Way back in 2003 I signed up to Theologyweb, a theology discussion forum – the best Theology Discussion forum anywhere on the web, in my humble opinion. One of the site owners is my friend Dee Dee Warren, who also runs the Preterist Podcast.

There have been a couple of relatively small “conferences” of Theologyweb geeks over the years. However, in conjunction with Perissos (run by my friend Lynn Erhorn), Theologyweb is looking at holding a large theology conference in Jacksonville, Florida. Here’s what Dee Dee had to say about it (I copied this from the Preterist Podcast)

Perissos Resources along with Theologyweb.com are discussing co-hosting a large theology convention in Jacksonville, FL March 1-3, 2013. We want to center the event around 2 formally-formatted 3-hour debates on eschatology (end-time philosophy) and a benefit banquet with a well-known keynote speaker. We’re also considering inviting several ministries to speak and raise awareness, hold book/media signings, and have several panel discussions. Some of you know we’ve done two small TWeb staff conventions in the past (2007, 2009), but we think it’s time to do a much bigger event that will almost feel like TWeb, only in person.

Our primary objective is to bring glory to God and see His kingdom advance. To that end, we want minister to the public with these programs as well as financially benefit the two ministries that will dedicate the next year of their lives to bring this event to fruition. The first step in this process is to test the market. If we’re the only ones excited about such an event, then it wouldn’t make much sense to go forward. So, we’re praying for clear direction and we’re asking you to tell us what you think of this concept. Your input at this crucial phase of our planning can make all the difference in whether or not this exciting event becomes a reality.

Clearly, this is a large endeavor. It will require a budget, sponsors, and, most importantly, sufficient interest to justify putting such an event together. We think this could have great ministry value and community impact, but we’d like to know what you think! We’ve put together a brief survey you can complete that will help us measure interest. You can access it below. We’re asking you to complete the survey (it’ll take about 2 minutes) and then tell all your friends about it so they can come and chime in, too.

It is our sincere hope that we can draw about 500 people to this event and that process begins right here. If we don’t get 250 responses in the next 2 weeks, the project may never see the light of day. We’d be sad to see that happen, since we’re already talking to some of the names you’ll see on the survey and there is interest on their part to participate. Please, be as social as you can about this! Post the link on Facebook, talk about it with friends, send an email to your fellow theology buffs!

If you might be interested in going to this conference, can you please complete the survey. This will help greatly with planning.

One more thing: One of the organisers approached me about this in particular, because if this conference does go ahead (and we will hopefully know fairly soon if it will), and if I can find a way (and at this stage I’m not sure what this will involve), then I’ll be speaking at this conference. And if that happens, I’ll also try to arrange other speaking opportunities in Florida while I’m over there.

Please: Spread the word. Complete the survey if you’re interested. And if you’re in the area and you’d like see something arranged while I’m there, let me know!

Glenn

For those who are interested, Justin Duckworth has been elected as the Anglican Bishop for the Wellington Diocese (I’m moving to Wellington).

I’m sick and tired of the way that extremist conservative claims about history – such that Abraham Lincoln actually existed – are taken seriously, but serious, well-thought-out, well evidenced and reasonable claims – like the claim that Richard Carrier does not exist – are demonised. This is manifestly unfair. As Tim McGrew has recently shown, pure Bayesian probability gives us excellent reasons to doubt this strong claim:
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I’m heading for the seat of power! In a manner of speaking, anyway. In a couple of weeks I’m getting on a plane, becoming a North Island dweller once more and moving up to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. I’m going to be working on a project for my employer (I won’t bore you with the details of that here).

Ruth and the kids aren’t coming with me. We didn’t want to move the family – not initially at least, because of the potentially temporary nature of the work and because we’re really not sure how long it will last, but it’s going to last a while – at least until late this year (maybe October or later). There’s even a chance it may be extended further – perhaps until sometime next year, but we don’t know anything that far in advance yet. If we reach the end of the school year here in Dunedin and the role is extended, then it’s likely we’ll all move up to Wellington and begin a new era in our family’s history. As far as my (non-academic) career is concerned, Wellington will be a good thing and may lead to great opportunities in the future.

So from May the 14^th I will be living like a monk for a while! Actually that’s not quite true, I will be back every now and then. My employer will be flying me back to Dunedin once a month, and we’ll be trying to live frugally so that I can afford to fly back once a month in addition to this (flights still aren’t nearly as cheap as I’d like them to be, and although I’ll be different work, as it’s a secondment my official job description doesn’t change), so twice a month (or at least thrice every two months, depending on what we can manage) I’ll have my family back. I’ll have a phone-and-Skype marriage for the rest of the time! While the move as a whole will be worthwhile and even a little exciting, this is that part that will undoubtedly be hardest.

But while I’m in Wellington I’ll be living like a monk. I’ll be focused on a few things: Work (of course), writing (so the blog output might actually increase while I’m away – I won’t be able to take many books up, so when I can I’ll invest a tablet), and working out (I’ll be going to the gym as much as I can). Wellington is a University city (although not as much so as Dunedin), so I’ll also be on the lookout for opportunities to speak to student groups, but I really don’t know what the “scene” is like up there.

Do I have any readers/listeners in Wellington? If so, drop me a line!

Glenn Peoples

What should we make of the often heard reference to “religious terrorism,” coupled with the innuendo that religion is a uniquely dangerous influence when it comes to just how far people will go in the name of their God, even to the point of outright terrorism?

I know, finding rhetorically cute but terribly skewed and misleading comments on religion from the late Christopher Hitchens is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. It was his forte after all. But because it does dovetail nicely with the issue that caught my eye today, here’s a memorable gem from his book God is not Great:

A week before the events of September 11, 2001, I was on a panel with Dennis Prager, who is one of America’s better-known religious broadcasters. He challenged me in public to answer what he called a “straight yes/no question,” and I happily agreed. Very well, he said. I was to imagine myself in a strange city as the evening was coming on. Toward me I was to imagine that I saw a large group of men approaching. Now—would I feel safer, or less safe, if I was to learn that they were just coming from a prayer meeting? As the reader will see, this is not a question to which a yes/no answer can be given. But I was able to answer it as if it were not hypothetical. “Just to stay within the letter ‘B,’ I have actually had that experience in Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, Belgrade, Bethlehem, and Baghdad. In each case I can say absolutely, and can give my reasons, why I would feel immediately threatened if I thought that the group of men approaching me in the dusk were coming from a religious observance.”

Yes, it’s a case of thinking quickly on his feet, and yes the examples he cites are probably fair game, given the actual scenarios he describes from the 1970s and 80s, and yes it’s made all the more punchy by the Sesame Street style “things that start with the letter B” approach, and there’s a rhetorically powerful (but terribly misleading) effect being elicited in the reader along the lines of “Wow, and that’s just the letter B! And there are twenty-six letters in the alphabet, so that’s six times twenty-six…”

It’s a popular card to play. When you aren’t in the mood for offering arguments for the truth or falsehood of religious beliefs, just go all anti-realist and appeal to the harm done by adherents of religious beliefs (because you know, that tells us which ones are true of course). But it’s a very risky card to play. And I’m not even talking about the obvious: That one-off, large-scale atrocities were worse under secular regimes than under religious ones. We know that. But set aside the errors of the past, give everyone a blank slate, and ask: What’s going on in the world today? I’m not doing any of this to bash or malign any group of people (other, I guess, than those who make inappropriate generalisations about religion and extremism or violence). But I do want to draw attention to a couple of things: First, the fast and loose way that some people are inclined to use (and interpret) the word “religion,” and secondly, the way that this simple religious/non-religious categorisation doesn’t make the non-religious looks squeaky clean. Let me be clear. I do not endorse the tactic of besmirching a general outlook based on the misdeeds of its less sociable adherents (that’s a mild way of describing them). But given that this is a tactic that is used against religion as a blanket category far too often, it seems appropriate to draw on the empirical data to see if it tells us anything relevant (as one should assume that it would).
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Imagine for a moment that you are a student at Dortmund University in Germany (highlighted on the map to the left). You chose to go there, let’s assume, because of the climate – both academic and geographical. Then imagine one day you woke up in Austria. You’ve moved! You’ve gone from one place to another. You’re no longer in the same place, and your climate – one would assume – has changed. In fact, you hear on the radio as you eat breakfast that literally millions and millions of people who were in Germany are now in Austria. The population of Germany is waning, and people are flooding into Austria.

Well, actually, not exactly. That’s the impression you might have initially: You were in the West of Germany, and now you’re in Austria, so you must have moved. There must be a mass Exodus going on if millions of people from Germany are suddenly in Austria. But actually, in the place where you are now, the sky is the same as it was before, the climate is the same, the people are the same, and in fact – your location is the same! How is this possible? Here’s how: While you were sleeping, an invasion took place. A swift but decisive battle was fought, and invaders from Austria re-drew the border dividing Germany from Austria, as illustrated on the right. People who regarded themselves as German before still regard themselves as Germans now, but the Austrians – they will take some convincing!

The Invading Austrians are happy for you to continue life as before, which you happily do. OK, so you’ve come to accept that although you’re in exactly the same place you were in before, the militant Austrians now call the land you stand on is called “Austria.” But then imagine that the Austrians start sending out press releases: There has been a mass exodus from Germany to Austria! The population of Austria is on the rapid rise! Austria must be really popular, because people are leaving Germany and moving to Austria. You can’t believe your eyes as you read the headlines in one after the other daily Germ- I mean Austrian newspaper. This is nonsense! That’s not what happened at all. Nobody changed where they live – The Austrians have just changed the labels on the map! There’s no “move” from Germany to Austria going on.

OK, as you can probably gather, I’m painting this scene as an analogy, and the scene is now set. I’m really talking about philosophy of mind and two points of view therein: Dualism and Physicalism. Physicalism is Germany. Dualism is Austria. Dualists are changing the map.
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In the Nuts and Bolts series I lay out some of the basic concepts thrown around in my areas of interest – philosophy, theology and biblical studies – and explain them for those unfamiliar with them.

This time I’m looking at the “Original Position,” a term that originates with John Rawls, one of the most significant political philosophers of the 20^th century. Rawls, like many people in the Western democratic tradition, advanced a form of social contractarianism; the view that the principles of just government are grounded in an agreement (a “social contract”) between the governed and those who govern. Those who govern must govern according to the terms of that contract, and in fact fellow citizens should only support policies or laws that are in keeping with that contract.

But what sort of contract would that be? Is it an overtly stated contract that we all actually agree to? No. Like many other social contractarians (e.g. John Locke), Rawls realised that the types of contracts that everyone might actually agree to could be significantly flawed in all kinds of ways. We want to think of social arrangements in terms of contracts partly because it stresses the fact that each side has the power to negotiate with the other on equal footing with them. But this is often not the case. Simply out of ignorance, for example, we might agree to terms that are actually unjust to us and unfairly advantageous to others. What if members of an ethnic minority in your society were willing to agree to a social contract that, unbeknownst to them, actually had the consequence that they were exploited and seriously disadvantaged when it came to, say, employment? What if all the kind, gentle people were happy to endure conditions in, say, trade negotiations that were flagrantly unfair to them and helpful to cutthroat, assertive, dishonest swindlers? So the actual contracts that people happen to form aren’t really good enough here.

What is needed to come up with the standard of what sorts of laws and public policies are acceptable, then, is a kind of hypothetical social contract, one that we would arrive at under idealised conditions. And what sort of conditions are those, you might ask? Here is where the title of this blog comes into play: The constitutional basis of law and government in a just society, says Rawls, are those that we – or at least ideal versions of ourselves – would formulate from the perspective of the Original Position.
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Do babies come into this world with a natural tendency to tell right from wrong, or is their stance entirely informed by social conditioning? Or is it both?

I’ve blogged in the past on ethical intuitionism, and I had some favourable things to say about it. Properly functioning people under the right sorts of conditions, I maintain, have a (fallible) tendency to form true moral beliefs. I also blogged recently about the fact that children, in the course of healthy, normal development without extraordinary intervention, naturally form belief in God.

What about healthy babies and moral beliefs? Do they naturally form true moral beliefs, or is it all a matter of social conditioning and etiquette? Well, I’ve already answered that question by supporting ethical intuitionism. If that’s a plausible view on true moral belief formation in general, then it will be true of everyone as they develop into a competent knower. But is there any scientific evidence that very young children and babies actually do naturally form (what many of us would take to be) true moral beliefs?
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“Ah, those silly creationists are at it again. Every real scientist knows that evolution is fact, and then these people with no real experience in science come along and bumble through the issues without understanding them at all. And as for those geographers! I have no real time for geography myself, but pah! Everyone knows the earth is flat!”

Ironic, right? Anyone who would say this is playing by an obvious double standard, and they would look a bit silly, to put things mildly. They would be doing the very thing they complain about others doing. Just imagine my surprise then when I read through Lawrence’s Krauss’s reflections (I think after reading it you might be justified in calling it a bit of an outburst) on his debate with William Lane Craig.
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Is atheism or theism more natural for human beings?

According to online author Tim Covell, “Everyone is born atheist. Religion is learned.” Over at the “rational response squad” you’re treated to the claim that “Many people don’t know it but everyone is born an Atheist, it’s not until a child has religious beliefs Pushed on them with out any evidence to support them that they “think” their [sic] a Theist.” David McAfee makes the same claim: “Now, the way I see it, everybody is born an atheist and, without submersion into religion as a child, we would most likely maintain that position…”  These are just examples. There are plenty more out there in the non-peer-reviewed pool of “intellectual diversity” that is the internet.

Now, there’s at least some truth here. Newborns don’t have a lot by way of beliefs. They’re an ignorant sort, you could say, so the fact that they don’t overtly believe in God, or stars, or carrots, or causation, or planets etc, really isn’t very interesting. However, when people call themselves atheists, they don’t usually mean to convey their ignorance. It’s hardly fair game to point out what babies don’t know as grounds for any claims about what’s natural for intellectually developed adults to believe. To simply talk about what babies actually know is one thing – and something pretty uninteresting at that. What is more interesting is to talk about the kind of beliefs that babies – unaided by religious education – naturally form as their minds develop. It is here that comments like those above are quickly culled from the pool of those that can now make it to the level of scientific respectability. They are wrong – children are not natural atheists after all.
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