In this review of Michael Shermer's most recent attempt to ground secular ethics in evolutionary biology, Kenneth Krause outlines some of the highlights of The Science of Good and Evil before turning to a discussion of some of its deficiencies. Among the former is the emphasis that moral problems "must be subjected to rational scrutiny," that moral sentiments and behaviors arose from evolution rather than God (and exist outside of us in this limited sense), and that while religion may have had limited success in "identifying universal moral and immoral thoughts and behaviors" and canonizing them, religion did not generate them. Krause then turns to a survey of empirical evidence for the thesis that "monotheism has proved an ineffectual prescription for morality," finally noting statistics showing that widespread American belief in God hasn't improved social problems like crime rates. This paves the way for Shermer's secular alternative. Many of Shermer's points were not original, but still valuable since they clearly "cannot be repeated enough," and his core standards are fairly intuitive and thus hardly revolutionary.

In this review of Sam Harris' The End of Faith, Kenneth Krause notes Harris' most important points about the destructive nature of faith. After pointing out that hundreds of millions of Americans hold beliefs clearly inconsistent with well-established scientific and historical facts, Harris turns to a discussion of how faith adversely affects our daily lives, directly motivates religious violence, and even threatens the future of civilization. The problem is not so much specific religious doctrines as it is the principle of faith itself--a principle which eschews reason and ends all meaningful conversation. Harris also blames religious moderates as much as fundamentalists for the ongoing religious conflicts of our times. Though Krause greatly appreciates all of these points, he ends by noting at least two deficiences of this book.

AIK is a new probabilistic argument against the existence of the Christian God. According to one version of the argument, if the Christian God existed he would ensure that (nearly) all human beings have an excellent knowledge of the Bible before they die. But, as a matter of historical fact, most human beings do not even get close to having an excellent knowledge of the Bible before they die (if they even know it at all). Therefore, the Christian God probably doesn't exist.

(2005) Review of On the Resurrection of Jesus Christ: A Debate Between Richard Carrier and Michael Licona. University of California, Los Angeles. April 19, 2004. The Carrier-Licona debate was a debate between an atheist historian and a Christian fundamentalist historian. Though I wish Richard Carrier had invoked his general arguments against the supernatural more pointedly […]

(2004) Richard Carrier On May 8, 2004, I debated the existence of God before an audience of a thousand. It was a team debate, and my colleague was my good friend Dan Barker, against two theists, respected Muslim scholar Hassanain Rajabali and Michael Corey, author of The God Hypothesis.[1] It was a fantastic event. Organized […]

(2004) Jeffery Jay Lowder Many of the books listed below are available from BarnesAndNoble.com. If you follow the links provided to buy books from Barnes and Noble, you’ll be helping to pay for The Internet Infidels’ Secular Web. The following are selected works for further study. While space constraints prevent listing every possible book under […]

In C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason, Victor Reppert has contributed what is surely the most extensive defense of the so-called 'argument from reason' yet to appear in print. In this critique, Richard Carrier points out what he believes are the most important conceptual flaws in Reppert's arguments, and explains in detail how these arguments are ineffective against Carrier's own personal worldview.

(2004) In my opening statement and subsequent rebuttals, I presented a case for belief in God, and for belief in Jesus Christ. In this closing statement I will not restate that case here, but will focus on refuting Drange’s last rebuttal. It seems that Drange is confused about which arguments I am using against ANB. […]

(2004) In finishing up my debate with Chris McHugh (CM), I shall first deal with the remarks that he made in his fourth rebuttal and then, at the end, return briefly to my argument from nonbelief. CM claimed that in his opening statement he had made a “case for Christian belief.” But in fact he […]