The Logical Atheist

The question is obviously ironic. What does should  or ought  mean if our actions are determined?  Should  presupposes the ability to deliberate and decide. But without a will -- the term free will  is redundant -- how could we make decisions? I've heard social scientists say something like this: since there is no free will, we ought to rethink the criminal justice system. We ought ? What does that mean if the premise is that the will is a delusion?  The reason I bring this up is that many atheists seem wary about free will. I think I can explain this wariness. Since atheists properly deny the existence of soul, or spirit, they think they're committed to what seems the only remaining alternative: materialist reductionism. They reject "the ghost in the machine" and embrace the machine alone. But they've thrown the will/mind baby out with the soul/spirit bathwater. I wrote this post, and you are reading it. Think of what those facts imply. How can they b...

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vs. Fiction in the Pentateuch , by Robert M. Price (the always delightful writer and speaker) A Shift in Time: How Historical Documents Reveal the Surprising Truth about Jesus , by Lena Einhorn Why I Am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons,  by Richard Carrier On the Historicity of Jesus: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.