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Showing posts with the label Richard Dawkins

Absolute Morality and Homosexuality

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Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglican Church http://www.stjohnsashfield.org.au, Ashfield, New South Wales. Illustrates Jesus' description of himself "I am the Good Shepherd" (from the Gospel of John, chapter 10, verse 11). This version of the image shows the detail of his face. The memorial window is also captioned: "To the Glory of God and in Loving Memory of William Wright. Died 6th November, 1932. Aged 70 Yrs." (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) One of the most popular arguments for the existence of God is the moral argument.  It states that God alone makes sense of objective moral values , and since objective moral values exist, then God exists.  A large number of people today, including atheists and agnostics, believe in objective moral values.  However, they do not agree with the Christian answer to provide a basis for those values. Sometimes looking at what can be considered the Christian answer, I don’t agree with it either. For instan

If we invite homosexual friends to family events, is that approving of homosexuality?

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English: A child's birthday celebration (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) This is a difficult issue to answer because we can't address all circumstances in which homosexual people could or could not be invited to family events. So, all I can do is speak in generalities and express my opinion. Let's take a look at different scenarios. Let's say we have a family member who is an atheist and you want to invite him or her over for a birthday party . Does it mean that by doing this you are approving of the person's atheism ? It would not. But then what about inviting a couple who are not married, male and female, to your home for dinner? They stay late, maybe there's a huge snowstorm; and they have to spend the night. Though you don't have the right to tell them what they can and can't do outside of your home, you do have the right to tell them what happens in your home. So, it would be appropriate to say that they are welcome to stay but that you would

Richard Dawkins: There’s nothing wrong with a little ‘mild pedophilia’

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CANTERBURY, UK, September 12, 2013 ( LifeSiteNews.com ) – When Richard Dawkins was 11 years old, his art teacher pulled him onto his lap, reached into his shorts, and fondled his genitals. When he told his schoolmates, he learned he wasn’t alone – the man had abused some of his friends, too. But 60 years later, the famed atheist author of  The God Delusion  can’t bring himself to condemn the teacher’s actions. Dawkins told  The Times  magazine last week that abuse like he and his classmates suffered causes “no lasting harm,” and that “mild pedophilia” or “touching up” shouldn’t be judged as harshly as rape or other crimes. “I am very conscious that you can’t condemn people of an earlier era by the standards of ours,” Dawkins said. “Just as we don’t look back at the 18th and 19th centuries and condemn people for racism in the same way as we would condemn a modern person for racism, I look back a few decades to my childhood and see things like caning, like mild pedophilia, and can

Shape or be shaped: Christians in an era of marriage decline

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February 6, 2013 ( Mercatornet.com ) - Christians throughout the West are dismayed at plummeting church attendance figures. They blame video games, or left-wing teachers, or Richard Dawkins . But perhaps the real answer is closer to home -- their own families. Divorce, single motherhood and cohabitation have been  destabilising  family life in America and other developed countries for decades. About one million children in the US each year experience the divorce of their parents, and more than half the children born to women under 30 are now born outside marriage. Reproductive technologies are also adding ambiguity -- and potential fault lines -- to family relationships. Christians as a whole  seem as likely  as the average American to be caught up in these trends. At the same time religious practice and church affiliation are declining. It seems obvious that these twin crises of marriage and faith are related, but what are the dynamics? Did religion decline and then marr