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Entries Tagged as 'Ethical Theory'

Back from San Francisco: A Belated Report

February 3rd, 2012 1 Comment

MandM has been quite of late, this is because Madeleine and I have been very busy.  With moving house in the midst of Christmas and New Years and Madeleine working part-time in a law firm and so on, we’ve had little time to blog. We are now set up, to some extent, and so this [...]

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Randal Rauser’s Mistake: A Defense of Calvin’s Doctrine of Election

November 12th, 2011 76 Comments

Thanks go to Matthew Flannagan for pointing me in the direction of this response to the problem. A while back Professor Randal Rauser issued a blog entitled “Calvinism and the Arbitrary Camp Director” in which he criticised the Calvinist understanding of election. For those of you who are unaware of the Calvinistic understanding of election, [...]

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Debate Review: Sam Harris and William Lane Craig on Ethical Naturalism Part II

April 18th, 2011 41 Comments

In Part I of my review of the debate between Sam Harris and William Lane Craig on the moot “Is the Foundation of Morality Natural or Supernatural? I discussed Craig’s defence of the contention that: 1. If God exists then we have a plausible account of (a) the nature of moral goodness and (b) the nature of [...]

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Debate Review: Sam Harris and William Lane Craig on Divine Command Theory Part I

April 13th, 2011 53 Comments

Last week Sam Harris and William Lane Craig debated the question: “Is the Foundation of Morality Natural or Supernatural?” at the University of Notre Dame. Given my interest in divine command meta-ethics I found the debate and the subsequent online discussion concerning it extremely interesting. I was particularly interested in how the ‘new atheist’ movement would [...]

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Hear Matt Speak on Divine Command Theory @ Auckland Uni

January 17th, 2011 4 Comments

The Auckland Reason and Science Society have invited Matt to speak on Divine Command Theory at an upcoming meeting: What: Divine Command Theory with Dr Matthew Flannagan Date: Friday 4 February 2011   Time: 3:00pm – 4:00pm Location: Auckland University – Room to be advised From the Facebook event page: “Venturing back into ethics and [...]

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A Response to The Dunedin School’s “Thinking in Tatters: Moral Relativism and So-Called ‘Counter-Examples’”

January 2nd, 2010 9 Comments

In my previous post, A Response to The Dunedin School’s “Thinking in Tatters: Moral Relativism and Hidden Objectivist Assumptions”, I addressed some criticisms levelled at a talk I gave on moral relativsm by Deane from The Dunedin School (TDS) blog. In a follow up post, which, once again, I cannot link directly too as TDS [...]

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A Response to The Dunedin School’s “Thinking in Tatters: Moral Relativism and Hidden Objectivist Assumptions”

December 29th, 2009 7 Comments

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A while ago I did a series of semi-popular posts on moral relativism beginning with Cultural Confusion and Ethical Relativism I. These posts grew out of a talk I gave in Tauranga in 2008. Later I presented essentially the same talk at Laidlaw College for Thinking Matters Auckland which was posted on You Tube and [...]

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The NZ Herald on Cactus Kate and Priorities in Journalism Ethics

November 17th, 2009 8 Comments

There is an interesting story unfolding in the blogosphere. Cactus Kate published extracts of APN News and Media’s guidelines for publication on her blog in, APN Chicken Out, and inserted her own commentary and spin on them based on email correspondence from staff members working for APN’s publications. Where it gets really interesting is that [...]

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Guest Sunday Study: Moral Perspectives on Lying

October 25th, 2009 2 Comments

Bethyada explores the morality of lying. (This guest post is part of open mic week(s)) There are a range of Christian theories on the moral acceptability of lying. The issues around lying seem difficult to fully categorise in English. The problem is a lack of simple words to express subtle differences in meaning. To illustrate [...]

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Sunday Study: The Virtue of Judging – Jesus was not a Relativist

June 23rd, 2009 3 Comments

About a year ago I gave a talk on moral relativism for Thinking Matters Tauranga. During that talk I noted that relativism entails that one cannot apply the moral principles you (or your culture) accepts to the practices of other people (or cultures). I was critical of this position arguing that it suffers from all [...]

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