What's New Archive ● 2019 ● December
What's New on the Secular Web?
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December 30, 2019
Added Hume's Beautiful Argument (2019) by Keith Parsons to the Argument from Miracles and Resurrection pages in the Modern Documents section of the Secular Web Library.
The received view of Hume scholars is that Part I of David Hume's essay "Of Miracles" proffers an argument that it is never rational to accept a miracle claim on the basis on testimonial evidence. But even among those advocating the received view, there's debate about exactly what argument is being offered in Part I. More significantly, the received view of Part I is notoriously hard to reconcile with the four evidential arguments offered in Part II of the essay. For if no testimony would ever be sufficient to establish that a miracle has occurred under any circumstances, why bother to evaluate whether the testimony that we actually have is good enough to rationally accept that any miracles have in fact occurred? In this essay Keith Parsons reconciles Parts I and II of Hume's long-debated "Of Miracles" by interpreting Part I to be allowing the possibility that one could rationally affirm the occurrence of a miracle on the basis of testimony in an ideal case. Part II then simply aims to show that no actual miracle claims even come close to approximating the ideal case. That is, in Part I Hume the philosopher lays out exactly how heavy a burden of proof the miracle claimant must meet when miracle claims are directed toward the well-prepared skeptic. Then in Part II Hume the historian cites the historical evidence that has been offered for miracle claims to show how unlikely it is that any actual miracle claim can meet such a burden. These two parts combine to show that, while it is in principle possible to substantiate a miracle claim with human testimony, the actual circumstances of such claims disclose a vast gap between what is verifiable in principle and what is confirmable in practice.
New in the Kiosk: The Internet Gives Doubters a Home (2019) by James A. Haught
The Internet provides a worldwide haven for freethought—and it also creates more freethought. If in-person meetings can't make a sanctuary for doubters, cyberland can. Religions spent centuries draining believers' resources to build a trillion-dollar global labyrinth of cathedrals, churches, mosques, temples, synagogues, etc. Skeptics have only a few physical citadels. But, with little investment, the secular movement is making a worldwide intellectual home in the scientific marvel of cyberspace.
Recommended reading from the Bookstore: Doubting Jesus' Resurrection: What Happened in the Black Box? (2nd Edition) (2014) by Kris D. Komarnitsky.
Doubting Jesus' Resurrection begins at the Bible's account of a discovered empty tomb three days after Jesus' death. Considering scholarship from both sides of the aisle, it explains why there is good reason to conclude that this tradition is a legend. Following up on this possibility, Doubting Jesus' Resurrection turns its attention to the earliest recorded Christian beliefs that Jesus was raised on the third day and that he appeared to many people. Covering many topics often encountered in discussions about Jesus' resurrection, this book proposes an answer to the question: What plausibly could have caused the rise of these extraordinary beliefs if there never was a discovered empty tomb and Jesus did not actually rise from the dead?
December 21, 2019
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While politicians continue to pander to citizens' religious sensibilities, younger generations are increasingly—and likely irrevocably—secularizing the country. For the first time in US history, in 2019 the number of Americans who identify as nonreligious overtook those who identify as Catholic or evangelical. The General Social Survey's data points plainly show the nonreligious as the only 'affiliation' whose numbers are not declining or stagnating, but rising steadily. At the same time, hopes that millennials might turn back to religion as they get older and start families are not being realized; as one report put it, "there's mounting evidence that today's younger generations may be leaving religion for good." And as another report added, "the rise of religious non-affiliation in America looks like one of those rare historical moments that is neither slow, nor subtle, nor cyclical."
For over two decades Internet Infidels has shaped minds around the world by making hard-to-find material about atheism and naturalism freely available to anyone with Internet access. Whether underscoring the conflict between science and religion or exposing the all-too-human origins of Bronze-age myths about the Canaanite god of metallurgy, Internet Infidels is the only nonprofit that provides an extensive counterbalance to supernaturalistic ideologies.
