Reading Time: 9 minutes So yesterday I posted a piece being very critical of Islam as a religious theology (in the context of teaching RE), just as I have spent 10 years doing with Christianity. The comments thread exploded and, I have to say, the conversation was really pretty good. There were lots of people who disagreed with each other […]
consequentialism
Posted inEthics and Morality
All the Options to Explain Suffering
Reading Time: 2 minutes Quality commenter here, 3lemenope, recently provided us with his idea of the range of reasons that can be given to explain suffering in light of OmniGod: 1. Suffering is a lesson 2. Suffering is deserved 3. Suffering is a means to some other end That’s it. None of the options speak well of an omni-anything. […]
Posted inEthics and Morality, Politics
Being Honest with your Moral Consequentialism: Single Issues and Trump Support
Reading Time: 3 minutes We’re almost there, so a few more political pieces to go… Trump supporters must really be careful now. He has moved into such open lying in his rallies and messaging now that he is swimming in conspiracy theories and nonsense. It’s dangerous. As I have said in many pieces, support for him amongst intelligent people […]
Posted inEthics and Morality, Politics
Evangelical Christianity, the GOP, Morality and Cognitive Dissonance
Reading Time: 7 minutes Cognitive Dissonance: The term cognitive dissonance is used to describe the mental discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes. People tend to seek consistency in their attitudes and perceptions, so this conflict causes feelings of unease or discomfort. This inconsistency between what people believe and how they behave motivates people to engage in actions that […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
Pearced Off! #3 – God Is a Consequentialist
Reading Time: < 1 minute I am running a series of the old podcast segments from my Pearced Off! section of the Skepticule Podcast (a British skepticism-based podcast now on hiatus) that I used to contribute to. Some of the earlier ones have some quieter audio. Apologies. They run at around ten minutes. Something to keep you company outside of Netflix and the news… […]
Posted inEthics and Morality, Health, Politics
Consequentialism and Coronavirus, Visually Speaking
Reading Time: < 1 minute For those who are a bit TL;DR for my recent piece, I have now set it to face time. If you fancy my dulcet tones, check this out. And while you’re at it, please subscribe to my channel. I plan on doing a number of these over the lockdown period. Help me out! Stay in […]
Posted inEthics and Morality, Health, Politics
Morality: Consequentialism and Coronavirus
Reading Time: 4 minutes We are living in times of moral dilemma. As I have so often stated before, politics is a subset of morality. When we talk about morality, we talk about oughts – normatively what we should, as individuals, do. Politics is this write large over societies and from a governmental perspective. In these testing times of […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
Craig on Terminating Would-Be Apostates
Reading Time: 5 minutes Here is a recent question to William Lane Craig on his Reasonable Faith website: Hi Dr Craig, I’ve been studying the Perseverance of the Saints and I found your paper on the subject very thought-provoking. I have been wrestling with this subject as of late and there appear to be certain difficulties with the traditional understanding of […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
God Is a Consequentialist. The Theist’s Defence: God Is Not Moral (I)
Reading Time: 5 minutes I have written an essay that can be found variously on this site called “God Is a Consequentialist” in which I set out that God is a moral consequentialist. Some of which I will now set out or paraphrase before looking at the defence William Lane Craig and others use to get around this. This […]
Posted inEthics and Morality, Politics, Psychology
The US Political Landscape Crumbles; Consequentialism Reigns Supreme
Reading Time: 4 minutes Holy cow. Where to start. I know this is “supposed” to be a blog concerned with atheism and religiosity, but how can I not comment on the ongoing sh!tstorm that is US politics? There are so many little areas to talk about that this piece could be 10,000 words (it isn’t, don’t worry!). Just the […]