What's New Archive ● 2016 ● February
What's New on the Secular Web?
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February 17, 2016
New in the Kiosk: Was Jesus an Extraordinary Person? (2016) by Michael D. Reynolds
The conventional notion about the character of Jesus is that he was an extraordinary person: unique, grand, captivating, a paragon of virtue, and a teacher of concepts that all human beings should use to govern their lives. But is this true? The biographical material shows that Jesus was not a peace-maker, did not offer socially useful ideas other than being charitable, possessed no ethical concepts more advanced than those of his society, and did not have original thoughts. The evidence does not prove that he was charismatic. The prevalent notions that Jesus was the perfect human being, a great teacher, or the perfect moralist are constructs created because of the belief that he was divine.
February 11, 2016
Added Alvin Plantinga Can't Say That, Can He? A Review of Where the Conflict Really Lies (2016) by Richard M. Smith to the Alvin Plantinga page under Criticisms of Christian Apologetics and Apologists page, the Argument to Design page under Arguments for the Existence of a God, and the Naturalism page under Nontheism in the Modern Documents section of the Secular Web Library.
In Where the Conflict Really Lies, Alvin Plantinga maintains that any apparent conflict between science and classical Christian theism is superficial at best, and that the real conflict lies between science and the "quasi-religion" of naturalism. In fact, because there is evidence of biological and cosmological "fine-tuning," he claims, science may even provide evidence that God exists. In this review Richard M. Smith critiques what Plantinga has to say about three main topics: design arguments that purport to show a deep concord between science and theism, scientific challenges to theism from biological evolution and divine action in the world, and Plantinga's frontal assault on naturalism—that thinking would be impossible and cognition would be unreliable if naturalism were true.