Testimony forms a big part of apologetic argument. It may be the testimony of a person who says their life was personally changed by Jesus because they were delivered from an addiction. Or it could be the testimony of a person who says they were supernaturally healed of an ailment following a prayer. Or it […]
An Interview with Elephant Philosophy
The Problem of Evil: My Friendly Debate with Alex Malpass
Atheism and Antitheism
In this article, I continue my survey of concepts commonly associated with atheism by considering anti-theism. For the previous installment on atheism and secularism, click here. For the last fifteen years or so, the public face of atheism has been synonymous with the new atheism of people like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late […]
Is the problem of evil less of a problem if evil is not a thing?
Some theists attempt to lessen the problem of evil by arguing that evil has no independent ontological existence: instead, it is merely the absence of good. Let’s consider that defense for a moment by trying out the logic in an analogous case. Imagine that Mr. and Mrs. Jones leave town for the weekend and they […]
Steelmanning Run Amok
The other day, I posted an article on the proper application of the Strawman Fallacy. So I thought it would make sense to start off the new year with a companion article addressing steelmanning. While strawmanning is an informal fallacy that involves intentionally critiquing the weaker versions of a position while ignoring the stronger versions, […]
Militant Agnosticism
Michael Shermer describes his own disbelief in God as follows: “I once saw a bumper sticker that read ‘Militant Agnostic: I don’t know and You Don’t Either.’ This is my position on God’s existence: I don’t know and you don’t either.”[1] Shermer is right to call that position “militant”. To claim that nobody can know […]
Before You Accuse Somebody of the Strawman Fallacy
You don’t accuse somebody of lying just because they said something that is false. The accusation of lying is only justified if you have good evidence that they knew that what they were saying is false at the time that they said it and that they said it with the intention of persuading someone else […]
My New Biblical Violence Book
I’ve been thinking about the problem of biblical violence since I wrote a critique of Paul Copan in 2008 (published in 2009). Over the last twelve years, I delievered a conference paper on the topic, I have devoted chapters to the imprecatory psalms and violence of Torah in my books What’s So Confusing About Grace? and Conversations with […]
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
Merry Christmas, everyone! Here is the introduction to the chapter on incarnation in my 2008 book Faith Lacking Understanding. The excerpt invites Christians to rediscover the magic and mystery of incarnation by way of a celebrated children’s story. In her delightful children’s classic The Best Christmas Pageant Ever Barbara Robinson tells the story of how the […]
Is the Christian God Worthy of Worship? A Debate with Dan Barker
Dan Barker is a former fundamentalist preacher-turned-atheist, author of many books including Godless and God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction, and co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. In this informal from December 22 2020, we addressed the question “Is the Christian God Worthy of Worship?”
Atheist Polemic for Pastor Dan: A Review of God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction
Dan Barker. God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction. New York: Sterling, 2016. At the beginning of chapter 2 of his bestselling book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins infamously describes God as “jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, […]
Atheism and Secularism
This article continues my survey of ideas commonly associated with atheism. The previous installment considered the relationship between atheism and freethought. In this article, we consider the relationship between atheism and secularism. There is no doubt that atheism is often closely associated with secularism such that self-identified atheists are often committed to the furtherance of […]
If You Defend Ravi Zacharias and Hucksters Like Him, You are Part of the Problem
This morning, I received a comment on my February 2019 article “Christians cannot sit on the fence concerning Ravi Zacharias.” It reminded me that even with the most recent shocking revelations about Ravi sexually abusing young women at his massage parlours (see here and here), there will always be people willing to defend the man […]
