CADRE Comments

William James ( 1842–1910 ) Atheist pundit Austin  Cline can often be found pontificating about religion on about.com. He has an article around religious experience as a God argument, [1] his prejudicial dismissal of the argument is tailormade for my new book, The Trace of God: A Rational Warrant for Belief, by Joseph Hinman (paperback, soon to be e book available on Amazon ) to answer. First I want to clear the way by a knit pick. the phrase "Do we experience God's existence?" is an awkward and odd phrase. It's redundant because the only way we could actually experience God as a reality is if God is real, what we call "existing," thus even though this is a misuse of the term on his part according to Paul Tillich's theology [2] to experience God is to say that God is real and thus the idea that we are experiencing God's existence is just redundant. If we experience God as a reality then God must be real or we are not truly e...

In reading through news stories today, I noted that a number of stories concerned agnosticism. The always less-than-thoughtful Huffington Post has an article entitled "Debates About Agnosticism Are as Old as the Concept Itself", and second entitled "Agnosticism in the UK: It's Time to Listen to the Faithless Majority." (I wonder why the Huffington Post is obsessed with agnosticism.) Following up on some thoughts, I came across a page on the old Skeptical Web...er, I mean the Secular Web, called " Why I am an Agnostic " by Clarence Darrow. The opening paragraph is written in a different typeset than the remainder, so I am uncertain whether the following quote is from Mr. Darrow or from skeptic who felt he ha to take a few cheap shots as a sort of introduction to Mr. Darrow's own thoughts below. Regardless of the source, the quote that caught my attention was, "Everyone is an agnostic as to the beliefs or creeds they do not accept." This wa...

Update: now with 100% more Prisoner Dilemma game theory! {g} "Option A is made of fire!" Some people believe the Golden Rule is that there is no Golden Rule. This kind of person worships the void, rejecting truth (perhaps to serve themselves or else perhaps in despair). And yet in doing so, they only commit intellectual suicide: for if there is no Golden Rule then neither can that be a Golden Rule. Some people believe the Golden Rule is that there is a Golden Rule. This kind of person worships static existence or maybe mere power effect. They do at least acknowledge truth; but typically they expect the truth to be worthlessly simple--or maybe themselves if they have enough power! Some people believe the Golden Rule is "Do not do to others what you'd rather not have done to you." These people worship nothing, not knowing what to worship; but at least they reject the worship of mere power as improper, and might be looking to worship more than themselves if they...

In a recent post I excerpted some quotes from Robin Le Poidevin's recent book Agnosticism on the moral argument. In this post I want to share some more quotes from the book on the presumption of atheism. I wanted to title it, 'An atheist denies the presumption of atheism', but the more I read, the more convinced I am that he cannot possibly be an atheist. The book seems to be, not merely a description of agnosticism, but a strong positive argument in its favor. Therefore, unless Le Poidevin is merely writing 'speech in character', it seems that he is an agnostic. Nevertheless, he provides a very convincing rebuttal to the presumption of atheism, which is relevant to the discussion between Christians and atheists. Le Poidevin begins by describing the presumption of atheism as follows: Atheism doesn't require defense. Rather, it is up to theists to convince us that there is a God. Unless they can do so, we can remain comfortable in our disbelief. Only if they pr...

Robin le Poidevin is the author of an introduction to philosophy of religion called Arguing for Atheism , which atheist blogger Austin Cline calls "one of the best books on atheism which is currently available." More recently he has contributed the Very Short Introduction to Agnosticism for Oxford University Press. I have been unable to ascertain whether he is a full-blown atheist or an agnostic, but at the very least he is highly skeptical about religion, which makes his comments about morality and conscience all the more remarkable. They are presented in the context of demonstrating the ultimate ambiguity of all arguments for the existence of God, but they seem to me to lean very much in the theistic direction. To reverse well-known expression, with enemies like this, who needs friends? We all know what it is like to have a conscience, and it sometimes gives us a hard time. But what is the source of this thing that prompts us to certain actions, makes us refrain from oth...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, starting chapter 16, can be found here. This entry concludes chapter 16.] [The previous entry ended with: "If the proposition 'reactions produce actions' is nonsense, then either atheism is false, or we might as well treat it as false because it can never, in any legitimate way, get going even as a live proposition (much less as a possibly cogently defended one). Atheism could still be sheerly asserted; but a sheer assertion is not a reliable conclusion upon which to form a subsequent belief."] There are two categories of defense against this deduction that we should reject atheism being true. da.) The proposal 'reactions produce actions' is not nonsensical. db.) Defensible arguments (such as, for instance, atheism theories) can be produced purely by automatic reactions without actions. Adherents of the first defense would proceed by one of the general following methods (with var...

[Introductory note from Jason Pratt: the previous and first entry in this series of posts can be found here. ] Sometimes when the topic of religion (or theology, or philosophy, or metaphysics...) rises in conversation, one person will wave off the discussion with this type of dismissal: 'There isn't much point discussing such things, because such discussions cannot, by their very character, reach true answers.' This person might also declare that anyone can argue validly to anything; or that an infinite number of true answers are possible. This type of person will express himself in several different ways; but his main position is that such discussions cannot be useful. [Footnote: I distinguish, however, between such a person and a person who wants to make some positive use of a claim that an infinite number of exclusively true answers are possible. I will discuss such a positive proposition later.] Sometimes this tactic represents a head-in-the sand approach: the person d...

In June, I wrote a brief essay about the new poll from Barna that had determined that atheists were less charitable and satisfied than theists which I titled (not surprisingly) Poll: Atheists and Agnostics are Less Charitable and At Peace . According to the story, Barna polled a cross-section of the general public asking questions about (among other things) religious preference and charitable giving, and used the data collected to draw a correlation between the amounts people gave and their stated religious preference. The data, when analyzed, revealed that atheists and agnostics were significantly less charitable than theists. The news report ofn the Barna poll read: Additionally, when the no-faith group does donate to charitable causes, their donation amount pales in comparison to those active in faith. In 2006, atheists and agnostics donated just $200 while believers contributed $1,500. The amount is still two times higher among believers when subtracting church-based giving. Natur...

Barna Research Group in Ventura, CA, has just published the results of a poll that showed several differences between atheists and agnostics, on the one hand, and Christians, on the other. A report on the poll can be found in an article published in Church Executive entitled Study sizes up gaps between Christians, atheists and agnostics . Here are some of the more interesting results. Most atheists and agnostics (56 percent) agree with the idea that radical Christianity is just as threatening in America as is radical Islam. Two-thirds of active-faith Americans (63 percent) perceive that the nation is becoming more hostile and negative toward Christianity. Atheists and agnostics were found to be largely more disengaged in many areas of life than believers. They are less likely to be registered to vote (78 percent) than active-faith Americans (89 percent); to volunteer to help a non-church-related non-profit (20 percent vs. 30 percent); to describe themselves as "active in the commu...

Intro note from Jason Pratt, guest author for the Cadre... Warning: 14 page post approaching! The original discussion, such as it was, can be found scattered through here on the Cadre journal page. John Loftus eventually continued his replies, first to BK and then to myself, here on the Debunking Christianity journal. You’ll need to scroll down a while through the comments to get to mine, and then to John’s reply. I’m around #11. Where I quote John Loftus, I am sometimes using double-fancy brackets {{like this}}. For in-paragraph quotations, I’ll use regular double-quote marks. Single-quote marks indicate a paraphrase. Since I’m going to end up repeating myself several times, I won’t blame John if he synopsizes in any reply he makes. I would of course prefer that he recognize I made such-n-such reply and include some reference to it, at least in principle, in his own replies. This is one way how discussions ‘continue’ as ‘discussions’. {s} John, {{I hope that [mutual learning] happen...