Archives for December 2018

Several posts ago, I wrote about the inherent limitations of a secular materialist worldview in relation to ethics and ethical reasoning. I was both surprised and encouraged by the many insightful responses I received and I wanted to follow up on that discussion. I claimed that a secular materialist who wants to create a de-ontological system of ethics must rely on the claims of science for ethical norms. If you want to create a reasoned system of right and wrong without God, there are no … [Read more...] about The Materialist Atheist Worldview, A Follow Up

In recent years we have witnessed the surge of the so-called New Atheists. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, the late Christopher Hitchens, and a host of others have attacked Christianity and other belief systems. In the place of belief in a god, these writers view the world in strictly materialist terms; life is a series of physical and chemical interactions and no more. Science, and especially neuro-science and evolutionary biology, can provide the answers we need to life’s great questions of … [Read more...] about The Materialist Atheist Worldview

In a previous article I wrote about a shocker: Christians have a problem with sexual desire. I know that caught you off guard, but it was meant to surprise “traditional” Christians even more. There is the persistent and false assumption that the historical Christian ideal praises sexual desire within marriage. Not true for the early church. Not even true for Martin Luther, father of six children and passionate defender of marriage. Luther wrote, “Intercourse is never without Sin; but God excuses … [Read more...] about Gay Sexual Ethics, Part II

The line for the bar stretched down the block. Usually, I am not one for long lines at bars, but this was my first Guerrilla Queer Bar in Boston and everyone in the line was gay. The concept is simple. You put together a Facebook group and then once per month send out a message that the gays are taking over a straight bar for the night. In Boston, it worked surprisingly well. Standing next to me in line was a drag queen, or more accurately a drag nun. She wore a black habit with a nun’s hat … [Read more...] about Gay Sexual Ethics, Part I

Professor James Barr was infuriated. Specifically, he was incensed at the evangelical obsession with biblical inerrancy, the doctrine that every word of the original manuscripts of the Bible is without error and historically accurate. Barr had gone to college in the 1940s and been heavily involved in the evangelical student group on campus. That group molded his faith and his passion for studying the Bible. But by the 1970s, the movement had changed. The sole criterion for being an … [Read more...] about The Failure of Contemporary Evangelicals