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The Tentative Apologist
Why Reason Always Requires Faith: Explained in 6 Minutes
The video freezes for a bit but I’m not bothering to re-record it! At least the audio is fine. And hey, it’s only 6 minutes. ?
The Laws of Thought: Critical Thinking with Stephen Law
Stephen Law is a leading English philosopher, author, and editor for the journal Think. In his spare time, he beats the skins and climbs mountains. What I appreciate most about Stephen is his commitment to public philosophy, and that commitment is perfectly demonstrated in his new online course on critical thinking. You can check out the […]
Is Craig’s Moral Argument Defensible?
For years, William Lane Craig has repeated a bad argument that the existence of objective moral values entails the existence of God. He did it again yesterday: 1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.2. Objective moral values do exist.3. Therefore, God exists.#Apologetics #MoralArgument https://t.co/V5G7ysRpg4 — Reasonable Faith (@RFupdates) January 30, […]
An Update on My Biblical Genocide Book
I began writing this book one month ago today: December 26, 2020. I am now at 85,000 words and hope to finish the final two chapters in the next ten days or so. My special contribution to this debate is captured in my subtitle: “Biblical Genocide in the Light of Moral Intuition“. (I will announce […]
My Biblical Violence Book: A Quick Update
My blog has been relatively quiet of late and the most significant reason is that I began writing a new book on December 26. As of today, January 16, my manuscript on biblical violence is 68,000 words. My goal is to have the manuscript ready for copy-editing and typesetting by the end of the month […]
Anecdotes vs. Testimony
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 […]
