Aug 31, 2015 | Culture
Mars Hill is the famous place in Athens where the Apostle Paul debated with and spoke to Greek philosophers as described in Acts 17. It is also the name of an audio journal produced by Ken Myers for more than 20 years. A couple years ago Andrew Ferguson at the Weekly Standard wrote a great piece about Myers that prompted me to start subscribing to Mars Hill Audio. Myers is definitely a high culture guy, so you won’t find any analysis of pop culture in the journal, but he always does thoughtful interviews that teach me things I didn’t know, and helps to expand my understanding of the world as a Christian. (more…)
Aug 30, 2015 | Explanatory Power
As shocking as it may seem, a website dedicated to helping people find extra-marital dalliances is used almost only by men! Who could have seen that coming. The tag line for the Ashley Madison website, much in the news this past week or so, is, “Life is Short. Have an Affair.” Dubious advice to be sure, but it attracts mostly men: Duh!
Out of 5.5 million female accounts, roughly zero percent had ever shown any kind of activity at all, after the day they were created. The men’s accounts tell a story of lively engagement with the site, with over 20 million men hopefully looking at their inboxes, and over 10 million of them initiating chats. The women’s accounts show so little activity that they might as well not be there. … we’re left with data that suggests Ashley Madison is a site where tens of millions of men write mail, chat, and spend money for women who aren’t there.
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Aug 29, 2015 | Apologetics
[M]oral relativism implies that neither cultures (if conventionalism is in view) nor individuals (if subjectivism is in view) can improve their moral code. The only thing they can do is change it. Why? Consider any change in code from believing, say, racism is right to racism is wrong. How should we evaluate this change? All the moral relativist can say is that, from the perspective of the earlier code, the new principle is wrong, and from the perspective of the new code, the old principle is wrong. In short, there has merely been a change in perspective. No sense can be given to the idea that a new code reflects an improvement on an old code because this idea requires a vantage point outside of and above the society’s (or individual’s) code from which to make that judgment. And it is precisely such a vantage point that moral relativism disallows.
–J.P. Moreland, Love God With All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul
Aug 25, 2015 | Explanatory Power
At the website of the Theopolis Institute a piece was recently posted by Mark Horne with the curious title, “If There is ‘Natural Law’ How Can People Believe in Same-Sex Marriage?” I say curious because I’m not sure why five lawyers in black robes declaring gender complimentarity irrelevant to marriage somehow makes natural law an invalid concept. Nor does a certain percentage of people believing such things can be marriage invalidate natural law. Like any law, natural laws can be broken, but the law is no less a law just because someone decides to flout or ignore it. But first what exactly is “natural law”? (more…)
Aug 4, 2015 | Explanatory Power
I was looking for a quotation allegedly by G.K. Chesterton (I haven’t been able to find where it came from) to the effect that when people don’t believe in God it isn’t that they believe nothing, but that they will believe anything. We can see throughout history where this has no doubt been true at times, but I came across an atheist who seems to think what Chesterton was implying was that all atheists believe willy nilly in anything at all. This atheist, Austin Cline, or if he’s not at atheist, he is About Religion‘s “Agnosticism & Atheist Expert,” seems to think Chesterton’s quotation prompts this question:
Does Atheism Eliminate Any Standards for Belief, Truth, or Behavior?
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Mars Hill is the famous place in Athens where the Apostle Paul debated with and spoke to Greek philosophers as described in Acts 17. It is also the name of an audio journal produced by Ken Myers for more than 20 years. A couple years ago Andrew Ferguson at the Weekly Standard wrote a great piece about Myers that prompted me to start subscribing to Mars Hill Audio. Myers is definitely a high culture guy, so you won’t find any analysis of pop culture in the journal, but he always does thoughtful interviews that teach me things I didn’t know, and helps to expand my understanding of the world as a Christian. (more…)
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