In this highly original and challenging essay, Raymond Bradley develops an argument that all religions are probably false inspired by David Hume's famous discussion of the 'contrary miracles' of rival religions. According to Bradley's argument from contrariety, any one of the vast numbers of religions ever conceived (or to be conceived) makes factual claims contradicted by the claims of all of the other religions. Moreover, the claims of any particular religion are generally as well-attested as the claims of all of the others. Consequently, given the "weight" of the "evidence" of all of the other religions, the probability that the claims of any one religion are true is exceedingly low. From this it follows that all religions are probably false.

The Failure of Daniel’s Prophecies (2007) Chris Sandoval           Introduction           Honest Inspirational Fiction           Daniel’s Four Empires           The Symbolism of the Statue and Beasts           The Greek Four-Empire Scheme           The Origin of “Darius the Mede”           Was “Darius” an Alias?           Mixed Messages           The Brutality of the Fourth Empire           The Diadochi           The Maccabean War           The Traditional Christian Interpretation of the […]

Review of Reasonable Faith (2007) Chris Hallquist Review: William Lane Craig. 1994. Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books. 350 pp.           Overview           Introduction           Chapter 1: Faith and Reason: How Do I Know Christianity is True?           Chapter 2: Man: The Absurdity of Life Without God           Chapter 3: God: The Existence of God           Chapter […]

In this autobiographical account of his journey from Baptist fundamentalist to freethinker, Raymond D. Bradley outlines his reality-driven philosophical predisposition and the difficulties it generated for his acceptance of traditional Christian doctrines throughout his childhood. These difficulties with specific doctrines--several of which Bradley discusses in detail--matured into a brief stint with deism before finally culminating in full-blown, outspoken atheism.

According to Alister McGrath, the early 21st century marks the decline of atheism. In this critique of McGrath's arguments, Keith Parsons considers whether the intellectual clout, stature, or influence of atheism has in fact declined in recent years, concluding that McGrath does not even begin to address the real intellectual case for atheism. That disbelief in God is just as much a matter of faith as belief in God can only be a stale platitude from McGrath given his failure to even superficially survey the best arguments for atheism. McGrath does address, however, four charges made by Richard Dawkins against religion, including the charge that evolution makes God unnecessary as an explanation and that religion is a source of much of the misery in the world. Parsons concludes that once one appropriately qualifies or refines Dawkins' accusations, McGrath's critique fails to adequately address the underlying problems for religion that inspire them. Moreover, to the extent that the influence of inherently controversial and divisive religions on people's lives grows, a corresponding dawn of the popularity of atheism is inevitable.

In Kingdom Coming Michelle Goldberg lets America's "Christian Reconstructionists," who openly advocate making the Bible the basis of a shari'a-type religious law, speak for themselves. Though considered extreme even within the religious right, an offshoot called dominionism, or Christian Nationalism, openly advocates theocracy and is rapidly gaining ground among "mainstream" right-wing Christians. Those swept away in this fundamentalist counterculture live in a universe that they have created, separate from and parallel to the one that the rest of us live in. The immediate danger they pose is not their impact on social issues, but the subversion of rationality itself, which has been achieved to an alarming extent. Today the best established scientific conclusions are routinely undermined and derided, and even the mainstream media feel that they have to offer "balance" on scientific issues by giving equal time to cranks and crackpots. The religious right is motivated, organized, and well-funded, and they are not going away. We ignore them at our peril. Goldberg has done us a service in giving us a beautifully crafted statement of why we fight.

Well written in an artistic but critical style, Günther Bornkamm's Paul attempts to outline Paul's life and work before finally turning to his theology and gospel. While drawing on the work of several New Testament scholars, Bornkamm largely relies on his own interpretation of the Pauline epistles, Acts, and the interplay between them, leaving the reader to evaluate his arguments primarily on their own merits. Against source-critical methods, Bornkamm occasionally uses the texts he has judged as inauthentic as reliable sources of information without recourse to any clear criteria, and dismisses uncomfortable passages attributed to Paul as inauthentic without offering any supportive arguments. This ad hoc pick-and-choose methodology leaves his presumptions open to criticism where the texts are silent or in conflict. But otherwise Paul is a great book, generally utilizing critical evaluation of the sources to unravel Paul's ingenious and enigmatic character.

One of the clearest statements of the case for a Creator is written by Roy Abraham Varghese in his introduction to the volume Cosmos, Bios, Theos. Here Varghese argues that the best explanation for why there is something rather than nothing necessarily terminates in God, rather than the ultimate features of the physical universe, for unlike any physical thing, God is self-explanatory. But we are left completely in the dark on the sense in which God is self-explanatory, and how that would differ from the self-explanatoriness of a putative original, uncaused state of the physical universe. Consequently, I argue that there is no intellectual difficulty in postulating an initial state of the universe as a ultimate brute fact, and conclude that Varghese's arguments to the contrary fail.