Modern Library

God Doesn’t Punish? (2019) Michael Moore The claim that “God doesn’t punish” appears about 100,000 times on Google; another 150,000 hits can be found when French, German, Russian, and Spanish equivalents are also added. Haven’t the authors of this phrase heard of the Flood (Genesis 6:7): “So the LORD said, “I will wipe from the […]

A Critique of Miracles by C. S. Lewis (2000) Nicholas Tattersall   Introduction More than thirty years after his death, C. S. Lewis is still world-famous as a literary critic, as an author of children’s fiction and as a Christian apologist. His works have been translated into many languages and they are widely read and […]

Evidentialism Do Atheists Bear a Burden of Proof? A Reply to Prof. Ralph McInerny (1997) by Keith M. Parsons Parsons rebuts Prof Ralph McInerny’s claim that the burden of proof should fall on the unbeliever. Is Atheism Presumptuous? A Reply to Paul Copan (2000) by Jeffery Jay Lowder Lowder refutes Paul Copan’s claim that Antony […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Let me assess James’ conclusion about theism and elaborate upon which points we disagree upon. I want to show why some atheists, like me, might see Godlessness as preferable to theism under the light of serious doubts and criticisms. I will find faults with theism, but they are not conclusive or irreparably damaging. They are […]

[This article was originally published in Analysis 57.4, October 1997, pp. 295-304.] Quantum Cosmology’s Implication of Atheism (1997) Quentin Smith     ‘In principle, one can predict everything in the universe solely from physical laws. Thus, the long-standing ‘first cause’ problem intrinsic in cosmology has finally been dispelled.’ Fang and Wu, (1986):3) 1. The quantum […]

What Can We Infer from the Present about the Past? (2006) Richard Carrier   In “Do No Miracles Today Imply None in the Past? A Critique of Richard Carrier’s Methodology,” Amy Sayers responds to an argument in my collection of essays “Why I Don’t Buy the Resurrection Story” (6th ed., 2006). In particular, she responds […]

O’Connell’s First Rebuttal (2008)   Response to “What Paul Said” Carrier here throws out a number of passages which he thinks make better sense if Paul accepted a two-body theory of resurrection (hereafter 2BT). But it can be clearly demonstrated that all of these passages are either better explained on a one-body theory (hereafter 1BT), […]

Wanchick’s Closing Statement (2006)   Basic Argument for Naturalism (BAN) Per Carrier, P1 assumes science specifically is the “most reliable method” for finding truth. Scientific indication is sufficient for belief. But Carrier’s opening statement failed to demonstrate that science (or any discipline) provides a sufficient condition for belief. He now says it’s obvious that science […]

Bad Science, Worse Philosophy: the Quackery and Logic-Chopping of David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists (2000)   8. Misrepresenting Darwinism Richard Carrier   Foster’s main enemy is Darwinism, which he claims to have ‘refuted.’ But he seems to have no proper idea of what Darwinism actually is. Some of his misrepresentations may be polemic. Take for […]

Was Christianity Too Improbable to be False? (2006) [See Introduction]   Richard Carrier   7. Was Christianity Highly Vulnerable to Inspection and Disproof? 7.1 General Argument 7.2 The Problem of Differing Research Paradigms 7.3 The Problem of Luke’s Methods as a Historian 7.4 First Example: Luke on Paul’s Trial 7.5 Holding’s Argument Backfires 7.6 Second Example: Luke on Agrippa’s Cause of […]

What’s Good and Bad in In Defense of Miracles (1999, 2005) Richard Carrier   [Part 2 of a more comprehensive Review of In Defense of Miracles.]   Many of the chapters in the book In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God’s Action in History (1997) make arguments that need to be addressed, or at […]

Kooks and Quacks of the Roman Empire: A Look into the World of the Gospels (1997)   Richard Carrier   We all have read the tales told of Jesus in the Gospels, but few people really have a good idea of their context. Yet it is quite enlightening to examine them against the background of […]

This file has been relocated: it is now Section X of Probability of Survival vs. Miracle: Assessing the Odds.

This file has been relocated: it is now Section I of Rebutting Lesser Arguments.

Thallus: An Analysis (1999) Richard Carrier   [A formal peer reviewed version of the research in this article is now available in volume 8 of the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, under the title “Thallus and the Darkness at Christ’s Death” (PDF). The new article updates and supersedes the old.] This is a preliminary […]

The Witch Killers of Africa (2003) Richard Petraitis   In June of 2001, villagers of Congo’s northeast provinces began a bloody witch eradication campaign, sparing neither neighbor, nor friend. Alleged witches were unceremoniously hacked apart by machete-wielding vigilantes, bringing about a scene of carnage unmatched since the machete killing-sprees of the Rwanda Crisis. The innocent […]

________________________________________ 159 Beyond Born Again Appendix: Getting A New Start Some readers may have been taken aback at my suggestion at the end of Chapter 10, that I can deem leaving Evangelicalism a viable option. It is clear to me that there are individuals whose experience with Evangelical Christianity has been negative enough in the […]

Christ a Fiction (1997) Robert M. Price   I remember a particular Superboy comic book in which the Boy of Steel somehow discovers that in the future, he is thought to be as mythical as Peter Pan and Santa Claus. Indignant at this turn of events, he flies at faster than light speed and enters […]

Resurrection. Resurrection is the Semitic and biblical alternative to the Greek idea of immortality of the soul on the one hand, and to the Indian idea of reincarnation on the other. Resurrection refers to the glorious hope that at the end of earthly history, the righteous of past ages will rise bodily to new life […]

Those who closely study the origin, development, and structure of the universe tend to disbelieve in any spiritual dimension to it. Science has inadvertently discovered that religious pictures of the world are false; when speaking to the same questions, science and religion invariably get different answers. Cosmology has no need for a First Cause since the Big Bang might simply be a transitional phase in an infinitely old universe or, alternatively, there may be no "before" the Big Bang anymore than there is a "north" of the North Pole. Appeals to alleged fine-tuning are presumptuous: physicists extrapolating from the earliest well-understood moment after the Big Bang using the laws of physics alone would erroneously deem our universe inhospitable to life. How, then, can we reliably anticipate the likelihood of life arising in hypothetical universes with different laws? Even supposing that physical constants are in fact "tunable" (which they may not be), constants might take on different values in other universes; and as Carroll puts it, "intelligent observers will only measure the values which obtain in those regions which are consistent with the existence of such observers." Finally, cosmology betrays unintelligent design: entire classes of fundamental particles exist that would have no impact on life in they had never existed. Evidently, a simple materialist formalism could offer a complete description of the universe.

A Critique of Fundamentalism (II) Steven J. Conifer [Author’s Note: The following is an extension of my essay “A Critique of Fundamentalism,” in which I critique chapters 1 and 5 of Henry M. Morris’ and Martin E. Clark’s The Bible Has the Answer. The essay is located on the Secular Web at https://infidels.org/library/modern/steven_conifer/fundamentalism.html.]   4.1. […]

From Taoist to Infidel (2001) Richard Carrier My experiences with religion as a child were all good. My mother was a church secretary at a First Methodist Church only a block from our home, and I attended Sunday School fairly regularly, but my parents rarely insisted that I attend any sermons. The religion sold at […]

Argument from Holy Scripture: Mormon Scripture Book of Abraham [ Index ] In 1835, Joseph Smith acquired a collection of papyrus fragments from a traveling Egyptian show. He claimed to be able to translate these fragments, and the Book of Abraham is the result. The articles selected here confront the origins and “divine” nature of this text. […]

Prophecy The Argument from the Bible (1996) by Theodore Drange “Almost all evangelical Christians believe that the writing of the Bible was divinely inspired and represents God’s main revelation to humanity. They also believe that the Bible contains special features which constitute evidence of its divine inspiration. This would be a use of the Bible […]

Religious Experience According to the argument from religious experience (ARE), the “self-authenticating witness of God’s Holy Spirit” or other mystical experiences constitute direct evidence of communion with God or other supernatural beings. In “The Will to Believe” (1896) William James distinguishes between strong and weak versions of the argument. The strong version contends that religious […]

The Bible in the Book of Mormon (1999) by Curt van den Heuvel “The Book of Mormon was written by someone who either had a KJV Bible in front of him, or was intimately familiar with its contents. When we add to this phenomenon other Book of Mormon problems, such as the lack of any […]

Review of Skeptics and True Believers (2005) Thomas Clark   Review: Chet Raymo. 1998. Skeptics and True Believers: The Exhilarating Connection Between Science and Religion. New York: Walker and Company. 288 pp. This article was originally published at naturalism.org in 1998, home page of the Center for Naturalism. This version contains minor editorial changes. Science […]