The Logical Atheist

In the latest edition of Talk Heathen , a project of the Atheist Center of Austin (ACA), host Eric Murphy suggested in a conversation with a self-described "agnostic theist" that logic is nothing more than a useful social contract rather an inescapable feature of the world, thought, and language. As he put it (at about 1:16:30). We're both operating on a set of assumptions. One of those assumptions is that the laws of logic hold.... I'm granting that to you in order to have this conversation and you're granting that to me in order to have this conversation. Moving from there, we can behave in a logical manner. Yes, it sucks we can't prove the laws of logic because we would need the laws of logic to prove it, but that doesn't mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater. It just means we understand and accept that we have a core set of assumptions that we're allowing each other to have in order to move forward in talking about the world. In precise te...

"You can't tell the players without a scorecard." That's what vendors used to shout at major league baseball games to sell programs. The same could be said about the broad atheist community. The terms have multiplied, so you need a guide to keep them straight.  On side side we have what have been variously called negative atheists, soft atheists, and weak atheists. These are atheists who do not believe in God or gods, mostly because they have yet to see convincing evidence. (When I write God  I'm including any sort of supernatural thing.) But they won't say they believe no God exists. Some on this side call themselves skeptical atheists. I would call them evidentialist atheists. On the other side we have, correspondingly, positive atheists, hard atheists, or strong atheists. They not only do not believe in God, they believe no such thing exists. They go beyond a-theism, mere nonbelief. (See Wikipedia's  scorecard .) Things get a little confusing because on...