Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Atheism and Theism

  • Spencer Case on Atheist TV

    Here. "The skeptical channel's ideological commitments won't appeal to conservative atheists."

  • On Whether Some Arguments from Evil Beg the Question

    Thesis for consideration: It can reasonably be maintained that some arguments from evil beg the question against theism.  Suppose we 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…

  • Christian Physicalism?

    J. P. Moreland is against it.  Me too.  More generally, I oppose any amalgamation of classical theism and materialism about the mind.  (See my "Could a Classical Theist be a Physicalist?" Faith and Philosophy, vol. 15, no. 2, April 1998, pp. 160-180.) Here are some  excerpts from Moreland's piece: Christianity is a dualist, interactionist religion…

  • The Most Powerful Argument Against Religious Faith Ever?

    Over at the The Philosopher's Stone, Robert Paul Wolff waxes enthusiastic over a quotation from Hobbes: "Fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind, or imagined from tales publicly allowed, RELIGION; not allowed, SUPERSTITION." Just think what Hobbes accomplishes in these eighteen words!  The only distinction between religion and superstition is whether the tales that provoke…

  • Van Inwagen on Russell’s Teapot

    I thank Jannai Shields for referring me to Peter van Inwagen's Russell's China Teapot and Andrew Bailey for making van Inwagen's papers available on the Web. 

  • Russell’s Leaky Teapot Revisited

    Gary Gutting recently interviewed Alvin Plantinga in the pages of The New York Times and brought up the business about Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot.   The following response of Gutting to Plantinga comes early on in the interview: G.G.: You say atheism requires evidence to support it. Many atheists deny this, saying that all they need…

  • Is Atheism Irrational? Gary Gutting Interviews Alvin Plantinga

    Here.  There are currently 980 comments.  More proof that the only good combox is a closed combox.  Equivalently, the best arguments against an open combox are the contents of one.  Related articles Sensus Divinitatis: Nagel Defends Plantinga Against Grayling Thomas Nagel Reviews Alvin Plantinga Opinionator | The Stone: Is Atheism Irrational? Articles by Alvin Plantinga

  • In the Absence of Knowledge, May One Believe? Remarks on Magee

    According to Bryan Magee ("What I Believe," Philosophy 77 (2002), 407- 419), nobody knows the answers to such questions as whether we survive our bodily deaths or whether God exists. Citing Xenophanes and Kant, Magee further suggests that the answers to these questions are not only unknown but impossible for us to know. Assuming that…

  • Theism is not a Religion

    Yesterday I argued that atheism is not a religion.  Well, theism is not a religion either, but for different reasons.  Atheism is not a religion because it amounts to the rejection of the central commitment of anything that could legitimately be called a religion.  (So if atheism were a religion, it would amount to a…

  • 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…

  • Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Men Have Forgotten God

    As the USA drifts daily farther in the direction of leftist totalitarianism, the words of Solzhenitsyn ought to be considered.  Excerpt: . . . the world had never before known a godlessness as organized, militarized, and tenaciously malevolent as that practiced by Marxism. Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart…

  • Ontic Versus Alterity Theism

    There is a problem that has occupied me on and off for years. Mikael Stenmark's Prague paper, "Competing Conceptions of God: The Personal God versus the God beyond Being" got me thinking about it again.  What follows, however, is not intended as commentary on Stenmark's paper. One way into the problem as I conceive it…

  • Idolatry and Atheism

    If God exists and you worship anything in his place, then that thing is a false god and you are an idolater.  But if God does not exist, and you worship anything at all, then you are also an idolater.  For idolatry entails worshipping something unworthy of worship, and if God does not exist, then…

  • The Role of Concupiscence

    The role of concupiscence in dimming our spiritual sight has long been recognized by many, among them, Plato, Augustine, and Pascal: "There are some who see clearly that man has no other enemy but concupiscence, which turns him away from God." (Pensées, Krailsheimer #269, p. 110)  One wonders how much of the atheism of a…

  • William Lane Craig to Debate Lawrence Krauss

    In Australia, soon, details here.  Topic: Why is there something rather than nothing?  Poor Krauss is going to get slaughtered, and deservedly so.  Debating Craig is like getting into a gun fight with Doc Holliday.  I would never debate him on anything, even if I thought debate was philosophically worthwhile.  He has been honing his…