Given Barack Obama’s reversal of the ban on federal funding for research on new lines of human embryonic stem-cells, I thought I might add my own thoughts on the issues around stem-cell research. My thoughts are somewhat tentative; largely because, unlike many in the media, I don’t see the issues as clear cut or as […]
Entries Tagged as 'Theology'
Some Thoughts on Human Embryonic Stem-cell Research
March 12th, 2009 51 Comments
Tags: Abortion · Embryocide · Ethics · Feticide · Science and Religion
An Eye for an Eye and Turning the Other Cheek
March 3rd, 2009 11 Comments
In The Autonomy of Ethics David Brink complains that “tradition and scripture may speak but in conflicting ways”;[1] in a endnote he cites a single example, Inconsistency is at stake, for example, when we juxtapose the Old Testament doctrine of an “eye for an eye” (Exodus 21:23, 24; Leviticus 24:19, 20; and Deuteronomy 19:21) and […]
Tags: David Brink · David Daube · eye for an eye · Lex Talionis · turn the other cheek
Brink on Dialectical Equilibrium
February 5th, 2009 2 Comments
In my last two posts, I have criticised David Brink’s appeal to scripture in order to argue against the appeal to divine commands in ethics. Brink anticpates the kind of argument I have offered and states, A common theistic response to these interpretative puzzles is to endorse the interpretation of tradition and scripture that yields […]
Tags: David Brink · Ethics · Faith and Reason · God and Morality · Hermeneutics
Capital Punishment in the Old Testament: 2
January 27th, 2009 20 Comments
In Capital Punishment in the Old Testament: 1 I suggested that the capital sanctions found in The Torah in most cases were not intended to be carried out, that instead there operated an implicit assumption that a person who committed a serious crime had forfeited their life and hence was to pay a ransom as […]
Tags: Capital Punishment · David Brink · David Instone Brewer · Ethics · Gordon Wenham · Hermeneutics · Old Testament Ethics · Theology
Capital Punishment in the Old Testament: 1
January 25th, 2009 9 Comments
In “The Autonomy of Ethics,” David Brink writes that a literal reading of the Old Testament, [Y]ields problematic moral claims, such as Deuteronomy’s claims that parents can and should stone to death rebellious children (21:18-21) and that the community can and should stone to death any wife whose husband discovers that she was not a […]
Tags: Capital Punishment · David Brink · Ethics · Hermeneutics · Old Testament Ethics · Theology
Rest In Peace Richard Neuhaus
January 12th, 2009 Comments Off on Rest In Peace Richard Neuhaus
It is with sadness that I have just read that Richard John Neuhaus died on Thursday the 8th of January at age 72. There are various obituaries hereFor those New Zealand readers who won’t know. Neuhaus was a Lutheran turned Catholic priest who wrote and commented extensively on issues of religion and public life. His […]
Mumbai, Muslims & Libertarian Su
December 2nd, 2008 5 Comments
Like most people, Matt and I are pretty horrified at what is going on in Mumbai. We have wanted to write something on it but just now I found this piece by Susan the Libertarian, oft heard quoted on Newstalk ZB. Whilst I would not describe the abuse Sus experienced as “feudal nonsense” (chivalry came […]
Tags: Islam · Libertarian Sus
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.
