The Christian Research Journal have published an online copy of an article I wrote for their journal last year:
In a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times, the distinguished philosopher of science Michael Ruse raises the question, Is it morally wrong to believe in God? Some skeptics maintain there is something irrational about theism. But is it immoral?
Behind the question is the rhetoric of the New Atheism represented in the writings of people such as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris. Ruse historically has been fairly critical of New Atheism and maintains that, although New Atheists are “self-confident to a degree that seems designed to irritate,” they display “an ignorance of anything beyond their fields to an extent remarkable even in modern academia.”
However, behind their remarkable uninformed hubris is a “moral passion unknown outside the pages of the Old Testament.” Ruse notes that “atheists of Dawkins’ stripe don’t just say that believing in God is an intellectual mistake. They also claim that it’s morally wrong to believe in the existence of God or gods.” Ruse appears to have some sympathy with this motif of their thought and attempts to defend it.
See the rest of my article here
Tags: God and Morality · Michael Ruse · New Atheists · Publications1 Comment
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.
Just another mediocre lazy-ass academic philosopher.
If it weren’t for 50+ years of tyranny of the grade and arbitrary graduate school politics, many academic philosophy rock stars would have received a bullet in the head decades ago.
Academic philosophy is the Confederate Flag of education, currently preoccupied with little more than sex scandals/lawsuits and fending off accusations of discrimination, along with kindergarten gold-star-for-showing-up pretend education.
Ruse is just another academic fraud who couldn’t argue for obligation of any kind, moral or not, if his life depended on it. Which is why he stays well-protected from any kind of wide-open scrutiny.
There are some 8-10 year olds here in St. Pete who want to know when Ruse started adding “true” to “naturally selected” concerning his own beliefs and theories.