What does it mean to say "I have a right to my opinion?"

What does it mean to say that I have a right to my opinion? If I have a right to life, it implies that some powerful person cannot take my life away from me without justification. How would someone take your opinion away from you, short of brain surgery? 

Learning fallacies from Trump

Here. 

Does Dawkins base his "religion is child abuse" argument on one letter?

No, he doesn't. He bases it on intuition. It can't be wrong if it feels so right. 

Richard Dawkins: That is of course true. And I am not basing it on that. It seems to me that telling children, such that they really, really believe, that people who sin are going to go to hell, and roast forever, forever, that your skin grows again when it peels off from burning, it seems to me to be intuitively entirely reasonable that that is a worse form of child abuse, that it will give more nightmares, that will give more genuine distress, if they don’t believe it its not a problem, of course.

What does the evidence say? This. 

How Gnu are you

Test yourself here. 

An implicit premise in the gay rights debate

Race and gender are about who you are and are unchangeable (transgender cases aside). Actively pursuing a homosexual sexual orientation is about what you do. Opponents of gay marriage often say that there is nothing wrong with being gay, the only problem is gay sexual activity.

To hold this position, however, you have to abandon a culturally popular belief, that a sex life is essential to human happiness.

For example, colleges like Wheaton College are often accused of discriminating against homosexuals because they have code of conduct that proscribe homosexual activity. But did you know that a Bible professor at Wheaton College, Wesley Hill, is openly gay. Ah, you say, that doesn't count. Hill is committed to a celibate lifestyle. But he is not only a gay man, he's most certainly NOT in the closet.

But if a sex life is essential to human happiness, what happens to people who can only pursue that happiness with children? What about persons with a spouse for whom intercourse is painful? What about someone married to someone whose sexual ability has been destroyed through injury?

Since I love to illustrate points with songs, this song, Ruby don't take your love to town,  is about a man injured in Vietnam whose wife has decided to run around.

It couldn't happen here, could it?

From Religious Culture: Faith in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, by Jerry Pankhurst, in Russian Culture, 2012.

Socialization objectives.

 The atheistic socialization agenda included a wide range of positive incentives. Proper behavior and attitudes were reenforced by legitimate authority and thus carried a positive emotional charge. Atheistic socialization had as its ultimate goal what Soviet writers called "a scientific atheistic worldview," which included the following elements:

 (1) Strong scientific training awaited all students, starting from the earliest grades. Science was always taught as the indubitable and entirely sufficient way of understanding the world that left no room for alternative orientations. All other perspectives, most notably religion, were said to be incompatible with science and distorting of reality.

(2) A special emphasis was placed on the notion that humans make their own futures. There were no supernatural forces or divine entities which had any relation to the world. In Marxian terms, science was the surest basis for building the future because it recognized the true nature of the world.

(3) Atheistic socialization required teaching about the history of freethought and atheism, as well as about "religious obscurantism" that undermined the progress of science.

(4) Atheism had to have its "positive heroes" -- Charles Darwin, Galileo, Copernicus, and others. The abundant literature on such characters served an important socialization goal of creating "reference idols" to encourage the youth in particular to emulate atheistic values. [39]

(5) Movies and newspapers, television and radio, literature and painting -- all forms of mass culture had to be upgraded in content, so as to woo the population away from religious spectacles. For instance, during the Easter holidays the state would show especially popular programs on TV and keep movie theaters open into the late hours to keep the populace from attending all night Easter services.

 (6) Atheist propaganda was carried out by a sprawling set of agencies and organizations, such as the Museum of Religion and Atheism and Knowledge Society, [40] which printed pamphlets and books, offered public lectures and presentations. Through all these socializing institutions and practices the authorities sought to provide models of atheist behavior and attitudes for average Soviet citizens, to turn them into "good atheists" intolerant of religioznoe mrakobesie (religious obscurantism). But the same outcomes could be, and sometimes had to be, accomplished through other means, like punishments and costs inflicted on the believers to discourage them from practicing proscribed behavior.

 Social Control Imperatives.
Soviet believers who evaded the socialization efforts mounted by the state had to bear excessive costs for their religious activities. The state did everything it could to "overcome" religion peaceably, to make it "wither away," but when its "constructive" efforts failed, it was ready to deploy a vast array of social control devices to stamp out religious customs.

Here are some of the more important social control venues favored by the Soviet state:

(1) Forbidding formal religious education for children, that is, any group classes, Sunday schools, etc.

(2) Hindering the participation of children in religious activities by pressuring and intimidating clergy, parents, and children themselves (usually in school).

 (3) Controlling baptism rites, i.e., requiring a formal "registration" and a "permit" for a baptism ceremony.

 (4) Ridiculing or criticizing believers in the public press.

 (5) Intentionally and actively seeking out believers and attempting to "reeducate" them. School teachers played a particularly important role in this regard, as did Pioneer and Komsomol cadres, Party and trade union activists at the workplace. Adults could also be force into one-on-one sessions with atheist activists.

(6) Publishing and disseminating antireligious propaganda through literature, lectures, newspaper articles, radio, and television programs. The Knowledge Society has to be singled out here for its relentless efforts on behalf of "scientific atheism," though the trade unions, party cells, atheist clubs, and antireligious museums did not lag far behind.

 (7) Manipulating religious leaders so as to limit their personal influence and ability to organize and disseminate religious influence.

(8) Limiting the prospects for appointment and job advancement for religious believers. Since most high level positions required party membership, believers were naturally excluded from advancement to such levels. In some cases, believers were denied routine pay increases and promotions because of their "backward views." Though this was not universal practice, it encouraged believers to be less visibly active religiously or hide their faith altogether, and it intimidated those who were not active from becoming so. In these and perhaps other ways, the Soviet state barred children from sympathetic exposure to religion and punished those who defied the state and sought to exercise their nominal constitutional rights. Needless to say, children who passed through this elaborate system of antireligious propaganda were less likely to become religious adults, while those who persisted in their religious beliefs and practices could expect their life options to be severely curtailed by the state.

Are Christians to blame for the Orlando attacks?

Here. 

Last I checked, the attacker was of a different religious persuasion.

Woody Guthrie's Jesus Christ

Sung by Merle Haggard.  Woody's Jesus is not a Republican.

Does Obergfell mean we can marry whoever we want?

No.

The question of the number of people you can marry, and the age of the person you can marry, is still restricted. NAMBLA, the North American Man Boy Love Association, wants to eliminate the latter restriction. The Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints wants to eliminate the former restriction. 

The testability of intelligent design

Here. 

Joe Hinman's Trace of God

Here.  It's a version of the case from religious experience.

The XYZ question concerning evidence

It goes like this. X is evidence for Y just in case Z.

I've answered the question here at various times, and people are dissatisfied with my answer. Fine. I want to know your XYZ answer. If you are going to tell me I don't have any evidence, then apparently you have a different answer to the XYZ question than I do. But when I ask people what their answer is, I never find out.

Evidence for theism from the existence of thinking beings

There are facts in existence that are vastly more probable to exist if theism is true than if it is not. In all theistic universes a thinking being exists. In many atheistic universes no thinking beings exists, and it is difficult to see how thinking beings could possibly exist. Therefore, the evident fact that there are thinking beings in our universe is evidence that God exists. It may not be enough evidence for strong atheists, but the fact that it is evidence is indubitable.

Now, this is not all of our evidence, surely, and other pieces of evidence no doubt support atheism. But this is a piece of evidence that supports theism even if a naturalistic theory of mind is defensible.

The case against reality

Here. 

This is Welty's post, that Steve is referring to.

Any sufficiently vacuous evolutionary explanation is indistinguishable from magic

Here. 

A skeptic critiques the skeptic movement

And is told he shouldn't be so skeptical of the skeptic movement.

Hypocrisy?

Some are willing to use the Establishment Clause and the demand for neutrality to silence religious advocacy in classroom at publicly funded schools, yet have no compunction about atheist advocacy in those very same institutions. 

Are they hypocrites? 

No, they’re not being hypocritical. It is wrong to advocate for a religion in the public university, because when religious ideas are presented, they have to be presented in a neutral manner, without endorsement. However, atheism is not more a religion than not collecting stamps is a hobby. Therefore we can shove atheism down your throat to our heart’s content, since it is not a religion, but is instead a non-religion, and treats all religions with equal contempt. Besides, all we’re doing when we are creating atheists is supporting science and critical thinking.

Confirmation bias in atheism

Atheists with a strong emotional aversion towards the Christian faith, apparently suffer from a confirmation bias regarding ancient history similar to the confirmation bias of certain Christian fundamentalists regarding the theory of evolution. Seen from their respective scientific specialisms, the claim that Jesus never existed is as stupid as the claim that evolution never happened. Richard Dawkins used to make the former claim (click here), followed later on by a statement that “it doesn’t really matter whether or not Jesus existed.” Well, maybe it doesn’t matter to someone who is not interested in scientific research, although Dawkins claims to foster “science and rationality”. And now we’re at it, how “rational” is Dawkins if he continuously minimizes “positive” examples of faith and religion in order to confirm his conviction that faith and religion are, in most cases, a “bad, delusional thing”? Confirmation bias, anyone? For instance, Dawkins claims that Martin Luther King’s leadership of the civil rights movement did not arise from King’s Christian beliefs. Maybe he should read King’s work first before making such statements. That’s what a scientist should do…

Here. 

Confirmation bias about confirmation bias

Accuse the other side of confirmation bias, and then maybe you won't have to confront it in yourself

VR: "Not everyone can be right, but people who are wrong can be wrong without irrationality."

Cal: But do you accept that confirmation bias is real, and that if one is wrong because of its effects the one would be irrational? 

Because it seems like you're trying to say that confirmation bias isn't real, and that it doesn't affect thinking in a way that would make one irrational. If that's the case, you'd be wrong on both counts. 

VR: No, neither. First, what I am questioning isn't the reality of confirmation bias, nor the fact that it can lead to irrationality. Satta M's description seems accurate: 

It's more like the Principle of Total Evidence- actively seeking out evidence that disconfirms your hypothesis, not just that which confirms it.

Fine, I get that. People should look for reasons on both sides, and failure to do so leads to mistakes. You could get the right answer while suffering from confirmation bias, but you decrease your chances if you do.

My complaint is not with the idea. But the idea, it seems to me, is best used as a tool for self-evaluation. Insofar as my memory is accurate, I am privy to all of the information that goes into my decision to believe this or that. You are not privy to that information. Consequently, you are not in a position to figure out what I have considered and what I haven't.

It isn't just a matter of what you read, it is also a matter of how charitably you read it. If I trust the authority of someone who tells me "Sure, read this stuff, but make sure you don't buy any of it, because you don't want any of your money going for that guy's royalties, since the stuff he writes sucks so badly," then even if you read stuff from that side you will be reading it not to understand it, but to look for something to pounce on.

It seems to me that, when confirmation bias is used as a tool not for self-analysis, but to explain the disagreement of our opponents, it goes something like this.

"I know I have analyzed this issue correctly, and cannot possibly be wrong. So there must be some explanation for why someone whose intelligence is supposed to be a great or greater than mine has come to the opposite conclusion. I know, it's confirmation bias!" That is, rather than seeking to understand one's opponents position and to figure out whether perhaps there is a parameter of the issue that one has failed to consider, you use the idea of confirmation bias to say "Mistakes were made, but not by me." It just seems to me that the people who yell the loudest about other people's confirmation bias look like people who suffer from it most themselves, and don't realize it. People use the idea of confirmation bias to do exactly what the idea of confirmation bias should teach you NOT to do. It's like the people who listen to sermons some vice in church and start thinking of who other than themselves ought particularly to listen to that message.

I happen to have spent some time in Barnes and Noble the other day, and paged through the Loftus volumes The Christian Delusion and The End of Christianity. Both those volumes include good, interesting, challenging stuff for Christian apologists. The funny thing was that both books contained endorsements by Christians, and even Christian apologists like Randal Rauser and Matt Flanagan. They both said that while, of course, they didn't agree with the conclusions of Loftus et al, they thought that reading the contents of those books would be helpful for anyone trying to think through apologetical issues. What strikes me as odd here is that I don't think John would be caught dead putting an endorsement on some volume by apologetical authors, such as True Reason or Contending with Christianity's Critics, suggesting that the contents of that volume would be a worthwhile challenge for atheists. 

Is unbelief a function of intelligence?

Apparently not, based on these studies provided by Joe Hinman.

Kelly Clark on Irrationality Charges against Atheists

Here.  I am inclined to throw irrationality charges around like manhole covers. They inflame discussion unnecessarily and are harder to prove than the claims you are trying to defend. It's easier to argue "P is true," than to argue "P is true, and every one who believes not-P is guilty of such and such and intellectual failure.

Is Confirmation Bias Avoidable?

It seems to me that the defense of any position can be attributed  to confirmation by its opponents. It is a charge that proves everything, and therefore nothing.

Craig on animal consciousness

Here. 

Some Lies Never Die: The Myth of the Dark Ages

The Myth of the Dark Ages.

A bad grade for pro-life advocacy

Here. 

HT: Bob Prokop

A Twitter Exchange between Jeff Lowder and Peter Boghossian about my two posts

Here.  I am afraid Boghossian has no idea, and wants to have no idea, what I am talking about. Of course I didn't say his teaching methods were modeled after the professor in God is Not Dead. He needs a course in basic reading comprehension if he thinks that. What I said was that having a course at a public university that brings up religious issues, and in that course makes it evident that if they have certain religious views and express them in the course, they cannot get a passing grade, or will not have the same chance to get a passing grade as those who adopt another religious perspective, then serious questions from the point of view of the Establishment Clause have to be raised.

A State Religion in Texas?

If you go by the actual words of the Constitution,all it says is that Congress shall make no law establishing religion.

So, presumably, the State of Texas could make the Southern Baptist church the state religion. 

The Supreme Court would not permit it, however.

Why I have a dog in the fight amongst atheists

I think we DO have to make a serious distinction amongst atheists, and I don't say that because some atheists are nicer to people like me than others. At times when some barriers between people have been coming down, having a society this not only disagrees about religion, but fragments over it, is a serious problem that is not good for a free society.

What I meant when I said skeptics need the hallucination theory

I need to clarify what i mean by "need." I do not mean they need this or any theory to avoid irrationality charges. I also don't mean that there aren't those for whom the "Humean trump card" is enough, that is, the supernatural character of an actual resurrection is sufficient to render any alternative account more plausible.

On my own view, however, there are bound to be people who, without irrationality, are going to come at these accounts with different prior probabilities for all sorts of reasons. I am not a foundationalist about antecedent probabilities. I think people are going to be coming at this question of resurrection from all over the map. Some will be theists already who think Christianity is pretty plausible on independent grounds. Some people think it's a crazy idea.

I think even a skeptic would have to say we have good reason to think that the Christian movement began when people, starting in Jerusalem started proclaiming that a recently crucified leader had been resurrected. The people who recorded these accounts look as if they were trying to be accurate, Luke especially. If you look at stories like stories like Philostratus' Life of Apollonius, you get so little care for accuracy that you have the guy showing up in Nineveh some seven centuries after it was destroyed. Luke, on the other hand, in Acts, gets a bunch of government forms right on the money, just for starters. Ancient mythmakers just don't work their butts off to be accurate. It's hard for me to believe that Luke was sitting around thinking "Gosh, I've got to get a lot of the mundane stuff right here, because in 1900 years some archaeologists are going to go through and find all these cities and figure out whether I got that stuff right."

The behavior of the apostles makes no sense unless they sincerely believed that Jesus was resurrected. Some of them claimed to have seen Jesus resurrected, including, by the way, the Apostle Paul.

Dawkins once said that while he thought it was possible to be an atheist without evolutionary theory, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. Admittedly, someone with a low enough prior for a resurrection can, without irrationality, say that he doesn't have a good theory about what happened, but that whatever it was, it wasn't a resurrection, since that's maximally improbable from the point of view of their own credence function. The hallucination theory, if it works, is a big step in the direction of providing an answer to the question, "If it wasn't a resurrection, then what DID happen?" Otherwise, you've got something that's a big mystery on atheist assumptions that does make sense on the hypothesis that Christianity is true. Can a rational person admit this and stay atheist? Sure.But I think an honest atheist would have to admit that some significant pieces of evidence support the Christian claims.

Christianity and the game of telephone

Here. 

Why I think skeptics need the hallucination theory

Let me explain, as best I can, what the skeptic has to deal with in this debate. According to the accounts, Christ was executed by crucifixion, dead and buried. The crucifixion was instigated by people in the Jewish leadership, and carried out by the Romans. Yet, within a short time, you have a bunch of people, starting in Jerusalem, and working their way outward to the rest of the empire. Peter, in Acts, makes this statement at the Gate of Jerusalem:

If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a man who was lame and are being asked how he was healed, then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed.

In other words, he is telling the people responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus that Jesus had been resurrected, and therefore vindicated. Even if these accounts are were not completely accurate, the presence of people so firmly convinced that Jesus was resurrected that they were willing to risk a similar fate needs explanation. It is extremely difficult to resist the conclusion that the people who promulgated this message were profoundly convinced of the resurrection, because they were literally betting their lives on it.

Of course, there are people who think there was no historical core to the Christian message, and that Jesus never even existed. But this is an extreme position that most skeptics find don’t find defensible, and it makes it even more difficult to explain the spread of Christianity through the Empire.

Unless the extreme skeptical position is defensible, how do we explain the spread of Christianity? If the body was stolen, who would do it, and why would they. Some people have tried to say Jesus survived his crucifixion, but that seems really implausible. To say everyone forgot where Jesus was buried and went to the wrong tomb doesn’t make much sense either. Hallucination theory explains the Christian movement without making the movement and out and out fraud.

ECREE and Neil Armstrong

Some people have used extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence to argue against the moon landings. They happened a long time ago (though not as long ago as the resurrection, supposedly), we don’t find people going to the moon at all these days, so how do we know the whole thing wasn’t just made up?
 

Peter Boghossian, God is Not Dead, and the Establishment Clause

From MCFA: 

“To prevent doxastic closure it’s also important to read the work of noted apologists. The only two I’d suggest are Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig, though I’d urge you not to buy their books; their projects don’t need your support. If you must buy one of their books buy it used and support a local bookstore, this way the author doesn’t receive any royalties.” (Kindle Locations 3419-3421).

Remember the debate surrounding God's not Dead? I watched the movie and for the most part I didn't care for it, because most real atheist professors don't act like that atheist professor in the movie, who tries to get the class to sign an atheist statement in order to avoid dealing with the problem of God in the course. Even the most virulently anti-religious philosophy professors that I have encountered (and I have encountered a few) don't act like this, and it's a mistake to tell Christians that this is what they should expect in philosophy courses, including those taught by staunch atheists. 

But people like Boghossian, I am afraid, make God is not Dead look realistic. 

What is more, I do think the fictional professor in God is not Dead DOES violate the Establishment Clause, because he puts requirements for passing the course on believing students that he doesn't put on nonbelieving students. 

Boghossian's course, I think, also violates the clause. That is because while he presents arguments against his own view, he provides a message in required course material that he, the professor, considers their arguments so unworthy of being taken seriously that students shouldn't provide royalties to the authors by buying their books. A teacher can say what he thinks in class so long as he also says there are intelligent people who think the opposite, and in the last analysis it is their responsibility to decide the issue for themselves. 

As Randal Rauser says 

If this really is his advice, then I must say it is absolutely terrible advice. Simply reading or listening to somebody you disagree with doesn’t prevent cognitive closure. The only way to do that is to read your opponents with charity. Needless to say, when you preface the advice to read somebody with the proviso that their works are so bad (and harmful) that you ought never pay money for the books if possible, you have undermined any hope in your reader of engaging their works with charity.

http://randalrauser.com/2014/01/peter-boghossian-on-his-opponents/

If you do this on the public dime, then you are shoving your religious views down the throats of your students, and the fact that atheism is not a religion in some other important sense does not exempt you from the force of the Establishment Clause.

Peter Boghossian's Atheism Course

Apparently Boghossian can get away with a teaching a New Atheist apologetics course at a public university, on the public dime.  Of course he denies this.

Just as the purpose of religious studies is not to convert students to a particular faith tradition, this course is not about “converting” students to atheism.

But his textbook is A Manual for Creating Atheists, written by him.

See this discussion here. 

Is anyone bias-free?

In the debate over Regnerus' investigation of same-sex parenting, it seems to me that objectivity is, by the very nature of the case, going to be difficult to come by. See the discussion here.

Christianity the Ultimate Cold Case?

Here. 

Is Neil Degrasse Tyson an ID supporter?

The ID in question would be computer simulation. Still.....Here. 

Do Christians have a persecution complex?

Here. 

Science, God, and specialization

Why are some questions philosophical rather than scientific? If someone, such as Keith Parsons, affirms this, is it because of philosophical snobbery?

I don't think so. Science is not a general field. It is divided between physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology, economics, etc. Even then, scientists are even more specialized than that. But the question of God does not fall within any specialized science, so it cannot be a scientific question.

An early memory

I grew up in a United Methodist church in Phoenix. In the early 1960s, a local fundamentalist pastor was gathering signatures for a ballot initiative that would have prohibited the teaching of evolution in public schools.

This is something of a contrast with “equal time” laws that were developed subsequently, according to which school had to teach creationism alongside evolution. No, he wanted to re-enact something like the law Scopes violated in Tennessee.

Our pastor's response  was to publicly criticize this effort. Dr. Long thought that a battle with the theory of evolution was ill-advised, and said so from the pulpit. The Huntley-Brinkley report, then NBC’s big competitor with Walter Cronkite on CBS, picked up the story, and an excerpt from Dr. Long’s sermon was on the national news. 

 

Can atheist advocacy be limited by the Establishment Clause.

The question is whether open or implied atheist advocacy in public school can violate the establishment clause. The whole basis for the Dover decision was the idea that ID content has to be kept out of the public school classroom because those who supported it were motivated by a desire to promote religious belief. In a court case it was successfully argued that you atheism is protected by the free exercise clause, in a case where an atheist prisoner was granted access to atheist materials. 

http://www.atheist-community.org/library/articles/read.php?id=742

Now, in the Constitution, the free exercise clause and the establishment clause go together. Heck, they're in the same sentence. Atheists can't help themselves to the free exercise clause, but when accused of violating the Establishment Clause on behalf of atheism, fall back on the "not collecting stamps" argument. That's cheating. 

So, as I keep saying, the main argument in the Dover case, which was an Establishment Clause case, only works if you assume the religious neutrality of evolutionary biology. That is the official NCSE position on the compatibility of religion and evolutionary biology that people like Dawkins, Myers, and Coyne are hell-bent on attacking. 

Given the constitutional context here, the fact that atheism is not a religion in the popular sense is irrelevant. If you want Free Exercise protections, you have to live with Establishment Clause limitations. It's the American way.

Who was he talking about?

From a commentator at Debunking Christianity. How can a professor say something so moronic as: "... philosophical questions, like the existence of God". WTF? This guy is NOT a professor but a bible thumping religionist.

This is a statement about

a) Victor Reppert
b) Alvin Plantinga
c) William Lane Craig
d) Keith Parsons

What if evolution really provides an argument for atheism?

Some people think it does. Suppose teachers and textbook writers were eager to draw out the atheistic implications of evolution, and did so in public schools. (Some seem to). 

Does that mean that the teaching of evolution in school also violates the establishment clause, since it supports the religion of atheism? 

Would this mean that evolution, as well as creationism or intelligent design, could not be taught in the public schools, since it would undermine the religious neutrality of government institutions? 

The fine-tuning of the universe

1. If the initial explosion of the big bang had differed in strength by as little as one part in 10\60, the universe would have either quickly collapsed back on itself, or
expanded rapidly for stars to form. In either case, life would be impossible.
2. (An accuracy of one part in 10 to the 60^th power can be compared to firing a bullet at a one-inch target on the other side of the observable universe, twenty billion light years away, and hitting the target.)

3. Calculations indicate that if the strong nuclear force, the force that binds protons and neutrons together in an atom, had been stronger or weaker by as little as five percent, life would be impossible.

4. If gravity had been stronger or weaker by one part in 10\40, then life-sustaining stars like the sun could not exist. This would most likely make life impossible.

5. If the neutron were not about 1.001 times the mass of the proton, all protons would have decayed into neutrons or all neutrons would have decayed into protons, and thus life would not be possible.

6. If the electromagnetic force were slightly stronger or weaker, life would be
impossible, for a variety of different reasons.

7. Either this is an accident, or a design. Or perhaps there is a multiverse, and we just happen to be in the universe that has life in it.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia on Fideism

Here. 

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.

Court rules against the Flying Spaghetti Monster as a religion

Here. 

Even treating some issues as debatable is considered offensive by some

Here's a report from a cancelled debate from last February sponsored by the Oregon State Socratic Club:

We are sorry to have to inform you that the debate on Thursday, February 25th on the topic "Is Gender a Choice?" has been canceled. Our debaters were informed that some students on campus are offended by the topic of the debate and may plan to protest the event as transphobic, despite the fact that we had both sides fully represented. Because of this one of our speakers did not feel comfortable proceeding with the event. We are disappointed, but understand.
We hope you'll keep up to date with us as we continue onward.

The idea seems to be that the mere presentation of both sides of some issues is considered offensive.

Oregon State University has a Socratic Club

A redated post. I think there should be a national Socratic club, or,  better yet, and international Socratic club.

Well, it had one. And it still does.

Shouldn't all colleges? Here.

Josh McDowell on reasons for rejecting Christ

I have found that most people reject Christ for one or more of the following reasons:

1. Ignorance - Romans 1:18-23 (often self-imposed), Matthew 22:29
2. Pride - John 5:40-44
3. Moral Problem - John 3:19-20

Here. 

I've never found this persuasive, any more than I find atheist explanations of theism persuasive. 

Why atheists change their minds

Here. 

The only antidote to ideological violence

From this discussion. 

But I think New Atheist fundamentalism, and that is really what it is, really think there is a brave new godless world out there to be had if we just dump enough ridicule on religious believers. 

Consider this: 

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.

I'm sure Dawkins didn't mean it literally, but I think this explains some of the atheistic fanaticism out there. 

People out there really believe that we can make this world a better place for everyone by getting rid of theistic belief. That is why some of them are dissatisfied with the normal methods of honest argumentation, the principle of charity, etc. when engaging in discussion with believers. Consider this diatribe aimed at you. 

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2016/04/keith-parsons-is-just-old-that-explains.html#more

In order for religious believers to engage in atrocities, they have to think the religious end they want to pursue justifies the means. A good case can be made that the use of power on behalf of Christianity isn't appropriate,although Christians in history have not bought these arguments. Marx's version of the secular paradise isn't the only one out there, by any stretch of the imagination. 

The antidote to ideological violence is a willingness to accept, and accept only, those means of persuasion made available by a free and open society. This is possible for religious believers and religious unbelievers. The idea that you can save the world from ideological violence by spreading unbelief as opposed to belief is, in my view, delusional.

Are nones atheists?

Some people think the decline of religious affiliation is a gain for atheism. I think this is a category mistake.

Do scientists who believe in design need to look for it?

I try to imagine what I would do if I were a biologist, with respect to claims of design. Now, I have no trouble affirming the ancient earth, gradual development or even common ancestry. And while I might believe in intelligent design, I am less certain than your typical ID advocate that science can or should go looking for it. There are more proximate causes that need to be traced, I might just think that I should trace them and table the question of ultimate design. I have never been able to figure out why evolutionary biology needs to either affirm or deny intelligent design. Some people think that design was put in at the initial conditions of the universe, if so biological investigation won't necessarily turn it up.

It is very interesting to me that both religious and non-religious scientists do perfectly good science. Atheists like to portray religious scientists as living in a world of cognitive dissonance, of believing in design while leaving design out of their science. But probably they just do the science and, when asked about design, just say, "Well, I'm not in the business of looking for it."

 

Religious Violence and Cultural Fragmentation

The problems that surround the "religious violence" claim have to do with the level of generality at which the issue is addressed. For example, one of my complaints with Dawkins is that he claims that 9/11 gave him a reason to start a militant crusade on behalf of atheism as opposed to religion. My objection to him bears considerable similarity to my objection to the claim by Donald Trump that Muslims should be excluded from coming to America because some of them are terrorists. The problem is that while bin Laden and I are both theists, I am more than willing to operate within an open society, and he wants to use political power and even terror to advance what he takes to be the cause of Islam. I object to Trump's statements because in order to get from Islam to the terrorist ideology you have to take about three right turns, and there are plenty of Muslims who exist quite peaceably in an open society. I think there is a difference between Christianity and Islam in that Christianity has no statecraft in its founding documents, (all the Bible says about government is "Render unto Caesar"), while the Qur'an does purport to tell you what to do with government. 

Religion can lead to violence since religions typically assert what is most important to those who believe them. But religion does not guarantee how much a believer will care whether others believe as they do. In fact, I've seen atheists care a whole heck of a lot more about other people believing as they do than I do as a Christian. I am also inclined to concur with Christian thinkers from Lactantius to Locke and the Christians who moved Europe toward democratic government and instituted religious freedom, in that I maintain that meaningful religious devotion should be free and voluntary, and there is something inherently self-defeating about forcing religious truth on others. If one thinks one's views in matters of religion are true, then to some extent we want others to agree with us, but there are ethical and unethical ways of getting others to agree with us. (Ridicule, as a method of persuasion, seems to me to be a form of violence. Sticks and stones can break our bones, but it is just false to say words can never hurt us). 

It is sometimes asserted that religious believers have more motivation for coercive conduct than secularists, since believers think there are eternal consequences of believing or not believing, while secularists do not recognize such eternal consequences. I don't buy this. Some atheists say we are on the cusp of history, that whether we renounce faith or not will determine whether we will progress or regress as a culture. If you really believe that, then it's going to be tempting to advance the cause of atheism any which way you can. Some forms of atheist advocacy, they become widespread, may convince some people, but it may at the same time prompt religionists to protect their culture by homeschooling their kids or sending them to Christian schools, and it will also prompt a resurgence of the Religious Right. What we will get is more cultural fragmentation than we have already, and I think that will be unfortunate.

It's only a model

 In Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail, the assembled knights look in awe upon the imposing walls of “Camelot”… until someone points out that “it’s only a model.”

Bob Prokop wrote:  
I remember well a discussion I had about 2 years back with astrophysicist Dr. Ron Lee. I was floored when he told me that no serious cosmologist believes that something called the "Big Bang" actually occurred billions of years ago. The Big Bang (or, to give it its official name, the Standard Cosmological Model, or SCM) is simply a mathematical construct that helps make sense of and provides a framework for observations made in the contemporary universe. But as to what really happened at the Dawn of Time, I was told, "That's not a question for science, but for theology."

Similarly, nuclear physicists employ something called a quasiparticle to explain what occurs within matter at the subatomic level. Quasiparticles have no physical existence, but once again are merely mathematical models used to account for observations.

It turns out that quite a lot of scientific terminology is like that.

VR: Why do we NEVER hear this sort of thing from evolutionary biologists? 

C. S. Lewis on talkative communities

It's as if he knew what the internet would be like long before Al Gore invented it!

In any fairly large and talkative community such as a university there is always the danger that those who think alike should gravitate together into coteries where they will henceforth encounter opposition only in the emasculated form of rumour that the outsiders say thus and thus. The absent are easily refuted, complacent dogmatism thrives, and differences of opinion are embittered by group hostility. Each group hears not the best, but the worst, that the other group can say.

Is all knowledge scientific?

I don't see how it can be. In order to do science, you have to be able to do mathematics. (Ever try to pass a science course without it?) But mathematics is not science. It operates using a infinite set of non-natural entities called numbers. If there are no numbers, there's no science.

What if Dawkins had said....

So religion is the problem, and 9.11 showed this? Let me ask this question. What if Dawkins had written the following:

“Allah of the Qur'an is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

Would he be alive today?

Larmer's essay on methodological naturalism

I forgot the link for this. Here. 

Parsons and Feser on Coyne

 From the letters page at First Things. Amen and amen.

Old Atheism

I once read that the Los Alamos physicists during the Manhattan Project refused to consult doctors. Instead, they read medical books on their own, diagnosing themselves and prescribing their own treatments. They assumed that medical science must be trivially easy for anyone who could master nuclear physics.

After reading Edward Feser’s review of Jerry A. Coyne’s Faith vs. Fact (“Omnibus of Fallacies,” ­February), I conclude that some contemporary scientists must have much the same attitude toward philosophy. If you can do population genetics or you are comfortable with tensor calculus, then surely philosophical argument must be a snap. No need for any special training. Wing it, and you will be as good as a pro. Sadly, this is not the case, as amply demonstrated by some of the efforts of the “New Atheists.” When a philosophical pro such as ­Feser subjects their texts to an appropriately astringent analysis, he makes their logical lacunae and sophomoric mistakes glaringly obvious.

If what is done by Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, and Coyne is the “new” atheism, then I am an ­unapologetic advocate of “old” atheism. That is, I favor atheist advocacy that is argument-dense and skips the invective. Lampooning your opponents as ignorant Bible-beaters may be lowbrow fun, but it is bad manners, and, more to the point, ineffective. Don’t call them names. Defeat their arguments. That is the worst thing you can do to them. However, defeating your opponents’ arguments requires (a) taking their best arguments seriously, and (b) doing your philosophical homework. “Old” atheism is therefore hard. Caricaturing with broad strokes is easy, but it cannot be said to advance rational debate.

In fairness to Coyne, he is no doubt understandably frustrated that his excellent book Why Evolution Is True still needed to be written. Over forty years ago, Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” Even back then it had been true for a long, long time. Coyne is exactly right that the continued cultural resistance to evolution has its source in ideology rather than science, and that the obscurantist ideologies are religiously motivated. However, the way to address this ­issue is not by setting up simplistic false dichotomies between “faith” and “fact.” True, if you define “faith” as Ambrose Bierce did—“Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel”—then it is easy to equate religious belief with obfuscation. Again, though, the purposes of rational debate are not served.

From the first publication of the Origin of Species, Darwin had religious allies. Darwin gladly accepted the aid and support of such allies. Harvard botanist and conservative Congregationalist Asa Gray was perhaps Darwin’s leading supporter in the United States. Evolution’s conflict is not with religion per se, but with certain dubious theological tenets. The best antidote to bad religion is good religion, but you lose the potential aid of the latter when you tar everything with the same brush.

Keith M. Parsons
The university of Houston-Clear Lake
Houston, Texas

Edward Feser replies:

I thank Keith Parsons for giving us a little of that old-time atheism. That the dispute between theism and ­atheism is essentially a philosophical disagreement rather than a matter for empirical science to settle is as true today as it was in Aristotle’s age, or Plotinus’s, or Aquinas’s, or Leibniz’s. And as the “old atheist” philosopher David Stove once said, “it takes a philosopher to catch a philosopher.”

Yet as philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend once lamented, the ­scientists of his generation—­Feynman, Schwinger, et al.—despite their brilliance, were, compared to the generation of Einstein and Bohr, “uncivilized savages” who “lack[ed] depth” when addressing matters of philosophy. Sadly, the generation of Dawkins, Krauss, and Coyne makes even Feynman and company look like philosophical giants. Combine these premises and we get the conclusion that contemporary skeptics are well advised to look to professional philosophers like Parsons rather than to amateurs like Coyne if they want their atheism to be improved as well as “new.”