In my previous post I mediated on the morality of lying. I suggested that a divine command theorist: a person who believes that the property of moral wrongness is the property of being contrary to God’s commands does not need to affirm that lying is wrong in any and all circumstances. In updating the post […]
Entries Tagged as 'Philosophy of Religion'
Theology, Morality and Reason
March 1st, 2008 Comments Off on Theology, Morality and Reason
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Ethics · Faith and Reason · Peter Cresswell · Theology
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
Equality or Hegemony: NZARH and Religious Trusts
February 16th, 2008 4 Comments
Generally I am not a fan of Post Modern ways of thinking; frequently what I see propagated under that banner is irrational and incoherent but made to look profound through the use of sophisticated sounding intellectualised language. However, one idea often touted as “post modern” I find plausible, at least in some contexts. This is […]
Tags: Charity · NZARH · Rationalists · Religion in Public Life
More on Faith and Reason
January 4th, 2008 3 Comments
A correspondent of mine sent me a copy of this faith and science flow chart and asked me to comment on it. My thoughts are as follows. 1. The flow chart on faith appears to be a caricature. According to the chart faith is a three fold process, (a) one just comes up with an […]
Tags: Faith and Reason · Science and Religion
The Body Snatchers and the Problem of Pluralism
December 14th, 2007 1 Comment
As I was driving around Auckland this morning talkback was rife with people discussing the recent body snatchers case; an estranged father, against the wishes of both the deceased and her next of kin stole his daughters body and buried it in a family plot. Of course I remember the furor over the previous case, […]
Tags: John Rawls · Philosophy of Religion · Pluralism · Race Relations · Religion in Public Life
Mayra Veronica and the Troops in Iraq: Where the Islamists Have a Point
December 12th, 2007 2 Comments
I am a fan of Bill Vallicella’s blog. A few days ago I found a post of his which is worth reproducing [link to post now broken Jan 2011]. He led with a picture of a scantily clad and busty Mayra Veronica and wrote: Don’t expect any more ‘eye candy’ on this site, but now […]
Tags: Bill Vallicella · Islam · Mayra Veronica · Religion in Public Life
New Publication
November 21st, 2007 Comments Off on New Publication
I just received word from the Editor of The Journal of Ethics and Medicine that my article “Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criteria: A Critique” has been accepted for publication in a future issue (the exact issue is still being decided). There may be some minor amendments made but at present the following is the […]
Tags: Abortion · David Boonin · Ethics · Feticide · Published

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.




