John W. Loftus’ new book, The End of Christianity (Prometheus, 2011), a collection of essays by atheists, was just released a few weeks ago. It serves as a companion volume to last year’s The Christian Delusion. And it wears its raison-d’etre on its sleeve. I intend to provide a review of the book in the […]
worldview
Apologetics and the ‘Company Man’ Image
Right after graduating university, my old roommate took a position with Sherwin Williams paint. He went off for a few days of training and came back with a thick binder of SW propaganda, a new shirt, and a whole new outlook on life. From that point on every time we went out he would point out the problems […]
Why “defeating naturalism” is harder said than done
The intrepid S1lverBullet posed a direct question to me: “what qualifies as a defeater to belief in Yawheh/Jesus/Holy Ghost? A logical impossibility? What, exactly?” Later he explained further what he was looking for: “I was asking what might qualify as a defeater? A defeater would be identified by what criteria? It seems that his [Randal’s] beliefs must […]
Dogmatic Daniel’s degenerating dialogue
I had a great dialogue with the Society of Edmonton Atheists. But it seems like my dialogue in the blog with one of the SEA’s chief representatives, Daniel (not to be confused with the character in Elton John’s song) has been degenerating. Daniel initially wrote in the blog: “Randal is a great guy, very intelligent, […]
Royal flushes, resurrections, and the things you teach your children
The Atheist Missionary’s criteria for what he would teach his children has continued to evolve (or devolve, I’m not sure yet). That’s a good thing because it is important for him to work out the principles that guide how he raises his progeny. The key issue concerned past event types that are unique and unrepeatable. […]
Welcoming an Atheist to the Worldview Interrogation Room
I recently asked Shawn the Atheist to explain and justify his worldview commitments to atheism. He kindly obliged. His brief statement of belief and defense is available here. In what follows I will be interrogating that statement. For ease of reference I have rendered all quotations from Shawn in the same candy apple red as […]
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 […]
On taking an objective approach to inexplicable events
We all tend to filter incoming data in accord with our presuppositions. This is nothing new to this blog. I have griped about the confirmation bias before. And it is a feature discussion in my new book. But here I’d like to focus on a specific issue: inexplicable events. We’re talking the equivalent of supernovae […]
Indoctrination in Focus on the Family’s “The Truth Project”
Friends, Romans, Triablogue Posse, I will be returning later today to some of the comments that are in the threads like overripe fruit laden on the vine. But for now I wanted to draw your attention to a journal article I wrote for Christian Scholar’s Review in 2009 which I just uploaded to the academic […]
Mens Paired Figure Skating and Atheism
Jerry Rivard writes in the blog to offer a reprimand: “Much has been said on this blog and at CP about naturalism being the inevitable conclusion that follows atheism. Nonsense! A person can certainly believe that there are no gods, but that there are ghosts, for example. They may have an inconsistent world view as […]
Atheists in natural glass houses
Atheists living in their “100 percent natural” glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. But alas, when many insist they don’t live in such a house, or when they can’t see the glass walls hemming them in on every side, I suppose it’s difficult to persuade them that they shouldn’t hurl that hunk of granite in their […]
