Narratives are powerful. They control what we identify as significant data or facts, how we empirically apprehend the data, what interpretations and shades of significance we place upon the evidence, and the conclusions drawn. Absolute objectivity is impossible. Only relative neutrality and disinterestedness are possible. The cut of our jib determines the winds we catch [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Commentators'
Easy Dupes: Amina Abdallah Arraf al Omari “Gay Girl in Damascus”
July 3rd, 2011 7 Comments
Tags: Amina Abdallah Arraf al Omari · Gay Girl in Damascus · Homosexual Conduct · Islam · Israel · Palestine · Paula Brooks · Syria · Tom MacMaster
Aslan is Not a Tame Lion: The Christchurch Earthquake Beyond Our Questions
April 16th, 2011 14 Comments
In the aftermath of the second Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand, “official” Christian spokesmen were exercised to assure people that God, the Living God, had nothing to do with earthquakes. They defalcated. Their theodicy was that their god was absent. In the face of likely outrage, church officials revealed that they worship, in fact, the [...]
Tags: Aslan · Chris Trotter · Christchurch Earthquake · Problem of Evil
Atheist Posters: University Intolerance is Suddenly News?
February 3rd, 2011 32 Comments
Last night I watched a section on TV3′s Campbell Live about the treatment of a campus atheist club at the University of Lincoln entitled “Atheist uni students’ posters torn down” (follow the link to view the video). This story went into detail about how the clubs posters have been regularly ripped down and defaced. The [...]
Tags: Atheist Club · Campbell Live · Natasha Utting · University of Lincoln
Pro Life Tour: Hear Jill Stanek, Bryan Kemper, Glenn Peoples, Brendan Malone and Matthew Flannagan
January 31st, 2011 305 Comments
Student group Pro-Life New Zealand brought have popular pro-life speakers Jill Stanek and Bryan Kemper out from the US for a nationwide tour of New Zealand. Pro Life Tour 2011 31 Jan Wellington 1 Feb Palmerston North 2 – 3 Feb Christchurch 4 Feb Dunedin 5 Feb Auckland 7 Feb Hamilton Most centres will have day workshops [...]
Tags: Abortion · Brendan Malone · Bryan Kemper · Ethics · Feticide · Glenn Peoples · Jill Stanek · Pro Life NZ
Maori Animism: New Zealand’s Established Religion
January 30th, 2011 256 Comments
New Zealand, along with all nations, is acutely religious. But, more than most Western countries, the dominant religion is now the Established Religion. We are using “established” in the historical sense of a religion prescribed and protected, so that all citizens must respect and honour that particular religion’s beliefs and practices. Established religion is the [...]
Tags: Maori Animism · Phil Mohi · Religion in Public Life · State Religion
William Lane Craig, Original Sin and Original Guilt
December 31st, 2010 74 Comments
A lot of people are up in arms at the moment about a paragraph in William Lane Craig’s answer to Question 193 “Overweening Ignorance.” Facebook, blogs, twitter and message boards are abuzz with Christians angrily attacking Craig with the charge that this paragraph shows he either does not hold to the doctrine of original sin or [...]
Tags: Original Guilt · Original Sin · Richard Swinburne · Steve Hays · William Lane Craig
Epistemology 101: Science, Faith and Authority Part II
July 21st, 2010 12 Comments
This three-part blog series is essentially the talk I gave at the recent Clearing the Air Forum, which was entitled “Discovering Truth in the Synthesis of Science and Faith.” The audience was comprised of scientists, church leaders, journalists and other interested parties so this is a fairly lay introduction to epistemology. In my first post, [...]
Tags: AGW · Clear · Climate Change · Epistemology · Faith and Reason · Greg Dawes · John Locke · Keisha Castle-Hughs · Nicholas Wolterstorff · Richard Dawkins · Roy Clouser · Science and Religion
Just Nuke BP’s Oil Leak
July 4th, 2010 2 Comments
Milo Nordyke, one of the masterminds behind US research into peaceful nuclear energy in the 1960s and ’70s and Viktor Mikhailov, a Physicist who served as a Russian Minister of Nuclear Energy, agree on a comparitively cheap solution for BP’s oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico – just nuke it. In what admittedly sounds like [...]
Tags: Bill Clinton · BP Oil Leak · Gulf of Mexico · Milo Nordy · Nuclear Bomb · Viktor Mikhailov
My Body, My Choice? Yep, but not your Breasts…
July 1st, 2010 7 Comments
All the hoo haa over the article by Kathryn Blundell, deputy editor for Mother & Baby, entitled “I formula fed. So what?” has does nothing but simply further the image of women as irrational beings who cannot reason consistently. On the one hand we have the mantra “my body, my choice,” which is typically chanted the [...]
Tags: Bad Reasoning · Breast Feeding · Feminism · Kathryn Blundell
Contra Mundum: Pacifism and Just Wars
July 5th, 2011 25 Comments
Comedian Bill Maher recently berated Christians for being hypocrites for supporting military action against terrorists in his “New Rules” segment on the U.S. TV show Real Time (transcript here). Jesus, Maher contended, was a pacifist; “Jesus lays on that hippie stuff pretty thick. He has lines like, “do not repay evil with evil,” and “do [...]
Tags: Bill Maher · Contra Mundum · Investigate Magazine · Just War · Pacifism · War Ethics