Jason Rosenhouse has an excellent discussion or even better dissection of some recent writing by Philip Johnson. I’ve had this partial entry on Johnson sitting amongst my drafts for ages, but since Johnson is now bringing forth many of the same arguments, and Rosenhouse has quite thoroughly demolished them, I will simply refer you [...]
|
|||||
|
Ben Witherington alerted me to Plantinga’s review of Dawkins’ book The God Delusion on Christianity Today. Now I must be frank (well, no, I don’t have to, but I will!) and say that I find philosophers provide the most annoying of reading. They seem to me to be the world’s best rationalizers, providing excellent [...] A post on the evangelical outpost alerted me to a minor tempest about abortion rights. It seems that Amanda Marcotte believes that abortion is a moral good, something to be celebrated. Having recently encountered the notion that one trully cannot take the position I do, that abortion in the bulk of cases is to be abhorred, but that making it unlawful is not the best strategy for limiting it in our society, I find it interesting to see the same position taken by the other side. Marcotte says: Also, saying that abortion is morally questionable, even if you’re pro-choice, is a huge insult to the brave men and women who risk life and limb to perform them. Which simply adds that to a whole list of other things I can’t possibly do, but do anyhow, such as supporting our troops, but opposing the war our political leaders have sent them to fight. As a moral choice, I think that there are a very few cases in which I could morally support the decision for someone to have an abortion, such as serious risk to the life of the mother. I don’t buy the notion that we can’t decide who lives or dies–we do that every day. We just like to pretend that we’re leaving it in God’s hands. As an aside, this whole business of “leaving it in God’s hands” suggests to me the picture of someone in a hospital bed, with machines breathing for him, tubes feeding him, and various monitors attached to every part of his body. Then somebody says, “We can’t disconnect the tubes, we need to leave it in the hands of God.” Well if those tubes are sticking out of me, or if my life is being preserved on the off chance that I might come out of a coma some years later, pull the tubes and truly leave it in God’s hands. (And yes, the responsible parties, including my health-care surrogate are aware of my views.) What I think is morally reprehensible is the notion that we can’t choose responsible behavior in the first place, i.e. that the decision to produce the baby in the first place is too difficult, yet it’s OK to make abortion an easy option. I don’t think it can be, or will be, an easy option no matter what you do. For various reasons, I want to keep it legal, but “legal” and “right” are not equivalent in my view. Thus I’m angered by Marcotte’s rhetoric, but I simply see it as part of the continued insistence by people on both sides of this debate to leave the majority of the country out of the debate, or alternatively to define them into one camp or the other whether they fit there or not. One of the few things the Democrats and Republicans can agree on is measures to keep themselves in power. This includes limiting access to the ballot and making sure that the election system continues to favor the two major parties. Thus, it’s good news that the supreme court has agreed to review the appeals [...] Carl Zimmer has an excellent short post at The Loom commenting on the journalistic duties involved. Go read it–it will only take a few moments, but it makes a critical point. One of the failures of the Christian response to this is to get over-the-top about attacks on Christianity, when what we are actually [...] Rev. Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council issued a statement attacking the forthcoming documentary on the grave of Jesus and his family. It was titled TV Special on Jesus’ Grave — a Hoax?. Though I have already commented on what I see is a completely unscientific and unscholarly hype, this is not terribly [...] A documentary to be shown on the Discovery Channel purports to have discovered the tomb and the ossuary of Jesus (CNN story here). I’m amazed that something like this would be called a “documentary” since there is next to no possibility of sufficient evidence for such a claim. The sad thing is that [...] Frequently I see the challenge to outrage on blogs or even occasionally in print media. It goes something like this: Group A has been very outraged by X, the horror of which is minimized by the writer. The writer describes something that outrages him or her, surely much more horrible than X, and wonders [...] . . . who needs rationalizations? I refer to the article 7 Reasons Why (it’s title in the title bar) also titled “Key Issues Regarding Bible Translation.” This is on the domain genderneutralbibles.com, (yes, Virginia, there really is a genderneutralbibles.com!). A while back I blogged on Mark Driscoll’s reasons for using the ESV at [...] The latest addition is Seekism, with his latest post, Does the Old Testament Accurately Describe God. |
|
||||
Copyright © 2012 Henry E. Neufeld - All Rights Reserved Powered by WordPress & Atahualpa 
|
|||||
Recent Comments