Christopher Hitchens Vs. Laura Ingraham & Doug Wilson

They start talking after an opening minute of some Gospel Bob Dylan: Your Thoughts?

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The Thing That Made The Things For Which There Is No Known Maker

Strictly deriving belief in the Christian God logically from the problem of where everything comes from: It’s amazing how the problem of how something comes from nothing leads to so many obvious and unavoidable truths, isn’t it? Your Thoughts?

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How Genesis Is Not Only Literally False, But Metaphorically False

Mary Midgley argues that only the views of fundamentalist literalists are refuted by the fact of evolution: Appeals to evolution are only damaging to biblical literalism. Certainly the events described inGenesis 1 are not literally compatible with what science (from long before Darwin’s day) tells us about the antiquity of the Earth. But this is not […]

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Are Divine Command Theory And Objective Morality Mutually Exclusive Concepts?

Luke Muelhauser confronts William Lane Craig with the inconsistency between his divine command interpretation of morality, according to which things are moral or immoral as solely determined by God’s calling them as such, on the one hand, and his insistence that in this way God is the source of “objective morality”: But let us say […]

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Disambiguating Faith: How A Lack Of Belief In God May Differ From Various Kinds Of Beliefs That Gods Do Not Exist

Yesterday on Friendly Atheist there was a vigorous debate in the comments section about whether there is a real and important difference between claiming one lacks belief in God (or gods) and outright claiming that there is no God (or gods).  Here is a nice formulation of the argument that the distinction is an irrelevant […]

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The Evil God Hypothesis

Stephen Law has recently published an article in Religious Studies showing how many of the arguments used in theodicy (meaning, in attempts to prove that there is a good God, despite the existence of evil) could equally well be employed to prove that there is an evil God.   Listen to Law explain and defend the […]

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Mr. Deity Tries To Find Time To Make Time

I don’t know if I’ve seen such a well-scripted bit of comdy about metaphysics and cosmology before: Your Thoughts?

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On Rejecting Atheism Because You Don’t Like Atheists

Chris begins an otherwise interesting reply to my post on Jon Stewart’s views on religion with this puzzling remark: Well I agree with Stewart’s statement to a degree, you can be a good person without faith, I know several aethists who are not the sterotypical ahole. I guess this comment is more of a bouncing off […]

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98th Philosophers’ Blog Carnival

Kenny Pearce has the new Philosophers’ Blog Carnival. There is a link in the upper right corner of his page that says “view with boring colors” in case you find his all green writing on all black background unpleasant. Your Thoughts?

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Camels With Hammers Philosophy

After this introductory paragraph, every sentence in this post will summarize and link a different post expressing my views, primarily on topics related to atheism, philosophy, and ethics—which are the primary preoccupations of this blog. I am organizing all of these links into this one summary statement of “Camels With Hammers’ Philosophy.”  This post will […]

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The Yearning Animal

Greta Christina takes down the argument that the desire for God proves there is a God to fulfill it out there to be discovered: Someone (I can’t remember who now) recently pointed out that the “no atheists in foxholes” argument, even if it were true (which it’s not), isn’t an argument for God’s existence. It’s actually […]

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A Knock Out Argument For Intelligent Design

Your Thoughts?

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Philosophical Ethics: A.J. Ayer And The Emotivism Of A Positivist

In a series of posts this semester, I am going to blog all (or almost all) the lecture topics for the two Philosophical Ethics classes I am teaching this semester.  Each of these posts will primarily explicate the reading or a theme that dominated class discussion in a way that should be accessible to novices […]

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On Comparing God To The Tooth Fairy

As I argued to Clergy Guy recently, there is a qualitative difference between talking about the possible scientific/metaphysical principle of a ground of all being defensibly called “God” and talking about one of the personal deities of historical religions who are claimed to engage with each other and with humanity in highly specified ways by […]

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Qualia Soup On Faith and William Lane Craig Arguments For God’s Existence

Qualia Soup’s first new video in months (and it’s terrific as usual).  He takes apart entirely the notion that we can have knowledge of anything supernatural. Your Thoughts?

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Definitions, Maths, Big Bang, and Fables

Some nice meat and potatoes refutation of predictable Christian arguments.  What I found worth highlighting in particular here on the blog was akegg’s adept way of addressing the question of what the Big Bang is said to demonstrate. Your Thoughts?

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Extra Bonus Daily Hilarity: High Stakes Intelligent Designing

A terrific video about the irrationality of our “design” as counter-proof that the functions we evolved evidence a perfect “designer.”  The video comes via Friendly Atheist: Your Thoughts?

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Physicist Steven Weinberg On The Question Of God

Your Thoughts?

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Contra The Fine Tuning Argument

ZJ gives a kick ass, concise, precise, logically strong, awesomely robotically delivered refutation.  Seriously, it’s brilliant and thorough and you really really really should watch it: (via Toomanytribbles) Your Thoughts?

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Disambiguating Faith: Faith As A Form Of Rationalization Unique To Religion

Rod Dreher confronts psychological research which illustrates the pervasive role of rationalization in our thought processes, which leads us reflexively to seek out information that confirms preexisting beliefs rather than challenges them among other techniques for seeing only what we want to see.  Turning to the implications of the realities of rationalization for the religious […]

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Is The Idea Of “Nothing” Illusory?

I was thinking about the argument for the existence of God that hinges on the question of how something could come from nothing.  And I wondered, is nothing even an intelligible concept?  Everything we experience is something. We have a concept of zero since we can imagine there being zero of some particular thing either […]

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“The Real Occam’s Razor”

Michael Dickens connects two quotes which belong together.  First there’s Occam’s Razor: Never increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything And then Einstein’s superbly adds the missing qualification: Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. In both of these statements of the importance of parsimony are the […]

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On What Counts As A Theological Position

Anderson Brown has an interesting post arguing that agnosticism is not a theological position because it is the claim that one cannot make a metaphysical assertion about the existence or non-existence of God and, therein rejects both the possible alternative theological positions (that there is a God and that there is not one): A “theological […]

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Is Karma Incompatible With Atheism?

An excellent question posed by a Scot, a reader at The Friendly Atheist. While Richard gives a fine answer supposing belief in a supernatural version of Karma, I find several of the comments interesting and more akin to the way I’ve used the term. Gary says: Actually, the word “karma” is sanskrit and simply means […]

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Dawkins vs. Collins (Obama’s New NIH Selection)

RichardDawkins.net has reprinted a 2006 debate between Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins, the prominent (and now powerful) proponent of compatibility between religion and science who has recently been selected by Obama to head up the NIH.  The article has some really interesting moments, so I recommend you read it in full.  Here is what I […]

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