Last Sunday, a preacher asked the congregation to recite the “Pledge of Allegiance” in church. I find such a practice idolatrous. My allegiance to my country is not a part of my Christian obligation. As a Christian, my ultimate allegiance belongs to God alone. My allegiance to my country is part of my obligation as a citizen or resident of my country. My allegiance to my country is primarily motivated by my willingness to contractually participate in social cooperation for the establishment of peace, security, social stability, and justice for all members of the citizenry. A country is temporarily and contingently established for the organization and management of the contractual participations of the citizenry in social cooperation. Of course, I am willing to die for my country, when the values (such as peace, security, social stability, and justice) that are essential for the social cooperation of the citizenry are unjustifiably threatened. But that’s not a Christian obligation. That’s my contingent obligation as a part of the citizenry. It is idolatrous to treat one’s allegiance to one’s country as an expression of one’s allegiance to God. One can pledge allegiance to one’s country without necessarily pledging allegiance to God. One can pledge allegiance to God without necessarily pledging allegiance to one’s country.
Dr. William Lane Craig, a leading evangelical apologist, is featured in a major article in The Chronicle of Higher Education [see http://chronicle.com/article/The-New-Theist/140019/?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en ]. That should be a surprise, since CHE is not known for having a taste for people like Craig. I think that Craig is overrated by evangelicals, but underrated by academics. His triumphalism, I think, weakens the merits of his arguments, since it underrates what I consider to be persuasive cases for atheism. It tends to caricature his opponents’ arguments as unworthy of serious considerations. However, his skills as a debater are unparalleled. He is definitely a force to be reckoned with. Of course, winning a debate is not a sufficient condition for establishing the truth of one’s claim. But I think that his opponents, like Alexander Rosenberg (Duke philosopher) and Lawrence Krauss (theoretical physicist), are mistaken for downplaying the role of formal debates in
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