March 27, 2018

As I’ve mentioned before, Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the philosophers who I teach in my classes. Nietzsche was a perspectivalist.   This means that he believed that the world is just full of different perspectives or points of view, and that no particular perspective is superior to any other. So, contrary to what virtually all philosophers since Plato have taught, there is no comprehensive religious or philosophical way of viewing the world that is better, or wiser, or more accurate,... Read more

March 19, 2018

One philosopher who I teach regularly in my philosophy classes is the great German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche is well-known for his atheism. Perhaps surprisingly however, some of the people of whom Nietzsche most critical were atheists. The reason why? He believed that most of his fellow atheists in 1800s Germany were hypocrites. The definition of a hypocrite is someone who says one thing and then in reality does another. Well, Nietzsche believed that the atheists around him were saying... Read more

October 5, 2017

When I teach ‘Business Ethics’ to my students, I let them know that codes of ethical conduct are statements that one often encounters in the business world. They range from very vague at one extreme to very complicated at the other. They’ve become more popular in recent years. Partly this is because they offer companies a first-line response against legal liability. It is also because they set a behavioral tone, ethically speaking, for company cultures. At best, they are inspirational... Read more

September 18, 2017

The philosopher Dave Hume offers several arguments against miracles in his Enquiry. But I do not think these arguments refute the existence of miracles. After mentioning two of them last week, I want to talk about the last two of them here. Hume’s third argument for why he thinks that miracle stories are fabricated is that they always arise from among barbarous and ignorant people, in far-away lands. Such persons lack education and sophistication, and Hume thinks that they gravitate... Read more

September 11, 2017

In his famous Enquiry, the philosopher Dave Hume offers 4 supplementary arguments against miracles (or ‘prodigies,’ as he calls them). He thinks that these arguments refute the existence of miracles. I want to talk briefly about two of them here.   Hume’s first reason is centered on the idea of testimony. In short, Hume thinks that there has never been a sufficient body of evidence for a miracles occurrence because no miracle has ever been supported by the testimony of... Read more

August 12, 2017

In my ‘Introduction to Philosophy’ classes I often teach David Hume’s famous ‘Enquiry,’ from the 1700s. One of the most important parts of the Enquiry is Hume’s critique of miracles. In truth, Hume is not just critiquing miracles. He is trying to critique all supernatural phenomena (i.e. dreams, healings, visions, answers to prayer, interactions with God, etc.). The critique of miracles in section 10 of the Enquiry is a reason for thinking that Hume was probably an atheist.   First... Read more

May 25, 2017

Should we just throw it all aside and say that it is no longer of any importance for our day-to-day lives? Read more

March 13, 2017

Last week I shared a way of modeling Pascal’s Wager, which Pascal offers as an argument for God’s existence. This week I want to share three common critiques of Pascal’s Wager. 1st Critique: the Wager does not work as a demonstration of the advantages of Christianity, over other religions. I agree with this critique. Think about it for a second. You could run the Pascal Wager for a variety of different religious perspectives that teach the existence of an afterlife. You could run... Read more

March 7, 2017

Blaise Pascal perhaps is best known for his ‘Wager’ argument for God’s existence. I regularly teach the ‘Wager’ in my classes, and it goes as follows. Pascal says that every human being faces a choice. Everyone must choose whether to believe in God or not. You cannot not make this decision. You must choose, and if you try not to choose (say, by being an agnostic about God’s existence – someone who says we just cannot know one way or... Read more

March 2, 2017

Speaking personally, my intent is to share my Christian faith with large numbers of my neighbors in the course of my life. I see doing so as being the natural outflowing of the spiritual exercises that I undertake in my devotional life. I plan also to train up my children in the Christian faith. My children will be raised as Christians because the Christian faith is the best I can give them as a parent. There is a cartoon out... Read more


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