MandM has moved to www.mandm.org.nz.

Every post on these pages has been imported to the new site. Comments here are closed but they are open on the new site.

Please update your links.

We are finally moving to Wordpress! The move will happen this morning at 10 am New Zealand time.

There is nothing you need to do. No need to change your links or your bookmarks; we will still be at this address just in a different form.

We are switching off comments now and will turn them back on once we have moved. So if you have something burning to say get it already to go and post it on the new site after 10 am.

There may be a brief loss of transmission as we switch from Blogger and redirect the domain to our shiny new Wordpress home but it shouldn't last long.

See you at the new place.

PS. If you are having getting to the new site after 11 am, try rebooting your computer or clearing your cache.

Sorry all, it appears that between last nights bloggers drinks and this morning JS-Kit have switched us over to their Echo upgrade for comments which has effectively wrecked the hours of work I, along with the help of Bethyada and Stephanie, put into making comments appear seamlessly integrated and appears to no longer give you a link back to your own blog.

On the bright side the comments appear legible even if they don't look that tidy so I will get to work understanding Echo and seeing what I can do to improve the current state of affairs.

UPDATE
In true JS-Kit style the instructions for customising Echo were hopelessly techie assuming a huge amount of knowledge the average blogger does not possess. Given that Echo has munted the way our comments display I am pleased to report that I managed to turn Echo off and switch back to the previous format. Comments are back to normal.

There will be no Sunday Study this week as the past week has been taken up with preparing for the memorial service on Waiheke Island, the Faith and Science conference I spoke at yesterday and two other deadlines for written work due Friday; and on top of all that, our family car blew its head gasket yesterday morning, on the motorway no less, causing us to miss the first ferry to the memorial service. I ended up not going, getting the car towed instead and going to the conference early and Madeleine ended up sending the kids back on the passenger ferry by themselves while she took her Grandfather's car off the island by car-ferry, which saw her lost in Half Moon bay last night without a map - major dramas - all ended well but it was a long week followed by a very long day yesterday and we need a break.

We won't be away too long as Chuck Bird has alerted us to a terribly dishonest piece in the Herald about the anti-smacking law that must not go unanswered and I intend to tidy up my conference paper notes and put them up as a series entitled "Does Evolution Make Belief in God Untenable?"

In the mean time, if any of you have any particular bible passages you'd be interested in my dedicating a Sunday Study to in the future please leave them below.

You're invited to a Thinking Matters Auckland, God, Morality and Society, event:

What: Dr Matthew Flannagan speaking on "In Defence of Divine Commands"
When: Tuesday 4th August – 7:00pm
Where: Lecture Room 2, Laidlaw College, 80 Central Park Drive, Henderson, West Auckland
Format: Talk followed by questions, answers and discussion.
Cost: Free but donations are appreciated

Are God's commands irrelevant when we discuss moral and ethical questions? Many claim that this is the case and offer the following as an argument against Divine Commands: either an action is right because God commands it or God commands it because it is right; the latter renders God's commands superfluous, if they are right independently of God then God is unnecessary; however, the former renders God's commands arbitrary, if God commanding an action makes that action right then any action could conceivably be right. Given this, they conclude that God and the commands he issues, should be kept out of consideration of our ethical and moral questions.

In this talk Matt will challenge this line of thought and will demonstrate that this attempt to dismiss God's commands from our consideration of ethical and moral issues is flawed and will explain, in layman's terms, why a Christian should not be intimidated by this argument.

Matt holds a PhD in Theology, a Masters degree in Philosophy. His area of expertise is Philosophy of Religion, Theology and Applied Ethics. He is an adjunct lecturer in Philosophy for Laidlaw College and Bethlehem Tertiary Institute and is currently re-training to be a high school Religious Studies/Philosophy teacher. He has formally debated the Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand’s Dr Zoe During and the New Zealand Association of Rationalist Humanist’s Dr Bill Cooke and his publications appear in international journals of philosophy and ethics. He writes for MandM and has nearly 15 years experience teaching, engaging and challenging secular culture both in New Zealand and internationally.

The observant will have noticed that Sunday has been and gone and the Sunday Study is, once again, not online. It's location is currently in Tauranga, either in Matt's head or partially written on his laptop or (my preferred speculation) in email transit to me for editing.

In Matt's defence he has just finished teaching a three week intensive History of Philosophy course for Laidlaw College which saw him up til sometimes 3am every night writing the next day's lectures. Amidst those three weeks he had to prepare and give a seminar on Moral Relativism for Thinking Matters, research, write and preach a sermon for church, prepare for and sit his end of semester exams for his Teaching Diploma, celebrate Brittany's birthday and help me put together a party full of 9 year old girls. The minute he finished the lecturing stint he then had 3 essays to write due this afternoon and last night he had to prepare and give a bible study and drive to Tauranga for his last class of the semester which he is in now.

He is due home tonight and I expect him to be shattered when he arrives. Outstanding is the Sunday Study and two seriously overdue pieces refuting key arguments put forward by anti-smacking proponents that he promised to write ages ago but now he is finally clear of the chaos I am sure these will spring forth forthwith and the Sunday Study will be up later today.

Don't forget tonight's event from the Thinking Matters Auckland series on God, Morality and Society, Dr Matthew Flannagan speaking on Moral Relativism at Laidlaw College at 7pm.

Not sure if its your thing? Check out the video of Matt's talk Apologetics: Answering Objections to the Christian Faith.

If you enjoyed the video of Matt's talk Apologetics: Answering Objections to the Christian Faith come and hear him live at the next God, Morality and Society Thinking Matters Auckland event:

What: Dr Matthew Flannagan speaking on Moral Relativism
When: Tuesday 9th June – 7:00pm
Where: Lecture Room 2, Laidlaw College, 80 Central Park Drive, Henderson, West Auckland
Format: Talk followed by questions, answers and discussion.
Cost: Free but donations are appreciated

A popular view of ethics holds that actions are right or wrong only if a person or a community believes that they are right or wrong, and that it is inappropriate to apply your own standards to others. This position is known as moral relativism. In this talk Matt will look at the common arguments for relativism, argue that relativism is a mistaken view of ethics and show how relativism fails.

Dr Flannagan holds a PhD in Theology, a Masters degree in Philosophy. His area of expertise is the interface between Philosophy and Theology, Applied Ethics and Worldviews. He lectures in History of Philosophy for Laidlaw College and in Sociological Issues in Education for Bethlehem Tertiary Institute and is currently re-training to be a high school Religious Studies/Philosophy teacher. He writes for MandM and has nearly 15 years experience engaging and challenging secular culture both in New Zealand and internationally.

He has formally debated the Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand’s Dr Zoe During and the New Zealand Association of Rationalist Humanist’s Dr Bill Cooke; he has been published in several international journals of philosophy and has a personal reference from the then President of the Evangelical Theological Society in his resume.

The first Christian Libertarian Blog Carnival is officially on and features some great articles, worth reading including a contribution from MandM. If you are looking for some quality weekend reading, pop on over and check out what is on offer - you never know, you might discover a new second-favourite blog.

Matt has given me Part II of his Tooley, Plantinga and the Deontological Argument from Evil to edit and post but I am knee deep in my final assignment of the year which is due Thursday at 4pm. Further, I am having a very bad pain week and I am particularly struggling with mouse use so my computer time has to be assignment only for now. Won't be long!