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What’s New Archive

What's New Archive ● 1997 ● September

  • September 29, 1997
    • Survey Reveals Polling Bias
      Report on a 1993 study on church attendance in which the researchers first polled members of 172 churches, and then took a head count, allegedly revealing extensive overreporting of religiosity in standard polls.

  • September 28, 1997
  • September 27, 1997
  • September 26, 1997
  • September 18, 1997
  • September 16, 1997
    • Removed the Cowan-Krueger Debate on the Existence of God from the Debates Page
      Cowan cancelled, on the grounds that he would have too much work at the time of the debate.

    • Added Eternal Hostility : The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy to the II Bookstore.
      This book comes highly recommended from a number of different freethinkers. It is a call to see the Radical Religious Right for what it really is: a seditious force aiming to overthrow democracy and install a theocracy right here in the United States of America.

    • Citizens Bring Suit Against US Army to Force Removal of Giant Religious Symbol (Off Site)
      A group of Hawaii citizens filed suit in US District Court (District of Hawaii) to force the removal of a giant religious symbol from government property at Schofield Barracks, US Army Base.

    • Created a religious symbols on public property directory in the Church-State Separation section of the Activists' Corner

  • September 15, 1997
  • September 14, 1997
    • Created a directory for the This month's web.scan looks at the web pages of The Kabalarians.

    • Created a Promise Keepers directory in the Monitoring the RRR section of the Activists' Corner
      Started by former University of Colorado head football coach Bill McCartney, this is the Christian organization that schedules outreach conferences in football stadiums across the US, for men only. Promise Keepers has an estimated budget of $117 million. Promise Keepers opposes homosexual rights and promotes the notion that the man should be the head of the household; the wife should be subservient to the man.

    • Added 11 new articles to the Monitoring the RRR section of the Activists' Corner

    • Added Mainstream Opinion to the Activists' Corner's List of Related Sites
      "Providing The Tools To Fight The Religious Right"

    • RRR Organizations
      The effective activist must always be aware of what opposing organizations are doing and saying. This page lists all major RRR political organizations with an on-line presence.

    • Added Making a Difference (Or: Becoming an Activist For Your Cause) by Stuart Bechman
      If you ever felt strongly about a cause and wondered 'How Can I Help?', then this article is for you. Stuart Bechman lists a number of ways in which you can make a contribution and provide some impact for your cause.

  • September 13, 1997
    • Updated the IRC page
    • Added announcement for the CFA Executive Director job opening to the II Help Needed page
      The Campus Freethought Alliance is working to start freethought organizations on high school and university campuses around the world. They need an executive director.

    • II Quotations File [ 174K ]
      The II Quotations File is what we use to generate the II Quote of the Minute. If you have a quotation or two you think belongs in the file, and you can document your source, we'll add the quotation(s) and give you the credit.

    • Added many examples of anti-Christian bias to the satire, Life In Our Anti-Christian America.
      As of this announcement, we have 212 items in the list. Check it out and add your own suggestions!

    • Added "And When We Got There the Cupboard Was Bare" by James Patrick Holding to the "Rebuttals to Jury" page
      Holding responds to James Still's Personal Observation

    • Added "Is ETDAV an Apologetic?" by Jeffery Jay Lowder to the "Rebuttals to Jury" page
      James Patrick Holding claims that Josh McDowell's ETDAV is not an apologetic. As Lowder shoes, Holding's thesis is dependent upon some (fictitious) difference between apologetic books designed for skeptics, and apologetic handbooks desgined for Christians who must defend their faith to skeptics.

  • September 12, 1997
  • September 9, 1997
  • September 8, 1997
  • September 7, 1997
    • Located a bookstore which has copies of Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology by William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith
      According to Big Bang cosmology, the universe began to exist about fifteen billion years ago with an explosion called `the Big Bang'. But was this explosion created by God, or did it occur without cause? In Part I, Christian philosopher William Lane Craig defends the theistic interpretation of Big Bang cosmology. In Part II, atheist philosopher Quentin Smith defends the atheistic interpretation. Part III contains Craig's and Smith's interpretations of Stephen Hawking's cosmology, and its implications for the existence of God. An excellent scholarly resource for anyone interested in the debate over Big Bang cosmology. Readers unfamiliar with Big Bang Theory may wish to consult other works before reading this one.

    • The Power of Penguins by Judith Hayes (The Happy Heretic, September 1997)
      Using the same ridiculous "tests" believers use to demonstrate the power of prayer, Judith Hayes demonstrates the power of penguins.

    • Can Everything Come to Be Without a Cause? (1994) [ 33K ] by Quentin Smith
      A refutation of T. D. Sullivan's claim that it is impossible for the universe to come to be without a cause. In the course of arguing that it is possible that the universe came to be causelessly, Smith outlines an argument that it is necessary that the universe began with a big-bang singularity if it began causelessly.

    • Cowan-Krueger Debate on the Existence of God
      Doug Kreuger just earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy and is the author of a short, forthcoming introduction to atheism. Steve Cowan is a local preacher and also holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy. This will be their third debate together.

    • II Top Ten Bestsellers List
      The top ten best-selling books in the II Bookstore

    • A Short Glossary for Culture Warriors by Tim Gorski
      A humorous collection of some terms you might hear tossed around in a political discussion.

  • September 6, 1997
    • Help Needed
      Many of you have responded to our request for volunteers in the II FAQ. We're now maintaining a list of all the areas in which we can use volunteers. If you're interested in helping II, please check this page often, as we will be updating it to reflect current needs.

  • September 4, 1997
    • Added First Amendment Pledge (Off Site) to the Activists' Corner List of Related Sites
      In the tradition of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, this site encourages everyone to take the "First Amendment Pledge," which reads as follows: "I pledge to support free speech and free expression for all Americans and to urge Congress to uphold the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and pass no law abridging our freedom of speech."

    • July 1997 Feedback
      Some of the feedback Internet Infidels received during July 1997 on the Secular Web, along with some responses.

    • Causation and the Logical Impossibility of a Divine Cause (1996) by Quentin Smith
      "Virtually all contemporary theists, agnostics and atheists ... [have] assumed that the sentence, 'God is the originating cause of the universe', does not express a logical contradiction . . . . I believe the prevalence of this assumption is due to the fact that philosophers have not undertaken the requisite sort of metaphysical investigation into the nature of causation. This investigation is the purpose of this paper; specifically, I shall argue that the thesis that the universe has an originating divine cause is logically inconsistent with all extant definitions of causality and with a logical requirement upon these and all possible valid definitions or theories of causality. I will conclude that the cosmological and teleological arguments for a cause of the universe may have some force but that these arguments, traditionally understood as arguments for the existence of God, are in fact arguments for the nonexistence of God."

  • September 3, 1997
    • The Anthropic Coincidences, Evil and the Disconfirmation of Theism (1995) by Quentin Smith
      "The anthropic principle or the associated anthropic coincidences have been used by philosophers such as John Leslie (1989), William Lane Craig (1988) and Richard Swinburne (1990) to support the thesis that God exists. In this paper I shall examine Swinburne's argument from the anthropic coincidences. I will show that Swinburne's premises, coupled with his principle of credulity and the failure of his theodicy in TheExistence of God, disconfirms theism and confirms instead the hypothesis that there exists a malevolent creator of the universe."

    • Internal and External Causal Explanations of the Universe (1995) by Quentin Smith
      Citing both philosophical considerations and modern day physics, Smith argues that "it is nomologically necessary that a beginningless universe has an internal causal explanation (be it deterministic or probabilistic) but no external causal explanation."

    • Stephen Hawking's Cosmology and Theism (1994) by Quentin Smith
      Stephen Hawking has recently argued that there is 'no place for a creator', that God does not exist. Yet theists have jumped all over this statement, claiming it blatantly fails as an argument for God's nonexistence. Specifically, they have argued that even if Hawking's physical laws are true, that fact does not entail that the God of classical theism does not exist or even disconfirm the classical theistic hypothesis. It seems to me that a case can be made that Hawking's physical laws are inconsistent with classical theism. I shall develop an argument to this effect in the present paper. Although this argument is not explicit in Hawking's writings, it is arguably implicit in or based upon his theory. I shall argue that that the proposition, "Hawking's wave function law obtains", entails the proposition that "God does not exist."

See "What's New?" for past months.

 
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