Why I Bother Writing About the Boring Question of Whether Religious Beliefs Are True

March 8, 2012 By 43 Comments

Alain de Botton has caused a stir in the atheist blogosphere, and particularly here at Freethought Blogs, with his new book Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion. More specifically he caused waves with his article on CNN , which is heavy on selections from the book, and which begins as [...]

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Examining Some Alleged Divine Attributes

February 21, 2012 By 24 Comments

Jaime: Okay, so why do you believe that your god is a good explanation for the universe? Robin: Because everything that exists needs an explanation and the universe is no exception. Jaime: But then why doesn’t your god need an explanation? Aren’t we just headed for an infinite regress unless you just admit that something doesn’t need [...]

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Is It Just A Mystery Whether God Exists?

February 16, 2012 By 71 Comments

Robin: Jaime, what bothers me about your atheism is that it’s so dogmatic. You claim to know there is no God. That’s so arrogant. Jaime: Yes, I claim to know there are no gods. But I don’t claim it dogmatically or arrogantly. I claim it based upon the fact that the evidence is overwhelmingly against [...]

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God and Goodness

January 30, 2012 By 32 Comments

Robin: Look, I get it, Jaime. As an atheist, you think that God’s wisdom is foolishness, that God’s righteousness is wickedness, and that the bloody death of Jesus on the cross is hateful and ugly rather than the epitome of love and beauty that Christians like I think it is. The Bible makes it very [...]

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Criticizing Wicca: God and Goddess

December 29, 2011 By 4 Comments

This is a guest post by Eric Steinhart, Professor of Philosophy at William Paterson University. According to several Wiccan texts, the Wiccan ultimate deity manifests itself in two forms, the male god and the female goddess. The first way to think about the god and goddess is realistic.  This is theological realism: the god and [...]

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Wicca and the Problem of Evil

December 28, 2011 By 17 Comments

This is a guest post by Eric Steinhart, Professor of Philosophy at William Paterson University. Many Wiccan writers criticize Christians for dividing the ultimate deity into a purely good God and a purely evil Devil.  They deny this division.  Buckland writes: “the idea of dividing the Supreme Power into two – good and evil – [...]

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John Shook: Proving God's Existence Is Impossible

November 17, 2011 By 14 Comments

This semester I have been teaching Philosophy of Religion using John Shook’s superbly thorough, systematic, incisive, and critical summation of the arguments for and against the existence of God, The God Debates: A 21st Century Guide for Atheists and Believers (and Everyone in Between). The book is impressive enough that I would give it the [...]

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Defending Philosophy 1: A Reply To Dr. Coyne

October 29, 2011 By 94 Comments

A little Nietzsche to set the tone: Of the friend Our faith in others betrays wherein we would dearly like to have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer. And often with our love we only want to leap over envy. And often we attack and make an enemy in order [...]

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"Not Everything In Life Is Logical"

October 24, 2011 By 17 Comments

When we rationalists, naturalists, and other assorted atheists insist that no one should form beliefs that disregard logic and evidence, the defenders of faith often tell us that “Not everything in life is logical”, or use some variant of this phrase. What might they mean by this? Where is their confusion exactly and how best [...]

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Documentary with Stephen Hawking about Whether God Created the Universe

October 22, 2011 By 2 Comments

Your Thoughts?

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