The Logical Atheist

Moses and Minimalism: Form Criticism vs. Fiction in the Pentateuch , by Robert M. Price (the always delightful writer and speaker) A Shift in Time: How Historical Documents Reveal the Surprising Truth about Jesus , by Lena Einhorn Why I Am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons,  by Richard Carrier On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason to Doubt , by Richard Carrier Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World , by Tim Whitmarsh

"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...

"More and more the myths put about by these Christians are better known than the doctrines of the philosophers. Who has not heard the fable of Jesus' birth from a virgin or the stories of his crucifixion and resurrection? ...But the point is this, and the Christians would do well to heed it: One ought first to follow reason as a guide before accepting any belief, since anyone who believes without testing a doctrine is certain to be deceived.... Just as the charlatans of the cults take advantage of a simpleton's lack of education to lead him around by the nose, so too with the Christian teachers: they do not want to give or receive reasons for what they believe. Their favorite expressions are 'Do not ask questions, just believe!' and: 'Your faith will save you!' 'The wisdom of the world,' they say, 'is evil; to be simple is to be good.' If only they would undertake to answer my question--which I do not ask as one who is trying to understand t...

Where did the universe come from? Focus on that question -- specifically on the first word, where . Now you know the answer.  There are no wheres  outside the universe. There is no where there . There is no there  there. Asking about a location that by definition would have to be outside existence is a very strange request indeed. It would be asking about something that by definition could not exist. The question makes no sense.

From Auburn University philosophy professor Roderick T. Long's post "Defensor Fidei" : Secularists often criticise the notion of “faith,” which they take to mean belief without evidence, or at least belief without sufficient evidence. I think this is a mistake. I do not mean to deny that many doctrines put forward as articles of faith are in fact propounded without sufficient evidence. All that I deny is that their being so is part of the meaning of the word “faith,” either in ordinary language or in theology. Note that I am not saying that being based on evidence is part of the meaning of “faith,” but only that not being based on evidence is not part of the meaning of “faith.” Faith can either be well-grounded in evidence, or not. It is not the purpose of this post to affirm (or for that matter to deny) that any particular article of faith is true, or reasonable, or justified by evidence. I’m in formal rather than material mode here....   It seems to me that what the wor...

To be honest all theistic propositions ought to being with this disclaimer: Warning : what I'm about to say will sound like English, but I won't really be speaking English. When I use words like exist , intelligence , design ,  being , good , and the like, they should not be mistaken for the homonyms that you know. Human beings form concepts ultimately from their sensory material (guided by the principles implicit in that experience, namely, the law of identity and its corollaries). Those concepts are then used to build wider and more abstract concepts based on shared characteristics. Concepts therefore cannot simply be ripped from this hierarchical context and applied to a realm that is said to be in principle beyond anyone's sensory experience, indeed beyond reality itself. Therefore, our normal concepts cannot be the same as the homonyms used to describe the "supernormal" or God. You've been cautioned. 

Whenever theism dons the scientific mantle you will hear that God (or some god) must exist because life exists. The chances of life existing are so small, it is said, that God is the only feasible explanation. The answer here is the same as the answer to the argument from design and other similar arguments: the supernatural can explain nothing. It is a pseudo-explanation: we are simply told nothing when we are told that life was created, via mysterious processes, by an inherently unknowable -- indeed ineffable -- "being" that "exists" outside of and prior to existence. ( Treblig gainges. ) Any scientific theory, however meager the evidence , is superior to a supernatural "explanation" because, being logically contradictory, that "explanation" doesn't even rise to the status of theory . Drawing again on George H. Smith's Atheism: The Case Against God , I note that the argument from life bases its argument on the improbability of a spontan...