In a previous post I mentioned Professor Raymond Bradley’s (Bradley) contention that, [3] The bible teaches that God will torture people endlessly for their beliefs. In his article he cites several scriptural passages in support of this contention. I think his exegesis is problematic; I cannot go into huge detail in a blog post but […]
Entries Tagged as 'Ethics'
William Lane Craig, Raymond Bradley and the Problem of Hell. Part Two.
June 23rd, 2008 13 Comments
Tags: Apologetics · Atheism · Bill Cooke · Debates · Divine Command Theory · Faith and Reason · God and Morality · Hermeneutics · NZARH · Philosophy of Religion · Rationalists · Raymond Bradley · William Lane Craig
William Lane Craig, Raymond Bradley and the Problem of Hell Part One
June 21st, 2008 5 Comments
During the Q & A at the recent Auckland Cooke – Craig debate, Professor Raymond Bradley (Bradley), Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Auckland University, offered an argument, which he has laid out in more detail in his article A Moral Argument for Atheism, as follows: Christians accept that: [1] Any act that God commits, causes, […]
Tags: Apologetics · Atheism · Bill Cooke · Debates · Divine Command Theory · Faith and Reason · God and Morality · Hermeneutics · NZARH · Philosophy of Religion · Rationalists · Raymond Bradley · William Lane Craig
Praise from our Critics
June 20th, 2008 3 Comments
Despite holding to a somewhat contrary viewpoint and despite having had more than one clash of viewpoints it appears that our critics accord us some praise. I just now stumbled accross this thread on GayNZ.com’s forum discussing Christian blogs and websites and was pleasantly surprised by the comments on our blog. Kay writes: “The M […]
Tags: Abortion · Feticide · GayNZ.com · Homosexual Conduct · Sexual Morality
Patrick Nowell Smith on Divine Commands
April 15th, 2008 2 Comments
In a widely-anthologised essay Morality: Religious and Secular. Patrick Nowell Smith offers a influential criticism of “religious morality” It is clear from his definition of religious morality that it is Voluntarism ( or a Divine Command Theory of Ethics) he has in mind. Smith states that the religious moralist has “assumed that just as the […]
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Ethics · God and Morality · Patrick Nowell Smith · Philosophy of Religion
Abortion and Brain Death: A Response to Farrar
March 19th, 2008 26 Comments
David Farrar of Kiwiblog weighs in on the abortion debate. I have met David a couple of times and worked with him on several issues and I have a lot of time for him but on this issue we disagree. Given how widely read Farrar’s blog is, and seeing the ethics of killing a fetus […]
Tags: Abortion · Brain Death · David Farrar · Ethics · Feticide
Permissible Lies
February 19th, 2008 2 Comments
In wake of the return of the stolen victoria crosses and the Police claiming they are “honour bound” to pay the thieves the promised reward not PC argues that it is permissible to lie to an agressor. The standard example in the literature (which PC utilises) goes something like this: You are hiding someone fleeing […]
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Ethics · Lucia Maria · Peter Cresswell · Theology

A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.





Greens, Tasers and Torture
November 29th, 2007 3 Comments
Watching the news the other night, I heard how some UN body had declared that the use of tasers constituted torture. (At least that is how it was reported). Predictably the Green party cited this as a for rejecting the use of Tasers.The implicit argument here seems to go something like this. [1] The use […]
Tags: Ethics · Greens · Torture