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An Exercise in Begging the Question

The world was a dark and gloomy place until the Enlightenment came along, after which people began to think for themselves and break free from the shackles of religious authority. So we are told, once again, in The Moral Arc, a book by journalist Michael Shermer. For him, the Enlightenment did not merely accelerate humanity’s moral progress, but rather it reversed the moral regress characteristic of pre-Enlightenment human history. Since then, science and reason have been guiding humanity on a path toward justice, truth, and freedom. Continue Reading »

God, Gods, and Fairies

One of the strangest claims often made by purveyors and consumers of today’s popular atheism is that disbelief in God involves no particular positive philosophy of reality, much less any kind of religion or creed, but consists merely in neutral incredulity toward a certain kind of factual . . . . Continue Reading »

No, Please, Anything but God.

Andrew Ferguson informs and amuses at The Weekly Standard about that other orthodoxy in, “The Heretic: Who is Thomas Nagel and why are so many of his fellow academics condemning him?” It is longish, but I liked it and for possibly unnatural reasons, thought some of you might like it, . . . . Continue Reading »

Not Understanding Nothing

A Universe from Nothing:  Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing by lawrence m. krauss  free press, 204 pages, $24.99 Acritic might reasonably question the arguments for a divine first cause of the cosmos. But to ask “What caused God?” misses the whole reason classical . . . . Continue Reading »

Faith Without a Hitch

“There she is, speaking through broken English, she’s poorly educated, she’s no match for Hitchens in debate, and yet her whole life trumped every single argument he could make — all the clever arguments that he could make against God and God’s existence.”Gayle . . . . Continue Reading »

The Moral Landscape (a review)

Does science have anything to tell us about the nature of morality? Could use of the scientific method help us apprehend the nature of good and evil? Sam Harris certainly thinks so as he appeals to the burgeoning field of neuroscience as the pathway to discovering objective moral facts. For example, . . . . Continue Reading »

When Atheists Are Angry at God

I’ve shaken my fist in anger at stalled cars, storm clouds, and incompetent meteorologists. I’ve even, on one terrible day that included a dead alternator, a blaring blaring tornado-warning siren, and a horrifically wrong weather forecast, cursed all three at once. I’ve fumed at furniture, cussed at crossing guards, and held a grudge against Gun Barrel City, Texas. I’ve been mad at just about anything you can imagine. Continue Reading »

eBook recommendation: the Infidel Delusion

There have been a slough of books recommended here at Evangel in the last month of so — and to buy them all you’d need a small fortune. But what if there was a book recommended here which was worth a small fortune, but you could in fact download it and keep it for free?My friends at the . . . . Continue Reading »

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