Common Sense Atheism

Yet another example...

Dr. Zach (of the excellent Evolution 101 podcast) talks about 'herding cats' (bringing atheists together) at the North Texas Church of Freethought. I've written about this concept before, here.

Over a dozen people are taking the Debunking Christianity / Ultimate Truth-Seeker Challenge. The idea of the challenge was summed up by John Loftus:

I have a challenge for Christians. It’s a challenge few will take up... even though many expert Christian apologists have done it without a loss of faith. Other Christian thinkers... end up rejecting [their] former faith.

Do this. I’ll call this the Debunking Christianity challenge... Read up on all of the top Christian apologetics books and then [decide] in fairness to read all of the top skeptical books...

What are you afraid of? If your faith can withstand our arguments then you will be a better informed Christian with a much stronger faith. If your faith cannot withstand our arguments then your faith wasn’t worth having in the first place. YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE!

But my original challenge is pretty difficult. Many of the books can't be understood without the equivalent of a Ph.D. in philosophy! So, we need a version of the challenge that is much easier to swallow.

And here it is, my Ultimate Truth-Seeker Challenge (Easy Version):

1. C. Stephan Layman - Letters to Doubting Thomas (240 pages). Presented as a series of letters between a Christian and an atheist, this book presents a case for God not based on the usual arguments but on why God is the 'best explanation' for the way things are. A careful and respectable case for God's existence.
2. Guy P. Harrison - 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God (354 pages). Each brief chapter explains one of the 50 most common reasons people give for believing in a god, and summarizes why skeptics are not persuaded by that reason.
3. William Lane Craig - Reasonable Faith (416 pages). A leading Christian philosopher's defense of theism and Christian doctrine, with all the standard philosophical and historical arguments.
4. John Loftus & others - The Christian Delusion (385 pages). Michael Martin writes: "Using sociological, biblical, scientific, historical, philosophical, theological and ethical criticisms, this book completely destroys Christianity."
5. Richard Swinburne - Is There a God? (144 pages). Many philosophers think Richard Swinburne has given the best evidential case for God ever conceived. This slim and attractive book is Swinburne's own attempt to make his arguments accessible to the layman.
6. Richard Carrier - Sense and Goodness Without God (444 pages). A comprehensive case not just for atheism but for a full, enriching, purposeful, and moral naturalistic worldview.

That gives us 1,183 pages of skeptical literature and 800 pages of apologetic literature. (Don't complain! The other version of this challenge is lopsided in the opposite direction.)

If you want to embark on either version of the Ultimate Truth-Seeker Challenge, please let me know and I'll add you to the list! It would also be nice if you comment every so often with a status update.

Vox Day is a Christian blogger and author of The Irrational Atheist. We have agreed to a friendly dialogue about the reasons for our beliefs, though we’ll try to avoid regurgitating all the usual arguments for and against the existence of God. See our previous letters.

Vox,

I'm glad you're working with me to establish some criteria for "good explanations" before we start proposing good explanations for S:

(S) Humans often take pleasure in the involuntary and undeserved suffering of others.

It amuses me that even though we are now discussing philosophical technicalities for a bit, our readers still manage to find a way to hurl insults at whichever one of us they see as the "opponent."

I suspect your training in philosophy or economics helps you to see the importance of our "philosophical spade work." For example, to determine whether or not the United States is in a recession, it matters very much how we define the term "recession." Likewise, to determine what is a good explanation of S, it matters very much how we define the term "good explanation."

I said that one model of explanation says that x is a good explanation of y if x is a potential explanation of y, and if:

x possesses the following explanatory virtues to a greater degree than any other known potential explanations of y: testability, consistency with background knowledge, past explanatory success, simplicity, ontological economy, informativeness, predictive novelty, explanatory scope, and explanatory power.

You replied that "some of the virtues cause you to artificially limit the investigation of the unknown." In particular, you think that testability, consistency with background knowledge, fitting within a tradition of past success, simplicity, and ontological economy are not useful criteria for finding a good explanation.

You do, however, see value in explanatory power, informativeness, predictive novelty, and explanatory scope. Like me, you would give explanatory power less priority than the other three.

I don't need to keep all of my proposed explanatory virtues. Nobody has an 'authoritative list' of explanatory virtues. But allow me explain why I think the explanatory virtues you reject are more valuable than you seem to think. Then perhaps you can either come to agree with me or explain why you think I am wrong.

(more...)

Gabe Czobel's new article - An Analysis of Richard Swinburne's The Existence of God - is a convenient summary of Swinburne's book and some arguments against it. There are many problems with Swinburne's book that Czobel does not discuss, but at least Swinburne takes seriously the problem of offering 'God did it' as a 'best explanation.'

On Reasonable Doubts, Tim Callahan of Skeptic Magazine debunks that awful movie Zeitgiest.

I wish I was the coolest guy in the world.

I rewrote my post on Religion and Suicide Terrorism.

Homeopathy gets the smackdown in the U.K.

Swedish cartoonist draws Muhummad with a dog's body, extremists try to kill cartoonist, police arrest extremists, multiple Swedish papers reprint original cartoon. Yay!

Still more sites added to my Internet Atheism Search Engine.

Reluctantly, and for the first time, I have banned someone from commenting on this site. The endlessly abusive Neil C. Reinhardt will have to degrade dialogue elsewhere.