What's New Archive ● 2011 ● May
What's New on the Secular Web?
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May 19, 2011
New in the Bookstore: Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are (2011) by Bart D. Ehrman.
It is often said, even by critical scholars who should know better, that "writing in the name of another" was widely accepted in antiquity. But New York Times bestselling author Bart D. Ehrman dares to call it what it was: literary forgery, a practice that was as scandalous then as it is today. In Forged, Ehrman takes readers back to the ancient world, where forgeries were used as weapons by unknown authors to fend off attacks to their faith and establish their church. Ehrman's fascinating story of fraud and deceit is essential reading for anyone interested in the truth about the Bible and the dubious origins of Christianity's sacred texts.
May 18, 2011
New in the Kiosk: Evolution for Creationists (2011) by Craig Gosling
Creationists claim that science cannot demonstrate evolution in the lab before their eyes. Creationists demand that they need this kind of proof if they are to accept evolution. Gosling sets the record straight.
May 10, 2011
Updated Creation ex nihilo - without God (1997, 2011) by Mark Vuletic on the Cosmological Arguments page under Theistic Arguments, as well as the Creationism - Evolution page, in the Modern Documents section of the Secular Web Library.
In a long overdue update to this popular article, Mark Vuletic offers a short but informed discussion of whether physical processes could have produced the universe from nothing. This discussion is divided into three main sections: (1) Can Something Come from Nothing? (2) Can the Universe Come from Nothing? and (3) Is the "Nothing" of the Physicists Really Nothing? This discussion is supplemented with an updated list of quotes from popular science works supporting the idea that the universe could come into existence from nothing via natural processes.
May 4, 2011
Added A Simple Statement of the Problem of Evil (2011) by Keith Parsons to the Evidential Arguments from Evil page under Arguments for Atheism in the Modern Documents section of the Secular Web Library.
If God is all-powerful, then he can prevent evil; and if he is as good as can be, then he will prevent it. Why, then, does evil exist? The existence of evil implies that either God is not all-powerful, or he is not perfectly good. And if the traditional God must be both, then the existence of evil entails that such a God does not exist. Unless, of course, God has some morally sufficient reason for permitting evil—to prevent even greater evils, perhaps, or to enable some greater good. But examples of apparently pointless evils could be multiplied indefinitely, and some evils are so egregiously awful that no conceivable attendant good would be great enough to justify permitting them. But perhaps there are attendant goods that we, with our finite minds, simply cannot conceive. Perhaps; but this solution comes at a price. If we can have no inkling of what God would permit to happen, then we can equally have no inkling of whether God does, or even could, exist.