I’ve been thinking recently about the moral issues surrounding immigration. This is partly because it’s an issue I’ve never really studied in depth, and partly because it’s become a massive political football. Here’s a thought that came to me. As I understand it, the right of a refugee to seek asylum in international law has […]
Entries Tagged as 'Social Commentary'
Some subversive thoughts on immigration
September 29th, 2025 Comments Off on Some subversive thoughts on immigration
Tags: immigration · Refugees
Michael Huemer on Wokeness
September 8th, 2025 Comments Off on Michael Huemer on Wokeness
Political Philosopher Michael Huemer weighs in on the question: what is wokeness? I have been known to describe the essence of wokism as “reverse bigotry”. In the past, various forms of bigotry were common: prejudice against blacks, against women, against gays, against transgender people, and more. Wokism proposes, rather than to eliminate bigotry, to reverse […]
Tags: Michael Huemer · Political Correctness · Political Philosophy
When bigots call out “bigots”
April 13th, 2023 Comments Off on When bigots call out “bigots”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHbzSif78qQ”>Monty
Albert Giubilini and I would not agree on a lot. Giubilini has defended not only abortion rights but what he calls “after-birth abortion”( which of course is a reference to infanticide). He also opposes religious conscientious objection in medicine. I disagree with him on both topics and disagree strongly. I find his conclusions repugnant. However, […]
Tags: Bigotry · Free speech
IS A FETUS A HUMAN BEING? Part one: Viability
June 7th, 2019 1 Comment
This is one of a series of posts based on a class I teach for level 3 NCEA Religious Studies. In the last few posts we saw that most of the Christian religious tradition sketched the following argument against feticide; Premise [1] Killing a human being without justification violates the law of God. Premise [2] […]
Tags: Abortion · David Oderberg · Feticide · Michael Tooley · Peter Singer · Susan Sherwin · Viability
FETICIDE IN CHRISTIAN MORAL THOUGHT (Part Four) : Feticide in the Reformed Protestant Tradition
May 28th, 2019 Comments Off on FETICIDE IN CHRISTIAN MORAL THOUGHT (Part Four) : Feticide in the Reformed Protestant Tradition
In our last post we saw how Medieval Christian’s adopted the same position on abortion we saw developed in Alexandrian Judaism and by Patristic theologians. We also saw how this position found its way into European and English law. Of course during the medieval period, Christian’s in Europe were Catholic. However, during the sixteenth and […]
Tags: Abortion · Feticide · John Calvin · Martin Luther · Melanchthon · Puritans · William Gouge
Matthew Flannagan (MandM) and Jason Thibodeau (Secular Outpost) Debate God and Morality
September 24th, 2018 4 Comments
Yesterday, I had a long and enjoyable public discussion with Jason Thibodeau on the topic of The Euthyphro dilemma. Jason is a writer for the Secular Outpost and teaches philosophy at Cypress college in California. He also is the author of a recent article entitled “God’s Love is Irrelevant to the Euthyphro Problem” published in Sophia […]
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Euthyphro Dilemma · Jason Thibodeau
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.
Goodbye NCEA, Farewell, Get lost, Good Riddance
September 21st, 2025 Comments Off on Goodbye NCEA, Farewell, Get lost, Good Riddance
Some readers of this blog will know that I work as a secondary school teacher. Recently, several people have asked my opinion on the government’s decision to ditch the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). My thoughts follow. When I was at teachers’ college, we were taught that New Zealand had the best curriculum in the […]
Tags: NCEA