Dr. Maarten Boudry performs a 'Sokal-style hoax' on two theology conferences. Here is the abstract: The Paradoxes of Darwinian Disorder. Towards an Ontological Reaffirmation of Order and Transcendence. Robert A. Maundy, College of the Holy Cross, Reno, Nevada In the Darwinian perspective, order is not immanent in reality, but it is a self-affirming aspect of reality in so far as it is experienced by situated subjects. However, it is not so much reality that is self-affirming, but the … [Read more...]
Debunking the Myth of Persecution
February 26, 2013 By Leave a Comment
I have a cartoon on my office door showing a pie chart representing religious affiliation in the U.S. Of course, by far the largest section of the pie is labelled "Christian." All others are represented by small slivers. A speech balloon from the Christian part says "Help! We are being oppressed!" The rhetoric of oppression is still absurdly used by Christian polemicists. Every holiday season we hear about the "war on Christmas." The removal of "Roy's Rock,"--a two-and-a-half ton granite … [Read more...]
Alex Rosenberg’s 2012 Argument for Nihilism
February 26, 2013 By 5 Comments
In his 2012 book, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, Alex Rosenberg defends an argument for nihilism.[1] In this article I want to evaluate his argument. Definitions Before we turn to his argument, we first need to understand how Rosenberg defines his terms. Let us begin with the word “scientism.” In his own words, Rosenberg defines “scientism” as follows. But we’ll call the worldview that all us atheists (and even some agnostics) share “scientism.” This is the … [Read more...]
Implication vs. Entailment
February 24, 2013 By 10 Comments
In my recent post “The Perfect Goodness of God – Again” I used conditional derivation to prove a conditional statement, and took that to be sufficient to prove that the antecedent of the conditional statement entailed the consequent. Then I had second thoughts about that approach to proving an entailment. Penance for my possible sin against logic is to look up the terms ‘implication’ and ‘entailment’ (as well as other related terms: ‘deduction’ and ‘validity’) in various … [Read more...]
Craig’s Argument from Intentionality
February 21, 2013 By 45 Comments
Here is my summary of Craig’s “argument from intentionality” in his recent debate with Alex Rosenberg. 5. God is the best explanation for the intentional states of consciousness in the world. Philosophers are puzzled by states of intentionality, the state of being about something or being of something. It signifies the object-directendess of our thoughts, such as thinking about my summer vacation or about my wife. But no physical object has this capability. A chair, a stone, or … [Read more...]
Thoughts on the “Logical vs. Evidential” Distinction
February 21, 2013 By 3 Comments
Chris Hallquist recently questioned the significance of the distinction between logical arguments from evil and evidential arguments from evil. He writes: In general, the insistence of people who follow these issues on classifying versions of the problem of evil as either “logical” or “evidential” is weird. It isn’t something you see with any other kind of argument in philosophy. What we care about with deductive arguments is first whether they are valid, and second whether the … [Read more...]
Mark Douglas Seward: Fine-tuning as Evidence for a Multiverse: Why White is Wrong
February 16, 2013 By 7 Comments
Abstract Roger White (God and design, Routledge, London, 2003) claims that while the fine-tuning of our universe, α , may count as evidence for a designer, it cannot count as evidence for a multiverse. First, I will argue that his considerations are only correct, if at all, for a limited set of multiverses that have particular features. As a result, I will argue that his claim cannot be generalised as a statement about all multiverses. This failure to generalise, I will argue, is also a … [Read more...]
Blogging the Passive-Aggressive Way
February 14, 2013 By 9 Comments
I just happened to go to the Triablogue website. I noticed that Hays dedicated an entire post to his combox exchange with me regarding the failure of the Resurrection as an explanatory hypothesis. I found it interesting to see how he categorized the post: It appears that Hays has dedicated an entire blog post category or "label" to "Village Atheist." Not all of his posts about comments made by atheists seem to be placed into this category, so one can only assume that he is using the … [Read more...]
An Atheist Guide to Love
February 14, 2013 By 1 Comment
Fellow Patheos Atheist channel blogger Libby Anne (Love, Joy, and Feminism) has a column in today's Washington Post in the Guest Voices section. LINK … [Read more...]
The Cammels with Hammers Civility Pledge
February 13, 2013 By 7 Comments
Daniel Fincke just posted this on his blog. Republishing here with his permission and with my full support. If you want to take this pledge too, post your signature and your comments and any personal addendums you make to it in the comments section below. Also consider reposting the full pledge and reasons for the pledge on your own blog and/or other social media outlets to make your commitment to civility explicit. Also consider inviting others to do the same. I encourage people to freely … [Read more...]
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