Our reader survey regarding preferred content drew relatively few responses, but those which we received had something to say. First, the basic genre question had some surprises. The folks that answered the survey had five choices in the basic Genre category. The genres and the number of votes each got are as follows: Read on…
My wife challenged me to answer an essay by Alvin Plantinga, a professor of philosophy, attempting to justify religious belief through logic. My response: LOL.
For millennia, religious apologists have advanced innumerable supposed logical arguments. It’s a fool’s errand. Read on…
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…
Last night I participated in a debate on this topic, at a local college; there were representatives of five different religions, and I spoke for the humanist viewpoint. Here is my opening statement: The French scientist Laplace wrote a book about planetary physics; and Napoleon asked him why it didn’t mention God. Laplace replied, “Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis.” We humans get morality first from our human nature, developed through biological evolution, and second, from our thinking … Read on…
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…
Once upon a time, this site accepted comments. That was until the Great Mormonism Furor of 2007, which resulted in new Ground Rules for the Eloquent Atheist. You might want to follow that link if you have not previously done so. Even after, or perhaps because of, the Ground Rules post, persons clearly unable to abide by those rules continued to yammer on about the details of Mormon holy underwear construction and other equally weighty subjects. We are not anti-debate, … Read on…
Jesus Christ! Christopher Hitchens is a tough read. Yes it’s true that “god is not great.” It’s also true that “religion does poison everything”. I think it’s safe to say that everyone in this room would wave that banner proudly. I do stick to my belief that Hitchens is a tough read. So what are my options to deal with this problem? I guess I could have contacted Christopher Hitchens and ask him to write a “Dummy’s Guide to Freethinking” … Read on…
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…