I have been struggling for weeks to try to re-state Richard Swinburne's argument concerning the coherence of the idea of there being a perfectly good person (from Chapter 11 of The Coherence of Theism, hereafter: COT). I think I can now at least point the way as to how to do this. The overarching argument goes like this: 1. The statement 'There is a perfectly free and omniscient person' is a coherent statement. 2. The statement 'There is a perfectly free and omniscient person' entails the … [Read more...]
Cat: Jewish Zombie can make you live forever?
January 31, 2013 By 4 Comments
HT: AtheistSoup.com … [Read more...]
Religious Belief Systems of Persons with High Functioning Autism
January 30, 2013 By 5 Comments
Abstract: The cognitive science of religion is a new field which explains religious belief as emerging from normal cognitive processes such as inferring others' mental states, agency detection and imposing patterns on noise. This paper investigates the proposal that individual differences in belief will reflect cognitive processing styles, with high functioning autism being an extreme style that will predispose towards nonbelief (atheism and agnosticism). This view was supported by content … [Read more...]
Christianity Today’s Review of Susan Jacoby’s The Great Agnostic
January 30, 2013 By 3 Comments
I haven't read Jacoby's book, but Christianity Today's review strikes me as a sympathetic if somewhat critical review. LINK … [Read more...]
Petition about Boy Scouts Atheism Ban
January 30, 2013 By Leave a Comment
The Boy Scouts of America is in the news again because it is apparently reconsidering its ban on homosexuals. Since their discrimination against nontheists doesn't seem to get nearly as much attention, I wanted to use this opportunity to remind Secular Outpost readers of the Change.org petition to the BSA to stop their ban on atheists from being members. If you haven't already signed the petition, please do so! … [Read more...]
Feser Insults (Insulted?) Parsons Again
January 30, 2013 By 5 Comments
If Edward Feser is not yet the JP Holding of theistic philosophers, he seems to be well on his way. I don't always read his blog, but his latest item caught my attention. "God and Man at HuffPro" In that brief article, he links to this older article: "So you think you understand the cosmological argument?" I hadn't seen that article before. In it, he makes the following statement, "Like every other academic field, philosophy of religion has its share of hacks and … [Read more...]
Hillarious Summary of the Argument from Shotgun Weddings Against Same-Sex Marriage
January 30, 2013 By 2 Comments
Over at Preliator pro Causa, Joe McKen presents a hillarious summary of what has to be one of the absolute worst arguments ever made against same-sex marriage. Marriage should be limited to unions of a man and a woman because they alone can "produce unplanned and unintended offspring," opponents of gay marriage have told the Supreme Court. By contrast, when same-sex couples decide to have children, "substantial advance planning is required," said Paul D. Clement, a lawyer for House … [Read more...]
New URLs for RSS Readers
January 28, 2013 By Leave a Comment
If you are using an RSS reader, please update your reader as follows. To follow The Secular Outpost at its new site on Patheos, subscribe to this feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/patheos/secularoutpost Because we migrated our Disqus account from the old site to the new site, the location of the RSS feed for comments is unchanged. In case you have not already subscribed to the comments feed and wish to follow comments made about The Secular Outpost posts, subscribe to this … [Read more...]
How the Distinction between Deductive vs. Inductive Arguments Can Mask Uncertainty
January 28, 2013 By 25 Comments
Everyone who has taken a philosophy 101 class has learned the distinction between deductive and inductive arguments. It goes like this. Only deductive arguments may be valid; an argument is valid if and only if the truth of its premises guarantees the truth of its premises. Otherwise, the argument is invalid. If an argument is both valid and contains all true premises, then the argument is sound. Not all invalid arguments are worthless, however, and the concept of an inductive argument shows … [Read more...]
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