Skip to main content

Talk on moral and religious education

There's a talk I gave as an avatar on moral and religious education available here. It is based on my book The War For Children's Minds. About 50 mins long. Obviously the book goes into more detail. This is merely a short taster...


Comments

Love the shot around 33:00 - "he actually looks like this"
Bernard Hurley said…
I don't think your ghost was holy but he did manage to talk without opening his mouth so he was fairly magical. But I do think he ought to have done something about the guy who was smoking!
Anonymous said…
So many observations, so little space.

An authoritarian believes that some external agent should dictate the operating parameters of an individual. Does that believer also accept, that it is I who should define those parametric delimiters? I once heard a mother, who had cracked it, talking to her offspring. She issued directives. But had taught her infant to respond with the simply beautiful query: “Because?”
Why not a simple set of universal “laws” that all religions, science, and even Asimov himself might subscribe to. The “Species Law” perhaps.
p.s. Richard is in the wrong station of your cross. Because he blanks questions that he has never asked of himself.
p.p.s. Next Big Question time. Please ask Nicky to back off the volume on the lady with hers cranked up to 11. (Shout, and they will better understand?)
Didem Naz said…
Trend Film izle Yeni çıkan yerli ve yabancı filmleri indirmeden online ve full izleyebileceğiniz sinema platformudur...

Popular posts from this blog

EVIDENCE, MIRACLES AND THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS

(Published in Faith and Philosophy 2011. Volume 28, Issue 2, April 2011. Stephen Law. Pages 129-151) EVIDENCE, MIRACLES AND THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS Stephen Law Abstract The vast majority of Biblical historians believe there is evidence sufficient to place Jesus’ existence beyond reasonable doubt. Many believe the New Testament documents alone suffice firmly to establish Jesus as an actual, historical figure. I question these views. In particular, I argue (i) that the three most popular criteria by which various non-miraculous New Testament claims made about Jesus are supposedly corroborated are not sufficient, either singly or jointly, to place his existence beyond reasonable doubt, and (ii) that a prima facie plausible principle concerning how evidence should be assessed – a principle I call the contamination principle – entails that, given the large proportion of uncorroborated miracle claims made about Jesus in the New Testament documents, we should, in the absence of indepen

Why I won't be voting Labour at the next General Election, not even to 'keep the Tories out'.

I have always voted Labour, and have often been a member of the Party, campaigning and canvassing for them. For what it’s worth, here’s my feeling about voting Labour next General Election:   1. When the left vote Labour after they move rightwards, they are encouraged to just move further right, to the point where they are now probably right of where e.g. John Major’s Tory party was. And each time the Tories go further right still. At some point we have got to stop fuelling this toxic drift to the right by making the Labour Party realise that it’s going to start costing them votes. I can’t think of anything politically more important than halting this increasingly frightening rightward slide. So I am no longer voting Labour. 2. If a new socialist party starts up, it could easily hoover up many of the 200k former LP members who have left in disgust (I’d join), and perhaps also pick up union affiliations. They could become the second biggest party by membership quite quickly. Our voting

Aquinas on homosexuality

Thought I would try a bit of a draft out on the blog, for feedback. All comments gratefully received. No doubt I've got at least some details wrong re the Catholic Church's position... AQUINAS AND SEXUAL ETHICS Aquinas’s thinking remains hugely influential within the Catholic Church. In particular, his ideas concerning sexual ethics still heavily shape Church teaching. It is on these ideas that we focus here. In particular, I will look at Aquinas’s justification for morally condemning homosexual acts. When homosexuality is judged to be morally wrong, the justification offered is often that homosexuality is, in some sense, “unnatural”. Aquinas develops a sophisticated version of this sort of argument. The roots of the argument lie in thinking of Aristotle, whom Aquinas believes to be scientifically authoritative. Indeed, one of Aquinas’s over-arching aims was to show how Aristotle’s philosophical system is broadly compatible with Christian thought. I begin with a sketch of Arist