The Resurrection

 

• 1 Corinthians 15:3-8: "For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance. Or you at the first: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas. That is, Peter and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born."

Happy Easter!

Alvin Plantinga

This is a piece on Alvin Plantinga from Kelly James Clark. 

Bronze Age Superstitions

 From Matthew Flannagan on Facebook: 

I often correspond with religious sceptics. Countless times I have been informed by people that they don't share my religious beliefs because, apparently unlike me, they are educated, intelligent free thinkers who don't believe in the bronze age stories found in the New and Old Testament.

I had another person inform me of this today.

Here is some friendly advice to people who confidently say things like that:

Suppose, I told you, that Abraham Lincoln was President of the United States during the renaissance period. Or imagine I told you that Martin Luther was a contemporary of Augustine of Hippo and lived during the fall of Rome. Would you take me seriously? I suspect you wouldn't. Comments like that would show I had no clue at all about historical events, didn't know the basic historical facts, and literally did not know what you were talking about.

In light of this, can you please take note of the following fact: the bronze age refers to the historical period which occurred from approximately 3300 BC to 1200 BC.

The value of money

Money is less valuable the more of it you have. The money you need to keep a roof over your head, food out your table, and keep your creditors paid contributes more to your well-being than the money you  have over and above that. So the money paid to wealthier people has less utility than it would have were it paid to people further down the economic scale. 

This helps to explain why Bernie Sanders is appealing to so many people. 

Political discomfort

 Political parties are coalitions of interests of various groups of people. Some of those interests coincide with Christianity and other do not. A politician who says, either explicitly (they normally aren't that stupid) or implicitly that "A vote for me (or my party) is a vote for Jesus" is blaspheming.

People need to read C. S. Lewis's Meditation on the Third Commandment. Over, and over and over, and over, and over.

Christianity will make you uncomfortable with the ideology of ANY party. If you are completely comfortable with the ideology of any party as a Christian, you are not thinking clearly.

Keith Augustine's Defense of Naturalism

 Here. 

Breaking News

 Breaking News: Biden admits election theft, will be vacating the Presidency in favor of Trump later today. Dominion CEO arrested on fraud charges.

Argument from explanatory vacuity

 On this old post I came up with an argument for atheism. It got over 300 comments. 

This is the argument. 

1) If Billy Graham were to fall ill, many Christians all over the world would pray for his recovery.
2) If Billy were to recover, they would all praise God and credit him with the healing.
3) If Billy were to die, they would say that it was not God’s will for Billy to recover.
4) But if God can be used to explain why something occurs but also why something does not occur, then it really does not explain it at all.
5) But if this is so, the appeal to God explains nothing.
6) If God explains nothing, then we should simply deny God’s existence.
7) Therefore, we should believe that God does not exist.

The golden rule

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  

So, if I wouldn't mind someone playing loud music at 3 AM in the next apartment, it is OK for me to do it?

The value of approval

 

That was then, this is now

 

u  If you oppose vaccine mandates for COVID, would you have sided with vaccine opponents in dealing with previous diseases? Would you, for example, have opposed the vaccine mandate for smallpox in the early 20^th century? If you would have supported vaccination then, why oppose it now?

 

The Moral Wager

 What if all you had to go on in deciding whether there is a God is what you think will make you a more moral person.  Kant thinks that our knowledge of nature is of reality as it appears to us and not as it is in itself, so for him I think it knocks out all the standard evidential arguments and leaves us with what we can postulate as a matter of practical reason. But I am asking what the argument is for people in a wager-like situation, where you are making the wager not based on what is in your personal best interest, but based on what is in your moral best interest. 

If this is your view of things, do you wager on God? Or not? 

Blame Biden for Gas Prices? The case against

Here. 

What is the case for? 

Air Jordans and Hakeem Olajuwon

When Air Jordans came out, the price was so high low income kids couldn't afford it, and sometimes kids were murdered for their Air Jordans. Hakeem Olajuwon, the Houston Rockets' superstar center who led Houston to two NBA titles (at the expense of my Phoenix Suns), was a Muslim who refused based on his religion to allow his name to be used on overpriced athletic shoes. Instead, he endorsed a shoe that was about 1/3 the cost of Air Jordans.

Nike Sweatshops and Catholic Ethics

 Jim Keady maintains that for a Catholic University to support Nike products puts them in conflict with Catholic social principles. Here. 

My book was translated into Polish

 Yesterday I got four copies of a Polish translation of C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea. It was translated into Korean a number of years ago, but I was really surprised to see this. 

Business Ethics: A contradiction in terms?

What is the ethical responsibility of business? According to Milton Friedman, it is to increase its profits.

Atheism and ethics

 Atheists often bristle at the suggestion that, given their rejection of religion, they are any more likely be unethical. Many of them are ethically motivated. But I have trouble believing that religion makes no moral difference.

LSD and AR-15s don't mix

 Ted Nugent, a rock and roll singer, began his career with the Amboy Dukes, who recorded a hit song called "Journey to the Center of the Mind," clearly to be accomplished through the use of psychedelic drugs. More recently, he has been an advocate of exercising your second amendment rights. But I hope he doesn't think we ought to journey to the center of the mind and exercise our second amendment rights at the same time. As they say in A Christmas Story, "You'll shoot your eye out."

Why Hebrews was written before 70 AD

 Here. 

HDS : Hillary Derangement Syndrome

 Those who complain about TDS seems to be the worst sufferers of HDS. 

See here. 

No problem

 Is insisting in human rights forcing our values on people in foreign countries? If so, I'm all for forcing my values on people in foreign countries. No problem.

Calvinism and the worship-worthiness of Yahweh

 Imagine the following person, call him Smith. Smith is convinced, based on various arguments (presuppositional or evidential) that an infinite being, called Yahweh, exists. Yahweh, Smith believes, raised Yeshua from the dead, and the Yeshua is Yahweh's son, the second Person of a Trinity.  He believes, further, that the Old and New Testaments are factually inerrant. Based on an exegetical analysis of Scripture, (Rom 9, John 6:44, et al.) that the Reformed Doctrine that Yahweh predestines some to receive saving grace, while predestining others to suffer the punishment of hell, to be an accurate account. He's a good Calvinist, except for one thing. Given the fact that, for millions of people, Yahweh could have given them saving grace but did not, and instead inflicts everlasting punishment upon them, he concludes that Yahweh is unworthy of worship. With respect to those we care about, we are inclined to give up anything of ourselves, even our own life, to prevent them from suffering disaster. And eternal punishment is surely a fate worse than death, or prison, or being tortured on earth, or being publicly shamed, etc. If goodness is definable in terms of lovingness, then a deity who exemplified perfect goodness would do everything possible to keep people from suffering eternal torment, and on this score, Smith reasons, Yahweh falls short. 

A good Calvinist could, it seems to me, give a prudential argument for why Smith should worship Yahweh. God, ex hypothesi, has either condemned Smith to hell or elected him for heaven, but his choosing to worship Yahweh no doubt renders it more probably that Smith is among the elect. But what I can't find here is a moral argument as to why Smith ought to worship Yahweh. That Yahweh is Smith's creator seems insufficient, because that would mean that someone created by Lucifer ought to worship Lucifer. So, if there is a moral argument, what is it? 

(Notice that I don't use the word God for Yahweh, because the concept of God seems to entail moral goodness, and that is what is at issue in this discussion). 

C. S. Lewis on Total Depravity

 Here. 

Though it's actually about the argument from total depravity to the conclusion that our concept of good and evil are worth simply nothing applied to God. 

Reformed schools

 When I was a fellow at Notre Dame I went out to dinner with Al Plantinga. He was telling us how he liked the Catholic school his daughter attended. So I asked him "So, you couldn't find a Reformed school for her?" Only, I deliberately failed to enunciate the "d" in Reformed, prompting a disquisition by AP on the difference between a Reformed school and a reform school.

Burning and banning books.

 Burning or banning books always seems like a self-defeating enterprise-- it calls attention to the very books you are banning or burning.

But some people still do it. 

Here. 

On Wittgenstein

 My dissertation advisor was Hugh Chandler, who did his own dissertation under Wittgenstein student Norman Malcolm. (Chandler admired Wittgenstein but as no disciple) I also took a Wittgenstein course from Wittgenstein disciple Peter Winch. But for a defender on naturalism, Wittgenstein is a double-edged sword. Winch applied the Wittgensteinian idea of language games to argue (and I think this really is consistent Wittgensteinianism) that the Genesis story and the Darwinian theory of evolution are not in conflict because they occur in different language games. Imagine what Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett would say about that! Naturalists invariably claim that while religious people are playing language games, we in science are nailing down reality, and that is precisely what Wittgenstein's position, taken to its logical conclusion, prevents you from doing. In fact, it's hard to see how far Anscombe could follow Wittgenstein. If she were to explain Catholic Eucharistic doctrine to Wittgenstein he would say "Yes, in the Catholic language game, the elements really are the Body and Blood of Christ, though that is not part of the Protestant language game." Anscombe would never be satisfied with that!

Is the Holocaust strong evidence against theism?

Jeff Lowder thinks so. 

Here. 

C. S. Lewis as wartime apologist.

 The evidence suggests that he saw apologetics as a wartime duty, and his workload at Oxford was smaller when so many British men were fighting the Nazis. Lewis loved debate and believed in the rationality of his faith (and this didn't at all waver), and he continued his Presidency of the Oxford Socratic Club until he went to Cambridge. But he never envisioned himself as the go-to guy for Christian apologietics. Even John Beversluis, the arch-critic of Lewis's apologetics, recognized that the Anscombe exchange had nothing like the kind of impact that Humphrey Carpenter, George Sayer, and A. N. Wilson claimed that it did. It is weird that none of these authors so much as mention Lewis's revised chapter, which makes their accounts of the Anscombe incident rather like an account of the Kennedy assassination that omits the fact that Jack Ruby killed Oswald.

Miracles was published in 1947, but was written during wartime.

What if Anscombe had never replied to C. S. Lewis?

74 years ago yesterday on Feb 2, Elizabeth Anscombe read her paper replying to Lewis on his argument against naturalism. But Ludwig Wittgenstein, her mentor. did not approve of her attending the Oxford Socratic Club and did not think C. S. Lewis to be worth refuting. What if Anscombe had listened to Wittgenstein. How would Lewis's apologetic and literary output have been different?

My view is "not much." (Though there would have been no revised chapter). What do you think?

Act and rule utilitarianism

Utilitarians have rules, too, not just deontologists. But those rules are chosen in accordance with what will maximize happiness for the greatest number. There is a split amongst utiltiarians between people who think we should do what maximizes utility even if it is against the rules chosen based on utility, and thoso who think we should act based on the rule chosen based on utility, even if the act we perform might not maximize utility. This is the split between act utilitarians and rule utilitarians. 

Errors and slavery

 The case for slavery in America. 

Here. 

How did people defend positions we now think are obviously morally deficient? How do moral errors take place? 

Rate yourself ethically

 Are people as ethical, or less ethical than they think they are?

If people were to rate themselves on a scale from 1 to 10 where 1 is least ethical and 10 is most ethical, wouldn't most people put themselves in the top 25%? But most of us can't be in the top 25%.

Temptations and moral dilemmas

 Also, there are two types of moral decisions. One is a temptation. With a temptation it's pretty obvious what the morally right thing to do is. The hard part might be doing it. An example would be finding a wallet on the street. it's your duty to turn it in and get it back to its owner. But  you have bills to pay, so you might not do it, but you know you should. The other is a dilemma, where you have moral reasons to do two opposing actions. . An example of a dilemma would be whether to honor a patient's request for assisted suicide. On the one hand, a doctor is trained to keep a patient alive, but is also taught to abide by the wishes of the patient. Coming to an answer as to what is right requires further ethical consideration. 

A transnational federal government??

From Humanist Manifesto II:  (1973) 

TWELFTH: We deplore the division of humankind on nationalistic grounds. We have reached a turning point in human history where the best option is to transcend the limits of national sovereignty and to move toward the building of a world community in which all sectors of the human family can participate. Thus we look to the development of a system of world law and a world order based upon transnational federal government. This would appreciate cultural pluralism and diversity. It would not exclude pride in national origins and accomplishments nor the handling of regional problems on a regional basis. Human progress, however, can no longer be achieved by focusing on one section of the world, Western or Eastern, developed or underdeveloped. For the first time in human history, no part of humankind can be isolated from any other. Each person’s future is in some way linked to all. We thus reaffirm a commitment to the building of world community, at the same time recognizing that this commits us to some hard choices.

So, in addition to paying taxes to the local, state and federal government, we would then have to pay taxes to the transnational federal government? 1040T for Transnational? 

Moral facts

 When it comes to adultery, we have some people who think that God, (who presumably knows what is right or wrong) has told us not to do it in the Seventh Commandment. If there is a God, a take it that it more than just His opinion that adultery is wrong. But if there is not God, or God never said that, then we can still ask whether or not adulterous affairs are good things. One aspect of this has to do with whether marriage necessarily implies a promise to be faithful, which of course would be broken by the adulterous affair. Religious traditions that include the idea behind the Ten Commandments think that there are what philosophers call moral facts: that is, something true about what is right and wrong regardless of what anybody thinks about it. Religious nonbelievers disagree with one another as to whether there are moral facts: J. L. Mackie was a philosopher who thought that moral facts do not exist, Erik Wielenberg is an atheist philosopher who thinks that moral facts do exist.

Aquinas on natural law theory

 Here. 

Why be moral in business?

 I am somewhat conflicted about how much you can make the argument that good ethics in business pays. I think in most cases unethical conduct will bite your company in the rear end eventually. But if decision-makers are not with the company for the long haul, as they often are not, then they can reap the rewards of short-term benefits and then leave before the results of their policies start harming the company. 

So my main argument in response to the question "Why should I be moral ib business" is that you'll sleep better at night. 

My dad's Invictus parody

 Apologies to W. E. Henley. 

It matters not

How crooked the used car salesman

How charged with punishment his scroll

He is the master of his fate

He has a bankroll

Have we heard the last Presidential concession speech in American history?

 Hillary Clinton is famous for being the first woman to run for President as the candidate of one of the major parties, and tried to become the first woman President of the United States. Nevertheless, will she be remembered as the last candidate to do something, namely the last person ever to concede an election to her opponent? It's a chilling thought.

The difference principle

 The value of the first, say 60,000 for a person is much greater than the second 60,000.  From the standpoint of maximizing happiness, it is better for two people to have 60,000 each than it is for one person to have 100,000 and the other have 20,000, since the one 20,000 is going to be close to the poverty line, while the other one will just have a few more luxuries. 

But some inequalities benefit the people on the bottom. Doctors make more money than street sweepers, and when street sweepers need a doctor, they would have to agree that this is a good idea. But are other inequalities morally acceptable? 

According to John Rawls's Difference Principle, the answer is no. 

The difference principle provides that inequalities are unjustified unless they make the least advantaged better off. But in order to apply this principle, we must make predictions about the future economic effects of current economic policies, predictions that are notoriously difficult to make.

See here. 

A Debate on God's Existence

 Between Richard Swinburne and Peter Millican. 

I met Swinburne at Notre Dame in 1990. I remember him telling me he thought my rebuttal to Mackie on miracles was decisive. 

Here. 

Do extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?

 A reply to a standard anti-Resurrection argument. 

Here. 

Is God changeless?

 This article explores just this issue. Here's a topic with zero political overtones. Probably, it will get zero comments. 

Arsenic, old lace, and the value of life

 Suppose you were asked by a skeptical person why you value human life. Not happiness, or quality of life, just life itself. Why do you believe that we ought to preserve life even if in doing so we decrease the overall balance of pleasure over pain. 

I once knew a thoroughgoing skeptic about the value of life. He considered the old women who killed their boarders in Arsenic and Old Lace to by public benefactors. When asked "Well, based on your argument, why shouldn't I just kill you now?" He replied "It would be OK so long as you could do it painlessly."

I suppose someone could question this position's sincerity through an exercise of one's Second Amendment rights. But I am not sure this argument works. 

Elizabeth Warren on making capitalism accountable

 Here. 

But it's still capitalism, right? 

All you need is love. But what kind?

 Here. 

A case for government regulation

 Here. 

Utilitarianland

 We might ask the question of why we value human life as something valuable in itself, as opposed to the preservation of life as something that will sustain the overall balance of pleasure over pain. With animals, we consider animal pain to be something to avoid, but animal death is not taken as seriously, even by the likes of Peter Singer.

Strictly speaking, for utilitarians, life is not a value. If you kill someone, and you spare them or the world a pleasure-pain deficit, then it is a good act. If you kill someone, and it hurts the balance of pleasure over pain, then of course it's a bad thing.

so a pure utilitarian could say of the pro-life movement, "The trouble with your pro-life movement is that it places an inordinate value on human life." Someone from Utilitarianland might say "In our society, if there is a homicide, we calculate utilities to see if the homicide produced an overall benefit or an overall deficit. If we determine that the homicide was beneficial, we don't punish it. Why do you punish homicides without checking to see if the homicide maximized utility.

Of course the utilitarianism practiced in utilitarianland is Act Utilitarianism.

We treat animals differently

We do seem to treat animals differently. We eat them, but some people think they ought to be slaughtered humanely. On the other hand, people who kill and eat other humans are not excused because the people were slaughtered humanely. 

Whoever quotes a movie in the combox will be summarily shot. 

The hypocrisy fallacy

 (W)e live in an idiotic age where people believe that the alleged hypocrisy of a critic nullifies the merit of criticism. A parent who smokes is a hypocrite for telling his kid not to smoke—but that doesn’t mean the kid should therefore smoke.--

Jonah Goldberg. 

Here. 

You play you pay? Probably a bad argument against abortion

 I've never thought the "you play, you pay" argument is very strong. In our male-dominant society men can push women into sex in various ways when they don't really want it, and then avoid responsibility. Some will object to this, but I'm convinced it hurt the pro-life cause to have a pro-life President who bragged about grabbing women by the you-know-what and has never officially repented of the sentiments he expressed on that tape. Whatever you think as a pro-lifer, you probably don't want to say that it is usually the woman's fault if she ends up with an unwanted pregnancy.

Is this the end of American Conservatism?

 David Brooks, a conservative, thinks conservatism is no longer recognizable today. 

Can we stop the slippery slope?

 Where assisted suicide is legal, insurance companies can use assisted suicide as an excuse for not paying for end-of-life treatment. I have trouble seeing how you stop the slippery slope from allowing assisted suicide to pushing people into using it in order not to be a burden.

Death with Dignity???

 Why is assisted suicide a death with dignity? What does dignity mean here, and does using it in this context fit with the ordinary use of the term? (Or is it just a piece of propaganda?)

Are there two kinds of marriage?

 Before leaving the question of divorce, I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused. The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is the quite different question — how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mahommedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognise that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not.--C. S. Lewis 

Is there an argument for the legality of same-sex marriage along these lines? 

If assisted suicide is legalized, will vulnerable people be less protected

I can understand the case for legalizing assisted suicide. I can. But will suicide be put forward as the preferable option not to save those who are dying from suffering, but for the convenience of the rest of us? It is easy to imagine, for example, insurance companies refusing payment for end of life care because, well, you had the right to commit suicide, and if you don't avail yourself of that, we shouldn't have to make any more payments.

(My trust in insurance companies is extremely limited).

Margaret Battin did a study where she claimed that vulnerable persons are not at risk in assisted suicide. But not everyone is convinced.

The central pro-life argument

The central prolife argument is that abortion is homicide--that the differences between fetuses and those already born are not substantial enough to justify treating those born and those unborn differently with respect to protecting their lives. With those already born, you may be greatly burdened by allowing someone to live, but you still can't kill them expect under special circumstances.

If you believe in the right to abortion, that is the argument you have to come to terms with, first and foremost. Arguments about whether, for example, women get depressed who choose abortion, or whether abortion leads to a higher instance of breast cancer, are secondary.

Ross Douthat's Anti-Abortion Case

 Here. 

Believe it or not, this was published in the eeevil New York Times. 

A house divided

 Lincoln: "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

Can we endure half pro-life and half pro-choice? 

Does it make sense for states to determine abortion law? Can we tolerate that level of division? 

An anti-abortion argument

•1. Infants, however undeveloped, are considered persons whose lives are protected by law.

•2. Fetuses differ from infants in four ways represented by the acromym SLED. The differ in size, in level of development, in their environment, and in their dependency.

•3. Size is not a morally relevant difference when it comes to the right to life. The fact that I am bigger than my wife, but smaller than Shaq, doesn’t affect the right to life that we all possess.

•4. The unborn is less developed than an infant, but I am more developed than an infant. So this can’t be a basis for discrimination with respect to the right to life.

•5. The unborn in a different environment from an infant. It’s inside a womb, and the infant is outside the womb. But this is not a relevant difference. We would consider a law silly that said you can’t kill me inside my house, but you can kill me outside my front door.

•6. Degree of dependency is not a relevant difference. Toddlers are more dependent than adolescents, but does that mean that an adolescent has a greater right to life than does a toddler? An elderly person becomes more dependent with time, but we don’t’ question the right to life of the elderly, do we?

•7. All beginning points for the right to life, except for conception, are matters of degree, of a person having something that you can have more or less of. But that raises the question of how much is enough.  You either are conceived or not conceived, but you can have more or less of the SLED properties. Therefore, conception is the relevant difference that confers a right to life. 

Christianity and partisan politics

 I think you can make pragmatic and tentative choices of party as a Christian, but Christian ought to be, in an important sense, independent of any party. Parties are coalitions that combine godly and ungodly interests, almost by definition.

The devil and soft determinism

 If soft determinism is true, your total past circumstances, not just being poor, guarantees that you steal. It "makes" you steal, but it doesn't make you steal against your will. And because you wanted to do it, your act is considered free even though it's determined. But the past guarantees that you want to steal and do. It would be the same if the devil gave you the desire to steal and the made it so you would. You would still be considered free.

The Bible and the Death Penalty

 The Old Testament is loaded with death penalty offenses, though Christ said the only ones who could carry a death sentence against one adulteress in particular were ones who were without sin. (They were executing ONE person after catching her in the very act of adultery. What's wrong with this picture?)

On Karma

 Looking at the world around me, I have a lot of trouble believing in Karma, at least as it concerns life in this world. The fact is, cold-blooded murderers die in their beds of old age with no regrets, living off the benefits of the crime they committed. That's just a fact. Watch the movie Crimes and Misdemeanaors, which makes the point very forcefully. Unless there is something like God, or else a law of Karma that governs not this life, but reincarnation into the next life (that is how Karma is understood in Eastern traditions like Hinduism and Buddhism), what goes around does NOT come around. Or, at least, it doesn't have to. 

How free should a free market be?

How free does the market need to be? Does a regulated market cease to be a free market? If so, we lost our free market long ago. Free markets can create monopolies. In fact, that is what players in the Game of Capitalism are aiming for.

A (misguided) defense of the election fraud claim

 Here. 

This is a case for the election fraud claims, made by someone getting a degree in apologetics from Trinity Evangelical Theological Seminary. I think very poorly of it, and I think Christians who pursue the MyPillow Delusion are bound to hurt the credibility of both Christianity and the Republican Party. 

I'd rather talk about C. S. Lewis and Bertrand Russell. But this is so harmful. 

Facts, opinions, and rights

The fact-opinion distinction, along with the idea that you have a right to your opinion, is the bane of my existence as a philosophy instructor. Intellectual rat poison.

Shoving your religion (or lack of it) down someone's throat

 It is natural, if you think something is both true and important, which Christianity (and atheism) are certainly believed to be by their adherents, in wanting others to believe it also. What constitutes "shoving it down someone's throat", I think, takes some analysis.

I don't hear people say "Don't shove your atheism down my throat." But some atheists clearly do just that. 

Douglas Groothuis on Bertrand Russell

Here. 

The world's leading Heinlein scholar.

 Bill Patterson.  

Also a leading figure in Phoenix fandom during the Golden age of same. 

God the micromanager?

There are two schools of thought on free will and God. One of them says that God can predestine and strictly control all of our actions, but so long as we have the desire to do what we do and act on that, we are still free. At this point, though, atheists will say that if all God has to give us is that kind of freedom, then he could have made us all in such a way that we always act freely while guaranteeing that we act rightly, and why on Earth would a good God refuse to do that if he could? The other view is that God's being in charge of everything includes the power to leave some things up to us, so that given the actual past, we have the power to do one thing or another thing. That way, if we obey His will, we are really obeying his will and not just doing what He programmed us to do in the first place. To say God is sovereign is not to say that God is a universal micromanager.

    

Thinking one's religion (or religious view) is true

 Any belief system is thought to be true by its adherent, and therefore other views are considered false. That is as true for atheist materialism as it is for Christian theism. And people tend to think that those who agree with them about what is true are in some sense superior to those who don't. But different religious groups look differently at those who differ from them religiously, in that some people think that people outside their religion are all going to hell, and others do not.

Socialism for the goose, socialism for the gander.

 If you allow enough "socialism" to permit the government to bail a company out to keep it from failing, can't you also allow enough "socialism: to allow government to control executive salaries to help sustain the ethics of the company thus bailed out?

Does ethics pay?

 Even though ethics may often pay, the idea of ethics is that you ought to be ethical even if it doesn't pay. The Mafia, after all, has been pretty profitable organization over the years, but its ethical record has been somewhat questionable.

Religion, Morality, and Kitty Wells

A redated post/ 

Country music, as most of us know, is  the most theology-laden form of popular music. The lyrics of this song, sung by Kitty Wells in the early 60s, illustrates, I believe, something interesting about the effect of religion on morality. It is a song of a woman who supposes herself to have been a wrongly deserted wife whose husband has given her divorce papers, all legal and proper. However, she asks whether "God is satisfied" with his actions, telling him that he will be called to account for what he has done by God, and implies that his lawyer won't do him any good when he stands before God and must be held accountable for his actions.

Your lawyer called and said he had the papers all prepared
To sign my name was all I had to do
He saw the judge, now he seen me, there's only one thing left
Will your lawyer talk to God for you?
Will your lawyer talk to God and plead your case up on high
And defend the way you broke my heart in two?
Manmade laws to set you free on earth but is God satisfied
Will your lawyer talk to God for you?
We all face that final judgment and it's very strict they say
When your time comes, I wonder what you'll do
Will you bow your head in shame or will you turn your head away
Or will your lawyer talk to God for you?
Will your lawyer talk to God and plead your case up on high
And defend the way you broke my heart in two?
Manmade laws to set you free on earth but is God satisfied
Will your lawyer talk to God for you?

I am not saying anything about the morality of divorce in general. Clearly, it is evident that at least some people desert marriages without adequate moral justification, and the law, as we currently conceive it, cannot prevent them from doing so. I bring these lyrics up because it seems to make nonsense of the popular idea that somehow religious belief, or lack of same, isn't a game-changer when it comes to morality. Assuming atheism, this appeal would be plain nonsense. Again, I am not arguing that no one can follow a moral code without a belief in God. But I think we must admit the force of this sort of consideration, and face that fact that many people, over the centuries, have turned away from a wrongful act because they believed that God would hold them accountable if they performed that action. I am thinking primarily here of the accountability and shame for these actions, as opposed, say punishment in hell. If someone can't see the moral force of this sort of thing, then I would have to say there is a screw loose somewhere.

What polytheists and atheist agree on

 Polytheistic religions have been, for the most part amoral. It was the Jews who, in going monotheist, connected morality to religion. How THAT happened has to be one of the most amazing facts of history. Interestingly enough the pagans of the past and the atheists of today agree on one thing, there is no righteous being in charge of everything.

What difference does religion make to morality

 . There is one way in which religion on the face of things makes a difference, and that is if there is no God (or no law of Karma), then morally bad actions can be beneficial in the long run to those who perform them. If you get away with murder, you get away with murder. On the other hand, if there is a God, then some sort of balancing of the scales of justice awaits  us all. 

Do religions agree on morality?

Do religions agree on more than they disagree with when it comes to morality? Do any religions, for example, say that murder, adultery or bearing false witness is OK?

Is the free market ever really free?

To what extent is our economy really a free market economy? Is government involved in the economy to a large extent even when it appears as if we have a free market?

What does it mean to say we are entitled to our opinion?

A redated post. 

What does it mean to say that someone is entitled to their own opinion? People say that a lot, but I am not sure what they are saying when they say it. To say I am entitled to something, I take it, implies someone might want to take it away from me, and either shouldn't or shouldn't be permitted to. But who might be taking out opinion away from us, and what kind of protection do we need from whoever it is that is trying to take our opinion away from us? Further, it isn't clear what an "opinion" is in this context. That can mean a personal preference that can be neither true nor false (country music is better than rock-n-roll), or it can mean a claim which can be true or false, and for which there can be evidence, but is not completely settled to everyone's satisfaction. Consider the "opinion" of Kirilov in Dostoyevsky's The Possesed, who believes that "he who kills himself, becomes God." Is this something that Kirilov is "entitled to," even if it may lead him to suicide (and did, in the novel).
And then we can look at the various means that people might use to get people to stop holding an opinion. We can torture someone to make them change their minds, we can disown them or give them a lot of disapproval and make them feel bad for believing what they do, or we could try to give them reasons why their beliefs are false. Does our being entitled to our opinion mean that no one should attempt to give another person a logical reason for rejecting what he or she currently believes? I would say, certainly not.

This essay is entitled "Sorry, but you are not entitled to your opinion."

I believe I have linked to it before.

Executive pay and socialism

  Should government control executive pay? If it does, would that be socialism? 

Could God be wrong?

 Suppose it is God's opinion that adultery is wrong. He is said to have asserted this. Could we say to God that that is just his opinion, and while He has a right to his opinion, we have a right to ours? 

Wouldn't it be a little silly to tell the almighty something like that? 

Of course, God has to exist for this to be true. But many people think there is a good reason to suppose that God really does exist. On the assumption that God exists and has commanded us not to commit adultery, is there any way to argue that adultery can sometimes be OK? 

Could God be wrong? I can see a new theology, fallibilist theology. God may be great, but he goofs up on some of his commandments and has to be corrected by humans. 

How odd it would be if God made it so that fideism is true

 . If reason has no valid statute in religion, it follows that religion has no reasonable status in human life. Therefore it is unreasonable for a man to be religious. The reasonable man is the atheist.

"How odd of God/To choose the Jews." So runs the celebrated couplet whose lightness of humor does not cancel the seriousness of its statement of the initial mystery of the redemptive economy. A greater oddity, however, could be conceived. How odd of God it would have been had he made man reasonable so that, by being reasonable, man would become godless. This brings me to my third subject—that most mysterious of all the oddities on the face of God's earth, the godless man.--John Courtney Murray The Problem of God. 

Do androids have a first person perspective?

 Would androids have a first person perspective. My computer, running a chess program, can beat me in chess. But it doesn't seem to know the joy of victory or the agony of defeat, though we might be able to program it to behave as if it does.

In honor of the World Series

 Sister Wynona Carr. 

Are unprovable statements objective?

 Objectivity does not depend on provability. There are unprovable statements that have to either be true or false. "There is intelligent life on other planets" would be one. I don't know how to prove it one way or the other, but it's got to be true or false. 

Consider the claim "An omnipotent being exists." Many people think that statement can't be proven one way or the other. But even if those people are right, there either is one or there isn't. 

If there is a God, does God know that adultery is always wrong, or is God in the dark about it? It's hard to imagine the latter position as even conceivably true. 

ethics and contradictions

 Ethics is a study of right and wrong. Sometimes we know what is right to do, and the question is whether or not we find the will to do it. If there is an universal interest in something, we sometimes choose to follow our private interests or to do what is moral. A course in ethics won't necessarily enable you to resist temptation.  But at other times there are moral reasons that someone can  provide for opposing actions. Take war for example. War kills people, but there do seem to be reasons that many people think justify war. Suppose we have a choice between performing an action and killing one person, or not performing an action, in which case five people are killed, but not as a direct result for our actions. What is right to do? 

Are there ethical statements that can be true or false? Now, a statement can be true or false whether or not there is proof available to us. For example, consider the belief that there is intelligent life on other planets. Being right here just means that the belief conforms to reality. You can be right without being reasonable--for example if I had thought that the Cardinals would win their first seven games, I would have been right. But if I thought that because I am a fan of the Cardinals, then I wouldn't be reasonable in forming my belief, even though it turned out to be true. It would still be wishful thinking, and no less so because I turned out to be right. 

Or consider the idea of life after death.  People disagree about whether or not it is real. But eventually we are all going to die, and when we do, we will either experience life after death,  in which case the people who said that there is life after death would be right and the people who denied it would have been wrong. On the other hand, if there is no life after death, then the people who thought there was no life after death were in fact right, though of course they won't be in existence to collect their bets. 

So what about the moral claim that some shouldn't get an abortion if the only reason for getting it is so as not to look fat in her wedding pictures. People disagree about that--some people think that a fetus is not yet a person, so getting an abortion for any reason or no reason is justified. But others disagree. People produce arguments about this issue. People on different sides of this sort of an issue think that their opponents are making a mistake. that they are getting their ethics wrong. 

Can you get your ethics wrong? Is Hannibal Lecter's murder and cannibilism not just distasteful, or illegal, or impolite, but really and truly wrong? If something is objective, then once you clarify what the terms mean, then the statement is has to be either true of false and the law of noncontradition applies. If it is just relative to a person or a society's feelings or preferences, then the law of noncontradiction does not apply. 

The law of nontradiction says that a statement cannot be both true and false. But if the question is whether McDonald's burgers are better than those of In-N-Out's, then there is an implied "for me" clause which prevents the law of noncontradiction from applying. If you ask whether or not belching after dinner is rude, then there is an implied "for my society." But what about moral judgments, ranging from controversial claims like "Abortion is nearly always wrong," to "It is wrong to inflict pain on little children for your own amusement." Are these statement relative to some person or society, or are they straighforward statements to which the law of noncontradiction should apply. When you ask yourself whether you can apply the law of noncontradiction to moral statements, think of a controversial case, and then a noncontroversial case. 

In these cases it is tempting to apply the "fact vs. opinion" distinction. Be careful. Both of those terms are ambiguous. "Fact" can mean either true, or provably true. "Opinion can mean either "Reasonable people can believe either the claim or its denial," but it can also mean that it's a matter of personal or societal taste, and therefore it cannot be true or false. 

Exclusivism on truth, pluralism on rationality and salvation

 You could be an exclusivist about truth (Religious claims are true or false, and when there is a contradiction only one side can be right), but a pluralist about reasonableness (reasonable people can hold contradictory positions when it comes to complex issues without being open to charges of irrationality), and a pluralist about salvation (People can be saved even if they don't believe certain things about God or Christ). 

I personally lean toward all three of those positions. 

Calvinists on free action and God's glory

 Calvinists will argue that to act freely is to act on one's own desires. You are excused from doing an action if you wanted to do otherwise, but somehow God forced you to do it against your will. But, when you sin, you do what you want to do. You had the desire to sin,  you were able to sin, and  you did sin. So it is your responsibility, whether God predestined  you to do it or not. 

According to Calvinists (and many secular philosophers who are called soft determinists), you are free just in case you want to do something, and have the power to carry out  your will. They maintain that the idea that you could have done otherwise given the actual past is a false and incoherent concept of free will, and one that does not obtain in the real world.

On the face of things, this position adds strength to the atheistic argument from evil, since it deprives the theist of free will as an explanation for human (and demonic) wrongdoing. Rowe's argument from evil, for example says: 

1) An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.

Now Calvinists believe that some people go to hell, and even if they meet the soft determinist's definition of free will, it is still the case that those people could have been saved if God had chosen to save them. But what they maintain is that what is good, in the final analysis, is what gives God greater glory, not what makes humans happy, even for eternity. Hence, they maintain, having millions of people (and fallen angels) in hell is better than God saving everybody, since if he damns millions of people he gets not only to exercise his mercy on those he forgives and saves, but also gets to exercise his wrath against unrepentant sin. That renders God a more glorious being than he would be if he just saved everyone, and therefore it is right for God to do, even though it inflicts intense suffering on millions of people and fallen angels. 

On the standard of divine goodness

 It seems appealing to say we shouldn't judge God, or that God himself is the standard of goodness. The problem with attempts to avoid having some standard of goodness to which one appeals is that without such a standard, the term "goodness" is deprived of meaning. If I say that Kyler Murray is a good quarterback, and you ask me what I mean by that, I can point to the fact that the Cardinals are the team with the only perfect season in the NFL, and then go over his completion percentage, quarterback rating, rushing and passing touchdowns, number of interceptions, etc. If he started losing games and getting bad numbers, and you came to me and told me he should be benched, it would be no argument to say, no Kyler is the standard of goodness, and by definition everything he does is worthy of approval.

Part of the standard definition of God is to say that that being is perfectly good. So before we call someone God, we have some idea of what that is supposed to mean--we are presupposing a standard of goodness that some being, such as Yahweh, meets. If someone were to say "Who are you, O man, to answer back to God," the answer would have to be that this would make sense except that some who says that Yahweh is not good is arguing, in fact, that Yahweh doesn't merit the title of God. In virtue of what is some being, however powerful, entitled to the title of "God?" Answering back to a being who really is God would be mistaken by definition, but to assume that this being merits the title of God would be to beg the very question at issue.

If there is no standard of goodness that we are claiming that God meets when we say that God is good, then the phrase "God is good" doesn't mean anything. Is it an expression of subjective approval on our part (we like the Big Guy, or think we had better because of what the Big Guy might do to us), or is it an actual statement? And if it is a statement, what is it?

Get ready, get ready, the worrrld is coming to an end

 Oh, not this again. 

When I was a young Christian Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth was popular. If Lindsey had been right, the Rapture would have happened around 1981. 

But here is a new book saying that Jesus will return in our lifetime. 

What part of “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." don't you understand? 

On the other hand, I was starting to wonder when the Antichrist was elected President in 2016. (Just kidding). 

Lucifer and miracles

 Can Lucifer perform miracles? In the Temptation story, Lucifer implies that he has the power to perform them, and Jesus never disputes this

What about alien life?

 Why believe there are, or are no, aliens? I don't think we've been visited (and if we have I don't think they are very interested in us), but I wonder how you would settle the question of life on other planets?  

Even in the ancient world, we thought most events had natural causes

 People accept natural causes for most events, science or no science. Otherwise, miracles wouldn't get anyone's attention. Jesus's walking on water wouldn't have meant anything if fisherman on the sea of Galilee routinely walked on water to find better fishing spots.

Phony miracles

 Peter Popoff is notorious for this sort of thing. 

Here. 

Does religion cause wars?

 Is religion the cause of most wars? 

This is a popular myth. 

God and life after death

 The case for life after death seems closely tied to the case for God. If there's a God, then having us live 70 years in the veil of tears and then just having it all end seems hard to understand. Think about all the virtuous people who had have to suffer in this life, and think about all the nasty people who have exploited others and died in their beds of old age. Life ain't fair, and if this life is all there is but there is a God, then God ain't fair. But, the concept of God is of a just being. Therefore, it seems as if, if God is going to be fair, he's going to have to provide some kind of afterlife for those he creates. 

A premise of the argument from evil

 An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.

Is this premise open to question? 

Hume's arguments against miracles do not imply atheism

 The arguments against miracles by Hume do not imply that God does not exist. In fact, Hume explicitly says that his arguments are not affected by the existence or the nonexistence of God. If God exists, he says, we can know about what he does through the course of nature, but miracles contradict the course of nature, therefore, we should reject all miracle claims even if we are theists.