[ Author Index | Subject Index ]
The Modern Library contains material written during or after 1970, which tends to be more scholarly than Kiosk material.
Mark Hutchins Faith And History
Faith and History A Critique of John Warwick Montgomery’s Apologetics Mark Hutchins Introduction This paper will offer a critical view of John Warwick Montgomery’s approach to Christian apologetics, specifically his attempt to show skeptics that history provides a credible basis for belief in the New Testament Jesus. While Montgomery has not been the only Christian […]
Mark Vuletic Myst
The Yoga-Sutras of Patanjali and The Cloud of Unknowing: A Preliminary Step in Assessing the Ontological Accuracy of the Mystical Experience (1996) Mark I. Vuletic [This paper was written for a seminar in mysticism taught by Neal Grossman at The University of Illinois at Chicago in Spring, 1996] Proponents of mysticism sometimes offer the […]
Mathew Arguments Hebrew
אתאיזם: טיעונים נפוצים (1997) mathew המאמר המקורי כאן מבוא המסמך הזהמכילתגובות לטיעונים שעלו לעתים תכופות בקבוצות דיון המוקדשים לדיון באתאיזם.התשובותהמובאות כאן אינן מתיימרות להיות מקיפות או סופיות. מטרת המסמך אינו לסייםאתהדיון, אלא להרים את רמתו. הערה לגירסה העברית חלקמהתשובותהעוסקות בטיעונים שנוגעים רק לנצרות ו\או בארצות-הברית לא תורגמו לעברית,מתוךמחשבה שנושאים אלה לא יענינו את […]
Michael Martin Davis Resurrection
Davis on the Rationality of Belief in the Resurrection (2005) Michael Martin Introduction From 1998 to 2000, I engaged Christian apologist Steven Davis in an exchange on the rationality of belief in the Resurrection in the pages of Philo.[1] Subsequently, I assumed that the debate had ended, but to my surprise Davis recently published […]
Michael Martin Heaven
Problems with Heaven (1997) Michael Martin Introduction Belief in Heaven is an essential part of the great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Famous theologians have written about it and ordinary theists hope to go there after death. Unfortunately, atheists have had little to say about Heaven although some atheist writings are indirectly […]
Michael Martin Martinag
On a New Argument for Agnosticism (2001) Michael Martin In a recent Internet paper entitled "A Formal Justification of Agnosticism,"[1] Bill Schultz defends agnosticism by denying the universality of the Principle of Excluded Middle (P v ~P).[2] In addition, he accuses me of using the Principle of Excluded Middle to try to "force agnostics […]
Michael Martin Values
Atheism and Humanistic Value Theory (1996) Michael Martin What is the relation between atheism and humanistic value theory? Can one be an atheist [1] and not accept any humanistic value theories? Can one accept a humanist value theory and believe in God? These are the sorts of questions that I want to address in […]
Michael Moore Total Institution
Religion as a Total Institution (2019) Michael Moore According to sociologist Nicki Lisa Cole, “A total institution is a closed social system in which life is organized by strict norms, rules, and schedules, and what happens within it is determined by a single authority whose will is carried out by staff who enforce the rules” […]
Nontheism Atheism About
About Atheism An Introduction to Atheism (1997) by mathew This is a gentle but thorough introduction to the different varieties of atheism and agnosticism. It covers many common misunderstandings, and defines and explains terms used elsewhere. Recommended for all readers, religious or not. To provide a sense of cohesion and progression, the author has presented […]
Nontheism Atheism How Live
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 […]
Nontheism Naturalism
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, […]
Paul Draper Intro1
Introduction to Section One: Mind and Will (2007) Paul Draper What sort of entity is the human mind? Also, what is freedom of the will, and do human beings have such freedom? Determining the correct answers to these questions is crucial for determining which of naturalism and theism is more credible. In order to […]
Paul Obrien Gentle Atheism14
I want to discuss some emotional issues that religious beliefs serve to address and accommodate. Although it seems obvious that a belief should be concerned with the truth, it is less obvious to some that a belief’s implications help determine its worth. It is even less obvious that a belief needs to conform to one’s […]
Peter Kirby Tomb Assessment
Assessment of the Evidence As the postmodernists would urge us all to do, I will begin with a confession of my interest in this matter, of biases that operate on levels seen and unseen, from the motivation to make my efforts in writing appear worthwhile to my general disbelief in the Christian religion. There […]
Quentin Smith Atheism
Two Ways to Prove Atheism (1996) Quentin Smith [This speech was delivered before the Atheist Alliance convention in Minneapolis, MN on April 6, 1996.] Today I will discuss two ways to prove atheism: that scientific cosmology can prove atheism and that the existence of gratuitous evil proves atheism. I’ll begin with scientific cosmology. Scientific […]
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Reason Freethought
Browse the Secular Web Bookstore for books on Freethought. Freethought Freethought Challenges of the ’90s (1992) by Fred Edwords Science and technology are transforming the world’s values more dramatically and more completely than organized religion has ever been capable of. Because so many people cannot deal comfortably with the moral dilemmas raised by the new […]
Richard Carrier Carrier Wanchick Carrier1
Carrier’s Opening Statement (2006) Naturalism Is True, Theism is Not Method If we want all our beliefs to be more likely true than false, then we must proportion our beliefs to the evidence. So if our reasons to believe are few and unreliable, our confidence should be low, and if our reasons to believe […]
Richard Carrier Foster1
Bad Science, Worse Philosophy: the Quackery and Logic-Chopping of David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists (2000) 1. Who is David Foster? Richard Carrier David Foster received his technical training at King’s College London and has the degrees of M.Sc. and Ph.D, retiring in 1993 from a career as a scientific consultant. He has written […]
Richard Carrier Improbable Moral
Was Christianity Too Improbable to be False? (2006) [See Introduction] Richard Carrier 5. Who Would Join a Moral Order? Every scholar of antiquity has noted the broad interest among the ancient Greeks and Romans in philosophies that promoted a strong moral order. Every great philosophy was morally demanding—in fact, that is precisely why […]
Richard Carrier Indef 4c
Clark’s Survey of Other Religions (1999, 2005) Richard Carrier [Part 4C of a larger Review of In Defense of Miracles.] The Problem of Competing Claims David Clark aims to tackle a particular problem defined by Hume: as Clark puts it: “If Christian televangelists and New Age cultists both appeal to miracles in support […]
Richard Carrier Musonius
On Musonius Rufus: A Brief Essay (1999) Richard Carrier Since this man deserves far more publicity than he has ever gotten in the modern age, I have written this short essay. He exemplifies the sort of man who should have been venerated and made the founder of a world religion, but was not, yet […]
Richard Carrier Resurrection 2a
This file has been relocated: it is now Section I of Probability of Survival vs. Miracle: Assessing the Odds.
Richard Carrier Resurrection 3e
This file has been relocated: it is now Section V of General Case for Spiritual Resurrection: Evidence Against Resurrection of the Flesh.
Richard Carrier Resurrection Rubicon
Why I Don’t Buy the Resurrection Story (6th ed., 2006) Richard Carrier The Rubicon Analogy James Holding claims that we have as much evidence that Jesus rose from his grave as we have that Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon (“Julie’s River Run: On Comparing the Rubicon to the Resurrection“). There are numerous errors […]
Richard Gale Freedom
Freedom and the Free Will Defense (1990) Richard Gale The following article was originally published in SOCIAL THEORY AND PRACTICE, Vol. 16, No. 3, Fall 1990. It is my purpose to explore some of the problems concerning the relation between divine creation and creaturely freedom by criticizing various versions of the Free Will […]
Rob Sarver Chap11 Opening
Opening Remarks Background My purpose in composing a rebuttal to Chapter 11 of Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands a Verdict (hereafter ETDAV) is to correct some of the historical errors and point out the assumptions made by McDowell in this volume. Having myself witnessed how Christians use ETDAV as an evangelization tool, it is […]
Robert Price Beyond Born Again Chap6
________________________________________ 75 Beyond Born Again Section II– The Evangelical Apologists: Are They Reliable? Chapter 6: Guarding An Empty Tomb In Chapter 5, I dealt with the most common arguments for the reliability of the gospels. Now I want to discuss a special case, the arguments advanced for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. At the outset […]
Robert Price Price Rankin About
Mars Hill Forum #35 JESUS: FACT OR FICTION? A Dialogue With Dr. Robert Price and Rev. John Rankin Held At Unitarian Church Montclair, New Jersey January 11, 1997 Transcribed by Pieter Crow DR. ROBERT M. PRICE is Adjunct Professor of New Testament at Drew University and Adjunct Instructor of Philosophy, Religion, and Classics at […]
Roger Ericson Fatherless
What Would Father Do? A Review of Faithof the Fatherless by Paul C. Vitz by Roger Ericson [This review was originally published in Volume 8, Number 2, of Skeptic magazine.] In Faithof the Fatherless [Hardcover, Paperback], Paul C. Vitz joins the ranks of Michael Behe (Darwin’sBlack Box [Hardcover, Paperback]) and Michael Drosnin (The Bible Code […]