One irritating feature of the contemporary media is the credence they give to the views of celebrities. There is often a kind of unwritten assumption that because a person is a good actor or singer, his or her views on politics, morality and ethics somehow carry more weight.Case in point is the enthusiastic reporting of […]
Entries Tagged as 'Philosophy of Religion'
Dixie Chicks, Free Speech and the Flat Earth Society
February 13th, 2007 Comments Off on Dixie Chicks, Free Speech and the Flat Earth Society
Tags: Bad Reasoning · Dixie Chicks · Freedom of Speech · George Bush · Historical Ignorance · Iraq
Don’t Apologise for Your Opinion
December 27th, 2006 Comments Off on Don’t Apologise for Your Opinion
I get so frustrated whether it is in the company of others, on email lists or participating in blog and debate board debates when I see someone present their case, their reasons for holding the position they do, how they think their position defeats objections and then they throw in “its just my opinion.” Its […]
Tags: Bad Reasoning · Little p philosophy
Reductio ad Bushium
December 16th, 2006 1 Comment
I read am amusing letter to the editor in the Otago Daily Times yesterday. The writer was discussing the coup in Fiji. Halfway through the letter he expressed outrage at the suggestion that democracy should be preserved. This, he noted, is what George W Bush believes *shock* *horror*. Here we have a reductio ad Bushium: […]
Tags: Bad Reasoning · George Bush
Democracy and Legitimacy
December 5th, 2006 Comments Off on Democracy and Legitimacy
The founding statement of liberal political theory, John Locke’s Two Treaties of Civil Government, opens with the following statement: Reader, thou hast here the beginning and end of a discourse concerning government; what fate has otherwise disposed of the papers that should have filled up the middle, and were more than all the rest, it […]
Tags: Declaration of Independence · Fiji · John Locke · Liberty · Role of the State · War Ethics
In Remembrance of the Religious Right
November 29th, 2006 1 Comment
Many people gained their freedom because of the religious right and the determination of one man to impose his unpopular religious beliefs onto society through the state.
Tags: Religion in Public Life · Slavery · William Wilberforce
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.
What is Fundamentalism?
December 17th, 2006 Comments Off on What is Fundamentalism?
we must first look into the use of this term ‘fundamentalist’. On the most common contemporary academic use of the term, it is a term of abuse or disapprobation, rather like ‘son of a bitch’, more exactly ‘sonovabitch’
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Fundamentalism · Humour