Given that yesterday we advertised Dr Glenn Peoples’ upcoming public lectures and because the smacking referendum begins on Saturday, I thought we’d share this article critiquing bad anti-smacking reasoning by Glenn. (dis)Honest to God: How Not to Argue about the Smacking Referendum Ian Harris tells us (“Honest to God,” Dominion Post, [Dominion Post. Saturday July […]
Entries Tagged as 'Philosophy of Religion'
(dis)Honest to God: How Not to Argue about the Smacking Referendum
July 28th, 2009 73 Comments
Tags: Glenn Peoples · Ian Harris · Referendum · s59 · Smacking
Dr Glenn Peoples on Abortion, Morality and Law
July 27th, 2009 2 Comments
Canterbury student group Prolife UC have organised for Dr Glenn Peoples to deliver some free public lectures at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch on Abortion, Morality and Law. Thursday 30th July 7.30 pm“Chasing the Justificatory Goalpost: Public Justification and Religious Beliefs” There is a broad political tradition that we are a part of that […]
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Religion and Science: A Response to Ken Perrott’s “Other Ways of Knowing”
July 23rd, 2009 129 Comments
Ken Perrott, at Open Parachute, took issue with some comments I made in my recent defence of Plantinga’s stance on Evolution being taught in state schools. To gain focus let’s look at one thing I said to Ken in the comments section on that post, If the relevant evidence points towards a theory it does […]
Tags: William Alston
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong on God, Morality and Arbitrariness
July 17th, 2009 21 Comments
Is morality independent of religion? One common argument for this position is that denying it makes God’s commands arbitrary. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues, Let’s assume that God commanded us not to rape. Did God have any reason to command this? If not, his command was arbitrary, and then it can’t make anything morally wrong. On the […]
Tags: Atheist · Divine Command Theory · God and Morality · Philosophy of Religion · Walter Sinnott-Armstrong · William Wainwright
Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part II
July 16th, 2009 Comments Off on Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part II
In Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part I, I noted that a defender of the permissibility of feticide, who does not also want to endorse infanticide and who defends the sentience criterion, must “identify a reason for holding that the potential of a human brain is morally relevant after” the fetus acquires […]
Tags: Abortion · David Boonin · Don Marquis · Ethics and Medicine · Feticide · Sentience
Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part I
July 15th, 2009 3 Comments
This two-part series was originally published as: Matthew Flannagan “Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique” Ethics and Medicine – An International Journal of Bioethics Vol 25:2 (Summer 2009) 95-106. It is reproduced on this blog with permission. Abstract Defenders of the permissibility of feticide commonly argue that killing an organism is not homicide […]
Tags: Abortion · David Boonin · Don Marquis · Ethics and Medicine · Feticide · Sentience
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.
Jim Evans Decisively Smacks John Roughan
August 6th, 2009 11 Comments
On Saturday the NZ Herald’s John Roughan demonstrated why journalists should not engage in legal interpretation in his widely criticised piece on the smacking referendum, “Sinister undertones to referendum instigator.” At the time I struggled to ascertain whether Roughan was being deliberately deceptive or he just didn’t get it. He essentially quoted the non-controversial, much […]
Tags: Jim Evans · John Roughan · Referendum · s59 · Smacking