Christians and Abortion - Ignorance, apathy and shame

Christianity and Slavery

It shouldn't be a particular surprise to anyone that most Christians ethical views are influenced and informed far more by the media and the cultural zeitgeist than by a Christian world-view. What this means is that most Christians tend to be ignorant about a number of things that are shaping the minds and practices of people here in the UK. One example I will focus on specifically is that of abortion. I don't think it would be an overstatement to claim that abortion is the twenty first centuries ethical equivalent of the chattel slavery so prevalent in the nineteenth century. If anything it is far worse, and like slavery it has serious cultural consequences with respect to how we view certain groups of people within our society. In Wilberforce and Clarksons day the big question was whether or not it was wrong to treat black people as inferior to whites and therefore justifiably use them as a means for their desired profitable ends as slaves. The answer to this questions would affect how you would view and therefore treat them, because if they weren't a human 'person' with moral value then there really was little problem with chattel slavery.

"Is God a Moral Monster?" by Paul Copan

I published this article first on the Reason Blog: http://www.cck.org.uk/reason/book-review-god-moral-monster-paul-copan

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I have felt for quite some time that there has been a gaping hole in popular apologetics, namely, accessible and contemporary material on ethical issues arising from the Old Testament. The New Atheists have held up the God of the Old Testament as tantamount to an evil tyrant. Is God a Moral Monster? addresses some of these accusations head on. Paul Copan begins by quoting Richard Dawkins, who says:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully” (Richard Dawkins The God Delusion, p.31)

A Guest Response from Malin Freeborn on the Moral Argument (Part 2 of 2)

[Note: This is a continuation of a conversation involving atheist philosophy graduate Malin Freeborn and myself (Jonathan McLatchie) regarding the moral argument for the existence of God. This is part 2 of 2 of Malin's rebuttal to my first response. This response deals with my objections to his arguments from Scripture. For Malin's first guest post, see here. For my response, see here. For part 1 of Malin's rebuttal, see here. For my response to part 1 of Malin's rebuttal, see here.] 

It has been claimed that whether or not we can glean our moral knowledge from scripture is entirely missing Mayer’s point, that the subject he discusses in moral ontology rather than moral epistemology.  However, while scripture is not itself the ontological foundation of ethics, any theory of morality must provide some account of morality which goes beyond ‘Morality is the character traits of God, whatever those may be’.  It must provide concrete moral statements which must then be accountable themselves to reason and common sense.  Theological moral injunctions and their sources are not reasonable, and for this reason we must have a good look at the source - in Meyer’s case the Bible.

This system does not, on the whole, provide a usable ethical system.  It is not an answer to any moral problems, it is nothing but a signpost.  The apologist’s ethics simply point beyond.

Question: What is right to do and wrong to do?

Answer: The actions and character are good.

Q: What are they?
A: We can know them through the Bible.
Q: Then I shall look at the Bible.

A: I’m afraid you can’t read anything in the Bible without my commentaries.

Simply put, it seems to me that the apologist has a set of ethics and then attempts to back them up with scripture.  Anyone who follows the ethics of a religious person cannot know the character or voice of their god, so they must either become an apologist to determine their own reading of scripture, or they must put their faith in an apologist and do what the apologist says.

A Response to Malin Freeborn on the Moral Argument

Here at Apologetics UK, we seek to promote objective dialogue and constructive criticism as much as possible. Our attitude is that, if Christianity is true, it ought to be able to withstand any criticisms that are made of it. Similarly, if an argument we make is sound, it ought to be defensable. On the flip side of the coin, if Christianity is false, we don't want to adhere to its tenets anyway. It is for this reason that we are encouraging the occasional postings of guest articles by critics of Christianity, from a range of perspectives, in order to stimulate thought and critical reflection.

A couple weeks ago, I published an article by atheist philosophy graduate Malin Freeborn on the subject of the moral argument. His article was specifically a response to a lecture presented by Christian philosopher Stephen Meyer as part of the TrueU series.

Freeborn's article was disappointing in several respects, most notably his apparent conflation of moral ontology and moral epistemology, and his prolonged tangential detour into an irrelevant subject. I have dealt with Freeborn's arguments from Scripture in two appendices following the main text. Let's turn our attention to what he has to say.

Is Christianity Evil?

The late Christopher Hitchens in his rhetorical master-piece that is God is Not Great argues that religion as a whole is a terrible evil, Dawkins claimed that God is a sort of mental illness and the rest of the four horsemen, Dennett and Harris offer just variations on those themes.

If you are of the sceptical variety and only read other Atheist writings, that is to say that you only learn about Science, Philosophy, Literary Criticism, History and the like from other Atheists [This is not to say that this is the case for all Atheists, but certainly a growing minority] it’s no surprise that many have come to believe that Christians do and have done very little good in the world. I’ve encountered many Atheists unfortunately of this type who are just as indoctrinated as the people they claim they are against, sadly the irony is lost on many of them.

However I don’t want to appear overly negative, in fact many of the people I would rather spend time with happen to be thoughtful and pleasant Atheists. Sadly many although not all Christians are not interested in intellectual matters and I admit I have to return to a select group of non-theists for interesting intellectual discussion.

Steven Weinberg once said: “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” [1]

Even those people who don’t adhere to a particularly sceptical view of the world will have had their view of Christianity shaped by the often negative depiction through the media. EastEnders for example had a Christian Pastor murdering someone and then kidnapping his girlfriend in 2010, for my American friends EastEnders is one of the most viewed soaps on British TV. From the media you tend to get the picture that Christians in America are allegedly all like George Bush and Christians here in the UK are known more for what they are against rather than what they are for, as we all allegedly hate homosexuals, people who have abortions and Jerry Springer the musical.


Needless to say we may not agree with those things but we don’t hate anyone and in fact Jesus warned his followers many times to practice love over hatred and Christians are made aware of the seriousness of hatred in several places [2].