The Christian Rationalist

Category Archives: Philosophy

A Real-Life Trolley Problem

11 Comments Posted by Sam Elder on July 16, 2015

Many of you are probably familiar with the Trolley Problem, a classic ethics problem phrased something like this:

There is an unstoppable trolley hurtling down its track towards three innocent victims tied to the track. You’re fairly certain they will be killed instantly if the trolley reaches them. Fortunately, you find yourself standing next to a switch which can alter the route of the trolley away from those three people, saving them. Unfortunately, there is another innocent victim tied to the alternative stretch of track, and you’re fairly certain that the trolley would kill him if you diverted it. Do you flip the switch? Read more of this post

Philosophy, Weekly Post abortion, disgust, ethics, Planned Parenthood, Roe v. Wade, The Center for Medical Progress

The Fear Inside

Leave a comment Posted by Sam Elder on July 4, 2015

My last blog post focused on supporting the governmental recognition of gay marriage from an evangelical Christian perspective. It sparked several series of Facebook comments and a wide-ranging discussion that hasn’t stopped. Outside that public light, several people reached out to me individually, to talk more or simply to encourage me for posting it. In all, this foray of my blog into a political hot potato has gone even better than expected, and I’m encouraged by the way it’s brought people from different parts of my life together.

To continue this objective, I thought I’d try to describe a sort of meta-worldview that I noticed popping up in the discussion, and in some other contexts. Yes, this is going to be another one of those posts, where each section describes a different angle on the same topic. Stick with me. Read more of this post

Philosophy, Weekly Post fear, Inside Out, philosophy

Gays Should Be Allowed to Marry

2 Comments Posted by Sam Elder on June 28, 2015

For anyone reading this far enough into the future, the National Conversation is currently focused on the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday making gay marriage legal in all 50 states, which seems to be an appropriate time to share my view on the matter. For what it’s worth, I’ve believed essentially the same thing since some time in college, so at least three years, but since I only started posting regularly on this blog a few months ago, I hadn’t gotten the chance to write it out in detail until now.

Insufficiently Updating Thomas and the True Nature of Faith

9 Comments Posted by Sam Elder on April 7, 2015

Yesterday was Easter, which as I wrote last week provides an excellent window into the core of Christianity. Christmas might be more widely celebrated in our culture today, but Jesus’ virgin birth is far less important than his resurrection to the existence, progress, and veracity of Christianity.

The centrality of the resurrection to Christianity could really not be understated. In text frequently read at Easter, Paul claims that Christians are really all-in on the resurrection: “And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14). Historically, the ideas of Christianity would not have gotten off the ground if all it was spreading was the message preached by a dead messiah-claimant. At the very least, Jesus’s followers would have needed to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead.

But one famously didn’t…

The Thermodynamics of Religious Conversion

5 Comments Posted by Sam Elder on March 30, 2015

Back in November, I wrote an answer on Quora (which I’ll link to later) that made me think even more about the subject afterwards. An outspoken atheist there had posed the following challenge:

Can anyone offer one serious, credible reason why I should consider a belief in your god? I’m not asking for empirical evidence. Just one credible reason we should discuss this further.

Even though the OP had a vanishing chance of changing his mind about anything because of this question, I found a certain elegance and importance to how it was posed. So much conversation about beliefs hinges on whether this particular piece of evidence or line of argument is convincing or not convincing, but only rarely do you ask why you should be taking up the case in the court of your mind in the first place.

And it’s an important question. The vast majority of our lives, we don’t make significant changes to our mindset, thought processes, worldview. We might pick up a habit from a friend, find the wisdom in our parents’ advice, or learn another useful lifehack from Buzzfeed here and there. But it’s only in rare moments that we take a moment to step back and reexamine whether we want to entertain a much more dramatic shift.