Randal Rauser

Home of progressively evangelical, generously orthodox, rigorously analytic, revolutionary Christian thinking (that's what I'm aiming for anyway)

morality

While we’re on the topic of abortion, here’s a great debate (and the prochoice guy wins!)

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Abortion is, as we all know, one of the most heated of all moral debates. That is one of the reasons I think so highly of this debate between Peter Kreeft and David Boonin of the University of Boulder. It is all about careful moral reasoning rather than heightened moral rhetoric. (Not to say that […]

How many ‘F’ words in a film is TOO many?

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It has been nineteen years since conservative commentator and film critic Michael Medved published the bestseller Hollywood vs. America: Popular Culture and the War on Traditional Values (HarperCollins, 1992), a book that made him a hero for “family values” conservatives across North America. While Medved made some valid points about the debasedness of some pop […]

Can atheists be trusted?

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Last week Stephen Maitzen, a very fine philosopher of religion, provided the links for two of his papers. The popular distillation of the argument is “Does God Destroy our Duty of Compassion?” (Free Inquiry, (Oct/Nov 2010), 52-53). That is the place if you want a quick overview of the argument. The second paper, ostentatiously titled […]

Why we should all be driving a Tata (if we’re lucky)

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A few years ago I was jogging along when I came upon a fine fog hovering over the sidewalk. The idiot neighbor was busy spraying his lawn with some kind of carcinogenic chemical to make it green. Good for him. But my lungs bore the brunt of it. Economists refer to that as an externality. An externality is any cost to […]

God and the Goddish Good

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Jerry Rivard asks: “Do you have a reason why objective morals can’t exist without an omnipotent omniscient deity? (And please don’t just say “well where else would they come from”.)” I’ve dealt with this topic in a previous blog post, “If there is no God then is everything permissible?” Let me give the nuts and bolts […]

I want to know what evil is

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The critics never liked Foreigner much, but then their mullet-wearin’ Camaro-drivin’ fans never liked the critics much. And really, who could resist the infectious drive of an arena-grade power ballad like “I want to know what love is”? Although Lou Gramm may have been asking what love is, I think he had a reasonably good […]

Grandpa drowns. Humanity flourishes

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James (of http://www.atheistspot.com/) has presented a secular morality which seems to look like this: Thou shalt commit acts which further human flourishing and not commit acts which inhibit human flourishing. I think this is just another form of utlitarianism where we seek to maximize pleasure or happiness and minimize displeasure or unhappiness. We could thus […]

Vomit flavored jelly beans and other offenses to the natural order

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As I noted last time, people disagree radically on their conceptions of what it means to flourish. To some people, flourishing would mean growing old and full of years. But Roger Daltrey (lead singer of The Who) hoped he’d die before he gets old (see the lyrics for “My Generation” for further clarification). And as for Eric […]

I wanna kill myself … and you too

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Conversational Atheist has listed at his website  9 facts that Sam Harris has provided to go from is to ought. Unfortunately, I found myself stumbling on his very first fact:  FACT #1: There are behaviors, intentions, cultural practices, etc. which potentially lead to the worst possible misery for everyone. There are also behaviors, intentions, cultural […]

How do you critique infant sodomy to a moral skeptic?

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Now things are spinning out of control. James retorts: “You have ‘argued’ that certain moral facts are objectively true because you happen to see them, or intuit them, or sense them, to be true. Some argument! Well, Gary the corpse raper happens to see quite clearly that rape is good. How are you going to […]