Common Sense Atheism

In April 2010, Brian Auten’s Apologetics 315 blog hosted a series of essays by 20+ bloggers in Christian apologetics on the subject Is Christianity True? The essays were read aloud as the Is Christianity True podcast, and collected in a free ebook.

These very short essays provide a convenient way for me to offer quick replies to a vast swath of apologetic arguments and give a naturalist’s perspective on all of them. My goal in such a short space is not to refute all these arguments but to give the “first round naturalist’s response” to them – to explain why these reasons do not persuade me to adopt again the religion in which I was happily raised. As with 100 Proofs the Earth is Not a Globe, a huge number of arguments does not mean any of them are good arguments.

In the midst of repelling all these Christian arguments I’ll try to squeeze in relevant, condensed versions of atheistic arguments so that I can explain not just why the case in favor of Christianity fails, but also why Christianity is not true.

I will also be reading the essays as the Why Christianity is False podcast (also on iTunes), for those who prefer listening to reading. ((This is me throwing a bone to those who are sad that I cancelled my Counter-Apologetics podcast.))

Contents:

• Four Bad Arguments for God (replying to Tawa Anderson)
• ‘God Did It’ is a Terrible Explanation (replying to Jim Wallace)
• Christianity is an Incoherent, Inconsistent Fantasy (replying to Wes Widner)
• The Success of Naturalism (replying to Richard Gerhardt)
• Science Has Limits, and That’s Precisely Why it Works (replying to Bob Perry)
• Complexity Does Not Imply Magic (replying to Peter Grice)
• The Real Facts about Jesus (replying to Chad Gross)
• Explaining with Resurrection is Like Playing Tennis Without a Net (replying to Shelby Cade)
• Naturalistic Explanations for the Fanatical Stories about Jesus (replying to Luke Nix)
• Minimal Facts Again (replying to Aaron Brake)
• Against Resurrection (replying to Amy Hall)
• Christianity Was Not Impossible (replying to James Patrick Holding)
• Seas of Superstition (replying to Stephen J. Bedard)
• Lol, No. Judaism Does Not Prove Christianity (replying to Anthony Horvath)
• Christianity and Euthyphro (replying to Mariano Grinbank)
• Christianity Is Objectively False (replying to Marcus McElhaney)
• The Gospels Tell Me Lies (replying to Vocab Malone & Paul D. Adams)
• Christianity and Logic (replying to Glenn Hendrickson)
• The Evidence for Atheism (replying to Brian Colón)
• Christianity Fails its Tests (replying to Kyle Deming)
• Showing Atheism is True (replying to Matthew Flannagan)
• The Wise Man Rejects God (replying to Brian Auten)

Stay tuned as I publish these short essays!

(Listen to other episodes of Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot here.)

Today I interview philosopher Eric Steinhart. Among other things, we discuss:

• Dawkins’ central argument in The God Delusion
• Neo-Platonic theology vs. Biblical theology

Download CPBD episode 062 with Eric Steinhart. Total time is 44:59.

Eric Steinhart links:

• Eric Steinhart
• Eric Steinhart at William Paterson University

Links for things we discussed:

• Dawkins, The God Delusion
• Craig’s Kalam Cosmological Argument
• Aquinas’ “Five Ways“
• Lee Smolin
• Nick Bostrom
• Neoplatonism
• Peter van Inwagen
• Elyon
• Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, Daniel Dennett
• Maitzen, “Anselmian Atheism“
• Paul Tillich
• Greg Boyd, Myth of a Christian Nation
• John Hick
• Hugh Everett
• John Leslie
• Leibniz, “On the Radical Origination of Things“

Note: in addition to the regular blog feed, there is also a podcast-only feed. You can also subscribe on iTunes.

(more…)

(Listen to other episodes of Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot here.)

Today I interview Paul Almond. Among other things, we discuss:

• God as an explanation
• Faith and the problem of induction
• Is God necessary for morality?
• Could God be beyond logic?

Download CPBD episode 061 with Paul Almond. Total time is 44:03.

Paul Almond links:

• Paul Almond

Links for things we discussed:

• Problem of induction
• Gell-Mann, The Quark and the Jaguar (good book on complexity and information theory)
• Tegmark on the multiverse (Tegmark argues that a multiverse is less complex than a single, limited universe)

Note: in addition to the regular blog feed, there is also a podcast-only feed. You can also subscribe on iTunes.

(more…)

(Listen to other episodes of Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot here.)

Today I interview philosopher Stephen Law. Among other things, we discuss:

• How to raise our children so as to avoid fascism
• If we can be quite sure an all-evil God does not exist, why can’t we be sure an all-good God does not exist?
• Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion

Download CPBD episode 060 with Stephen Law. Total time is 40:51.

Stephen Law links:

• Stephen Law’s blog
• Stephen Law at Wikipedia
• The War for Children’s Minds

Links for things we discussed:

• Stephen’s philosophy books for kids of various ages: The Philosophy Files, The Philosophy Files 2, The Xmas Files, The Outer Limits, Philosophy Rocks! and Really, Really Big Questions
• Oliner, The Altruistic Personality
• Haneke, The White Ribbon
• Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem
• Law, “The Evil God Challenge” and my comments: one and two
• Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
• The God Delusion Weekend (and iTunes)
• Keith Ward
• John Polkinghorne

Note: in addition to the regular blog feed, there is also a podcast-only feed. You can also subscribe on iTunes.

(Listen to other episodes of Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot here.)

Today I interview philosopher Andrew Melnyk. Among other things, we discuss:

• Definitions of physicalism
• Objections to physicalism

Download CPBD episode 059 with Andrew Melnyk. Total time is 33:17.

Andrew Melnyk links:

• Andrew Melnyk at the University of Missouri
• Andrew Melnyk at Internet Infidels
• A Physicalist Manifesto: Thoroughly Modern Materialism

Links for things we discussed:

• Physicalism
• Contractarianism
• Consciousness
• Melnyk’s debate with Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro

Note: in addition to the regular blog feed, there is also a podcast-only feed. You can also subscribe on iTunes.