Back in 2005 there was a minor furore when Labour MP Ashraf Choudhary stated he agreed with the Koran’s teaching that people who engaged in homosexual conduct or who committed adultery should be stoned to death. In the media spiral that followed, some commentators pointed out that it was not just Islam that held this [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Capital Punishment'
Contra Mundum: Stoning Adulterers
May 2nd, 2011 90 Comments
Tags: Adultery · Ashraf Choudhary · Capital Punishment · Contra Mundum · Gordon Wenham · Investigate Magazine · J J Finkelstein · John Goldingay · Old Testament Ethics · Raymond Westbrook · Walter Kaiser
Matthew Flannagan’s Opening Statement: Bradley v Flannagan Debate
August 7th, 2010 11 Comments
On Monday 2 August at the University of Auckland Emeritus Professor of Philosophy Dr Raymond Bradley and Dr Matthew Flannagan (of this blog) debated the topic “Is God the Source of Morality? Is it rational to ground right and wrong in commands issued by God?” For the benefit of those who could not be there, who [...]
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Canaanites · Capital Punishment · Chris Tucker · Debates · Divine Command Theory · God and Morality · J J Finkelstein · Joe M Sprinkle · K Lawson Younger · Nicholas Wolterstorff · Philip Quinn · Raymond Bradley · Raymond Westbrook · Robert Adams · Walter Kaiser
Sunday Study: Does the Bible Teach that Children Should be Executed for Swearing?
August 23rd, 2009 3 Comments
One command in the Old Testament which is frequently lampooned by sceptical readers is Leviticus 20:9, If anyone curses his father or mother, he must be put to death. He has cursed his father or his mother, and his blood will be on his own head. Some contend that that this passage commands the courts [...]
Tags: Capital Punishment · Hermeneutics · Old Testament Ethics · Sunday Study · Swearing
Capital Punishment in the Old Testament: 2
January 27th, 2009 20 Comments
In Capital Punishment in the Old Testament: 1 I suggested that the capital sanctions found in The Torah in most cases were not intended to be carried out, that instead there operated an implicit assumption that a person who committed a serious crime had forfeited their life and hence was to pay a ransom as [...]
Tags: Capital Punishment · David Brink · David Instone Brewer · Ethics · Gordon Wenham · Hermeneutics · Old Testament Ethics · Theology
Capital Punishment in the Old Testament: 1
January 25th, 2009 8 Comments
In “The Autonomy of Ethics,” David Brink writes that a literal reading of the Old Testament, [Y]ields problematic moral claims, such as Deuteronomy’s claims that parents can and should stone to death rebellious children (21:18-21) and that the community can and should stone to death any wife whose husband discovers that she was not a [...]
Tags: Capital Punishment · David Brink · Ethics · Hermeneutics · Old Testament Ethics · Theology
Abortion and Capital Punishment and Craig Young
October 25th, 2007 8 Comments
An acquaintance of mine sent me a copy of this article at Gaynz.com by Craig Young. Craig and I have a kind of knack at studying the very same topics at the same time. He wrote a PhD thesis criticising conservative Christian views on abortion around the same time I started writing my PhD thesis [...]
Tags: Abortion · Bad Reasoning · Capital Punishment · Craig Young · Feticide · Jim Peron · NAMBLA
Texan Justice and Liberal fiction
August 19th, 2007 No Comments
Texas is about to perform it’s 400th execution since capital punishment was reinstated in 1982. Stuff has an interesting article on this entitled “Religion, Culture Behind, Texas Execution Tally” The article suggests that outsiders find it puzzling that evangelical Christians support capital punishment. This surprise, I suggest, reflects the theological and historical ignorance of these [...]
Tags: Capital Punishment · Ethics
Abortion and Capital Punishment: No Contradiction
August 2nd, 2007 1 Comment
One argument I frequently hear is that opposition to feticide, the killing of a human fetus, is inconsistent with support for capital punishment. Some times this argument is pushed even further. It’s alleged that this inconsistency shows that what really motivates opponents of feticide is not opposition to killing, but good old fashioned misogyny. An [...]
Tags: Abortion · Alvin Plantinga · Beverly Harrison · Capital Punishment · Ethics · Feticide
Saddam Dead
December 30th, 2006 No Comments
At 4pm Saddam Hussein, the Butcher of Baghdad, was executed. Saddam deserved to die. I do not think anybody believes he was innocent of serious crimes. This dictator murdered and tortured thousands of innocent people including women and children. I have had the misfortune of reading some of the accounts of Saddam’s atrocities from firsthand [...]
Tags: Capital Punishment · Saddam Hussein
Saddam to be Executed Soon
December 27th, 2006 No Comments
Saddam will be executed 25 Jan 2007. While I will not celebrate his execution I am pleased that it is happening.
Tags: Capital Punishment · Saddam Hussein
