Modern Library

Nash on Naturalism vs. Christian Theism (1999, 2005) Richard Carrier   [Part 3B of a larger Review of In Defense of Miracles.]   Claiming Victory After Only One Battle Ronald Nash’s basic argument is that naturalism, which excludes miracles, is unreasonable, but Christian theism, which includes miracles, isn’t. The chapter begins by explaining why worldviews […]

Connections Medieval to Modern (Bibliography of Skepticism in the Ancient World) (1998) Richard Carrier (copyright 1999)   Links Medieval to Modern David Hume, A. H. Basson Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1958. Blackwell, Constance, “Diogenes Laertius’s Life of Pyrrho and the Interpretation of Ancient Scepticism in the History of Philosophy: Stanley through Brucker to Tennemann,” in Scepticism […]

Why I Don’t Buy the Resurrection Story (6th ed., 2006) Richard Carrier   General Case for Insufficiency: The Event is Not Proportionate to the Theory   According to the Christian theory, God is god of All Humankind, and more than that, He is god of All the Universe. This is inconsistent with the proof offered […]

Why I Don’t Buy the Resurrection Story (6th ed., 2006) Richard Carrier   General Case for Spiritual Resurrection: Evidence Against Resurrection of the Flesh   I do not believe Jesus survived. Still, the fact that we can cast some doubt on it (see Probability of Survival vs. Miracle) proves that an apparent “resurrection” was not […]

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

Translations (Bibliography of Skepticism in the Ancient World) (1998) Richard Carrier (copyright 1999)   Translations The Modes of Scepticism: Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations, Julia Annas, and Jonathan Barnes (editors and translators), New York, Cambridge University Press, 1985., 203 p. Augustine, Against the Academics, John J. O’Meara (translator), Westminster, Md., Newman Press, 1950, 213 p. […]

________________________________________ 127 Beyond Born Again Section III– Can Evangelical Theology be Born Again? Chapter 10: Toward Evangelical Maturity Never has Evangelical biblical scholarship been so mercilessly run through the wringers as it was in James Barr’s Fundamentalism (1977). Many of his reviewers criticized Barr for not offering any alternative to what he tore down. This […]

Review of The Case Against Christianity (1998) Robert M. Price   Michael Martin, The Case Against Christianity. Temple University Press, 1991. 273 pp. ISBN 1-56639-081-8 (hard cover); 0-87722-767-5 (paperbound). Reviewed by Robert M. Price. After a dozen years of active involvement as a born-again Christian, and another twenty as some sort of Liberal Protestant, I […]

By This Time He Stinketh The Attempts of William Lane Craig to Exhume Jesus (1997) Robert M. Price   He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all. –Samuel Taylor Coleridge Have you ever wondered […]

The Sinai Argument (2001) Shlomi Tal   The question of whether the revelation of God to the ancestry of the nation of Israel took place is of great importance to the Jewish faith, comparable to the Empty Tomb debate in Christianity. As do fundamentalist Christians with the latter, Orthodox Jews base the faith on the […]

A Critique of Fundamentalism (2000) Steven J. Conifer [The following essay was delivered before the spring 2000 meeting of the West Virginia Philosophical Society, held April 7-8 at West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV.] I. Introduction I shall herein assess fundamentalism, namely, that of the Christian variety. The New Standard Encyclopedia defines the term as […]

Why I Am No Longer a Christian (2003) Ruminations on a spiritual journey out of and into the material world Kendall Hobbs I have found it a rare occurrence to come across a Christian evangelist (living in the United States, evangelists are almost always Christian) who does not have serious misunderstandings of my beliefs and […]

Theistic Arguments: Books Related reading available through the II Bookstore.    Argument to Design/Cosmological Arguments: Cosmology Evolution   Charles Darwin: The Origin of Species (USA) Materialism Science & Philosophy Argument from Miracles/Religious Experience Logic Skepticism Ontological Arguments Logic Materialism Science & Philosophy Moral Argument/Divine Command Theory Ethics Existentialism   Frederick Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil (USA); (UK)   On the Genealogy of […]

Hugh Ross Farrell Till‘s Responses to Hugh Ross’s Biblical prophecy-fulfillment claims: Prophecy Fulfillment: An Unprovable Claim (Part 1 of 3) Prophecy Fulfillment: An Unprovable Claim (Part 2 of 3) Prophecy Fulfillment: An Unprovable Claim (Part 3 of 3) The Fine-Tuning Argument (1998) by Theodore Drange Currently, a very popular theistic argument is the so-called “fine-tuning […]

Hinduism Induced Religious Conversions: An Affront To Hindus (2002) by Balgrim Ragoonanan Ragoonanan explores some typical misunderstandings of Hinduism, provides useful information for both Christians and Hindus on the nature of Hinduism, and explains why Christian proselytizing is an affront to Hindus. [Editor’s note: This article is presented as an article of interest regarding Hinduism. […]

Other Theistic Arguments Various articles related to general and other arguments for the existence of God(s). In addition to the articles below, see also related Debates, Reviews, and Links. To purchase related reading, go to the Secular Web Book Store. Argument from Confusion [ Index ] An atheological (i.e., argument for the nonexistence of a God) from […]

The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity (1986-electronic edition 2000) Thomas Sheehan   Appendix: Notes on Rabbinical Literature A. THE MISHNAH In the centuries after the closing of the Pentateuch (ca. 400 B.C.E.), and particularly from 270 B.C.E. onward, there grew up alongside the Written Law of the Pentateuch a rich oral […]

Wittgenstein on Seeing (1999) Travis J. Denneson The basic evil of Russell’s logic, as also of mine in the Tractatus, is that what a proposition is is illustrated by a few commonplace examples, and then pre-supposed as understood in full generality. –§ 38, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume I You need new conceptual […]

Some Comments on William Craig’s “Creation and Big Bang Cosmology” Adolf Grünbaum   University of Pittsburgh   [This article was originally published in Philosophia Naturalis, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 225-236, 1994.] I. Introduction Craig makes a whole array of assertions, some of which call for much more detailed scrutiny than is possible in a […]

WHY I BELIEVE IN CREATION (Bifurcation) I said to myself concerning the sons of men, God has surely tested them in order for them to see that they are but beasts. For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same. As one dies so dies the other; indeed, […]

Religion And The U. S. Supreme Court – Cases (4 of 4) by Bill Schultz From 1981 through the Present Table of Contents   Main Text The Law as Things Stand Now Links To Supreme Court Opinions, Etc., Founding-1942 Links To Supreme Court Opinions, Etc., 1943-1960 Links To Supreme Court Opinions, Etc., 1961-1980 Links To […]

How Good Are Those Young-Earth Arguments? Copyright Statement   Copyright © 1995 Dave E. Matson. Copies of this paper may be made and sold by Edward T. Babinski, the National Center for Science Education, and all other groups who are battling the attempts by "scientific" creationists to adversely affect the quality of science education. All […]

Young-earth "proof" #10: Jupiter and Saturn are cooling off rather rapidly. Since they still give off internal heat, they cannot be billions of years old. 10. Jupiter is not cooling off that rapidly! Based on the fact that Jupiter is radiating twice as much energy as it receives from the Sun, and given its mass […]

Young-earth "proof" #9: Saturn’s rings are unstable which indicates that they are less than millions of years old. If Saturn’s rings are less than millions of years old, then what of it? That doesn’t prove that the planet is less than billions of years old. Recent study suggests that the rings are not older than […]

by Richard C. Carrier Fundamentals of Agreement and Disagreement Jen Roth has composed her case well, and I can see this debate will be of great value to everyone, not only secularists.  I will begin with the major points of fundamental agreement and disagreement between us.  Roth is quite right when she identifies the two […]

About the Capital Punishment Debate The topic for this debate is: Is There a Humanist Case For Capital Punishment? The debaters have agreed to the following debate format: Opening statements, submitted independently of one another, 1 January 2001 First rebuttals, submitted independently of one another, due 1 February 2001 Second rebuttals, submitted independently of one […]

On The Subject of Memetics: Memes began as a metaphor in Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene for the promulgation of ideas and information. It was later taken on as a serious idea by Susan Blackmore, Aaron Lynch and others. Critics of memetics think the idea has gone too far and that there is no basis […]

Over the years I have been confronted by numerous bibliolaters: people who take the Bible to be inerrant and, thus, put it beyond intelligent criticism. Since theirs is a particularly pernicious religion (absurdly claiming that certain antique documents are divinely inspired), it has seemed important to me to develop strategies for dealing with such manifest foolishness

Moderator’s Comments Dr. Jesseph’s Opening Arguments Dr. Craig’s Opening Arguments (Off Site) Dr. Jesseph’s First Rebuttal Dr. Craig’s First Rebuttal (Off Site) Dr. Jesseph’s Second Rebuttal Dr. Craig’s Second Rebuttal (Off Site) Dr. Jesseph’s Third Rebuttal Dr. Craig’s Third Rebuttal (Off Site) Related Articles on Craig’s Arguments | Atheism Articles | GODEXIST Mailing List

The Krueger-McHugh Debate: Theism or Atheism (2003) Christopher McHugh     Closing Statement by Christopher McHugh In my first rebuttal, I made the point that Krueger’s opening statement only argued against a very narrow God-concept, and did not account for mystical notions of God like the one that I proposed. I wrote that I could, […]