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Jaime: Okay, so why do you believe that your god is a good explanation for the universe? Robin: Because everything that exists needs an explanation and the universe is no exception. Jaime: But then why doesn’t your god need an explanation? Aren’t we just headed for an infinite regress unless you just admit that something doesn’t need [...]
Archive for the ‘Arguments Against The Existence of God’ Category
Examining Some Alleged Divine Attributes
February 21st, 2012 
Daniel Fincke 
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Christianity, Christianity, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion 
Tags: Classical Theism, Divine Attributes, Divine Simplicity, Divine Timelessness, Eternal, God, God's Timelessness, Immutability, Temporality and Eternality, Theistic God, Timeless 
22 Comments »Is It Just A Mystery Whether God Exists?
February 16th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Robin: Jaime, what bothers me about your atheism is that it’s so dogmatic. You claim to know there is no God. That’s so arrogant. Jaime: Yes, I claim to know there are no gods. But I don’t claim it dogmatically or arrogantly. I claim it based upon the fact that the evidence is overwhelmingly against [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, God, God, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism Tags: Agnostic Theism, Believing by Faith, Can We Know There Is No God?, Dogmatic Atheism, Faith vs. Knowledge, Gnostic Atheism, God and the Mystery Excuse, God is a Mystery, Is God Just A Mystery?, Knowing There Is No God, Metaphysics, Mystery, Mystery vs. Pseudomystery, What is a mystery? 70 Comments »God and Goodness
January 30th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Robin: Look, I get it, Jaime. As an atheist, you think that God’s wisdom is foolishness, that God’s righteousness is wickedness, and that the bloody death of Jesus on the cross is hateful and ugly rather than the epitome of love and beauty that Christians like I think it is. The Bible makes it very [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Authority, Authority, Bible, Bible, Christianity, Christianity, Ethics, God, God, Metaethics, Metaethics, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Morality, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy Of Religion, Problem of Evil, Problem of Evil, Rationalism, Religion, Religion Tags: Divine Command Theory, God and Goodness, God's goodness, Theological Voluntarism 26 Comments »Criticizing Wicca: God and Goddess
December 29th, 2011 Eric Steinhart According to several Wiccan texts, the Wiccan ultimate deity manifests itself in two forms, the male god and the female goddess. The first way to think about the god and goddess is realistic. This is theological realism: the god and goddess are both real things. They exist. A Wiccan who thinks like this is ontologically [...]
Wicca and the Problem of Evil
December 28th, 2011 Eric Steinhart Many Wiccan writers criticize Christians for dividing the ultimate deity into a purely good God and a purely evil Devil. They deny this division. Buckland writes: “the idea of dividing the Supreme Power into two – good and evil – is the idea of an advanced and complex civilization. The Old Gods . . . [...]
John Shook: Proving God’s Existence Is Impossible
November 17th, 2011 Daniel Fincke This semester I have been teaching Philosophy of Religion using John Shook’s superbly thorough, systematic, incisive, and critical summation of the arguments for and against the existence of God, The God Debates: A 21st Century Guide for Atheists and Believers (and Everyone in Between). The book is impressive enough that I would give it the [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion 14 Comments »Defending Philosophy 1: A Reply To Dr. Coyne
October 29th, 2011 Daniel Fincke A little Nietzsche to set the tone: Of the friend Our faith in others betrays wherein we would dearly like to have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer. And often with our love we only want to leap over envy. And often we attack and make an enemy in order [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Historical Philosophy, Historical Philosophy, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Science, Science, Science 94 Comments »“Not Everything In Life Is Logical”
October 24th, 2011 Daniel Fincke When we rationalists, naturalists, and other assorted atheists insist that no one should form beliefs that disregard logic and evidence, the defenders of faith often tell us that “Not everything in life is logical”, or use some variant of this phrase. What might they mean by this? Where is their confusion exactly and how best [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Astronomy, Astronomy, Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Biology, Biology, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Evolution, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Physics, Physics, Rationalism, Religion, Religion and Science, Science, Science, Secularism, Technology, Technology Tags: "Not Everything In Life Is Logical", Logic, Naturalism 17 Comments »Documentary with Stephen Hawking about Whether God Created the Universe
October 22nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Your Thoughts?
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Physics, Physics, Religion, Religion and Science, Science, Science 2 Comments »A Debate About The Wisdom of Trying To Deconvert People
October 20th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Jaime: So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how best to debate the existence of God with religious believers… Kelly: Why would you do that? Jaime: Do what? Kelly: Debate the existence of God with religious believers. What’s the point in that? Jaime: What do you mean, “what’s the point?” We live in the [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Authority, Authority, Autonomy, Autonomy, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Benedict XVI, Religion, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church, Secularism Tags: Debate With Believers, Deconverting, Why Debate Believers? 14 Comments »What I Think About The Existence of God
September 2nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke In my “What I Think About” series, I am providing a compendium for my blogging up until now on key issues in atheism, philosophy of religion, and moral philosophy. In each post, I provide a short summary of my key positions and then offer links to the posts where I argue in greater depth for [...]
It's Atheism, Not Adeism
June 26th, 2011 Daniel Fincke As I have expressed a number of times in the past, I am a gnostic atheist. I am an atheist in the sense that I neither believe in nor worship, appease, pray to, or in any other way imagine myself to interact with personal gods. Simply lacking such belief and refraining from related practices is [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Featured, God, God, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion Tags: Agnostic Atheist, Agnosticism, Deism, Gnostic Atheist 12 Comments »Lawrence Krauss Replies To William Lane Craig's Crowing
April 5th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Physicist Lawrence Krauss recently debated William Lane Craig and was appalled by both his tactics in the debate and his subsequent representations of it. Krauss is eager to get his own account of events to a wider audience, so in the interest of contributing to that end, I am reproducing it in full below. You [...]
Can Atheists do Math?
March 2nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart Leibniz’s version of the cosmological argument (his Sufficient Reason Argument) runs from the continency of our universe to the existence of some necessary being. This necessary being is the ground of our universe. The ground isn’t part of our universe – it stands in no spatial, temporal, or causal relation to any [...]
The Fine Tuning Argument Debunked
February 26th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Your Thoughts?
Defending The Apparent Truth Of Evolution's Mindlessness
February 21st, 2011 Daniel Fincke Last Christmas Eve, I argued that the belief that God “guided evolution” was not a rationally respectable way to reconcile science with faith but rather it was essentially an effective denial of the theory of natural selection, in its scientifically explanatory sense. Part of the revolutionary character of the discovery of evolution by natural selection [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Biology, Biology, Creationism, Creationism, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Evolution, Evolution, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, God, God, Historical Philosophy, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Science, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Science, Secularism Tags: Alvin Plantinga, Eugenie Scott, Huston Smith, Jerry Coyne, National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT), National Center for Science Education (NCSE) 4 Comments »Pat Tillman In Hell? (Or "How NOT To Proselytize")
February 9th, 2011 Daniel Fincke John writes in to trivialize the tragic death of Pat Tillman because he was *gasp*—an atheist: I wanted to leave a comment about Pat Tillmans death in afganistan, while it is tragic, the greater tragedy is that if he was an athiest, He died not knowing ( or not believing )that Jesus died on the [...]
All Things Dull And Ugly
February 6th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Earlier this afternoon, I encouraged us to sing a hymn about how all things bright and beautiful were made by evolution. While many religious believers and non-believers alike could sing that song together, I worry some religious believers who do not believe in evolution may have been left out of all the fun and singing. [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, Christianity, Christianity, Comedy, Comedy, God, God, Hilarious, Music Videos, Music Videos, Parody, Parody, Problem of Evil, Problem of Evil, Religious Satire, Religious Satire, Satire, Satire, Videos Tags: Monty Python 2 Comments »How To Get Something From Nothing!
February 4th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel explains! (And in an accessible way which includes lots of pictures and comic strips!) (via) Your Thoughts?
The Atheism Tapes: Philosopher Colin McGinn
January 31st, 2011 Daniel Fincke Below is a good video in which Colin McGinn first talks in personal terms about he became an atheist and then the philosophical case for atheism: Your Thoughts?
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Secularism, Videos, Why I Am Not A Christian, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Colin McGinn 2 Comments »Disambiguating Faith: Faith Which Exploits Infinitesimal Probabilities As Openings For Strong Affirmations
January 8th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Pete C. argues that because our comprehension is limited, it is hubris for us to rule out faith in things that alleged to go beyond it: I’m not sure where I fall in the spectrum of agnosticism (if i belong there at all) so I can’t really self identify. But I will offer an explanation [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Faith, Faith, Featured, God, God, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Spinoza, Spinoza 2 Comments »Catch Up Before You Speak Up
January 6th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Luke Muehlhauser admonishes his fellow atheists to do a better job of catching up with the current states of various aspects of the scholarly debate between theism and atheism before presuming to publicly debate theists. He gives a couple instructive examples of failure to do so: In a debate with theist Bill Craig, agnostic Bart Ehrman [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Philosophy Of Religion Tags: Bart Ehrman, Bayes' Theorem, Christopher Hitchens, David Hume, JH Sobel, Logic and Theism, Luke Muehlhauser, Miracles, William Lane Craig 6 Comments »Atheist Philosopher Of Religion Keith Parsons Abandons Theism Debate And Calls Theist Positions Frauds
January 5th, 2011 Daniel Fincke This happened during last semester when I was less capable of blogging in a timely manner. Now that there’s a fresh article on it, I thought I would highlight this piece by Julia Galef summarizing what went down (particularly because it adds even a little more kindling to the excellent debate among the Camels With [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion Tags: Alvin Plantinga, Brian Leiter, Debunking Christianity, Keith Parsons, Leiter Reports, Peter van Inwagen, Prosblogian, Secular Outpost No Comments »1st TOP Q: “How, If At All, Can People’s Claims To Simply Intuit That There Is A God Be Rationally Refuted Or Supported?”
January 1st, 2011 Daniel Fincke Today’s inaugural open philosophical question is inspired by a good question raised this summer by long time friend of Camels With Hammers George W. of the blog Misplaced Grace. I am going to slightly modify his question since it involves addressing a particularly weak and willfully illogical form of an argument for the ability to [...]
Disambiguating Faith: The Evidence-Impervious Agnostic Theists
December 29th, 2010 Daniel Fincke A vast majority of believers, though probably not all, believed in God before they ever encountered any arguments for its existence. For obvious cultural and psychological reasons, the concept of God is intuitively understandable and believable for most children and by far most believers start believing in childhood. Even those who spend a short time as [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Faith, Faith, Featured, God, God, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion, Why I Am Not A Christian, Why I Am Not A Christian 21 Comments »
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