The Secular Outpost: 20+ Questions for Theists #2

John Loftus has posted a link to a  list of questions for theists from another blog. Rather than answer all of them in a single post, I will take each of them one at a time. Today:

Why would God desire to create embodied moral agents, as opposed to disembodied minds (such as souls, spirits, or ghosts)? Why is the human mind dependent on the physical brain?

These questions contradict one another. If mind is dependent on a physical brain than there can be no souls, spirits, or ghosts (there are no ghosts from a Biblical worldview). The second question assumes that the first can't be answered because it assumes that there are no disembodied minds. There is no conclusive proof of that because there is no real way to experiment to find out what happens to a human mind after death. Also from a Biblical worldview, there is no reason to conflate mind and spirit. The Bible discusses mind, spirit, and soul as separate categories. The other thing is that God did create minds, souls, and spirits as well as  "embodied moral agents" so the question doesn't make sense. The question also presupposes the existence of minds, souls, and spirits. These questions are ill posed and pointless to answer. If anyone would care to rephrase it, I'd be happy to further discuss it.


²⁷ Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, ²⁸ so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.- Hebrews 9:27,28

The Secular Outpost: 20+ Questions for Theists

James White Responds to "14 Steps That Will Evolve Your Views On Gay Marriage"

Dr James White has responded to the following blog article on his webcast last Tuesday.

14 Steps That Will Evolve Your Views On Gay Marriage

It is a really good response and shows why these steps are silly and don't really make any sense what-so-ever. The picture on the left is a case in point. Listen here.

dangerous idea: The Moral Argument that Christians don't use, but atheists always rebut

Dr Victor Reppert has posted a very interesting posting posing the following question.

Yet, when I hear atheists talking about moral arguments, they always assume that the advocate of the moral argument is saying that we have to believe in God to lead moral lives, (and indignantly argue that we don't have to believe in God to lead moral lives) in spite of the fact that Christian advocates of moral arguments, at least the ones I am familiar with NEVER say that. 
Why?

I agree with Dr Reppert. I have not ever heard a Christian scholar or apologist argue that unbelievers have to recognize God in order to have a moral code. The argument is that without God, you don't have a foundation for that moral guide any better or binding on everyone. It doesn't matter how often you say that the Bible does not say that godless people do not have morals. The Christian position is that morality is flawed and tainted by sin. So what about Dr Reppert's question. I think atheists default to the strawman position because they cannot give a satisfactory rebuttal to the moral argument for the existence of God and they are too proud to admit their failure.

dangerous idea: The Moral Argument that Christians don't use, but atheists always rebut

Spider-Man and Likeness Rights | Law and the Multiverse

I just found out about a very interesting article about intellectual property rights. The article is most interesting because it discusses those issues in the context of a storyline from the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book series. Here is how the article's author summarized the story and what the article discusses.

Here’s the complete history: As usual, Spider-Man tried to make some extra money on the wrestling circuit.  The company that organized the matches was Hercules Wrestling, Inc., and apparently Parker signed away the Spider-Man name and merchandising rights to Hercules.  Later, a Spider-Man movie came out, and the studio managed to prevent Hercules from putting out Spider-Man merch, resulting in Hercules going bankrupt.  Apparently a company called C and C Licensing picked up the rights from Hercules in bankruptcy. C and C is a subsidiary of GG Enterprises, which Fisk purchased.  Thus, through this chain of subsidiaries, Fisk owns the rights to the Spider-Man name as well as the licensing rights for his likeness.  As a result, Fisk actually wants Spider-Man to keep doing his thing because Fisk makes more money from the merchandise sales than he loses from Spider-Man meddling in his affairs.  Pretty villainous, eh?

Spider-Man and Likeness Rights | Law and the Multiverse

A World with No Math - Save the Children

Ever thought about how much the world would suck without math? This is a video promoting education for children in mathematics especially in less developed countries.




A World with No Math - Save the Children