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June 29, 2009

New in the Kiosk: Raising Kids Without Religion (2009) by J. Cafesin

"We must teach our children to recognize their radiating effects on all they touch, and not only acknowledge their mighty power but embrace the responsibility that comes with it to further humanity's development, not for rewards in an afterlife, but to help make it possible for generations to come to experience living."

June 22, 2009

Added Review of The Riddle of Resurrection (2009) by Robert Oerter to the Resurrection page under Christianity in the Modern Documents section of the Secular Web Library.

In the early 20th century anthropologist James Frazer proposed a recurrent dying-and-rising-gods motif in pre-Christian Near Eastern mythology. In The Riddle of Resurrection, Tryggve Mettinger attempts to revive this notion, but only by questionably redefining resurrection to mean some sort of continued existence after death. Mettinger concludes that there is no compelling evidence for a connection between this motif and Christianity, but nevertheless that the existence of such a connection remains an open question. This is an important qualification because popular Christian authors have cited Mettinger's work as evidence that there were no pagan influences on Christian beliefs about Jesus. In fact Mettinger denies having provided any sort of complete study which might support the uniqueness of the Christian concept of resurrection.

June 12, 2009

New in the Bookstore: Not the Impossible Faith (2009) by Richard Carrier.

Not the Impossible Faith is a tour de force, dissecting and refuting the oft-repeated claim that Christianity could not have succeeded in the ancient world unless it were true. Dr. Carrier surveys a whole range of topics regarding the origin of Christianity and its cultural context, demonstrating that its success has entirely natural explanations and nothing to do with whether its supernatural claims were true. Written with occasional humor and an easy style, thoroughly referenced, and with many entertaining "gotcha!" moments, Not the Impossible Faith is a must-read for anyone interested in the origins of Christianity.

June 11, 2009

Added Cataract (2009) by Mark Vuletic to the Evidential Arguments from Evil page in the Modern Documents section of the Secular Web Library.

Does horrendous suffering constitute evidence against the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and infinitely benevolent God? In this colorful hypothetical dialogue (based upon a real one in the philosophical literature), Mark Vuletic considers the primary issue of contention between the defender and skeptic of God's goodness: Could any amount of suffering ever constitute evidence against the goodness of God?

June 4, 2009

Added A Bug in William Lane Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument (2009) by Jeffrey T. Allen to the Theistic Cosmological Arguments page in the Modern Documents section of the Secular Web Library.

A crucial premise of William Lane Craig's kalam cosmological argument (KCA) is that the universe began to exist. Craig supplements the KCA itself with a secondary argument for this crucial premise. That secondary argument, in turn, presumes that an actual infinite cannot exist. In this essay, Jeffrey T. Allen argues that if an omniscient God exists, the premise that an actual infinite cannot exist is false, as an omniscient God would need to know an infinite number of truths about himself. Thus Craig's defense of his KCA appears to entail a premise that contradicts the conclusion of his KCA. As long as Craig does not offer some alternative defense of the KCA premise that the universe began to exist, and unless he can justify limiting to the physical world, his KCA premise that whatever begins to exist has a cause, he must either concede that it is false that an actual infinite cannot exist, or else that God does not exist.

May 30, 2009

Added Review of God and the New Atheism (2009) by Bart Klink to the Faith & Reason and Theism pages in the Modern Documents section of the Secular Web Library.

"The new atheism" refers to a recent revival of popular atheist books, particularly in the United States, which critique both the grounds for belief in God and the detrimental effects of religion on society. The popularity of these books has naturally spawned a religious counteroffensive, the latest installment of which is John F. Haught's God and the New Atheism. Though Haught laments the new atheists' indifference to theology, a case could be made that theological nuances are irrelevant to the views held by most ordinary believers, and that this is the real target of critique. Moreover, Haught completely misses the main point of the new atheists: that all religious doctrines lack reasonable justification. In the end, their central point is untouched: that faith requires belief without evidence, and that in the absence of evidence, any imaginable (self-consistent) belief is as credible as any other—so there is no good reason to adopt one unevidenced belief over any other.

May 23, 2009

New in the Kiosk: Was Jesus Raised from the Dead? : A Response to William Lane Craig's Resurrection Argument (2009) by Nick Covington

"The only way that Craig can criticize the account I have given is by arguing that his theory, that Jesus was raised from the dead, is to be preferred because it is simpler than proposing a theory to account for the empty tomb and proposing an independent theory to account for the post-mortem appearances of Jesus. The 'simplicity' of Craig's theory is only skin deep. My account of Craig's 'four facts' involves well-known and well-documented cultural phenomena, whereas his account proposes a God which intervenes in human affairs, for which I have yet to see any convincing evidence."

May 2, 2009

Added Job Opening: Creator of the Universe—A Reply to Keith Parsons (2009) by Paul Herrick to the Theistic Cosmological Arguments page under Arguments for the Existence of a God in the Modern Documents section of the Secular Web Library.

In "No Creator Need Apply: A Reply to Roy Abraham Varghese," Keith Parsons argues that the success of science in explaining the world makes belief in God logically unnecessary, as science is fast approaching a point where everything has been explained by a completed and well-confirmed physics. As science progresses, he argues, we are left with less and less need to hypothesize the existence of a Creator. But to the contrary, Paul Herrick argues that philosophical theism rests on a rationally satisfying and philosophically attractive logical basis that cannot, in principle, be overturned by the continued progress of natural science.

April 26, 2009

New in the Bookstore: Resurrection Reconsidered: Thomas and John in Controversy (1995) by Gregory J. Riley.

Resurrection Reconsidered an eye-opening exposition of the various views of resurrection among early Christians that centers on the protracted debate within early Christian circles concerning a foundational aspect of the Gospel of Thomas and its related literature: the concept of the body and resurrection. It traces the background of this idea in the Semitic and Greco-Roman world, and its expression in the Thomas literature as a whole: the Gospel of Thomas, the Book of Thomas, and the Acts of Thomas. But the inspiration for the study, and its main focus, is the controversy between the two closely related Christian communities of Thomas and John, between the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of John on the issue of resurrection, which is expressed in John most clearly in the story of Doubting Thomas.

New in the Kiosk: Easter Thoughts (2009) by Neil Lucock

"Easter is the main Christian festival and a central part of the Christian religion, so, feeling inquisitive after spotting a poster at the railway station I checked out a local church web site. They said that God sent his 'son' as a sacrifice to forgive us our sins so we could have eternal life. There are some problems with that statement..."

April 16, 2009

Posted the final assessment in the Carrier-O'Connell debate, On Paul's Theory of Resurrection.

After some delay due to a search for two replacement judges whom both debaters would agree upon, the average total assessment of the Carrier-O'Connell debate has been posted, as well as the individual assessments of the winner, margin of victory, and most salient aspects of the arguments offered by both debaters.