Is it intrinsically evil to slaughter infants or does it depend on the context? Our moral knowledge says one thing, biblical passages like 1 Samuel 15:3 seem to say something else. ?
moral epistemology
Prolife Christians Who Support Child Killing
Defending the morality of the Canaanite genocide has disastrous consequences for a consistent Christian ethic as I explain in this video. ?
Four Pitfalls for Apologists Defending Biblical Violence
Over the last decade or so, Christian apologists have directed significant effort in defending morally problematic biblical violence including texts which attribute prima facie evil actions to God as well as prima facie evil actions which are commanded or commended by God. For example, Christian apologists offer various justifications of the texts that appear to […]
Could God command something morally heinous?
This article is excerpted from my 2016 book An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar (Prometheus), coauthored with Justin Schieber. Support the authors and consider buying a copy! You won’t be disappointed. Well, okay, you might be disappointed — life gives no guarantees — but I’m betting you won’t be. Anyway, without further ado, let’s […]
Emotions as a way to moral reflection and theological truth
A few days ago I received an email from a reader that posed a question and invited my response. With permission I’m reproducing a portion of the email. I’ll then offer a response below: If I had to say what I have found most helpful about your work, it would be your insistence on the […]
Merely squeamish?
My discussion these last few days has been concerned with the ethical obligations of those who would refuse, on moral grounds, to kill animals simply for the culinary pleasure of eating them. But the argument depends on people being able to read their own intuitions about killing. Could it be that they’re misreading those intuitions? […]
Christians who are skeptics about moral perception
In “Is rape worse than sacrifice?” I critiqued Crude’s claim that moral atrocity is essentially linked to the infliction of physical and/or psychological suffering on a victim. I did so with the following scenario: “Three year old Billy is watching Sesame Street and eating Pop Tarts when his father kills him with a gunshot from […]
The Problem of the Faulty Moral Perception Faculty
Many Christians apparently believe that an act like killing and mutilating a child as a devotional act toward a deity can be morally virtuous (i.e. if God commands it, and God can command it because he has commanded it) but raping a child as a devotional act to a deity cannot (because God never would […]
Rape, moral perception, and biblicism
Jerry Shepherd offered an extended rebuttal to my article “Christian moral schizophrenia and psychopathy.” Reading through his comments I recognized that a single question could help us focus the issue of debate significantly and so I focused on the moral status of acts of rape: “It seems quite clear that on your view it is […]
Three theses on devotional child killing
The article I presented at the Atlanta SBL meeting, titled “‘I want to give the baby to God’: Three theses on devotional child killing” is now available! This is the biggest release since Gran Turismo 5! So to read and/or download the paper you can click here or go find it in the “Academic Papers” […]
