Metaphysics

Disambiguating Faith: Naturalism, Materialism, Empiricism, And Wrong, Weak, And Unsupported Beliefs Are All Not Necessarily Faith Positions

August 2, 2011 By Daniel Fincke 4 Comments

Here at Camels With Hammers Eric Steinhart recently accused popular atheism with being guilty of faith in versions of naturalism, materialism, and empiricism on the grounds that their particular positions are “based on weak arguments or no arguments at all”. But believing a position based on a weak argument is not the same thing as believing [...]

Filed Under: Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Featured, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy 4 Comments

The Church of Google: Google is God

April 21, 2011 By Daniel Fincke 2 Comments

by Eric Steinhart Many thanks to Zike for pointing me to The Church of Google. The Church of Google website gives nine lovely arguments for the divinity of Google. The Church of Google website also gives excellent replies to objections against the divinity of Google. Brilliant! Guest Contributor Eric Steinhart is a professor of philosophy [...]

Filed Under: Arguments for the Existence of God, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Philosophy, Religion, Religion and Science 2 Comments

Atheistic Design Arguments

March 7, 2011 By Daniel Fincke 1 Comment

by Eric Steinhart All design arguments reason from the organization in our universe to the existence of some divine designer. What does this designer do? Design implies deliberate selection from a plurality of alternative possibilities. It cannot be selection from one possibility nor can it be random selection. It has to be rational selection. According [...]

Filed Under: Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Cosmology, Featured, God, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Philosophy, Physics, Religion and Science, Science 1 Comment

Atheism and Leibniz

February 28, 2011 By Daniel Fincke 10 Comments

by Eric Steinhart The cosmological argument is really a family of arguments. Some of the cosmological arguments are very concrete. Aquinas’s Second Way and the Kalam Argument (popularized by William Lane Craig) reason back to some first cause of the universe at the beginning of time. Atheists (like Quentin Smith) have given various replies to [...]

Filed Under: Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Cosmology, Featured, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Physics, Science 10 Comments

The Secret Agreement between Atheists and Theists

February 27, 2011 By Daniel Fincke 17 Comments

by Eric Steinhart Atheists and theists have a strange secret agreement. You can see it if you look at the way they treat the arguments for God, like the cosmological argument. The theists say: (1) If the reasoning in the cosmological argument is correct, then God exists. (2) The reasoning in the cosmological argument is [...]

Filed Under: Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Cosmology, Featured, God, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Religion, Uncategorized 17 Comments

The Simulation Hypothesis

February 24, 2011 By Daniel Fincke Leave a Comment

by Eric Steinhart Atheists can use the traditional arguments for God in strange new ways. There’s no reason to reject those arguments – on the contrary, I think they should be carefully studied, and their flaws should be repaired. But I don’t think they lead to God. I love the Cosmological Arguments. And the ones [...]

Filed Under: Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Cosmology, Featured, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Physics, Religion and Science, Science Leave a Comment

Defending The Apparent Truth Of Evolution’s Mindlessness

February 21, 2011 By Daniel Fincke 4 Comments

Last Christmas Eve, I argued that the belief that God “guided evolution” was not a rationally respectable way to reconcile science with faith but rather it was essentially an effective denial of the theory of natural selection, in its scientifically explanatory sense. Part of the revolutionary character of the discovery of evolution by natural selection [...]

Filed Under: Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Biology, Biology, Creationism, Creationism, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Evolution, Evolution, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, God, God, Historical Philosophy, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Science, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Science, Secularism Tagged With: Alvin Plantinga, Eugenie Scott, Huston Smith, Jerry Coyne, National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT), National Center for Science Education (NCSE) 4 Comments

Why Materialism is Unscientific

February 10, 2011 By Daniel Fincke 8 Comments

by Eric Steinhart You’ve probably heard the old question: Why is there something rather than nothing? It’s unfortunate when theists screw this up. They say: Because God created the universe! Of course, since God is something, you can’t use God to answer the question. The universe coming from God is just something from something. And [...]

Filed Under: Atheism, Cosmology, Featured, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Physics, Religion and Science, Science 8 Comments

The Positive Content of Atheism

February 7, 2011 By Daniel Fincke 4 Comments

by Eric Steinhart Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers recently wrote about being irked by “Dictionary Atheists”. He doesn’t like it when people say that atheism means nothing more than denying God. His post is long, but I just want to focus on the issue of the meaning of atheism: why complain about dictionary atheists? After [...]