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Whenever Christians cite the their faith in support of some unpopular moral view, objectors often turn to a well worn argument. I call it the 'if you don't teach this, you can't teach that' argument. The argument turns on a comparison between the objectionable view in question and some other Christian view or Biblical text. The objector accuses the Christian of cherry-picking his beliefs. One version of the argument suggests that the Christian obeys only parts of his faith that support the objectionable view while not obeying those that appear to support the objector's moral view. The longer the list of Christian beliefs that the Christian does not support, the more effective the argument. And as long as the reader thinks those beliefs are what the Christian  ought  to believe, the objector remains persuasive. To be sure, a Christian who only seeks to fulfill some of his obligations while ignoring others is not consistently practicing his faith. Although we ...

Consider Fred. Fred hates cars. But Fred hates cars in 1946. We don't know why he hates cars and perhaps he might like modern cars. We can speculate all we like, but we can't say for sure that Fred would like modern cars. We can't say, "Well, when Fred hated cars in 1946, cars were very different. Fred didn't even know about modern cars. Therefore, Fred would not hate cars in 2017." The reason we can't make the conclusion is because no kind of car was specified as the subject of Fred's scorn. Indeed, it is highly likely that Fred hated all species of cars not because he hated every car he had encountered, but because he hated cars per se.  The above mind-reading is problematic reasoning, but it is used all the time especially in moral reasoning. The essential feature of this reasoning is some assumption about what a speaker (or writer) 'has in mind' when he or she says (or writes) something. For example, imagine you are back at school. ...