I’ve been talking about biblical violence on Twitter over the last day. So now I’m back to my blog and drawing on several articles I’ve written over the years all to the end of driving home a singular point: don’t sacrifice your conscience in defense of a particular reading/interpretation of the Bible. If you know […]
moral perception
Is it categorically wrong to eat other human beings?
First off, my apologies for choosing such an, ahem, distasteful topic to discuss on the day before the day before Christmas. But here goes. In the discussion thread to my article, “Could God command something morally heinous?“, one of my readers, a fellow named “Angry Grasshopper,” (henceforth, AG) took issue with my statement that cannibalism is always wrong. He wrote: “cannibalism […]
The Bible depicts God commanding moral atrocities. Should we believe it?
The Bible includes some descriptions of divine action which are fundamentally at odds with the moral perceptions of properly functioning human beings. In some cases, God is presented as performing actions that appear to be wicked. In other cases, he is presented as commanding humans to perform actions that appear to be wicked. Of the latter, […]
Bestiality, Pederasty, Incest … and Homosexuality: The “Big Four”?
Over the last day I’ve had some back-and-forth with a new commenter, dchap, on the discussion thread for “Apologist Michael Brown responds to Part 1 of my review of the Brown-Vines Debate“. The following excerpt from my comments sums up my assessment of the exchange: “Thanks again for your contributions. I don’t agree with you […]
Reading the Bible informed by conscience
In “A review of “God or Godless”, inerrancy, and begging the question” I defended myself against a reviewer of God or Godless who opined that I had made a “major mistake” in my theology by rejecting the doctrine of inerrancy. I pointed out that I don’t reject inerrancy, though I do reject indefensible articulations of […]
On William Lane Craig’s defense of the Canaanite genocide (Part 2)
In my first installment in this series I argued that conservative Christian apologists like William Lane Craig and Paul Copan are at their weakest when they argue that God commanded putative moral atrocities like genocide. And I noted that the interlocutor for my critical discussion would be William Lane Craig’s defense of the Canaanite genocide in […]
Encountering the Other: An exercise in moral perception finely-tuned
Yesterday I explained to FroKid my view that moral perception yields certain properly basic beliefs such that when we perceive certain actions we can perceive immediately in a properly basic way the action as right or wrong, good or evil. As I said, “I believe a human being with properly functioning moral perception will perceive […]
Rosie, don’t get in the elevator: A guide to moral intuition
Stephen Matizen seems to think that we are only justified in attributing special status to human beings if we can identify qualities possessed by all and only human beings. This is how he put it most recently: Name a morally relevant quality possessed by all and only humans. Rationality? Not all humans have it (Terri […]
Moral debate in a pluralistic world: A meandering conversation with Jerry Rivard
This morning we are going to have a little discussion about moral epistemology. A few days ago I noted that on an externalist epistemology “you can know p without being able to show that p.” In other words, you can know that a proposition is true without being able to demonstrate the way you know […]
Can rape be objectively wrong?
The problem of evil is often presented to Christians as the objection to the existence of God. Sometimes it is presented as a logical problem — the existence of an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God is logically inconsistent with the existence of evil — but more often these days it is presented as a matter of probabilities — […]
