Modern Library

This essay has been significantly revised to reflect updates that were published in the Journal of Near-Death Studies in 2007. Several points have been streamlined for clarity and to remove unnecessary verbiage. The section on psychophysiological correlates has been rewritten to be much more accessible, and now ends on a discussion of what is implied by the influence of medical factors on NDE content. A discussion of circumstantial evidence of temporal lobe instability among NDErs has been added to the section on the role of the temporal lobe in NDEs. A few points have been incorporated into the main text from Augustine's replies to Journal commentaries where they elaborate on points in the lead essays, such as a discussion of why cross-cultural diversity undermines a survivalist interpretation of NDEs. That argument is followed up by a similar one, cut for space from the Journal discussions, about the meaning of the apparently random distribution of pleasant and distressing NDEs. Additionally, a large number of new endnotes have been added to this essay. Most of these summarize the most important points of the Journal exchanges (notes 1-6, 10, 17, 20, 23, 28, and 30-32), but a significant number also concern other issues or recent developments (notes 5, 7, 8, 11-16, and 22).

In his opening argument, Quentin Smith argued that universe explains its own existence, without remainder, even if the universe has a finite age, for the state of the universe at any particular moment is sufficiently caused by all of its preceding states. Since this complete explanation makes no reference to God, Smith argued, insofar as God is by definition a part of any complete explanation of the universe, God does not exist. In his response, Robin Collins cited the flight of a cannonball as a counterexample to Smith's line of reasoning, but the counterexample is not analogous; unlike the universe, the flight of the cannonball does not have a historically complete explanation in terms of earlier parts of that flight. Being charitable to Collins, however, it is possible that although the universe has no first moment in physical time, it may in some metaphysical time series, allowing one to make room for God in a complete metaphysical explanation of the universe. Smith's argument, then, might not demonstrate the nonexistence of God, but it nevertheless provides a probabilistic argument against the existence of God. And on Collins' own "likelihood principle," the fact that our best scientific theory of the origin and evolution of the universe supports a self-caused universe is much more likely on naturalism than on theism, and thus provides very strong evidence for naturalism over theism.

In this online debate historian Richard Carrier and theology scholar Jake O'Connell spar over whether Paul believed that Jesus rose from the dead in the same body that died, or in a new body, leaving his old body behind to rot in the grave.

Totality Beliefs and the Religious Imagination chronicles a medical doctor's journey from traditional religion to Eastern-path meditation and mysticism, finally ending in nonbelief. The author writes in great detail about his own loss of any kind of faith in his personal journey toward atheism and naturalism. Although the author has come to reject all supernatural claims, he nevertheless apparently suspects that humanity cannot endure without hope in the existence of some unseen supernatural being. He seems to doubt that any secular worldview can ever satisfy the spiritual yearning of the masses. Reviewer Edward Tabash, a constitutional lawyer who is extensively involved in atheist activism, deeply appreciates the author's comprehensive chronology of the journey from religion, through mysticism, to nonbelief. Tabash has made a similar journey. However, Tabash does not embrace the author's apparent pessimism about ever persuading masses of humanity to give up their supernatural beliefs.

Anthony Campbell's short and accessible Totality Beliefs and the Religious Imagination illustrates a temperament rather than providing exhaustive arguments against religious beliefs. Campbell thinks that the supernatural is not real, but there is no rancor in his view of religion. He does not treat supernatural convictions as a straightforward mistake curable by a steady application of common sense. Nor does he think that religion is invariably an evil. And even though he has come to think that religions involve too many false beliefs, he thinks that there are too many important questions entangled with our religious traditions to just cast them aside.

John Allen Paulos is a mathematician who writes popular books about the role that mathematics plays in everyday life. In Irreligion he tackles arguments for the existence of God, from design arguments to arguments from miracles to Pascal's wager. His refutations are intended to plant the seeds of doubt more than to offer scholarly analysis. In some cases mathematics is relevant to the argument, but overall the book is a rather light-hearted and personal account of why the author remains unconvinced.

Many New Testament scholars have presented their personal reconstruction of the historical Jesus, laboring to painstakingly separate fact from myth. Unfortunately, in the absence of a rigorous methodology, religious beliefs have doggedly militated against their best efforts, and E. P. Sanders' The Historical Figure of Jesus is no exception to this tendency. In this review, Jacob Aliet outlines what he takes to be the five main weaknesses of Sanders' scholarship, some philosophical, some methodological, as revealed in The Historical Figure of Jesus.

Is baptism necessary for salvation? In his article, "The Bible's Teaching on Baptism: Contradictory or Complimentary?" Eric Lyons states the following: "According to numerous skeptics, the Bible contradicts itself regarding whether or not water baptism is essential for salvation (e.g., Drange, 1996; Morgan, 2003; cf. Wells, 2001). According to these men, Jesus and Paul were confused regarding the purpose of baptism--was it necessary, or not?" Lyons cites my Biblical Inconsistencies as the source of the claims that he alleges that I make regarding baptism. To put it plainly and succinctly, he is simply and completely wrong. I make none of the claims that he alleges that I make.

What was “the Blood of Jezreel”? (2008) Farrell Till IntroductionThe Jehu ProblemSummary of the SolutionThe Solution in Detail “The Blood of Jezreel” in Context“The Blood of Jezreel” Historically2 Kings 10:30: A Postponed Judgment?Other Biblical Examples of Deferred Punishment2 Kings 10:29-31 Viewed in the Light of Exodus 20:3-5“Jezreel” Elsewhere in Hosea“The Blood of Jezreel” as a […]

This article examines Nowicki's novel version of the Kalam Cosmological Argument (N-KCA), and finds it seriously flawed. The N-KCA purportedly shows the factual impossibility of a denumerably infinite set of coexisting concrete entities; and that there would be such a set were an infinite temporal series of events to obtain because each existing substance bears its own necessarily permanent temporal marks and those of its ancestors. Nowicki, professing the A-theory of time, nevertheless maintains that truth-makers of past-event propositions are not tensed facts, according to some correspondence theory of truth, but rather the temporal marks borne by existing substances.

Dinesh D'Souza's What's So Great About Christianity (with no question mark in the title) aims to rebut the "new atheists" on their own ground. Its most evident goals include convincing the reader that there is justification for a theistic world view and demonstrating the cultural superiority of Christianity. In service of the first goal he covers many of the standard arguments, but with little originality, except perhaps for his use of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. His general procedure, illustrated in this case and in a number of others, is to present background material and then make an unjustified transition that purports to establish his case. This triumphant style of reasoning is not likely to convince atheists, or even doubters. Beyond this, almost nothing he says in favor of the truth of Christianity would be persuasive to someone with a different religious view. The book's principal defect is that it presents too many different reasons for its theistic conclusion, rather than treating a few decisive arguments in depth. This suggests that the book is ultimately political, with its implicit goal to reassure those already leaning toward Christianity that they are on the right side.

In The Miracle of Theism and elsewhere John L. Mackie argued that the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and wholly good God is logically incompatible with the existence of evil, as God could have created persons who always freely choose the good. Alvin Plantinga responded with his famous Free Will Defense, in which he claimed that, under certain conditions, it was impossible for God to create a world containing no evil whatsoever. In this refutation, Raymond D. Bradley notes that these conditions--such as actualizing a world containing significantly free creatures or one in which all of God's creatures suffer from "transworld depravity"--were entirely up to God, in that he could have refrained from creating such a world. Since in virtue of his omniscience any such God would have known the consequences of creating the world that he did, he would bear command responsibility for all the evils that resulted from his creation--if he only existed in the first place. In other words, a morally perfect, omnipotent, and omniscient God does not now, and never did, exist.

In this contribution to an American Philosophical Association symposium on "God, Death, and the Meaning of Life," Evan Fales considers three responses to loss of faith in the Christian God: despair, optimism, and rebellion. Western culture is permeated by belief in an afterlife on religious grounds, shaping these responses in particularly anxious ways. Fales considers both how atheists can respond to the question of the meaning of life, and, in what is surely a surprising direction for some, whether Christianity even has the resources to provide meaning through doctrines as problematic as requiring another to pay for your own sins. In July 2007 Fales updated this paper for the Secular Web by expanding his discussion of reasons to doubt the moral acceptability of another person (such as Jesus) absolving individuals of responsibility for their sins (or wrongdoings) through sacrifice, substitution, or by serving as a moral exemplar.

C. S. Lewis's argument from reason (AfR) claims that the process of inference by which consideration of premises causes us to adopt a conclusion cannot be coherently conceived of in terms of physical cause-and-effect alone. In C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea, Victor Reppert maintains that the argument still poses a strong challenge to naturalism. However, Richard Carrier has attempted to refute Reppert's version of the AfR by invoking developments in cognitive science and computational theory. In this essay Darek Barefoot argues that advances in cognitive science do not affect the AfR since there is an absolute conceptual divide between rational mental causes and physical computational ones. Furthermore, if the AfR is successful, it reveals that rationality is fundamental to the universe, not simply a by-product of physical cause-and-effect; and this, in turn, is readily explicable on theism, but problematic for naturalism.

In this highly original and challenging essay, Raymond Bradley develops an argument that all religions are probably false inspired by David Hume's famous discussion of the 'contrary miracles' of rival religions. According to Bradley's argument from contrariety, any one of the vast numbers of religions ever conceived (or to be conceived) makes factual claims contradicted by the claims of all of the other religions. Moreover, the claims of any particular religion are generally as well-attested as the claims of all of the others. Consequently, given the "weight" of the "evidence" of all of the other religions, the probability that the claims of any one religion are true is exceedingly low. From this it follows that all religions are probably false.

The Failure of Daniel’s Prophecies (2007) Chris Sandoval           Introduction           Honest Inspirational Fiction           Daniel’s Four Empires           The Symbolism of the Statue and Beasts           The Greek Four-Empire Scheme           The Origin of “Darius the Mede”           Was “Darius” an Alias?           Mixed Messages           The Brutality of the Fourth Empire           The Diadochi           The Maccabean War           The Traditional Christian Interpretation of the […]

Naturalism, Free Choices, and Conscious Experiences (2007) Andrew Melnyk           1. The Kind of Naturalism in Question           2. Free Choices           3. The Fact That the Universe Contains Conscious Mental States As I understand them, Charles Taliaferro and Stewart Goetz (hereafter, TG) are best viewed as making two main objections to a certain kind of naturalism. In […]

Review of Reasonable Faith (2007) Chris Hallquist Review: William Lane Craig. 1994. Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books. 350 pp.           Overview           Introduction           Chapter 1: Faith and Reason: How Do I Know Christianity is True?           Chapter 2: Man: The Absurdity of Life Without God           Chapter 3: God: The Existence of God           Chapter […]

In this autobiographical account of his journey from Baptist fundamentalist to freethinker, Raymond D. Bradley outlines his reality-driven philosophical predisposition and the difficulties it generated for his acceptance of traditional Christian doctrines throughout his childhood. These difficulties with specific doctrines--several of which Bradley discusses in detail--matured into a brief stint with deism before finally culminating in full-blown, outspoken atheism.

In Kingdom Coming Michelle Goldberg lets America's "Christian Reconstructionists," who openly advocate making the Bible the basis of a shari'a-type religious law, speak for themselves. Though considered extreme even within the religious right, an offshoot called dominionism, or Christian Nationalism, openly advocates theocracy and is rapidly gaining ground among "mainstream" right-wing Christians. Those swept away in this fundamentalist counterculture live in a universe that they have created, separate from and parallel to the one that the rest of us live in. The immediate danger they pose is not their impact on social issues, but the subversion of rationality itself, which has been achieved to an alarming extent. Today the best established scientific conclusions are routinely undermined and derided, and even the mainstream media feel that they have to offer "balance" on scientific issues by giving equal time to cranks and crackpots. The religious right is motivated, organized, and well-funded, and they are not going away. We ignore them at our peril. Goldberg has done us a service in giving us a beautifully crafted statement of why we fight.

Physicalism and the First-Person Point of View: A Reply to Taliaferro and Goetz (2007) Andrew Melnyk In my paper, “A Case for Physicalism about the Human Mind,” I didn’t attempt to defend physicalism about human mentality (henceforth, just physicalism) against the many objections that philosophers, and others, have made to it. Instead, I tried to […]

A Case for Physicalism about the Human Mind (2007) Andrew Melnyk           1. What Is Physicalism about the Human Mind?           2. Physicalism about the Human Mind and Theism           3. Some Evidence for Physicalism about the Human Mind                   3.1 An Enumerative Induction                   3.2 Evidence from the Neural Dependence of Mental Phenomena           4. An Antiphysicalist Response In this […]

According to Alister McGrath, the early 21st century marks the decline of atheism. In this critique of McGrath's arguments, Keith Parsons considers whether the intellectual clout, stature, or influence of atheism has in fact declined in recent years, concluding that McGrath does not even begin to address the real intellectual case for atheism. That disbelief in God is just as much a matter of faith as belief in God can only be a stale platitude from McGrath given his failure to even superficially survey the best arguments for atheism. McGrath does address, however, four charges made by Richard Dawkins against religion, including the charge that evolution makes God unnecessary as an explanation and that religion is a source of much of the misery in the world. Parsons concludes that once one appropriately qualifies or refines Dawkins' accusations, McGrath's critique fails to adequately address the underlying problems for religion that inspire them. Moreover, to the extent that the influence of inherently controversial and divisive religions on people's lives grows, a corresponding dawn of the popularity of atheism is inevitable.

Well written in an artistic but critical style, Günther Bornkamm's Paul attempts to outline Paul's life and work before finally turning to his theology and gospel. While drawing on the work of several New Testament scholars, Bornkamm largely relies on his own interpretation of the Pauline epistles, Acts, and the interplay between them, leaving the reader to evaluate his arguments primarily on their own merits. Against source-critical methods, Bornkamm occasionally uses the texts he has judged as inauthentic as reliable sources of information without recourse to any clear criteria, and dismisses uncomfortable passages attributed to Paul as inauthentic without offering any supportive arguments. This ad hoc pick-and-choose methodology leaves his presumptions open to criticism where the texts are silent or in conflict. But otherwise Paul is a great book, generally utilizing critical evaluation of the sources to unravel Paul's ingenious and enigmatic character.

One of the clearest statements of the case for a Creator is written by Roy Abraham Varghese in his introduction to the volume Cosmos, Bios, Theos. Here Varghese argues that the best explanation for why there is something rather than nothing necessarily terminates in God, rather than the ultimate features of the physical universe, for unlike any physical thing, God is self-explanatory. But we are left completely in the dark on the sense in which God is self-explanatory, and how that would differ from the self-explanatoriness of a putative original, uncaused state of the physical universe. Consequently, I argue that there is no intellectual difficulty in postulating an initial state of the universe as a ultimate brute fact, and conclude that Varghese's arguments to the contrary fail.

In Finite and Infinite Goods, Robert Merrihew Adams offers an interesting variation on G. E. Moore's famous open-question argument against ethical naturalism. In giving causal-explanatory reasoning the last word in ethical inquiry, he says, ethical naturalists negate a critical stance that permits us to raise evaluative questions about any ethical judgment, no matter how well-supported empirically. But Adams's version of the open-question argument is deeply confused. First, modern science shows that the relevant critical stance is quite compatible with giving causal-explanatory reasoning the last word. Second, ethical naturalists need not treat any ethical judgments as immune to criticism. Finally, if Adams's argument were sound, it would undermine his own case for a divine-command theory of ethics.

In "Ten Things Wrong with Cosmological Creationism," Richard Carrier argues that if we try to explain the existence of the universe by positing God, we still leave the existence of God itself unexplained--invoking an additional, unnecessary entity without any explanatory benefit. But Paul Herrick resists this conclusion, arguing that theists have a reasonable reply to Carrier's argument. Moreover, this reply requires the existence of God, as it cannot be applied to any material object or collection of material objects. This, in turn, demonstrates that theism offers an explanatory advantage over scientific naturalism, collapsing a crucial premise of Carrier's argument.

In Finite and Infinite Goods Adams gives his defense of a modified divine command theory its fullest elaboration, defending it against a number of standard objections. This material is essential reading for anyone interested in whether morality does or could depend on religion. Moreover, Adams thoughtfully argues for the need for several forms of moral faith, including faith that morality "is not a massive socially induced delusion." Along the way, he also offers a striking defense of liberty of conscience and church-state separation, with an emphasis on the value of critical thinking in both ethics and religion. Although Sullivan finds much to agree with here, he offers two particular criticisms of Adams's version of divine command theory. Nevertheless, Sullivan concludes that intelligent nonbelievers and believers can only benefit from carefully and critically working their way through this important book.

David Eller's Natural Atheism is no ordinary freethought handbook. Its chapter on church-state separation reviews most of the appropriate legislation and case law, concluding that freedom from religion is protected by the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion. As an unapologetic rationalist, Eller insists that any deviation from reason--including faith--merely masquerades as thinking. Advocating the relativity of moral systems to specific social contexts, Eller nevertheless thinks that reason can ground moral systems by encouraging socially beneficial behavior on the basis of intersubjectivity. And while he thinks that no religious source truly values toleration, he is ambiguous about the extent to which freethinkers should tolerate religion for social convenience at the expense of truth.

Hector Avalos' Fighting Words adds organization, scholarly research, and coherent theory to the phenomenon of religiously inspired violence. Analyzing religious violence in terms of "scarce resource theory," Avalos argues that sacred spaces and authoritative scriptures constitute scarce resources accessible to, controlled by, or interpreted by only a few. Competition for these resources, or for group privilege and salvation, inevitably leads to violence which is only that much more tragic because of the unverifiability of the very existence of such resources. Failure to recognize the authority of, or correctly interpret or observe, a particular sacred text creates the potential for bloodshed; and Judaism, Christianity, and Islam's soteriological justifications for violence only exacerbate its realization. Rather than merely explaining the root causes of religious violence, Avalos encourages us to assist religionists in modifying their traditions to thwart the maintenance and creation of unverifiable scarcities, or otherwise seek the elimination of their violent traditions.