Modern Library

The Errancy of Fundamentalism Disproves the God of the Bible (1996) Niclas Berggren 1. Introduction This essay will investigate the often-made claim from Christians, that the Bible is the inspired word of god, a corollary of which is that it is perfectly without error. This view is exemplified by the following statement of Jimmy Swaggart, […]

Logical Arguments from Evil According to logical arguments from evil, some known fact about evil is logically incompatible with God’s existence. (In contrast, evidential arguments from evil merely claim that some known fact about evil is evidence for God’s nonexistence.) Ever since Alvin Plantinga rebutted J. L. Mackie’s logical argument from evil, the majority of […]

Introduction Living without a god isn’t easy. But living in general, with or without a god, is an undertaking that challenges and frustrates the best of us. As humans, we are special in that we lead our lives and treat our lives in a relatively cognizant, rational manner. We are naturally reflective creatures. We have […]

The Atheist’s Certainty (1994) Peter D. Wilson   Neither atheists nor agnostics believe in gods. Whether or not this lack of belief is itself a belief has long been debated and forms part of the disagreement between atheists and agnostics. The atheist confidently proclaims “God does not exist” while the agnostic admits uncertainty and believes […]

Simplicity and Why the Universe Exists (1997) Quentin Smith   The following article was originally published in Philosophy 71 (1997): 125-32. I If big bang cosmology is true, then the universe began to exist about 15 billion years ago with a ‘big bang’, an explosion of matter, energy and space from a singular point. This […]

O’Connell’s Closing Statement (2008)   Response to “On Over What?” Of course, I think that the alternative explanations I propose are not just possible, but probable. However, the audience will have to decide this for themselves. According to several prominent lexicons, the normal meaning of “ependyomai” is “to put on one garment over another garment.” […]

Generalia (Bibliography of Skepticism in the Ancient World) (1998) Richard Carrier (copyright 1999)   Generalia Alexander, Loveday, “The Living Voice: Scepticism Towards the Written Word in Early Christian and in Graeco-Roman Texts,” in The Bible in Three Dimensions: Essays in Celebration of Forty Years of Biblical Studies in the University of Sheffield, D. Clines, and […]

Was Christianity Too Improbable to be False? (2006) [See Introduction]   Richard Carrier   12. Did No One Respect the Opinions of Uneducated Laymen? James Holding argues that “Peter and John were dismissed based on their social standing,” citing Acts 4:13, which “reflects a much larger point of view among the ancients,” of hostility to […]

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 […]

Creation As a Pseudo-Explanation in Current Physical Cosmology Adolf Grünbaum   University of Pittsburgh   [This article was originally published in Erkenntnis 35: 233-254, 1991.] Introduction In his posthumously published The Direction of Time (1956, p. 133), Hans Reichenbach wrote: “At the present state of cosmology, it is very difficult to come to a conclusion […]

CHAPTERS 5 & 6: WHY I BELIEVE IN HEAVEN / HELL (Non Sequitur) After that long analysis of the chapter on creationism, I need a rest! Fortunately, the next two chapters in Why I Believe can be reviewed relatively quickly. The chapter on Heaven begins by first trying to establish the immortality of the human […]

The Essence Of Agnosticism by Bill Schultz The word “agnostic” was coined by Thomas Henry Huxley, and so there can only be one single point of departure for any discussion of the essence of agnosticism. That point is the definition of agnosticism chosen by Huxley himself: Agnosticism is not a creed but a method, the […]

Religion And The U. S. Supreme Court – Now by Bill Schultz Table of Contents Introduction The Legacy of the Founding Fathers The “Sleeping Dog” 14th Amendment An Era Of Religious Orthodoxy The Great Change The Changed Law Evolves New Laws Against Religious Discrimination The Modern Teeter-Totter The Law as Things Stand Now The Law […]