Beautiful:
Category Morality
Surely both, that the star appeared and the wise men knew to follow it to find the baby Jesus, was a miracle. Can there be any doubt? So why did it lead them to Jerusalem, the wrong town — and much worse — to Herod, who only became aware of His rival after the wise men inquired about the new born King of the Jews? It was then that Herod resolved to kill Jesus.
Here is another piece, this time on the atonement and sin, from a friend who supplies adverts and what have you to the Free Inquiry magazine amongst others. He has a special interest in the fascinating life of Robert Ingersoll.
So tonight I am attending a Tippling Philosophers get-together in Fareham, UK. We are discussing transhumanism. For those who don;t know, this is the idea (or movement for the idea) that we can adapt our bodies and cognitive abilities using technology to prolong our lives, choose our babies genotype and phenotype etc etc – the harnessing of technology to change and progress what we might (erroneously?) define as our humanity, biological or otherwise.
The Vatican has suspended a senior German Church leader dubbed the “bishop of bling” by the media over his alleged lavish spending.
Bishop of Limburg Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst is accused of spending more than 31m euros (£26m; $42m) on renovating his official residence.
I am exceptionally grateful that John Loftus thought of me when shortlisting potential contributors to his latest anthology Christianity Is Not Great. Not only that, but my chapter on atheological morality, which I wrote a few months ago for him, was one of the chapters used in the proposal to Prometheus Books. And they have just accepted the project! Fantastic! Here is what John has just announced:
El Salvador has one of the toughest anti-abortion laws in the world. A side-effect is that women who suffer miscarriages are sometimes suspected of inducing an abortion – and can even be jailed for murder.
Check out this map. In this day and age, this is nothing short of a shocker. I simply cannot believe…
Many liberal Catholics have been encouraged by Pope Francis’s comments about sexual ethics in a recent interview. His general point was that these are lesser matters, not to be emphasized at the expense of the church’s essential message of healing and salvation.
I have been researching an awful lot with regard to feminism and gender theory. My partner’s daughter is studying Gender…
Lothar’s Son, who has interacted before with me on Ockham’s Razor (which I was just too busy to deal with his reaction to my initial thoughts, so sorry there), has responded to the Google Hangout that Counter Apologist, Justin Schieber and myself. Here is his post, which I will post in a slightly different colour, and will comment interlinearly:
This is brilliant. As Upworthy states: What do you do when you’re a politician live on television and a pastor…
Recently, I have run a number of articles about morality and its intersection with biology: Human Brains Are Hardwired for…
Well, it depends on your definition of highbrow, of course. But please check out the video of myself, Counter Apologist and Justin Schieber from Reasonable Doubts discussing the Evidential Problem of Evil, going through a ton of arguments and interesting points. It was really enjoyable and we hope you get out as much enjoyment as we did! Hopefully it won’t be the last.
Craig has been involved in a series of discussions in Australia with Laurence Krauss regarding philosophy and science. Unfortunately, Krauss is no great philosopher which is what most of this discussion revolved around. However, both Craig and the annoying moderator claimed the “consequentialism is a terrible ethic” and that utilitarianism and consequentialism had been “renounced” by the Abrahamic faiths.
My twins had their birthday the other day so we went to Paulton’s Park, a local theme park for young children with a section called Peppa Pig World, and my boys love Peppa Pig.
All sounds rather unphilosophical so far. But that was until we pulled off the M27 and hit the short dual carriageway to a roundabout which led to a single carriage road to the park itself. The drive would normally take somewhere in the region of a minute. Or less. Apart from it took us an hour. One whole hour of my life I will never get back.
Science Daily: Aug. 22, 2013 — Perhaps one of the most defining features of humanity is our capacity for empathy —…
So, like Ed at Incredulous, I was pretty wowed by this piece of artwork by a poster on the subreddit…
Manipulation is often thought of as morally repugnant, but it might be responsible for the evolutionary origins of some helpful or altruistic behavior, according to a new study.
As reported here, the House of Lords recently had what can only be described as a fascinating debate. Whilst some non-UK visitors to this blog may not be able to access the video, thanks to Chris Street at HASSNERS (where you can find the transcript with really useful notes and comments), here is the full transcript from Hansard: