Category: Atheism and Theism
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“You’ve Ruined my Life, Professor Craig!”
Here, with William Lane Craig's response.
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Berdyaev on the Moral Source of Atheism
There are respectable forms of atheism. The atheist needn't be a rebellious punk stuck in intellectual adolescence, swamped by sensuality, and given to self-idolatry. Nicholas Berdyaev, The Destiny of Man (Harper Torchbooks, 1960, tr. Natalie Duddington, p. 24): It is precisely the traditional theology that leads good men, inspired by moral motives, to atheism. The…
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Is Theism Empirically Refutable?
Consider the following passage from J. J. C. Smart: It looks as though the theistic hypothesis is an empirically refutable one, so that theism becomes a refuted scientific theory. The argument goes: (1) If God exists then there is no evil, (2) There is evil, therefore (3) It is not the case that God exists.…
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Generic and Specific Problems of Evil
Substack latest. The nature and tractability of the problem depends on the type of theism espoused. ………………………. Vito Caiati comments: I very much profited from the short essay “Generic and Specific Problems of Evil” that you posted on Substack yesterday. I have read it several times, and, if viewed from the perspective of the ultimate destiny of…
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Can an Atheist be an Idolater?
Substack latest.
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Deism, Classical Theism, and Existential Inertia
On deism, God starts the universe existing, but then he takes it easy, allowing it to exist on its own in virtue of its 'existential inertia.' The latter is an analog of inertia in physics. Newton's First Law states that a body at rest or in uniform rectilinear motion continues in its state of rest…
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Soloveitchik on Proving the Existence of God
Joseph B. Soloveitchik's The Lonely Man of Faith (Doubleday 2006) is rich and stimulating and packed with insights. But there is a long footnote on p. 49 with which I heartily disagree. Here is part of it: The trouble with all rational demonstrations of the existence of God, with which the history of philosophy abounds,…
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An Atheological Argument from the Evil of Radical Skepticism
Bradley Schneider sends this argument of his devising: Premise 1: If God exists, God has the power to eliminate/overcome/defeat any evil in reality without creating more evil (i.e., God and evil can coexist but God should prevail over evil in the end). Premise 2: Radical skepticism about the world is an evil (NOT that radical…
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Is Classical Theism a Type of Idealism?
I return an affirmative answer. If God creates ex nihilo, and everything concrete other than God is created by God, and God is a pure spirit, then one type of metaphysical realism can be excluded at the outset. This realism asserts that there are radically transcendent uncreated concrete things other than God. 'Radically transcendent' means…
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Five Grades of Agnosticism
In David Horowitz's Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America (Humanix, 2018), we read: My own theological views are those of an agnostic — one who doesn't know. I do not know whether there is a Divine designer or not. (p. 24) Well, I don't know either. I agree with Horowitz when he tells…
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Natural Evil and Fallen Angels
This is an old post from my first blog, dated 3 January 2005, slightly redacted. ……………………………….. Keith Burgess-Jackson writes: I have a question for my theistic readers. How do you reconcile the devastation wrought by the tsunami with your belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being? If God could have prevented the tsunami but didn’t, then…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Seder Scene in “Crimes and Misdemeanors”
"Crimes and Misdemeanors" is Woody Allen's masterpiece. Here is the Seder scene. Addendum 8/26 The scene ends with Saul saying "If necessary, I will always choose God over the truth." It works cinematically, but it is a philosophically lame response to the atheist Aunt May. It is lame because Saul portrays the theist as one…
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Animal Suffering and the Problem of Evil
A Catholic reader of this blog is deeply troubled by the problem of animal suffering. He reports his painful recollection of a YouTube video that depicts . . . the killing of a baby elephant by 13 lions. They first attacked the little elephant in the open, but he was saved when several water buffalo intervened…
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Once More on Romans 1: 18-20 and Whether Atheism is Morally Culpable
Brian writes, In Van Til and Romans 1: 18-20 you accused Paul of begging the question in Romans 1 when he characterizes the natural world as ‘created’. The question you have in mind – the one presumably being begged by Paul – is whether the world is a divine creation. BV: That's right, but let's…
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God, the Cosmos, Other Minds: In the Same Epistemological Boat?
Tony Flood has gone though many changes in his long search for truth. He seems to have finally settled down in Van Til's presuppositionalism. Tony writes, God, the cosmos, and a plurality of minds other than one’s own are in the same epistemological boat. [. . .] To be skeptical about one but not the…