Tag Archives: Morality

News

When pastors get it right: Pulpit Freedom Sunday 2012

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My favorite pastor Wayne Grudem, the best pastor on the face of the planet, explains why he participated in Pulpit Freedom Sunday 2012. (H/T Jeremy)

Excerpt:

This Sunday I have agreed to join nearly 1,500 pastors nationwide and participate in Pulpit Freedom Sunday, sponsored by Alliance Defending Freedom. In my sermon, I plan to recommend that people vote for one presidential candidate and one political party that I will name. We will then all send our sermons to the IRS.

This action is in violation of the 1954 “Johnson Amendment” to the Internal Revenue Code, which prohibits tax-exempt organizations like churches from endorsing any candidate by name. But in our nation, a higher law than the IRS code is the Constitution, which forbids laws “abridging freedom of speech” or “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion (First Amendment).

I fully understand that many pastors might never want to endorse a candidate from the pulpit (I have never done so before and I might never do so again). But that should be the decision of the pastors and their churches, just as it was in 1860 when many pastors (rightly) decided they had to tell citizens to vote for Abraham Lincoln in order to end the horrible evil of slavery. When the government censors what pastors can preach, I think it is an unconstitutional violation of freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

[…]I have compiled a list of 24 differences between the two parties on issues with a moral component. Here are some of them where the parties differ:

The rule of law (vs. judges who change the original meaning of the Constitution), freedom of religion in public expression (vs. freedom of worship in private), protection of life (vs. glorying in unrestricted abortion rights), the preservation of marriage (vs. promoting same-sex relationships as “marriage”), the limitation of federal power (vs. an unconstrained federal government), parental choice in education for children of all income levels and all races (vs. protecting a government-regulated monopoly on schools), turning back government overspending and avoiding debt that we cannot repay (vs. reckless spending that threatens to bankrupt our children and our nation), caring for the poor by reducing taxes to leave more money in the job-creating private sector (vs. ever-increasing taxes that drain money from job-creating businesses), a strong military to protect us and the many small democracies that look to us for protection (vs. damaging defense cutbacks that leave smaller nations, the world’s sea lanes, and our own nation increasingly vulnerable), and a commitment to stand by Israel (vs. snubbing its leaders and demanding that it make ever-greater concessions).

You can read 5 reasons why pastors ought to have participated in Pulpit Freedom Sunday 2012 here.

Here’s one of their reasons:

1.  The issues the country is facing are biblical issues. Pastors, more than many others, are uniquely suited to speak to the issues confronting the country in this election season.  Issues such as life, marriage, the family, the economy, the poor, and many others are addressed specifically in scripture.  The effect of the Johnson Amendment has been to make these biblical issues “political,” as if slapping a “political” label on an issue somehow removes it from the purview of scripture.  For example, a pastor preaching a sermon thirty years ago that abortion is wrong was just being biblical. But that same sermon today is labeled as political and, as a result, the pastor is sidelined into silence.  It’s not that the church is somehow becoming “political.”  It’s that politics is invading the realm of the church.

We need more pastors to connect what the Bible says to policy and events in the real world. We need to take positions that are in accord with what God’s Word says, and we need to be ready to defend our positions in public using public arguments and public evidence – especially scientific research – that will be persuasive to non-Christians who do not accept the Bible. That’s the only way to stop the cultural decline caused by the secular left.

The best introductory book on the interface between Christianity and politics is “Indivisible: Restoring Faith, Family, and Freedom Before It’s Too Late“, co-authored by Jay Wesley Richards. The Kindle edition is $9.99. Richards’ Ph.D is from Princeton University.

The best comprehensive book is “Politics – According to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture” by Wayne Grudem. The Kindle edition of that one is $4.99. Grudem’s is from Cambridge University. First-rate Christian scholarship on practical Christianity.

And you can listen to Grudem delivering Sunday school training at his church on every single chapter of that book right here. All free, and no ads. Be sure and scroll through all the previous years to get all the topics! Ethics, social policy, fiscal policy, foreign policy and more!

News

Atheist professor strips naked in classroom, shouts “There Is No F–king God”

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From Michigan Live. (H/T Newsbusters)

Excerpt:

Professor John McCarthy has always seemed a bit odd to Kyle Hillman, but nothing could have prepared the Michigan State University freshman for what happened Monday afternoon.

McCarthy was walking his Calculus I class through a practice problem about 1 p.m., finding a particular derivative, when he asked his students whether a potential solution he found was correct.

“Someone said it looked right, so (McCarthy) said, ‘Thanks, I need some reassurance sometimes,'” Hillman recounted. “‘Math is all about questions and answers. And Steve Jobs invented the computer, but what do computers do? They ask questions and we answer them.'”

McCarthy pronounced Jobs’ surname as if it rhymed with robes, Hillman said. That kind of deviation from the subject matter was not out of the ordinary.

“He always goes on tangents like this that don’t really make sense to the math that we’re learning,” Hillman said. “He said this four times in a row. That’s what he does.”

But what happened next was out of the ordinary.

“He started talking about his colleagues and how they’re all actors,” Hillman said. “He said, ‘It’s all an act and none of it’s real.’ Then he ran out of the classroom.”

Hillman, 17, said McCarthy pressed his face against the window to the classroom from the hallway, saying, “I’m not yelling. See, I’m not yelling.” Then he ran back into the classroom, put his head in his hands and began crying.

“He said, ‘It’s all just an act, we’re all acting,'” Hillman recollected.

McCarthy then began shouting and swearing about God and religion, Hillman said. The professor pulled out his wallet and removed a $1 bill, waving it around. After that, he ran out of the classroom again.

Hillman said he and about half of his 30 classmates left after that.

“He ran out of the classroom and some people walked by — they didn’t seem to be part of anything — and said, ‘Class is dismissed, you can leave,'” Hillman said, noting he had never seen the group before.

“I left at that point, because it was pretty terrifying.”

Hillman said McCarthy remained clothed as half of the class exited. Within minutes, however, the professor had stripped down and continued his rant down the halls of MSU’s Engineering Building, according to multiple witness accounts.

I’m not sure if this person is a good representative of atheism, but… HA HA HA! See the related posts below for some more atheists behaving badly.

Related posts

Polemics

William Lane Craig assesses Sam Harris’ attempt to ground morality on atheism

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This Reasonable Faith article is worth a read.

First, objective moral values:

So how does Sam Harris propose to solve the “value problem”? The trick he proposes is simply toredefine what he means by “good” and “evil” in nonmoral terms.9 He says we should “define ‘good’ as that which supports [the] well-being” of conscious creatures.”10 He states, “Good and evil need only consist in this: misery versus well-being.”11 Or again: “In speaking of ‘moral truth,’ I am saying that there must be facts regarding human and animal well-being.”12

So, he says, “Questions about values … are really questions about the well-being of conscious creatures.”13 Therefore, he concludes, “It makes no sense … to ask whether maximizing well-being is ‘good’.”14 Why not? Because he’s redefined the word “good” to mean the well-being of conscious creatures. So to ask, “Why is maximizing creatures’ well-being good?” is on his definition the same as asking, “Why does maximizing creatures’ well-being maximize creatures’ well-being?” It is simply a tautology — talking in a circle. Thus, Harris has “solved” his problem simply by redefining his terms. It is mere word play.

Second, objective moral duties:

Does atheism provide a sound foundation for objective moral duties? Duty has to do with moral obligation and prohibition, what I ought or ought not to do. Here reviewers of The Moral Landscape have been merciless in pounding Harris’ attempt to provide a naturalistic account of moral obligation. Two problems stand out.

Natural science tells us only what is, not what ought to be, the case. As philosopher Jerry Fodor has written, “Science is about facts, not norms; it might tell us how we are, but it wouldn’t tell us what is wrong with how we are.”17 In particular it cannot tell us that we have a moral obligation to take actions that are conducive to human flourishing.

[…]Second, “ought” implies “can.” A person is not morally responsible for an action he is unable to avoid. For example, if somebody shoves you into another person, you are not to blame for bumping into this person. You had no choice. But Harris believes that all of our actions are causally determined and that there is no free will.20 Harris rejects not only libertarian accounts of freedom but also compatibilistic accounts of freedom. But if there is no free will, no one is morally responsible for anything. In the end, Harris admits this, though it’s tucked away in his endnotes. Moral responsibility, he says, “is a social construct,” not an objective reality: “in neuroscientific terms no person is more or less responsible than any other” for the actions they perform.21 His thoroughgoing determinism spells the end of any hope or possibility of objective moral duties on his worldview because we have no control over what we do.

If you missed the debate between William Lane  and Sam Harris, here is the video:

And you can read a summary of the debate, written by me. There’s audio in that post, as well.