I am a Brit living in America. My favorite restaurant is Cracker Barrel, I display a large star spangled banner in my study, and occasionally practice my ‘mercan accent (much to the embarrassment of my wife). I am constantly appropriating a culture not of my own. But then I’ve been doing it for years. In my teens, my guitar heroes included black blues players like Albert King and John Lee Hooker. And I’m not alone: Eric Clapton, John Mayall, Gary Moore, and a host of other white Brits spent hours appropriating the sound, look and psychology of the poor black man from the delta. So, are we doing something wrong?…
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Disturbing Reasoning
Today I came across two examples of disturbing reasoning. I am distinguishing disturbing from merely fallacious. Disturbing reasoning deserves its own box, brand, and–ever hopefully–banishment. To reason disturbingly is to make an argument that implicitly accepts a disturbing assumption. A disturbing assumption is some belief that is almost universally rejected or should be rejected as immoral. Here is an example from Penn Jilette: The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount…
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Why I Love the Wrath of God
Read the following excerpt from theologian, Arthur Pink. It is about the wrath of God. The wrath of God is his eternal detestation of all unrighteousness. It is the displeasure and indignation of divine equity against evil. It is the holiness of God stirred into activity against sin. It is the moving cause of that just sentence which he passes upon evildoers. God is angry against sin because it is a rebelling against his authority, a wrong done to his inviolable sovereignty. Insurrectionists against God’s government shall be made to know that God is the Lord. They shall be made to feel how great that Majesty is which they despise, and how…
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Atonement and Punishment: A Defense of Retribution
Here is a common argument against the penal substitutionary view of the atonement: The penal substitutionary view of the atonement entails a retributive view of punishment, but retribution is insufficient moral justification for punishment. Therefore, the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement is false. In response, I shall argue that the retributive justification of punishment is well supported by the Bible and by commonly held intuitions about meritorious actions. The penal substitution view of the atonement holds that sinful human beings deserve divine punishment and that Jesus Christ was punished in their place. According to this view, punishment is deserved by a sinner but can be absorbed by someone other…
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Atonement: Punishment and Blood
“Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man” (Genesis 9:6) Genesis 9:6 is a standard text used to support the principle of lex talionis (a life for a life). In this case, those who murder shall be killed. Although there is some debate over whether the text indicates that the one who kills is man or God, the principle is clear: those who commit murder deserve death. As Bruce Waltke points out, such a payment is a demand of God: “This is an obligation, not an option… Blood shed through homicide must be dealt with.”[1] Waltke argues that the…
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Lewis on Justice and Punishment
In “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment” C.S. Lewis argues that if one accepts that punishment is justified, then one must have some moral reason for it. However, there appear to be only three options: retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation. Lewis argues that neither deterrent nor rehabilitation count as reasons for punishment. Therefore, if we accept punishment as justified, we must accept retribution to be the reason. When we consider punishment in terms of deterrence or rehabilitation we don’t consider it in terms of whether it is just. Rather, we only consider it terms of whether it succeeds in deterring or rehabilitating. Whereas the concept of desert is conceptually linked to the…
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Planned Parthood
My house has parts–walls, foundations, windows, etc–and there are things that are inside my house–children, saucepans, guitars, etc. Being inside my house does not entail being part of my house. But there are boundary cases: Are my curtains or appliances part of the house or merely contained within the house? If they are inside my house and not part of the house itself, then I can take them when I leave the house. If, on the other hand, they are part of the house, then I should not remove them when I leave. Recently, in response to a question I posed about abortion, someone wrote this: When the fetus is…
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Why Taxes Aren’t Gifts
An obligation is an action one owes one or more other people. When one fulfills an obligation one does something good but not all good actions are obligations. Some actions are supererogatory, they go above and beyond obligation. I am obliged to pay taxes but I am not obliged to donate money to charity. Both actions are good but the latter is a supererogatory action. The moral status of an action depends on whether the action is an obligation. Failure to perform an obligatory action is wrong. The value of an action does not so depend. An action can be good even if it is not obligatory. It is good…