A couple days ago Salon.com published an article on a new survey (you can read it here) which reveals that one-third of young Americans describe themselves as “not religious”, meaning that they are unaffiliated with any formal religion. As I read the article my sense of self-importance inflated just a bit as I realized many […]
agnosticism
Can a sane mind believe in a singularity?
In the midst of our ongoing discussion of the origin of the universe and the role that agent causal explanations might play in accounting for it, Joseph Palazzo (in his amiable, diplomatic way) made the following comment: “BTW, do you understand what a singularity [is]? From the context of your post, it doesn’t look like […]
Three bad ways to defend agnosticism
So does the universe has a cause for its existence, and if so is the cause a personal one? It seems like a reasonable question, and one which would be open to the tools of philosophical and empirical investigation. For example, if the universe appears to be finite in existence (it does) and to be […]
An Atheistic Riddle
Question: How do you turn an atheist into an agnostic? Answer: Ask them to provide evidence of atheism! (I know this should really be tweeted rather than blog posted, but I stopped tweeting a few months ago. Anyway, a mere tweet would not permit me to thank Joseph and TAM for providing inspiration for this fine […]
Blaming those who doubt
In my last post I critiqued the 5 Minute Apologist Rick Cornish for his claim that “Honest, objective investigation repays our efforts with more than adequate evidence to know him [that is, to know that God exists].” I don’t dispute for one minute that some doubt in God’s existence may be borne out of an intellectually dishonest appraisal […]
Conversations with the Five Minute Apologist (Part 2)
We now return to our spotty engagement with Rick Cornish’s book 5 Minute Apologist. Today’s quote comes from a chapter that discusses the existence of God as it builds toward the following climax: “When all the available evidence is considered, it overwhelmingly supports the existence of a personal, moral Spirit distinct from the world but […]
The day Billy went undercover as a skeptic: The briefing
“Okay Billy, first thing is to start calling yourself a skeptic. Tell people you doubt everything and that you only believe based on reason and evidence.” “Doubt everything? Dad, isn’t that a bit silly? Nobody doubts everything.” “Just do it son. And make sure you say you don’t believe in god or gods. (And be […]
Three reasons agnostics shouldn’t call themselves atheists
Recently the issue of defining atheism came up in the blog. In response, I thought I’d repost a January 2010 article I wrote at Christian Post on the topic. The Problem The line between atheist and agnostic used to be clear. Atheists believed that no God or gods existed. Agnostics didn’t have any belief as […]
Can you perceive God if you cannot demonstrate your perception to others?
Let’s consider Beetle’s response to my essay “Perceiving the transcendent God through transcending entities“. While I don’t agree with most of what Beetle says, it is a concise, well written representation of many standard criticisms and thus it is worth our time to critique it carefully. Beetle begins with a conciliatory statement that conceals a […]
An open minded challenge to the dogmatic doubter
The leading candidate for ironic declaration of the year? The “open-minded” agnostic who says “Nobody can know that God exists.” Why? Well gosh, he sure sounds confident for someone who characterizes his position in the terms of tentative doubt. I thought of that as I read Jerry Rivard’s comment: “I consider it to be an obvious and undeniable truth that […]
Does a really old universe show that human beings are not important?
Mark Twain thought so. In one of his finest rhetorical moments (in a career sparkling with them) he wrote: “Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is. I dunno. If […]
Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses religion, bacteria, and the meaning of life
Neil deGrasse Tyson, writer, scientist and host of the PBS program Nova, is my favorite science-popularizer. However, that doesn’t mean I agree with him, certainly not when it comes to metaphysics or theology. Here is a great piece of rhetoric from Tyson on whether there is a meaning to life (or the universe on the whole). I […]
Getting to the bedrock of naturalism
This is the final installment in my dressing down of The Atheist Missionary’s slapdash approach to the pedagogy of his children. We saw him dismiss the resurrection because New Testament historians are supposedly constrained by religion and institutional affiliation to affirm the things they do. (This bizarrely contentious series of asertions demosntrates that the discrimination against “religion” […]
Why no professional philosopher would use Dawkins’ argument
I have been accused of being unfair to Dick Dawkins. Well let’s look at what Dawkins calls “the central argument of my book” (The God Delusion, 187). He summarizes it in six steps. Steps 4-6 are not directly relevant to the core of the argument against God, so I’ve only reproduced steps 1-3 (see The […]
