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During the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin presented a view that was to have a revolutionary effect on how we conceived of ourselves and our place in the world. Darwinism stood opposed to the two traditional views that had been assumed for centuries, the Classical view and the Judeo-Christian view. According to the Classical view, human nature is primarily distinguished by its rational capacities. For example, Plato considered the human soul to be composed of reason, will, and appetite. Plato thought that reason should govern the appetite and enforce its conclusions through the will. Similarly, Aristotle thought that humans are ‘rational animals’, sharing much in common with our creaturely neighbors but distinguishing ourselves by our unique rational faculties. Aristotle considered the powers of human reasoning to be their highest power, a power that should be trained to function properly in accordance with its nature. According to the Judeo-Christian view, humans are made in t...

Supposedly, Christianity will go away. We will evolve and move on. Infuriatingly for some, it's not going away that easily. Today, we remember a day when Jesus was supposed to go away. But, things did not go as planned.  Crucifixions were supposed to be smooth and orderly. Everyone played their part to make sure the punishment was carried out with maximum efficiency and elegance. But this was no ordinary crucifixion. Things had already been going off the rails. Pilate couldn't find a crime but gave in to the crowd's call for Jesus to be crucified. Jesus himself was not displaying the normal characteristics of the guilty. But surely the day itself would go without a hitch and everyone could put this sorry episode behind them. The first sign that things were not going to be normal appeared when Jesus had his cross taken away and placed upon the shoulders of Simon of Cyrene. Now the criminal marched without his cross. No one knows why this happened, but we know...

We all have an interest in human progress. Whether it be the accumulation of knowledge, removal of disease, increase in prosperity, decline in murder, or a wealth of other worthy aims, we want to see human life get better over time. However, for some people, being 'part of history' or devoting oneself to human advancement is the source of their meaning in life. It is the 'something' that transcends their own value and grants them purpose for their lives. Without it, they think their life would be pointless. The view that human progress can provide meaning in life goes back at least as far as Hegel. Hegel’s view is complicated. But one can grasp the idea by thinking about the nature of change. Hegel thought that change was due to conflict. First, a conflict emerges between two ideas or forces. Then, the conflict works its way out. Once the conflict resolves, another situation is created in which new conflicts are present. The process of change is a 'dialectical...

Those opposed to the pro-life movement think that their opponents have a nefarious motive for their activism: "they don't really care about babies. They just want power or control, or they just want to win." In the following debate, the Hitch makes this explicit. Watch Bill Craig's response. Starts at 1:16: Craig's response is right. The Hitch presumes that Christians don't have the intellectual resources to care for people in the present. All they have is a hope that the future, post-resurrection world will be better. All the Christian talk about life is really a veiled attempt to control others. Craig's response is the denial of this premise. He argues that we do indeed have the intellectual resources to care about people in the present. It is because people are made in the image of God that each person has intrinsic moral worth and comes with a set of inalienable rights. In other words, Christians have good reason to care for people in the present...

Why evangelize? Finding an answer to this question has become an urgent task since the Barna Group published findings that suggest that " almost half of practicing Christian millennials say evangelism is wrong ." It seems odd that those who have been saved by Jesus would think it wrong to tell others about him. My guess is that it may have more to do with motivation than with moral reasoning. Moral reasoning might tell us what we ought to do, but it can't tell us how to want to do it. I recently became a foster parent. My wife and I have been talking about it for years and so about a year ago, we finally started the process. Throughout the training and licensing, we kept talking about why we were doing it. We could come up with all sorts of reasons why fostering and adopting are good things to do. But we found it much harder to come up with reasons why we wanted to do it. I wondered what I might say if a friend or family member asked me "what makes you want...

You do something great, I clap. The child is naughty, he gets no ice cream. The athlete wins the race, she gets a medal. All of these actions and reactions seem built into the universe. It's just the way it is. According to Clifton Mark, this is false - this is not the way the world works. Oh, and to believe it is leads to evil. Mark defines meritocracy as the idea that "the rewards of life – money, power, jobs, university admission – should be distributed according to skill and effort." Most people, he says, think of meritocracy as a fact about the world. It is just the way the world works. However, Mark argues that "the belief that merit rather than luck determines success or failure in the world is demonstrably false." Mark offers one argument for his claim that meritocracy is not the way the world works and three more to support the claim that it leads to all sorts of evil. Of course, it could be the case that it is the way the world works and that ...

Did we learn the concept of God and infer his existence from some other more basic belief, or did we have the concept of God or a belief in his existence 'already in the mind'? Such is the issue of nativism: whether there is something in the mind prior to experience. Some theologians and philosophers espouse strongly nativist views. For example, Gordon Clark argues for a form of concept nativism. He argues that human beings have “innate ideas and a priori categories” the purpose of which are for “receiving a verbal revelation, of approaching God in prayer, and of conversing with other men about God and spiritual realities.” Clark makes two arguments for his view. First, he argues that it is not possible to arrive at a concept of God from sense experience: "Since man was created in the image of God, he has an innate idea of God…it is not possible for a blank mind to abstract the concept of God from sensory experience nor to lift sensory language by its bootstraps to a s...

Amber Petrovich argues that too many old people are in charge and that they should stand aside to make way for the young . The point is simple: Older people know less about what life is like now than younger people. Since government is about the present, younger people are better equipped to be in charge: "too many of our politicians are too out of touch to be making crucial policy decisions that affect millions of lives every day...I will never claim to know what adult life was like in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, but I do know what adult life is like now. So why are you still making decisions for people like me who are becoming adults in this century?...The world now is drastically different … so why aren’t our politicians?" Oddly, I have recently been saying exactly the opposite: Older people have had more opportunity to experience life and ought to have gained much wisdom from those experiences. Thus, it is better to be governed by older people than younger. I even th...

“we had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and national community” (Martin Luther King) Is it okay for a Christian to break the law? On the one hand, the Bible tells us to to obey governing authorities (1 Peter 2; Romans 13). On the other hand, there are examples of apparent justified law-breaking (Esther 4; Daniel 1, 3, 6; Acts 5:29). Occasionally, Christians are obliged to break the law. When the law asks us to perform acts contrary to the explicit command of God, we are obliged to obey God. For example, Christians are obliged to disobey any prescription to refrain from worship of God. We are also obligated to explain the gospel to people (sometimes this gets us arrested ). According to Martin Luther King, Christians ought to disobey unjust laws such as segregation laws: “There are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obey...

"The philosophers of the past did not write in order to reflect their times or to provide future historians with something to do. Their work was intended to point beyond itself to something else - to the truth about things - and what matters ultimately is whether they succeeded" (Ed Feser, Aquinas, 1).

Consider the present state of political discourse. Isn't it, at least in part, a discussion about evil and what to do about it? Of course, it also involves thinking about some things as evil and other things as good. But once a political group has decided what they think is evil, the debate is all about what to do about it. Debate over the environment is about what to do to confront the bad effects of successful economies. The debate over wealth and poverty becomes a debate about how to shrink the income gap. The same is true of debates over firearms, border control, the moral status of the unborn, and a plethora of other issues. What price utopia? What a politician has to do is attempt to restrain evil without removing other features of overweighing value. Good governance restrains evil without diminishing other valuable features of human life. Thus, to govern well, one must have a grasp of the nature of human beings. Indeed, any political philosophy begins with answering th...

"School has to be bigger. It has to mean more than 'I teach my subject.' School has to be about teaching people to change the world for the better. If we believe that, then teaching will always be a political act. We can't be afraid of our students' power. Their power will help them make tomorrow better. But before they can do that, we have to give them chances to practice today. And that practice should start in our schools" (Sydney Chaffee, 2017 CCSSO teacher of the year, TED talk, Nov 2017). According to the Sydney Chaffee, education is a matter of social activism. Teachers are to be facilitators, "thought partners" who let students "grapple with complex, hard issues" without "necessarily giving them the right answers." Students are not formed, informed, or reformed by teachers; instead "students make choices" and the aim of the school is to "encourage students to articulate their own opinions, not to coer...

If you were to find yourself in court accused of performing an action that you think is morally permissible--good, even--but against which there is a law, how would you react? Most likely, even if everyone in the room thought otherwise, you would think an injustice was being carried out. Imagine being led from the courtroom to undergo lashing, imprisonment, or even death when in your mind you had done nothing wrong. I'm sure most people's stomachs would be in a knot. You'd be angry and incensed for good reason. The reason, I suggest, is that legal codes of particular governing authorities are beholden to a higher law. Now, perhaps you are wrong. Either there is no higher law or you are wrong about what it would say. If there is no higher law, then that feeling of injustice is merely a feeling and nothing more. In which case, justice just is whatever the court decides. If, on the other hand, there is a higher law, but you are wrong about what it would say, then you ha...