Over the last few days I’ve had some exchanges with “Mike D” who, it turns out, moonlights as “The A-Unicornist.” Mike summarizes the exchanges in a couple blog posts here and here. Things have not gone well, and it is not hard to see why. Consider this opening of Mike’s first article-summary. He notes that […]
Archives for May 2013
A Theologian, An Atheist and A Schmuck walk into a radio show…
Tomorrow I’m going to be on The Drew Marshall Show, a Toronto-based talk radio show hosted by (you guessed it!) Drew Marshall. The title they’ve selected: “A Theologian, An Atheist and A Schmuck walk into a radio show…”A Panel Discussion About The Existence Of God! I’ll be on the panel with Justin Trottier, chief spokesperson for […]
God and the arbitrary attribute charge: A response to Jason Thibodeau
Jason Thibodeau has been offering a series of critiques of my views on God and explanation over at his blog. Here’s the most recent entry: “Do theists need to explain God’s existence? Part 3“. In case you were wondering, Jason has a PhD in philosophy from the University of California and is a professor in philosophy […]
How to confound Christians with bad arguments: #5 Call them Liars for Jesus
You might think this is pretty minimal. I prefer to call it streamlined. So while it is but three words, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an argument buried in there or that it can’t be very effective when deployed carefully. Indeed, I would submit that this angry, vitriolic (and increasingly common) retort does wield an effective […]
Adam offers answers for the Swedish Atheist
Philosopher Adam Omelianchuk just reviewed The Swedish Atheist, the Scuba Diver and Other Apologetic Rabbit Trails and you can read his review here. Adam liked the book. For example, he writes: “The first half of the book consists of a protracted discussion over religious epistemology, which is one of the best ‘introductions’ to the topics I’ve […]
Robert Price and winning the debate by fiat
Robert Price reviewed God or Godless in Free Inquiry Magazine and John Loftus is over the moon about it. He emailed me and the Baker publicist yesterday to let us know. In his email he gleefully wrote: “Unfortunately [Price] doesn’t have anything good to say about Randal’s arguments saying I ‘systematically punctured’ them like one who popped […]
Half-baked evidentialist epistemology
Faithful readers of this blog will probably know that one of my readers, Jeff, has been criticizing my position that testimony can be a properly basic source of justified belief and knowledge (absent defeaters to the truth of the testimony). On Jeff’s view, testimony is always non-basic and is only rationally assented to based on […]
The Tenative Apologist Podcast has launched!
It was a long process but finally The Tentative Apologist Podcast has been launched. It has replaced “News/Events” on the homepage header (nestled in right beside “Blog”). My first interview is with evolutionary creationist Denis Lamoureux. You can check it out here. So check it out, be patient as the production values become more polished […]
Wildly improbable? Some background reading
For those interested in some background reading for my article “How to confound Christians with bad arguments: #4 Believe what is probable, not merely possible” I recommend my two-part critique of John Loftus’ essay “Christianity is wildly improbable,” titled “The End of Christianity? (Part 4)” and “John W. Loftus and a Swede named Mario“. Those […]
How to confound Christians with bad arguments: #4 Believe what is probable, not merely possible
A couple years ago I wrote an article titled “How to confound Christians with bad arguments: #1 Compare Santa to Jesus.” The article was widely lauded by my minions of readers, leading to two follow ups, “#2 The Indistinguishable Argument“, and “#3 Security Blanket Gambit“. All of these are wonderfully bad arguments which flourish on […]
The latest “God or Godless” review
The latest review comes from the “Panorama of a Book Saint” blog. You can read the review here. The blogger, Dr. Conrade Yap, liked the book and was more sympathetic with my arguments (not surprising given that he is a Christian theist). However, Dr. Yap does say some things that left me perplexed and suspecting […]
Should Christians hedge their bets?
The other day I was speaking about doubt to a group of Christians. During the discussion that followed one lady said that while she was a Christian, she thought that even if Christianity is false and reincarnation is true, that her current belief system would put her in good stead with the law(s) of reincarnation. […]
How can Christianity be the only true religion?
I was asked to share my thoughts on this question today, though as you can probably guess I’ve heard this one before. People often leap to the task of answering a question like this without first taking a breath and examining the question itself. But what does it even mean to ask if Christianity is […]
The kalam cosmological argument and libertarian free will (Part 2)
For part 1 click here. (Warning: if you haven’t read part 1 yet then you should or part 2 won’t make much sense.) After thinking about the issue a bit more I decided there is a simpler and more elegant way to demonstrate that there is no incompatibility between the first premise of the kalam […]
