Gentle Godlessness A Compassionate Introduction to Atheism (1995) Paul O’Brien Introduction Part One: Atheism Part Two: The Cosmological Argument Part Three: Arguments for the nonexistence in God Part Four: Real Arguments Part Five: Atheism Reassessed Part Six: William James Part Seven: The Pragmatic Theist Reassessed Part Eight Part Nine: Pragmatic Atheism Part Ten: Atheism Part […]

A Tribute to Steve Allen By Dr. Paul Kurtz With the death of Steve Allen, American culture has lost a unique Leonardo, an exceptional man of thought and action – and the humanist and skeptical movements in particular have suffered the grievous loss of an heroic supporter. Steve Allen’s talents were many-dimensional. He has been […]

Addressing Those Colossal Misunderstandings: A Response to Doug Krueger (1999) Paul Copan Ravi Zacharias International Ministries   Having read Doug Krueger’s critique[1] of Ravi Zacharias’ book A Shattered Visage,[2] I was shocked at his vitriol and unwarranted sarcasm. However, I am grateful to the powers that be at the Secular Web/Internet Infidels website, who have […]

New Testament Contradictions (1995) Paul Carlson [Editor’s note: As with all lists of alleged biblical contradictions, there will be disagreement in at least some specific cases as to whether a given “contradiction” is a genuine contradiction. It is therefore up to the reader to decide for him/herself whether to accept that a listed “contradiction” is, […]

Magic and Witchcraft From Simbas to Ninjas: Congo’s Magic Warriors (2003) by Richard Petraitis Despite History’s long record of defeats for those who embrace magic as martial strategy, young African men still line up as recruits in answer to the witch doctor’s siren call for magic wars. Despite the promises of village witch doctors, the […]

  Faith Healing Archive of Medical Expert Gary Posner’s Essays on the Paranormal [ Index ] Can Science Prove that Prayer Works? by Hector Avalos (1997) (Off Site) Florida woman’s “miraculous” cure featured on “Unsolved Mysteries” by Gary P. Posner (Off site) God in the CCU? by Gary P. Posner If Looks Could Kill and Words Could […]

Apparitions and Hauntings Ghostly Photos by Joe Nickell (1996) (Off Site) Investigative Files: Miracle Photographs by Joe Nickell (1996) (Off Site) Investigative Files Paranormal Lincoln by Joe Nickell (1999) (Off Site) “Miracle Photo” at Medjugorje by Patrick Fitzgerald (updated 1998) (Off Site) Did God send a shaft of light through the heart of a Medjugorje […]

Magical Thinking & the Paranormal “Paranormal” is one of those adjectives that admits of many different definitions, as it entails somehow being “above” or “outside of” the norm when what constitutes “the norm” does not exactly admit of a clear definition. Despite this ambiguity, it is useful to think of paranormal phenomena as occurrences whose […]

Secular Humanism Humanist Manifesto I Humanist Manifesto II Humanist Manifesto 2000 Humanist Manifesto III Corliss Lamont Page (Off site) 10 Myths About Secular Humanism (1997) by Matt Cherry & Molleen Matsumura Includes responses to claims like, “The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that secular humanism is a religion” and “Secular humanism is the official religion of the public education […]

Pluralistic Naturalism There are two main kinds of naturalism: materialism and pluralistic naturalism. Materialism, or physicalism, is a “monistic” form of naturalism in that it maintains that only one basic kind of stuff exists–physical stuff. Pluralistic naturalism, by contrast, combines naturalism with ontological pluralism, the idea that there is more than just one basic kind […]

Materialism Materialism (or physicalism) can signify either a broad metaphysical view, or, more narrowly, a type of theory of mind. Metaphysical materialism is a specific kind of naturalism which contends that everything that exists is either physical or dependent upon the physical. Broadly understood, reductionist materialism maintains that everything is strictly physical; more narrowly, it […]

Naturalism As defined by philosopher Paul Draper, naturalism is “the hypothesis that the natural world is a closed system” in the sense that “nothing that is not a part of the natural world affects it.” More simply, it is the denial of the existence of supernatural causes. In rejecting the reality of supernatural events, forces, […]

Why Should Atheists Be Moral? Does the Christian Theism Advocated by J.P. Moreland Provide a Better Reason to be Moral than Secular Humanism? (1998) by Richard C. Carrier Carrier refutes Moreland’s claim that theism offers more and better reasons to live a moral life than atheism or secular humanism. Doing the Right Thing (1998) (Off Site) […]

Transcendental Argument for the Nonexistence of God The atheism section of the Modern Library is maintained by Jeffery Jay Lowder <Jeff Lowder>. Butler’s Defense of TAG and Critique of TANG (1996) by Michael Martin Michael Butler in a recent paper published on the Internet has attempted to defend The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of […]

Book Reviews Lively Answers to Theists: Review of Robin Le Poidevin’s Arguing for Atheism (1998) by Keith Parsons The Many Forms of Atheism (Off Site) by Massimo Pigliucci Review of Antony Flew’s God, Freedom, and Immortality (1985) by Michael Martin Review of George H. Smith’s Atheism: The Case Against God (1982) Michael Martin Review of Gordon Stein’s […]

The Biological Role of Pain and Pleasure The argument from the biological role of pain and pleasure is an evidential argument from evil that focuses on a specific type of “natural evil”: the biological role of pain and pleasure. Inspired by Hume and formulated by philosopher of religion Paul Draper, the argument uses Bayesian confirmation […]

The Argument from (Reasonable) Nonbelief 1993 was a watershed year in the philosophy of religion generally and for atheological arguments specifically. In that year, Cornell University Press published J.L. Schellenberg’s now classic book, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason. Schellenberg’s book contained the first book-length analysis and defense of the idea that the weakness of evidence […]

On the Nonexistence of God and Proving a Negative A common objection to atheism is that it is impossible to “prove a negative.” This objection is exposed as a myth: it is possible to prove a negative, and several examples are provided in the articles by Carrier, Lowder, and Vuletic. It is therefore illegitimate to […]

On Average, Are Atheists as Moral as Theists? General An Introduction to Atheism (1997) by mathew This useful introduction to atheism addresses several of our questions, including Are atheists less moral than religious people?, Is there such a thing as atheist morality?, and Isn’t the whole of life completely pointless to an atheist? Atheists Can […]

Morality and Atheism This index links to 9 questions relevant to the relationship between morality and atheism: Are atheists as moral as theists? Can life have meaning without God? Does atheism entail a certain view on specific moral questions? How should atheists live? On naturalism, are we free and morally responsible for our actions? On […]

Argument from Physical Minds The argument from physical minds (APM) is a strong but neglected argument in the case for atheism. Two versions of the argument have important implications for the philosophy of religion. The first is the mortalistic argument from physical minds, which runs as follows: If a nonphysical mind (rather than the brain) […]

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Can Life Have Meaning without God? Can Secular Philosophy Give Us Objective Morality? (2003) by Taner Edis This is a review of Michael Martin’s Atheism, Morality, and Meaning (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2002). “Michael Martin is an eminent atheist philosopher, and he gives us a hard-hitting critique of those theistic arguments which claim that all is […]

Logical Arguments Logical arguments for atheism attempt to show that the concept of God is self-contradictory or logically inconsistent with some known fact. In the jargon of the philosophy of religion, the former type of logical arguments are sometimes called incompatible-properties arguments. These arguments attempt to demonstrate a contradiction in the concept of God. If […]

Meaningfulness of Religious Language The atheism section of the Modern Library is maintained by Jeffery Jay Lowder <Jeff Lowder>. No essays available at this time

How Should Atheists Live? Atheism and Humanistic Value Theory (1996) by Michael Martin “Atheism and humanistic value theory . . . are distinct and separable positions. . . . [Humanists must] defend their humanistic values without support from either atheism or theism. Since humanistic values can be supported by both camps, both belief and nonbelief […]

Without God, What Grounds Right and Wrong? Adams’s Open-Question Argument Against Ethical Naturalism (2006) by Stephen Sullivan In Finite and Infinite Goods, Robert Merrihew Adams offers an interesting variation on G. E. Moore’s famous open-question argument against ethical naturalism. In giving causal-explanatory reasoning the last word in ethical inquiry, he says, ethical naturalists negate a […]

On Naturalism, Are We Free and Morally Responsible for Our Actions? An Argument from Consciousness and Free Will (Great Debate) (2007) by Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro Most naturalists insist that there is no room for purpose or teleology in the universe. They hold that the origin and evolution of the universe was governed by […]

Argument from Evolution Many conservative Christians and lay atheists alike claim that if biological evolution is true, then God does not exist. Ironically, while many conservative Christians have attacked evolution because it supposedly entails atheism, no contemporary atheist philosopher has used evolution as evidence for atheism. Indeed, the only philosopher who has formulated an argument […]

Reviews of Books about Arguments from Evil Book Review: Dialog on Good, Evil, and the Existence of God (2000) by Mark Ivan Vuletic In 1978, philosopher John Perry published a well-received little book in which three fictional friends engaged in a series of stimulating but easy-to-understand discussions about personal identity and immortality. Review of Andrea […]