Keith Parsons's Blog, page 16

Sean Carroll: Does the Universe Need God?

That is the title of Carroll's essay in The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity. Carroll argues that cosmology doesn’t require or support theological hypotheses. An online copy is available at the blog, What There Is and Why There Is Anything.



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What are the Social, Political, and Moral Implications of Atheism?

This is the subject of debate in the combox at Victor Reppert's blog, Dangerous Idea.



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Richard Carrier's Does the Christian Theism Advocated by J. P. Moreland Provide a Better Reason to be Moral than Secular Humanism?

Carrier refutes Moreland's claim that theism offers more
and better reasons to live a moral life than atheism or secular
humanism.

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Wes Morriston's The Moral Obligations of Reasonable Non-Believers: A special problem for divine command metaethics

The fact that many people do not believe that there is a God creates an obvious problem for divine command metaethics. They have moral obligations, and are often enough aware of having them. Yet it is not easy to think of such persons as "hearing" divine commands. This makes it hard to see how a divine command theory can offer a completely general account of the nature of moral obligation. The present paper takes a close look at this issue as it emerges in the context of the most recent version of Robert Adams' modified divine command theory. I argue that, despite a valiant attempt to do so, Adams does not succeed in giving an adequate account of the moral obligations of non-believers. More generally, I claim that if divine commands are construed as genuine speech acts, theists are well advised not to adopt a divine command theory.

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ex-apologist: On a Common Apologetic Fallacy

The fallacy sketched above occurs so frequently in the apologetics literature that I hereby label it the Apologetics Fallacy. The Apologetics Fallacy is the dialectical fallacy of assuming, in contexts of the sort sketched above, that because one has shown that D isn't a rebutting defeater for P, one has thereby shown that D isn't an undercutting defeater for P. A paradigm case of the Apologetics Fallacy can be found on pp. 291-292 of this article. And a paradigm case of the appropriate response to the Apologetics Fallacy can be found on the same pages of the same article.

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Disproof Atheism Society

"The Disproof Atheism Society, founded in 1994, is an independent, Boston-based, worldwide network of people interested in logic, science, and analytic philosophy who support the development of disproof atheism. We host monthly talks, discussions, and other events, primarily at Boston University and usually with a featured speaker. In 2010 we hosted the first-ever Disproof Atheism Conference, an all-day academic conference focused on deductive disproofs of God."



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Skeptic Blogs

Here is a link to John Loftus's new blog aggregation site.



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Wes Morriston's God and the Ontological Foundation of Morality

Ouch!



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Theism, Atheism, and Metaethics

In response to my comments on "Atheist Ethicist: Theism, Atheism, and Blame," Keith Parsons rightfully pointed out an error and an inconsistency in my comments where I had denied that theism has metaethical implications. As is often (if not always) the case in philosophy, a lot of this depends on terminology. And although I responded in the combox on that post, I realized that the issue really warrants its own post.



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Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence (ECREE), Part 7: Christian Apologist Glenn Miller Agrees!

Not all theists or even Christians reject ECREE. One example of a Christian apologist who accepts ECREE is my friend Glenn Miller. Glenn writes:

I personally agree with this principle...and so does God, apparently...why else would there be such an emphasis on it in the bible?


The only issue I would have with the skeptic would be how
'extraordinary' does it have to be before it counts as 'extraordinary'?

I address this issue in my reply to William Lane Craig.





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