This weekend “Saw 3-D” came out on top at the box office. No surprise. It is a well established horror film franchise. I’ve never seen any of the Saw films, but I get the general idea: line people up to be tortured and killed in a series of grisly, sadistic and extraordinarily creative ways. The Saw […]
The Tentative Apologist
Rape as objectively evil
In my last post I stated that rape is objectively evil and any worldview that cannot count for this fact suffers accordingly. Alexander responded with a refreshing dose of dramatic bravado: “Not so, Randal Rauser! According to Randy Thornhill, rape is actually an evolution of a ‘genetically advantageous behavioral adaptation’ and, in that context, not inherently evil.” This […]
Can rape be objectively wrong?
The problem of evil is often presented to Christians as the objection to the existence of God. Sometimes it is presented as a logical problem — the existence of an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God is logically inconsistent with the existence of evil — but more often these days it is presented as a matter of probabilities — […]
Mens Paired Figure Skating and Atheism
Jerry Rivard writes in the blog to offer a reprimand: “Much has been said on this blog and at CP about naturalism being the inevitable conclusion that follows atheism. Nonsense! A person can certainly believe that there are no gods, but that there are ghosts, for example. They may have an inconsistent world view as […]
When the scientific method comes to town
Randal (from an earlier post): “So what is naturalism? Is it a claim that only a particular kind of knowledge can be had (i.e. scientific)?” Brenda: “Yes. If you have another method besides the scientific method for determining objective facts about the world we’d love to heard about it.” Whoa! Now this is an interesting […]
Atheists in natural glass houses
Atheists living in their “100 percent natural” glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. But alas, when many insist they don’t live in such a house, or when they can’t see the glass walls hemming them in on every side, I suppose it’s difficult to persuade them that they shouldn’t hurl that hunk of granite in their […]
From typing on a keyboard to the soul
I am going to be getting back to The Christian Delusion next week, but you see this week I am teaching a 1 week intensive course in systematic theology so I’m trying to find time merely for something short and delightful for y’all. (1 week intensive courses are, for the professor, the closest equivalent of […]
Extraordinary cars require extraordinary acceleration
Silverbullet sternly informs me: “We ask that you support extraordinary claims with extraordinary evidence.” This claim is so familiar, indeed, well-worn, that it is like putting on a pair of old 501 jeans. The only problem is … it doesn’t fit very well. And why is that? What’s wrong with this delicate and eminently reasonable demand for […]
Naturalism and the ole’ swimming hole
Picture yourself taking your kids to the community pool with your favorite yellow inner tube when your friend retorts: “Community pool? That’s disgusting! Do you know what they have in that water? Crap and pee and barf, all floating around in particles too small to see.” Taken aback at this rather bold affront, you ask your friend: “So […]
When atheists grow up and become naturalists
A number of my readers are atheists, but only one is anatheist.net, and that’s James Tracy. In “What John Loftus has is a failure to communicate” James and I continued with the old faith as a starting point of thinking theme (my theme, to be more specific). When James refused to come out and affirm any form […]
The Denigration of Civil Discourse: More lessons from John Loftus
I am grateful to John Loftus for highlighting through vivid illustration the denigration of civil discourse that I lament in my forthcoming book You’re Not as Crazy as I Think (see the books section of this site). In the book I point out that those who espouse indoctrinational modes of thinking commonly dismiss the views […]
How to avoid the question: Lessons from Loftus
Every so often people provide challenges to our positions that we cannot seem to answer. So what are we to do? Concede the difficulty and work to revise or reject our position? Well we could do that, but nobody likes to eat crow. And we have our reputations to protect, don’t we? So I am […]
Facing my mortality in the elevator
I just had an existential moment in an elevator. And no, it was not after viewing Shyamalan’s (producer) new film “Devil” (featuring a few people trapped in an elevator with the devil). So here’s the scene. I’m speaking in a conference at Calgary and as I was riding the elevator up after my morning breakfast a […]
What John Loftus has is a failure to communicate
Chapter 7 of Loftus’ edited volume The Christian Delusion is by Loftus himself and is titled “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.” In the essay Loftus intends to provide the reader with “a brief romp through the Bible with an eye on the failure of a perfectly good omniscient God to communicate […]
