The world is full of bizarre phobias. One of the strangest is arachibutyrophobia, the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. (If you're that scared then why are you eating a Reese Peanut butter cup to begin with?!)

As a theologian, my pick for the weirdest phobia (at least on the surface) is ouranophobia, the fear of heaven. How could anybody fear heaven? Isn't that crazy?

The problem is that when you consider the kinds of images of heaven that people have gleaned from the church, ouranophobia doesn't seem like such a strange condition after all. For example, because heaven is presumably about worshipping God, and we're supposed to be worshipping God in church, many have concluded that heaven will be like a never-ending worship church service. The problem with that image is that Christians generally don't seem to view the church service as the absolute high point of their week, so it is dubious based on that evidence to think that a never-ending church service will be the place of maximal joy. Indeed, it is almost like telling a child that is diligently chewing his vegetables that heaven is like eating an endless bowl of raw broccoli and cauliflower. FULL POST

Imagine a defense attorney that is trying to defend his client's innocence against the charge of murder. To his initial delight the defense attorney comes across an eyewitness who is emphatic that the attorney's client did not commit the murder. The reason? The eyewitness says he saw another man commit the crime. Do you think the attorney would be delighted at this discovery? Do you think he would welcome the testimony? Of course. Any minimally capable defense attorney would do precisely that.

But then imagine if the defense attorney expressed reservations about the value of the eyewitness. The reason? "My client says the murderer was wearing a red shirt but the eyewitness says he was wearing a blue shirt." Yeah, so? I mean are you kidding? Mr. Attorney, how about some perspective here? The main point you want to defend is not that your client provided an accurate description of the attire of the murderer. Those are mere details. The real point is to establish that your client was not guilty.

The attorney responds: "But what if people learn that the eyewitness disagrees with my client on the color of the shirt? That could call my client's entire testimony into question. I mean, if he got the detail of the shirt color wrong, what else did he get wrong?" FULL POST

The Supreme Court rejected the final appeal for clemency on behalf of Troy Davis. This despite the surprisingly weak eye witness testimony (much of which has since been retracted) which initially convicted him. This past year the United States criminal justice system executed 46 people, almost twice the number that was executed in Saudi Arabia. (Who woulda thought?) But still, that is beside the point for the present case. We can debate the morality of killing those who are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But surely we can all agree on the immorality of killing those where there is reasonable doubt of guilt.

Interestingly, even if Troy Davis is guilty, the act of executing him given the evidence of his guilt (or lack thereof) is unconscionable.

Consider an illustration. You're driving home when you see what looks like a dummy lying on the road. You drive over it instead of swinging onto the shoulder or stopping to take a closer look. In fact, it could have been a human person. There was reasonable doubt that it was in fact a dummy. What if it was a person?

Let's say that you decide to drive back later and check. Whew! Tt was a dummy after all! That discovery may get you off legally, but it doesn't get you off morally. You are still guilty for driving over something that, given the available evidence of the time, very well could have been a human being. And that is an unconscionable act. FULL POST

There have been many surveys of the religious belief (or lack thereof) of scientists. While certain factors vary, the overall pattern is strikingly consistent: scientists on the whole are less likely to be religious than the general population. And elite scientists (e.g. members of the NAS or Royal Society; nobel laureates, etc.) are less likely to be religious than the general population of scientists. So there seems to be a correlation between increase in scientific knowledge and decrease in religiosity.

In my experience many people seem to reason tacitly from this statistical pattern to draw some general conclusions about the evidence (or lack thereof) for key religious claims. The reasoning seems to go like this:

(1) The more scientific knowledge you have the less likely you are to have religious beliefs.

(2) Therefore, scientific knowledge is somehow incompatible with religious belief.

Or perhaps the move is more like this:

(1) The more scientific knowledge you have the less likely you are to have religious beliefs.

(2') Therefore, scientists must have good scientific reasons for lacking religious belief. FULL POST

If you would have told me yesterday that I would find myself in sympathy with a controversial ethical position taken by Pat Robertson I wouldn't have believed you. But here we are. Christian Post blogger Olabode Ososami's article "Divorce and Pat Robertson's Alzheimer's Gaffe" has changed all that. In an interesting article Ososami points out that Robertson defended divorcing a spouse stricken by Alzheimer's Disease because, as Robertson says, it is "a kind of death". Ososami goes on to quote Robertson as follows:

"I know it sounds cruel, but if he's [the husband] going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again, but make sure she has custodial care and somebody looking after her...."

Robertson then added:

"Get some ethicist besides me to give you the answer."

Ososami was not sympathetic to Robertson's controversial position. And it is easy to understand why. This seems to be precisely the kind of situation covered in the "for worse" part of the martial vows. Thus divorcing a spouse at such a stage seems to be a cruel abandonment, like the cancer-stricken wife who finds her politician husband cheating on her. FULL POST

Right now a prayer is being offered up by a desperate mother somewhere at a camp in Somalia. Her severely malnourished child is suffering from severe diarrhea and vomiting. She has been told by one of the men that these are signs of cholera. Her child is dying in her arms and she can do nothing. Her prayer is desperate and anguished.

If God hears any prayer he must hear this one. If any prayer is justified it is surely this one.

At the same time another prayer is being offered by a soccer mom in suburban Dallas. She usually drives the Porsche Cayman, but her husband wanted to drive it to a church conference in Houston. So she is stuck with the Escalade. And if there is one thing she hates, it is parking the Escalade. So even before she arrives at Pottery Barn she prays that she may find a parking space near the entrance. (In case you were wondering, Pottery Barn is a relatively upscale home furnishings chain in the United States, not a barn with pottery.) FULL POST

While reading through Michael Shermer's enjoyable book How We Believe: Science, Skepticism and the Search for God (New York: Henry Holt, 2000) I came across the following passage:

"Doubt is good. Questioning belief is healthy. Skepticism is okay. It is more than okay, in fact. Skepticism is a virtue and science is a valuable tool that makes skepticism virtuous." (xxv)

There is just enough truth in this statement to make it dangerous.

First problem. Shermer says "doubt is good." I reply: "Sometimes. But sometimes doubt isn't good."

And when might that be?

For example, I believe the following proposition:

"It is wrong to inflict suffering on others simply because doing so is pleasurable to the perpetrator."

Would Shermer say without qualification that doubt of this proposition is good? I assume not. (If he would commend doubt of that proposition then I would simply shift ground by arguing that he ought not commend doubt of it. And I suspect most of you would agree with me.)

So clearly it is not always good to doubt.

We can illumine the complexities by considering the following conversation I had with my daughter the other day: FULL POST

I was not very kind to David Eller's first contribution to The End of Christianity. I shall continue my curmudgeonly ways as I review his second contribution, an essay titled "Is Religion Compatible with Science?"

I shall begin my complaints with the topic. Why "religion"? Why not focus on Christianity and argue for the incompatibility of Christianity and science? That would be an easier thesis to establish (at least in principle). It certainly would be more focused. By arguing that religion simpliciter is incompatible with science Eller opts for an enormously difficult, overly-ambitious thesis. What is more, that expansive focus is simply inappropriate for this book. Remember the book under consideration is titled "The End of Christianity", not "The End of Religion." Consequently, an argument seeking to establish the incompatibility of Christianity with science would have been a simpler, more focused thesis and also one more appropriate to the book's stated purpose.

In fairness, it is not all Eller's fault. John W. Loftus, the book's editor, should have flagged this problem and encouraged Eller to submit a paper both more appropriate and less likely to crash and burn. FULL POST

Pete asked what a person who believes God is omnibenevolent does with "God hated Esau" (Malachi 1:3; Romans 9:13).

There are a number of complexities in these passages. To begin with, there is the fact that the specific individuals Jacob and Esau serve as symbols representing people groups (Israel and Edom, or more broadly, insider and outsider). Second, there is the potential for the hyperbolic use of language. Third, insofar as "election" is in view there is the distinction between election for a particular task and election for an eternal destiny. In addition, insofar as one accepts the appropriateness of the "scripture interprets scripture" principle there is the question of whether texts which seem to teach divine omnibenevolence (e.g. John 3:16; 1 Timothy 2:4) should function as interpretive controls of those texts that seem not to. If that is a defensible move then we might reasonably conclude "I don't know what those 'God hated Esau' texts are teaching but I do know what they aren't teaching."

With all that in the background I can now turn to my main point: the "God hated Esau" passages, so beloved of the Calvinist, actually contradict Calvinism. FULL POST

Hell. It had to come up sooner or later. And it takes center stage in Keith Parson's contribution to The End of Christianity, chapter 10, "Hell: Christianity's Most Damnable Doctrine".

I took away one important lesson from this chapter: Keith Parsons doesn't like Dick Cheney or Sarah Palin. In fact, I thought these were the two best lines in the essay:

"How can even the wickedest of human beings, a Hitler, Stalin, or Cheney, say, deserve eternal punishment?" (238)

"Socrates's existence is so qualitatively superior to a fool's that it would be better to be Socrates, even when he is having a bad day, than Sarah Palin having a good day." (246)

Wow! Those are real zingers!

Imagine for a minute that John Lotus edited a book called The End of the Republican Party, a collection of essays purporting to show why the GOP is so misguided and errant that the party should be disbanded. And imagine that Keith Parsons wrote two essays in that book, one targeting Cheney Machiavellianism and the other taking issue with Jesus Camp Palin. Parsons may very well have written two fine essays critiquing Cheney and Palin. But his essay wouldn't really be relevant to the Republican party per se. FULL POST