Category: theology

  • Schieber vs Hernandez: Does God Exist

    Having some time to kill yesterday, I watched a theism/atheism debate between Justin Schieber and Eric Hernandez, hoping to see a new or (at least) interesting argument from the theism side. Alas, Hernandez’s arguments were old, illogical, debunked-centuries-ago nonsense, from a very particular strain of Christian Protestantism.

  • God’s Not Dead

    I decided to witness the car-crash that I’ve been assured that God’s Not Dead is, first-hand, so in order to maintain some semblance of sanity, I posted tweets fairly frequently during the movie. And stopped it a lot to go do something else, lest the overload of ignorance do long-term damage. It took probably about…

  • A “Personal Relationship” with Jesus

    I’d like to go back to the most excellent example of terrible writing, 7 Things That Prove God Is Real, to focus on the last two points that the author (J. Lee Grady) makes. I want to focus on them as they appear to be pretty common within the arguments for [insert religion here], and they’re…

  • A Short Overview of Free Will

    Last night, I gave a short presentation on Free Will in order to kick off some discussion between mixed groups of atheists and theists. It went quite well, I feel, and the discussions that I was involved with went pretty well. The notes I used are included below. It’s a really just a rough overview,…

  • Free Will: Illusion or Real? A Theist and Atheist View

    I will be presenting one half of a discussion on Free Will tomorrow evening (in Vancouver, BC, for non-local readers). I (and the other presenter) will be giving a short 15-min introduction to the topic, and then everyone will be breaking up into smaller discussion groups. If you’re interested in having positive (I hope) discussions…

  • To The Stone: Please Pull Out of Your Nose-Dive

    The Stone is part of The New York Times, an outlet for Philosophy and public discussion of philosophical issues. Generally speaking, I think it’s an excellent idea: philosophy needs more public engagement, and the public needs to engage with more philosophy. Its most recent article (“Is Atheism Irrational“), however, is pure, unadulterated dross. Under the…

  • The Watchmaker Analogy: not an argument

    The ‘watchmaker analogy‘ has been around for quite some time (about 209ish years by my count), and it was refuted shortly after it’s explication (in fact, Paley was refuted by Hume before Paley was born). Several folk have gone after it, in a variety of ways but the damned thing just keeps showing up. To be…

  • Hate the belief, not the believer

    There’s a post that I come back to on this site again and again. It’s something that I frequently link to when having discussions with believers and non-believers alike whenever they start getting their back up and feel that they are under attack when I’m pressing on their beliefs: we are not our ideas. However, I’ve…

  • Why people don’t like to answer theistic questions…

    To readers who prefer short posts, I’d like to apologise in advance: this is not a short post. Unforunately, the nature of this extended argument is such that there’s no easy way to break it into 2 or 3 posts without killing the flow. In a discussion I’ve been having recently with one particular believer,…