Skip to main content

Justin Vacula and John Murray

Very interesting conversation. Provides some nice insights into Murray's thinking and how his world view makes sense to him. Go here.

Comments

M. Stevenson said…
Murray doesn't really do much justice to the theist's position on your Evil God Challenge. My favourite part, at around 09:44:

Vacula: Why would the creator be all good, instead of all evil, or morally neutral? How can you get to that conclusion?
Murray: Well, because God is God. There is no evil in God. God is moral perfection.
Vacula: How do you know that?
Murray: How do I know that? If you want to see God, look at Jesus. Jesus is the express image of his person, the exact brightness of his...
...So I look at Jesus. Is there anything in evil, anything evil at all about Jesus?
*silence*
Can you find anything evil about Jesus?
*silence*
Vacula: Well no, I think you're missing the objection here.

Classic stuff, well played Justin!
August 13, 2012 at 9:08 PM
Paul P. Mealing said…
I’m always amazed at people who claim they know the mind of God.

“The first marriage was performed by God”. “I am a personal witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ…”

“If man had never chosen to sin…” there would be no natural disasters.

Our ignorance is based on what God “keeps secret from us”. “The big bang is ridiculous.”

“The more I read [the Bible] the more I believe its perfection.”

This is someone who reads a text to the effective exclusion of all others and has convinced himself that was is obviously mythology to others is fact to himself.

I thought Justin Vacula did a very good job.

Regards, Paul.
August 15, 2012 at 1:51 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

EVIDENCE, MIRACLES AND THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS

(Published in Faith and Philosophy 2011. Volume 28, Issue 2, April 2011. Stephen Law. Pages 129-151) EVIDENCE, MIRACLES AND THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS Stephen Law Abstract The vast majority of Biblical historians believe there is evidence sufficient to place Jesus’ existence beyond reasonable doubt. Many believe the New Testament documents alone suffice firmly to establish Jesus as an actual, historical figure. I question these views. In particular, I argue (i) that the three most popular criteria by which various non-miraculous New Testament claims made about Jesus are supposedly corroborated are not sufficient, either singly or jointly, to place his existence beyond reasonable doubt, and (ii) that a prima facie plausible principle concerning how evidence should be assessed – a principle I call the contamination principle – entails that, given the large proportion of uncorroborated miracle claims made about Jesus in the New Testament documents, we should, in the absence of indepen
159 comments
Read more

Aquinas on homosexuality

Thought I would try a bit of a draft out on the blog, for feedback. All comments gratefully received. No doubt I've got at least some details wrong re the Catholic Church's position... AQUINAS AND SEXUAL ETHICS Aquinas’s thinking remains hugely influential within the Catholic Church. In particular, his ideas concerning sexual ethics still heavily shape Church teaching. It is on these ideas that we focus here. In particular, I will look at Aquinas’s justification for morally condemning homosexual acts. When homosexuality is judged to be morally wrong, the justification offered is often that homosexuality is, in some sense, “unnatural”. Aquinas develops a sophisticated version of this sort of argument. The roots of the argument lie in thinking of Aristotle, whom Aquinas believes to be scientifically authoritative. Indeed, one of Aquinas’s over-arching aims was to show how Aristotle’s philosophical system is broadly compatible with Christian thought. I begin with a sketch of Arist
49 comments
Read more

Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism refuted

Here's my central criticism of Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN). It's novel and was published in Analysis last year. Here's the gist. Plantinga argues that if naturalism and evolution are true, then semantic epiphenomenalism is very probably true - that's to say, the content of our beliefs does not causally impinge on our behaviour. And if semantic properties such as having such-and-such content or being true cannot causally impinge on behaviour, then they cannot be selected for by unguided evolution. Plantinga's argument requires, crucially, that there be no conceptual links between belief content and behaviour of a sort that it's actually very plausible to suppose exist (note that to suppose there are such conceptual links is not necessarily to suppose that content can be exhaustively captured in terms of behaviour or functional role, etc. in the way logical behaviourists or functionalists suppose). It turns o
151 comments
Read more