I'm right, you're an idiot, so it's time to shut the discussion down

This is from James Lindsay, quoted on Loftus' blog. What do you say when someone wants to shut down the dialogue? 

It is very difficult to see the matter of theism as something to treat seriously as a philosophical object. We shouldn't. It is a theological object, and theology is only "pseudo-philosophical," as Carrier puts it, and pseudo-academic, as I outlined above. No one is required to take such a thing seriously or engage its "best" arguments, as if it has any, as if the real contenders haven't already been dealt with thoroughly and repeatedly, and as if any argument stands up to the simple and straightforward question that's been waiting for them all along: "Where's the evidence?"

But because the idea that we should engage any position's best case is generally true in philosophy proper, and all academic debate, it is an easy value to turn into a false virtue. The principle simply doesn't apply here because theology is pseudo-academic, though. Misapplying it as a false virtue, a moral value defining a particular kind of thinker, I think, is exactly what apologists for the philosophy of religion are doing, and I think it constitutes a confusing and unproductive avenue in the conversation that should not continue. LINK.

A reply to Wielenberg on naturalistic moral realism: C. S. Lewis's Second Moral Argument

I had a look at the Wielenberg Faith and Philosophy paper, and one problem jumps out at me. For moral properties to do the work we expect them to do, they have to  be causal properties. Something being right has to at least potentially play a role in my doing what is right. But even if there are these moral properties, they aren't physical, and if all causation is physical, then these properties can't affect my behavior without violating the causal closure of the physical. In theism is true, then these moral properties can be at least possibly causally relevant. So we have, I think, still a reason for choosing a theistic account over a non-theistic one. To paraphrase Lewis, "Even if moral truths exist, what exactly have they got to do with the occurrence of a right decision as a psychological event?"

Lewis's moral argument in Miracles chapter 5 emphasizes the causal role of morality, though it is not as apparent Mere Christianity.

Wielenberg's paper is here, Lowder's recommendation of Wielenberg is here. 

A little exercise

Provide a convincing argument against slavery that would be convincing to anyone  who thinks slavery isn't wrong, without any explicit or implicit theological appeals.

I actually think that, at least for long periods of history, the institution of slavery is defensible from the standpoint of utilitarianism, for example. It is now a socially unpopular idea. But so is infanticide and bestiality, but Peter Singer is prepared to defend both.

I don't think it can be done. It's a dog eat dog world, only the fittest survive, if we have the power to enslave others, what's wrong with it? It will certainly help me pass on my genes. Owning slaves gives people a selective advantage.

Believe, me I despise slavery. But I don't see a universally convincing secular argument.

Would a secular case against slavery have been persuasive? I doubt it!

Another critical question is whether we could have ever come upon the idea that slavery is wrong if Paul's point had not been made. People became slaves historically because of military defeat. Slaves were the spoils of battle. On a polytheistic view, if you lose a war, your god was defeated by the other country's god, and so they had the right to treat you as human refuse. Paul says that the slave has to be treated in certain ways because you and the slave are both creatures of the same God, and God plays no favorites. 

But what if we had gone from a polytheistic view to the view that we weren't created at all, but were spat up by evolution. Wouldn't it be natural to think that a country who had just won a war was the country that was "selected for," as if were, and could do what it wanted to do with the people of the country that lost? It's a dog eat dog world, and natural selection supports those who can enslave others and get them to do hard labor. Did the free people of Egypt build the Pyramids? How did ships cross the Mediterranean sea. Could you have gotten a galley full of rowers with volunteer labor? Could a convincing case against exploitation have been made without the kind of theological appeal that Paul makes? 

Of course, nowadays we all hate slavery (though believe me, it's still around!) But it came naturally for a lot of people to treat it as perfectly acceptable. We all imagine that if we had been in, say, the antebellum South, we would have seen through the detestable practice. But the moral force of the abolitionist arguments came from their Christianity. It did not come from secular humanism.

Ephesians' indirect critique of slavery

Discussed  here. 

Here is the indirect attack:

9 And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.

Now if you really internalize the message that the slave and the master have the same Lord, and that the Lord shows no favoritism, how can you own slaves? Nevertheless, we might wish Scripture had spelled that out for us. 

Theism, atheism faith, and placing our bets

Atheism is possibly false, yet the atheist must act as if it is true. Christians place their bets as well. Faith in the sense Lewis talks about in Mere Christianity must be exercised by anyone who has a developed world-view. Faith in the sense of belief in the teeth of evidence is something I don't expect from anyone.

On the philosophy of religion

What we call the philosophy of religion has to do with what we as a culture do with our deepest and most serious disagreements. It's a difficult project, because we have a much easier time talking to people who agree with us for the most part.But if we don't discuss these differences, what do we do? Do we reinstitute the Inquisition for the ideologically unacceptable?

Slagle on Omphalos

Here

I always thought Omphalos was a clever idea.. But these are decisive arguments against it.

lucky to be alive

I was in a car accident, and broke my hip. I got the worst of it, my wife and daughter are OK. A speeder got us. They're out of the hospital, I have a couple more days.

Some questions about the Kitzmiller decision

I don't think that court case was rightly decided, or at least not for the reasons that was given in the decision. If "the court said it, I believe it, that settles it" was a good argument form, then we could establish that black slaves are really the property of their owners because Dred Scott v. Sandford said that they were.

But now we get to something I really don't get. Edwards v. Aguillard said that you couldn't teach creationism in public school, since this made reference to the doctrines of a specific religion.

The Supreme Court held that the Act is facially invalid as violative of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, because it lacks a clear secular purpose (first test of the above Lemon test), since (a)the Act does not further its stated secular purpose of "protecting academic freedom." and (b) the Act impermissibly endorses religion by advancing the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind.
They also said:

We do not imply that a legislature could never require that scientific critiques of prevailing scientific theories be taught. . . . Teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind to schoolchildren might be validly done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science instruction.
Now, suppose someone took what was originally a creationist textbook, used all the same arguments, but deleted the implication that a supernatural being was responsible. This is some dastardly subterfuge?

Suppose in fact the people who were developing this were actually creationists, and even young earth creationists. Suppose, further, they hoped that by making the case for a designer, they hoped that they could support religious belief. Couldn't they still say that they were doing what the court says was allowable.

If the court says "You can't do A, but you can do B," you are still doing B and not A even if you wanted to do A, or even if people concluding A was what you hope they would do if you do B, the fact is you ARE doing B and not A.

So they changed the words of the book to satisfy the ruling. Isn't that what you're supposed to do???

Besides it is just plain false to say that advocates of ID are advocates of creationism, if creationism is meant to be something like YEC and flood geology. Behe, for example, affirms common ancestry, something that is an absolute no-no amongst creationists, who will label you an evolutionist if you accept it.

Are you a determinist? Here's how you can tell

Would you say, with respect to any decision that you have made, that given the actual past, you could have done otherwise than what you did? Determinists may agree with the statement "I could have done otherwise," but what they mean is that if the past had been different, the act would have been different.  Libertarians say that even given the actual past, they could have done otherwise from what they did.

Nagel on the idea that ID is science

The denier that ID [intelligent design] is science faces the following dilemma. Either he admits that the intervention of such a designer is possible, or he does not. If he does not, he must explain why that belief is more scientific than the belief that a designer is possible. If on the other hand he believes that a designer is possible, then he can argue that the evidence is overwhelmingly against the actions of such a designer, but he cannot say that someone who offers evidence on the other side is doing something of a fundamentally different kind. All he can say about that person is that he is scientifically mistaken.”
― Thomas Nagel

Is Scientific Thought Truncated?

Because Doctor Logic says that the scientific method is the only way to transcend bias in thinking, I want to give some arguments from C. S. Lewis that scientific thought is truncated, and that therefore scientism introduces a bias of its own into our thinking. I am redating this post from 2006.

From Chapter 6, Answers to Misgivings, in C. S. Lewis's Miracles: A Preliminary Study, pp. 41-42.
All these instances show that the fact which is in one respect the most obvious and primary fact, and through which alone you have access to all the other facts, maybe precisely the one that is most easily forgotten—forgotten not because it is some remote or abstruse but because it is so near and so obvious. And that is exactly how the Supernatural has been forgotten. The Naturalists have been engaged in thinking about Nature. They have not attended to the fact that they were thinking. The moment one attends to this it is obvious that one’s thinking cannot be a merely natural event, and that therefore something other than nature exists. The Supernatural is not remote and abstruse: it is a matter of daily and hourly experience, as intimate as breathing. Denial of it depends on a certain absent-mindedness. But this absent-mindedness is in no way surprising. You do not need—indeed you do not wish—to be always thinking about windows when you are looking at gardens or always thinking about eyes when you are reading. In the same way the proper procedure for all limited and particular inquiries is to ignore the fact of your own thinking, and concentrate on the object. It is only when you stand back from particular inquiries and try to form a complete philosophy that you must take it into account. For a complete philosophy must get in all the facts. In it you turn away from specialised or truncated thought to total thought: and one of the fact total thought must think about is Thinking itself. There is a tendency in the study of Nature to make us forget the most obvious fact of all. And since the Sixteenth Century, when Science was born, the minds of men have been increasingly turned outward to know Nature and to master her. They have been increasingly engaged on those specialized inquiries in which truncated thought is the correct method. It is therefore not in the least astonishing that they should have forgotten the evidence for the Supernatural. The deeply ingrained habit of truncated thought—what we call the “scientific” habit of mind—was indeed certain to lead to Naturalism, unless this tendency were continually corrected from some other source. But no other source was at hand, for during the same period men of science were becoming metaphysically and theologically uneducated.

Religion and Incarceration

A critique of a popular atheist claim. Here. 

What is it like to be one of Boghossian's students? "I wrote what I had to to 'agree'.

Here is what a student wrote on a paper in Boghossian's class.

"I wrote what I had to ‘agree’ with what was said in class, but in truth I believe ABSOLUTELY that there is an amazing, savior GOD, who created the universe, lives among us, and loves us more than anything. That is my ABSOLUTE, and no amount of ‘philosophy’ will change that."

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/07/192/boghossian#ixzz37ffInOeL
Inside Higher Ed

Now think about this. A student feels she has to write certain things to pass a course which are contrary to what she believes. As teachers we have the power of the grade. I would certainly feel I had done something wrong if a student felt she had to take certain positions she did not believe in because she was afraid of flunking if she disagreed with me.

What kind of a person do you want to be?

A post by Unkle E, a frequent commenter here.

Should the Establishment Clause Apply to Atheists as well?

Here. 

The majority view seems to me that it should be. If this conclusion is drawn, then what happens to Peter Boghossian, who uses his position as a professor at Portland State University, to promote atheism?

Is there a double standard in the way that academic freedom is typically understood? If I made it my stated purpose to convert my students to Christianity, and said so, (something I would never do) would I be more likely to get in trouble with administration than someone like Boghossian, who does what he does?

Thomas Nagel's account of reason

A redated post.

Reason, if there is such a thing, can serve as a court of appeal not only against the received opinions and habits of our community but also against the peculiarities of our personal perspective. It is something each individual can find with himself, but at the same time it has universal authority. Reason provides, mysteriously, a way of distancing oneself from common opinion and received practices that is not a mere elevation of individuality... not a determination to express one's idiosyncratic self rather than go along with everyone else. Whoever appeals to reason purports to discover a source of authority within himself that is not merely personal or societal, but universal... and that should also persuade others who are willing to listen to it. The Last Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 3-4.

One way we might approach some of this is to ask whether reason in this sense exists, as I claim, it must if philosophical and scientific inquiry is to be truly possible, and second, what are the metaphysical implication of the existence of reason in this sense.

A new book: Trace of God by J. L. Hinman

I've been reading J. L. Hinman's book Trace of God, which is a discussion and defense of the argument from religious experience. In one passage he quotes a passage from someone named Gracely on Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence in which Gracely admits that if ordinary evidence were only required, some paranormal claims would prove to be defensible. It really does look like moving the goalposts to me. This passage is blogged here. 

There is no science, only sciences

Is this an accurate statement?

John Schellenberg's argument from hiddenness

1. If there is a perfectly loving God, all creatures capable of explicit and positively meaningful relationship with God who have not freely shut themselves off from God are in a position to participate in such relationships--i.e., able to do so just by trying to.

2. No one can be in a position to participate in such relationships without believing that God exists.

3. If there is a perfectly loving God, all creatures capable of explicit and positively meaningful relationship with God who have not freely shut themselves off from God believe that God exists (from 1 and 2).

4. It is not the case that all creatures capable of explicit and positively meaningful relationship with God who have not freely shut themselves off from God believe that God exists: there is nonresistant nonbelief; God is hidden.

5. It is not the case that there is a perfectly loving God (from 3 and 4).

6. If God exists, God is perfectly loving.

7. It is not the case that God exists (from 5 and 6).

What, if anything, do you think is wrong with this argument. It seems to underly a lot of atheist argumentation these days. 

Saints and Skeptics on the Argument from Reason

Here. 

An index to the Feser-Parsons exchange

Here. Some hope for those who were wondering if real dialogue between Christians and atheists can still take place in the Blogosphere.

Carrier and I agree on something!

A redated post.

Hence, I propose a general rule that covers all and thus distinguishes naturalism from supernaturalism: If naturalism is true, everything mental is caused by the nonmental, whereas if supernaturalism is true, at least one thing is not.

ID and open-mindedness

Bob Prokop called attention to this essay, and asks why the exclusion of intelligent design from serious dialogue doesn't have the same bad effect. Here. 

Why I don't buy "trajectory of science" arguments

I should say that I am unpersuaded of "trajectory of science" arguments which suggest that as we investigate further we will find greater and greater support for reductionism. Two aspects of the materialistic vision of the world as it has been historically understood are the following: 

1) The universe had no beginning, and has always existed. 

2) The universe is deterministic, and as we do science we will come closer and closer to finding determining causes for everything. 

Now, thanks to the development of the Big Bang theory in the first instance, and quantum mechanics in the second instance, confidence in both of these theses has eroded in comparison to what might have been thought in the early days of the 20th Century. 

Now, of course, naturalists have revised their conception of what is naturalistically acceptable to accommodate a universe with a temporal beginning, and a universe with quantum level indeterminism. But the point is that science frustrated the expectations of what at the time were the expected results of the naturalistic thrust of science. 

With respect to the analysis of mind, I see a lot of bravado about reductive analyses but no real hard evidence that reductions are going to be successful. In fact, given the fact that "the material" or "the natural" has to be defined in terms of the absence of the mental, it looks to me as if reduction of the mental to the physical is logically impossible, and that the more we study things scientifically the more evident this will become.

Bottom line: future science is FUTURE science. Who knows where it will go. 

Can we talk? Some concerns and fears

Thinking of how things have gone on this blog in the last couple of years, I have struggled with my real purpose. 

Thinking about the New Atheism, I think it really doesn't attempt to argue against religious belief. The point isn't debate, it's marginalization. It's keeping religious believers off the "adult table," as Boghossian likes to say. Treating it as argumentation, I think is a mistake. I have complained about the underlying attitude. I think it is socially dangerous. But I think my complaints are pointless, in a way. 

Polite respectful dialogues isn't just to be nice. People naturally tend to represent positions they don't like poorly. When we have the enterprise of defending our own positions, yes we like our positions and we like seeing people embracing them. But we also have to commit ourselves to the health of the community of dialogue. If I were to have a public debate with someone on belief in God, I would feel as if we are opponents in one sense, but we also have a cooperative goal of enhancing understanding of the issues at stake. Without a sense of this common goal, discussion inevitably degenerates. 

The latest crop of anti-theists aren't saying Christianity or theism is wrong, they are trying to get across the idea that it is not even wrong. I don't know how I would construe the rules of dialogue for dealing with something you consider to be not even wrong. Normal dialogue is aimed at showing that something is wrong, and gives a certain respect to the opposing view in order to refute it. 

I still hate banning people, but I think that if you think you have nothing to learn about questions surrounding religious belief and other philosophical matters, I will just say that Dangerous Idea is not for you. 

I am not concerned about an impending "End of Faith." I am concerned about the possibility that we are evolving toward a situation where believers and unbelievers can't even talk to one another without the discussion degenerating. We've had good discussions here,  but I have been seeing less and less of it as time has gone on. A kind of intellectual apartheid is where I am afraid we are headed as a society. 

If you find someone on the other side isn't giving you real dialogue, then know what to ignore. Don't waste time telling someone they're an idiot. There is no constructive purpose in doing that. 

Here is the Scientific Method

This is an overview of the scientific method. But can you do experiments like this in evolutionary biology? 

Loftus sometimes says that there is no Christianity, only Christianities. I wonder if someone could say that there is no science, only sciences. Some things seem appropriate for physics but not for biology, others for psychology and sociology. Then there are people who follow Rutherford say that science divides between physics and stamp collecting.  

 

Key Info

• The scientific method is a way to ask and answer scientific questions by making observations and doing experiments.
• The steps of the scientific method are to:
  • Ask a Question
  • Do Background Research
  • Construct a Hypothesis
  • Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
  • Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
  • Communicate Your Results
• It is important for your experiment to be a fair test. A "fair test" occurs when you change only one factor (variable) and keep all other conditions the same.
• While scientists study how nature works, engineers create new things, such as products, websites, environments, and experiences.
  • If your project involves creating or inventing something new, your project might better fit the steps of The Engineering Design Process.
  • If you are not sure if your project is a scientific or engineering project, you should read Comparing the Engineering Design Process and the Scientific Method.

Nagel on ID and public education

This is a really stellar paper, neatly balanced.

Here.

The AFR, the Fallacy of Composition, and Underdetermination

A lot of anti-AFR arguments make the charge that it commits the fallacy of composition. My claim is that sometimes the status of the upper-level state follows necessarily from the base-level states, and sometimes it leaves the hopelessly underdetermined. The state of a planet seems to be fully determined by the states of the particles that make up the planet (plus relations to the star it revolves around, etc.) Mental states are, as I see it, hopelessly underdetermined by the physical. The physical states are compatible with numerous mental states, or even a complete lack of mental states entirely. 

Del Ratzsch on ID in 2004

This is a Panda's Thumb response, and I am somewhat surprised by the PT commentators' level-headed responses.

Ratzsch's attitude is pretty close to mine. I recently did some re-reading in Dembski's book The Design Revolution, and I think it contains two significant overreaches. First, he rejects Bayesian inference, probably because he doesn't want prior probabilities to undermine his case. Lydia McGrew argues that this is a mistake, and I agree. Second, he was touting "Of Pandas and People" as a way of recruiting people to ID, and supporting the attempt to get this into the K-12 classroom. I think that's an overreach, too. 

I don't think ID, or even the Discovery Institute, deserves the kind of demonization that we often see. I think evolution advocates are guilty of some pretty egregious overreaches themselves. 

Indoctrination?

Suppose a parent were to tell a child the following: 

Now, son (or daughter) I am not telling you what to believe. As the great Richard Dawkins says, if I were to label you as a child according to my beliefs, I would be guilty of child abuse. But, when you decide what to believe, just remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and no religion is worthy of belief unless it passes that Outsider Test for Faith, as defined by John Loftus. 

Indoctrination? Yes, no, maybe so?

Rate yourself morally

I wonder if anyone things of themselves as an immoral person. I wonder what the results would be if people were to rate themselves on a percentile scale as a moral person.

Did J. B. Phillips see C. S. Lewis after his death?

Randal Rauser poses this question here.

Leaving the fold, atheist style

Apparently, children of atheists don't always keep the, uh, un-faith.

Here. 

A real socialist on Obama's "socialism"

Here. 

The Jones Decision: Evolution's Trojan Horse?

The decision by Judge Jones excluding intelligent design from public education has been lauded by defenders of evolution, including atheistic evolutionists like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, who use evolutionary biology as a launching point for a defense of atheism. However, it seems to me that if we look carefully at the foundations of the Jones decision, the decision really makes sense only on the basis of arguments that decisively undermine the attempt to base a case for naturalism on evolution.

The Evolutionary Argument For Naturalism (EAFN) goes like this:

1.       If naturalism is false, and theism is true, then we should be able to find evidence of design through biological investigation.

2.       But we do not find that evidence of design through biological investigation. Instead, (to use the phrasing found in the subtitle of The Blind Watchmaker), the evidence of evolution reveals a world without design.

3.       Therefore evolutionary evidence supports naturalism, and provides evidence against theism.

Now let’s look at the basis on which Jones rejects ID. He maintains that ID fails to be scientific on the grounds that “it violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation.” In other words,  the problem with ID is methodological.

This methodological argument gets ID out of the way all right. But it’s a poison pill for the EAFN. If you are maintaining that the evidence of evolution reveals a world without design, then you are perforce presupposing that the evidence of evolution could have revealed something else had the evidence been different. But it does so at a heavy price for the EAFN. It effectively supports a very different argument, an argument I shall call the Methodological Argument for the Metaphysical Neutrality of Science, or MAMNS.

A good statement of MAMNS is found in the philosophy of religion textbook Reason and Religious Belief by Peterson, Hasker, Reichenbach, and Basinger. They write:

“As we try to assess ID, it is difficult (to) feel the force of its criticism of methodological naturalism per se. Methodological naturalism is simply the process of looking for natural causes for natural phenomena, a disciplined focus that has been the secret of science’s success. Methodological naturalism is neutral about whether any nonnatural phenomenon or supernatural reality exists. The fact the some atheistic scientists---such as Dawkins and others---believe that methodological naturalism favors philosophical naturalism reflects their own misunderstanding of the neutrality of science.  Ironically, this misunderstanding is shared by ID thinkers! So the theme of conflict between religion and established science is very strong in both groups.”

MAMNS could be formalized as follows:

1.       Evolutionary biology is the result of the application of methodological naturalism to biological phenomena.

2.       If evolutionary biology is methodologically naturalistic, then it is not equipped to adjudicate between naturalism and theism, without begging the question.

3.       Thus while the evidence of evolution is not free to mention design as an explanation for biological phenomena, neither can it actually establish the lack of design. All it can do is to provide the best account of biological phenomena that we can come up with without appealing to design.

It is important to remember the context of this decision. The plaintiffs in the case were trying to impugn ID as violation of the Establishment Clause. Now if you accept the EAFN, then just as you have to worry about ID violating the Establishment Clause if you teach it in school, you would then have to also worry about the claim that the teaching of evolution in school violates the establishment clause, since the evidence of evolution would then be used to support a religious position, namely atheism. Such a difficulty could be avoided if Jones were to embrace MAMNS, however. Under MAMNS, evolution is just science doing its job, but ID is an overstepping of the boundaries of science. The Jones decision (made by a churchgoing Republican judge) makes sense only if MAMNS is a good argument.

If the argumentation here is correct, then you can accept the Jones decision, or you can accept the EAFN. But you cannot do both. 

It all depends on your priors

I think an argument can be good even when it isn't strong enough such that it ought to convince any unbiased person. An argument might provide some evidence for its conclusion, which might be sufficient or insufficient given someone's personal prior probabilities.

The problem of motivated reasoning

The problem I am posing here is whether one side or the other of the religious debate can be accused of being more influenced by non-truth-conducive considerations than the other. Is there anything to be gained on either side by saying "you only believe that because you want to." It is my contention, going back to C. S. Lewis, is that these wish considerations pretty much cancel each other out. and nothing is to be gained by motivational speculations. We are not in a position to judge our opponents' thinking as "motivated" while our own position is free from motives.

Dealing with "Slaves, obey your masters"

Here. 

Successful?

The MGonz test

How to tell when you're wasting your time.

Here.

A redated post.

Nagel On Dennett on the Fear of Religion

Thomas Nagel wrote:

“In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper–namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers.

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”(”The Last Word” by Thomas Nagel, Oxford University Press: 1997)”
But, many complain, Nagel isn't a real atheist, in fact, he's got to be a theist in disguise. Real atheists don't suffer from the fear of religion. 

OK, how about Daniel Dennett, in this passage from Darwin's Dangerous Idea: 

 "My own spirit recoils from a (personal) God in the same way my heart sinks when I see a lion pacing neurotically back and forth in a small zoo cage.  I know, I know the lion is beautiful but dangerous; if you let the lion roam free, it would kill me.  Safety demands that it be put in a cage.  Safety demands that religions be put in cages, too . . . . .  We just can't have the second-class status of women in Roman Catholicism."  

Now try to tell me the fear of religion doesn't exist. 

The doctrine of the concealed wish

A redated post.

There are of course people in our own day to whom the whole situation seems altered by the doctrine of the concealed wish. They will admit that men, otherwise apparently rational, have been deceived by the arguments for religion. But they will say that they have been deceived first by their own desires and produced these arguments afterwards as a rationalization: that these arguments have never been intrinsically even plausible, but have seemed so because they were secretly weighted by our wishes. Now I do not doubt that this sort of thing happens in thinking about religion as in thinking about other things; but as a general explanation of religious assent it seems to me quite useless. On that issue our wishes may favour either side or both. The assumption that every man would be pleased, and nothing but pleased, if only he could conclude that Christianity is true, appears to me to be simply preposterous. – C.S. Lewis "On Obstinacy in Belief"

Gilson's Reply to Boghossian

Here. 

What happened to C. S. Lewis. Could it happen to you?

For Lewis, It was matter of coming to think that there are a bunch of lines of evidence that you believe support theism, or even Christianity. If you read his book it's hard to escape the idea that he thought he had reasons to become a Christian, and that this made him psychologically uncomfortable. Whether these reasons were good or bad is not the point here. 

People like Dawkins think that the evidence against theism is overwhelming. What if someone were to gradually move from that position to believe that the case for atheism is less than overwhelming, then about 50-50, and then it starts looking like God really does exist after all. 

If that happened to someone, a lot of atheists might react the way Nagel would: 

“In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper–namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers.

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”(”The Last Word” by Thomas Nagel, Oxford University Press: 1997)”

And that is how Lewis reacted when it happened to him.

Tim McGrew v. Peter Boghossian debate

Here. 

Does science presuppose God?

Vincent Torley replies to Carroll, Coyne, Dawkins and Loftus.

Moral subjectivism and not-so-controversial ethical issues

Ethics courses, including ones that I teach, tend to focus on issues which are hard to resolve. Nobody is going to argue much over the question of whether it is morally acceptable to invite someone over for dinner, push them into the oven, and cook them AS dinner. But a subjectivist has to hold that ALL moral judgments are subjective, not just with respect to things like abortion and gay marriage, but with respect to an issue like this. Do you want to say that Hannibal Lecter has a broken moral compass, or does it make sense to say "Who's to say what's really right or wrong?," concerning Hannibal's conduct. 

Comments on McCormick on Motivated Reasoning

I don't think the lecture was worthless, by any stretch of the imagination. However, there is a tricky feature to this, which is that it is easy to see the "motivated" aspects of our opponents' arguments and have a hard time seeing them our own side. I didn't like the way he took the entire field of Christian apologetics, and says that it was an example of motivated reasoning. I sketched out in "On being an apologist" how apologetics might be done without what is being called motivated reasoning. 

I thought his lecture got close to Bulverism on a couple of occasions. 

My rule is to constantly check my own thoughts for motives, but not try to speak with any authority about the motives of others. However, if opponents think there are no non-rational motives for what they think, and that all the non-rational motives are on my side, I have no trouble pointing out at least possible non-rational motives that they might have. Since they can't read my mind, all the can come up with are possible motivations I might have for believing as I do.

Robert Merrihew Adams" Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief

Here. 

How many sexual orientations are there?

On interesting question in this area is what counts as an "orientation." Are there two orientations, straight and gay, are there three, straight, day and bi, does a preference for group sex count, or a preference for multiple partners or one partner? Does bestiality and pedophilia count?

The reason I bring this us is that defense of gay relationships typically goes something like this.

1. A sexual orientation is, in many cases an unchangeable fact about a person that can't be altered by the use of free will.

2. If a person has an orientation, then a person has a moral right to an intimate life in accordance with that orientation. Celibacy should not be morally enforced on someone.

3. If one's orientation is homosexual, and this can't be changed then one should have the right to express that orientation in an intimate relationship, and society (and the institution of marriage) should recognize this fact.

But I think few of us, apart from members of NAMBLA, would use that argument in defense of, let's say, pedophilia. It seems that if you are a pedophile, and you can't change that "orientation," given the degree of harm that that does, you are morally obligated to be celibate.

Lecture on motivated reasoning by Matt McCormick

It seems as if this cries out for a tu quoque response, given the fact that McCormick runs what is essentially an atheist apologetics website.

Russell on Fideistic Faith: Pusillanimous and sniveling?

A redated post. 

There is something pusillanimous and sniveling about this point of view, that makes me scarcely able to consider it with patience. To refuse to face facts merely because they are unpleasant is considered the mark of a weak character, except in the sphere of religion. I do not see how it can be ignoble to yield to the tyranny of fear in all terrestrial matters, but noble and virtuous to do the same things where God and the future life are concerned.

Bertrand Russell, The Value of Free Thought (1944).

On being an apologist

Glenn Peoples argues against getting an apologetics degree, here.

I replied as follows:

I think I agree, at least in principle.
Let me use C. S. Lewis as an example. Here you have the most influential figure in apologetics in the last century, and guess what? He pretty much backed in to the arena. He wrote books when he was asked to write them or when he was asked to appear on radio. He went from atheism through a long path to concluding that Christianity is true, and then became a Christian. He came to Christian conclusion by reflecting on various things, and then wrote apologetics to why he came to believe as he did.

Today the word “apologist,” in many circles, has a negative connotation. The idea is that you we committed to begin with to Christianity and then went out looking for reasons why someone should believe it. My goal is to think as clearly and as carefully as I can about what is true, to do my “job”, which happens to be philosophy, and if there are apologetic implication to that, then “apologetics” is a matter of sharing those. If I really think an argument is indefensible, then I shouldn’t be presenting it even if I think it will be widely accepted by many people. I remember it took some time in graduate school before I was fully convinced that the argument from reason, which I ended up writing my dissertation and a book about, was a good one.
I think you have to do philosophy, or science, or mathematics, or biblical studies first, as honestly as you can, and if think there are positive apologetic implications for what you say, then by all means share them and defend them.

Free Will and Mocking Beliefs

Bob: I see nothing wrong with critiquing or even mocking someone's beliefs. Christianity is a belief system. That is quite different from being gay or having black skin. People can't change their ethnicity or sexual orientation. However, they can change their belief system.

VR: Doesn't this presuppose a distinction between free actions, for which we are morally responsible, and characteristics we can't change, for which we are not responsible. This seems like a distinction that New Atheists insist on collapsing, such as here?

Tom Clark's case against contempt

From naturalism.org.

Here. 

Chapter 14 of Surprised by Joy

Here. 

It ends with this famous passage. 

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused be wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.

C. S. Lewis rejects idealism

A tutor must make things clear. Now the Absolute cannot be made clear. Do you mean Nobody-knows-what, or do you mean a superhuman mind and therefore (we may as well admit) a Person? After all, did Hegel and Bradley and all the rest of them ever do more than add mystifications to the simple, workable, theistic idealism of Berkeley? I thought not. And didn't Berkeley's "God" do all the same work as the Absolute, with the added advantage that we had at least some notion of what we meant by Him? I thought He did. So I was driven back into something like Berkeleyanism; but Berkeleyanism with a few top dressings of my own. I distinguished this philosophical "God" very sharply (or so I said) from "the God of popular religion." There was, I explained, no possibility of being in a personal relation with Him. For I thought He projected us as a dramatist projects his characters, and I could no more "meet" Him, than Hamlet could meet Shakespeare. I didn't call Him "God" either; I called Him "Spirit." One fights for one's remaining comforts.

Anti-Christian bullying

Apparently it happens. For some reason, we don't hear about it as much as we about, say, anti-LGBT bullying.

Rebecca Groothuis on biblical equality

Here.  Rebecca is the wife of Douglas Groothuis.

The One True Religion Fallacy

Here.  

HT: Bob Prokop

Was Dan Quayle Right? (about single mothers)

Apparently, he is still being defended, here. 

Intelligent Design asks a legitimate question, whatever else you might think

Im-Skeptical wrote: Science shows that evolution is a purely natural process, even though you might think there is still some divine hand behind it, sort of telling nature how to behave. But that's not what "ID science" claims. They specifically reject natural evolution. They say that complex life forms could not have evolved naturally. You can call this an anti-ID backlash if you want. What I'm against is their rejection of science in matters that are well settled.

Now here is what I think problematic about this type of argument. We can begin with a distinction between design exclusion and design denial. Design exclusion just says that design is not brought into a scientific explanation for, say, why the bacterial flagellum works the way it does. If that's the case, then science can't say that the B-F was designed (since that would be not to do science), but it also can't say that it wasn't. If we are adhering to a strict methodological naturalism, then all we can say is that since we're science over here, we can't make design part of the explanation for the B-F. The question of design is left outside the competence of science. Many people in science adhere to this kind of a position. Some are theists and some are atheists. Operating this way, it is easy to get to the conclusion that naturalistic evolution is the best science, because it's the only game in town by definition. The result is some version of NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria). Consistently applied this leads to a kind of "language game" perspective where scientists are playing the scientific language game, but that wouldn't prevent someone from playing the religious language game and affirming creation. The claim that one perspective or the other represents reality would be regarded on this view to be a mistake. 

But methodological naturalism gets challenged on both sides. People who think science should affirm a designer are going to see this as an unjustified limitation on science, and also those, like Dawkins, who argue that the evidence of evolution reveals a world without design have to argue that science could have reached the opposite result if the evidence had been different. But then we have to go back through the history of biology to figure out whether the dog is wagging its tail or the tail is wagging the dog. Did naturalistic evolution become the only game in town because of methodological constraints, or would scientists have found design if only it had been there. Because methodological arguments have so often been used in defense of evolution, I consider it unfair to call ID advocates IDiots, since they are asking a perfectly legitimate question. 

Mutual Submission in Ephesians

This is a debate concerning whether the Bible really teaches that husbands are supposed to have a one-way authority over their wives. One of the passages that is often used to support this is Ephesians 5:22, but it Ephesians 5:21 Paul says “Submit (or, submitting) to one another out of reverence for Christ.” 

Wayne Grudem is a critic of the idea of mutual submission, but Margaret Mowzscko defends it. I'm definitely on Margaret's side here. It seems to me that one-way submission opens the door for abuse.

Craig on the AFR

Here. 

Angus Menuge on the argument from reason

Here.  Wintery Knight has put together some resources.

Alexander Pruss's version of the Cosmological Argument

Here. 

Lydia McGrew on Feser and ID

Here. 

William Lane Craig defends the argument from contingency

William Lane Craig defends the argument from contingency. Here. 

Women in the Colorado philosophy department reply

Here.  Alison Jaggar, in particular, is a well-known feminist philosopher.

Steve Thomas interviews me

A redated post.

Steve Thomas did an interview of me that spells out some basics of the Argument from Reason. It was done before C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea was published.

A new brief form of the argument from reason

By Darek Barefoot.

Political correctness and the search for academic freedom

Discussed in a post by Lydia McGrew here. 

HT: Steve Hays

A couple of quotes from C. S. Lewis's Miracles, chapter 8

If I put six pennies into a drawer on Monday and six more on Tuesday, the laws decree that – other things being equal – I shall find twelve pennies there on Wednesday. But if the drawer is has been robbed I may in fact find only two. Something will have been broken (the lock of the drawer or the laws of England) but the laws of arithmetic will not have been broken.

Lewis, C. S. (1947) ‘Miracles’ ‘Chapter 8: Miracles and the Laws of Nature’ p 60

This perhaps helps to make a little clearer what the laws of Nature really are. We are in the habit of talking as if they caused events to happen; but they have never caused any event at all. The laws of motion do not set billiard balls moving: they analyse the motion after something else (say, a man with a cue, or a lurch of the liner, or, perhaps, supernatural power) has provided it. They produce no events: they state the pattern to which every event – if only it can be induced to happen – must conform, just as the rules of arithmetic state the pattern to which all transactions with money must conform – if only you can get hold of any money. Thus in one sense the laws of Nature cover the whole field of space and time; in another, what they leave out is precisely the whole real universe – the incessant torrent of actual events which makes up true history. That must come from somewhere else. To think the laws can produce it is like thinking that you can create real money by simply doing sums. For every law, in the last resort, says ‘If you have A, then you will get B’. But first catch your A: the laws won’t do it for you.

Lewis, C. S. (1947) ‘Miracles’ ‘Chapter 8: Miracles and the Laws of Nature’ p 61s 

Francis Beckwith on religious arguments in the public square

Here. Arguments are good or bad, and whether they are religious or not is irrelevant.

Bob Prokop on Skepticism about Extra-Terrestrial Intellgence

If Bob is right, the devotees of SETI can eat their heart out.

Here. 

Bob, if I recall correctly, you have the support of the late great Joe Sheffer on this one. (Appeal to authority, appeal to authority).

This post has nothing to do with religion that I know of.

NT allusions in the Ante-Nicene Fathers

Here. 

Pope John Paul II speaks to astrophysicists

This is a John Paul II speech to a group of astrophysics.

Anti-science? It doesn't sound that way.

Bart Ehrman on textual integrity

There was a debate on this between Ehrman and Daniel Wallace. Here is what Ehrman said: 

To be sure, of all the hundreds of thousands of textual changes found among our manuscripts, most of them are completely insignificant, immaterial, and of no real importance for anything other than showing that scribes could not spell or keep focused any better than the rest of us.

A critique of new atheist evidentialism

Here. 

Was the Bible lost in translation?

This is a popular position, but the evidence is against it. See here. 

Motives and dialogue between believers and unbelievers

Redating a post on religion and motivation.

When I was in Cambridge, Gary Habermans told me that about the first question he asked Antony Flew as Flew got off the plane from England to engage in the famous (or infamous) "Did Jesus Rise from the Dead" debate with Habermas, was whether Flew thought that everyone wants for theism to be true, and that while theists engage in wishful thinking, nonbelievers are honestly facing the truth. Flew replied that he disagreed with people like Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche in this; that he thought that both believers and unbelievers had non-rational motives for believing what they believed. Well, we know what eventually happened to Flew, but I think this is a profound recognition that people on all sides of these issues need to come to terms with. If you read Bertrand Russell's anti-religious writings, you find the following picture: believers believe for emotional reasons, such as the fear of death, the fear of hell, and the fear that the universe should be meaningless. Nonbelievers, on the other hand, have faced the fact that it is 70 years and out, they wouldn't believe unless the evidence pushed them their, since their position is so contrary to what we humans would like to be true.

Consider what how Russell defines free thought:

'The expression "Free Thought" is often used as if it meant merely opposition to the prevailing orthodoxy. But this is only a symptom of free thought, frequent, but invariable. "Free Thought" means thinking freely - as freely, at least, as is possible for a human being.

The person who is free in any respect is free from something; what is the Free Thinker free from? To be worthy of the name, he must be free of two things; the force of tradition, and the tyranny of his own passions. No one is completely free from either, but in the measure of a man’s emancipation he deserves to be called a Free Thinker.

A man is not to be denied this title because he happens, on some point, to agree with the theologians of his country. An Arab who, starting from the first principles of human reason, is able to deduce that the Koran was not created, but existed eternally in heaven, may be counted as a Free Thinker, provided he is willing to listen to counter arguments and subject his ratiocination to critical scrutiny.

What makes a Free Thinker is not his beliefs, but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought, he finds a balance of evidence in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem.' - Bertrand Russell, "The Value of Free Thought"

Notice that while Russell thinks that the class of Christian freethinkers could have members, in fact he thinks the class of actual Christian freethinkers to be empty.

I was myself at one time officially concerned in the appointment of a philosophy
professor in an important American university; all the others agreed that of course he must be a good Christian. Practically all philosophers of any intellectual eminence are openly or secretly freethinkers; the insistence on orthodoxy therefore necessitated the appointment of a nonentity or a humbug.

Couldn't they have gotten one of those Christian freethinkers? Apparently, in actuality he thought there were none. All the irrational motives are on the side of belief, all the rational motives are on the side of nonbelief.

If you defending theism and talking to someone who believes this sort of thing, I can guarantee you that it is going to be extraordinarily difficult to get anywhere. Whatever reason you give them, they are automatically going to assume that whatever "reasons" you give for the hope that is in you are not the real reasons; the real reasons are that you are afraid of death, afraid of hell, afraid that the universe should be meaningless, or maybe afraid of sex (Russell forgot that one, I have no idea why). Now there are theists would talk the same way; they think people are afraid to submit to God and are looking for any possible excuse to avoid believing.

I think that if you are in dialogue about belief and unbelief this is what you ought to get cleared up before the discussion goes any further.

Consider the following passage from C. S. Lewis: “In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed” – perhaps the most reluctant convert in all of England ." Are you inclined to read this and say, naah, it couldn't be true. Lewis had to have really
wanted to believe, or he would never have been able to.

But what about unbeliever Thomas Nagel? Is he telling the truth when he says:

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper - namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God, and naturally, hope that I'm right about my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. (1997)

I think it's almost impossible to get anywhere in a discussion with someone who really thinks that all the irrational motivations are on the other side. But are they all on the side of the theists. Well, let's put it this way. We know that Bertrand Russell was committing adultery at the age of 80. Wouldn't coming to accept Christianity at any point in his adult life require some, well, massive lifestyle changes? Besides, is it very pleasant to believe that there is someone who in existence who has an absolute, non-negotiable right, power, and authority to issue commandments? Did Russell really think that there was only reason underlying his unbelief, and not some very powerful non-rational motives.

Now I'm perfectly happy to see the motive arguments cancel each other out. Then we can start talking about the pros and cons of these matters with a level playing field. But if you are arguing with someone who thinks that all the irrational motives are on the other side, then you are going to face a burden of proof that will be almost impossible to overcome, unless you address the motivational issue first.

New Atheism's Moral Meltdown

From Saints and Skeptics. Here. 

If there is no God....

If there's no God, everything is permitted, including hanging onto theism in spite of the evidence. Why not?

What would you do if I could get you to reassess the evidence?

I'm very reticent to say what I would do if I reassessed the evidence in a certain way. Atheists are fond of asking "Well, if I could convince you of this or that, would you deconvert? What would it take?" It's kind of like asking "Would you divorce your wife if she had an affair?," when she isn't having one and I have no reason to believe that she will have one.

C. S. Lewis's Rejection of Soteriological Exclusivism

But Lewis was no soteriological exclusivist. This is from Man or Rabbit.

The question before each of us is not “Can someone lead a good life without Christianity?” The question is, “Can I?” We all know there have been good men who were not Christians; men like Socrates and Confucius who had never heard of it, or men like J. S. Mill who quite honestly couldn’t believe it. Supposing Christianity to be true, these men were in a state of honest ignorance or honest error. If there intentions were as good as I suppose them to have been (for of course I can’t read their secret hearts) I hope and believe that the skill and mercy of God will remedy the evils which their ignorance, left to itself, would naturally produce both for them and for those whom they influenced.

I would have to admit that had I felt that I had to be an exclusivist, it would have been a lot more difficult for me to remain a Christian. Lewis and others convinced me that I could reject exclusivism and still remain a Christian.

Is the argument for an unmoved mover circular?

I'm Skeptical wrote: 

I realize that classical theists have logical arguments to prove the existence of God. But you don't realize that they all presuppose the existence of God. So yes, they do take God as a brute fact, no matter how much they deny it.


Now, here is presentation of Aristotle's Unmoved Mover. I take it you are implying that this must be a circular argument. How so?

Atheism is unfalsifiable, and it's the theists' fault

According to this post, from the Axis of Jared.

On cosmological arguments

A redated post. 

In making sense of questions concerning cosmological arguments, I think perhaps an important place to begin is to think through what kind of necessity can be attributed to the physical universe. The physical universe, at least if it is beginningless, can be considered to be factually necessary, and perhaps that concept needs to be clarified. I’d like to see a detailed definition of factual necessity.

Once we get this, we then have to ask if we have good reason to think that a universe that possesses factual necessity is unexplained in some important way that could be overcome by accepting theism. Is there a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason that is rational to accept that gives us reason to think that a theistic explanation is nevertheless needed?

And then we have to ask what reason we have to suppose that the universe had a beginning. If the universe had a temporal beginning, how does that change the situation?

The Gay Case against Gay Marriage

Here.

Witch Hunts, Religious and Secular

I don't know if Christians have any greater record of inquisitions and witch hunts than anyone else does. Christians invariably think that Christianity matters, and that what it has to say is important and worth spreading. But you need something more than that to get witch hunts etc. You need the idea that this end justifies the means used to accomplish it, and that it is appropriate to use the weapons of power to get people to believe the right thing. Most Christians today, I think would say that a forced belief in Christianity isn't real one, and that such actions on behalf of Christianity are inappropriate and self-defeating. The people who brought the idea of a free and democratic society to the Western were mostly Christians. Any democratic society needs religious freedom to survive. For political reasons, autocratic governments pursue religious (or non-religious) uniformity. Democratic ones ordinarily tolerate opposing religious views. Islam is somewhat of a different case, because Islam, is rooted in the idea that the government should be implementing it. That's why it's so hard to get a democracy going in an Islamic country. 

Now Christian autocrats have pursued Christian uniformity, and often pursued Catholic or Protestant uniformity. Atheist autocrats have also pursued atheist uniformity, as in the case of the League of the Militant Godless in Russia. The way this is prevented is not by supporting or opposing religion, it is by saying the governments should stay out of the business of enforcing uniformity in matters of religion. 

People will sometimes say atheism is a non-belief, not a belief, but in the minds of many this non-belief matters. Some, like Dawkins, think that society will either progress or regress depending on whether or not we are successful in ridding ourselves of religion, which they consider to be irrational superstition. So, if you have the power to use force to help eliminate religion, or to force it on others, would you use it? If you were given Tolkien's One Ring, and could use it to make everyone religious or everyone nonreligious would you use it? If religion or lack of it matters, and most of us on both sides think it does,  then it is always possible for anyone to "use the ring" to compel assent, if the power to do so is present. 

What would science look like in a creationist world?

Let me ask this question. Assume that creationism were true. What would science look like in that possible world? Would it be true that if even if there were no evolution, it would have been necessary to invent it?

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy on The Hard Problem of Consciousness

Here. 

Hasker on Chalmers

Here. 

A redated April Fool's Day meditation

April Fool's day is today, but what I have to say is not specific to that day. On AFD, people try to show up the gullibility of their fellows by trying to get them to believe things that aren't true. I think, though, that in many ways Christians have failed to value the virtue of wisdom, and the result has been a kind of gullibility that makes us look as if the charges of credulity that are leveled by unbelievers at believers have some merit to them.

Consider the following passage from C. S. Lewis, where he talks about the virtue of prudence:

He wants a child’s heart but a grown-up’s head. . . . The fact that you are giving money to a charity does not mean that you need not try to find out whether that charity is a fraud or not. . . . It is, of course, quite true that God will not love you any less, or have less use for you, if you happen to have been born with a second-rate brain. He has room for people with little sense, but He wants every one to use what sense they have. . . . God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers. If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you, you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all. (Mere Christianity pp. 77-78).

In an essay I will be publishing in the upcoming volume on philosophy and the Chronicles of Narnia, I add:

Like many passages in Lewis, this one has tremendous contemporary relevance. Many people in the Christian community (and outside of it) have been slack in their intellectual responsibilities, and the results have been disastrous. The mass suicides in Guyana and the suicide of the Heaven’s Gate cult in California are grim reminders of what happens when religious people give up on thinking critically and simply follow what a leader says. Or to take less dramatic examples, but ones closer to home, think about how millions of Christians get caught up in spiritual fads like the recent “prayer of Jabez” phenomenon or the sensational eschatology of the Left Behind series. How many people have given money they can hardly afford to television evangelists, only to find out that the money went for air-conditioned dog houses and visits to sleazy motel rooms? The Christian community suffers greatly whenever it is intellectually lazy and careless.

But are matters of faith and exception to the policy of prudence? Should we be prudent in the rest of our lives and exercise faith (believe without regard to evidence) in matters of religion? Lewis's answer is emphatically no.

I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it. That is not the point at which Faith comes in...Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. . . . That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods “where they get off,” you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith.

Hence Faith and Prudence are not polar opposites, but are rather two sides of the same coin. The job of Christian apologetics, in my view, is to show that the life of prudence and the life of faith are in harmony with one another, in short to show that Christianity is rational. Much of the world thinks it is not rational, and a lot of things Christians say and do supports them in this, making the task of Christian apologetics more difficult than it would otherwise be.