Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Atheism and Theism

  • J. P. Moreland on Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (Part One)

    (The following review will be crossposted shortly at Prosblogion.  Comments are closed here, but will be open there.) Apart from what Alvin Plantinga calls creative anti-realism, the two main philosophical options for many of us in the West are some version of naturalism and some version of Judeo-Christian theism. As its title indicates, J. P.…

  • Atheist Baggini: The New Atheist Movement is Destructive

    Here.

  • Dennett on the Deformation of the God Concept

    I had an excellent discussion with Mike Valle on a number of topics yesterday afternoon.  The following post exfoliates one of the themes of our discussion. One of the striking features of Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (Viking 2006)  is that Dennett seems bent on having a straw man to attack. This is…

  • Is Religion the Problem? Why Isn’t Belief As Such the Problem? The Special Pleading of Some Atheists

    One of the arguments against religion in the contemporary atheist arsenal is the argument that religious beliefs fuel war and terrorism. Rather than pull quotations from such well-known authors as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, I will quote a couple of passages from one of the contributors to Philosophers Without Gods, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. His piece…

  • The Trouble with Continental Philosophy: Tillich

    Today’s example of Continental muddle-headedness is not from a philosopher, strictly speaking, but from a theologian who was influenced by a philosopher, Heidegger, and who has had a great deal of influence on philosophers. Paul Tillich (1886-1965) writes: Atheism can only mean the attempt to remove any ultimate concern – to remain unconcerned about the…

  • Attaching Useful Senses to ‘Negative Atheism’ and ‘Positive Atheism’

    I have already sufficiently explained why 'atheism' and 'negative atheism' cannot be usefully defined in terms of mere absence of theistic belief.  (See also Peter Lupu's comments on this topic.)  But sense can be attached to these phrases and to their near relatives 'negative atheist' and 'positive atheist.'  I suggest that a negative atheist is…

  • Sam Harris on Whether Atheists are Evil

    In Letter to a Christian Nation (Knopf, 2006), in the section Are Atheists Evil?, Sam Harris writes: If you are right to believe that religious faith offers the only real basis for morality, then atheists should be less moral than believers. In fact, they should be utterly immoral. (pp. 38-39) Harris then goes on to…

  • Against Terminological Mischief: ‘Negative Atheism’ and ‘Negative Nominalism’

    This from the seemingly reputable site, Investigating Atheism: More recently, atheists have argued that atheism only denotes a lack of theistic belief, rather than the active denial or claims of certainty it is often associated with. I'm having a hard time seeing what point there could be in arguing that "atheism only denotes a lack of theistic…

  • The Definition of ‘Atheist’ and the Burden of Proof

    Some define atheism in terms of the absence of the belief that God exists.  This won't do, obviously, since then we would have to count cabbages and sparkplugs as atheists given the absence in these humble entities of the belief that God exists.  But the following could be proffered with some show of plausibility: An…

  • The No True Scotsman or No True Atheist Fallacy

    In logic, a fallacy is not a false belief but a pattern of reasoning that is both typical and in some way specious. Specious reasoning, by the very etymology of the term, appears correct but is not. Thus a fallacy is not just any old mistake in reasoning, but a recurrent mistake that is seductive.…

  • A. C. Grayling and a Stock Move of Militant Atheists

    Since A. C. Grayling has surfaced in the ComBox here, it it will be useful for people to see just what sort of fellow he is.  So over the next few days I will reproduce  three or four of my Grayling posts from the old site. Militant atheist philosopher A. C. Grayling writes, Religious belief of…

  • Does the Atheist Deny What the Theist Affirms?

    It seems to me that there is a sort of 'disconnect' in theist-atheist debates. It is as if the parties to the dispute are not talking about the same thing. Jim Ryan writes, The reason I'm an atheist is straightforward. The proposition that there is a god is as unlikely as ghosts, Martians amongst us,…

  • Russell’s Teapot: Does it Hold Water?

    Here is a famous passage from Bertrand Russell's Is There a God? Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a…