Take the logic test, devised by Colin Beckley and friends. The test is HERE.

There are actually two short tests, each out of 15. I got 15 for each one, and since I’m an illogical nutjob (so people in the blogosphere keep telling me) I’m sure you’ll all do much better!

EDIT: As Madeleine reminds me, a hat tip is in order! Thanks Mads.

I know this may come as a total shock to many readers, but some politicians are not amazingly bright. Or at least even if they are, the arguments that they use to make a political point are – to put it somewhat gently – not always water tight. While this isn’t exactly front page news, I was browsing through some things that are front page news, and my eyes were assaulted with a couple such examples, and was prompted to mention them. For the record, I’m not a member of any political party and I didn’t vote for either National or Labour. I’d like to think that I would right now be reacting the same way no matter which major party was leading the government, and no matter which party had opposition MPs making ridiculous arguments. It’s about good philosophy, no more and no less.
Interested? Read the rest.

Nick “The Slasher” McGurk was found guilty of no fewer than nine counts of first-degree murder. A jury took just ten minutes to reach a unanimous guilty verdict. The case was open and shut. The judge donned his black cap and passed sentence: “Nicholas James McGurk, the court sentences you to death by hanging. Your sentence shall be carried out on a weekday next week in a turn of events that meets the following description: You are to be taken from your cell at midday to be hanged, but you will not know the day of your execution until the executioner knocks on your door on that that fateful day. That moment shall come as a thief in the night, in a most unpleasant surprise.”

Staring death in the face, Nick was in despair. He was led back to his cell where he would await that dreadful knock at the door. It was Friday afternoon. In the wee hours of that night, the Slasher couldn’t sleep. He had the following conversation with himself:
Interested? Read the rest.

I thought it was high time we had another “nuts and bolts” blog, part of a series where I unpack some of the basic terms and concepts used in either theology or philosophy. This time we’re in theological territory, looking at the question of what this thing called Liberal Theology (or “theological liberalism”) is.

As I’ve noted before when discussing the issue of inerrancy, Martin Luther said that the Bible made statements that weren’t correct about the number of people involved in battles. John Calvin said that the Bible made statements that weren’t correct about a bright star in the sky when Jesus was born. Charles Hodge* said that when it comes to truth and error, the Bible was like a marble building, where marble is truth and sand is not. Sure the building might contain the occasional speck of sand which isn’t marble, but we can still call it marble overall.

Now as I look around the world of conservative evangelicalism, I notice that nobody calls Luther, Calvin or Warfield a liberal (or at least, nobody that I am aware of). And yet for expressing this sort of thought about the Bible myself (namely that everything it teaches is true, but it contains incidental claims that are not factually correct), I’ve recently been called a theological liberal (albeit by a very small number of people whom I can count on the fingers one hand and still have a couple of fingers left over). Theological liberalism is the movement represented by the likes of John Shelby Spong, Lloyd Geering in New Zealand, or historically by folk like Rudolph Bultmann or Friedrich Schleiermacher. I wonder how these guys would feel at being lumped in with Calvin and Warfield?

Moving on to the issue of the afterlife, well known evangelical scholar John Stott claimed, on exegetical grounds, that the lost will one day be no more and that only those people who have eternal life in Christ will live forever. The same position was expressed by other evangelical authors like Michael Green, Philip Edgecumbe Hughes and John Wenham. The church father Arnobius of Sicca taught the same thing (this is just meant as a tiny list of examples).

And yet, for defending this same doctrine – on the basis of detailed exegesis of many parts of Scripture – I’ve been dubbed by one or two people in recent times a theological liberal. I wonder how John Spong would feel being told that he was in the same camp as John Stott!

Of course as many readers will see right away, something has gone askew here. All of this is just a case of confusion. Unfortunately there’s a tendency for some evangelicals (although fortunately not the majority) to think that their stance on any theological issue is the default conservative one (naturally!), and that if a person doesn’t hold their view then they must (obviously) hold a view that makes them a liberal. What’s on display when this happens is actually just historical ignorance of what theological liberalism actually is, combined with confusion over the difference between erroneous beliefs and a theologically liberal stance. As I said when I started the “nuts and bolts” series, rather than just getting frustrated at ignorance, it’s better to become part of the solution. So today I’ll be answering the questions: what is theological liberalism, and how is it distinguished from say, error or heresy?
Interested? Read the rest.

Lately I’ve been seeing some pretty unpleasant discussions at blogs where Christians have been positioning themselves in opposition to other Christians because those other Christians didn’t hold some doctrine that was essential to the faith, or else they did hold it, but they didn’t regard it as essential to the Christian faith. The example I have in mind is the rough treatment that William Lane Craig has received for not holding that an Augustinian take on original sin was essential to Christianity (even though he seemed, in that discussion, to think that something like it was still true). Think about that term: “Essential to the Christian faith.” Essential. Necessary. You can’t have Christian faith without it. Required.
Interested? Read the rest.

I know, I know. Pointing out that Richard Dawkins bungles the relationship between science and religion is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. Next to getting confused about what arguments for religious belief actually say, he has built the latter part of his career on the practice of being wrong about the relationship between religion and science. Still, it’s worth noting the occasions where he does this if only for the purpose of serving as a voice of reason against the choir of adoring Dawkinites.

The late Steven Jay Gould described the relationship between religion and science with the acronym NOMA: Non-overlapping magisteria. They are completely separate fields. Science investigates purely natural phenomena, and religion asks – well, religious questions; questions about theology, about God, about questions about subject matter that’s not part of “nature.” I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with Gould, just setting the scene, as Dawkins’ comments are given as his reason for rejecting NOMA. He has to reject it, of course. Richard Dawkins holds a view that is sometimes derisively called “scientism,” the belief that science is the proper way to investigate all questions of fact. If it’s a fact, then it’s something for science to investigate.

Now, here’s what Dawkins has to say about NOMA:
Interested? Read the rest.

Every now and then I make a remark about the unfairness and crippling partisanship of some evangelicals and the way that it harms our collective effort to present the Christian message to the world. However I don’t typically name names when it comes to people who have personally attacked me. I don’t like to give publicity to those who do not deserve it. This post is an exception, both to give an example of the kind of widespread behaviour that is of such concern, and also to point out that I’m not just making it up. I’m also putting this here to give the perpetrator the opportunity to publicly make amends, after thus far ignoring my public invitation to do so at his blog.
Interested? Read the rest.