Web Papers

Of the various Old Testament (OT) ethical issues, Yahweh’s command that Israel kill the Canaanites strikes us as the weightiest. In this issue of Philosophia Christi, Wes Morriston and Randal Rauser highlight this theme in reply to my earlier essay, "Is Yahweh a Moral Monster?"  I am grateful for their comments and for the opportunity to respond to the key questions they raise. Since their objections overlap somewhat, I shall simply list and respond to the major concerns as I see them. In doing so, I shall touch on the contributions made by comrades-in-arms, Clay Jones and Joseph Buijs, whose supportive essays also appear in this issue.

The new film Religulous by Bill Maher and Larry Charles attracts those who are already fans of Bill Maher and his open hostility to all things religious. But Religulous is nothing more than filthy, nudie, druggie, and obtusey. There is little to laugh at and nothing to learn.

Independent agreement among a diverse range of scholars with
different worldviews shows that complex specified information  is a sound
criterion of design detection. Philosopher Peter Williams argues that even
scientists and philosophers outside the ID movement, including some who are
opposed to the theory, use CSI as a design detection criterion. Here, he
demonstrates empirical evidence within the natural world justifies a design
inference on the basis of reliable design detection criteria such as CSI.

Whether or not there is an objective purpose to life obviously depends upon
whether or not life was created for a purpose. You can't get purpose without
a purposer. It's impossible to entertain the question of whether life might
be created for a purpose without raising the question of how a belief in creation
relates to scientific attempts to understand origins – and especially how a
belief in creation relates to the theory of evolution.

As both an "educated" Christian and an ID theorist I find plenty with which to take issue in
The God Delusion; primarily because this rhetorical tour de force
relies upon setting up and knocking down straw men. Dawkins' review of natural
theology is anything but "thorough" in either breadth or depth and the book
delivers a feast of fallacies, including assertion making, wishful thinking, equivocation, data
picking, and  ridiculing anything Dawkins cannot understand.

The new atheists (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens) level arguments against Old Testament morality as primitive and barbaric, presumably undercutting belief in the biblical God (Yahweh). Yet the Old Testament presents creational moral ideals in Genesis 1-2. Because of Israel’s embeddedness in the ancient Near East’s harsh, morally-problematic social milieu, Old Testament legislation is in places still morally inferior, though offering dramatic, incrementalimprovements upon such conditions. Mosaic Law attempts to regulate and limit tolerated structures (warfare, polygamy, patriarchalism, slavery), permitting various social structures because of human hardheartedness. Though falling short of the divine ideal, Mosaic laws often point to it.