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” […]
agnosticism
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 […]
A great “godless” book
Pete Hautman. godless. Simon Pulse, 2004. 198 pp. ISBN: 10: 1416908161 It is summer in St. Andrew Valley and Jason Bock is fifteen, awkward, disenfranchised and bored. Needless to say the Catholic Church he is forced to attend by his parents doesn’t add much in terms of excitement. Father Haynes is “a thousand years old at […]
Does extraordinary uncleanliness require extraordinary soap?
Once again the claim has surfaced: “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” And once again I have had to shoot it down. Now what could be the problem with a principle so symmetrically reasonable? Grey days produce grey moods. Cold weather requires a cold weather jacket. Why wouldn’t extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence? The problem starts […]
Russell’s Teapot: An analogy worthy of a first year undergraduate
I have been asked to explain what is wrong with Bertrand Russell’s Teapot Analogy. Unfortunately, I can’t respond by reproducing the argument of Peter van Inwagen’s paper given at the Society of Christian Philosophers conference since (a) I daydreamed through part of the talk and (b) I recycled the handout. (Don’t get me wrong. It was definitely […]
The Apostate Atheist
Tory Ninja raised the problem of self-described Christians who do not believe any person like God exists. That’s a problem. That is, it is a problem that some self-described Christians deny p where p is “God exists.” But the same thing goes in the other direction. Last week in one of the blog threads so-called “Atheist […]
Being completely objective about your worldview (as if that were possible)
In the past I have had my great frustrations with John Loftus and his Outsider Test of Faith. Shall I count the reasons? For starters, it is arbitrarily imposed upon people who hold a set of claims that are “religious” as a means to test those claims when a more consistent application would present it as […]
Dr. Z meets Dustin
Dustin responded to the case of Dr. Z becoming an agnostic by writing “Yes, there are people who lose their faith in God due to evil. This just shows that their faith was no true faith, but only temporary (cf. Matt. 13:21). God has varying means by which He exposes spurious faith, and rancid evil […]
Dr. Z: A Brief Addendum
So we have Dr. Z, weeping into his glass of brandy, no longer able to affirm the proposition God exists, a proposition which on the reading of Romans 1 that has been presented to us, a person can only deny if they are in some sense in sinful rebellion against the knowledge of God that is […]
The night Dr. Z became an agnostic
Dr. Z, an OBGYN, was working with Doctors Without Borders in the Congo. Dr. Z had decided he simply had to go because he felt it was his calling as a Christian to help alleviate some of the enormous suffering in the world. For months Dr. Z labored tirelessly in a makeshift camp, desperately attempting […]
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 […]
Carl Sagan’s old time religion
I would like to say some more about Sagan’s Pale blue dot fallacy but before doing so let’s say something about Sagan’s (ir)religiosity. It is often assumed that Sagan was an atheist. (Here I am assuming the standard definition of atheist as one who believes there is no God where “God” is defined broadly as […]
