A passage from Homer’s Zoo

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
–Epicurus Read on…

Is God an Evil Alien Bodysnatcher?

(a revised chapter from: The Sins of God)

Let’s suppose there is a God. Let’s suppose that this God is our divine creator, that he (for the purpose of this treatise I shall use the personal pronoun of ‘he’, with respect to the fact that as God does not exist, ‘he’ could equally not be a ‘she’ or an ‘it‘) is immortal and that among his necessary attributes, he is omnipotent, omniscient and supremely benevolent. Read on…

The Meaning of Life

One sometimes encounters people who assert that, unless there is a
God, life has no meaning. Now, as soon as we ask what they mean by
God and by the meaning of life we enter a quagmire from which it is
impossible to get out. Read on…

Famous Freethinkers- Armstrong, Karen

“A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from its effect, “he” becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all-knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled. An atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified.” Read on…

Faith versus Reason

Frequent commenter Lee recently pointed me to a blog essay by philosopher Michael Lynch, “Reasons for Reason.”

He says current American divisions are rooted in fundamental differences about what makes a belief believable. Lynch sees a problem of circularity in validating reason by using reason, with all beliefs thus ultimately premised on something arbitrary. Read on…

Are atheists more religious than humanists?

If you are an atheist, and find the title of this essay provocative, it is not entirely an accident. I have a point, and now that I have your attention perhaps you will listen while I make it. Religions have survived over the millennia because they thrive on boundaries between the “us” and the “them”. This applies in spades to the three great monotheistic ones. Christianity and Islam not only have evolved elaborate rituals and behavioral requirements to provide instant … Read on…

Some Reflections on Whether God Exists

The first point to take up is what the question asks.  Does it mean: “Is God part of the world, do we have rational–and thus communicable, non-mysterious and not inherently private–justification for believing that the claim is true?”  Or does it mean the somewhat different question, “Is God real?”  And if the latter, what criteria of reality is to be applied to searching out the answer? A problem in approaching the issue is that, as many believers maintain, God is … Read on…

Agnosticism, a personal definition

Agnostic symbol - Dali

Agnosticism is simpler than it sounds, and also much more difficult. Most would define agnosticism as the view that the truth of certain claims (especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims) are unknown or unknowable. Simply restated, man cannot rationally have sufficient knowledge to either prove or disprove the existence of one or more religious deities, if any. As such, agnosticism is not a statement of either belief or disbelief. … Read on…

Marvin’s question about Agnosticism

Dali

A gentleman named Marvin used our contact form to ask a question that should have been answered before he could ask it. His actual question is as follows: Hi. Do I have to be an atheist to submit my works here? I am actually an agnostic but I sometimes wonder and speculate the non-existence of God. Somehow, I am an adherent of atheistic existentialism by Nietzche. As the fellow that should have arranged to answer this question in advance, I … Read on…