I am exploring a concern about, or potential objection to, Swinburne's inductive cosmological and teleological arguments for the existence of God. The objection I have in mind is something like this, for the cosmological argument: Although the one factual premise of Swinburne's cosmological argument is supposed to be the ONLY contingent factual claim or assumption upon which the conclusion of the argument rests, the argument actually rests on a considerable number and variety of contingent … [Read more...]
Swinburne’s Cosmological and Teleological Arguments – Part 2
March 3, 2014 By Leave a Comment
Like many other liberals, I'm delighted and mesmerized by Bridgegate and various other Chris Christie scandals from the fine state of New Jersey. I cannot wait for my daily dose of Rachel Maddow dishing the latest dirt on Christie and his idiotic crowd of corrupt New Jersey hooligans. What does this have to do with Swinburne's arguments for God? Well, one neat trick that a couple of Christie's friends have pulled is to plead the 5th amendment as a legal justification for refusing to turn … [Read more...]
Very Interesting Theistic Argument
February 28, 2014 By Leave a Comment
I just discovered Robin Collins' very, very interesting reply to Carroll. Collins defends an entirely new class of fine-tuning argument for theism. This new class of fine-tuning argument does not argue that the universe is fine-tuned for life. Rather, this new class of fine-tuning argument argues that the universe is fine-tuned for discoverability. This novel argument sets up the following reply to Carroll on the extremely low entropy of the early universe: the extremely low entropy of the … [Read more...]
Extremely Low Entropy of the Early Universe as Evidence against Theism?
February 27, 2014 By Leave a Comment
One of the topics from last Friday's debate between William Lane Craig and Sean Carroll was the extremely low entropy of the early universe. As I type this blog post, the video of the debate isn't available, so I'm going from memory. But I thought I heard Carroll argue that the extremely low entropy of the early universe is evidence favoring naturalism over theism. In The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity, Carroll seems to make a similar point: An example of fine-tuning well … [Read more...]
Swinburne’s Cosmological & Teleological Arguments
February 25, 2014 By Leave a Comment
I'm not going to try to fully explain and evaluate Swinburne's Cosmological and Teleological arguments for God here. That would be way too much to tackle in one or two blog posts. There are just a couple of doubts or concerns about these arguments that I would like to express and explore. Swinburne's inductive cosmological argument for God has just one premise: e. A complex physical universe exists (over a period of time). Therefore: g. God exists. Swinburne argues that e is more … [Read more...]
Plantinga on the Alleged “Irrationality” of Atheism
February 23, 2014 By Leave a Comment
I want to comment on Gary Gutting's recent interview of Alvin Plantinga in the New York Times. Unless otherwise indicated, the quotations are quotations of Plantinga. Still, that’s not nearly sufficient for atheism. In the British newspaper The Independent, the scientist Richard Dawkins was recently asked the following question: “If you died and arrived at the gates of heaven, what would you say to God to justify your lifelong atheism?” His response: “I’d quote Bertrand … [Read more...]
Reppert on Theistic Explanation
September 9, 2013 By 10 Comments
Victor Reppert has chimed in on my reply to Wintery Knight. This is always an interesting issue. But does it really make sense to ask of an omnipotent being how they did something. For example, I once beat a Grandmaster in a chess tournament. Now, you might ask how I did that, since as someone whose rating has never gone above expert, you might wonder how I did that. (And the answer isn't all the flattering, was able to win because my opponent had had entirely too much to drink.) But if I … [Read more...]
Intelligent Design Arguments and Cumulative Cases
September 7, 2013 By 67 Comments
As we saw in my reply to Wintery Knight, he (like many other proponents of intelligent design or ID) propose that there are multiple, independent lines of evidence which favor intelligent design over its alternatives. Here is a partial summary of the evidence ID proponents offer. "Cosmic Fine-Tuning," i.e., the initial conditions of the universe and the values of the constants of the fundamental laws "Biological Fine-Tuning," i.e., the biological information in the first replicator … [Read more...]
Scientific Discoveries, Theism, and Atheism: Reply to Wintery Knight
September 3, 2013 By 48 Comments
I'm going to offer some comments on a recent post by Wintery Knight. He writes: When people ask me whether the progress of science is more compatible with theism or atheism, I offer the follow four basic pieces of scientific evidence that are more compatible with theism than atheism. [italics are mine] The following point is nitpicky, but it's worth mentioning just because so many non-philosophers, including both theists and nontheists, misuse words like "compatible" and "consistent." … [Read more...]
Initial Impressions on the Andrews-Schieber Debate: Part 4
August 15, 2013 By 12 Comments
In this post, I'm going to comment on Schieber's' first rebuttal. Schieber's First Rebuttal In defense of his argument from divine lies, Schieber writes: As to my argument against Christian knowledge, Mr. Andrews replies that he knows God is essentially truthful – that it is impossible for God to lie because it logically contradicts his moral perfection. The problem here is that nothing about moral perfection logically entails always telling the truth. While lying is usually seen as a … [Read more...]
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