Modern Library

Butler’s Defense of TAG and Critique of TANG (1996) Michael Martin   Michael Butler in a recent paper published on the Internet has attempted to defend The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God (TAG) and refute The Transcendental Argument for the NonExistence of God (TANG).[1] In this paper I evaluate his defense and refutation. […]

Atheism and Intraorganizational Free Speech (1996) Michael Martin   What position should atheists take on freedom of speech? In particular, what stand should atheistic organizations take in regard to the freedom of speech of its members? Should they censor members who do not adhere to particular doctrines which, even if they are not entailed by […]

A Response to John Frame’s Rebuttal of The Transcendental Argument for the Nonexistence of God (TANG) Michael Martin   My article, "The Transcendental Argument for the Nonexistence of God," was originally published in the New Zealand Rationalist and Humanist (Autumn 1996, p. 4). It recently appeared on the Internet and was replied to by John […]

[Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Teaching Philosophy 9:1 (October 1986): 90-91. The page numbers below show the position of the text within that pagination scheme.] ________________________________________ 90 An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism, Gordon Stein, ed. Prometheus Books, 1980, 354 pages, $14.95 pbk. Michael Martin This book is a useful reminder that […]

Psychopathology in Religious Ideation: The Case of Death by Proxy (2013) Michael Moore Though there is no unequivocal evidence for a causal relationship between religiosity and psychopathology, a large body of data suggests a connection between these two phenomena. (For some of the controversial research findings, see my paper with Daniela Kramer titled “We are […]

On the Nature of Morality (1998) An Internet Reply to Eugene Khutoryansky’s “Objective Morality Based on Scientific and Rational Reasoning” Niclas Berggren   “There are no objective values.” – J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977, p. 15. I. There has long been a discussion in philosophy regarding the nature of […]

Reviews of Books about Arguments from Evil Book Review: Dialog on Good, Evil, and the Existence of God (2000) by Mark Ivan Vuletic In 1978, philosopher John Perry published a well-received little book in which three fictional friends engaged in a series of stimulating but easy-to-understand discussions about personal identity and immortality. Review of Andrea […]

The Biological Role of Pain and Pleasure The argument from the biological role of pain and pleasure is an evidential argument from evil that focuses on a specific type of “natural evil”: the biological role of pain and pleasure. Inspired by Hume and formulated by philosopher of religion Paul Draper, the argument uses Bayesian confirmation […]

The Case Against Faith: A Critical Look at Lee Strobel’s The Case for Faith (5th ed., 2020) Paul Doland Review: Lee Strobel. 2001. The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House. 304 pp. The stated goal of Lee Strobel’s The Case for Faith is to […]

Now we should assess atheism pragmatically. Theism has proven to be a fairly good pragmatic theory, but maybe not quite as attractive as it would superficially seem. Still, it survives despite its harshest criticisms and remains resilient to this day. I want to briefly mention some views typically held about atheists and the atheistic lifestyle. […]

Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution Michael J. Behe The Free Press, New York ISBN 0-684-82754-9 xii + 307 pp Reviewed by Peter Atkins, University of Oxford For those who have not already encountered this book or one of its numerous reviews, let me simply say that the author sets out to argue […]

Secular Ethics and Animal Rights (1995) Peter D. Wilson   Since the beginning of recorded history humans have searched for the knowledge that teaches us right from wrong. Most of the time, people have found this knowledge in religion. But for those of us who do not believe in gods, we are left to fend […]

Smith Closing Title TBA (2008) Quentin Smith     Continue the Debate Copyright ©2008 Quentin Smith. The electronic version is copyright ©2008 by Internet Infidels, Inc. with the written permission of Quentin Smith. All rights reserved.

The Big Debate: Comments on the Barker-Carrier vs. Corey-Rajabali Team Debate (2004) Richard Carrier   On May 8, 2004, I debated the existence of God before an audience of a thousand. It was a team debate, and my colleague was my good friend Dan Barker, against two theists, respected Muslim scholar Hassanain Rajabali and Michael […]

The Rules We Followed (2008)   Welcome to On Paul’s Theory of Resurrection: The Carrier-O’Connell Debate. Here Richard and Jake explain the rules of debate they both agreed to follow.   (1) The parties to the debate composed a joint statement specifying the proposition to be defended and defining every term in that proposition to […]

  Entropy Explained (2003, 2005) Richard Carrier   Addendum A to “Bad Science, Worse Philosophy: the Quackery and Logic-Chopping of David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists” (2000)   Introduction The concept of entropy is generally not well understood among laymen. With the help of several physicists, including Wolfgang Gasser and Malcolm Schreiber, I have composed the […]

Kersey Graves and The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors (2003) Richard Carrier [Editor’s note: This is a conflation of three responses which were made by Richard Carrier to feedback and e-mail involving questions about the scholarhip of Kersey Graves, in particular, and about scholarship, in general, in the subject area about which Graves concerned himself in […]

Was Christianity Too Improbable to be False? (2006) [See Introduction]   Richard Carrier   14. Was the Apparent Ignorance of Jesus a Problem? James Holding argues that “if you want a decent deity, you have to make him fully respectable,” yet “ignorance of future or present events” is embarrassing and would be a big hurdle […]

Moreland’s “Christian Science” (1999, 2005) Richard Carrier   [Part 3C of a larger Review of In Defense of Miracles.]   Christian Science, Moreland Style Moreland correctly identifies the fact that many scientists and atheists erroneously hold that miracles are beyond science because they are not natural, not repeatable, and not governed by law. And I […]

Luke and Josephus (2000) Richard Carrier There has long been the observation that Luke-Acts contains numerous parallels with the works of Josephus, generating three different theories to account for this: that Josephus used Luke, that Luke used Josephus, or that they both used some common but now lost source. Steve Mason has reviewed the arguments […]

This file has been relocated: it is now Section I of General Case for Insufficiency .

This file has been relocated: it is now Section I of General Case for Spiritual Resurrection: Evidence Against Resurrection of the Flesh.

This file has been relocated: it is now the second half of the new Introduction.

The Problem of the Virgin Birth Prophecy (2003) Richard Carrier   In March 23 of 2003 I received the following question by email. I was encouraged to publish my answer online, since it would be of help to many others faced with the same question.[1] Some of my advice is applicable to many other questions […]

Original Sin: Can’t Live With It, Can’t Live Without It (2010) Richard Schoenig   1. Introduction 2. Doctrine of Original Sin (DOS) 3. Can’t Live With It (DOS)      3.1 The Evolutionary Science Problem for the Genesis Creation and Garden of Eden Stories           3.1.1 Nonliteral Interpretation of Genesis Creation and Garden of Eden Story           3.1.2 Hybrid […]

________________________________________ 33 Beyond Born Again Section I– The Born Again Experience: A Brave New World? Chapter 2: The Evangelical Subculture In the last chapter, I tried to explain and critique some important aspects of the way Evangelicals interpret and cope with their experiences. Now I want to turn to a slightly different aspect of Evangelical […]

Robert J. Miller, The Jesus Seminar and its Critics. Santa Rosa: Polebridge Press, 1999. 154 pp. plus indices. Paperback. ISBN 0-944344-78-X. Reviewed by Robert M. Price.   If you had any remaining questions about the methods, goals, and origins of the notorious Jesus Seminar, this book by my Seminar colleague and pal Bob Miller ought […]

Review of Can We Trust the New Testament? (2005) Robert M. Price   Review: G. A. Wells. 2004. Can We Trust the New Testament?: Thoughts on the Reliability of Early Christian Testimony. Chicago, IL: Open Court Press. xii+242 pp. I must admit I await each new book by G. A. Wells with the same eager […]

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 […]