The Logical Atheist

Callers to online atheist talk shows frequently cite their personal experiences as evidence for the existence of God or a god. That is, they directly perceive God through their sensations. This will not do. What's open to challenge is not the experience itself--we may take the callers at their word--but their interpretation of what they feel. They can be absolutely certain they felt something, but what they may not be regarded as infallible about is their explanation of their experiences. To be taken seriously, their explanations must be open to examination and criticism. I can witness a breathtaking sunset at the beach and be overcome by a good feeling I never experienced before. But how I interpret that feeling is another matter entirely. If I explain it by the sheer splendor of the sight, that is entirely plausible and worthy of acceptance by others. Not so my claim that I experienced God's presence or something extranatural. If I submit that as evidence for the existence of...

While slight changes in the constants of physics could make life as we know it impossible, what about life as we do not know it? We have no reason to believe that our kind of carbon-based life is the only form that is possible under every possible variation in constants and the laws of physics. I have shown that long-lived stars, which are regarded as necessary for the building of the chemical elements that constitute living structures, can be expected for a huge range of physical constants. Similarly, [physicist] Anthony Aguire examined the universes that result when six cosmological parameters are varied by orders of magnitude and found that they do not preclude the existence of intelligent life. Furthermore, modern cosmology indicates that multiple universes may exist with different constants and laws of physics. In that case, it is no more surprising that we live in a universe suited for us than it is that we live on the planet suited for us—Earth rather than Mars or Venus. The uni...

In the 17th century Blaise Pascal famously said , "God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and not of the philosophers and savants." But were he around today, mightn't he say, "God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and not of the physicists, biologists, and savants"?

From now on I will try to remember to use the term extranatural  instead of supernatural . The latter suggests that something is natural and then some. Superman has "powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men," But he was not beyond nature; he was like us but more so.  In contrast, extranatural  suggests something outside of, separate from, nature and not subject to nature's laws. The analogy with  extralegal  is clear: it describes something or someone that is beyond the law and not subject to its authority. While something or someone can be beyond the civil or criminal law, nothing can intelligibly be said to be outside of nature or existence--for what could the concept be  possibly mean in that case?

Okay, this is a pet peeve of mine: people who say we can discover the truth about the world but not "Capital-T Truth." I usually hear YouTube skeptical theists (from whom I of course distinguish logical atheists) say things like this all the time. So what's wrong with it? I think I know what they mean. They want to say that we human beings can't be omniscient or infallible, which is of course true. If we were either of these things we would have no use of reason or logic--which precisely are methods that fallible beings need to if they are to reliably acquire knowledge. To the classical God, reason and logic would be superfluous. It would already and automatically have all the knowledge that could be had. So it's ridiculous to fault reason for not guaranteeing perfect knowledge. That misses the whole point. We cannot deny that new evidence could come to our attention tomorrow that would require us to modify or even jettison an empirical belief. (This principle doe...

"If, now, we could find something which you could unhesitatingly recognize not only as existing but also as superior to our reason," St. Augustine asked in Free Choice of the Will , "would you have any hesitation in calling it, whatever it may be, God?" See anything wrong with this? Note the word recognize . The word has more than one sense, and I'm certain Augustine didn't mean the sense of seeing a familiar face or hearing a familiar tune. He must mean the sense of understanding. So my question is: how could we understand that something is superior to our reason? Reason is our means of understanding; it is understanding. If something were superior to reason, reason could not demonstrate it or lead to such understanding. It wouldn't require demonstration or understanding. As someone (Richard Dawkins, I think) put it, if you make an argument that faith is superior to reason, you've already lost the debate. But wait--we might interpret this another w...

God forbid! Well, I shouldn't have thought so, but Auburn University philosopher Roderick Long has me thinking again. Or, to be more precise, he again has me thinking that the theist/atheist dichotomy is false, like so many hoary philosophical dichotomies (e.g., realism versus nominalism), in that it can be transcended or synthesized. (See his paper  "God and Human Attitudes: 33 Years Later" .) Long's paper is a look at James Rachels's  "God and Human Attitudes"  (1971), in which Rachels argued that God by definition would have to be worthy of worship, yet "[n]o being could possibly be a fitting object of worship" because that would require us to subordinate our moral agency and our consciences. Yet, Long argues, medieval Scholastics regarded God as identical with truth, being, and goodness; these were not merely properties that God possessed, they were what God was ....  God is something like the logical structure of reality. On this view, the...