Extrapolating from Tumeke's December 2008 stats, the top 10 Christian Blogs on Public Discourse in New Zealand are as follows; these stats are used in the calculations for the MandM top 10 NZ Christian Blog rankings for December 08:

1. NZ Conservative (22 + 1)
2. Something Should Go Here, Maybe Later (Half Done) (24 + 9)
3. The Briefing Room (27 + 4)
4. MandM (50 - 4)
5. Kiwi Polemicist (71 + 1)
6. Contra Celsum (91 + 4)
7. Say Hello to my Little Friend (Beretta Blog) (94 + 3)
8. Star Studded Super Step (116 New)
9. Put up Thy Sword (118 - 20)
10. Samuel Dennis (129 – 67)

Of Note:

• Again, no change in the number 1 spot, well done NZ Conservative.


• Those in this month's top 7 held their positions fairly stably however some blogs saw massive drops – probably the nature of December in play.


• We welcome some new faces in the Christian blogosphere; Andy Moore's Star Studded Super Step debuts at number 8 (of course this blog has been around a while but this is its first time on Tumeke's and MandM's rankings) and new comer, Blessed Economist.

Other Christian blogs making the top 200 NZ blogs on Public Discourse are:

• Gavin Knight (131 – 19)


• Blessed Economist (137 New)


• Definitive (163 + 4)


• Section 59 Blog (175 - 9)


• NZ Debate (194 - 43)


• The Voice of Reason NZ (199 – 5)

(Numbers in brackets show the overall NZ ranking of each blog)

Note: This list does not include Christians who blog but whose blogs are not identifiably Christian and is based on Tumeke's classification and ranking methods.

If you think your blog should be on the rankings click here.

In “The Autonomy of Ethics,” David Brink writes that a literal reading of the Old Testament,

[Y]ields problematic moral claims, such as Deuteronomy’s claims that parents can and should stone to death rebellious children (21:18-21) and that the community can and should stone to death any wife whose husband discovers that she was not a virgin when he married her (22:13-21). We have more reason to accept secular scientific and moral claims than we do to accept a literal reading of these particular religious texts.[1]

In a footnote Brink refers to several other references to capital punishment in the Old Testament for various different crimes.[2]

I respect Brink’s stature as an ethicist, however, as an interpreter of scripture his work has left a lot to be desired. That said, I find the kind of hermeneutics he employs common in sceptical literature, so I will address what he says here.

One principle of interpreting literature is to interpret a text according to its genre. One does not read poetry, for example as science or scientific theorems as songs or math texts as romantic fiction. The book of Deuteronomy, in terms of its structure, literary form and language, parallels the structure and language of Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) legal texts. Many of the cases given are similar to the cases and laws in these texts. As such, this raises the issue as to how references to capital punishment function in such texts.

In a study of ANE legal corpus, Raymond Westbrook notes that seemingly harsh penalties are common in such codes. In old Babylonian law, the hand that assaults is severed; a man who kisses another’s wife has his lips cut off; a person who steals bees is to be stung by bees; a person who had thrown his victim into an oven was to be thrown into an oven; a man who raped another’s wife would be sentenced to having his own wife or daughter raped; a negligent builder whose house collapsed and killed another’s son would be sentenced to having his own son killed, and so on.[3] In fact, the Code of Hammurabi states that if a man knocks out the eye of one of the upper classes, his eye must be knocked out.[4]

Not only are these punishments harsh but they both appear inconsistent with the legal practice that occurred in these cultures and also with themselves in some instances. Westbrook notes “[s]ome law codes impose physical punishments and others payments for the same offenses, while some codes have a mixture of the two.”[5] Westbrook notes that the contradiction is only apparent because “in highlighting one or the other alternative, the codes are making a statement as to their view of the gravity of the offence.”[6] The laws “reflect the scribal compilers’ concern for perfect symmetry and delicious irony rather than the pragmatic experience of the law courts.”[7] The method used in legal texts was “to set out principles by the use of often extreme examples.”[8]

Westbrook points to the practice of “ransoming” as providing an explanation of how this worked in application. In ANE legal practice a person who committed a serious crime would be considered to have forfeited their life or limb, this, however, did not mean they were executed or mutilated. Instead they could ransom their life or limb by making a monetary payment and/or agreeing to some lesser penalty, usually decided by the courts. This background was implicitly accepted and understood to apply.

Westbrook is not eccentric in this view. J J Finkelstein makes a similar point reflecting on what appears to be very harsh capital (and sometimes vicarious) sentences in the code of Hammurabi and the absurdity and impossibility of putting them into practice. As Finkelstein notes, one law which states that a physician whose patient dies in surgery or is blinded by surgery is to have his hand cut off. Finkelstein remarks that “it is inconceivable that any sane person in ancient Mesopotamia would have been willing to enter the surgeon's profession if such a law were literally enforced.”[9] On the other hand, “if a system of ransom were assumed where the life of the builder or his son could be redeemed and the hand of the physician could be redeemed by pecuniary ransom, these laws would not only have an admonitory function (for which the more graphic statement of the penalty--execution or mutilation--is more effective), but would also be practical as law.”[10]

He concludes that Mesopotamian penalty prescriptions,

[W]ere not meant to be complied with literally even when they were first drawn up, [But rather they] serve an admonitory function. If one would be bold enough to restate Hammurabi’s 230 as a direct admonition it might run to this effect: “woe to the contractor who undertakes construction and in his greed cuts corners”.[11]

Interestingly many commentators of The Torah have noted it appears to operate with the same assumption. This is particularly evident with the laws regarding homicide. Ex 21: 29-32 deals with a case where an ox gores another person to death due to negligence on the part of the owner. The penalty stated is that the negligent person shall be put to death. However, immediately preceding this, provision is made for a monetary fine to be paid instead of execution. Joe Sprinkle comments,

[V] 29 applies the principle of [life for life], a man whose negligence has caused the loss of a life forfeits his own life. But v. 30 goes on to show that this operates within a system that permits a payment of money to take the place of the actual execution of the offender.”[12]

Sprinkle goes on to conclude, “In sum, there is good reason to suppose that the death sentence of v. 29 is mostly hyperbole to underscore the seriousness of negligence which threatens the life of another human being.”[13]

A second example cited by Sprinkle occurs in the book of Kings. Here an incident is mentioned where a person has committed a capital crime. The sentence is announced “a life for a life”; however, the immediate context shows what this sentence was. “It will be your life for his life or you must weigh out a talent of silver.” Sprinkle notes that here again “'life for life' in the sense of capital punishment has an explicit alternative of monetary substitution.”[14]

Perhaps the clearest example is on noted by Walter Kaiser. In Exodus 21:13-14 the law clearly distinguishes between accidental and premeditated homicide. If a man who has struck another and killed that person (an analogous case to a man striking a woman and killing her) seeks sanctuary, he is to be provided it unless he “lay in wait” for his victim. Jackson notes that “lay in wait” referred to premeditated homicide.[15] In Numbers 35 the same law is expounded in more detail; a homicide where a person “lay in wait” is contrasted with a homicide where the assailant “attacked him suddenly without enmity.”[16] This appears to be a reference to an intentional but not premeditated attack such as a ‘crime of passion.’

After laying out clearly and repeatedly that the a person who kills in pre-meditation “shall surely be put to death” the text goes on to state “'Do not accept a ransom for the life of a murderer, who deserves to die. He must surely be put to death… .” Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it.” Unless there was an assumed practice of “ransoming” the lives of those under a capital sentence, this comment seems superfluous. Sprinkle notes “The availability of ransom seems to have been so prevalent that when biblical law wants to exclude it, as in the case of intentional murder, it must specifically prohibit it”.[17]

In, Towards an Old Testament Ethics, Walter Kaiser draws the same conclusion,

The key text in this discussion is Num 35:31: “Do not accept a ransom [or substitute] for the life of a murderer, who deserves to die. He must surely be put to death.” There were some sixteen crimes that called for the death penalty in the OT…. Only in the case of premeditated murder did the text say that the officials in Israel were forbidden to take a “ransom” or a “substitute”. This has widely been interpreted to imply that in all the other fifteen cases the judges could commute the crimes deserving of capital punishment by designating a “ransom” or “substitute”. In that case the death penalty served to mark the seriousness of the crime.[18]

In my next post I will argue that this understanding of the references to capital punishment in The Torah makes best sense of the laws regarding adultery that Brink cites (also recently raised by Mark V in the comments section).

[1] David O Brink “The Autonomy of Ethics” The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, ed Michael Martin (Cambridge :Cambridge University Press, 2007) 159.
[2] Ibid, note 17, 164.
[3] See Raymond Westbrook, “The Character of Ancient Near Eastern Law,” in A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law, Vol. 1, ed. Raymond Westbrook (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2003) 74.
[4] Code of Hammurabi, 195-196, also 199.
[5] Westbrook “The Character of Ancient Near Eastern Law,” 71-78.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] J. J. Finkelstein The Ox that Gored (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1981) 34-35.
[10] Joe M Sprinkle “The Interpretation of Exodus 21:22-25 (Lex Talonis) and Abortion,” Westminster Theological Journal 55 (1993) 241
[11] Finkelstein The Ox that Gored 35.
[12] Sprinkle “The Interpretation of Exodus” 238.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid, 233-53.
[15] Bernard Jackson. “The Problems of Exodus 21:22-25 (Ius Talionis),” Vetus Testamentum 23 (1973) 288-290.
[16] Num. 35:22.
[17] Jackson “The Problems of Exodus” 239.
[18] Walter Kaiser, “Gods Promise Plan and his Gracious Law,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 35:3 (1992) 293.

RELATED POSTS:
Capital Punishment in the Old Testament: 2

I saw my surgeon this week and had confirmed what we expected; my recovery is outside the norm, I am not doing as well as expected. This means an extra month off work, at least, and no time frame as to when I can expect to return to work. Most people are back at work by now and fast working towards resuming full-time duties and are barely on any pain medication.

On the bright side the surgeon is not yet worried about my long term recovery prospects. There is still hope I can improve.

This is very frustrating for Matt and I as I am still fairly useless in terms of my ability to work, parent, blog, run the house and function in general and I still need a lot of care and support and drugs which screw with my brain. Living with ongoing pain and numbness and the limits that causes is very hard to take some days too - not to mention the financial implications.

We have been digesting this for a few days, hence the silence on the blog, but I am determined to get back to as close to normal as possible so Matt should have a few blogs up over the next day or so and I will keep working on doing the same too.

I am always slightly disturbed when I encounter Bush-haters amongst my friends. Disturbed not because it surprises me that Bush-hater exist but because my friends are otherwise smart, informed, thinking people who have a healthy degree of scepticism towards the left-wing, anti-conservative values of the media and hollywood; I just don't get how they can navigate other issues well but then buy into all the conspiracy, anti-Bush hysteria.

They in turn, of learning that I think Bush is one of greatest US Presidents of my life time and that I firmly believe he will be remembered up there with Reagan, Lincoln, Roosevelt and Washington as one of the best, think I am insane and are invariably shocked. They start throwing all the conspiracy theories at me, they talk about his motives, his war-mongering and the rest. Typically each demonstrates a superficial understanding of the issues and even when they have read up on some of these issues they still fall into the error of failing to understand the nature of politics and the necessity of spin demonstrating that despite their protests they have and do buy into the media and hollywood's portrayal of Bush.

In New Zealand, even among a Christian or politically conservative constituency, I am very aware that in making these statements I am amongst a minority and that many regular readers will be baffled to discover that I think Bush rocks. If you are such a person but you otherwise generally like what I have to say, please read the following article that appears in today's Herald as it summs up pretty much everything I would like to say.

This article, unlike today's Herald editorial claiming the opposite, was written by a political historian, educated at Cambridge.

Legacy the Bush-Haters Will Loathe
NZ Herald 16 Jan 09

The American lady who called to see if I would appear on her radio programme was specific. "We're setting up a debate," she said sweetly, "and we want to know from your perspective as a historian whether George W Bush was the worst president of the 20th century, or might he be the worst president in American history?" "I think he's a good president," I told her, which seemed to dumbfound her, and wreck my chances of appearing on her show.

In the avalanche of abuse and ridicule that we are witnessing in the media assessments of President Bush's legacy, there are factors that need to be borne in mind if we are to come to a judgment that is not warped by the kind of partisan hysteria that has characterised this issue on both sides of the Atlantic.

The first is that history, by looking at the key facts rather than being distracted by the loud ambient noise of the 24-hour news cycle, will probably hand down a far more positive judgment on Mr Bush's presidency than the immediate, knee-jerk loathing of the American and European elites.

At the time of 9/11, which will forever rightly be regarded as the defining moment of the presidency, history will look in vain for anyone predicting that the Americans murdered that day would be the very last ones to die at the hands of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in the US from that day to this.

The decisions taken by Mr Bush in the immediate aftermath of that ghastly moment will be pored over by historians for the rest of our lifetimes. One thing they will doubtless conclude is that the measures he took to lock down America's borders, scrutinise travellers to and from the United States, eavesdrop upon terrorist suspects, work closely with international intelligence agencies and take the war to the enemy has foiled dozens, perhaps scores of would-be murderous attacks on America. There are Americans alive today who would not be if it had not been for the passing of the Patriot Act. There are 3,000 people who would have died in the August 2005 airline conspiracy if it had not been for the superb inter-agency co-operation demanded by Bush after 9/11.

The next factor that will be seen in its proper historical context in years to come will be the true reasons for invading Afghanistan in October 2001 and Iraq in April 2003. The conspiracy theories believed by many (generally, but not always) stupid people – that it was "all about oil", or the securing of contracts for the US-based Halliburton corporation, etc – will slip into the obscurity from which they should never have emerged had it not been for comedian-filmmakers such as Michael Moore.

Instead, the obvious fact that there was a good case for invading Iraq based on 14 spurned UN resolutions, massive human rights abuses and unfinished business following the interrupted invasion of 1991 will be recalled.

Similarly, the cold light of history will absolve Bush of the worst conspiracy-theory accusation: that he knew there were no WMDs in Iraq. History will show that, in common with the rest of his administration, the British Government, Saddam's own generals, the French, Chinese, Israeli and Russian intelligence agencies, and of course SIS and the CIA, everyone assumed that a murderous dictator does not voluntarily destroy the WMD arsenal he has used against his own people. And if he does, he does not then expel the UN weapons inspectorate looking for proof of it, as he did in 1998 and again in 2001.

Mr Bush assumed that the Coalition forces would find mass graves, torture chambers, evidence for the gross abuse of the UN's food-for-oil programme, but also WMDs. He was right about each but the last, and history will place him in the mainstream of Western, Eastern and Arab thinking on the matter.

History will probably, assuming it is researched and written objectively, congratulate Mr Bush on the fact that whereas in 2000 Libya was an active and vicious member of what he was accurately to describe as an "axis of evil" of rogue states willing to employ terrorism to gain its ends, four years later Colonel Gaddafi's WMD programme was sitting behind glass in a museum in Oakridge, Tennessee.

With his characteristic openness and at times almost self-defeating honesty, Mr Bush has been the first to acknowledge his mistakes – for example, tardiness over Hurricane Katrina – but there are some he made not because he was a ranting Right-winger, but because he was too keen to win bipartisan support. The invasion of Iraq should probably have taken place months earlier, but was held up by the attempt to find support from UN security council members, such as Jacques Chirac's France, that had ties to Iraq and hostility towards the Anglo-Americans. History will also take Mr Bush's verbal fumbling into account, reminding us that Ronald Reagan also mis-spoke regularly, but was still a fine president. The first MBA president, who had a higher grade-point average at Yale than John Kerry, Mr Bush's supposed lack of intellect will be seen to be a myth once the papers in his Presidential Library in the Southern Methodist University in Dallas are available.

Films such as Oliver North's W, which portray him as a spitting, oafish frat boy who eats with his mouth open and is rude to servants, will be revealed by the diaries and correspondence of those around him to be absurd travesties, of this charming, interesting, beautifully mannered history buff who, were he not the most powerful man in the world, would be a fine person to have as a pal.

Instead of Al Franken, history will listen to Bob Geldof praising Mr Bush's efforts over Aids and malaria in Africa; or to Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India, who told him last week: "The people of India deeply love you." And certainly to the women of Afghanistan thanking him for saving them from Taliban abuse, degradation and tyranny.

When Abu Ghraib is mentioned, history will remind us that it was the Bush Administration that imprisoned those responsible for the horrors. When water-boarding is brought up, we will see that it was only used on three suspects, one of whom was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda's chief of operational planning, who divulged vast amounts of information that saved hundreds of innocent lives. When extraordinary renditions are queried, historians will ask how else the world's most dangerous terrorists should have been transported. On scheduled flights?

The credit crunch, brought on by the Democrats in Congress insisting upon home ownership for credit-unworthy people, will initially be blamed on Bush, but the perspective of time will show that the problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started with the deregulation of the Clinton era. Instead Bush's very un-ideological but vast rescue package of $700 billion (£480 billion) might well be seen as lessening the impact of the squeeze, and putting America in position to be the first country out of recession, helped along by his huge tax-cut packages since 2000. Sneered at for being "simplistic" in his reaction to 9/11, Bush's visceral responses to the attacks of a fascistic, totalitarian death cult will be seen as having been substantially the right ones. Mistakes are made in every war, but when virtually the entire military, diplomatic and political establishment in the West opposed it, Bush insisted on the surge in Iraq that has been seen to have brought the war around, and set Iraq on the right path. Today its GDP is 30 per cent higher than under Saddam, and it is free of a brutal dictator and his rapist sons.

The number of American troops killed during the eight years of the War against Terror has been fewer than those slain capturing two islands in the Second World War, and in Britain we have lost fewer soldiers than on a normal weekend on the Western Front. As for civilians, there have been fewer Iraqis killed since the invasion than in 20 conflicts since the Second World War. Iraq has been a victory for the US-led coalition, a fact that the Bush-haters will have to deal with when perspective finally – perhaps years from now – lends objectivity to this fine man's record.

It is with sadness that I have just read that Richard John Neuhaus died on Thursday the 8th of January at age 72. There are various obituaries here

For those New Zealand readers who won’t know. Neuhaus was a Lutheran turned Catholic priest who wrote and commented extensively on issues of religion and public life. His book The Naked Public Square was an important work challenging the modern liberal notion that religion should be privatised and not be utilised in public debate. Neuhaus was was a long time civil rights activist who marched in the civil rights movement, against Vietnam, and became a leading intellectual in the Neo Conservative movement. The journal he edited First Things brought together Jewish, Catholic and Protestant scholars with a conservative bent and produced some of the some of the most thoughtful and insightful commentary on issues related to religion and public life that I have read.

Neuhaus and his excellent and often sarcastically witty columns will be missed.

Recently I did a post on relativism and in earlier posts I have defended a divine command theory of ethics against various objections. In the comments section Mark V raised an interesting and thoughtful response. I hope Mark does not mind if I pick up on his points because the themes he raises are well worth discussing. Mark writes

You have earlier stated that if God exists we are obliged to obey him, presumably you mean we are obliged to obey his commandments. There are many commandments in the Bible, particularly in Deuteronomy that no theist today would ever dream of obeying. So even theists today use their reason and the facts to decide what is ethical and what is not. In doing so they appeal to a standard of ethics that is outside the Bible.

I think that Mark’s interpretation of the Deuteronomy is probably mistaken. However, putting his exegesis of the Torah to one side, Mark’s central point here, if I understand him correctly, is that we often know what is right and wrong independently of our beliefs about what God commands, in fact often we use our beliefs about what is right and wrong to help us decide what God’s commands are hence ethics is not dependent on God’s commands. This line of argument is common in the literature. In Morality Religious and Secular Patrick Nowell-Smith refers to an argument that is “familiar to philosophers but of which the force is not always appreciated”

[W]e must be persuaded independently of his goodness before we admit his right to command. We must judge for ourselves whether the Bible is the inspired word of a ind and benevolent God or a curious amalgam of profound wisdom and gross uperstition. To judge this is to make a moral decision, so that in the end, so far from morality being based upon religion, religion is based upon morality[1]

In Philosophical Problems and Arguments. James Cornman and Keith Lehrer express the same point.

Consider what we would do if we read that Moses had returned with such commandments as ‘make love to thy neighbor’s wife,’ ‘steal thy neighbor’s
goods,’ and ‘take advantage of thy parents.’ We would decide that what-ever was revealed to Moses, it was not the will of God, because these are immoral commandments. We do not justify that something is moral by showing it is God’s will, because the only available way to evaluate conflicting claims about what God wills is by finding which one is in accordance with what is moral.[2]

Several of the essays in Is Goodness without God good enough: A debate on Secularism, Faith and Ethics also make this point. In this book Paul Kurtz gives numerous arguments to the effect we can know right and wrong and live a moral life even if we do not believe that God exists.[3] The fact that ones knowledge of right and wrong is independent of and in some instances prior to ones knowledge of what God commands also figures prominently in the essays of Walter Sinnott-Armstrong[4] and Lousie Anthony[5]. In fact atheist populariser Christopher Hitchens frequently makes this point.

Despite its pervasive appeal I think this inference is flawed. I think it’s based on a failure to make an important distinction. Take the claim that right and wrong is independent of God’s commands. This claim is ambiguous: it could mean (a) that ones knowledge of right and wrong is independent of ones knowledge of what God commands or it could mean (b) that right and wrong exist independently of Gods commands. The first claim states that beliefs about right and wrong are epistemologically independent of beliefs about divine commands. The second is that the existence of moral properties such as right and wrong are ontologically independent of God’s commands.

Now the divine command theory denies (b) Divine command theorists claim that wrongness is (i.e. is identical with) the property of being contrary to God’s commands. Something cannot exist independently of itself. Hence it postulates an ontological dependence between divine commands and moral properties such as wrongness. The arguments above however do not refute this claim, what they show is not that (b) is the case but that (a) is the case. The arguments of Cornman, Lehrer, and Nowell-Smith, Anthony and Armstrong show that we can know what is right and wrong independently of knowing or believing in the existence of divine commands. Hence they show at most an epistemological independence.

Showing that beliefs about right and wrong are epistemologically independent of beliefs about God’s commands does not show that right and wrong are ontologically independent of God’s commands unless epistemological independence entails ontological independence. In other words, the objector here assumes that if my knowledge of something’s does not depend upon is my knowledge of something else then the two things can exist independently of each other.

This assumption however is false. Take a straightforward example of identity; the property of being water is identical with the property of being H20 as such H20 and water are not ontologically independent. Yet people for thousands of years could perceive water, drink it, detect it, use it etc without knowing anything about atomic theory. Hence, our knowledge of water is independent of our knowledge of H20. Yet this fact does not mean that water is not identical with H20. Two things can be identical without people knowing that they are identical.

As Mark Murphy[6] and William Lane Craig[7] point out those theists who defend divine command theories and or maintain that morality cannot exist independently of religion almost always have ontological dependence in mind. The same is typically true of atheists and nihilists who argue that the “death of God” entails nihilism. John Mackie for example argued that the kind of entities that exist in a naturalistic universe. A universe where the only things that exist are the things postulated by our best scientific theories is a universe where properties like rightness and wrongness do not exist.[8] As Craig notes these people are raising the question of the “ontological foundation for ethics not its epistemological foundations”[9] Pointing out that our knowledge of ethics is independent of theological claims people know or believe avoids rather than addresses this issue.

[1] Patrick H. Nowell-Smith, “Morality: Religious and Secular,” in Christian Ethics and Contemporary Philosophy, ed. Ian T. Ramsey (London: SCM Press, 1966) 97.
[2] James W. Cornman & Keith Lehrer, Philosophical Problems and Arguments (New York: MacMillan, 1979), 429.
[3] Paul Kurtz “The Kurtz/Craig Debate: Is Goodness Without God Good Enough” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, Eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 25-49.
[4] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong “Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, Eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008),101-116.
[5] Louise Anthony “Atheism as Perfect Piety” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, Eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008),67-84
[6] Mark Murphy “Theism, Atheism, and the Explanation of Moral Value” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, Eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008)117-118.
[7] See his comments in William Lane Craig “The Kurtz/Craig Debate: Is Goodness Without God Good Enough” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics Eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 25-49 and also “This Most Gruesome of Guests” in “The Kurtz/Craig Debate: Is Goodness Without God Good Enough” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics Eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 168 and also n 5
[8] John Mackie Inventing Right and Wrong (New York: Penguin Books, 1977 )
[9] Craig “This Most Gruesome of Guests”, 168-167

We took the younger kids to see Madagascar 2 the other day and our youngest, Noah aged 7, loved the bit at the end where the shark came out of the ocean, gave chase snapping its teeth and ultimately fell into a live volcano. When we heard about today's opportunity to see a dissection of a great white shark at the Auckland museum we decided to go see.

It was really hot and packed with people and standing room only; although our three eldest caved and went inside to the air-conditioned, seated, auditorium with live video feed, Noah persevered and we eventually managed to get a good spot up the front on the bench seats.

To say there was a bit of a media presence was an understatement; anyone would have thought the star attraction was a celebrity or a major politician not a shark.

This photo only shows the first ring of cameras around the shark and does not show the ones on the hill or the ones standing around us taking the same shot.

We were nabbed by TV1 who interviewed Madeleine as to why we were there [to see the shark perhaps...] though Madeleine came up with something cleverer than that, and what Noah thought might be in the shark's stomach; Noah's answer of "a bicycle and maybe a can" left the reporter looking perplexed so the footage may get scrapped, nevertheless - Noah insists TV1's news tonight is compulsory viewing.

There is a chance Noah might make it to air as we heard the same reporter interviewing one of the museum people and heard him ask about sharks eating bicycles and whether people expecting that were likely to be disappointed. On dissection, it turned out the shark had been eating fish (fresh, not out of a can and had not recently encountered any bicycles - Noah was most disappointed) thought it did have a snapper hook in its stomach which saw Noah standing on his seat; at least one fisherman out there is not telling tall tales when he speaks of the one that got away.

We queued in the heat and managed to get up close and personal with the shark. Here is Noah taking it all in.

You can watch the whole event online here.

UPDATE: Noah made the news but he was not happy about how the reporter reacted on air to his comment about the bicycle and we have already had phone calls and emails about his "imagination." So in defence of Noah, who formed his list of what might be inside the shark using google and books prior to attending the necropsy today, here are links to two sites that vindicate him:

"Almost everything has been found in the stomach of bull sharks, from bicycle tires to human remains."

"Stomach contents of Great Whites examined have contained everything from shoes to tin cans."

The following shows how November's Top 10 NZ Christian Blogs (public discourse) fare on Half Done's December stats compared to Tumeke's November stats;

1. [1] NZ Conservative 10 (23)
2. [3] Something Should Go Here, Maybe Later 17 (33)
3. [4] MandM 25 (46)
4. [2] The Briefing Room 27 (31)
5. [9] Put up Thy Sword 46 (98)
6. [5] Samuel Dennis 51 (62)
7. [6] Kiwi Polemicist 61 (72)
8. [8] Say Hello to my Little Friend (a.k.a Beretta Blog) 65 (97)
9. [10] Gavin Knight 109 (112)
10. [7] Contra Celsum 117 (95)

Top 10 Half Done [Top 10 Tumeke] name of blog Half Done rank (Tumeke rank)

Of Note:

• All Top 10 Christian blogs improved on Half Done's formula v Tumeke's - a few have close to 50% improvement!
• There are now 5 Christian blogs in the top 50.
• There is a change in the top 3 ;-)

Other Christian blogs making the top 200 NZ blogs on Public Discourse but outside the top 10:

[10] Section 59 Blog 137 (166)
[O] NZ Debate 159 (151)
[O] Definitive 165 (167)
[O] The Voice of Reason NZ N/A (194)

Note: This list does not include Christians who blog but whose blogs are not identifiably Christian and is based on Tumeke's classification and ranking methods.

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In two earlier posts, I discussed John Rawls’ defence of the contention that theological premises should be bracketed or excluded from public discourse. In particular, I appropriated the criticisms of Rawls’s position made by Nicholas Wolterstorff.

In “Wolterstorff on Religion, Politics, and the Liberal State" in Religious Beliefs in the Public Square, Robert Audi argues that Wolterstorff’s conclusion is mistaken. He argues that Rawls’ position is more qualified than Wolterstorff appears to think. Audi points out that Rawls is only, "speaking above all about coercive state power in relation to matters of basic justice, not about every political issue. ... Moreover, the emphasis is not on actual agreement, ... but on its realistic possibility given rationality."[1] [Emphasis original] Audi suggests that concerning issues of constitutional essentials and questions of basic justice there are “some very basic moral intuitions that are common to mature rational adults who are conscientiously devoted to living together in harmony”.[2]

However, Wolterstorff has not just argued that public reason is problematic because it will not deliver actual agreement. His argument was that such agreement was not a realistic possibility. He said, “It would be utterly unreasonable” for a person using Rawls' method to “expect anything else than disagreement”. Wolterstorff claims that agreement is not a realistic possibility because while some will agree, some will not. “[T]he reasonable thing ... to expect is not that all reasonable people who use their common reason will agree with ... [the] results, but that not all reasonable people will agree.”

Audi’s other points seem to be that Rawls limits his position to “basic issues of justice” and “constitutional essentials” and that on these matters agreement is a realistic possibility. However, I noted above that on many substantive matters there is not a realistic possibility of agreement. The question then needs to be asked, are these matters of basic justice or constitutional essentials? If they are, then Audi’s position appears false. On these types of matters, it is simply not true that there are sufficient common sets of intuitions for a reasonable hope of agreement to occur.

On the other hand, if these are not matters of basic justice or constitutional essentials then Rawls' position lacks any bite. If, for example, the question of feticide is not a question of basic justice or constitutional essentials then Rawls’s position entails no objection to appeals to divine law on this topic. It is only on constitutional essentials and basic justice that such appeals are wrong and this is not such an issue.

Note that if Audi is correct here, much of the sting is taken out of Rawls' position. One cannot appeal to comprehensive doctrines in contexts where there is widespread agreement on basic issues; one can only appeal to such doctrines where there is widespread disagreement. Therefore, on deeply contentious issues like abortion, euthanasia, homosexual rights, etc appeals to divine law are perfectly appropriate. Appeals to divine law are only wrong when there is widespread consensus amongst rational people.

However, Wolterstorff does address this issue in the article Audi refers to. In “The Role of Religion in Political Issues” Wolterstorff states, “if my using reasons that I know you do not endorse really does constitute my not treating you as equal, then it constitutes that whether or not the issue is constitutional essentials or matters of basic justice”.[3] On this, he seems correct. Consequently, if Rawls' claims about why one should bracket comprehensive beliefs on such matters are cogent then we should bracket them on other matters as well. This would of course mean that on many questions of public debate, if not most, no answers would be forthcoming. Moreover, as Wolterstorff himself points out, it would mean one could not appeal to the values of political liberalism either. Liberalism presumably is a comprehensive doctrine so again Rawls position would be rendered incoherent.[4]

On the other hand, if Rawls’s reasons for bracketing comprehensive beliefs are incorrect with regards to non-constitutional matters, if on these issues of coercive legislation one can appeal to theological beliefs that are rejected by rational people yet not disrespect them, then it is hard to see how they can become incorrect just because the topic has changed. Hence, it is doubtful that Rawls can limit his restriction in the way he wants to and given this, all the problems of applying public reason to non-constitutional issues apply with full force.

These responses all assume Audi’s contention that on matters of basic justice and constitutional essentials, agreement between reasonable people can be reasonably expected. Audi bases this claim upon a rhetorical question.

But is there not a strong consensus, at least among citizens of democratic societies, that justice requires not only equal protection of the laws but also laws that protect liberty, including political and religious liberty and freedom of speech, up to a certain level? There are of course disagreements on matters of detail...[5]

The problem here is that each of these examples involves appeal to an ambiguous and vague notion. However, as soon as an attempt is made to fill out these concepts with substantive content the apparent consensus disappears.

Consider the example of freedom of speech. Audi notes that most people agree that there should be freedom of speech, however, what does this mean? Free from what? From prior restraint? From the initiation of force? From no restraint upon content but not upon the manner of expression? Is this a negative freedom so that it forbids merely coercive attempts to prevent speaking? Is it a positive freedom so that the state has a duty to provide public funds to subsidise expression? Reasonable people can be expected to disagree on the answers to these questions. Moreover, these are not just matters of detail, they are disagreements over the very meaning of the term ‘freedom’ in the phrase ‘freedom of speech’. It may be true that people use the same terms but the substantive content and the meaning that they understand the terms to denote differs widely.

Similar disagreement arises over what sort of speech is referred to in the term ‘freedom of speech’. Does it include a right to engage in hate speech? Does it include speech denying the Holocaust occurred? What about racist and sexist speech? Does it include speech that is blasphemous or defamatory? Again, reasonable people disagree; not only do they disagree over the meaning of the term “freedom” they also disagree over what types of speech one is free to engage in.[6]

I think the same thing occurs concerning freedom of religion. In his book Foreordained Failure, Steven Smith demonstrates that there is no such thing as a right to freedom of religion. Instead there is a spectrum of views about religious tolerance that comes in degrees; no state tolerates all religious sects and very few states tolerate none. He notes that Aquinas, Cromwell, Locke and Mill all advocated and defended forms of religious tolerance. However, each disagreed as to which religions such tolerance should apply to and the proper limits upon those they disagreed with.[7]

Smith argues further that these differing accounts of freedom of religion all depended upon comprehensive views and one cannot adjudicate between them without appeal to such views. Attempts to articulate a right to freedom of religion from a neutral or public stance are quite hopeless.[8] Similar things can be said about the idea of ‘equality’ within the term ‘equal protection of the laws’. Hence, it appears that even on these issues of basic justice and constitutional essentials public reason will not utilise principles that all reasonable people can be expected to endorse, nor will one be able to get very far without utilising comprehensive doctrines of some sort.

I think the difficulties Rawls’ position faces are illustrative of a general problem with the dialectic over theological beliefs in the public square. If one attempts to exclude theological beliefs from public discourse, because reasonable people can reject them, then secular comprehensive beliefs must also be excluded as reasonable people can and do reject secular beliefs. If one does not exclude secular beliefs then special pleading is going on. If one does exclude both secular and religious beliefs then what is left will be insufficiently thick to address many public issues. One would have to appeal to some comprehensive belief to answer the questions that one faces but such restrictions upon comprehensive beliefs would render one’s position incoherent.

[1] Robert Audi, “Wolterstorff on Religion, Politics, and the Liberal State,” in Religion in the Public Square; The Place of Religious Convictions in Political Debate, ed. Nicholas Wolterstorff & Robert Audi (Lanham, Md: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc, 1997), 133-134.
[2] Ibid., 134.
[3] Wolterstorff, “The Role of Religion in Political Issues," Religion in the Public Square; The Place of Religious Convictions in Political Debate, ed. Nicholas Wolterstorff & Robert Audi (Lanham, Md: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc, 1997), 106.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Audi, “Wolterstorff on Religion, Politics, and the Liberal State,” 132.
[6] Ibid. Audi argues that in these types of situations one means substantially the same thing by the term, agrees on the paradigms of its application and yet offer differing definitions. This is because “providing definitions is a demanding task” and “many different definitions can be applied to the same finite range of cases”. However, this misconstrues the situation. As noted it is not that these people use the term the same way but that they use it and understand it in a very different way. They disagree over the paradigms and hold to a different range of finite cases even if there is some overlap between them.
[7] Steven Smith, Foreordained Failure: The Quest for a Constitutional Principle of Religious Freedom, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
[8] Ibid.

RELATED POSTS:
Rawls on Religion and Public Life Part 1
Rawls on Religion and Public Life Part 2

Happy New Year everyone. Sorry we have been rather quiet of late, we have been taking a break. I did put up something on Rawls but no one seems to have bitten so I figured most of you were taking a break too.

We have not been away due to Madeleine's recovery, which is unfortunatly not going so well. She was expected to return to work on Thursday and it is looking very likely that she will not as she still has a lot of pain and some numbness in her hands. We are trying to not get too ahead of ourselves as to what this means for the future.

That aside, it has been very nice to take in some sun, go at a slower pace, catch up with friends and family. I have managed to work on some articles, throw out some job applications do some jobs around the house and relax.