Ok, finally… I was so close for so long. I have the new site layout pretty much finished (I think).
Let me know if you see some obvious mistakes when you’re clicking around, and let me know what you think of the redesign. If you are reading this through an RSS feed, come check out the site.
Now, as to not disappoint with a mere “Theme update” post, I’ll throw in a few quick thoughts about the following youtube video:
This guy’s name is Chad — youtube handle: “RationalResponder” and he’s a protege of Ray Comfort — and it shows.
He analyzes a question he hears from atheists that goes something like, “Do you actually believe that Jesus rose from the dead or that a guy lived in a fish for a few days?”
His 1, 2, switcheroo argument/tactic summarized:
1. Agree with the skeptic that these miraculous events are miraculous.
2. Claim that the skeptic misrepresents Christianity if he thinks that there is a naturalistic explanation for the miraculous events.
The question asked by the skeptic, somehow, is a misrepresentation of Christianity, because Christianity has always said that the supernatural was involved with these miracles!
Switcheroo: Can you give me one reason why God, the creator of the universe, wouldn’t be able to alter His creation in any way He sees fit?
First of all, I don’t know a single person who thinks that Christians believe that miracles happened via natural means. There can be misrepresentations of what Christians believe, but this is just not one I have ever come across.
Second, I’m not sure that Chad wants to claim this method of thinking in his daily life. Is he suggesting that he believes any and every supernatural claim ever made because, well, God could do anything? My guess is that he has a fair amount of skepticism to any number of supernatural claims that I might make off the top of my head. Like, God caused rocks in my backyard to levitate during my childhood as long as no one was observing them, for example.
Would Chad ask me why I believed that? — If he did, and I answered, “Well, you are misrepresenting my belief in rock-levitation by asking for a naturalistic cause — or, perhaps you can give me a reason why God, creator of the universe, wouldn’t be able to cause rocks to levitate?” do you think he’d be satisfied?
Let me know your thoughts on the new theme; and on Chad’s youtube video and what response you might take if he responded to you that way.
I just published a new short article that asks, “If a person thinks that Jesus’ sacrifice is valid, why was it imperative for Jesus to survive Herod’s massacre of the innocents?”
The goal of the article is to generate new thinking on the point of Jesus’ alleged sacrifice — it’s a worthwhile endeavor for both Christian and non-Christian to try and fully understand what each believes about vicarious redemption.
One thing that I find odd about the atheism subreddit of reddit.com is the very specific (and inconsistent) notion of what “belongs on the atheism subreddit”. As far as I can tell, an article that focuses on how atheists can debate and engage religious people is definitely not mis-labeled by being in the atheist subreddit. An argument might be made that a hyper-specific atheists-arguing-with-theists subsubreddit is a better fit.
Now, onto some of the criticism of my article. I got a number of challenges like, “Why would an atheist ask anything about something that doesn’t exist?” — Which is an inexcusable challenge from theists, but blows my mind as criticism coming from fellow atheists.
Other criticism: “They will say ‘no, God doesn’t commit evil’.”
More criticism: “This is the same as asking ‘Can God create a rock so big that He can’t lift it?”
Still more criticism: “This doesn’t prove that God doesn’t exist.”
I imagine that most of the criticism comes from people who did not read the whole article. If not, then I have to work on my clarity. Take the last criticism “This doesn’t prove that God doesn’t exist.” — My article also doesn’t prove that oatmeal is a better breakfast than waffles. This criticism only works if I failed to do what I set out to do. I make fairly tight claims that I try to argue, and I write them out explicitly. Let me know if I fail to persuasively argue a claim that I’m actually attempting to prove.
The simple logic of the article goes:
B or ~B
If B, then C.
If ~B, then D.
Asking whether it is possible for God to commit evil is rather straight forward. It is not asking whether you judge God to be moral (at least not initially). If God is ‘limited’ in some way — ie He cannot do evil — I would not argue that this is a strict contradiction of God being all-powerful yet, powerless to do an entire class of actions — I argue that His status as a “moral creature” becomes tenuous.
On the other hand, if God is capable of doing evil, the next question becomes not one of logical possibility, but one of epistemology — how do you know what evil He has done or not done?
If a theist would have a strong issue with either conclusion: C or D, then the argument as a whole is effective.
One funny sidenote — stumbleupon is a great source of traffic for my site overall, but Can God do evil got recommended (hooray) and favorably reviewed (hooray), but categorized under porn (huh?).
I’ve submitted a ‘change category’ request — so it should be fixed soon, but I can imagine anyone hoping to stumble across porn and ending up a religious debate site would be disappointed.
I’ve posted a new article. Atheists can ask a number of tough questions in the course of a conversation or debate with a theist that quickly lead to some interesting conclusions. The following question can be very effective:
It’s important to get the types of questions straight. A few entries ago I mentioned that an atheist should focus on asking a theist to explain his own actions rather than God’s — Why worship an apparently evil God? Rather than: Why does God allow evil?
It’s another matter all together to ask whether God is actually capable of doing evil. If He cannot do evil (for whatever reason), His omnipotence and praiseworthyness become highly suspect. If He can do evil, then there are some very interesting problems that arise for the theist.
I have been very busy these past few weeks, among other things, I have to advance to candidacy within a month. So, starting mid-June expect a bunch of new activity at this site. I have had time to think on my daily commute, and I have had a nice chance to organize a number of different thoughts.
Among the things that I have been kicking around in my mind is to really focus on how to word ideas and questions to create the largest impact on the listener.
I’m in the planning stages of starting (modifying) a Student Organization that will have as its goal something very similar to the Reason Project (a Sam Harris non-profit foundation which very recently got officially launched). The mission statement would be something like:
Mission Statement of a University Chapter of the Reason Project—A student organization devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society and on campus. The campus organization draws on the talents of prominent and creative thinkers in a wide range of disciplines to encourage critical thinking and erode the influence of dogmatism, superstition, and bigotry in our world.
I posted a poll over at the Reason Project website (the response to which has so far been encouraging): http://www.reasonproject.org/forum/viewthread/12179/
I would like for this Student Organization (whether affiliated with RP or not) to do is to actively engage the student community in a productive way. To this end, I envision a number of forums being made available. The tentative plan is for an informal weekly gathering with a specific topic announced to start the moderated discussion, with a more formal monthly debate. There are an entire range of possible topics that can be worded in a number of ways. For example:
Is religious faith a force for good in the world?
Has a much different ring to it than,
Is religious gullibility a force for good in the world?
Now, to be honest, neither is not really a fair question because ‘faith’ has a positive connotation and ‘gullibility’ has a negative connotation. The second question might be a stupid idea as a debate topic, but might be an excellent tool for conversing with fellow atheists who have a problem with a policy of challenging the faithful.
Anyway, I will get back to frequently updating this site very soon!
I got a little carried away with the artwork, the hats didn’t need to be so ornate, but then again, I’m an artist and I think it’s clear from my work that I have a great deal of talent for drawing. </sarcasm>
Actually, I hope that you enjoy the comic. It deals with Ray Comfort and a billboard that he put up…
Aside: One thing that I honestly don’t understand, is that Ray is now claiming that his “bananas are an atheist’s worst nightmare” video was edited so that it didn’t show the Coke can analogy in the beginning, and just left it with the banana argument. This editing, apparently, doesn’t not show that Ray was making a parody. There is no conceivable parody he could be making against anyone except himself because he only argues for his own position.
New post discussing Biblical errancy, the role of animal sacrifice and (briefly) what the Messiah was not expected to do.
I rarely engage in Biblical errancy types of arguments, but this one has yielded promising results for me in a number of recent conversations that I’ve had with people in person (including 2 different pastors).
There are many different issues that come up with how people can discover what is good and what is evil.
I find that arguments regarding this topic circle around some fairly… unproductive lines of argument from both the theistic and atheistic sides.
I will eventually write up a few arguments that I’ve found to be useful; but I just posted an argument that I’ve had some success with here: Response to: God is the Source of Morality.
Essentially, it directly tackles the epistemic question of how a person gains knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. Either there are good reasons to think that certain actions are wrong, or there are not. A theist who thinks that humans cannot discover this on their own will have a hard time in justifying how he came to believe that God Himself is good. Specifically, how does he choose to follow God and reject Lucifer? He read God’s book first? What if he had read Satan’s book first? What would that say?
If you do not think that he would have a hard time, and you think you could make the case for him, I’d love to hear someone give the defense a try.
It has been a while since I last updated. I’ve been thinking very hard the past couple weeks about exactly what exactly I want this website to be about, etc.
I have done the blog thing before (for years, actually) and been semi-successful with it (under different names that you may or may not be aware of). I began this website as a sort of clearing house for the essays that would comprise a book. I reluctantly added the blog feature so that I could post some small clippings of things that I had thought of as they occurred (or made announcements about new essays that I had written.) Blogs are great, and they serve a purpose. I plan on continuing to update this website and blog as often as I find useful, but I am not intending for the blog to be the purpose for this site.
The essays on this site as they currently stand are in what I’d call a 2nd draft version. I still have the goal of writing a book, and I expect to do a full re-write on every single article that I’ve posted.
I’ve also decided that by the time I finish the book, fully half of the book will be posted to this website. The book is taking shape to be around 300 pages long (maybe more), and I’ve been writing a number of essays that will only appear in the book.
I also have about… 20 other projects that I’m working on simultaneously, and a few more that I am helping others with (one of which I hope to be allowed to go public with in the next 2 weeks).
Thanks for your support! Expect to see a few new essays in the next couple of days!
I am always interested in constructive criticism, on anything that I write. Tonight, I looked at the reviews that users have given my articles…
I had many positive reviews, but here are 3 out of the 4 negative reviews that my Azeusism article got on Stumbleupon (the 4th was just a stream of profanity):
Quirken: Over 99% of the world’s population is “azeusist” these days. And nobody would ever use that term in a serious conversation anyway.’
The reason the argument works is that because almost everyone “these days” is azeusist, therefore every atrocity was committed by an azeusist. The term could be used in any conversation serious enough to think that atheism causes things like genocide. Especially if using the term gets the point across clearly and quickly.
rikuboshi: The religiously inclined could use this to their advantage in an argument as well, you know.
I do not know. I cannot imagine the way that this argument would be advantageous to the religiously inclined. Perhaps someone can help me with this one?
droe82: From the page: “End of argument.”
Anyone who feels that they need to proclaim that their statement is the end of an argument is an intellectual coward. As far as I’m concerned, you might as well start sucking your thumb.’
Right… I was just making clear where the ridiculous argument ended and when I started talking again. He must be thinking that I was making the Azeusism causes atrocities argument for real — and somehow missed the “Find the flaw in the following argument:” bolded headline that began the argument.
Then of course there is the note that was left on my site that said the argument was flawed because Zeus does not exist.
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