Keith Parsons's Blog, page 20

Are Christians the Best Argument Against Christianity?

According to The Confident Christian, Christians themselves are "the best argument against Christianity." The author sums up the argument as follows.

Noted Christian apologist and author Ravi Zacharias says the one
question that has haunted him the most throughout his ministry was asked
by a Hindu acquaintance: “If this conversion you speak about is truly
supernatural, then why is it not more evident in the lives of so many
Christians that I know?”[6] In other words, a God who is said to transform should produce people with transformed lives.

This apparently very visible missing element in the Church today has
been pointed out by famous atheists such as Frederick Nietzsche who once
remarked, “I might believe in the Redeemer if his followers looked more
redeemed”, and Karl Marx who turned away from religion when he saw his
Jewish father abandon their faith in favor of joining the Lutheran
church simply to help his business grow.

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Whatever The Motive, Human Ego Can Be An Understandable Component Of The Apologist’s Public Outreach

Among nonbelievers on the Internet, there has recently been some discussion about whether the more prominent public speakers and debaters for fundamentalist religious beliefs are honestly self deluded or are intentionally misrepresenting what they claim to be the truth about reality. I am in no position to definitively assess, one way or another, which of these possibilities is the case with each individual proselytizer. However, whether it is an honest but mistaken belief that these mythologies are real, or an intentional defense of positions the speaker actually believes to be false, we cannot ignore the role of the human ego in motivating such proselytizing.



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Index: The Evidential Argument from Evil: the Biological Role of Pain and Pleasure

The purpose of this post is to provide an index for all posts regarding Paul Draper's version of the evidential argument from evil which focuses on the biological role of pain and pleasure (APP).



"Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists": a link to an online copy of Paul Draper's landmark essay

"The Argument from the Biological Role of Pain and Pleasure": an introduction to the argument

"Silver's Defense of Draper's Argument from the Biological Role of Pain and Pleasure": self-explanatory

"Is Evil Evidence for God?": I examine one specific attempt to use the "evil is evidence for God" objection and assess its effectiveness against APP

Jeff's Picks -- 5 Aug 12

The Argument from Evil

"The Problem of Evil in One
Picture"
"The Narcissism of Thanking
God"


"Why Should an Atheist Care
about the Problem of Evil?"


"Does Everything Happen for a
Reason?"
by Bruce Gerencser


"Is Evil Evidence for God?" -- by yours truly. A
rebuttal to one attempt to use the "turnaround" strategy and
argue that evil is evidence for God's existence.
"Does the Moral Argument
Undercut the Problem of Evil?" by Thrasymachus
"Why Moral Arguments Don't
Answer the Problem of Evil" by Thrasymachus
"Evil Shifts the Burden of
Proof onto Theism" by Thrasymachus


"Schellenberg's Deductive
Argument from Evil" -- Alexander Pruss critiques Schellenberg's new 'logical' argument from evil  against God's existence







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The political incoherence of atheism

Ian Murphy has a piece called "The 5 Most Awful Atheists." His choice of 5 is pretty much what I would pick: Sam Harris, Bill Maher, Penn Jillette, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, S.E. Cupp. Islamophobes, quasi-New Age ditzes, and libertarians.



There is a serious point here as well. Sometimes it makes sense to speak of an "atheist movement" or the likes in the US, particularly in the context of efforts to increase social visibility and acceptance. But by and large, beyond such narrowly focused concerns, "atheists" are not a politically coherent group. For my taste, for example, there are far too many libertarians among atheists. (I consider libertarianism to be both vastly stupider and more harmful than liberal religiosity.) I'm sure libertarians are equally frustrated about the traces of socialism they detect among nonbelievers.



But even setting matters of political taste aside, I don't fully accept recent arguments like that by Greta Christina that "atheism demands social justice." Like it or not, people like Ayn Rand and her fandom are significant parts of the landscape of American atheism. More broadly speaking, hypercapitalist ideologies such as libertarianism are inescapably popular in a country like the US. You just might be able to squeeze that tendency in together with some kind of rights-based liberalism, particularly if, like most liberals, you're prepared to go along with neoliberalism. But not anything that lists toward a more lefty flavor of "social justice."



In other words, the most likely course for atheism in the US is that it will remain a marginal preoccupation among well-off curmudgeonly white males. To the extent that there is a "we" at all in the sense of "we atheists," we are a remarkably useless bunch in political terms.

Catholic Bishop Calls for Blasphemy Laws

Stories like this make me very glad to be an American and to have the Bill of Rights. Sheesh!



LINK (HT: Ophelia Benson)

Advice to Critics of the Argument from Evil

According to one objection to arguments from evil, the existence of evil presupposes the existence of God, since objective evil could not exist unless God exists. My advice to critics of arguments from evil (AE) is this. Don't use this objection unless you plan to acknowledge and address the obvious rebuttal.

AE may be understood as a challenge to the internal coherence of a theistic worldview. An AE can be understood as saying something like the following:

Look. You theists believe that X, Y, and Z are evil. You theists
believe that God is good. You theists believe that good persons are
opposed to evil. So you theists need to explain why a god who is good
(in your sense of 'good') would allow so much apparently pointless evil
(in your sense of 'evil'). If you can't explain it, then that is a
problem for the internal coherence of your worldview.[15]

When AE is understood in this way, it doesn't presuppose that there are objective moral values.

Disqus and Starred Posts

FYI: If you like posts on this site, Disqus has a feature which allows you to "star" the page. Look for the box which appears directly below each post and directly above all of the comments which says something like "0 stars," "1 star," etc. Clicking that box once will add a star. Clicking it a second time will "undo" your previous action to give it a star.

Evangelical Leaders Echo Obama, say U.S. not a Christian Nation

LINK (HT: Eddie Tabash)

The Tapescrew Letters

What follows is a cautionary bit of fiction, inspired by C.S. Lewis's fiction The Screwtape Letters, Letters from a Senior to a Junior Devil,
which are fantastically entertaining and often very insightful. I don't
claim my mirror letters are as good as Lewis's, but they are offered in
the same cautionary spirit. 9,000 words,



This is adapted from the final bit of my book Believing Bullshit. I refer in places to specific mechanisms explained in the book, such as "I Just Know!" and Going Nuclear.



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