Atheism had nothing to do with it? That's not what they said: Wurmbrand's Tormentors and atheism

This is from Richard Wurmbrand's Tortured for Christ. 

The cruelty of atheism is hard to believe when man has no faith in the reward of good or the punishment of evil. There is no reason to be human. There is no restraint from the depths of evil which is in man. The Communist torturers often said, 'There is no God, no hereafter, no punishment for evil. We can do what we wish.' I have heard one torturer even say, 'I thank God, in whom I don't believe, that I have lived to this hour when I can express all the evil in my heart.' He expressed it in unbelievable brutality and torture inflected on prisoners.8

There are moral pits that Christians can fall into. Here is a Chesterton Father Brown story that describes one. But there is the "everything is permitted" moral pit that requires atheism. And it is a deep one. It is far from the case that atheists must fall into it. But I think it delusional to deny its existence, or to deny that it was partly responsible for the horrors that took place behind the iron curtain. 

Atheism and Communism

This is the best attempt I have seen to argue for a disconnection between these, while using the history of religious violence against religion.

Without a doubt, the crimes of professed communist regimes were terrible. But it is important not to lose sight of what caused them. This is the first major misconception: that the communists attempted to understand the world through reason and science rather than faith, and that this was the error that caused the crimes they committed. Communism was categorically not a reason- or evidence-based view of the world. Quite the contrary, it was a dogmatic, anti-rational ideology every bit the equal of fundamentalist religion, where certain propositions were taken on faith and were not allowed to be debated or questioned. Although the communists congratulated themselves for their liberation from superstitious thinking, in reality they had not escaped dogma; they had merely transferred their dogmatic beliefs from the tenets of religion to an equally rigid and inflexible set of political beliefs.

Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/essays/red-crimes/#ixzz3YkceohnH

But doesn't this presuppose that if you remain evidence-based, you will always be able to persuade others. But what if you can't, and you think it's really important that people accept the results of you reasoning if they don't reason their way into it themselves. And you have the power of the sword in your hands.

Are all religious arguments a bad basis for laws?

It seems to me that the expression "religious argument" can mean one of two things. It can mean that the argument is based in its entirety on the specific teachings of a particular religion, such as the teaching of the Jehovah's Witnesses that blood transfusions are wrong, or of Catholics that birth control should not be used. These make bad laws, to be sure. But it could only imply that human beings have a purpose for their existence which is not of their own making. Would an argument that implied that "religious" in the negative sense and therefore an inadequate basis for law? This would be affirmed, it seems to me, by most any theistic religion, and rejected only by atheists or materialists (the doctrine that everything is matter). Is it necessary for a claim to be acceptable from the standpoint of materialism in order to be acceptable basis for law? 

Dawkins' TED talk that started New Atheism: the case for militant atheism in 2002

Here. 

Crude on whether atheists are as moral as theists

Here. 

One 'trick' I'm particularly tired of is this: "Atheists are just as moral as theists, so you theists better say this if you want any dialogue with atheists." Except A) Who wants dialogue with atheists, particularly New Atheists who are bound by politics more than anything? And B) On what grounds do I say atheists are as moral as theists? My stock reply is, oh, so atheists are typically against abortion, gay marriage, premarital sex, and other things I view as immoral? And that usually seems to shut down that move, if only for that particular moment. 

This raises an interesting issue-when you compare atheists and theists morally, how can this be done when the parties don't agree on what morality amounts to.

The Catholic Encyclopedia on Fideism

•As against these views, it must be noted that authority, even the authority of God, cannot be the supreme criterion of certitude, and an act of faith cannot be the primary form of knowledge. This authority, indeed, in order to be a motive of assent, must be previously acknowledged as being certainly valid; before we believe in a proposition as revealed by God, we must first know with certitude that God exists, that He reveals such and such a proposition, and that His teaching is worthy of assent, all of which questions can and must be ultimately decided only by an act of intellectual assent based on objective evidence. Thus, fideism not only denies intellectual knowledge, but logically ruins faith itself.

Banning

I am going to have to ask two people, whose names I don't think I need to mention, to stop posting here. I do this with great reluctance. The reasons are two. One, I think your positions are better represented by other people who agree with you for the most part. Second, your contributions always make discussion more inflammatory than they need to be, and you don't bring out the best in the rest of us.

I love the idea of a "free speech zone" but you end up dominating the conversation here. And even when I want to address a position like yours, I think other representatives of your views better represent them.

Vallicella on the Infertility Argument for Same-Sex Marriage

Here. 

Creedal Discrimination

"Creedal discrimination" is now illegitimate at Vanderbilt University. Political correctness uber alles.

Eternal accountability

I don't think atheists appreciate the force of the doctrine of eternal accountability in restraining evil. Unless there is eternal accountability, either of the Hindu karma-birth-rebirth kind, or accountability before a monotheistic God, if we get away with it on earth, we get away with it period.

Vallicella on Dennett's Dilemma

Here. 

Lenin on the suppression of religion

"Religion is the opium of the people: this saying of Marx is the cornerstone of the entire ideology of Marxism about religion. All modern religions and churches, all and of every kind of religious organizations are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class."

The difference between atheism and religion with respect to violence

 Is that while religions like Christianity offer the answer to the major questions of life, atheism on the other hand is a claim concerning what the answers are not. An atheist who wants to use force to suppress religious belief wouldn’t be doing so to make people accept the true meaning of life, but rather to prevent people from getting a certain kind of wrong answer to those questions. But neither theism nor atheism actually answers those questions, since bare theism also does not tell us who God is or what God expects from us.


Nonetheless, someone could certainly use violence to prevent someone from getting the wrong answer just as easily as one could use it to make sure someone gets the right answer. 

 

What's so great about rejecting Christianity? The moral standards are lower!

Loftus: Today I am pretty much guilt free. That is, I have no guilt in 

regards to the Christian duties mentioned above. I am free of the 

need to do most of the things I felt I had to do because I was

 expressing my gratitude for what God had done. And yet, I am still

 grateful for my present life, even more so in many ways. I love

 life. I’m living life to the hilt, pretty much guilt free, primarily 

because my ethical standards aren’t as high. In fact, I believe the 

Christian ethical standards are simply impossible for anyone to

 measure up to. Think about it, according to Jesus I should feel

 guilty for not just what I do, but for what I think about, lusting, 

hating, coveting, etc. I’d like every person who reads this book to 

experience the freedom I have found. It is to you that I dedicate 

this book.

There are no ordinary people

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” 
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Why the new atheists are right, according to Aquinas

Here. 

Creation in the image of God and the limits of Christian homophobia

It seems to me as if when we see people as created by God, and as being whom God has an interest in making happy for an eternity, then we will be more, rather than less likely to take their interests seriously here on earth. "Endowed by their creator with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. "Endowed by evolution with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" makes no sense whatsoever.

Christian homophobia, for example, has to be limited by the fact that, given Christianity, homosexuals are human beings created in the image of God for the purpose of eternal salvation. That are not just biological accidents doomed to drop out of the gene pool since they can't reproduce. 

Religious Freedom Laws

For the record, I am not a fan of religious freedom laws, simply because they would be too easy to abuse. Anyone who wanted to do something could just say "It's my religion" and get away with just about anything. I think they are based on legitimate concerns, but the devil is in the details in writing these laws. 

Is there a way to get these laws to work so the floodgates won't open? 

The lessons of history

Secular societies are happier are they? Like the USSR and the People's Republic of China? 

Or in Denmark, the child pornography capital of the world? 

Although many atheists maintain their moral sense, the moral pit of "everything is permitted" thinking should not be underestimated. 

Communism began, I believe, with Marx's secularism combined with a genuine concern about economic injustice and the intent to do something about it. And the results are now in the history books. If you really think that secularism can make life better, the first thing I want to see is that you have figured out what the lessons were from this massive failure and have learned those lessons.

It would be paradise on earth

Atheists don't believe in the secular paradise? Really?

Sheahen: You've said that baptizing a child or saying "this is a Jewish child"—that is, pasting a religious label on a child—is child abuse. In your letter to daughter, you ask her to examine what she's told based on evidence. What do you hope the world would be like if all children were raised without religion, according to your theories?

Dawkins: It would be paradise on earth. What I hope for is a world ruled by enlightened rationality, which does not mean something dull, but something of high artistic value. I just wish there were the slightest chance of it ever happening. 

Francis Beckwith on excluding religion from legal reasoning

Here. 

The (Under) Population Bomb

Here. 

Is Empiricism Self-Refuting

Bill Vallicella thinks that Bertrand Russell has a good argument to this effect.

Why would you WANT and SSM opponent photographing your same-sex wedding???

You have to wonder about people who sue a photographer who doesn't want to do a same-sex ceremony. I mean, there are plenty of photographers out there, and why would you WANT an opponent of your same-sex wedding photographing it? Wouldn't it hurt the quality of their work?

If I were a gay couple, I would avoid photographers who had a Christian fish in their advertising, because they wouldn't be as good as a non-evangelical photographer. 

If I were a photographer opposed to SSM, and someone asked me to do one, I would begin by unrecommending myself on just these grounds. But I think I would do it if they insisted. 

Imagine the secular paradise? That really worries me!

I'm perfectly willing to see this is as a pretty idealistic song. But if someone is serious about trying to bring it to pass, then I get worried. I can understand someone being an atheist, believe me. What I find insane and dangerous is the idea that somehow the departure from religious belief will lead to some sort of secular paradise. With a religious paradise, it takes God to bring it into being. With a secular paradise we can, and are supposed to do it ourselves. If you take a vision of the secular paradise, and then you accept a combination of "everything is permitted" and "the end justifies the means," and you have a formula for bloodshed that will permit you to outstrip the body count of all the religious killings in the history of the human race.

The Dark Ages Myth

Here. 

Five Islamic Philosophers

Islamic philosophy, and even Islamic science, has a great past.  I hate to ask, but what happened?

Dion DiMucci on Lennon's Imagine

John Lennon was a beautiful man, but Imagine represents a huge failure of imagination. In 1971 we didn’t need to imagine atheistic internationalism. Communism was living and active, in a least two forms, and it wasn’t producing peace.  . . . What made it possible for so many leaders to issue the orders for atrocities over the course of a half-century and more? They feared neither heaven nor hell. Imagine that.
— Dion

Sexual behavior is not a choice, but religious belief is???

I-S: People are raised to be Christians, so to some degree, it is who they are. Yet it is possible to decide that you will no longer be a Christian. On the other hand, we don't get to choose our sexual orientation, and we can't just decide to change it. Most of us are heterosexual, and we never faced a decision to become heterosexual. It just happened that way, and we have no choice in the matter.

VR: I think there is a lot that is problematic about this statement. 

First of all, many atheists (Dawkins is an example, but there are others) deny the existence of free will, but this contrast won't float unless we do. 

Second, traditional Christians don't typically claim that homosexual orientation is a sin. They often claim that homosexual acts are sinful.  So, if your orientation inclines you toward members of the same sex, they may say you cannot engage in morally justified sex. Christians have also traditionally claimed that heterosexual acts by persons not married to one another are also sinful. Since not everyone is in a position to enter a marriage, that means that those persons are also barred from sexual activity. 

The critic of Christian opponents of homosexual activity, therefore, are assuming the view that persons have a moral right to fulfill their sexual desires in accordance with their orientation. But, thus stated, this argument comes into problems. We have to then get clear on what constitutes an "orientation." Richard Carrier has recently "come out" as polyamorous and has said that this is his orientation. And if we accept his claim, then what is next? Sadomasochism? Pedophilia? At the very least with the last category, I think most of us would be inclined to say that people with that orientation are obligated to remain celibate rather than act out this orientation. 

But we can surely choose what we do about our sexual orientation, whether to pursue sexual activity, or not. 

Atheists, often in response to Pascal's wager, tell us that they couldn't will themselves to be Christians if they wanted to. I don't think I could turn myself into an atheist by force of will, either. 

Hence, I don't think the contrast I-S wants to draw will work, at least not the way he wants to draw it. 

Is separation of church and state a myth?

This writer says that "The people did not want freedom FROM religion, but freedom OF religion."

Serve everybody?

Should A Print Shop Be Forced To Sell "God Hates Fags" Signs To Westboro Baptist Church?

This question was asked by Rick Santorum, but it is a good one. 

Being who they are

Does as person's sexual orientation constitute who they are? I am a lot of things. I am a Christian, I like the
Cardinals and the Suns, I teach at ASU West, I am a Democrat, etc.  And I happen to be a heterosexual. People who think there is something wrong with homosexual conduct say that disapproving of homosexual conduct isn't the same as hating homosexuals. In response, defenders of homosexuality will them say "You say you accept homosexuals as people, but you are opposed to them being who they are." But doesn't that assume that your sexual orientation is constitutive of who you are in ways your other activities are not. Is being gay or being straight an essential property of a person? 

It is interesting when conservative Christians say that they only oppose homosexual activity and not homosexuals, they are criticized. Sometimes this is a matter of Christians not living up to the "hate the sin, love the sinner" rhetoric. But sometimes it is suggested that this response doesn't make sense because being gay is "who they are."Yet the same people who say "this is who they are" will sometimes say that hate Christianity but not Christians. Why do these two things mix? 

"If there is no God, everything is permitted" in Woody Allen's movies

I think Allen's films (Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point) provide a forceful rebuttal to sanguine claims that are made on behalf of "Ethics Without God." It seems to me that, if we take Allen's message seriously, atheism, even if it is true (and Allen thinks it is true), atheism is ethically damaging in a significant range of cases, in that people can get involved in "everything is permitted" reasoning and never be held accountable by anyone, including themselves. 

It isn't that he thinks that ethics can come only from God. It is just that on an atheistic view it is perfectly possible for them to "get away with murder" and avoid punishment, even the internally imposed punishment of guilt feelings, which, it seems, can be overcome.

Particularly interesting is the difference between the outcome of Allen's movies and Crime and Punishment, which can only be explained in terms of the difference between Allen's atheism and Dostoyevsky's Russian Orthodox Christianity.

There is an ugly side to all of this, in that Allen has been accused of his own crimes and misdemeanors. Not murder, of course, but being a pedophile. 

Of course, Allen has not been proven guilty, but then, neither were his protagonists in the two movies. Did he fall into "everything is permitted" reasoning in his own life? 

Surely, a belief in ultimate moral accountability is hardly the only motive for being moral. More often than we realize, it does deter the evil in the hearts of men (and women). 

Papalinton likes this quote: "If religion cannot restrain evil. it cannot claim effective power for good." M Cohen, American professor of Philosophy and Law.

But I think that in many many, many instances, it does restrain evil. Of course, when it does restrain evil, it doesn't make it onto the evening news.

See also this discussion. .

A problem Bible passage

 When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are.  If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again.  But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her.  And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter.  If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife.  If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment.   (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)

At the risk of giving cannon fodder to resident gnus,  let me ask, how do we interpret this? 

An Essay on Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors

Here. 

Should it be illegal to quote this passage, on grounds that it's hate speech?

Roman s 1

26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Michael Murray on heavenly silence

Here. 

Why evolution doesn't select for ethics

Here. 

Religious motives for being moral

Often people assume that the only religious motives for being moral are those of getting to heaven and avoiding hell. These are often thought to be mercenary motives. But this is not the only kind of religious motivation for being moral. You might want to be moral  because it fulfills the purpose for which God created you.

Functionalism

It seems to me that what is often the dividing point between physicalists and their opponents has to do whether they find functionalism acceptable. This is a basic description of functionalism.

Do you believe in karma?

Do you think we have good reason to believe in karma? In Hinduism, karma works because that is how people get reincarnated. But so far as this life is concerned, it seems as if people do, for example, get away with murder. They kill people, and it never gets detected, and they benefit from the crime they commit and die of old age in their beds. We might think they are internally tortured by their own crimes, but I would like to see some real evidence that this is always so. In this life, there is crime without punishment. 

Ryan Anderson on why government is involved with marriage

Here. 

Is it really true that you gotta have a license?

Dogmatism in the philosophy of mind

In a good deal of philosophy of mind over the last 50 years or so, physicalism seems to have been taken as a kind of absolute presupposition. A good example would be Daniel Dennett, who says “before I could trust any of my intuitions about the mind, I had to figure out how the brain could possibly do the mind’s work.” This leads him to treat the brain as a “syntactic engine” that mimics the competence of semantic engines (though where Dennett thinks semantic engines can be found to mimic is, to say the least, very unclear). This strikes me as dogmatic, and leads me to think that, for the most part, materialist philosophers have not so much solved the problems posed by anti-materialist argument such as the argument from reason, but rather have presupposed that there has to be a materialistic solution to such problems. But what if these assumptions are questioned? If they are questioned, then the problems posed by arguments of the kind I have been presenting seem to me to expose a deep incoherence in philosophical naturalism.

The office of the "Devil's Advocate"

This is part of the process of canonizing a saint in the Catholic Church. Here. 

Ten arguments against same-sex marriage

Here. 

Parsons on what would convince him

Bob: For the record Keith Parsons does NOT say that no evidence would convince him. Quite the contrary, he gives what he thinks would have been a convincing scenario. See his scenario at 1:39. It's based on this passage by N. R. Hanson: 

'Next Tuesday morning, just after breakfast, all of us in this one world will be knocked to our knees by a percussive and ear-shattering thunderclap. Snow swirls, leaves drop from trees, the earth heaves and buckles, buildings topple and towers tumble. 

The sky is ablaze with an eerie silvery light, and just then, as all the people of this world look up, the heavens open, and the clouds pull apart, revealing an unbelievably radiant and immense Zeus-like figure towering over us like a hundred Everests. 

He frowns darkly as lighting plays over the features of his Michelangeloid face, and then he points down, at me, and explains for every man, woman and child to hear, "I've had quite enough of your too-clever logic chopping and word-watching in matters of theology. Be assured, Hanson, that I most certainly do exist!" '

Once, after reading a paper Keith wrote arguing against miracles way back in 1985, I asked Keith to assume that I were God, and wanted to know what kind of evidence he would find convincing. He answered by saying "If the galaxies in the Virgo cluster were to spell out the words "Turn or Burn, Parsons This Means You, I'd turn."

C. S. Lewis on Science and Miracles

CSL “If the laws of Nature are necessary truths, no miracle can break them: but then no miracle needs to break them. It is with them as with the laws of arithmetic. If I put six pennies into a drawer on Monday and six more on Tuesday, the laws decree that… I shall find twelve pennies there on Wednesday. But if the drawer 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. The new situation created by the thief will illustrate the laws of arithmetic just as well as the original situation. But if God comes to work miracles, He comes “like a thief in the night.” Miracle is, from the point of view of the scientist, a form of doctoring, tampering, (if you like) cheating. It introduces a new factor into the situation, namely supernatural force, which the scientist had not reckoned on. He calculates what will happen, or what must have happened on a past occasion, in the belief that the situation, at that point of space and time, is or was A. But if supernatural force has been added, then the situation really is or was AB. And no one knows better than the scientist that AB cannot yield the same result as A. The necessary truth of the laws, far from making it impossible that miracles should occur, makes it certain that if the Supernatural is operating they must occur. For if the natural situation by itself, and the natural situation plus something else, yielded only the same result, it would be then that we should be faced with a lawless and unsystematic universe… This perhaps helps to make a little clearer what the laws of Nature really are… They produce no events: they state the pattern to which every event… must conform, just as the rules of arithmetic state the pattern to which all transactions with money must conform…The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform but of feeding new events into that pattern… The reason (some) find it intolerable is that they start by taking Nature to be the whole of reality. And they are sure that all reality must be interrelated and consistent. I agree with them. But I think they have mistaken a partial system within reality, namely Nature, for the whole…The great complex event called Nature, and the new particular event introduced into it by the miracle, are related by their common origin in God… By definition, miracles must of course interrupt the usual course of Nature; but if they are real they must, in the very act of so doing, assert all the more the unity and self-consistency of total reality at some deeper level."

It seems to me that you cannot argue that science rules out miracles without begging the question and assuming the causal closure of the physical. The laws of nature tell us what will happen if God doesn't interfere, but it is part of the very idea of a miracle that God does interfere.

All fear is bad? You're kidding

Religion, since it has its source in terror, has dignified certain kinds of fear, and made people think them not disgraceful. In this it has done mankind a great disservice: all fear is bad, and ought to be overcome not by fairy tales, but by courage and rational reflection.- Bertrand Russell


Really? Fear is what saves my life when I am in the street, and a car is coming. 


Consider Monty Python's famous song of Sir Robin:

Bravely bold Sir Robin
Rode forth from Camelot.
He was not afraid to die,
Oh brave Sir Robin.
He was not at all afraid
To be killed in nasty ways.
Brave, brave, brave, brave Sir Robin.

He was not in the least bit scared
To be mashed into a pulp.
Or to have his eyes gouged out,
And his elbows broken.
To have his kneecaps split
And his body burned away,
And his limbs all hacked and mangled
Brave Sir Robin.

His head smashed in
And his heart cut out
And his liver removed
And his bowels unplugged
And his nostrils raped
And his bottom burnt off
And his pen--

"That's... that's enough music for now lads,
*** looks like there's dirty work afoot*** ???."

Brave Sir Robin ran away.
("No!")
Bravely ran away away.
("I didn't!")
When danger reared it's ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
("no!")
Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about
("I didn't!")
And gallantly he chickened out.

****Bravely**** taking ("I never did!") to his feet,
He beat a very brave retreat.
("all lies!")
Bravest of the braaaave, Sir Robin!
("I never!")

We all agree that the actual Robin is a coward, and that the song is false. But what about the Robin of the song. According to the popular definition of courage, one is courageous if one either lacks fear or ignores danger, and certainly the Robin of the song satisfies that requirement. However, Aristotle's definition of courage suggests that a courageous person lacks (or fails to act upon) fear, or ignores danger, to the extent that it is rational to do so. This courage in facing danger can be defective, in which case the person is cowardly, on the mean, in which case the person is courageous, or excessively, in which case the person is foolhardy, and hence does not possess the virtue of courage.

Notice also that it is possible for someone to "bravely run away," if we accept Aristotle's account of courage, however paradoxical that may seem. The reason Sir Robin is a coward is because the three-headed monster is bickering with itself, and hence cannot possibly be as dangerous as it might appear to be at first. Robin doesn't think long enough to figure that out, instead he "turned his tail and fled."

Here is a discussion of Russell on fear. 

Is there an argument for the necessary existence of God?

Here. 

God and Sweden

Sometimes, following Phil Zuckerman, people will say "People can be ethical without God, look at Sweden. They have a low rate of religiosity but also a low violent crime rate."

A Jewish philosopher thinks this is problematic. Here. 

The Craig-Parsons Debate.

Here.

A defense of the Crusades

Here. 

Does Religious Involvement reduce Domestic Violence?

The authors explored the relationship between religious involvement and intimate partner violence by analyzing data from the first wave of the National Survey of Families and Households. They found that: (a) religious involvement is correlated with reduced levels of domestic violence; (b) levels of domestic violence vary by race/ethnicity; (c) the effects of religious involvement on domestic violence vary by race/ethnicity; and (d) religious involvement, specifically church attendance, protects against domestic violence, and this protective effect is stronger for African American men and women and for Hispanic men, groups that, for a variety of reasons, experience elevated risk for this type of violence.

Here. 

On this issue, Conservapedia's claim is backed up by research. 

Open marriage, and oxymoron?

I wonder if "open marriage," if it doesn't involve a promise to be faithful, isn't an oxymoron. What does marriage mean in such a context? 

Atheism and Suicide

Here.  The Conservapedia has this one right.

Atheistic moral realism

By Erik Wielenberg.

Do people think atheists are more likely to do evil?

Apparently, even atheists think this. Here. 

Are Atheists Hypocrites?

This Conservapedia article has a lot of inflammatory content and I do not by any stretch of the imagination agree with all of it. Still, I offer it to generate some discussion.

Is this an orientation?

Much has been made of Richard Carrier's announcement that he is polyamorous. What interests me, however, is that he describes this as "an orientation" and uses the language of coming out. It seems to justify a concern of mine that other "orientations" can ride piggy-back on the rights recently gained for LGBTs and claim rights for themselves. And where does it stop?

From Ed Feser: A Catholic case for the death penalty

Here. 

Craig responds to Boghossian

Here. 

Atheism and violence again

Exactly. In the past, an atheist debate will very often assert that they have no intention of convincing anyone to be an atheist. It doesn't matter to them. Or so they said back then. 

But now it does. We can rate people with respect to how much they care whether people believe as they did with respect to religion. Some Christians really care about the beliefs of others, because they think their eternal destiny hangs in the balance. This leads to something I used to call hyper-evangelicalism. 

Some Christians don't care at all what others believe. I am somewhere in the middle; as a believer I hate seeing people intimidated out of their religious beliefs. 

But atheists, and least under the influence of New Atheism, seem to be more and more evangelistic. The idea seems to be that the world is on a cusp, between falling back into a new dark age through religion, or getting beyond this by embracing science, and therefore scientific materialism. 

This has been coupled with what I consider to be a hate message toward religious belief. There is even a slur-word, faith-head, which is used against religious believers. We are told that nothing short of naked contempt is deserved for people who believe in God, that their position merits ridicule and nothing but ridicule. 

One can, I suppose, try to escape the charge of hate by accepting some version "hate the belief, love the believer." But these are the same people who will respond to "hate the sin, love the sinner" with respect to homosexuality as proof of blatant bigotry. Why this is not blatant intellectual dishonesty is beyond my comprehension. 

Why could we possibly believe that, sooner or later, this whole mind-set will not erupt in violence on the part of somebody. Whether Hicks is that somebody or not is not the main thing I am bringing up for consideration. The step from viewing an idea as genuinely detestable to killing those who advocate the idea is not that big of a step, is it really?

Atheists might reply that since they've got evidence on their side, they won't need violence. But they are the same people who say that religious believers just won't listen to reason. So, what is to be done with them?

Just put "a new dark age" in for "hell" and you can see why someone might use force on behalf of atheism.
The more atheists insist that they are immune from the kind of temptation that leads to religious violence, the more concern I have. If you really think atheism leaves you with "nothing to kill or die for,"
then all I can give you is the Strait answer. 

I got some ocean front property in Arizona.
From my front porch you can see the sea.
I got some ocean front property in Arizona.
If you'll buy that, I'll throw the golden gate in free.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNlMzNUDM8s

A Portrait of the North Carolina Killer

Here. 

Doesn't hatred always have the potential for violence? Why are atheists immune to this?

From atheism to Christianity

By Philip Vander Elst.

Here.

Is heaven a bribe? C. S. Lewis on mercenary motives to do good

Is the only religious motive morality the fear of hell and the hope of heaven? Couldn't religion motivate someone to do what is right for other reasons, such as the desire to fulfill one's true purpose as a human being? 

“We are afraid that Heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that the mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man's love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love of exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Is the incarnation a contradiction?

Dawson Bethrick says yes.

Marc Cortez says no.

Randal Rauser interviews evangelical physicist Donald Page

Here. 

A critique of Everitt's argument from scale

Here. 

People who have seen God

Here. 

Theme Song for Religion and Morality: Will Your Lawyer Talk to God for You?

Country Singer Kitty Wells makes a religious appeal against a husband who has wronged her. This seems to show a role that religion plays in at least some contexts for morality. It goes without saying that if atheism is true, the song makes no sense. 

Here. 

Plantinga's case against the classical foundationalist account of properly basic beliefs

Basically he says that the criterion refutes itself. 

Here. 

Plantinga proposes a negative and a positive way of addressing this problem. The negative way seeks to demonstrate that the evidentionlist project will not hold up. The positive way seeks to offer a rationale for Reformed Epistmeology. 
The Negative (analytical) Argument

Plantings grants those propositions which are self-evident, evident to the senses, or incorrigible are properly basic. Plantinga's objection is with the evidentialist who claims that only these propositions are properly basic. Plantinga wants to include other beliefs (such as belief in the past, belief in other minds, etc.)

The foundationalist contention is presented as (19):

(19) "A is properly basic for me only if A is self-evident or incorrigible or evident to the senses."

Plantinga argues that one is rational in accepting (19) only if either (19) is properly basic or (19) relates to propositions which are properly basic. Now, Plantinga thinks that its obvious that (19) is neither self-evident, evident to the sense, nor incorrigible. Therefore , Plantinga makes the following claims:

N1 - (19) is not properly basic.
N2 - since no one has demonstrated that (19) relates to propositions which are properly basic, then, Plantinga asserts, not only is there no compelling reason to accept (19) but also to do so would be epistemologically irresponsible (on Clifford's criterion - there is not sufficient evidence).

This is the negative critique of evidentialism. It's Plantingas strongest argument.

Mutual Assured Destruction

John Loftus has been defending ridicule. I wonder if he has seen all the implications of his position. 

OK, but consider people like Holding, Hays, and Ilion. These people are Christians who regularly use ridicule. Ilion, for example, thinks that I am way too nice, and says so on a regular basis. I say that niceness isn't the real issue, that in discussions of this type ridicule tends to feed the suspicion that the objects of ridicule are not being adequately represented. If you can ridicule and accurately represent at the same time that's quite an accomplishment. Effective critique of an opposing viewpoint requires the use of, for example, the principle of charity, which just doesn't go together with ridicule.

But do you now see that your arguments for ridicule could just as easily be used by Christian apologists. If I remember correctly, you wanted me to ban one of more people on my site who you thought weren't civil. But if your argument works for you against, say, Jeff Lowder, it means that, in the in-house debate on our side, my ridiculing colleagues are right and I am wrong. I need to get nastier.

Now I suppose you can say that since my arguments are good and my colleagues' arguments are bad, that you have earned the right to use ridicule but they haven't. But THEY think they also have good arguments, and that gives THEM the right to ridicule. We would then be, on my view, headed on the road to mutually assured destruction.

Now I suppose you can take the Dawkins line and say that "our ridiculers are smarter and wittier than your ridiculers."

RD: You might say that two can play at that game. Suppose the religious start treating us with naked contempt, how would we like it? I think the answer is that there is a real asymmetry here. We have so much more to be contemptuous about! And we are so much better at it. We have scathingly witty spokesmen of the calibre of Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. Who have the faith-heads got, by comparison? Ann Coulter is about as good as it gets. We can’t lose!

But I wonder how well that would hold up against the Outsider Test for Ridicule. Is Dawkins maybe a little biased? Has he read J. P. Holding? I'll bet not.

And do you really want the issue settled on these grounds in any event?

Why does the government regulate marriage?

Here. 

The positive existence claim has the burden of proof, or does it?

 It is often argued that if you are making the positive existence claim, you have the burden of proof. Thus 

1) God exists

has the burden of proof, while

2) God does not exist

does not. 

Similarly

1) The external world exists

has the burden of proof while

2) The external world does not exist

does not.

The brain in the vat and the burden of proof

Any reason to think it isn't true? One way around this is to shove the burden of proof to the other side. In fact, you can win any debate just by shoving the burden of proof to the other side, because you can ask for proof for the proof, and then proof for the proof for the proof, and then proof for the proof for the proof for the proof, and then proof for the proof for the proof for the proof for the proof......., until your opponent gets tired. 

Six Naturalistically Problematic features of Reason

(1) Reason isn’t just pragmatically useful; indeed, it is self-refuting and circular to assert that it is.

(2) Reason isn’t a contingent, local, perspectivalist feature of our evolved nature. It has universal applicability. Evolution produces local, contingent dispositions, not universal, necessary ones.

 (3) Reason is intrinsically normative.

(4) Reason takes us beyond appearances to the hidden, intelligible structure of the world.

(5) In contrast to the senses, which put us in contact with objects via causal chains, reason is not mediated by mechanisms that could be selected by evolutionary processes; rather, reason puts us in immediate, direct contact with the rational order.

(6) Reason is active and involves agency (for example, it isn’t Sphexish); sensation is passive. 

See J. P. Moreland's review here. 

What is the evidence...

That our sense experience is veridical? That we are not brains in vats and our experience is not systematically false?

Why mental states are not physical states

If mental states are physical states, then the truth about what someone believes should follow necessarily from the state of the brain/physical world. But it doesn't. If we line up all the physical facts, we have every atom traced, the argument from The brain is in state X therefore he must believe, say, that God exists, cannot follow necessarily. The state of the physical always leaves the state of the mental indeterminate. But what my thought is about is determinate, not indeterminate. Therefore my belief is not a physical state.

C. S. Lewis on authority

“Don't be scared by the word authority. Believing things on authority only means believing them because you've been told them by someone you think trustworthy. Ninety-nine per cent of the things you believe are believed on authority. I believe there is such a place as New York. I haven't seen it myself. I couldn't prove by abstract reasoning that there must be such a place. I believe it because reliable people have told me so. The ordinary man believes in the Solar System, atoms, evolution, and the circulation of the blood on authority -because the scientists say so. Every historical statement in the world is believed on authority. None of us has seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the Armada. None of us could prove them by pure logic as you prove a thing in mathematics. We believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell us about them: in fact, on authority. A man who jibbed at authority in other things as some people do in religion would have to be content to know nothing all his life.” 
― C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity

Is it a mistake for Nagel to concentrate on reductive materialism?

I think some confusion is generated by his use of the term “reductionism” to describe the naturalistic position of which he is critical. Materialism is typically divided into three types, eliminative, reductive, and non-reductive materialism. On the face of things, by concentrating on reductive materialism, it might seem that he is letting the non-reductive materialists off the hook with his arguments, and this perhaps comprises the largest group of philosophers that call themselves materialist.

William Hasker, in The Emergent Self, (Ithaca, 1999), developed a tripartite definition of minimal materialism which, I believe works also for naturalism. That is, I don’t think any view can be thought to be genuinely naturalistic unless it satisfies these three requirements. And I think a position with these three characteristics is what Nagel is thinking of when he talks about reductive materialism. It is the view that

1)      At the basic level, reality is mechanistic. That is, it lacks intentionality, subjectivity, purposiveness, and normativity. None of these items can enter into a description of reality at the basic level of analysis.

2)      The basic level of analysis (which we typically call physics), is causally closed.

3)      Whatever else exists must supervene on the basic level. It must be the sort of think that must be the way it is because the physical is the way it is.

Andrew Melnyk maintains that “Naturalism claims that nothing has a fundamentally purposeful explanation…Naturalism says that whenever an occurrence has a purposeful explanation, it has that explanation in virtue of certain nonpurposeful (e.g. merely causal) facts.” And the failure to the mental on the ground floor of reality, so say that our minds can understand the world,  ultimately, because mind is fundamental to reality and not simply a byproduct of it, is what Nagel sees as ultimately wrong with the all the positions he is calling “reductivist.”

Nagel on Plantinga

I say this as someone who cannot imagine believing what he believes. But even those who cannot accept the theist alternative should admit that Plantinga’s criticisms of naturalism are directed at the deepest problem with that view—how it can account for the appearance, through the operation of the laws of physics and chemistry, of conscious beings like ourselves, capable of discovering those laws and understanding the universe that they govern. Defenders of naturalism have not ignored this problem, but I believe that so far, even with the aid of evolutionary theory, they have not proposed a credible solution. Perhaps theism and materialist naturalism are not the only alternatives.