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 […]
Michael Shermer
A Review of The Moral Arc Part 3: From Absurdities to Atrocities
For Part 2 of this review click here. Early on in The Moral Arc Michael Shermer quotes Voltaire: “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” (7) It’s clear that Shermer likes this quote because he returns to it on several occasions. At one point he offers a different translation: “Truly, whoever […]
A Review of The Moral Arc Part 2: Reason as Rhetoric
For Part 1 of this review click here. Imagine that you’re over at your friend Mike’s house for dinner when he pulls out a Monopoly box and invites you to a game. “But before we get started,” he says, “the rules are that I get $500 every time I pass go and you don’t get […]
A Review of The Moral Arc Part 1: Abortion
Michael Shermer. The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity Toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom. New York: Henry Holt, 2015. 543 pp. As I read it, Michael Shermer’s 2015 book The Moral Arc is a sweeping 500 page apologetic for two theses: the optimism thesis (the world is getting better); and the secular thesis (that improvement […]
Notes on the David Wood-Michael Shermer Debate
This week “Unbelievable” was preempted for an annual fundraising drive. In place of the regular show Justin Brierley posted a recent debate between Christian apologist David Wood and skeptic Michael Shermer. I’m only about half way through the debate at this point, having listened to opening statements and rebuttals. But I can say that this […]
Peter Boghossian’s Manual for Wasting Paper (Part 1)
Peter Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists. Durham, NC: Pitchstone Publishing, 2013. As some of you will know, I originally purchased Peter Boghossian’s book A Manual for Creating Atheists after Justin Brierley sent me a tentative invitation to debate with Boghossian on “Unbelievable”. When Boghossian then refused to appear on the program with me based on his insistence […]
Should you marry your theology to the latest science?
I’ve been slowly reading through Michael Shermer’s How We Believe in my spare time. It is a pleasant enough read, but has many noticeable weaknesses. Perhaps the biggest weakness is that Shermer is an advocate of the separation or two worlds model of theology and science (what Stephen Jay Gould called the “NOMA” or non-overlapping […]
Is doubt good? Is skepticism a virtue?
While reading through Michael Shermer’s enjoyable book How We Believe: Science, Skepticism and the Search for God (New York: Henry Holt, 2000) I came across the following passage: “Doubt is good. Questioning belief is healthy. Skepticism is okay. It is more than okay, in fact. Skepticism is a virtue and science is a valuable tool […]
Inerrancy faces anti-trinitarians, open theists and holocaust deniers
Ever since its founding the Evangelical Theological Society has required a core confession of its members: the inerrancy of scripture in the autographs. Then they discovered (in the early 80s as I recall) that non-trinitarian oneness people had infiltrated their ranks. It would seem that confession of inerrancy does not ensure that one will come […]
