Religious

Archive for Religious

Religious Views Can’t Well Be Compartmentalized

There is an understandable strain in the classical liberal tradition stressing the importance of “religious tolerance.” I am most familiar with Ludwig von Mises’ position on this topic, who defended toleration out of the need for peace. According to Mises, religious wars were the most terrible, because there was no hope of settling the underlying […]

Do Modern Evangelicals Oppose the Census?

[UPDATE below.] In my nightly reading I came across this passage in 1 Chronicles 21: 21 Now Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel. 2 So David said to Joab and to the leaders of the people, “Go, number Israel from Beersheba to Dan, and bring the number of them to […]

Physical Determinism and Free Will

An interesting discussion about free will and whether the physical universe is deterministic, which makes me reiterate my own view on these matters. When it comes to the vexing problems of dualism and also evolution, I think belief in an intelligent Designer (I have to make it a capital “D” since I’m talking about the […]

Religious Potpourri

Hey it’s Sunday, this is permissible… ==> On old review by Tom Woods of Edward Feser on the “new atheism.” ==> Ayn Rand was not a fan of C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man. (HT2 Jason Clemens on FB, who got it from Tyler Cowen I think.) But what did she think of Narnia? On […]

Because He’s God

A quick one: A lot of atheists / agnostics argue with me by pointing out that if humans did the sorts of things that occur in the Old Testament, I would be (rightly) horrified. Why then does this Yahweh character get a pass? Because He’s God. That’s not a cop out, it’s a perfectly fine […]

Jesus Attempts to Explain Why God Allows Evil

I was going to read my son another chapter from the second Harry Potter book, but he requested a story from “the Bible…your Bible.” (By which he meant, not the children’s animated book of Bible stories in his room.) So I flipped through and read him this, from Matthew 13: 24-30: 24 Another parable He […]

The Two Good Things About Christians…

…are that they publicly acknowledge that they are awful, but that there is a perfect role model to serve as a perpetual source of hope and encouragement. The older I get, becoming wiser and seeing firsthand the nature of men and women, the more I think Christianity is the diagnosis and prescription. Other worldviews lack […]

Not a Shred of Evidence for God?

One of the things that amuses me in “science vs. religion” debates (in quotation marks because I think that’s a false dichotomy, like have a debate between Superman and pizza) is the overblown rhetoric coming from the supposedly objective, rational, empirical side. (I’m sure the theists do it too, but they’re supposed to be the […]