Keith Parsons's Blog, page 11

Israel, Palestine, and Terror

(This is content is a bit tangential to secularism issue, but it is not entirely unrelated, so I hope I'll be forgiven for posting it here.)



Prof. Jerry Cohen's chapter from my book Israel, Palestine, and Terror is available on-line here. I think it's one of the strongest pieces in the book. My own contribution (three thousand words) is pasted in below.



Terror in Palestine: A Non-Violent Alternative?



Stephen Law



In
this volume, the philosophers Ted Honderich and Tomis Kapitan argue
that Palestinians have a moral right to use terrorism. Honderich’s and
Kapitan’s arguments differ. For example, Honderich’s is rooted in his
Principle of Humanity, while Kapitan develops a justification within
something like the framework of ‘just war theory’. Nevertheless, both
arguments conclude that Palestinian terrorism has been justified in at
least some instances. And both rest on a key premise: that the
Palestinians have had available to them no viable alternative to the use
of terrorism. Honderich writes:



that
the Palestinians' only means to a viable state has been and may still
be terrorism is something about which I myself have no doubt. Evidently
it is a factual proposition in need of support. There is enough in the
history of Palestine and Israel to lead me to think that the
disinterested people who say the Palestinians had and have an
alternative to terrorism are less moved by history and fact than by
abhorrence for terrorism. The feeling cannot settle the question (Honderich 2008, xx).



Kapitan
argues that non-violent methods are unlikely to end the existential
threat he believes the Palestinian community faces. He says,



[t]he
Palestinians have repeatedly used techniques of non-violence in
combating the Israeli occupation… and have sought and received the help
of like-minded Israelis, but to no avail. (Kapitan 2008, xx)



Here
I raise a question mark over this denial that there is an effective,
non-violent alternative to terror open to the Palestinian people.

Read more »

ex-apologist: J.L. Schellenberg's New Website

LINK



HT: ex-apologist

The Moral Laws Require a Moral Lawgiver Argument

Consider the following argument.

(1) If God does not exist, then there is no divine lawgiver.

(2) If there is no divine lawgiver, then there are no moral laws.

(3) If there are no moral laws, then there are no moral obligations.

(4) Therefore, if God does not exist, then there are no moral obligations.

Why should we believe (2)? It's not hard to imagine what an argument for (2) might look like. One might argue for (2) on the basis of the following supporting argument:

Read more »

ex-apologist: Lovering on Immoral Theistic Belief

Lovering, Rob. "On the Morality of Having Faith that God Exists", Sophia 51:1 (2012), 17-30.

Abstract: Many
theists who identify themselves with the Abrahamic religions
(Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) maintain that it is perfectly
acceptable to have faith that God exists. In this paper, I argue that,
when believing that God exists will affect others, it is prima facie
wrong to forgo attempting to believe that God exists on the basis of
sufficient evidence. Lest there be any confusion: I do not argue that it
is always wrong to have faith that God exists, only that, under certain
conditions, it can be.

HT: Ex-Apologist

Doug Geivett: Paranoid Atheists, Take Note

I discovered this old post on Christian philosopher Doug Geivett's blog. He mentions a book by John Mickelthwaite and Adrian Wooldridge, God Is Back: How the Revival of Religion Is Changing the World . According to Geivett, the book "is a kind of protest against the excesses of paranoid atheism." From the description, the book does indeed sound interesting.

Church of England Rejects Female Bishops

One of the comments at the following link pretty much sums it up:

I find it amusing that a woman can be the Queen of England and the Supreme
Governor of the Church of England, yet a woman cannot be a Bishop in
that same church.

LINK

The Empty Tomb: Reply to Josh and Sean McDowell

A friend informed me that Josh and Sean McDowell, in the new (revised?) edition of More Than a Carpenter (MTAC) on page 134, have offered a critique of the relocation hypothesis, which I defended in The Empty Tomb (TET). I have reviewed what they wrote. Here is a rough sketch of how I would respond.



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Guy Kahane: Value and Philosophical Possibility

Abstract: Much seems to be at stake in metaphysical questions about God, free will or morality. One thing that could be at stake is the value of the universe we inhabit—how good or bad it is. We can think of competing philosophical positions as describing possibilities, ways the world might turn out to be, and to which value can be assigned. When, for example, people hope that God exists, or fear that we do not possess free will, they express attitudes towards these possibilities, attitudes that presuppose answers to questions about their comparative value. My aim in this paper is to distinguish these evaluative questions from related questions with which they can be confused, to identify structural constraints on their proper pursuit, and to address objections to their very coherence. Answers to such questions offer one measure of the importance of philosophical disputes.



LINK

Matt McCormick's NPR Interview

A great interview from NPR.

Keith Burgess-Jackson: Alvin Plantinga on the New Atheists

As an atheist philosopher, Keith Burgess-Jackson is not impressed by Richard Dawkins's use of contempt to attempt to win "converts" from theism to atheism.



LINK