Modern Library

The Contemporary Debate on the ResurrectionHaving now discussed the importance and meaning of the resurrection, as well as its background probability, I’d now like to briefly survey the contemporary debate and outline the major arguments by both sides, at both the popular and scholarly levels. Christian authors who address the resurrection are obviously very easy […]

Luke and Quirinius An examination of Luke 2:1-3, and what McDowell says about it, and his sources. Other apologists mentioned. Answers from The Anchor Bible.   ETDAV 4A5B3C3D1E p.71 The Reliability and Trustworthiness of Scripture Evidence from Archaeology Luke 2:1-3 — archaeological support — the Roman Census under Quirinius (Cyrenius) McDowell states that, “It was […]

Review of Psychic Medium Van Praagh on CNN’s Larry King Live (1999) Joe Nickell [This article is exerpted from the June 8, 1999 Skeptical Inquirer Electronic Digest. Permission is granted by CSICOP to reprint this on the web.]   On-air seances are nothing new. Thirty years ago I arranged one in a dimly lit radio […]

GOD ON OUR COINS Written Statement of Jon G. Murray, President, American Atheists, Inc. 7215 Cameron Road Austin, TX 78752-2973 submitted to U.S. House of Representatives One Hundredth Congress Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs and Coinage of the Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Rep. Frank Annunzio, Illinois, Chairman Supplemental to oral remarks to be […]

First Rebuttal for the Negative (Gish, 15 minutes) Moderator: We will now have a 15-minute rebuttal by Dr. Gish. Gish: You know, Dr. Saladin has resorted to something that is quite common among evolutionists. He began to attack me personally. He tried to claim certain things, dishonesty and quoting of context and things like that. […]

Objection #6: A Loving God Would Never Torture People In Hell (2001) (Interview w/ J.P. Moreland, PH.D.) Kyle J. Gerkin   Tackling Templeton’s Challenge Moreland insists hell is not a torture chamber. He says hell is really a separation from God. He stresses that God is loving, but also just (172-4). Problems: Right away, Moreland […]

In Defense of Evolution (2003, updated 2006) Mark I. Vuletic   Introduction[1] The world presents to us vast evidence confirming the evolutionary history of life, and nothing even remotely resembling a disproof of it. This is an inexplicable mystery if, as creationists insist, God created the variety of life through a means other than evolution. […]

Deontological Objections to Consequentialism (1994) Mark I. Vuletic   One can imagine a deontologist attacking a consequentialist with the following invective: It is you, not we, who are concerned with your own moral purity. Your position has the effect of absolving you of all personal responsibility for the things you do. There’s no element of […]

The Cumulative Case for God INTRODUCTION Before I begin my case for the existence of a personal, infinite God, I would like to express my gratitude to Jeff Lowder for arranging this internet debate, and Dr. Michael Martin for agreeing to debate me. I consider it an honor to dialogue with a thinker of the […]

Jones Responds Douglas Jones   Apart from the more serious concerns, I find it quaint that both Parsons and Martin apparently hold to the notion that truth is in part determined by the number of pages one writes. Though my opening essay is directed to a non-technical audience, perhaps no such discussion need take many […]

The Naturalistic Fallacy  and Other Mistaken Arguments  of Paul Copan (2000) Michael Martin   Paul Copan has replied in the form of a letter[1] to my rebuttal[2] of his critique[3] of my Secular Web paper.[4] In this paper I will respond to his defense of the ontological foundation of theistic morality, his claim that ethical […]

Zens’ Defense of TAG (2000) Michael Martin   In a recent internet paper entitled "A Christian Response to atheist thinker, Michael Martin on TAG and the foundation of induction," Adam Spurgeon Zens attempts to defend Greg Bahnsen’s inductive form of the Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God (TAG).[1] Unfortunately, Zens does not seem to […]

Debates See also Theistic Arguments: Debates [ Index ] Debate Transcripts The Cooke-Aijaz Debate: Does God Exist? (2002) An Internet debate on the existence of God between Dr. Bill Cooke of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists and Imran Aijaz of the Auckland University Islamic Society. (See also the debate review, below). The Craig-Washington Debate: […]

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 […]

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 […]

In Defense of Sensible Naturalism (2007) Paul Draper             Varieties of Naturalism           Plantinga’s Objective Probabilities           The Inscrutability of P(R/N&E)           Plantinga’s Faulty Inference Should awareness of one’s evolutionary origins make one skeptical about one’s cognitive faculties? In other words, should it lead one to question the reliability of the psychological mechanisms that produce one’s beliefs? Darwin […]

Thomas Aquinas made this argument famous in the 13th century, though Aristotle had his own version of it centuries earlier. This argument appeals to such notions as cause and effect, and it addresses that which can be as confounding as a Zen koan. It seems certain that the world exists and we exist in the […]

Improbabilities in Mark I will start with those objections to the plausibility of the story that have little merit and proceed to those that are more serious. As always, I am not declaring any of these to be insuperable, but I do think that some provide a degree of evidence against the story. It is […]

Atheism, Theism and Big Bang Cosmology (1991) Quentin Smith The following article was originally published in AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY in March 1991 (Volume 69, No. 1, pp. 48-66). I. Introduction The idea that the big bang theory allows us to infer that the universe began to exist about 15 billion years ago has attracted […]

The Coherence of God: a response to Theodore M. Drange (2003) Ralph C. Wagenet   Theodore M. Drange, in his article Incompatible-Properties Arguments: A Survey (1998), presents a collection of arguments designed to demonstrate that a being with the attributes commonly associated with God cannot exist because the attributes are mutually incompatible. If Drange is […]

Bad Science, Worse Philosophy: the Quackery and Logic-Chopping of David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists (2000)   Addendum E: Zero Entropy Richard Carrier   Although there is no such thing as zero entropy in reality, it does exist as a mathematical ideal. In Thermodynamics: Foundations and Applications by Elias P. Gyftopoulos and Gian Paolo Bereth (MacMillan, […]

Carrier’s First Rebuttal (2008)   A Weaker Case Cannot Defeat a Stronger   O’Connell makes five arguments. None establish his case. I will treat each in turn, then reiterate my conclusion.   1. Vocabulary Argument O’Connell: Whenever the word “resurrection” (anastasis) occurs in Jewish sources within and around the first century A.D., it always denotes […]

What We Are Debating (2006)   Welcome to Naturalism vs. Theism: The Carrier-Wanchick Debate. Here Richard and Tom cowrote and approved a joint statement stating as clearly as is reasonable what claims each intends to defend here. JOINT STATEMENT In the present debate Richard Carrier and Tom Wanchick will each be defending a different thesis […]

Bad Science, Worse Philosophy: the Quackery and Logic-Chopping of David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists (2000)   3. Exercises in Self-Refutation Richard Carrier   Some of Foster’s philosophizing can be used against his own position. Chapters 4 and 5, for example, are the only good chapters in the book, in my opinion, though they do not […]

Was Christianity Too Improbable to be False? (2006) [See Introduction]   Richard Carrier   13. Would the Facts Be Checked? 13.1 Boiling away the Hyperbole 13.2 Evidence from Acts 13.3 Evidence from Early Apologists 13.4 Conclusion   13.1. Boiling away the Hyperbole Revisiting an earlier argument, James Holding contends that “Christian claims would have been easy to check out […]

Was Christianity Too Improbable to be False? (2006) [See Introduction]   Richard Carrier   Not the Impossible Faith: Why Christianity Didn’t Need a Miracle to Succeed Now available as a book, fully updated and reorganized. This is the definitive edition of “Was Christianity Too Improbable to Be False?” Even better than online, improved and revised […]

Richard Carrier [The following article was originally published in the Fall 1996 issue of Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines, published by the Institute for Critical Thinking at Montclair State University (Upper Montclair, NJ).] William Reinsmith’s paper “Religious Life and Critical Thought: Do They Need Each Other?” was well written and very communicative, but I […]

What an Atheist Ought to Stand For (1999) (Revised 2004)   Richard Carrier   A Justifiable Lament There is a common and justifiable lament that atheists are so preoccupied by naming and arguing what they are against, that people rarely hear what atheists are for. This is not only heard from the religious critics of […]

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

This file has been relocated: it is now Section IX of General Case for Spiritual Resurrection: Evidence Against Resurrection of the Flesh.