Blaise Pascal: Books on Pascal

It's difficult to find a bibliography of books about Pascal, his thought, his life, and the books he wrote that's not in an academic work. Thus, this list was born. I struggled to decide whether I wanted to list every book I've come across on on Pascal or just list every book I have personally …

Reading List: 2017

I want to create a list of all the books I have read in the year. This is nice way to keep a record of my reading while holding myself accountable to reading. Note that these are books I've read from cover to cover. This is not counting all the bits and pieces of books …

A. J. Ayer’s Short Argument Against Moral Subjectivism

Ayer takes subjectivism to be the thesis that actions are right or good if a person or group of persons approves of it. The subjectivist thinks, according to Ayer, that one can translate statement of value into statements of empirical fact. The subjectivist does this by banking their theory on the feeling of approval, which …

A Simple Argument Against Moral Subjectivism

In responding to a prompt for my class, I gave the following argument: If moral subjectivism is true, then everyone is infallible about moral beliefs. Not everyone is infallible about moral beliefs. .'. Moral subjectivism is not true. Over the course of my undergraduate career, I've come across many people who have espoused moral subjectivity. …

Doctrine of Double Effect and Jus in Bello

Class Prompt: In 1943 the British Air Force developed a plan to bomb three German dams. The first video you will see is a home video that I took of a summer trip to one of those dams, the Edersee. You will see several towns in the river valley that flooded when the dam was …

Human Nature, Personhood, and Abortion

Note: I wrote this blog post originally at Walking Christian. I re-read it and thought it was pretty good and I wanted to post it here too.  This is probably one of my favorite topics to discuss and debate. I’ve got a lot to learn, but I feel like I’m fairly competent in discussing this …

Book Review of Gary Neal Hansen’s Kneeling With Giants

When I first heard about Hansen’s Kneeling With Giants, I was excited to get my hands on a copy. My own prayer life had become monotonous, and I was in need of something that would help invigorate it. But the main problem for me was I was never really taught how to pray. I wasn’t …

Boethius on Free Will

This is an excerpt of a paper I wrote for my Medieval philosophy class.  Boethius On Free Will Compared In his “Consolation of Philosophy,” Boethius presents his views on free will in the form of a dialogue between himself and Lady Philosophy. After exploring the definition and existence of “chance,” Boethius asks whether man’s will …

God and Omnipotence: Aquinas’s Take

Does Limiting God remove His Omnipotence? Today in class I was in discussion with a classmate of mine about the nature of God's omnipotence. She made an interesting claim that the God of Aquinas is not all-powerful. I went on to explain that Aquinas's take on God was that God is indeed all-powerful in that …

Fetuses and the Moral Community

Here is an argument I presented over a Facebook post on abortion. If you are a human being, then you are part of the moral community. A fetus is a human being. Therefore, a fetus is part of the moral community. Justification of premises: Premise 1: Either a human being is part of the moral …