Right Reason

A few days ago I got home from a speaking tour in Hamilton, Muriwai Beach, Avondale (for those outside of New Zealand, those two are both in the Auckland region) and Tauranga. Fifteen talks over eight days! All the talks were very well received, and the discussions that followed were excellent.

The overall theme of the talks was faith and reason, unpacking some of the ways in which Christians have used reason to commend what they believe as true, along with some of the implications of Christianity actually being true. The opening talk at a couple of venues was directly about the crucial role of reason within the Christian faith, reflecting on the observation, among others, that “commitment without reflection is fanaticism.” The change of this site’s address to rightreason.org is motivated by this commitment to the reasonable discussion and defence of what we believe and why (whether overly Christian or not).

Against this backdrop, imagine the sense of irony that swept over me yet again when I arrived home, checked my email and read the following message (we’ll call the author J, who has consented to this email being made public).

How can you keep up the pretense that you know about life after death. You mock common sense. You trade on peoples [sic] fears of the dark and the unknown to put forward a controlling elitist superior position.

Reason in everyday decisions must prevail over blind faith

Deep sigh.

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Breaking news! The web address for this site has changed. I’m pleased to announce that I have acquired the address www.rightreason.org. The old URL (beretta-online.com) will still work via redirection, but please update your links if you can be bothered. Links to the new URL will help its visibility in a number of ways.

It was time to just bite the bullet and do it – it’s a better, more relevant name and it’s easier to remember.

The Podcast (and maybe the blog, but I’m thinking about it) is still called Say Hello to my Little Friend, but there may be a few decor changes to reflect the new address.

So remember – If you link to the site, please update your links as soon as you can. Beretta is no more. Long live Right Reason!

Glenn Peoples

The New Inklings discussion group is meeting for the second time in history. All are welcome for food, drink (both BYO) and discussion.

So – our next meeting is…

When: 5 pm, Tuesday 30 April 2013

Where: Trax Bar and Cafe, Platform 1, Wellington Railway Station

Topic: Part One of Jonathan Edwards’ book, Freedom of the Will – Read it before arriving

See you there!

Are you going to the 2013 Unbelievable conference in London?

Unbelievable? The Conference 2013 – Jesus: liar, lunatic, legend… or Lord?
Saturday 25 May, 9.30am – 5.30pm, The Brewery, Chiswell Street, London, EC1Y 4SD

“Now in its third year, Unbelievable? The Conference is the leading UK event for apologetics and evangelism. Ordinary Christians (yes you!) will learn how to share their faith effectively. We’ll also be marking 50 years of CS Lewis’ remarkable legacy as well as how to engage with today’s ethical and scientific issues in a variety of seminars featuring expert speakers.”

Speakers: Alister McGrath, Amy Orr Ewing, Peter S Williams, Fuz Rana, Dr Trevor Stammers, Kurt Jaros
Every booking of 2 or more tickets will receive a free copy of Unbelievable? The Conference 2012 triple DVD worth £20.
Book in at http://www.premier.org.uk/unbelievable2013

Busy times are ahead!

No sooner has the blog awakened in 2013 than here I am explaining why things may be quiet over the next month. The reasons are all good this time. In late April I’ll be heading north for a number of speaking engagements. Let’s call it a speaking tour, that sounds impressive. All plans are tentative and may be re-arranged at this stage, but they will definitely be approximately like this:

• On Saturday 20th April I’ll be speaking in Hamilton, details to be confirmed.
• Then from Monday 22 April to Thursday 25 April I’ll be up at Muriwai Beach, speaking at a camp for Holy Word Church of Auckland. There will be a strong apologetics theme to the talks, which will cover the role of reason in the life of faith, the moral argument for theism, the historicity of the resurrection and the spiritual backdrop to apologetics.
• From there I’ll head to West Auckland for a workshop over an evening (Thursday 25th) and a day (Friday 26th) with Thinking Matters Auckland where I’ll be joined by a host of other speakers including Auckland University’s Chris Tucker, Matthew Flannagan and other possible speakers to be confirmed. There I’ll be speaking on the New Atheism and Ethics on Thursday night, followed by talks on Friday on why Christianity matters if it’s true, God and moral value, and God and human equality.

From there it’s off to Tauranga for a “details to be confirmed” talk on Saturday.

All of this means that my writing attention is focused on getting these talks ready – but on the plus side for readers and listeners, it means that at least some of these talks will become podcast episodes in the fairly near future. if you’re interested in attending the Thinking Matters talks, head on over to their Facebook page and say hi!

Remember, if you’d like me to come and speak to a group of people where you are, have a look at the speaking page and drop me a line.

Glenn Peoples

Book Review: J. Warner Wallace, Cold-Case Christianity (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2013)

Wallace starts out with some general observations about how to reach evidence-based hypotheses. This is not at all presented as a densely worded, technical or scientific set of explanations. Instead, based on the kind of situations Wallace has encountered numerous times as a detective, he takes these situations as a springboard into a very user-friendly discussion of how we can take the facts that we encounter at face value and use them to reason to an explanatory hypothesis (in much the same way that a homicide detective uses the available facts to reason towards a hypothesis about whodunit). After discussing the way to approach any such explanation, Wallace then picks the “cold-case” at the centre of the Christian faith – the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

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When possible, don’t wait until something goes terribly, tragically wrong until you decide what you think about it.

I had been planning on letting some of the hoopla about gun control in light of the most recent awful school shooting die down a little before I made this brief comment, lest it get lumped in with the arguments about gun control itself (which this post is certainly not about). But evidently those heated discussions aren’t going anywhere in a hurry, so I’ve resigned myself to saying this with all the other conversations still happening. This is more of an observation/rant/vent than most of my comments tend to be.

In the immediate aftermath of the murder of children and staff at Sandy Hook elementary school at the hands of a gunman (whose name we do not need to repeat – more on that another time perhaps), as you would expect, social media was abuzz with conversations about it, and about the issue of legal access to firearms. I’ve got views on that, but those views don’t matter just now. Among some of the comments I was seeing were comments from people who seemed shocked – not just by the fact that such a terrible act had been carried out (which is perfectly understandable), but by the fact that such a scenario was even possible. Now, I know that of course they realised that it was theoretically possible for someone to commit mass murder. But they reacted as though they had never paused to think that people could do this with guns, and as though the possibility of these actions had never before factored into their ethical thinking about gun control.

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A version of this review was first posted at Rethinking Hell, a collaborative project that I contribute to. Check it out, it’s worth your time. Trust me.

I know of two movies going by the name Hellbound. One, as I’m sure everyone knows (right?), is Clive Barker’s horror classic, part two in the Hellraiser series. The other is a new documentary called Hellbound by Kevin Miller. I almost said “a new documentary called Hellbound by Kevin Miller, in which he explores the doctrine of hell,” because that, or so I think, is the way Kevin wants the public to see the movie. But having watched the movie carefully, I don’t think I would naturally describe it that way. The issue of hell, its biblical basis, its historical development, its critics and the evidence they cite – none of these things are really broached in what I would call much depth. While I genuinely appreciated aspects of what Kevin is trying to say, I came away with real reservations about a good deal of what was presented here – and certainly about the way that it was presented.

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