The Founding Fathers are still on the front line of debate amongst atheists and Christians, secularists and theocrats alike. All these years later there is still confusion abounding. Part of the reason why is that there are many misquotes (and this can happen on both sides). Here, for example, is a quote (A letter from Adams to Jefferson) sometimes used by secularists:
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It comes with great sadness to announce that my favourite podcast of all time, Reasonable Doubts, will no longer continue to be. This upsets me because there is no greater podcast on the internet than this one. RD has been with me for a good number of years and has provided ample stimuli for me to pass on in my own way.
The Atonement is one of those funny things in Christianity. It is the central tenet, the main raison d’etre of the whole shebang. Jesus existed as God incarnate in order to be sacrificed and die in order to pay for our sins, past, present and future.
Only it makes absolutely no sense.
In very simplistic terms, I see it like this:
Franz Kiekeben studied (University of South Florida) and taught (Ohio State University) philosophy, having written for the SKEPTIC magazine and published academic articles on determinism and time travel. He recently sent me a book he has written called The Truth About God to review.
Yes, you heard me, tomatoes.
I am devastated. My harvest of about three hundred tomatoes has been decimated. Tomato blight. Gutted. The yield would have been my best ever, and they were very healthy looking.
In Jonathan’s post titled, “Inter-Testamental Moral Relativism,” a hypothetical exchange between an atheist and an Xian highlights the morally relativistic nature of a fundamentalist worldview that defends the idea that executing a man for picking up sticks on a Saturday is obligatory at time T, but morally impermissible at T+1. In the exchange, the snarky hypothetical atheist wants to know exactly when T occurred in order to know exactly when people became morally obliged to refrain from executing Sabbath breakers.
Apologist Matthew Flannagan has criticised my points made on the recent post “Inter-Testamental Moral Relativism” which can also be expressed as “Covenantal Moral Relativism” as Justin Schieber has stated it. In this post I declared that the moral obligations being different between the Old Testament (OT) and the New Testament (NT) amounted to moral relativism (MR). Here is what Flannagan had to say:
Further to my post yesterday on Inter-Testamental Moral Relativism, I would like to make a few more points (which I have mentioned before here) on morality concerning God. Divine Command Theory (DCT) is the Christian/theistic ethical system whereby whatever God commands is rendered morally good and right on account of God commanding it. As Franz Kiekeben states in The Truth About God (pp. 133-134):
Theists hate moral relativism. They often accuse atheists and secularists of having it. For them, only the pseudo-moral absolutism of…
This post is one of my most popular pieces on this blog, and I am revising it slightly to make it even tighter, reacting to previous comments on the last version of this piece. I have tried to be detailed enough for it to be fairly comprehensive, though it could be more detailed; then again, it could be shorter and more digestible. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
In a statement issued at the weekend, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the killing of Niloy Neel, the fourth humanist blogger in Bangladesh to be hacked to death by Islamists this year, and called on the Government to do more to prevent further attacks. The British Humanist Association (BHA) has welcomed his call, and reiterated its own similar desire to see further violence prevented.
Skeptical Theism is an approach to the problem of evil that states that we just Index)can’t know the mind of…
I was recently sent a book to review, by Franz Kiekeben, called The Truth About God which is a whistlestop tour, I think, through atheism and counter-apologetics to arrive at the conclusion not that God is improbable, but that God is impossible. I will be interested to see where that goes (click on the image to buy it).
I recently had a fascinating debate with David Warden of the Dorset Humanists concerning Islam, which I have written fairly extensively about. The debate was really well-mannered and a pleasure to be involved with. Thanks to the Dorset Humanists for hosing and inviting me. Here it is:
Here is another account in my series of real-life deconversion stories. They are often painful, psychological affairs, as you can see from the various accounts. Dan Yowell was put on to me by contributor Cody Rudisill who has posted the occasional article. I thank MLC for his contribution. Please check out my book of deconversion accounts, edited with Tristan Vick, which can be bought from the sidebar over there >>>, or by clicking on the book cover. The previous accounts can be found here:
I was talking recently to a fellow liberal who happened to be a Hindu making correctly scathing attacks on UKIP, media bias and misrepresentation and, you guessed it, Islam. Again I was somewhat frustrated that an intelligent and informed guy was getting so much right and yet made one big error. I see it so often and have been involved in debating it here and here that I had to answer my critics here
Everyone knows about it. I needn’t really explain the story, but I will.
Dentist from Minnesota pays loads of money to go shoot a lion with a bow in Zimbabwe, after it is lured illegally outside of the national park with bait. Lion gets hit, wonders around in pain, life ebbing, for 40 hours until dentist finds it again, and shoots it in the head with a gun. Lion dies. Man thinks it’s all legal, apparently. The lion was left skinned and beheaded after the hunters trying to destroy the tagged collar Cecil the lion had. Man also faced prison in 2008 after lying to a federal agent about killing a bear.
I recently had the pleasure of having an interview/conversation on the subject of Big Bang Cosmology and the implications for the universe having an absolute beginning. The question is also wrapped up with theistic claims that a god is a necessary precursor to the universe (or not). Also, some will argue that the Big Bang is just the scientists’ way of avoiding the conclusion that God made everything.
Tunisia’s second attack in recent times has left the country reeling, and British tour operators pulling out for the next week, at least. This has been the biggest attack on and death of British people in a terrorist attack since the 7/7 bombings in London and the country has been rocked. But not as much as Tunisia itself will be rocked.
If you were God. A friend recently emailed this: The South Carolina Shooter’s Free Will or the Will of God?…