thoughtful ideas on life's big questions
Atheists sometimes characterise christians as people who believe in myths and magic, based on faith, which is the opposite of reason. I think this can be shown to generally be a mis-characterisation (see Is faith the opposite of reason? and Science, faith and certainty). But what if the tables were turned? What if many atheists […]
The Cosmological argument attempts to show that God exists by considering what caused the universe. The universe couldn’t cause itself to exist, the argument says, nor could it exist for no reason, so an external agent must have caused it. And what else could that external agent be than God? Despite various attempts to refute […]
It is almost a truism that atheists in western countries have ‘come out of the closet’, and are now enthusiastically pressing christians and other believers to recognise that their faith is unjustifiable. So what are the arguments they mostly use to support this conclusion? Over the past 6 years, I have engaged in discussions with […]
When we think about the question of “Is there a God?”, I guess we mostly think of arguments for and against. How did the universe get here if it wasn’t created? Does the suffering in the world prove there is no God? But there is another way to look at it.
I came across this the other day, on The official blog of University of Missouri Skeptics, Atheists, Secular Humanists, & Agnostics
Christians and other theists sometimes argue for God’s existence based on facts about the universe that science cannot explain, or has not yet explained. But non-believers sometimes accuse these arguments of being fallacious, because they use ‘God of the Gaps’ reasoning. Is this a problem?
A week or two back I posted on scientist Jerry Coyne’s discussion of free will (Jerry Coyne: why we don’t have free will) I have just come across a discussion of Coyne’s views on former academic philosopher Bill Vallicella’s blog, Maverick Philosopher. It’s pretty strongly critical, but worth reading.
One of the enjoyable things about writing a blog is the things you learn when researching a topic. I have read a little on the big bang and the fundamental laws that underpin our universe and I agree with the suggestion that the universe didn’t get the way it is by chance. But in preparing […]
Jerry Coyne is a Professor of biology at the University of Chicago, probably best known for his book Why evolution is true. In a recent column in USA Today, he presents the case for the unpalatable reality that our apparent ability to freely make choices is in fact an illusion. The column raises some interesting […]
Tom Chivers is a journalist for the Telegraph newspaper in the UK, and an atheist. He has written recently about God and Jesus in a refreshingly honest way.