Keith Parsons submits Atheist Manifesto

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Dr. Keith Parsons, an old sparring partner of mine from pre-journal days, and mutual friend of Victor Reppert (who has known and debated him a heck of a lot longer than I have), has decided to join several of his Secular Web fellows in contributing to their online journal (hosted by Blogger), The Secular Outpost. For his opening post, and in honor of a nephew of his (evangelical Christian "of the progressive Jim Wallis type") who asked him to explain briefly why he is an atheist, Keith has submitted an Atheist Manifesto, and has called for some comments on it. Victor has provide his own brief opening reply here, where it overlaps Victor's current-semester discussions and reposts about the Cosmological Argument. (The recently reposted debate in the comments of this post here between Steve Lovell and Exapologist is quite good, too.)

I like KP a lot, as well as several other SecWeb correspondents of my experience (Jim Lippard comes immediately to mind, among others.) I'm quite utterly swamped this week, and I still need to draft the next Eth&t3rdPers entry; so consider this a mental note to myself to come back and address his post later. Meanwhile, anyone tired of, let us say, "neanderthal" atheistic jibber-jabber, of the sort that has become increasingly popular in the past year or so, can check in on a far more worthy opponent.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Keith Parsons may be a cut above your usual Internet skeptic, but I heaved a great groaning sigh when he opened with that asinine 'appeal to common knowledge' that other deities are fictional. I just cannot take that seriously. It provides no positive reason whatsoever to be an atheist. It's merely a statement of the socio-cultural zeitgeist, and says more about psychology than about reasons to believe or disbelieve in God.
7/27/2007 09:04:00 AM
Jason Pratt said…
Oh, I imagine I'll have things to say about that, too, later (probably next week), once I put some worky-work stuff to bed back here. Meanwhile, please opine freely! {lol!} {bow!}

JRP
7/27/2007 11:06:00 AM
Jason Pratt said…
Catchup note, 8/7/07: I'm currently drafting a commentary on Keith's Manifesto. (Not much of a 'manifesto' per se, so far, but that probably sounded like a cool title or something. {s})

I expect I'll release it in multiple parts in the coming weeks. Quick-n-dirty summary so far is: (1) JD is smack on the money about Keith's opening paragraph (facetious and purile are two of the adjectives I'm using); (2) the other paragraphs so far aren't bad however (I'm just starting the anti-design paragraph, which has an instant critical problem; but the category error doesn't necessarily kill his complaint); (3) not much of a manifesto per se so far. {g} But maybe that will change down the page.

JRP
8/07/2007 12:14:00 PM
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