“The gentleman in the red shirt” shows us a simple lesson in why you should think through what your argument entails before you state it on national television and in front of a live audience. Too often we get tied up in knots trying to answer all the objections hurled at us, especially the specious […]
Entries Tagged as 'Philosophy of Religion'
Georgia on my Mind
November 13th, 2010 13 Comments
On Tuesday 10 November 2009 I was in Tauranga. I had been commuting from Auckland to Tauranga every Monday to attend lectures for the teaching diploma I was studying towards and then on Tuesdays I would deliver lectures for the adjunct position I had at the same institution in Tauranga. I remember that particular Tuesday well […]
Tags: Atlanta · Evangelical Philosophical Society · Georgia · Society of Biblical Literature
Contra Mundum: Pluralism and Being Right
November 5th, 2010 8 Comments
Recently I attended a lecture on science and religion at the University of Auckland. As is normal after such talks students stayed and discussed issues raised by the presentation. One student brought up a fairly common chestnut, he objected to the claim made by some Christians that their religion was true and that other religions […]
Tags: Contra Mundum · Investigate Magazine · Pluralism
God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part II Robert Adams
October 19th, 2010 7 Comments
In this three-part series I will look at some different ways of adjudicating conflicts between apparent divine commands and moral beliefs. I started with Immanuel Kant, now I will look at Robert Adams’ position. In “God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part I Kant” I mentioned Phillip Quinn’s observation that theists can face a particular dilemma, […]
Tags: Divine Command Theory · God and Morality · James Rissler · Kant · Philip Quinn · Raymond Bradley · Religious History · Robert Adams · Selection
God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part I Kant
October 13th, 2010 185 Comments
In this three-part series I will look at some different ways of adjudicating conflicts between apparent divine commands and moral beliefs starting with Immanuel Kant. In “Commonsense Atheism and the Canaanite Massacre” I addressed a question put to me by Luke from Commonsense Atheism, “If Matt did think these events happened literally as described in the […]
Tags: Canaanites · Divine Command Theory · God and Morality · Kant · Luke Muehlhauser · Old Testament Ethics · Philip Quinn · Religious History · Robert Adams
Podcasts on Christian Physicalism and The Probability of Christianity
October 10th, 2010 9 Comments
Matt and I have been listening to podcasts in the evening lately. These two, featuring two of our friends, who are both philosophers and bloggers, are really worth a listen. Glenn on Physicalism Glenn Peoples, of Say Hello to my Little Friend: The Beretta Blog and Podcast, recently spoke at the University of Oxford at the annual conference […]
Tags: Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot · Fine-Tuning · Glenn Peoples · John Haldane · Luke Muehlhauser · Lydia McGrew · Physicalism · Probability of the Resurrection · Unbelievable?
What Atheists Could Learn from Legal Interpretation 101
October 7th, 2010 117 Comments
At the beginning of each semester my lecturers would remind students of the fire policy, “if the alarm sounds leave the lecture theatre immediately through the nearest exit and reassemble outside the Davis law library.” Now if during class one day my lecturer had said to me, “Madeleine, do not leave class today until you […]
Tags: Bad Reasoning · Hermeneutics · John Loftus · Michael Martin · Old Testament Ethics · Rape · Stephen Carr

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.




