Mission Statement

Say Hello to my Little Friend exists to serve several ends:

Firstly, to provoke readers and listeners to critically engage philosophy, theology and biblical studies as they relate to academia, culture, history and the most important questions in life.

Secondly, to demonstrate – and to encourage others to demonstrate themselves – that a perspective of Christian belief is not only compatible with the above, but absolutely conducive to it as an intellectually defensible worldview that has much to commend itself to the honest and fair minded critic.

Thirdly, to challenge fellow Christians to be genuinely self critical in their acceptance of theological or philosophical traditions, and to be willing to scrutinise those traditions with a mind to being faithful to truth, to Scripture and ultimately to God.

These ends are met in a variety of ways – through blog entries, discussions in blog comments, direct discussion with readers, through the podcast, publication of articles as prompted by issues that arise here, speaking engagements and face to face with readers and listeners at events.

About this Blog

Say Hello to my Little Friend is the blog of Dr Glenn Peoples. It primarily covers issues in philosophy, theology, politics and social issues.

That’s not all. Say Hello to my Little Friend is also a podcast, the most widely listened podcast on philosophy or theology in the southern hemisphere. You can find and listen to the episodes by browsing the blog (click on the “podcast” button over on the right to only see the posts that are in the podcast category), or you can subscribe to the podcast at the iTunes Store. The iTunes page for this podcast is here.

The subject areas that come up most frequently at the blog and podcast will continue to evolve as my interests evolve, but some that interest me are:

• Philosophy of religion in general, including arguments for and against theism, the (alleged) problem of miracles and the traditional issues covered in philosophy of religion.
• Meta-ethics, the question of moral foundations, and in particular defending models of ethics with a theological grounding (like certain types of natural law view or a divine command theory), along with defending the thesis that philosophical naturalism leads to moral nihilism.
• Theological / biblical hermeneutical issues including personal and corporate eschatology (heaven and hell, life after death, as well as theological/biblical questions surrounding the future of humanity and creation), biblical views of human nature, issues surrounding the charismatic/pentecostal phenomenon and various other areas of theological inquiry.
• The place of religious convictions in public and political life.
• Philosophy of mind, the questions surrounding the makeup of the human person and the relationship between the mind/soul and the body.
• More recently, the issue of the freedom of the will.
• Lastly (but never least!), general heckling of those with whom I happen to disagree, humour, capitalising on the political misfortune of others, music, and random comments that have no apparent causal explanation.

Although I am a Christian, when it comes to the sorts of debates that Christians and non-Christians get into, while I am a participant and a commentator, I do not want to be a cheerleader. Fairness is one of the most important measures of integrity, and I certainly do not wish to give religion a “free pass.” I criticise the arguments of Christians as directly as I do the arguments of non-believers when I think that they go wrong, as I think that by doing so I am actually doing the Christian community a service. Christians – like atheists – are not helped by having their intellectual standards lowered by poor argumentation that is accepted because of a partisan spirit. The pursuit of excellence involves the willingness to reject bad arguments even when they are given in defence of “your side.”

Glenn Peoples