Brad asked Stephen Law: “I think you presented probably the most cogent and succinct case that an atheist can give in a debate, but why should I rationally assent when you have no alternative accounts of the universe, design, morality, or the resurrection?” Stephen Law replied: “Does the fact that I can’t explain why my apple tree […]
Stephen Law
Stephen Law vs. William Lane Craig: Round 2! (Craig’s first rebuttal)
In this post I’m going to focus on William Lane Craig’s first rebuttal to Stephen Law. Craig begins like this: “You remember in my opening speech I said that I would defend two basic contentions tonight. First, that there are good reasons to think that theism is true. We have yet to hear Stephen’s response to […]
Was Stephen Law guilty of a bait and switch?
In my summary of the debate I argued that Law was guilty of a bait and switch. I wrote: “In his closing Law made a striking admission. His argument from the evidential problem of evil is not actually aiming to show that God does not exist. In other words, his argument is consistent with many […]
Stephen Law vs. William Lane Craig: Round One!
On October 17th 2011 two philosophical heavy weights squared off against one another in a debate till the bitter end over the question “Does God exist?” In one corner stands William Lane Craig the lead debater in all Christendom. In the other corner, the amiable Stephen Law, a first rate philosopher in his own right. And […]
Stephen Law’s Evil God Hypothesis
There were a number of points that Stephen Law made in his book Believing Bullshit which I didn’t have time to address in my already bloated review. One of those was his so-called “Evil God hypothesis” (henceforth the EGH), a clever, if abortive, attempt to undermine theodicies (see pp. 24-27). First off, what is a […]
Has Stephen Law been sucked into an intellectual black hole? A Review of Law’s “Believing Bullshit”
Stephen Law. Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole. Prometheus, 2011, 271 pp. ISBN: 978-1-61614-411-1. In the vein of Carl Sagan’s The Demon Haunted World (Ballantine, 1997) and Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things (Holt, 2002), comes this new book by Stephen Law, senior lecturer in philosophy at Heythrop […]
