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Honorary Board
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What's New on the Secular Web?
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September 30, 2013
Added Psychopathology in Religious Ideation: The Case of Death by Proxy (2013) by Michael Moore to the Psychology of Religion page under Theism in the Modern Documents section of the Secular Web Library.
A large body of data suggests a causal relationship between religiosity and psychopathology. One illustration of such a connection is the delusional belief in "death by proxy," such as Greek orator Aelius Aristides belief that he could appease the Greek god Asclepius by sacrificing two of his foster sister's children in place of himself, 16th-century Jewish scholar Yosef Caro's belief that, although he was condemned to death, the death of his first wife and three children substituted for his own death, and psychoanalyst Carl Jung's belief that his doctor's death due to septicemia substituted for his own death, allowing him to survive an illness that would have otherwise killed him. Belief in death by proxy presumes that a divine being takes oneself to be so important that another human being can be sacrificed in one's stead, approaching what DSM-IV labels delusional disorder—grandiose type and bordering on the psychopathological.
September 27, 2013
New in the Bookstore: Rose's Will (2012) by Denise DeSio.
Meant to plant the seed where it needs to be planted most--with readers who might be believers--DeSio's award-winning debut novel, Rose's Will, is a fictionalized account of the bizarre circumstances surrounding her mother's death and the Bulgarian Holocaust survivor her mother left behind. Incidental to that, atheist and humanists should find it refreshing to see themselves in DeSio's characters. As the author puts it: "I imagine that even atheists like to read a novel once in a while, especially when it contains atheist characters that are portrayed in a positive light."
September 16, 2013
New in the Kiosk: Ignorance and Identity
(2013) by Zach Steward
"By most religious reckoning, history is and always has been a foregone conclusion. All wisdom, all grace, all law was bestowed upon human beings long before the arrival of any now present, and so there is nothing for the living to do but fulfill someone else's plan for them. We are relieved of the burden of free will and responsibility for our misdeeds by a simple act of repentance. In effect, God finished us, and long ago. When a human being rejects this conception of the universe, they simultaneously reject the hubris and vanity required to create it in favor of a universe where real choice reigns, along with real possibility, opportunity, discovery, maturity and the right to know."
August 22, 2013
New in the Kiosk: Teach the Controversy? (2013) by James R. Henderson
Stephen Meyer tries to make the case for "teaching the controversy" between Darwinian evolution and intelligent design by arguing (1) there is, in fact, such a scientific controversy, (2) voters support the idea of teaching the controversy, (3) the Constitution allows for and encourages the idea of teaching the controversy, and (4) that it makes good pedagogical sense to teach the controversy. I show that each of these points is either false or irrelevant. Further, Meyer charges the scientific community with censorship in keeping intelligent design out of textbooks and the classroom. To show this charge is false, I consider the lengthy evolution of continental drift/plate tectonics from novel concept to scientific orthodoxy.
July 29, 2013
New in the Kiosk: The Fundamentalist and the Creator, or God is an Atheist (2013) by Attila Romenian
Could God, in effect, embrace some or many of the tenets of atheism? This entertaining short story seems to suggest that possibility.
July 24, 2013
Added Objective Ethics Without Religion (2013) by Richard Schoenig to the Without God, What Grounds Right and Wrong?, Without God, How Do We Determine What's Right and Wrong?, and Why Should Atheists Be Moral? pages under Morality and Atheism, as well as the Moral Arguments page under Arguments for the Existence of a God, in the Modern Documents section of the Secular Web Library.
Is atheism compatible with objective moral facts? In this paper Richard Schoenig defends a justifiable objective moral code based on seven principles comprising two general prescriptions. Schoenig goes on to argue that this basic ethical rationalism—and by extension, objective morality—does not depend on the existence of any supernatural being and is justified by the fact that all moral agents would have a greater chance of achieving more of their plans of life if they lived in a society that followed ethical rationalism rather than one that followed any other moral code. Consequently, the moral argument for theism from ethical objectivity is shown to be unsound, for it depends on the false premise that the only way to account for ethical objectivity is to posit the existence of a supernatural being who grounds it.
July 2, 2013
New in the Kiosk: The Moral Argument for God's Existence (2013) by James R. Henderson
Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli advocate a version of the moral argument for god's existence that relies on the proposition that objective morality can have no objective basis for the physicalist. They argue that the physicalist must claim morality (if it exists) is based on matter and motion that is blind to all human striving. I argue that this mischaracterizes the options of the physicalist and that objective morality can be sustained by the physicalist. If this is the case, their argument fails.
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