Atheism

Purpose In Life: Nothing But Illusion?

Wednesday, May 15th, 2013

Update 5 pm May 16: Several commenters here and on Twitter are making the mistake of reading this as the usual meaning-and-purpose discussion. The apologists’ usual approach has to do with the adequacy of meaning and purpose for atheists. I’m not talking about that at all. Read on, and as you do, be careful not to confuse this discussion with that other one….

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There’s a running Internet debate between theists and atheists over the question of purpose. Atheists typically insist they can find purpose without …

Tagged As: Atheism, Free Will and Determinism, Purpose

No Crimes in the Name of Atheism?

Wednesday, April 24th, 2013

Here:

As Beatrice and Sidney Webb wrote in their admiring description of the USSR (‘Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation, 1940 edition) : ’It is exactly the explicit denial of the intervention of any God, or indeed of any will other than human will, in the universe, that has attracted to Soviet Communism the sympathies of many intellectuals and especially of scientists in civilised countries’. They added :’Lenin insisted, as the basis of all his teaching, on a resolute denial of there being any known …

Tagged As: Atheism

Theist Explaining Science to Atheists

Tuesday, March 19th, 2013

Some might consider this ironic: the theist explaining science to atheists. I don’t. I don’t see any reason why it should be surprising, even though some atheists think they have a lock on scientific reasoning.

Starting here in yesterday’s thread on “Five Things You Have Wrong About Christianity,” the atheists in the discussion are trying to push the idea of “scientific” prayer studies. What they’re showing is that they don’t understand how science works in such a setting.

They’ve been confusing experimentation with …

Tagged As: Atheism, Core, Origins and Science

Further on “Atheism Is Not a Belief”

Wednesday, March 13th, 2013

Atheists today often insist that atheism is not a belief, but a lack of belief. Here’s a question for them and others: Isn’t atheism a positive belief that “I do not need God in order to live my life”?

There are admittedly different kinds of atheism, but I think most of the atheists I’ve interacted with could affirm that as their personal belief. Atheists who are reading here: did I understand you correctly on that?

Tagged As: Atheism, New Atheism

Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos: Not Quite Real Enough

Tuesday, March 12th, 2013

Book Review

Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False by Thomas Nagel

Fact: Human consciousness is real.

Fact: Human rationality is real.

Fact: Human value judgments refer to real truths.

Fact: All of this is impossible on a materialist Neo-Darwinian conception of nature.

So says Thomas Nagel, the highly distinguished philosopher on faculty at New York University. From the above, one might expect him to number himself among the proponents of Intelligent Design, and indeed he mentions Stephen …

Tagged As: Atheism, Book Reviews, Mind, Origins and Science

Atheism, Faith, and Violence: Focus on Atheism

Wednesday, February 27th, 2013

Last time in this series on atheism, faith, and violence, I took a very brief look at Richard Dawkins’s misunderstanding of faith: specifically, that it’s not just the fact of faith but also its content that matters.

That was the first of five items I said I would cover in pursuit of the question Dawkins raised: is there a more logical path from faith to violence than there is from atheism to violence?

The answer to that quite obviously is yes, provided that the …

Tagged As: Atheism, New Atheism, Religion

Science, Materialism, and Myth

Tuesday, February 26th, 2013

I'm about a quarter of the way through John N. Oswalt's very readable The Bible Among the Myths: Unique Revelation or Just Ancient Literature? I've just been stopped short with a question about the relation of science to myth, and whether philosophcial materialism may itself be a form of myth.

Now I recognize there are a number of problems with that question. The first is that materialism is often associated with a certain school of thinking among scientists, which could cause anyone with half a …

Tagged As: Atheism, Myth, Naturalism, New Atheism, Origins and Science

Violence, Religion, and Atheism, Part One

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

Richard Dawkins says there is a logical path from religion to violence, but not from atheism to violence. He comes stunningly close to the truth, while yet missing it altogether.

This comes from somewhere after minute 75 in a debate (video here) with John Lennox in Birmingham, Alabama on October 3, 2007. Dawkins said,

I think there is a logical path from religion to doing …

Tagged As: Atheism, Evil, Faith, New Atheism, Religion, Richard Dawkins

Atheism, Faith, and Violence: So Close Yet So Wrong

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

Richard Dawkins says there is a logical path from faith to violence, but not from atheism to violence. He comes stunningly close to the truth, while yet missing it altogether.

This comes from somewhere after minute 75 in a debate (video here) with John Lennox in Birmingham, Alabama on October 3, 2007. Dawkins said,

I think there is a logical path from religion to doing terrible things…. There’s a logical path that says, if you really, really, really believe that your God, …

Tagged As: Atheism, Evil, Faith, New Atheism, Religion, Richard Dawkins

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