The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) comes into force today. It is still not clear who we’ll be trading anything with (that implies that there are other parties in the scheme) but what is clear is that we are now all paying, dearly, for the controversial science and policies that many of us reject. Winter just […]
Entries Tagged as 'Social Commentary'
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: Secularism and Public Life
June 1st, 2010 63 Comments
Legal scholar Stephen Carter stated, One good way to end a conversation – or start an argument – is to tell a group of well educated professionals that you hold a political position (preferably a controversial one such as being against abortion or pornography) because it is required by your understanding of God’s will. In […]
Tags: Christopher Eberle · Contra Mundum · Doctrine of Religious Restraint · Investigate Magazine · Michael Tooley · Nicholas Wolterstorff · Philip Quinn · Religion in Public Life · Richard Rorty · Robert Audi · Stephen Carter · Terence Cuneo
Contra Mundum: Richard Dawkins and Open Mindedness
May 6th, 2010 146 Comments
The bold statement “Richard Dawkins opens minds” leaped out at me from the newsletter sitting on the University of Auckland’s Law Library counter. The article went on to sing the praises of Richard Dawkins and mentioned his book The God Delusion. On reading the piece one could be forgiven for concluding that Dawkins’ works are […]
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Atheism · Contra Mundum · Faith and Reason · Investigate Magazine · Nicholas Wolterstorff · Peter Van Inwagen · Richard Dawkins · Richard Swinburne · Science and Religion · The God Delusion · William Alston · William Lane Craig
Lest we Forget: Why My Poppy is Red
April 25th, 2010 21 Comments
I was asked today why my poppy was red and not white. The answer is simple really. They died so that we could be free and I deeply respect and appreciate that and cannot fathom those who do not. RELATED POST: ANZAC Day: Lest we Forget or Have we Already?
Tags: ANZAC Day · World War I
Guest Post: Does Tax Exemption for Churches Directly Cost Taxpayers?
April 17th, 2010 152 Comments
Bethyada of True Paradigm offers us this guest post. I find it interesting because I wrote some thoughts about the New Zealand Association of Rationalist Humanist’s position on the issue of religious trusts having tax exemption in Equality or Hegemony: NZARH and Religious Trusts back in 2008. There I pointed out that humanist trusts that […]
Tags: Bethyada · Charity · Ken Perrott · Tax Exemption
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.
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