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Once upon a time, Carl Sagan predicted the appearance of an atheistic nature-religion: “A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge” [...]
Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category
On Atheistic Religion
January 8th, 2012 
Eric Steinhart 
Posted in 'Nuff Said, Atheism, Culture, Featured, Naturalism, Philosophy, Religion, Religion and Science 
59 Comments »Atheistic Wicca
January 8th, 2012 Eric Steinhart [This is the next to last post in my long series on atheism and Wicca.] My approach to Wicca has been critical. For philosophers at least, and hopefully for any rational person, criticism is based on careful analysis; it points to both the good and to the bad, to the true and to the false. [...]
Posted in Atheism, Featured, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Rationalism, Religion and Science, Wicca 16 Comments »Criticizing Wicca: Magic is Unethical
January 7th, 2012 Eric Steinhart [This is part of a series looking at atheism and Wicca.] Many Wiccans practice magic. Skeptics, rationalists, and naturalists may all be tempted to try to use science to refute the effectiveness of magic. Although such refutations do persuade some people, they often fail to accomplish anything: despite the best efforts of scientific debunkers, magical [...]
Criticizing Wicca: Magic is Unreliable
January 7th, 2012 Eric Steinhart [This is part of a long series looking at atheism and Wicca.] Any procedure for changing an initial situation (the start) into a desired situation (the goal) can be tested for its effectiveness. As used here, effectiveness is a matter of degree, so that procedures can be more or less effective. The simplest way to measure [...]
Criticizing Wicca: Magic
January 6th, 2012 Eric Steinhart [Magic is a pseudo-technology based on the pseudo-science of mysterious energy. It’s purpose is to provide the illusion of control. This post briefly describes how some Wiccans conceive of magic. Many Wiccans reject the use of magic altogether, or consider it entirely independent of Wicca. Thus the two should not be confused. After this brief [...]
Posted in Atheism, Featured, Intellectual Vices, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Rationalism, Wicca 7 Comments »The Illusion of Control
January 6th, 2012 Eric Steinhart [Much of the content and practice of religion is based on regulating (arousing, maintaining, and inhibiting) the illusion of control. This illusion is briefly described here. The neural basis of this illusion is clearly exposed in Wiccan texts. The illusion of control is said to be an adaptive illusion with personal and prosocial benefits. The [...]
Posted in Atheism, Epistemology, Featured, Intellectual Vices, Paganism, Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Wicca 2 Comments »The Atheism and Wicca Series So Far
January 5th, 2012 Eric Steinhart Some folks have jumped into this series just recently, and others have had some trouble following due to the server problems in the last two days. The point of this series is to critically examine Wicca (and other neo-paganisms) through the lens of atheistic analytic philosophy of religion. So here’s the list of links to [...]
Posted in Atheism, Featured, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Rationalism, Religion and Science, Wicca 2 Comments »Spiritual Exercises for Atheists
January 5th, 2012 Eric Steinhart Spiritual exercises (askesis) are practical activities for mental self-empowerment. They are intended to facilitate successful achievement by increasing the degree to which the self is mentally or emotionally prepared to perform. Spiritual exercises are not magic. Spiritual exercises are distinct from magic because they focus on causing changes in the self while magic focuses on [...]
Posted in Atheism, Evidence, Featured, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Psychology, Rationalism, Religion and Science, Wicca 11 Comments »Rational Rebirth
January 5th, 2012 Eric Steinhart Kurt Gödel (1906-1978) was an Austrian-American logician and mathematician. He is best known for his incompleteness theorems and his work in axiomatic set theory. However, he also produced some deeply interesting philosophical arguments. Some of these are found in his unpublished papers and letters. One of these is an argument for life after death (for [...]
Posted in Atheism, Featured, Metaphysics, Paganism, Philosophy, Rationalism, Religion and Science, Wicca 80 Comments »The Eternal Return of the Same
January 4th, 2012 Eric Steinhart The classical versions of eternal recurrence say that recurrence occurs within our universe. Those classical versions say that there is a cyclical pattern of events in our space-time. Since the classical theory of eternal recurrence makes claims about our universe, it is open to scientific study. And it is almost certainly false. There is no [...]
From Aristotle through Buddhism to Nietzsche
January 4th, 2012 Eric Steinhart Among all the classical theories of life after death, the one that seems to be most consistent with naturalism is the ancient Buddhist concept of rebirth. This concept is developed in Theraveda Buddhism. Theravedic Buddhism is an atheistic (or non-theistic) religion. Rebirth is linked to the Theravedic doctrines of impermanence and no-self. These doctrines imply [...]
The Soul is the Form of the Body
January 4th, 2012 Eric Steinhart According to the Wiccan theory of reincarnation, your soul leaves your body at death and enters a new body at conception. The Wiccan theory of reincarnation thus presupposes that human beings are soul-body composites. It is a type of soul-body dualism. Cunningham writes “The soul is ageless, sexless, nonphysical, possessed of the divine spark of [...]
Posted in Atheism, Biology, Featured, Historical Philosophy, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Wicca 
Tags: Aristotle, Aristotle on Soul, Aristotle vs. Descartes, Atheist views of the soul, Contemporary Hylomorphism, Hylomorphism, Reincarnation, Soul as program, What is the soul?, Wicca on Soul 17 Comments »Reincarnation
January 3rd, 2012 Eric Steinhart [I’m doing a long series of posts on atheism and Wicca. I am not a Wiccan - I'm an outsider. There are many good reasons why atheists should be interested in Wicca or neo-paganism more generally. When I discuss some topic in Wicca, I do it in three stages: First, I try to give an accurate presentation of [...]
The Atheist Wheel of the Year
January 3rd, 2012 Eric Steinhart The Wheel of the Year involves eight solar holidays (the sabbats). The sabbats include the solar quarter days (the solstices and the equinoxes) as well as the solar cross-quarter days intermediate between the quarters. For theistic Wiccans, these days symbolize events in the life-cycles of the god and goddess. These days are marked by sabbat [...]
Posted in Astronomy, Atheism, Cultural Secularism, Culture, Featured, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Wicca 68 Comments »Criticizing Wicca: The Wheel of the Year
January 2nd, 2012 Eric Steinhart The Wheel of the Year is a division of the solar year into eight holidays (the solstices, the equinoxes, and four days in-between). Insofar as the days on the Wheel of the Year mark natural points in the orbit of the earth around the sun, the Wheel marks a natural pattern. It marks a natural [...]
Posted in Atheism, Featured, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Rationalism, Religion and Science, Wicca 1 Comment »The Ontological Argument Against God
January 2nd, 2012 Eric Steinhart Many atheists seem to hate all metaphysics; perhaps the hatred is motivated by the notion that all metaphysics eventually leads to God. Of course, that is entirely false – there is a long tradition of purely atheistic metaphysics, which is as deep and abstract as theistic metaphysics. Any atheism that embraces rigorous metaphysical thinking is [...]
The Wheel of the Year
January 2nd, 2012 Eric Steinhart [I’m doing a long series of posts on atheism and Wicca. I am not a Wiccan - I'm an outsider. There are many good reasons why atheists should be interested in Wicca or neo-paganism more generally. When I discuss some topic in Wicca, I do it in three stages: First, I try to give [...]
Two Arguments for Evolution by Rational Selection
January 1st, 2012 Eric Steinhart Although there is some empirical justification for the Principles of Sufficient Reason and Plenitude, much of the discussion of the logic of creation and evolution by rational selection has been highly abstract. It has been a priori; a matter of pure reason. But it is reasonable to demand empirical justification for those metaphysical theories. To [...]
On Evolution by Rational Selection
January 1st, 2012 Eric Steinhart Almost all atheists are surely aware of Darwinian evolution, which is evolution by natural selection, and which explains the history of life on earth. Universal Darwinism is the thesis that evolutionary principles operate beyond earthly biology. Of course, not all things have genes or compete for survival in ecosystems. More general evolutionary theories need not [...]
Question about Atheists and Self-Consistency
December 31st, 2011 Eric Steinhart [Please head over to the newer post On Defining Atheism and Atheists.] Consider the following description of a human being X: X believes that a personal God exists and X believes that a personal God does not exist. I’m interested in which of these options you’d say is correct: (A) There is no person who [...]
On Preachers Who Don’t Believe in God
December 31st, 2011 Eric Steinhart As a counterpoint to the infamous posts on atheists who believe in God, I offer Dennett and LaScola’s work on preachers who don’t believe in God. Here is a Dennett and LaScola paper and here is their forthcoming website called The Clergy Project. But wait! Surely no atheist would believe in God! And surely no [...]
The Logic of Creation
December 31st, 2011 Eric Steinhart At a very high level of abstraction, Sabin characterizes the god and goddess as symbols for two aspects of natural creative power (natura naturans, being-itself as the power to be). She says that “The God represents, among other things, power unmanifest; the spark of life. The Goddess gives this power form” (2011: 117). We experience [...]
Posted in Atheism, Cosmology, Featured, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Religion and Science, Wicca 15 Comments »Creation Stories
December 31st, 2011 Eric Steinhart Many religions have creation stories. The Judeo-Christian creation stories are found in the first chapters of Genesis, which is the first book of the Bible. There is no need to repeat the Genesis stories here. It can be agreed that there are some metaphorical or analogical correspondences between the Genesis stories and our best science. [...]
More on Religious Diversity among Atheists
December 30th, 2011 Eric Steinhart [I did a short post on this two days ago; I’ve since dug further into the full Pew report and found more and stranger religious diversity among atheists.] The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life conducts the US Religious Landscape Survey. The survey is statistically sound, and thus its percentages can be reasonably extrapolated [...]
Posted in Atheism, Culture, Featured, Law & Politics, Philosophy, Rationalism, Religion, Religion and Science 38 Comments »Revelation versus Manifestation
December 30th, 2011 Eric Steinhart The Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are religions of revelation. As is well-known, these religions are derived from the experiences of religiously privileged individuals (prophets, messiahs, inspired writers) to whom it is alleged that God spoke. These religions say that God revealed special information to these privileged people. This information comes neither from our [...]
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