If there are good reasons to believe, then why does the Christian faith have some really vehement detractors?
That’s the question I look at in this episode.
Glenn Peoples
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Do you really have to just pick one discipline?
Recently I had the dubious honour of being overreacted against. I made some critical remarks about somebody’s attempt to reduce a theological point of view (annihilationism) to naturalism. I also made some fairly mundane (and fairly easily demonstrable) observations about the range of concepts that can be expressed by Qal verbs in Biblical Hebrew (I know, sounds riveting, right?). In a colourful plume of hormones and other brain chemicals I was labelled a “heretic,” somebody who is “blindly incompetent” and who is sinning against God merely by expressing the arguments that I do. My attempts to offer evidence in my defence were thwarted as the blog’s author simply chose not to publish the comments. Along the way it was recommended numerous times that I really ought to be more humble and gracious – like the person who was making these observations (!). And of course, the session ended with the prayer that I would become so (a prayer that I can only hope is not answered, given what the writer thinks humility and grace consist of!).
In this episode I continue to re-trace my steps through my mini speaking tour earlier this year. This talk was the second in a series of introductory talks on apologetics. In it, I introduce and explain the moral argument for the existence of God.
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Once you know what fallacies are, it’s tempting to try to catch people using them as often as possible. Take care that in doing so you don’t commit the fallacy of jumping the gun.
What’s the role of reason in faith?
The podcast is back! This short series consists of talks that I recently gave on a speaking tour, speaking at a church camp in Auckland as well as at Thinking Matters events in Hamilton, Auckland and Tauranga. The theme was Christian apologetics, and this first talk was to set the scene on the general issue of faith and reason.
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It happens far too often that somebody thinks that they are criticisng simplistic fundamentalism, when in fact they are the practitioner, rather than the genuine critic, of simplistic thinking.
Someone recently pointed out a video clip of a guy named John talking about homosexual relationships and the Bible. This is the point where I would normally offer a one-sentence summary of what his central claim is, but I’m not absolutely sure what it is. It has something to do with homosexuality, the f-word (fundamentalists), and consistency. Here’s the clip:
A number of my Christian friends are drawing attention to a video of British News presenter Martin Bashir taking Bill O’Reilly to task. [Edit: Yes, I know MSNBC is American, but Mr Bashir is British.] I have no problem with people taking Bill O’Reilly to task. His approach to current affairs is not one I admire, to the point where I had misgivings about coming to his defence. But if I had hesitated to do this on the grounds that I do not “like” him, I would be displaying the same partisanship for which I am about to criticise both Bashir and my friends who are giving his comments such a generous review.
Now that I’ve made a blog post since changing the address to www.rightreason.org I feel like the new name has been broken in. But I need your help.
A lot of sites have links to Say Hello to my Little Friend blog posts or podcasts episodes – or just to the main site. If you’re one of those people, it would really help if you could update those links to the new address. www.rightreason.org/etc rather than the old www.beretta-online.com/wordpress/etc. If you use the blog feed, please update this to https://www.rightreason.org/?feed=rss2
But don’t I have the site set up so that the old link will automatically send users to the right page? Yes, so people who follow those links will find the site. However, internet search engines know that those links are out there, and the prominence of a website (and its address) in search results is in part driven by those links, as are other background factors in web visibility.
It will only take a few minutes (don’t bother hunting out old blog posts with links in them), and it would help a lot. Thanks!
Glenn
A few days ago I got home from a speaking tour in Hamilton, Muriwai Beach, Avondale (for those outside of New Zealand, those two are both in the Auckland region) and Tauranga. Fifteen talks over eight days! All the talks were very well received, and the discussions that followed were excellent.
The overall theme of the talks was faith and reason, unpacking some of the ways in which Christians have used reason to commend what they believe as true, along with some of the implications of Christianity actually being true. The opening talk at a couple of venues was directly about the crucial role of reason within the Christian faith, reflecting on the observation, among others, that “commitment without reflection is fanaticism.” The change of this site’s address to rightreason.org is motivated by this commitment to the reasonable discussion and defence of what we believe and why (whether overly Christian or not).
Against this backdrop, imagine the sense of irony that swept over me yet again when I arrived home, checked my email and read the following message (we’ll call the author J, who has consented to this email being made public).
How can you keep up the pretense that you know about life after death. You mock common sense. You trade on peoples [sic] fears of the dark and the unknown to put forward a controlling elitist superior position.
Reason in everyday decisions must prevail over blind faith
Deep sigh.
Breaking news! The web address for this site has changed. I’m pleased to announce that I have acquired the address www.rightreason.org. The old URL (beretta-online.com) will still work via redirection, but please update your links if you can be bothered. Links to the new URL will help its visibility in a number of ways.
It was time to just bite the bullet and do it – it’s a better, more relevant name and it’s easier to remember.
The Podcast (and maybe the blog, but I’m thinking about it) is still called Say Hello to my Little Friend, but there may be a few decor changes to reflect the new address.
So remember – If you link to the site, please update your links as soon as you can. Beretta is no more. Long live Right Reason!
Glenn Peoples