[ Author Index | Subject Index ]
The Modern Library contains material written during or after 1970, which tends to be more scholarly than Kiosk material.
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 […]
Science Creationism
Creationism – Evolution Book Reviews Debates Behe, Michael Dembski, William Gish, Duane Johnson, Phillip Is Acceptance of Evolution Evil? (2016) by Michael D. Reynolds An often overlooked religious criticism of biological evolution focuses on the alleged ethical consequences of accepting it, particularly increased immorality and harmfulness. In this essay Michael D. Reynolds describes and critiques one such […]
Stephen Parrish Viable Values
Review of Viable Values (2004) Stephen Parrish Publishing on the Secular Web is not necessarily an endorsement of the mission of the Internet Infidels. Please note that Stephen Parrish has no interest in promoting metaphysical naturalism or the products advertised on this site. Review: Tara Smith. 2000. Viable Values: A Study of Life as the […]
Taner Edis Review Of Joshi
Exposing the Indefensible (2003) A review of S.T. Joshi’s, God’s Defenders: What They Believe and why They are Wrong (Amherst: Prometheus, 2003) Taner Edis Many infidels will enjoy this book, which skewers some of the more popular (rather than scholarly) defenders of religious faith. Joshi has a sharp tongue, which he uses to good […]
Testimonials Vuletic
From Believer to Atheist Mark I. Vuletic [The following paper was presented to the public on September 17, 2000 in an event entitled "Christian Becomes Atheist, Atheist Becomes Christian," and was sponsored by the Jesus Forum. The paper describes how I became an atheist, and was delivered after a talk by my co-speaker, Paul Smith, […]
Theism Christianity Character
Character of Jesus Atheists for Jesus (Off Site) This site is “designed to provide a method of communication between religious and nonreligious people who believe in the message of love and kindness put forth by Jesus.” The Justified Lie by the Johannine Jesus in its Greco-Roman-Jewish Context (2020) by John MacDonald In this article John MacDonald […]
Theism Christianity Whynot
Ex-Christians Testimonials Why I Am Not a Christian Why I Am Not a Christian (2006) by Richard Carrier In this explanation of why he is not a Christian, Richard Carrier outlines the top four reasons why he rejects Christianity: God’s silence, God’s inactivity, lack of evidence, and the overt conflict between discovered reality and Christian […]
Theism Links
Theistic Arguments: Links to Other Resources Formal debates between theists and nontheists on topics relating to the theistic arguments: Cosmological Design Miracles Moral Ontological Scripture Transcendental Wager Other To purchase related reading, go to the Secular Web Book Store. Argument from Holy Scripture: Biblical Criticism [ Index ] Selected articles on modern Biblical criticism and scholarship. Biblical […]
Theism Wager
Pascal’s Wager In the seventeenth century the mathematician Blaise Pascal formulated his infamous pragmatic argument for belief in God in Pensées. The argument runs as follows: If you erroneously believe in God, you lose nothing (assuming that death is the absolute end), whereas if you correctly believe in God, you gain everything (eternal bliss). But […]
Thomas Sheehan Firstcoming Two
The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity (1986–electronic edition 2000) Thomas Sheehan II How Jesus Was Raised From the Dead Soon after Jesus died, something dramatic happened to his reputation: His followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead and was alive with his heavenly Father. This enhancement […]
Tyler Wunder Davis 4
IV. Support for the Core Facts of Core Facts Before considering the inevitable confrontation between these two most persuasive cases, I will briefly describe some of the evidence marshalled by Habermas in support of the premises of his abridged apologetic. Identifying these supports is extremely important, for apart from sheer authority-approval and appeal to “shared […]
Adolf Grunbaum Theological
THEOLOGICAL MISINTERPRETATIONS OF CURRENT PHYSICAL COSMOLOGY* Adolf Grünbaum University of Pittsburgh [This article was originally published in PHILO, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 15-34, Spring-Summer 1998.] Abstract: In earlier writings, I argued that neither of the two major physical cosmologies of the twentieth century support divine creation, so that atheism has nothing to […]
Anachronist Why I Believe 99 Concl
Conclusion I do not consider myself a Christian, or an atheist. If one were to pigeonhole my own personal philosophy with a label, it might be "weak atheist" or "strong agnostic," because any belief concerning God is completely nonexistent from my mind. However, I don’t reject all religion or spirituality out of hand. Religion and […]
Bernard Katz Critic
McDowell in the Critic’s Den (1982) Bernard Katz [NOTE: The following article appeared in the July/August 1982 issue of The American Rationalist.] Christian fundamentalist Josh McDowell has become quite rash in one of his latest books Prophecy: Fact or Fiction. For he is pinning his whole faith in Christianity on the "historical evidence for the […]