Category: Atheism and Theism
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Does Everyone Have a Religion? Even Atheists?
Andrew Sullivan opines, Everyone has a religion. It is, in fact, impossible not to have a religion if you are a human being. [. . .] By religion, I mean something quite specific: a practice not a theory; a way of life that gives meaning, a meaning that cannot really be defended without recourse to…
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Are Atheists Vincibly Ignorant?
In Catholic thought there is what is called vincible ignorance. Here is a definition: Lack of knowledge for which a person is morally responsible. It is culpable ignorance because it could be cleared up if the person used sufficient diligence. One is said to be simply (but culpably) ignorant if one fails to make enough…
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Rethinking the Presumption of Atheism
Keith Burgess-Jackson just sent me his article Rethinking the Presumption of Atheism (Int J Philos Relig (2018) 84:93-111). I hope to read it soon.
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When Reasoned Faith No Longer Strikes One as Reasonable: What Then?
Thomas Doubting inquires, I’ve met and talked to a number of people who, while originally atheists, have found faith in God and become active Christians as result of their intellectual pursuit that led them to the conclusion that God is logically necessary. There is an ambiguity regarding 'logically necessary' that needs to be removed. Suppose…
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Could a Theist Maintain that Some Lack a Religious Disposition?
Suppose you believe that man has been created in the image and likeness of God. Could you, consistently with that belief, hold that only some possess a religious disposition? I have discussed this before, but the question came up again in an e-mail from a reader. I often say things like the following: The religious…
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The Poisoned Will of Jean Meslier
Before Voltaire, Meslier.
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Jordan Peterson on the Problem with Atheism
Earlier this evening I was watching Tucker Carlson. He had a psychology professor on whose YouTube videos had been blocked by Google but then later unblocked. His name is Jordan Peterson of the University of Toronto. I had never heard of him, and his performance on Carlson's show was not particularly impressive. Having viewed his…
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“Some of Us Just Go One God Further”
A revised version of an entry from 26 July 2010. ………………… I've seen the above-captioned quotation attributed to Richard Dawkins. From what I have read of him, it seems like something he would say. The idea, I take it, is that all gods are on a par, and so, given that everyone is an atheist…
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Belief Skepticism, Justification Skepticism, and the Big Questions
1) The characteristic attitude of the skeptic is not denial, but doubt. There are three main mental attitudes toward a proposition: affirm, deny, suspend. To doubt is neither to affirm nor to deny. It can therefore be assimilated to suspension. Thus a skeptic neither affirms nor denies; he suspends judgment, withholds assent, takes no stand.…
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Just Over the Transom from David Gordon
Dear Bill, I hope that you are well. Your post on a bad reason for thinking atheism is not a religion was excellent. I'm taking the liberty of sending a link to a review of mine that argues along the same lines as you do: Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies. By George H. Smith.…
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A Bad Reason for Thinking that Atheism is not a Religion
Atheism is not a religion. But the following is not a good reason for thinking so: Atheism (and here I mean the so-called “weak atheism” that does not claim proof that god does not exist), is just the lack of god-belief – nothing more and nothing less. And as someone once said, if atheism is…
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Whether Atheism is a Religion
I have been objecting to the calling of leftism a religion. Curiously, some people call atheism a religion. I object to that too. The question as to what religion is is not at all easy to answer. It is not even clear that the question makes sense. For when you ask 'What is religion?' you…
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The Holocaust Argument for God’s Existence
Andrew Klavan, The Great Good Thing, Nelson, 2016, p. 231: There are people who say that an evil as great as the Holocaust is proof there is no God. But I would say the opposite. The fact that it is so great an evil, so great that it defies any material explanation, implies a spiritual…
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Is the Modal Ontological Argument Compelling?
In a comment, Patrick Toner writes, . . . there is no substantive philosophical position for which there is *better* philosophical support than theism. I'm open to the possibility that at least one other philosophical position–namely, dualism–is at least as well supported by philosophical argument as theism. But nothing's got better support. [. . .]…
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Can an Atheist be Moral?
This is another one or those questions that never goes away and about which reams of rubbish have been written. 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…