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…

God, responsibility, and ethics

The religious argument that says it is their God that shows us all the right and wrong ways to act has always seemed full of holes to me. I have seen many of these bubbles pricked in the past on this site, but I am worried by another one, which has a long philosophical history. Of course, it may be just me… 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…

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…

Gravity, the god-gene, and Grace

My welfare in mind, Grace declares that coffee today at The Compass Café is out. She hands me Steven Hawking’s The Universe In A Nutshell, then quietly leaves the bedroom. Ten to the power of 36 is big. Just how big I cannot fathom under normal circumstances, let alone when in the grip of the flu. The same goes for a thousand light years across the spindrift of the cosmos. I sink into reverie. When the effects of medication wear … Read on…

What don’t unbelievers believe in?

Depending on the believer’s particular philosophical bent, and upon the journey of the unbeliever to her philosophy, it may be that there is truly not much difference between the believer and the infidel. It is possible, but not likely, that the unbeliever’s world-view is very nearly the same as that of any given believer, except that she believes in one fewer god than does a true believer, to paraphrase the words of Stephen Roberts. The unbeliever may be more independent … 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…