A half truth about evidence
I came across this the other day, on The official blog of University of Missouri Skeptics, Atheists, Secular Humanists, & Agnostics
Category: clues
God of the Gaps
Christians and other theists sometimes argue for God’s existence based on facts about the universe that science cannot explain, or has not yet explained. But non-believers sometimes accuse these arguments of being fallacious, because they use ‘God of the Gaps’ reasoning. Is this a problem?
Jerry Coyne and free will
A week or two back I posted on scientist Jerry Coyne’s discussion of free will (Jerry Coyne: why we don’t have free will) I have just come across a discussion of Coyne’s views on former academic philosopher Bill Vallicella’s blog, Maverick Philosopher. It’s pretty strongly critical, but worth reading.
Was the universe designed?
One of the enjoyable things about writing a blog is the things you learn when researching a topic. I have read a little on the big bang and the fundamental laws that underpin our universe and I agree with the suggestion that the universe didn’t get the way it is by chance. But in preparing […]
Jerry Coyne: why we don’t have free will
Jerry Coyne is a Professor of biology at the University of Chicago, probably best known for his book Why evolution is true. In a recent column in USA Today, he presents the case for the unpalatable reality that our apparent ability to freely make choices is in fact an illusion. The column raises some interesting […]
Jesus and God, honesty and hope
Tom Chivers is a journalist for the Telegraph newspaper in the UK, and an atheist. He has written recently about God and Jesus in a refreshingly honest way.
The cosmological argument for the existence of God
Using philosophical arguments in an attempt to prove the existence of God has a long tradition. Not long ago, these arguments had fallen a little out of favour as non-believers thought they proved nothing and believers often felt they didn’t need to prove anything. But interest in them has grown in recent times, as christian […]
Books: the philosophy of God
If you’re reading this, you probably think about God a bit – whether in belief or disbelief. There are a lot of ideas around about God (the website that this blog is part of has its fair share!), and on the internet, in particular, it is hard to tell who knows what they are talking […]
God explains nothing?
Here’s another common atheistic argument. Christians often argue that God is the only reasonable or feasible explanation of how the universe got here. A common atheistic response is to say that “God did it” explains nothing – it leaves us with no more of an explanation than we had before we brought God into the […]
Honesty and belief
I suppose we all like to think we are very honest with ourselves – we only believe what we really think is true and we don’t close our minds to evidence that goes against our beliefs. I suppose we all like to think that. But I think we are sometimes fooling ourselves. Let’s look at […]