Fifteen years ago when I lived in Vancouver I used to frequent a sandwich shop in Port Kells that was famous for its massive sub sandwiches. I remember in particular the breathtakingly generous slabs of baloney. I thought of that shop, and its endless supply of baloney, as I read John Loftus’ latest reply to my […]
Archives for February 2012
Would intelligent aliens present a problem for Christianity?
Jeff commented on my recent article “Should you call out Gouranga?” and in doing so offered a helpful basis to kickstart our discussion of exotheology. He is of the opinion that it is a problem to Christian theology if there are “intelligent species in the cosmos other than humans” for as he says “then we’re left […]
Should you have faith in John W. Loftus?
Yesterday I received an email from my co-author (God or Godless, Baker, 2013), atheist John W. Loftus. He said in the email “I wrote something with you in mind” and then provided a link to the following article in his blog: Faith is an Irrational Leap over the Probabilities Good ole’ John. Let’s go to the […]
From a field of dreams to a storm shelter of dread: A Review of “Take Shelter”
One day Ray Kinsella heard a voice in his cornfield, “If you build it, he will come.” And so begins the great American feel good story of a struggling farmer who builds a baseball diamond in his backyard. But what if Ray was waiting not for the arrival of a mysterious man but rather of a […]
One of these causes is not like the others: Getting behind the personal incredulity of ‘skeptics’
Why is it, I wondered, that the minute you point out that agent casuation is a perfectly familiar concept (it provides a fine explanation of the sentence you’re reading, for example) and then add that it is thus in principle a concept worth considering as an explanation of the universe’s existence, some people make the leap […]
Why is it that when you mention God somebody always mentions leprechauns?
It never fails. Mention God within the context of a sufficiently broad audience and somebody will raise the issue of leprechauns. I have lamented this unfortunate phenomenon in the past. This time the guilty party is a stalwart reader, Ray Ingles, who in response to my previous article on God and agent causation observes: “Some types […]
God and other not so strange causes
It is not uncommon in dialogues with atheists to hear the claim that invoking God as an explanation is something strange and totally foreign to experience. I call this the “foreign to experience objection” or F-TEO for short. The objection is that God is some kind of out of this world explanation (figuratively and literally I […]
More on Mormons, atheism and aliens
There has been some incredulity toward my claim that Mormons are really atheists. But that is not very surprising. As I have pointed out, the professional class in most fields of discourse holds definitions of terms that differ substantially from views widely held in the general population. Ask Joe the Plumber to define “free action”, “mind” and […]
Why Mormons are probably atheists
davidstarlingm has asked how the definitions that I provided for “God” and “theism” would relate to Mormonism: “where do the various flavors of polytheism, including Mormonism, fall into your definition? The Mormon Elohim is not the ultimate agent cause of everything that exists, as he is both contingent on a higher entity (the creator of […]
Atheists who don’t know what they don’t believe in
I regularly dialogue with people who, though they identify themselves as “atheists”, do not have a clear sense of how God — that which they purportedly don’t believe in — should be defined. To be sure, they are able to say in a piecemeal fashion “I don’t believe in Yahweh, Thor or Allah…” but they can’t get […]
Kill some wolves before you die: A review of “The Grey” (Part 2)
Warning: Spoiler(s) ahead. (Not really bad spoilers as would be the case if I told you that Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) in “The Sixth Sense” is really a ghost who doesn’t know he’s a ghost. That’d be a wicked spoiler. The “spoilers” here are really nothing more than the untimely revelation of plot points.) […]
Should you take the meteorite impact coverage?
In response to my illustration of the alien spaceship impact coverage Walter commented: “as far as insurance goes I opted out of alien spacecraft impact coverage and went for meteor and falling satellite coverage instead.” This got me thinking: what is the likelihood of dying from the impact of a meteorite? After some research I […]
From Mormon proxy baptism to alien spaceship impact coverage … and beyond!
Sadly, nobody chose to engage with my Pascalian defense of the Mormon practice of baptizing for the dead. I’ll return to that point at the end of this article. However, let me begin by giving you another illustration. Mormon proxy baptism and alien spaceship impact coverage Imagine that when you buy house insurance the insurance […]
Kill some wolves before you die: A review of “The Grey” (Part 1)
The moment I saw the trailer for “The Grey” I wept testosterone tears. Liam Neeson stranded in the Alaskan wilderness bare-knuckling it with rabid wolves? This made John Rambo’s escapades in “First Blood” look like “Kindergarten Cop” by comparison. But there were two other factors that drew me inexorably to the theatre. Factor one: the […]
