I just turned on the news and saw that Michael Jackson died a few hours ago, aged 50, apparently from cardiac arrest; the Herald has the story, Pop Star Michael Jackson Dies. I saw him in concert when he came to New Zealand in 1996. Whatever one can say about his personal life, the man […]
Entries from June 26th, 2009
A Counter-Point on the David Bain Re-Trial
June 26th, 2009 Comments Off on A Counter-Point on the David Bain Re-Trial
David Farrar links to this interesting opinion piece in The Press on the David Bain re-trial, Plenty of Doubt in Bain Jury’s Verdict. While we normally do not link to media reports of trials, because the media tend to publish selective, sensational snippets of trials removed from their context, this piece is different. It is […]
Tags: Justice
Issues to Consider in Moving from Blogger to WordPress?
June 25th, 2009 33 Comments
Our comments feed died a few weeks ago. Not only does our recent comments widget no longer work but we get no notification of new comments so if people leave comments on old topics we have no idea. It is extremely annoying and it means we cannot properly manage our blog; if someone left something […]
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Sunday Study: The Virtue of Judging – Jesus was not a Relativist
June 23rd, 2009 3 Comments
About a year ago I gave a talk on moral relativism for Thinking Matters Tauranga. During that talk I noted that relativism entails that one cannot apply the moral principles you (or your culture) accepts to the practices of other people (or cultures). I was critical of this position arguing that it suffers from all […]
Tags: Judging · Relativism · Sunday Study · Theology
Anti-Smacking Referendum: Vote No Website Launched
June 22nd, 2009 10 Comments
Visit the official Vote No website to get an overview of the issues, facts and arguments as to why you should vote no in the upcoming referendum on smacking being de-criminalised. You can also pick up banners to advertise the site: To put this banner on your site, copy and paste this code where you […]
Tags: Smacking
Not Voting is a Vote for Keeping Smacking Criminalised
June 22nd, 2009 6 Comments
I just had an interesting conversation with someone who is not remotely political, a sort of Joe Bloggs citizen. (Being somewhat outside normal, in that I like politics and analysing and debating issues and would find life boring without such things, I don’t interact with many ‘normal’ people on a day to day basis so […]
Tags: Smacking
A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.
No Defences Permitted for the Accused
June 19th, 2009 36 Comments
In, The referendum campaign is underway, No Right Turn’s Idiot/Savant gives an excellent example of an argument we see coming up a lot in the debate around the upcoming referendum on smacking. In addition to trotting out the standard ad hominem, that everyone who supports the reinstatement of the old section 59 of the Crimes […]
Tags: Bad Reasoning · Crimes Act · Defences · Idiot/Savant · Referendum · s59 · Smacking · Sue Bradford · William Blackstone