Matt’s article is available at this link flannagan-pc-18-1 Permission has been granted from the Editor of Philosophia Christi to upload this contribution. Learn more about the journal by going to www.epsociety.org/philchristi.
Entries Tagged as 'Role of the State'
Thank God for the New Zealand Anti Terrorist Squad: Online
October 16th, 2016 1 Comment
Tags: Ethics · Just War · Pacifism · Philosophia Christi
Yet Another Lawyer Agrees: Marriage Amendment Act Bill is an Affront to Freedom of Religion and Belief
March 13th, 2013 22 Comments
Barrister Ian Bassett has given another opinion describing the risks to freedom of religion and belief of Louisa Wall’s Marriage Amendment Act Bill if it is enacted in its presently proposed form, which would include this amendment: “Without limiting the generality of subsection (1), no celebrant who is a minister of religion recognised by a religious […]
Tags: Freedom of Religion · Gay Marriage · Grant Illingworth · Ian Bassett · Louisa Wall · Marriage Amendment Act Bill · Marriage Equality · Paul Rishworth · Rachael Wong · Same Sex Marriage
Contra Mundum: Separating Church and State
September 2nd, 2011 87 Comments
Co-authored by Matthew and Madeleine Flannagan The late Philosopher Richard Rorty once described religion as a “conversation stopper”, something that polarises discussion and ends or prevents fruitful dialogue. Rorty was an advocate of, “the happy, Jeffersonian compromise that the Enlightenment reached with the religious. This compromise consists in privatizing religion — keeping it out of […]
Tags: Contra Mundum · First Amendment · Investigate Magazine · Separation of Church and State · Separationism · Steven Smith · Thomas Jefferson · Wall of Separation
Pacifism, the Bible and the Sin of Selfishness
May 27th, 2011 20 Comments
‘If someone wants something from us and we do not want to give it to them that is the sin of selfishness and the Bible condemns selfishness.’ This was one of the three points a Christian pacifist speaker made in defending his stance at the panel discussion on War Ethics that Matt mentioned in Pacifism and The […]
Tags: Pacifism · Role of the State · War Ethics
The New Zealand Association of Rationalist Humanists and the Privileging of Secularism
December 20th, 2010 189 Comments
The New Zealand Association of Rationalist Humanists (“NZARH”) has a statement of aspirational ideals for the New Zealand state on their website. Entitled “The Tolerant Secular State” it is anything but. The first two sentences of the document exhibit a confusion which is inherent throughout (and commonly found in discussions of church and state): “The […]
Tags: Doctrine of Religious Restraint · Free Exercise · Freedom of Religion · Harry Potter · Jurisprudence · Lord Voldemort · NZARH · Paul Rishworth · Religion in Public Life · Rights and Freedoms · Secularism · Steven Smith
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.
An Interesting Comparison
February 4th, 2016 5 Comments
This from Occupy Democrats: This from the Unites States Founding Fathers: When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature […]
Tags: Bad Reasoning · Christian History · Declaration of Independence