Atheist John Loftus on David Wood's Conversion

You can read it here.

Pretty interesting coming from a guy who has this to say about his own deconversion:

Today I am pretty much guilt free. That is, I have no guilt in regards to the Christian duties mentioned above. I am free of the need to do most of the things I felt I had to do because I was expressing my gratitude for what God had done. And yet, I am still grateful for my present life, even more so in many ways. I love life. I’m living life to the hilt, pretty much guilt free, primarily because my ethical standards aren’t as high. In fact, I believe the Christian ethical standards are simply impossible for anyone to measure up to. Think about it, according to Jesus I should feel guilty for not just what I do, but for what I think about, lusting, hating, coveting, etc. I’d like every person who reads this book to experience the freedom I have found. It is to you that I dedicate this book.

Nothing like lowering the standards to be guilt free!

Nietzsche and the New Atheists

MavPhil:

Nietzsche and the New Atheists

The following quotation from a very interesting Guardian piece by John Gray entitled What Scares the New Atheists (HT: Karl White):

[1] The new atheists rarely mention Friedrich Nietzsche, and when they do it is usually to dismiss him. [2] This can’t be because Nietzsche’s ideas are said to have inspired the Nazi cult of racial inequality – an unlikely tale, given that the Nazis claimed their racism was based in science. [3]The reason Nietzsche has been excluded from the mainstream of contemporary atheist thinking is that he exposed the problem atheism has with morality. [4] It’s not that atheists can’t be moral – the subject of so many mawkish debates. [5] The question is which morality an atheist should serve.

Five sentences, five comments.

1. Yes.

2. Granted, the Nazis claimed their racism was based in science. But this is consistent with their racism having other sources as well.  So it doesn't follow that it is an "unlikely tale" that the Nazis drew inspiration from Nietzsche.  I say it isvery likely.  See Nietzsche and Nationalism Socialism.

3.  Spot on!

4.  Agreed, atheists can be moral.  Indeed, some atheists are more moral that some theists — even when the moral code is the Decalogue minus the commandments that mention God.  The question whether an atheist can be moral, however, is ambiguous.  While it is clear that an atheist can be moral in the sense of satisfying moral demands, it is not clear that an atheist can be moral in the sense of recognizing moral demands in the first place.  It is an open question whether an atheist, consistent with his atheism, could have justification for admitting objective moral demands.

5.  Before one can ask which morality an atheist should serve, there is a logically prior question that needs asking and answering, one that Gray glides right past, namely,

Q. Is there any morality, any moral code, that an atheist would be justified in adhering to and justified in demanding that others adhere to?

Read the rest here.

Colbert Destroys Atheist Physicist Lawrence Krauss

Somehow I had never seen this Colbert interview from a few years ago, so this is a belated post.  Krauss has written a book wherein he tries to defend the view that the universe literally came from nothing.  The trouble is, as numerous people have pointed out, his nothing is really a something (quantum vacuum states), so he hasn't really defended the claim that the universe came from nothing.

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The funniest part is towards the end.  After baiting Krauss into admitting that he thinks there is no God, we can extract the following argument from the astute (and clever) Mr. Colbert:

1. The universe came from nothing. [Krauss premise]
2. God does not exist. [Krauss premise]
3. If God does not exist, then God is nothing. [Implied]
4. Thus the universe came from God.

Colbert is a comic genius. (He studied mostly philosophy in college until his theater career began to take off).

Atheist Jerry Coyne on Plantinga's, "Is Atheism Irrational?": The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Read Alvin Plantinga's interview at the New York Times.  It's the good.  Now read Jerry Coyne's remarks about it at his blog.  It's the bad and the ugly.

Coyne is a biologist who likes to dabble in philosophy...a LOT.  And dabbling is about as far as it gets. Coyne's remarks are dripping with disdain for Plantinga.  It's difficult weeding through all the ad hominems to get to the arguments (if there are arguments to be found).  Coyne is truly out of his league but one wouldn't know that unless one read Plantinga's works AND understood them. I'll just comment on what Coyne says about atheism; everything else is just as bad:

• [Plantinga]: “But lack of evidence, if indeed evidence is lacking, is no grounds for atheism. No one thinks there is good evidence for the proposition that there are an even number of stars; but also, no one thinks the right conclusion to draw is that there are an uneven number of stars. The right conclusion would instead be agnosticism.In the same way, the failure of the theistic arguments, if indeed they do fail, might conceivably be good grounds for agnosticism, but not for atheism. Atheism, like even-star-ism, would presumably be the sort of belief you can hold rationally only if you have strong arguments or evidence.”

Coyne:  To most of us, I think atheism is simply the refusal to believe in gods, not the absolute denial that there are any.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "atheism" is the disbelief in, or the denial of the existence of God.  That sounds about right.  Coyne is a huge advocate of atheism but doesn't even know what atheism is!  Coyne is confused on two counts:  First in defining atheism in terms of a "refusal" it results in atheism being defined too narrowly.  It would rule out there being atheists who want to believe in God and don't refuse, and it would rule out there being atheists who disbelieve in God simply on the basis of what they take the evidence to be.  But perhaps Coyne is a type of atheist who is an atheist not due to the evidence but because he refuses to believe.  Second, Coyne confuses atheism with naturalism.  A naturalist neither believes in God nor anything "spooky" like God (ghosts, gods, angels, etc.)  A naturalist thinks that all mental life supervenes on what is natural, or on only what the best science tells us there is.  But one can be an atheist while still believing in supernatural entities.

Coyne also calls Plantinga's remarks on the Problem of Evil a "theodicy."  Uh, no.  Perhaps if you would actually READ some of the literature on the problem of evil (say, Plantinga's book on the topic) you would know that Plantinga is explicitly not giving a theodicy.


 

Atheists a Dying Breed?

'it's': these atheists can't spell

When I was a young, militant anti-Catholic, my good Catholic buddy would often remind me: "Sorry, friend.  We will always outnumber you because we have more children."

He had me.  The only way we'd overtake the Catholics, it seemed, was by out-converting them at a high rate.

But things are even worse for atheists in this regard it appears.  Though we are often told by atheism and scientism proselytizers that the "Enlightened" future will look grim for those of the "superstitious" persuasion, if the article linked to is correct (and based on my anecdotal evidence it sure seems likely), atheists have an evolutionary disadvantage--they just don't produce as many kids as people who are religious.  (Of course, the Christian faith also holds that the gates of hell will never prevail against the Church, but it doesn't hurt to have science on one's side).

Professor Jesse Bering, director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen's University, Belfast, who has just published "The God Instinct", a book on the origins of religion, said such an approach missed the basic point, that in practical terms evolution was reinforcing religion with every new generation.

He said: "Secular, nonreligious people are being dramatically out-reproduced by religious people of any faith. Since religiosity is to some degree a heritable trait, offspring born to religious parents are not only dyed in the wool of their faith through their culture, but may also be genetically more susceptible to indoctrination than children born to nonreligious parents."

He added: "As a childless gay atheist I suspect my own genes have a very mortal future ahead. But for any godless hetero-couples reading this, toss your contraceptives and get busy in the bedroom. Either that or, perish the thought, God isn't going anywhere anytime soon."

Life After Faith: The Case for Secular Humanism

Alvin Plantinga reviews Philip Kitcher's new book:

"The central purpose of this book," according to the preface, "is to show how a thoroughly secular perspective can fulfill many of the important functions religion, at its best, has discharged" (p. xiii). Philip Kitcher concedes that this may take a while: "a fully rewarding secular world cannot be built in a day" (p. 2). Kitcher seems genuinely sympathetic to religious concerns, and genuinely concerned to understand them. He writes with sensitivity and insight. He has an attractive style and writes well (although it isn't always easy to tell precisely what he means to say).

Kitcher begins (chapter 1) by explaining why he rejects religion. Here he is more nuanced and less bombastic than the dreaded new atheists, who, as he suggests, overlook the central role religion plays in the lives of most of the world's population: "Yet the atheist movement today often seems blind to the apparently irreplaceable roles religion and religious community play in millions if not billion, of lives" (p. xiii). Nevertheless, he claims, religious beliefs, beliefs about "the transcendent" as he takes them to be, are "almost certainly false" (p. 105). I'll begin by outlining his suggestions as to how a secular outlook can serve the same functions and goals as religion; then I'll examine his arguments for atheism.

Does Religion Have a Smart-People Problem? A Response to Salon.com

John Messerly at Salon thinks that religion has a smart-people problem.  I'd contest that, if there is a smart-people problem, it lies with today's group-thinking-elitist progressives; but that's for another time.

Messerly begins by noting that only 14 percent of philosophers are theists and a large majority are atheists (based on the Chalmers' study which everyone in the philosophical community is aware of. One thing Messerly doesn't note is that most people who actually study the arguments for/against theism/religion are theists--that is, most philosophers of religion--incline towards theism.  Does this prove anything of note?  Not that I can see).

I suspect the actual numbers of theistic philosophers are a bit higher, but there's no doubt that theists are in the minority...that is, today.  Of course the past was chock full of theistic/religious philosophers as well as scientists.  And what will the future hold?  Messerly promises us that in the future virtually no educated person will believe in the supernatural.  Moreover, science will even conquer death (!) which will be "the coup d'etat over religion." No doubt Messerly believes all of this on the basis of reason, not faith.  Or so one might be lead to believe.

Here are some excerpts with commentary: