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Entries Tagged as 'Nicholas Wolterstorff'

Freedom, Science and Christianity: A Response to James Valliant Part II

February 18th, 2010 2 Comments

Recently Peter Cresswell published a guest post by James Valliant, which originally appeared on SOLO. In Freedom, Science and Christianity: A Response to James Valliant Part I, I addressed Valliant’s claims that science and freedom of religion were unanimously opposed by Christians and the success of science and freedom of religion in Europe was solely [...]

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Sunday Study: Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part II

January 10th, 2010 13 Comments

In my previous post, Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I, I mentioned the position suggested by Alvin Plantinga and endorsed by Nicholas Wolterstorff that the passages in Joshua that appear to record the carrying out of genocide at God’s command, such as, “putting all the people to the sword”, “leaving no survivors”, [...]

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Sunday Study: Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I

January 3rd, 2010 18 Comments

Critics of Christianity often claim that the book of Joshua teaches that God commanded genocide. Raymond Bradley for example states,
In chapters 7 through 12, [the book of Joshua] treats us to a chilling chronicle of the 31 kingdoms, and all the cities therein, that fell victim to Joshua’s, and God’s, genocidal policies. Time and again [...]

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Rangiora New Life College, Religion and Discrimination

December 13th, 2009 13 Comments

On Wednesday I flew to Christchurch for an interview regarding a religious education (RE) teaching position in a Catholic School. On having the interview and receiving the subsequent rejection email, it was clear what the reason I did not get the position was: I am a protestant, the school has a particular Catholic ethos [...]

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Religious Restraint and Public Policy: Part VI

December 3rd, 2009 No Comments

In my last posts, beginning Religious Restraint and Public Policy: Part I,  I set out the doctrine of religious restraint and critiqued some of the key arguments in support of it. I looked at the objection that the argument from respect is too thin, that applied consistently it excludes too much and Audi’s response to [...]

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Religious Restraint and Public Policy: Part III

November 25th, 2009 3 Comments

In my last posts, beginning Religious Restraint and Public Policy: Part I, I set out the doctrine of religious restraint and touched on some criticisms of it. I looked at and critiqued some of the key arguments in support of the doctrine of religious restraint. In this post I will look at the objection that [...]

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Religious Restraint and Public Policy: Part II

November 24th, 2009 2 Comments

In my last post, Religious Restraint and Public Policy: Part I, I set out the doctrine of religious restraint and touched on some criticisms of it. In this post, I begin looking at and critiquing some of the key arguments in support of the doctrine of religious restraint.

II         Arguments for the Doctrine of Religious [...]

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Religious Restraint and Public Policy: Part I

November 23rd, 2009 28 Comments

In this series I set out the doctrine of religious restraint, the idea that in a pluralistic, liberal, society religious beliefs should not be utilised in the formation of public policy. I note that this doctrine entails an asymmetrical treatment of religious and secular beliefs, which appears to conflict with the central notion of liberal [...]

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Recyling: Rawls on Religion and Public Life

September 9th, 2009 No Comments

A common theme appeared in the comments section of my Investigate Magazine article, Contra Mundum: What’s Wrong with Imposing your Beliefs onto Others? Commenters suggested I had not addressed the standard liberal conception of the role of religion and public life, the view that no law should be based on premises that not all reasonable [...]

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Some More Thoughts on Religion and Public Life: Robert Audi’s Critique of Wolterstorff

January 6th, 2009 12 Comments

In two earlier posts, I discussed John Rawls’ defence of the contention that theological premises should be bracketed or excluded from public discourse. In particular, I appropriated the criticisms of Rawls’s position made by Nicholas Wolterstorff.
In “Wolterstorff on Religion, Politics, and the Liberal State” in Religious Beliefs in the Public Square, Robert Audi argues that [...]

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