. I know that there are passages in the Bible that sound as if they teach the righteous are rewarded and the wicked punished on earth, but then Job and Ecclesiastes come along and deal with the fact that, so far as we can see, that ain't happening.

The creation hymn in Genesis seems appropriate to an early stage on the scientific learning curve, and I see it's message as metaphysical (the monotheism of the hymn vs. the polytheism of the Enuma Elish), rather than scientific. I don't think its literal words need to be defended vis-a-vis modern science.

In saying all this I am sure I am profoundly disappointing both the inerrancy police (putting your moral intutitions ahead of the Bible, tsk tsk), and the skeptics among you.

Of course, it is surely open for the skeptic to say that God could, and should, have given the Hebrews a faster learning curve, both morally and scientifically. That's, I suppose a version of the argument from evil. Why didn't God dispel scientific and moral ignorance more quickly than he did. I don't subscribe to a theodicy sufficiently fine-grained to give an answer to that question.

On Engaging the Real Arguments

I disagree pretty strongly with Craig's way of defending such things as the ban on the Amalekites. At the same time, if I refused to engage anyone who held a position that I considered to be morally repugnant, there probably aren't going to be a whole lot of people to talk to.

I don't really have trouble with the idea of Dawkins refusing to debate Craig, if, for example, he thought that the sort of timed debate that Craig excels at would be a bad venue for him. The problem is that his work attacks religious belief but never comes to grips with such things as the Kalam Cosmological argument, or some of the other arguments Craig uses.

It's one thing to be poorly informed about theology. It is another thing to be poorly informed about the kinds of arguments that are used to defend belief in the existence of God.

Dawkins makes the claim that the theist is delusional, by which I take it he means that the case against theism is overwhelming. Yet he doesn't, in any serious way, engage any of the arguments in natural theology, and he seems to imply that it is beneath him to engage leading defenders of belief in the existence of God, and their arguments. I don't care whether he does it in a debate format or some other format, but somewhere, somehow, he needs to show that he knows how the Kalam Cosmological Argument and the Thomistic Cosmological Argument restrict the class of what needs a cause, so that a simplistic "Who made God" can't refute them in any direct way.

Craig is a leading defender of arguments for the existence of God. Regardless of whether some of his statements are morally repugnant, Dawkins needs to come to terms with him and those like him if he is to have any credibility with respect to his delusion charges. Putting his nose in the air with the "Courtier's Reply" does not replace confronting the actual relevant arguments.

Subjectivism and Evil Moral Positions

To hear Dawkins' talk, it sounds as if he's refusing to debate Craig because he holds an evil position, on killing the Canaanites.

But the fact is in Dawkins' universe, statements like "It was wrong of the ancient Hebrews to kill all those Canaanites and Amalekites" is neither true nor false. He may dislike it pretty intensely, and no doubt he thinks it conflicts with some strong moral intuitions that he has, but his philosophy doesn't even allow him to charge Craig with error on this point.

It isn't that Craig holds such a preposterous position that this proves his total irrationality. In fact, he holds a view that Dawkins himself would not consider to be false, let alone refutable.

Somewhere in England, an emperor is missing his lab coat.

Dawkins explains his refusal to debate WLC

Now it's not about resumes, it's about genocide.

Is the Euthyphro a Pseudo-Dilemma

Doug Benscoter thinks so. This would be bad news for the people who scream "Euthrypho!" every time a moral theory with a theological basis is introduced.

HT: Ilion.

The Pro-Murder Position on Abortion

Most discussion in the abortion debate presupposes that if the pro-life person can establish the claim that abortion is murder, the debate is over and the pro-life position has won. Camille Paglia, somewhat to the consternation of her fellow pro-choicers, actually concedes what pro-lifers consider to be their central argument. The standard pro-choice position denies the claim that abortion is murder, Paglia's view embraces it, but defends the absence of laws against abortion nevertheless.

Let's take a look at her statements:

Let’s take the issue of abortion rights, of which I am a firm supporter. As an atheist and libertarian, I believe that government must stay completely out of the sphere of personal choice. Every individual has an absolute right to control his or her body. (Hence I favor the legalization of drugs, though I do not take them.) ....


Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman’s body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman’s entrance into society and citizenship.


It looks as if a logically consistent position can be maintained here, the freedom to do as one chooses with one's own body trumps the genuine right of the fetus to life.  For a lot of people, her position is counterintuitive. Is her position irrational? Well, Hume said "It would not be irrational to prefer the death of a thousand Orientals to the pricking of the little finger." So, how, exactly, does the argument proceed from here? 


Actually this reminds me of an old friend of mine by the name of Bill Patterson, (whom Bob Prokop also knew),  now an archivist for the Heinlein Library, who staunchly opposed abortion on moral grounds. But since he was an anarchist, he opposed legislation against abortion, since he opposed, well, legislation, period. 

Relativism and Human Rights

Relativism is incompatible with an idea that many of us hold dear, the idea of inalienable human rights. If relativism is true, we are endowed by our culture, not our creator, with certain rights, and if the culture denies those rights,  as in cases like slavery or female circumcision, then there is nowhere to go to justify a claim that, contrary to what the culture has decreed, our rights are being violated. 

Hope Springs Eternal

From William Lane Craig's calendar. 


Tuesday 25th October 2011
7.30pm Lecture "Is God a Delusion?" A Critique of Dawkins' The God Delusion
[or a debate with Richard Dawkins if he should accept the invitation]
Sheldonian Theatre, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3AZ

Meritocracy and Economics: Herman Cain on Why You're Not Rich

"Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks, if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself!" Cain said. "It is not a person's fault because they succeeded, it is a person's fault if they failed. And so this is why I don't understand these demonstrations and what is it that they're looking for."


One of the main things that, for me, made me doubt and abandon the conservative politics of my high school days, was the fact this just didn't seem true. There were too many luck factors out there to believe that economic advantage is the product of personal merit. I heard about a study that showed that, in today's America, the biggest determinant of your economic success is how wealthy your parents were. 

Part of what may be at the bottom of some of this is the Reagan idea that when the government is helpful to disadvantaged persons, it undermines human self-reliance and creates "welfare queens."   I think conservatives have the idea that markets are meritocratic, that they distribute in accordance with what people deserve, or at least approximately. Therefore, when the government acts to help people lower down the economic totem pole at the expense of the people higher up, the government takes money from people who deserve it and give it to people who don't deserve it.  

Is there something more plausible than this for conservatives to say?

Does Fitting the Crime require Resembling the Crime

Maybe fitting doesn't require resembling. I'm inclined to think that it gives people an emotion. sense of fittingness if there is a similarity between the offense and the crime, but retributive theory just says you're supposed to deprive the offender of happiness in a measure that is calibrated to the wrongness of the act. There is nothing in that that requires that the form of the punishment resemble the offense.

When a murderer is executed, the death of the murderer differs in many ways from the death of the victim. The state makes sure the death is relatively free of physical pain, something murderers don't care about. The person executed has an execution date set on the calendar for years prior, the victim doesn't. So the murderer's experience differs in many ways from that of the victim.

Everyone is under a death sentence, anyway.

Court-appointed rapists

If the punishment has to resemble the crime in order to fit the crime, then what are we going to do with rapists? 

What the death penalty WILL deter

It would probably deter jaywalking better than murder. Murderers have a motive to risk at least life in prison to kill someone, so risking the death penalty is a smaller step further. On the other hand, no one is going to risk being executed to avoid walking a few feet to the crosswalk. 

A "Simpleminded" Response to a Complex Theological Problem

Somebody had to have been the first human. After all, there had to have been a first monkey, a first elephant, a first cockroach. Call that person Adam. That first person could have been in fellowship with God, and blew it. Why does evolution change anything? 

James White vs. my former colleague Lee Carter

Here are the complaints of Christian theologian James White against my former GCC colleague Lee Carter. I don't approve at all of what Carter has said, but I think I would even keep this case out of the courtroom. But if you think that someone can make a case against Gangadean but not against Carter, then I've got some oceanfront property in Arizona, from my front porch you can see the sea.

An Establishment Clause Case against a California High School Teacher

For anti-Christian statements in class. You see, the establishment clause cuts both ways.

Constitutionality and Censorship: Some Questions for Gangadean's Debunkers

I am afraid you don't understand what I have been arguing. I am a former student of Surrendra Gangadean, but not a follower in any sense. I am not, nor have I ever been, involved with Westminster Fellowship.

I have not chosen Romans over the Constitution. I am instead arguing against what I consider to be a tendentious interpretation of the Establishment Clause that I consider to be far removed from the original intent of the founders, and which has implications that I think even atheists should find objectionable.

The framers of the Constitution wanted to avoid the situation where the government had an established church, and they wanted to make sure people could practice religion any way they wanted to. That is the reason for the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause in the Constitution. I would concede a further point, that freedom of religion includes freedom from religion; that is, that a person is free to not engage in any religious practice whatsoever if they so choose.

The case against Gangadean seems to be centered around the idea that in presenting a rational argument for the existence of God, he is violating the establishment clause. In presenting the argument he does not force students to accept it, and he realizes that some may not. He doesn't say "Believe it because I say so," he asks people to consider the argument and decide for themselves if it is sound, in much the way that any teacher might present an argument for or against belief in God. (If this is not the case, then, of course, we would need evidence that he requires students to accept the argument in order to pass the course. Rumors and allegations won't do here). But, according to the case against him, he nevertheless violates the EC by even doing this.

Now, notice that the MCCCD standards for the introduction to philosophy class says that the course is supposed to cover arguments for the existence of God, as well as the problem of evil. But, of course, there are plenty of classes which cover the arguments where the teacher does not endorse the arguments, and in many cases the teacher will criticize the arguments. So, the teacher has to present arguments for the existence of God, but he can avoid violating the Constitution only by failing to endorse those arguments? That would mean that if a teacher doesn't endorse these arguments, it doesn't mean anything since he couldn't legally endorse them even if he thought they were sound?????

Of course, many teachers present the philosophy of religion section of their class with a desire to show students that their belief in God is irrational. They present the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments for the existence of God, usually with not much sophistication on the positive side, and then refute them with broadly Humean rebuttals. Then they will bring up the problem of evil, with the implication that failure to explain all evils refutes theism. Then they bring up Kierkegaard's Leap of Faith as proof that Christians themselves realize that their beliefs are irrational.

I have heard some of these teachers say things like "Well, I presented all the arguments for the existence of God and refuted them, and students still believe!" It is clear that in many cases they intend to impact the religious beliefs of their students, but of course, they seek to impact it negatively rather than positively. If someone were to ask them if, in presenting these arguments the way they do, they are impeding the free exercise of religion, they would probably say something like, "If people want to be irrational, I can't stop them. All I'm doing is showing them how irrational they are."

But a teacher who defends an argument in natural theology can say approximately the same thing. He can say "Yes, reason can be used to show that God exists. But I'm not forcing them to become believers in God. If people want to be irrational, I can't stop them."

Even if you accepted these arguments for belief in God, no religious act follows from that. It isn't even like the school prayer situation, where someone in school is pushed by the teacher to perform a religious act he may not believe in doing. Many students that I have encountered have a belief in the existence of God, even when they don't go to church and don't engage in religious acts. So making a case for God doesn't establish or force any religious activities, even on those students who accept those arguments.

If a teacher were to argue vigorously against the existence of God in class, and were also the faculty sponsor of the Campus Humanist Club or the school's Richard Dawkins Society, they would be doing a lot of things with which  I disagree, but the would not be engaging in any pedagogical misconduct. I've even heard students say "If you write a paper for X, and you defend the existence of God, you can't get better than a C." That kind of biased grading would, of course, be poor teaching,  whether done by a believer or an atheist. But it's a whole lot easier to assert this sort of thing than to provide real evidence that it is happening.

Of course, you can say that "Atheism isn't a religion, it's a non-religion, and so attempting to establish the truth of atheism doesn't violate the Establishment Clause, but defending it in class is." This is the "not collecting stamps" argument. But I am sure that is far from what the founders intended. And, as  Finney pointed out in the first thread, atheism has been ruled a religion for purposes of the Free Exercise clause, so it has to be treated as one when considering the Establishment Clause.

As Voltaire (hardly a defender of traditional Christianity) said, "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." A college or university should be an open marketplace of ideas, and the Establishment Clause is being abused when it is used as a tool for censorship.

Follow-up notes on the lawsuit post

A week or so ago, I was looking for a "Debunking C. S. Lewis" site that I had found. I typed the word "debunking" into Google, and instead of finding "Christianity" as the next word, which I expected to be suggested by Google, instead Google directed me to "Debunking Surrendra Gangadean," which is a Facebook page. I was shocked. Why would be be picked out for debunking?

The Facebook page was supposed to be devoted to the fallacies and sophistries of Surrendra Gangadean, but I actually saw no discussion of his arguments, or the arguments in his book. Instead, the site seemed to be devoted to the charge that he pushes his religious beliefs on his students, that he uses his classes to recruit students to a Christian fellowship he heads, and it was there that I discovered the lawsuit that was filed against him based on the Establishment clause. To read that site, he uses his classroom to run what amounts to a cult. 

What seemed to me problematic about all of this is that there are plenty of people who make a case against religious belief in their classes, and this is done deliberately with the intent to get people to give up their religious beliefs. If the Establishment clause can be used to beat religious professors over the head for defending their religious beliefs in class, but unbelievers can bash religious belief all they want, this creates an unfair asymmetry for the believer. 

However, I have been in contact with someone who is a good deal closer to my former teacher than I am, and he tells me that I was insufficiently critical of the factual content of the Debunking page. Professor Gangadean does not use his classes to recruit for a fellowship; in fact, he does not make his own beliefs especially evident in his classes, and often plays devil's advocate against the positions he himself holds. If so, he doesn't operate much differently from the way I do. I do think the description of my former teacher's activities by his debunkers is tendentious at best and deceitful at worst. 

Most teachers have beliefs which they make evident to some extent in their class. After all, we do believe things, and we should be able say that we do believe them. I know fellow Christian instructors who are more forward about their own beliefs in class than I am. If, on the other hand, I thought that many of my students were getting a lot of anti-religious intimidation in other classes, I might advocate more for what I believe than I do. I do feel a primary responsibility to teach the curriculum. I sometimes get asked about my own beliefs, and typically I will defer answering until the end of the semester. I try to make sure that, whatever you are a believer or an unbeliever, you will be able to say when the class is over that your view was competently represented. 

What I am saying is that I could be more of an advocate for my Christianity than I in fact am, and if I were to do so, I should not have to be concerned with lawsuits and the Establishment clause. The marketplace of ideas should be left open to all viewpoints, including religious ones. The idea that religious professors are obligated to lean over backwards to be neutral, while anti-religious can be unremittingly hostile, is a situation which is far from what the Founders had in mind when the laid out the laws concerning the establishment and free expression of religion. 

Was the beginning of the universe uncaused?

Quentin Smith thinks so.

Class Warfare, or Common Sense? Elizabeth Warren on the social contract

"I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,'" Warren said. "No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody.
"You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.
"Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."¹

 1. "Elizabeth Warren On 'Class Warfare': There Is Nobody Who Got Rich On His Own (VIDEO)," Eric Kleefeld, Talking Points Memo, 09-21-2011.

Columbus and the Flat Earth

The role of the "flat earth" in history is often taught wrong in grade school. People before Columbus already figured out that the earth was round. What they disagreed about was how big it was. Some people thought it was so big that if you sailed west to get to the East, you would be so long on the sea that your supplies would run out and you'd never make it. The other people said it wasn't so large, and you could reach the East in fairly short order by sailing west. The first group, who opposed funding Columbus' journey, were, of course right. What no one realized was that there was a whole different continent between Europe and Asia. Columbus didn't figure it out either. He thought he got to the Indes, which is why Native Americans are called Indians. The guy who did figure it out was Amerigo Vespucci, for whom the Americas are (in my opinion rightly!) named. 

How did the Diamondbacks go from worst to first in the NL West?

Maybe it has something to do with their manager. You get a lot of street cred for something like this, the most dramatic finish to a World Series in living memory. (Except maybe another game-winning hit by another injured outfielder, Luis Gonzalez).

Lawsuit filed against one of my former teachers

Well, not exactly. This suit was directed against the college, and one of his followers who teaches it his college. 

One of my first philosophy teachers was Surrendra Gangadean, way back in the spring of 1973 (!), at Phoenix College. I took a logic class from him. I was 19 at the time. It was interesting to me to meet a Christian in philosophy. However, I spent much of the semester arguing against his Calvinism.

I was rather surprised to learn that a course at his present institution, Paradise Valley Community College, not him, but an adjunct at that college, was sued for using his book as a text, which the plaintiffs thought violated the establishment clause, because it advocated Christianity.

Now, using the classroom to advocate my own positions is certainly not my style of teaching. I have this nutty idea that if I do my best to fairly present all viewpoints, students will have the best chance to reach the truth, which, of course,accords with my beliefs. You can't keep your own positions in the closet completely, however (especially if you're a blogger).  But lots of professors advocate their own positions. A lot of people have the image of the atheist philosophy professor who does everything he can to convert his class to atheism. Some 25 years ago I heard of a well-known philosopher at the University of North Carolina who taught a philosophy of religion classes with the expressed purpose of destroying the faith of his students.

If Mr. Gangadean got sued, why don't these people get sued also? Oh, wait, it doesn't violate the Establishment Clause, because atheism is to religion what not collecting stamps is to hobbies. Yeah, right.

Gays won't inherit the kingdom? Was something lost in translation

Theogeek seem to think that something was indeed lost in translation in the traditional reading of this passage in  I Corinthians.

Is Michele Bachmann a Dominionist? Nope. Next Question?

Left-wing critics aren't terribly well-informed about evangelicalism. I have plenty of objections to Bachmann. But this response by Doug Groothuis is right on target. 

I'm no fan of what is commonly known as the Religious Right. Going from biblical teaching to public policy is incredibly tricky business. But let's get our facts straight, shall we? 

Immigration quotas, an aspect of the immigration debate no one talks about

Sometimes I think that we make mistakes when we tempt reasonable people to break the law. Prohibition would be an example. When I was in a high school debate on legalizing pot,  I came up with an argument that said that since marijuana is a gateway drug to other drugs, we can take its "gateway" status away by making it legal. (I am not now prepared to endorse this argument now, however).

People like to talk about what to do about illegal immigrants (Path to citizenship? Attrition through enforcement?), and we also like to talk about border security (if we give a path to citizenship, and people are still entering illegally, aren't we going to repeat the cycle?), but could we reduce the problem of illegal immigration by making legal immigration easier?

What people sometimes say is we are a nation of immigrants, and that while we oppose illegal immigration, legal immigration is just fine. If that is our position, then we ought to make it easier to immigrate by increasing quotas. If, on the other hand, the real problem isn't just illegal immigration, but immigration itself, then we should be willing to say that honestly.

If guns are outlawed......

"If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."

"If immigration is oultawed, only outlaws will immigrate."

Is there any way that the first argument can be a good argument against immigration control, but the second is not a good argument against immigration control? 

Most of the people who would defend the first argument would hate the second argument.

Feser on Meta-Sophistry

This, among other things, contains an explanation of the conservative "slippery slope" argument against same-sex marriage in such a way that is doesn't come out as a blatant fallacy.

Deterrence and pickpocket hangings

Ilion likes to argue that the case for the death penalty has nothing to do with things like deterrence, or closure for victim's families. It is about retribution, and only retribution.

That's probably good for the death penalty, because the case for the death penalty as a deterrent to capital crime strikes me as weak. Pickpockets used to be hanged in England, and the most likely place to get your pocket picked was at a pickpocket hanging.

Prayer in Public Schools

A redated post. 

I honestly can't figure out what people want when they say they want prayer in public schools. Imagine the following scenario.

Jerry Falwell's Granddaughter: I'm so glad you worked so hard to bring prayer back into public schools.
Jerry Falwell: Yes, it was a hard fight, but with all the Supreme Court Justices that Bush packed the court with, we finally got that one changed.
Granddaughter: We prayed today in school for the first time.
Falwell: Praise the Lord! Thank you Jesus!
Granddaughter: We did the most beautiful prayer. I had never heard it before. It goes like this:

Hail Mary, full of grace.
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy
womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

Be careful of what you ask for. You may get it.

Hate Speech

Should people be prohibited from saying things because they might offend others? Sometimes workplace discourage or even proscribe talking about politics or religion, because of the offense it might cause to some workers. But in the public square generally, can we realistically restrict speech?

Voltaire once said "I do not agree with what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it." But how far does this go? Is it a small step between yelling "queer" at someone you think is gay, to beating up a gay person?

On the other hand, if we make a hate speech law, where does it end? Does one have the right to say that homosexuality is a sin, that Islam is a false religion, or even that Jesus is the only way to be saved and that everyone else is going to hell, without fearing civil retribution? A preacher in Britain was arrested merely for asserting that homosexuality is a sin, and the link on the post's title leads to a discussion of this case.

A Question about Victim's Families and the Death Penalty

Sometimes we are told that execution, like no other penalty, provides closure to crime victims' families. Many victims' families feel that way when the death penalty is being sought. But, after the executions take place, do they actually feel the satisfaction that they were hoping to feel before the criminal was executed?

Is there any research on this?

Defending Buddhism against Loftus

John Loftus: A religion by definition must be about supernatural beings and/or forces. Atheism therefore is not a belief nor a religion. I really don't know how much plainer I can get.

VR: Quite apart from the fact that this was something Loftus said, I doubt that this is true. Buddhism, as originally conceived by Buddha, doesn't make any essential reference to the supernatural. As I understand it, Buddha did believe that there were supernatural beings, but one of the essentials of his teaching was that either those supernatural beings have achieved Nirvana, in which case they won't do you any good, or they are still subject to the cycle of birth and rebirth, in which case they can't do you any good.

I don't see anything in the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism that makes any essential reference to the supernatural beings or forces.

The Four Noble Truths

1. Life means suffering.

2. The origin of suffering is attachment.

3. The cessation of suffering is attainable.

4. The path to the cessation of suffering.

Religion is harder than it looks, certainly to define. You may have to adapt Justice Stewart's dictum with regard to pornography: I can't define religion, but I know it when I see it.

The Global Warming Wager

Metacrock here points out the Pascalian character of the argument for global warming, and then shows that you can't accept global warming argument while at the same time also accepting atheist anti-wager polemics. He also has some useful things to say about the Wager as a tiebreaker for those otherwise undecided about God.

My interview with Backpack Radio is here

A redated post.

Immigration Policy from Leviticus, or what the Bible says about Arizona SB 1070???

Leviticus 19:34 New International Version ³⁴ The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.


Well, I suppose if we took Leviticus for our law, we'd be putting homosexuals to death. 

The End of Faith? Don't hold your breath

This is a CADRE entry on religious demographics.