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CA114 Animal Suffering is Evidence Against God
Is the kind, degree, and distribution of animal suffering evidence against theism? We discuss why teleological evil, the scale of suffering in evolutionary history, and the moral randomness of animal pain is strong evidence against the existence of God.
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Debate: Is Animal Suffering Evidence That God Does Not Exist? w/ Perspective Philosophy
Perspective Philosophy and I recently had a friendly debate about the problem of evil, metaethics, the contingency argument, and how he maintains his worldview as a catholic and vegan.
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Unknown Arguments For & Against God
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CA113 God’s Personality Change?
Is there any moral clash between the depiction of Yahweh and Jesus Christ?
Catholic Answers recently responded to a question I had originally asked when I was 19. On Twitter, I’d recounted an experience I had with Frank Turek when I was struggling to hold onto my faith:
Joe Heschmeyer, writing for catholic.com, made a much more respectable and empathetic attempt to answer the question, which we’ll be taking a (critical) look at today.
God’s Personality Change? – Catholic Answers
Good God? – David Bentley Hart
Slavery in the Bible – Counter Apologetics
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For those who are curious, I asked Frank Turek the question in August 2014 in Manitou Springs, Colorado. I attended a two-week apologetics camp called Summit.
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Bonus: Mormonism is More Defensible Than You Think (w/ LDS Philosophy & Thoughtful Faith)
I was recently invited on Thoughtful Faith’s channel to share my thoughts about why LDS theology may have a few philosophical advantages over more mainstream versions of Christianity. For example, Mormons reject perfect being theism in favor of a limited god, which opens up new avenues in responding to arguments from evil that are not available to other Christians. Rather than forwarding creation ex nihilo, Mormons believe the universe is eternal. God is a part of nature rather than outside it; he organized our universe from pre-existing material. Latter-day Saints also reject the standard, logically incoherent view of the trinity. Strikingly, they reject the notion of eternal conscious torment for the vast majority of non-Christians. Universalism (or something like it) is the default view in the LDS Church.
This is not “Christianity plus implausible stuff” – this is Christianity minus implausible stuff. Unless, that is, you consider eternal conscious torment, creation ex nihilo, and the baffling notion that our world was created by a perfect being to be valuable aspects of Christianity that somehow increase its plausibility.
The original clip on Thoughtful Faith’s channel
Why would a loving God create a place of ETERNAL torment? (feat. Emerson Green)
Full conversation with LDS Philosophy and Thoughtful Faith
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CA112 What’s the Best Explanation of Psychophysical Harmony? w/ Philip Goff & Dustin Crummett
Philip Goff and Dustin Crummett debate psychophysical harmony, God, axiarchism, pan-agentialism, natural teleology, and explore some neglected terrain between theism and the hypothesis of indifference. What are our options in explaining the fine-tuning of consciousness?
Twitter @waldenpod @Philip_Goff @dustin_crummett
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Music by ichika Nito & Whalers. Used with permission.
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CA111 How to Be a Christian When You Don’t Believe It’s True w/ Randal Rauser
I’m joined by Dr. Randal Rauser to discuss his new book, The Doubter’s Creed: How to Be a Christian When You Don’t Believe It’s True. We discuss the uniquely creedal character of Christianity, the credibility of doxastic voluntarism (the view that we can choose our beliefs at will), prudential reasons to hope Christianity is true, the dispute between William James and W.K. Clifford over belief without sufficient evidence, universalism, eternal conscious torment, religious disagreement, and whether non-Christians can be saved.
The Doubter’s Creed (currently $8.99 on Amazon)
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CA110 Addressing Popular Forms of Theism vs. the Best Forms
Should we address popular versions of theism? Or should we address the best, most defensible versions of theism?
To pursue the question of God’s existence, we must engage with the best forms of theism, not the worst. As Michael Huemer put it, “Who cares if you can refute the craziest version of a view? … The way to learn is to address the most interesting defensible views, not to spend our time discussing trivially false ideas.” Even if those trivially false ideas are widespread, wield lots of influence in the world, and are positively dangerous, they’re still trivially false. At worst, it’s deeply dishonest to refute the worst version of an idea, stop there, and act as if the entire idea has been refuted.
Depending on one’s goals, however, addressing the strongest forms of theism might seem like a waste of time. If you’re primarily concerned with atheist activism, helping others, and reducing the harm brought about by religion, why spend any time on things that have no significant influence in the world? The activists are generally more concerned with attacking the truth of influential beliefs that make the world worse. Philosophers are generally more concerned with addressing the best versions of each side, since that’s the best way of figuring out whether we should be theists, atheists, or agnostics. Though both are valuable and worthwhile projects, the main issue with the activist crowd is that they seem to think they’re the best at both, despite never engaging with the strongest versions of the view they reject.
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Discussion on Miracles
Friendly debate between three miracle skeptics and a theist.
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CA109 Meager Moral Fruits w/ Real Atheology
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CA108 Psychophysical Harmony, Physicalism, & God w/ Brian Cutter
Dr. Brian Cutter joins me to discuss his paper, ‘Psychophysical Harmony: A New Argument for Theism‘, coauthored with Dr. Dustin Crummett.
After talking about epiphenomenalism and why William James’ argument against it works against all views in philosophy of mind (with the lone exception of Type-A materialism), we explain why psychophysical harmony seems so improbable. We also discuss what I consider to be one of the weirder features of physicalism – the metaphysical impossibility of inverts, zombies, disharmony, and so on – and why one’s views about metaphysical modality won’t help you escape the argument from psychophysical harmony. In addition to touching on a few objections, we also talk about the underdetermination of the data, and why psychophysical harmony may be equally good evidence for some hypotheses of those who exist in The Nagel Zone.
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CA107 The Participation Theodicy — w/ John Buck
The participation theodicy holds, reasonably enough, that it would be good to create an ideal world. Since it would be good for God to do so, it would also be good for us to do so (as well as any other beings). The goodness would only be multiplied through our participation and contribution to the creation of an ideal world. The defender of the participation theodicy doesn’t deny that God could’ve created a much better world than ours — or even created us in heaven — and that this would be a good thing. Rather, they compare the goodness of creating a heavenly world ex nihilo to the goodness of creaturely participation in the creation of the same heavenly world. A unilateral divine act of ex nihilo creation would preclude the creative activities of other creatures. To quote my guest today, “The best sort of thing God could do would be to create the very best type of world for creatures to inhabit. But for creatures to be spontaneously generated in an ideal state of the world would be for them to miss out on helping God bring about that ideal world. So God, being generous, would have good reason to initially create creatures in a non-ideal state of the world, so that they could contribute towards bringing about its idealization, so that they too could do the very best type of thing that they could have done.”
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CA106 One Hell of a Problem – w/ Real Atheology & Counter Apologist
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Metaethics & Moral Realism w/ Michael Huemer
Dr. Michael Huemer joins me to discuss moral realism vs. antirealism, ethical intuitionism, phenomenal conservatism, moral disagreement, and much else in moral philosophy. (This aired originally on YouTube and Walden Pod.)
/ The Five Metaethical Positions /
purportedly refer to any sort of property, nor do evaluative statements assert propositions.
Error theory/nihilism: Moral statements (that imply that something has an evaluative property) are all false.
Evaluative truths are reducible to descriptive truths. Additionally, moral statements can be justified empirically.
Moral Non-Naturalism/Intuitionism: There are objective moral properties, and they are irreducible. Evaluative truths are not reducible to descriptive truths. Additionally, at least some moral truths are known intuitively.
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CA105 Responding to Trent Horn’s “5 Atheist Double Standards”
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Debate Breakdown w/ Ben Burgis: Christopher Hitchens vs. David Berlinski
This is my appearance on Ben Burgis’s channel. Ben and I listen to and comment on a debate between Christopher Hitchens and David Berlinkski over the motion “Atheism poisons everything.”
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CA104 How did religion evolve? w/ Naturalism Next
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Bonus: The Fall – w/ Christian Idealism & Invoking Theism
I’m joined by Christian Idealism and Invoking Theism to discuss how they see the Fall as non-young earth creationists. This was an impromptu recording in my hotel room at the Capturing Christianity conference in Houston. (You also might recognize the introductions from the previous episode.)
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CA103 Defeat, Evil, & Hell – w/ Christian Idealism & Invoking Theism
I’m joined by Christian Idealism and Invoking Theism to discuss the problem of evil, the defeat condition, eternal conscious torment, alternative models of the afterlife, and whether we can have sex in hell. We’re also joined on mic by John Buck for a few minutes. This was an impromptu recording in my hotel room at the Capturing Christianity conference in Houston.
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CA102 The Most Plausible Form of Christianity
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CA101 Five Arguments Against God w/ Jonathan MS Pearce
I’m joined by the author of “30 Arguments Against The Existence of ‘God’: Heaven, Hell, Satan, and Divine Design” to discuss five arguments raised in his new book.
Watch the interview on YouTube here
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CA100 A Catholic and an Atheist Debate God
Emerson Green defends the motion “God probably does not exist” against John Buck. Moderated by the Non-Alchemist.
YouTube: A Catholic and an Atheism Debate God and Religion
Transcript of Emerson’s opening statement
Follow John on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/WriterJohnBuck & Emerson here: https://twitter.com/waldenpod
Support the podcast at patreon.com/counter
Roadmap:
Introduction (2 min)
John’s Opening Statement (20 min)
First Cross-Examination (5 min)
Emerson’s Opening Statement (20 min)
Second Cross-Exam (5 min)
John’s Rebuttal (12 min)
Emerson’s Rebuttal (12 min)
John’s Closing Statement (5 min)
Emerson’s Closing Statement (5 min)
Audience Q&A
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CA99 Teleological Evil
There are many famous examples of unintelligent design in nature, but what about malevolent design? Some natural systems are aimed at producing suffering: they cause suffering by acting in accordance with their natural purpose, function, or design plan. Why would we infer a benevolent, omnipotent designer from malevolent design?
The fact that predation – a striking example of teleological evil – is a prominent feature of the biological order is very surprising on theism. Predation isn’t a feature of the biological order because animals are acting against their design plan – exactly the opposite. The fact that animals must savagely kill and devour each other in order to survive is strong evidence against the hypothesis that nature was designed, directly or indirectly, by an unsurpassably great being of perfect love and goodness.
The Problem of Teleological Evil – Felipe Leon [exapologist]
An Atheological Argument from Evil Natural Laws – Quentin Smith [infidels]
Justin Schieber of Real Atheology interviews Quentin Smith (2017) [YouTube]
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The Problem of Evil w/ Dry Apologist
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CA98 Religious Experience & Conclusion (Devil’s Advocate pt. 3)
We conclude our Devil’s Advocate series with religious experience, a summary of the arguments we’ve discussed, and why I’m still an atheist. I also offer a few thoughts on the debate between atheists and theists.
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CA97 Widespread Theistic Belief & Religious Disagreement (Devil’s Advocate pt. 2)
I recently participated in a “devil’s advocate” debate on God’s existence. Today, we continue to take a closer look at the arguments I raised. We discuss the common consent argument, epistemic authorities, soteriology, universalism, eternal conscious torment, religious diversity, and divine hiddenness.
This is part two of a three-part series. The full series is available now for patrons AND on YouTube for subscribers to the channel: https://youtu.be/qzV3E5NcDTA
00:00 Introduction & the argument from widespread theistic belief
11:00 The consensus of experts
15:57 Religious disagreement (diversity, discord, confusion, etc.)
37:06 Divine Hiddenness
47:02 A few more thoughts on religious disagreement
52:03 The value of disagreement
55:33 Final Thoughts
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Music by ichika Nito & Whalers. Used with permission.
Transcript of my Opening Statement
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CA96 Debunking Myself on God (pt. 1)
I recently participated in a “devil’s advocate” debate on God’s existence. Today, we take a closer look at the arguments I raised. We talk about the general approach of building a cumulative case for naturalism and theism, the argument from the existence of consciousness, and the argument from psychophysical harmony.
This is part one of a three-part series. The full series is available now for patrons AND on YouTube for subscribers to the channel: https://youtu.be/qzV3E5NcDTA
00:00 Introduction
01:08 Models of God
03:19 Methodology
08:27 The Existence of Consciousness – Is this understated evidence?
21:49 Psychophysical Harmony
33:17 Final Thoughts
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Music by ichika Nito & Whalers. Used with permission.
Transcript of my Opening Statement
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Does God Exist? Devil’s Advocate Debate
I recently participated in a “devil’s advocate” debate on God’s existence. I defended theism, and my opponent, a Catholic, defended atheism.
Emerson Green vs. Kyle Alander (Christian Idealism)
Transcript of Opening Statement
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CA95 The Argument from Psychophysical Harmony w/ Dustin Crummett
Dr. Dustin Crummett joins me to discuss a new argument from consciousness for theism. Though psychophysical harmony is evidence for theism, it may be equally good evidence for non-theistic hypotheses that I find interesting, like axiarchism and natural teleology.
**In the initial presentation of the argument (the first ten minutes or so), we assume that epiphenomenalism—the idea that consciousness has no physical effects—is true, but this is just for convenience, as psychophysical harmony is a puzzle for all (or nearly all) metaphysical views of the mind.
Psychophysical Harmony: A New Argument for Theism (Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion)
Philip Goff & Joshua Rasmussen – The Nature of the Cosmic Mind
Philip Goff – Axiarchism, cosmopsychism, the fine-tuning problem (Aeon)
A Christian Philosopher Answers Common Objections to Same-Sex Marriage – Dustin Crummett
In Defense of Socialism | Dr. Dustin Crummett
Applied Ethics: Abortion & Gun Control | Dr. Dustin Crummett
/ / /
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CA94 Logical Fallacies?
Take a look at nearly any book on critical thinking and you’ll come across a list of fallacies: ad hominem, argument from ignorance, appeal to emotion, appeal to authority, post hoc ergo propter hoc, god of the gaps, and so on. The problem is that many of these “fallacies” closely resemble good lines of reasoning. Overreliance on fallacy lists – common practice in the skeptic community – fosters shallow criticism, distracts from the substance of an issue, and doesn’t even accomplish the ostensible purpose of demarcating good and bad reasoning.
I’m hard on skeptics in this episode, but that’s because I used to lean on this crutch myself. Over time, the usefulness of this approach struck me as less and less credible, and talk about fallacies tapered off. Fortunately, philosophers like Maarten Boudry and Michael Huemer, whose work you can find below, explained in clear terms what is so unhelpful about this mode of thinking. “Fallacy theory,” as Boudry calls it, is only one feature of a shallow, facile mode of philosophizing, one which isn’t very conducive to a genuine search for truth. I would suggest that one way of improving the quality of our discourse would be to lay off the fallacy accusations a bit. It would lead to a more fruitful search for knowledge and understanding.
After the first five minutes or so of big picture criticism, the bulk of the episode is dedicated to concrete examples, focusing on the ad hominem fallacy, ad populum, “correlation does not imply causation” – the post hoc ergo propter hoc (or cum hoc) fallacy – and begging the question.
The Fallacy Fork: Why It’s Time to Get Rid of Fallacy Theory – Maarten Boudry
Playing Fallacy “Gotcha!” – Maarten Boudry
Knowledge, Reality, and Value: A Mostly Common Sense Guide to Philosophy – Michael Huemer
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Meager Moral Fruits Discussion – Guest Appearance on Jonathan MS Pearce’s Show
Jonathan MS Pearce is an author, speaker, and columnist who recently wrote an article on the meager moral fruits argument. Jonathan invited me on his YouTube channel, A Tippling Philosopher, to speak about the argument and a few common criticisms offered in response to it. We also discuss state atheism, liberalism, favorite books, and open theism.
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CA93 Is Mormonism the Best Version of Christianity? — with Tarik D. LaCour
Tarik D. LaCour is a Ph.D. student in philosophy and an M.S. student in psychology. He is a philosopher and cognitive scientist whose primary research interests are in the philosophy of psychology, cognitive science, and bioethics. He also writes about politics “from a conservative point of view,” and also on religion, from his perspective as a member of the LDS Church. Here’s an excerpt from a profile in Public Square Magazine entitled “A Latter-day Saint Empiricist”:
“LaCour is a growing figure in the Latter-day Saint intellectual community, no doubt largely due to the unexpected nature of his takes on almost everything. His social media leaps from brooding observations on science and philosophy to deadpan quips about politics and sports. In fact, the way LaCour evades easy categorization is surely part of his draw. He’s pessimistic, but not cynical. He cares about social justice but frequently deviates from popular narratives. … He’s a devout member of the Church, but openly embraces scientism (his Twitter handle is @realscientistic).”
Tarik and I discuss the LDS worldview and how it differs from other forms of Christianity. Mormons have deep disagreements with other Christians about the nature of God, soteriology, the afterlife, and much else. Further, these differences may provide philosophical advantages that favor Mormonism relative to other versions of Christianity. Tarik and I also discuss his scientism, empiricism, and eliminativism, and how these views intersect with his Mormonism.
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CA92 The Meager Moral Fruits Argument
Does Christianity bear the kind of fruit one might expect if it were true? Does naturalism or Christian theism better predict the moral fruits and lack thereof that we actually observe? Naturalists would expect Christianity to produce a mixed bag, like any other man-made institution. Christianity leads one to form loftier expectations.
There’s much more to say about this argument than we cover today, but we manage to lay out the essential core of the argument: a Theological Premise, an Empirical Premise, and a Moral Premise. The Theological Premise is, roughly speaking, the claim that Christianity should bear appreciable moral fruit, and that Christian theism and naturalism make different predictions: they lead us to form different expectations about the world. The Empirical Premise is meant to establish some relevant fact about the world. The Moral Premise affirms a moral fact or normative judgment. We defend each of these premises and work the meager moral fruits argument into a cumulative case for naturalism.
“I might believe in the Redeemer if his followers looked more redeemed.” – Nietzsche
For a discussion of Paul Draper’s original argument from meager moral fruits, see my video on Draper’s Case for Naturalism
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Is Free Will An Illusion? with Theoretical Bullshit
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CA91 Why won’t God heal amputees?
For the believer who advances the argument from miracles, the question of why God won’t heal amputees can be a thorn in the side. If God is willing to perform healing miracles – miracles that should convince anyone – why hasn’t God restored the lost limbs of amputees?
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From Young Earth Creationist to Atheist – Guest Appearance on Answers in Reason
Original video on YouTube – From YEC to Atheist
Twitter @waldenpod
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CA90 Hell: Eternal Conscious Torment
I argue that the notion of eternal conscious torment (ECT) leads to absurdities, and that theists can easily avoid these absurdities by abandoning ECT. For example, a believer in ECT must defend the following proposition: “A perfectly good, merciful, just, and loving God superintends the eternal conscious torment of human beings.” This proposition is incoherent simply in virtue of the meaning of those words. (The word “superintend” implies responsibility without suggesting that God is directly involved in the minutia of operations.) If a being oversees the eternal torment of humans, that being is not perfectly loving, good, merciful, or just. But these divine attributes are far more central to theism than ECT. Since ECT leads to conflicts with core aspects of theism, and since ECT is not itself a core aspect of theism, theists should not believe ECT.
So, either God doesn’t exist, and there isn’t anything to worry about; or God exists, and we shouldn’t fear eternal conscious torment precisely because the God of theism exists. If God’s nature is anything like theists have traditionally affirmed – good, merciful, just, and loving – eternal conscious torment is not a feature of the world.
Whether atheists or theists are right, there is no reason to be afraid of eternal conscious torment.
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Glenn Peoples vs. Ben Watkins on Hell, Annihilationism, and Universalism
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CA89 Why I don’t spend more time on contingency arguments
Arguments from contingency are widely considered to be among the strongest offered in defense of God. The results of the 2020 PhilPapers Survey have cosmological arguments ranked as the strongest family of arguments for theism. So why don’t I spend more time worrying about cosmological and contingency arguments?
Even those unfamiliar with cosmological arguments will have encountered the perennial “Why is there something rather than nothing” out in the wild. If a theist wants to know why there is something rather than nothing, then, for the sake of argument, I’ll say that however they explain the existence of God, that’s how I explain the existence of nature.
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What is Naturalism? – Walden Pod
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CA88 ID Theorist Accidentally Produces Evidence Against Intelligent Design
The Discovery Institute, an ID thinktank, has a list of “Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design.” On this list is an article authored by Michael Behe, alleging to prove the irreducible complexity of certain protein binding sites. However, his experiment demonstrated the exact opposite point as intended. He had to rig his study to an incredible degree, only to fall short nonetheless.
Watch it on YouTube here: Intelligent Design Theorist Accidentally Produces Scientific Evidence Against Intelligent Design
Behe’s article, “Simulating evolution by gene duplication of protein features that require multiple amino acid residues”
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7 Questions for Christians
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Answers in Reason – Ten Questions for Theists
Braxton Hunter – Ten Questions for Atheists
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CA87 God & Evolution
We’ll be exploring what the discovery of evolution potentially means for religion. Is evolution evidence against theism? If so, why? Is it incompatible with Christianity, as some Christians maintain? What is the conceptual landscape vis-à-vis evolution and theism—as in, what is the range of potential options available to a religious believer when it comes to evolution? We also briefly discuss evolutionary evil as evidence against God’s existence, and argue that the acceptance of evolution does not dissolve all the problems that arise between evolution and theism. Accepting evolution doesn’t mean you’re off the hook.
Transcript (and further links)
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Joe Schmid & Micah Edvenson on Evolutionary Evil
Joe Schmid & Non-Alchemist on Evolutionary Evil
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CA86 The Argument from Scale
Human beings seem cosmically unimportant. Though certainly from God’s perspective, we are more important than stars, rocks, vast stretches of empty space and time, and other things that don’t seem to possess any value in and of themselves, the latter group seems to have been afforded the lion’s share of the cosmos. Human beings, presumably the jewel of God’s creation, don’t seem to be the main event. So, does this favor naturalism or theism? Is the unimaginable vastness of time and space, and the lack of human centrality therein more probable on naturalism, or on theism?
If the universe is indifferent to human life, it’s no surprise that humans seem cosmically unimportant, not occupying a position of centrality or significance in an incomprehensibly vast ocean of space. The reality of our situation is sharply contrasted with the one our ancestors imagined themselves to be in. As William Lane Craig put it, “on the cozy, pre-Copernican cosmology—what C. S. Lewis called ‘the discarded image’ of the cosmos—theism seemed vastly more probable than atheism. Like a Fabergé egg, the little universe centered on the Earth, with the spheres of the planets and fixed stars revolving about it, cried out for an explanation in terms of a Cosmic Designer.”
We also discuss the “symmetry of evidence” and get a bit into the weeds of Bayes’ theorem.
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/ / /
On likelihoodism observation O is evidence for hypothesis H over ¬H iff P(O|H) > P(O|¬H).
Since P(O|H) + P(¬O|H) = 1 and P(O|¬H) + P(¬O|¬H) = 1, we can insert it into the prior formula to get an interesting result:
1 – P(¬O|H) > 1 – P(¬O|¬H)
P(¬O|¬H) > P(¬O|H)
So, in English, O is evidence for H over ¬H iff ¬O is evidence for ¬H over H. The means that you can have evidence for a hypothesis iff you can have evidence against a hypothesis.
Two other ways of expressing the same point that “O is evidence for H over ¬H iff ¬O is evidence for ¬H over H”:
P(h|e) > P(h) iff P(h|~e) < P(h)
E being evidence for H entails that ~E is evidence for ~H
Read more here from Hugh Jidiette
William Lane Craig – Does the Vastness of the Universe Support Naturalism?
Emily Thomas – Does the size of the universe prove God doesn’t exist?
Carl Sagan – The Cosmic Calendar
After 350 Years, Vatican Says Galileo Was Right – NYT
New Scientist – Vatican admits Galileo was right
Arguments from Scale – Tim Mulgan
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CA85 Conversation with The Non-Alchemist: Deconversion, Atheism, and Apologetics
Today, I’m speaking with The Non-Alchemist about the trials and tribulations of deconversion, reasons for being an atheist, lacktheism, Calvinism, Christian double-standards regarding testimonial evidence, the state of apologetics, what stuff is real, and more. Here’s this interview on YouTube with video (this episode was recorded on Streamyard and originally posted on YouTube).
Emerson’s appearance on NA’s channel
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Debate: Is evil strong evidence against God?
Here’s my debate with Zac of Adherent Apologetics on the problem of evil, hosted by the Non–Alchemist. I focus on the problem of animal suffering and defend an argument called the teleological argument from evil.
Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here
emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
Follow me on Twitter @waldenpod
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CA84 Why I Am An Atheist
There are five reasons, broadly, why I’m an atheist:
I. We don’t need God to explain anything.
II. There are few phenomena that are better explained by theistic models than by atheistic models.
III. There are many phenomena that are better explained by atheistic models than by theistic models.
IV. Theism is more metaphysically profligate than naturalism as an explanation.
V. Theism suffers from various internal problems.
We discuss each of these reasons, abductive atheology, and several issues related to atheism.
Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here
Follow me on Twitter @waldenpod
Music by ichika Nito & Whalers. Used with permission.
/ / /
Abductive Atheology – Timothy Perrine & Stephen Wykstra
Paul Draper’s Case for Naturalism (with transcript)
Graham Oppy explains “The Best Argument Against God”
Richard Swinburne on building a cumulative case
A few thoughts on what it means to be an atheist
On Atheism’s Intuitive Appeal:
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CA83 Hume on the Argument from Design
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Condemn the Architect: Hume’s Answer to Skeptical Theists (Bonus Episode)
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CA82 What the ‘agnostic atheist’ graph gets wrong
Can you be an “agnostic atheist,” or are those terms mutually exclusive? I try to explain how the famous four quadrant graph misunderstands the nature of belief, knowledge, and agnosticism.
Joe Schmid on Agnosticism and Justification [YouTube]
Gettier and knowledge with Kane B and Cole Nasrallah [YouTube]
What is knowledge? [SEP]
The Analysis of Knowledge [SEP]
Graham Oppy – Atheism: The Basics [Amazon]
twitter.com/waldenpod (@waldenpod)
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Debate: Is evil evidence against God? Emerson Green vs. Dr. Khaldoun Aziz Sweis
Here’s the audio from my recent debate hosted by Adherent Apologetics on the problem of evil. I argue that with respect to suffering, the world looks about as we’d expect it to look if god did not exist. Atheists can do a much better job explaining the kinds, degree, and distribution of suffering we observe in our world. Specifically, I appealed to three lines of evidence: The biological role of pain and pleasure, gratuitous suffering, and divine silence during tragedies.
(note – I accidentally said “When I was an atheist,” near the beginning when I meant to say, “When I first became an atheist.”)
/ / /
A few recent appearances on other channels:
Consciousness and Atheism with John Buck and Craig Reed TCR
Tjump and Emerson Green on Panpsychism – The Right to Reason Podcast
Deconversion and Atheism with The Non-Alchemist
https://linktr.ee/emersongreen
Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here
Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here
Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
Follow me on Twitter @waldenpod
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CA81 Skeptical Theism
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CA80 Secular Christianity with Philip Goff
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CA79 Paul Draper’s Case for Naturalism
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The Atheism & Mythos of H.P. Lovecraft
This Halloween, we’ll be discussing the life and work of the great horror author, H.P. Lovecraft.
Lovecraft’s atheism 00:00 – 07:38
Biographical details 07:39 – 12:50
Lovecraft’s reanimation and influence on culture 12:51 – 18:02
Lovecraft and the unknown 18:03 – 20:22
Forbidden knowledge and a New Dark Age 20:23 – 26:14
Fast zombies 26:15 – 27:27
More on the Lovecraftian mythos 27:28 – 29:13
Lovecraft’s writing style 29:14 – 38:54
Lovecraft’s racism 38:55 – 43:19
The Old Church Lady and art 43:20 – 45:46
Horror and its critics 45:47 – 48:20
/ / /
FREE LOVECRAFT AUDIOBOOKS
Dagon
The Rats in the Walls
The Shadow Out Of Time
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
/ / /
MORE LOVECRAFT PODCASTS
Chapo Trap House on Lovecraft [YouTube]
Lovecraft Literary Podcast [HP Podcraft]
Patton Oswalt [HP Podcraft]
Patton Oswalt with Chapo Trap House [Patreon]
/ / /
READINGS ABOUT LOVECRAFT
hplovecraft.com
Emma Stefansky – Primer on the works of HP Lovecraft [Polygon]
HP Lovecraft’s 125th Birthday [The Atlantic]
Nnedi Okorafor – Lovecraft Award [blogspot]
Criticism of Lovecraft’s Writing Style [The Guardian]
Criticism/Praise for Lovecraft [The Guardian]
The Philosophy of Horror – Noel Carroll [PhilPapers]
Against Religion – HP Lovecraft [Amazon]
The Portable Atheist – Christopher Hitchens [Amazon]
Complete List of Lovecraft’s Short Stories [hplovecraft]
/ / /
Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube
Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here
Dark Lofi (outro music) [YouTube]
Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
Follow on Twitter @waldenpod
My Top 25 Horror Movies [Letterboxd]
Check out my review of Hereditary, the most overrated horror film in cinematic history, over on Walden Pod.
/ / /
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Bonus: The EA Show – Interview with Emerson Green
This is the audio from my appearance on The Empathetic Atheist YouTube show. Justin & Andy ask me what I take to be the best argument against god and what I take to be the worst argument for god. I apologize for the audio (as well as the video) quality. I don’t know how to properly stream and my internet is terrible!
The EA Show – Interview with Emerson Green: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f59q8x1yqSY
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CA78 Young Earth Creationism & the Distant Starlight Problem
Young earth creationists believe that the earth, humankind, and the universe are approximately six-thousand years old. Scientifically, this is a fringe view, not taken seriously by anyone outside religious circles. However, the majority of Christians in the United States are young earthers.
Today, we discuss one particular problem for young earth cosmologies: the distant starlight problem. We can see stars that are millions and millions of light years away. If it’s true that the universe is only a few thousand years old, then why can we see stars more than a few thousand light years away?
40% of Americans Believe in Creationism [Gallup]
William Lane Craig on young earth creationism [YouTube]
Ken Ham on young earth creationism [YouTube]
Light-In-Transit and Anisotropic Synchrony Convention – Jason Lisle [AiG]
Jason Lisle – The Speed of Light and the ASC [YouTube]
The One-Way Speed of Light [YouTube]
Conventionality of Simultaneity [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
Starlight and Time – Russell Humphreys [GoogleBooks]
William Lane Craig on the Kalam & Theories of Time [YouTube]
Kalam & the A Theory – Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (pgs. 183-184) [PDF]
PBS – How we know the universe is ancient [YouTube]
PBS – How we know the earth is ancient [YouTube]
The Age of the Universe – Sixty Symbols [YouTube]
/ / /
Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here
Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here
Additional music by ichika Nito and was used with permission.
Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
Follow me on Twitter @waldenpod
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CA77 Since Matter First Writhed: The Mystery of Abiogenesis
Abiogenesis is the process by which life arises from non-living matter. Though life’s origin is an open question, abiogenesis research is a thriving interdisciplinary enterprise. In spite of this, many apologists have argued that it’s unlikely we will ever have a scientific explanation of abiogenesis. Abiogenesis is so improbable on naturalism, they say, that we should be open to supernatural explanations. I argue that abiogenesis is not improbable on naturalism, and also attempt to unravel the numerous errors creationists make when discussing the origins of life.
Astrobiologist Stuart Bartlett on What “Life” Means [Mindscape Podcast]
Astrobiology at NASA – Defining and Detecting Life [NASA]
Michael Russell on Alkaline Hydrothermal Vents [JPL]
Clay may have been birthplace of life on Earth [ScienceDaily]
Michael Russell on Emergent Structures in Nature [YouTube]
Meteorites Reveal Another Way to Make Life’s Components [NASA]
The Origins of Life [GreatCourses]
The Elemental Ingredients of Life are Common [wiki]
Jackson Wheat – A Few Ideas in Abiogenesis Research [YouTube]
The Replicators (Chp. 2 of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins) [text]
Why Abiogenesis is Impossible – Creation Research Society Quarterly [PDF]
Peanut Butter – The Atheist’s Worst Nightmare [YouTube]
Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here
Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here
@waldenpod
“We left the last hint of polar land behind us, and thanked heaven that we were clear of a haunted, accursed realm where life and death, space and time, have made black and blasphemous alliances in the unknown epochs since matter first writhed and swam on the planet’s scarce-cooled crust.”
— H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness
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CA76 The Incoherence of God (pt. III)
We complete our trilogy on igtheism and discuss epistemic questions about god’s attributes, the historical development of god’s nature, the experience of god, god’s relationship with logical truths, absence of evidence, and address the inevitable retreat into transcendence.
Follow me on Twitter @waldenpod
Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here
Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here
Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
Music by Whalers and ichika Nito and was used with permission.
. . .
Unintelligible God – Reasonable Doubts [Podchaser]
Bart Ehrman on the Origins of the Trinity [YouTube]
Ozymandias Ramses II on Logical Truth and Omnipotence [YouTube]
Logical Truth and Omnipotence [Reasonable Faith]
YouTube Playlist on Igtheism [YouTube]
Atheism: A Philosophical Justification – Michael Martin [Amazon]
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CA75 The Incoherence of God (pt. II)
We define our terms, address Graham Oppy’s claim that igtheism is self-defeating, discuss logical positivism and its relationship with igtheism, and present an igtheist divine hiddenness argument.
Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here
Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here
Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
Follow me on Twitter @waldenpod
Music by ichika Nito and was used with permission.
. . .
Ozymandias Ramses II on Theological Noncognitivism – Steve McRae Show [YouTube]
Unintelligible God – Reasonable Doubts [Podchaser]
Rabbi Sherwin Wine coins the term ‘ignostic’ [New York Times]
Atheism: A Philosophical Justification – Michael Martin [Amazon]
Response to Matt Dillahunty’s Criticism of Igtheism [YouTube]
TMM on Igtheism [YouTube]
YouTube Playlist on Igtheism [YouTube]
Atheism: The Case Against God – George Smith [Google Books]
A Disproof of God’s Existence – Colin McGinn [Skeptic]
/ A Note on Terminology /
I use my terminology in a consistent way throughout. As I mentioned, there is no widely recognized standard usage, so it’s important for one to define at the start words like igtheist, incoherent, meaningless, etc. I’m using the terms igtheist, ignostic, and theological noncognitivist as interchangeable, since many already treat them as interchangeable, for better or worse. Trying to establish one as strictly referring to incoherence and another as strictly referring to meaninglessness seems like a hopeless struggle to me, but I apologize for any confusion that resulted from the use of ‘theological noncognitivist’. I only insist on distinguishing two branches of thought that are too often conflated: the related but distinct views that god’s attributes are meaningless and god’s attributes are incoherent. Respectively, one means god talk is without content and the other means god’s attributes don’t cohere, which assumes some content. I’m primarily interested in the latter.
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CA74 The Incoherence of God (pt. I)
Can we make any sense of the idea of god? God is supposed to be an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, timeless, spaceless, immutable, disembodied conscious mind. We begin our series on igtheism by discussing several problems with these divine attributes. Is god unintelligible? Is this episode unintelligible? You’ll have to be the judge.
Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here
Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here
Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
Follow me on Twitter @waldenpod
Music by ichika Nito and was used with permission.
/ Resources on Igtheism /
Atheism: A Philosophical Justification – Michael Martin [Amazon]
Ozymandias Ramses II on Theological Noncognitivism – Steve McRae Show [YouTube]
Response to Matt Dillahunty’s Criticism of Igtheism [YouTube]
TMM on Igtheism [YouTube]
YouTube Playlist on Igtheism [YouTube]
Atheism: The Case Against God – George Smith [Google Books]
A Disproof of God’s Existence – Colin McGinn [Skeptic]
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CA73 Why Was Jesus Killed?
Why did the Romans kill Jesus? When I was a Christian, I was taught that the Jews were primarily responsible for the death of Jesus. The Romans may have carried it out, but it was ultimately motivated by Jesus’s conflict with Jewish authorities over his transgressions of Jewish law (calling himself god, blasphemy, etc.). Crucifixion, however, was a Roman punishment carried out by the Roman government for violating Roman laws — not a Jewish punishment carried out by Jewish authorities for violating Jewish laws. If Jesus was crucified, it was because he ran afoul of the Romans, not the Jews. So why did the Roman authorities want to execute Jesus?
We also discuss the historical Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea, human sacrifice, and the bad faith of William Lane Craig.
This week I’ll also be appearing on Embrace the Void with Aaron Rabinowitz and The Right to Reason with Robert Stanley.
Past Easter episodes:
CA48 William Lane Craig’s Four Facts about the Resurrection
CA26 The Spread of Christianity
CA25 “Who would die for a lie?”
CA24 The Resurrection of Jesus
Is there historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus? (This is where Craig repeatedly lies about Joseph of Arimathea) [Reasonable Faith]
Why Was Jesus Killed? [Bart Ehrman Blog]
Anti-Judaism in the Gospels [Ehrman Blog]
Jesus Smuggling – Rationality Rules [YouTube]
Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here
or if you prefer to give a one-time donation, you can do so with Venmo (@emersongreenpodcast)
Music by Whalers (theme) and ichika Nito (transitions) and was used with permission.
Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here
Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
Follow me on Twitter @waldenpod
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CA72 Moral Luck and Free Will Skepticism with Aaron Rabinowitz
I’m joined by Aaron Rabinowitz of Embrace the Void and Philosophers in Space to discuss moral luck, moral judgement, and whether it’s ever justified to hate a person.
Our first discussion on The Right to Reason Podcast: https://therighttoreason.podbean.com/e/panpsychism-debate/
Thomas Nagel – Moral Luck [PDF]
Galen Strawson – Things That Bother Me [Amazon]
Moral Luck [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
You can listen to Aaron on Embrace the Void here and Philosophers in Space here
Follow Aaron on Twitter @ETVpod and Emerson @waldenpod
Free Will – Counter Apologetics (2017) [YouTube]
“Tumors all the way down” [Very Bad Wizards]
Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here
Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here
Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
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CA71 Leibniz’s Argument from Contingency
We discuss Occam’s Razor and simplicity, the principle of sufficient reason, and brute facts.
Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR): The principle that everything must have an explanation, reason, cause, or ground.
Brute fact: Something with no further explanation.
*Edit* I used “brute fact” to simply mean “explanatory termination” in this episode. A brute fact, however, even if it’s the place where our explanations ultimately come to an end, may not be true in all possible worlds. If it was true in all possible worlds, we wouldn’t call it a brute fact; we would call it a metaphysical necessity. In other words, if x is brute, x may not have been.
/ Leibniz’s Contingency Argument /
- Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence (either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause).
- If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God (a necessary being).
- The universe exists.
- Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence.
- Therefore, the explanation of the universe’s existence is God.
I reject the principle of sufficient reason (the first premise) because I think there must be at least one brute fact, and because the PSR is arguably self-refuting. I also don’t think the universe needs an explanation for its existence, assuming we’re defining universe in the broadest possible sense. I need to add that caveat because what has previously been called “the universe” may in fact only be a part of everything that exists. In the same way that scientists prematurely named certain particles “atoms,” only to find out later they were not in fact atoms, we may have prematurely named a part of the universe, “the universe.” Apologists will sometimes burn a lot of fuel arguing that “the universe” has an explanation, when they’re not really talking about everything that exists, ever has existed and ever will exist. If this all-encompassing whole is not “an arbitrary act of the mind,” then it could be a brute fact. And to be fair, if god existed, god could be a brute fact. But on grounds of simplicity alone, without even touching all the problems with the notion of god, nature or some aspect of nature is a better candidate than god as the place where our explanations ultimately come to an end.
William Lane Craig on Leibniz’s Contingency Argument [Reasonable Faith]
Leibnizian Contingency Argument – InspiringPhilosophy [YouTube]
Contingency Argument [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
Principle of Sufficient Reason [SEP]
. . .
New music used with permission from ichika Nito
Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here
Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here
Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
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CA70 Why I Am Not A Christian (pt. II)
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CA69 Why I Am Not A Christian (pt. I)
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CA68 Do Atheists Need Faith? with Ozymandias Ramses II
Ozy and I discuss whether atheists have faith, and whether it’s naive for atheists to hold a reflexively anti-faith position. We also discuss Hume’s problem of induction, external world skepticism, solipsism, properly basic beliefs, certainty, Alvin Plantinga’s Reformed foundationalism, reliabilism and our belief-forming mechanisms, presuppositionalism, movement atheism, and other various issues in epistemology.
You can subscribe to Ozy’s channel here [YouTube]
Ozy, Alex Malpass, and Matt Dillahunty [YouTube]
Ozy and Matt Dillahunty [YouTube]
Ozy on Real Atheology [YouTube]
. . .
Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here
Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here
or if you prefer to give a one-time donation, you can do so with Venmo (@emersongreenpodcast)
Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
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CA67 Kalam Cosmological Argument: The Nature of Time
We discuss the A and B theories of time and how they relate to the kalam cosmological argument.
Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here
Support on Patreon here or give a one-time donation through Venmo (@emersongreenpodcast)
Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here
Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
. . . . .
A and B Theory of Time and the Kalam Argument – William Lane Craig [YouTube]
Why William Lane Craig Thinks Einstein Was Wrong – TMM [YouTube]
Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (pgs. 183-184) [PDF]
Brian Greene on the B-Theory of Time [YouTube]
Sean Carroll on Eternalism vs. Presentism [YouTube]
Sean Carroll on the KCA [YouTube]
NOVA – How an eclipse proved Einstein right [YouTube]
Complete solution to the Twins Paradox – minutephysics [YouTube]
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CA66 Materialism, Consciousness, and Atheism
We discuss the relationship between atheism, consciousness, and materialism after debunking arguments from consciousness formulated by Peter Kreeft and William Lane Craig. We also discuss why it’s important for naturalists to think carefully about these issues. I suspect that seemingly unrelated problems arise from our lack of a convincing story about consciousness. Consciousness and related phenomena, like morality and meaning, seem to be a major source of resistance to physicalism, naturalism, and atheism.
[Edit] Based on some of the feedback I’ve received, I feel the need to reiterate a major thesis of this episode: there is no incompatibility between atheism and any explanation of consciousness on offer. Atheism is not mutually exclusive to materialism, idealism, dualism, panpsychism, or any other solution to the mind-body problem. There is nothing one could say about the mind-body problem or the hard problem of consciousness that would count as a strike against atheism.
Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod for much more on philosophy of mind here
or if you prefer to give a one-time donation, you can do so through Venmo (@emersongreenpodcast)
Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here
Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
. . . . .
Alvin Plantinga – Against Materialism [PDF]
William Lane Craig – Argument from Intentionality [Reasonable Faith]5
Does consciousness point to God? – Unbelievable [YouTube]
Neil deGrasse Tyson and Ben Shapiro [YouTube]
Thomas Nagel – Mind and Cosmos [Amazon]
Arguments from Consciousness [wiki]
Here are modern atheist philosophers who hold very different views on consciousness:
Martine Nida-Rümelin, Atheist and Substance Dualist
Galen Strawson, Atheist and Panpsychist
Dan Dennett, Atheist and Materialist
Thomas Nagel, Atheist and Neutral Monist
(Young) Bertrand Russell, Atheist and Idealist
…
Keith Ward, Christian Idealist
Sharon Dirckx, Christian Substance Dualist
Peter van Inwagen, Christian Materialist
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CA65 God and Objective Morality — with Ben Watkins of Real Atheology
Ben Watkins joins me to discuss the moral argument for god’s existence, objective moral truth, the is/ought gap, meta-ethics, and other related topics.
You can listen to Ben’s podcast, Real Atheology, here
Moral Non-Naturalism [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
Listen to The Bible Says What!? here
Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here
Support on Patreon here or give a one-time donation through Venmo (@emersongreenpodcast)
Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here
Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
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H.P. Lovecraft – Halloween Special
This Halloween, we’ll be discussing the life and work of the great horror author, H.P. Lovecraft.
Lovecraft’s atheism 00:00 – 07:38
Biography 07:39 – 12:50
Lovecraft’s reanimation and influence on culture 12:51 – 18:02
Lovecraft and the unknown 18:03 – 20:22
Forbidden knowledge and a New Dark Age 20:23 – 26:14
Fast zombies 26:15 – 27:27
More on the Lovecraftian mythos 27:28 – 29:13
Lovecraft’s writing style 29:14 – 38:54
Lovecraft’s racism 38:55 – 43:19
Art and the Old Church Lady 43:20 – 45:46
Horror and its critics 45:47 – 48:20
. . . . .
Dagon – HP Lovecraft [YouTube]
The Call of Cthulhu – HP Lovecraft [YouTube]
The Shadow Out Of Time – HP Lovecraft [YouTube]
The Rats in the Walls [YouTube]
Lovecraft Literary Podcast [HP Podcraft]
Against Religion – HP Lovecraft [Amazon]
The Portable Atheist – Christopher Hitchens [Amazon]
Emma Stefansky – Primer on the works of HP Lovecraft [Polygon]
HP Lovecraft’s 125th Birthday [The Atlantic]
Nnedi Okorafor – Lovecraft Award [blogspot]
Criticism of Lovecraft’s Writing Style [The Guardian]
Criticism/Praise for Lovecraft [The Guardian]
The Philosophy of Horror – Noel Carroll [PhilPapers]
Dark Lofi (outro song) [YouTube]
Patton Oswalt [HP Podcraft]
Patton Oswalt with Chapo Trap House [Patreon]
Chapo Trap House – H.P. Lovecraft [YouTube]
. . . . .
Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod
or give a one-time donation through Venmo (@emersongreenpodcast)
emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
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CA64 Exorcism and the Rise in Demonic Possession
Why is the demand for exorcism on the rise? We discuss the belief in demonic possession, the concurrent rise of anti-science attitudes, the cultural role of religious psychology, and the evolutionary origins of demons.
Tracie Harris of The Atheist Experience – Exorcisms and Anthropology [YouTube]
Vatican to hold exorcist training course after ‘rise in possessions’ [The Guardian]
Exorcisms are on the rise [Atlantic]
A man drowned his 6-year-old son while trying to cast out a demon, police say [Washington Post]
‘Like being raped’: three claims of coerced exorcism in the UK [The Guardian]
Demonic Possessions – Here and How Podcast [Stitchr]
. . . . .
Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod
or give a one-time donation through Venmo (@emersongreenpodcast)
emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
Listen to Magic Tricks by Whalers
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CA63 Slavery in the Bible
Slavery, the practice of owning people as property, is never condemned in the Holy Bible. In fact, it’s endorsed by God personally in Leviticus 25. We discuss the character of Biblical slavery, and respond to seven common apologetics in defense of the slavery in the Bible.
Nonstampcollector – Context [YouTube]
Matt Dillahunty – Biblical Slavery [YouTube]
Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro [YouTube]
Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath [YouTube]
Rationality Rules – Biblical Slavery [YouTube]
Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod
or give a one-time donation through Venmo (@emersongreenpodcast)
emersongreenblog.wordpress.com
Listen to Magic Tricks by Whalers
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CA62 Reformed Epistemology, the Sequel
We discuss relativism, Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith,” the argument from personal experience, certainty, and how it all relates to Plantinga’s Reformed epistemology.
To those of you who may be wondering why we’re covering Reformed epistemology: Alvin Plantinga is one of the most respected Christian philosophers alive. He once served as the president of the American Philosophical Association, and he’s been awarded the Templeton Prize. Notre Dame’s Center for Philosophy of Religion renamed its Distinguished Scholar Fellowship the Alvin Plantinga Fellowship. And in 2012, the University of Pittsburgh’s Philosophy Department, History and Philosophy of Science Department, and the Center for the History and Philosophy of Science co-awarded Plantinga the Nicholas Rescher Prize for Systematic Philosophy. William Lane Craig has described Reformed epistemology as “one of the most significant developments in contemporary religious epistemology.”
What I’m trying to convey is that Plantinga is a Sophisticated Apologist™ and is taken very seriously by the religious and non-religious alike. According to many apologists and theologians, he’s the best they have. We should take the time to attempt to debunk their best offerings. Even though these two episodes have been comparatively dense to the usual CA episode, I think they were undoubtedly worth it. If for no other reason than to see how underwhelming the best they have turns out to be. As Jerry Coyne put it, “I’m starting to realize that there is no sophisticated theology; there are merely evasions and fancy language to get around the problematic lack of evidence for God and the palpably immoral statements in scripture.”
. . . . .
Atheism: A Philosophical Justification – Michael Martin (pgs. 266-278) [Amazon]
Tyler McNabb vs. Stephen Law on Reformed Epistemology [Unbelievable?]
William “In my heart” Craig [YouTube]
Daniel Hill on Reformed Epistemology [Panpsycast]
Alvin Plantinga – Is Belief in God Properly Basic? [PDF]
Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook
Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod
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Listen to Magic Tricks by Whalers
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CA61 Reformed Epistemology
To those of you who may be wondering why we’re covering Reformed epistemology: Alvin Plantinga is one of the most respected Christian philosophers alive. William Lane Craig described Reformed epistemology as “one of the most significant developments in contemporary religious epistemology.” Plantinga once served as the president of the American Philosophical Association. In 2017, he was awarded the Templeton Prize. The University of Notre Dame’s Center for Philosophy of Religion renamed its Distinguished Scholar Fellowship as the Alvin Plantinga Fellowship. In 2012, the University of Pittsburgh’s Philosophy Department, History and Philosophy of Science Department, and the Center for the History and Philosophy of Science co-awarded Plantinga the Nicholas Rescher Prize for Systematic Philosophy.
I’m trying to convey that Plantinga is a Sophisticated Apologist™ and is taken very seriously by the religious and non-religious alike. According to many apologists and theologians, he’s the best they have. We should take the time to attempt to debunk their best offerings. Even though these two episodes have been comparatively dense to the usual CA episode, I think it was worthwhile for many reasons. To quote Jerry Coyne, “I’m starting to realize that there is no sophisticated theology; there are merely evasions and fancy language to get around the problematic lack of evidence for God and the palpably immoral statements in scripture.”
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CA60 Christianity vs. Climate Change
Does Christianity, and religion generally, naturally lead to skepticism and apathy towards climate change? We discuss the apocalypticism, otherworldliness, and the just-world belief of Christianity, and their effects on our priorities and beliefs.
Blinded by Eschatological Light – William Bradford Nichols [Humanist]
Climate Change and Religion (Special Issue) – Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture [PDF]
Climate Change Skepticism and Denial – Riley Dunlap [PDF]
The Politics of Climate Change in the U.S. [Pew Research]
GOP rep: If climate change is real, God will ‘take care of it’ [TheHill]
Jesus Christ’s Return to Earth [Pew Research]
Predictions and claims for the Second Coming of Christ [wiki]
Trump will start the end of the world, claim Evangelicals who support him [Newsweek]
Charles MacKay – Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds [PDF]
Nietzsche and the Other World [YouTube]
Philosophize This – Nietzsche and Otherworldliness [YouTube]
Potholer54 – Climate Change Playlist [YouTube]
. . . . .
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. . . . .
Though this episode focuses on the religious contribution to climate denial, that focus shouldn’t obscure the political and economic causes. My position is that Christianity, by its very nature, is fertile soil for climate denial, and that it makes the potential destruction of human life on earth seem like no big deal. The religion, by its various doctrines and dogmas, naturally leads to apathy, and to disbelief towards anything like climate change. However, I think climate change and our insane reaction to it so far is first and foremost a result of our political and economic system. You can’t disentangle religion from our political and economic system, and it deserves to be singled out because it does play a consequential role in the story that’s too often overlooked. If we weren’t so religious, I think we would be in significantly better shape regarding climate change.
“Dark Money” Funds Climate Change Denial Effort [ScientificAmerican]
Following the Money that Undermines Climate Science [NYT]
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CA59 Irreducible Complexity Revisited
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CA58 NDEs pt. II
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Walden Pod [iTunes]
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CA57 NDEs (Near-Death Experiences) pt. I
Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) have received much attention in recent years. Are they evidence of an afterlife or merely evidence of our fear of death?
*UPDATE* A version of the out-of-body experiment I mentioned around 13:00 has been run. The results were negative. Unique photos were placed on high shelves, and not a single person was able to report what was on the shelves. The researchers brushed these unwelcome results under the rug, despite the fact that this part of the study was emphasized when the project was announced years earlier. Here are the results, and here’s a discussion of those results from Steven Novella. We’ll be discussing this study in Part II. 🙂
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. . . . .
Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris — Afterlife Debate [YouTube]
Sean Carroll and Steven Novella vs. Eben Alexander and Raymond Moody — Intelligence Squared Debate [YouTube]
Neurologica — Steven Novella’s Excellent Blog [Neurologica]
DMT and NDEs [Wired]
HowStuffWorks – NDEs [HowStuffWorks]
Why People Have OBEs [Atlantic]
Susan Blackmore — NDEs [The Guardian]
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Walden Pod [iTunes]
YouTube channel for Walden and CA [YouTube]
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CA56 The Flat Earth and Creationism
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CA55 Separation of Church and State
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CA54 Three Things Christians Should Stop Saying
“You were never a true Christian.” “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” “It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship.”
Atheists Before Darwin [AtheistRepublic]
No True Scotsman [YourLogicalFallacyIs]
Michael Gungor Interview [Nomad]
(I can’t find the one I heard a year or two ago, which was just Michael without his wife. You can read more about him on Patheos here)
Origins of “Love the sinner, hate the sin” [Catholic]
“It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship” – Noah Lugeons and Heath Enwright [YouTube]
I hate religion, and Jesus too – Amazing Atheist [YouTube]
Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus – Jefferson Bethke [YouTube]
Matt Dillahunty – Appeals to Personal Experience [YouTube]
End religious tax exemptions, get $80 billion a year [BigThink]
. . . . .
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CA53 Darwin Devolves (pt. II)
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CA52 Darwin Devolves: Michael Behe’s Case for Intelligent Design (pt. I)
Michael Behe recently published his latest case against naturalistic evolution and in favor of intelligent design: Darwin Devolves. Behe also authored Darwin’s Black Box, a creationist favorite, coined the term “irreducible complexity,” and was a key part of the famous Kitzmiller v. Dover trial in Pennsylvania. He’s also a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, a conservative think-tank that engineered the “Teach the Controversy” campaign aimed at smuggling creationism into biology education.
In his latest book, he argues that natural selection causes “devolution,” not evolution; and that random mutations will almost never “build or create anything at the genetic level.” Natural processes are unable, he argues, to generate the adaptive gains of genetic function that would be required to explain macroevolution or the biological complexity we observe.
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. . .
Michael Behe and Eric Metaxes – Darwin Devolves [YouTube]
Michael Behe – Darwin Devolves Summary [YouTube]
All of Behe’s Responses to Criticism [DarwinDevolves]
Richard Lenski – Does Behe’s “First Rule” Really Show That Evolutionary Biology has a Big Problem? [TelliamedRevisited]
Richard Lenski – On Damaged Genes and Polar Bears[TelliamedRevisited]
Jerry Coyne – Intelligent Design Gets Even Dumber [WaPo]
Nathan Lents – Behe’s Last Stand [Skeptic]
Nathan Lents et al. Criticize Darwin Devolves [ScienceMag]
Behe Summarizes “Central argument of the book” [EvolutionNews]
Jerry Coyne Responds to Behe’s EN Post [Whyevolutionistrue]
Behe’s Colleagues Criticize Darwin Devolves – Gregory Lang, Amber Rice [Wiley Online Library]
Behe’s 2010 Paper [Quarterly Review of Biology]
Jerry Coyne’s Response to Behe’s 2010 Paper [Whyevolutionistrue]
Darwin Devolves – Michael Behe [Amazon]
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CA51 Irreducible Complexity
Irreducible complexity (IC) has become one of the most popular arguments in favor of intelligent design, if not the most popular. The biochemist and ID proponent Michael Behe coined the term in his book Darwin’s Black Box, bringing the notion of IC to prominence. Certain biological systems, the argument goes, cannot have evolved by small changes through natural selection. If it could be demonstrated that there are irreducibly complex structures in nature, we would have a serious challenge to evolution by natural selection. Darwin wrote, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” However, Darwin’s next sentence was, “But I can find out no such case.” Not only has no such case been found out, there are deeper conceptual problems with irreducible complexity that we’ll explore.
I have an episode forthcoming on Darwin Devolves, Behe’s new book, but it was necessary to talk about IC first. I would also plug Richard Dawkins’s books if you’re looking to inoculate yourself against creationist nonsense generally. Climbing Mount Improbable, which came out in 1996, and The Blind Watchmaker, which came out in 1986, are both decisive smackdowns of the concept of intelligent design generally and IC specifically, since neither of those ideas are actually new; and the God Delusion deals with those subjects the most directly.
Though the term ‘irreducible complexity’ was coined by Behe in 1996, the underlying idea is an old and familiar one. As P.Z. Myers aptly explained, the creationist argument is and always has been some version of: “‘Complexity, complexity, complexity complexity. Oh look, there’s a pathway — it’s very complicated. Complexity! Complexity, complexity complexity — complexity. And did you know that cells are really, really complicated? But we’re not done — complexity! Complexity (complexity complexity). And you’re gonna be blown away by the bacterial flagellum — it’s like a little machine! And it’s really, really complicated! Complexity-complexity complexity. Complexity. We need more cells, they’re really complicated. You just get blown away by these things, they are just so amazingly complicated. Complexity. Therefore; design.’ You’ve heard it all now.”
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. . .
Irreducible Complexity [wiki]
Nathan Lents – Darwin Devolves [Science Mag]
Exaptation 101 [LiveScience]
Irreducible Complexity – Rationality Rules [YouTube]
Francis Collins – The Language of God [Amazon]
Kenneth Miller – Finding Darwin’s God [Amazon]
Richard Dawkins – Climbing Mount Improbable [Amazon]
Richard Dawkins – The Blind Watchmaker [Amazon]
Richard Dawkins – The God Delusion [Amazon]
Michael Behe – Darwin’s Black Box [Amazon]
Homunculus Argument [wiki]
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CA50 “If there’s no god, why not rape and murder?”
We discuss the moral argument for god’s existence, religious fictionalism, anti-theism, 20th century atrocities, and being good without god.
The discussion of Craig’s moral argument isn’t a comprehensive treatment, but I had to get him in there if we were going to address the question posed in the title. Craig has stated that on naturalism, there’s no reason to not literally eat our young, so I thought he should be included.
“We get our morality from our parents, peers, mentors, teachers, books, and culture, and we listen to that still small voice within—our moral conscience. Morality is in our nature. We are moral beings, with real moral emotions that we can reason about.” – Michael Shermer
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. . .
William Lane Craig – objective morality [YouTube]
Hitchens on anti-theism [YouTube]
Hitchens on faith-based morality [YouTube]
Hitchens on innate morality [YouTube]
Penn Jillette on rape and murder [YouTube]
Tales of the Hasidim (source of Jewish story about atheists) [Wiki]
Slavoj Žižek – “If there is a god, everything is permitted.” [YouTube]
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CA49 Science vs. the Supernatural: the Failure of NOMA and the Triumph of Naturalism
The biologist Stephen J. Gould proposed a solution to the apparent friction between religion and science: rather than being in outright conflict, science and religion each preside over distinct, non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA). Science can tell us nothing of the supernatural, and religion can only give us values, meaning, morality, and purpose. We discuss the utter failure of this conciliatory approach and point out the obvious: there is a zero-sum conflict between science and religion. We also discuss Carl Sagan’s garage-dwelling dragon, Bayesian reasoning, the triumph of naturalism, the definition of supernatural, the one-sided function of NOMA, and the inseparability of what is and what matters.
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. . .
Sean Carroll – The Case for Naturalism [YouTube]
Stephen Jay Gould on NOMA [SJG Archive]NOMA [Rationalwiki]
NOMA [Conservapedia – the only encyclopedia I trust]
Evolution [Pew]
Evolution II [Pew]
Catholic Church Admits Galileo was Right [New Scientist]
Carl Sagan – The Demon Haunted World [Amazon]
The Dragon in my Garage – Reading [YouTube]
Bart Ehrman – Anachronistic Camels [EhrmanBlog]
The Case for Religious Studies – William Gruen [InsideHigherEd]
Sam Harris – Religions are failed sciences [YouTube]
Jerry Coyne – NOMA [Whyevolutionistrue]
Noah Lugeons – NOMA Diatribe [YouTube]
TMM – NOMA [YouTube]
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CA48 William Lane Craig’s Four Facts about the Resurrection
“Any responsible historian, then, who seeks to give an account of the matter, must deal with these four independently established facts.” William Lane Craig has four non-negotiable, “established facts” that we apparently need to explain as non-believers.
(1) Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in the tomb.
(2) On the Sunday following his crucifixion, Jesus’ tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers.
(3) On different occasions and under various circumstances different individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive from the dead.
(4) The original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that Jesus was risen from the dead despite their having every predisposition to the contrary.
All four of these claims are possible to dispute. In fact, they’re not that hard to cast doubt on. But does it even matter? These four facts don’t go a long way. If we grant all four of Craig’s facts for the sake of argument, a resurrection is not the best explanation for them.
I assume a certain level of background knowledge about the resurrection today; and if I didn’t say it in this episode, it’s probably somewhere in CA24-26. Check those out for some more Easter stuff that wasn’t covered today 🙂
I primarily worked off the transcript of Bart Ehrman’s Debate with William Lane Craig on the Resurrection. I also occasionally referenced my notes from Ehrman’s work, usually from How Jesus Became God.
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CA47 Ten Contradictions in the Bible
If god cannot err, and the Bible is the word of god, shouldn’t we expect the Bible to be inerrant? And yet, we can find plenty of examples of the Bible making mistakes and even contradicting itself, and this would seem to imply that the Bible is not the word of god. Apologists have answered that the “original text” of the Bible has no errors, even if our passed-down manuscripts have a few. Of course, we have no access to this “original Bible” so their claim is unfalsifiable. Additionally, the presence of errors means that god, if he exists, doesn’t care very much about the contents of the Bible. Which is more likely: that god created a perfect word and didn’t care to preserve it? Or that god just didn’t have anything to do with the Bible? God easily could have made our Bibles inerrant; in fact, it’s what we would expect. This tells us something important about how much god, if he exists, cares about what’s in the Bible.
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. . . . .
The Big Book of Bible Difficulties [Amazon]
Bart Ehrman with Sam Harris [YouTube]
Self-Contradictions of the Bible – William Henry Burr [PDF link]
Matt Dillahunty – Primer on Scriptural Contradictions [YouTube]
Nonstampcollector – Bible Contradictions Quiz Show [YouTube]
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CA46 Is Religion the Opium of the People? — Marx and Religion
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Evangelical Christianity — Bonus
What is Evangelical Christianity? Why is anyone surprised that Evangelicals love the president? We discuss the characteristics of Evangelical Christianity, speculate about its future, and wonder how everyone isn’t an anti-theist at this point.
Eviction – Whalers [YouTube]
Secular Talk – Franklin Graham [YouTube]
Robert Wright Show – Sarah Posner [YouTube]
Chapo Trap House [iTunes]
Matt Walsh – Why Christianity Is Declining [YouTube]
Michael Shermer – The Moral Arc [YouTube]
The best anti-Evangelical tract in my opinion is Letter To A Christian Nation by Sam Harris. Definitely check it out if you’ve never read it.
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CA45 Heaven, pt. II
We discuss how we’re supposed to get to heaven in the first place, substance dualism, emergence, the population demographics of heaven, religious epistemology, and dying as a naturalist.
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DarkMatter2525 — The Afterlife is meaningless without an Afterafterlife [YouTube]
The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself — Sean Carroll [Amazon]
Valorie Tarico on Heaven [Salon]
Greg S. Paul on Abortion and Heaven [PDF]
On dying as a naturalist — The Five Invitations [Waking Up]
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CA44 Heaven, pt. I
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CA43 Biblical Prophecy and the Birth of Christ
The Christmas narratives in Matthew and Luke are supposed to contain fulfilled prophecies. However, these two Gospel accounts of Jesus’ birth are not only discrepant, but conflict with our historical knowledge. Biblical prophecies are commonly invoked as compelling evidence for us to consider, so we examine the Christmas story and the prophecies believers claim were fulfilled.
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. . . . .
Historian Bart Ehrman’s excellent blog [Ehrmanblog]
Christmas lofi [YouTube]
“We have a whole religion based on a woman who really stuck to her story.” -Greg Giraldo
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Russell Conjugation — Bonus
We examine a concept vital to the project of being a skeptic. We’re not perfectly rational beings, and we have to learn about our cognitive biases if we want to overcome them. This was originally released as Patron bonus episode #8.
Russell Conjugation [Edge.org]
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CA42 Argument From Personal Experience
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. . . . .
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CA41 Argument From Biblical Confusion
The existence of Biblical, Koranic, or Talmudic confusion is not easy to square with an omni-god who inspired, dictated, or otherwise controlled the contents of a holy book. The Bible is long, vague, contradictory, ambiguous, and has no obvious message. There are about as many interpretations of the Bible as there are readers of the Bible, but why should this be the case? Wouldn’t god want to make her message as clear as possible, especially since these issues are literally life and death? If god is omniscient and omnipotent, she would know exactly how to make her message impossible to misunderstand, leaving no room for misinterpretation or confusion. In her omniscience, she would see all the strife, bloodshed, and damnation that would result from her lack of clarity; if she was omni-benevolent, she would want to avoid this and make her message clear. How is it possible that two sincere believers, approaching god’s word in good faith, can come away with clashing interpretations of god’s message that leaves one of them destined to burn for all eternity?
The argument from biblical confusion against Christianity — Jonathan Garner [Philosophy of Religion blog]
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CA40 Speaking in Tongues / Glossolalia
Glossolalia [Wiki]
Heather Kavan — Linguistics of Glossolalia [PDF]
William Samarin — Linguistics of Glossolalia [Amazon]
Andrew Newberg — Glossolalia Neuroimaging Study [PDF]
Wired — Glossolalia Neuroimaging Study [Wired]
Glossolalia – OWN [YouTube]
Dan Barker – Tongue Speaking [YouTube]
Anti-Glossolalia Christian Writer [GotQuestions]
Patheos — Non-Christian Glossolalia [Patheos]
Bart Ehrman — Tongue Speaking and Snake Handling in Mark [EhrmanBlog]
Prank Calling Joel Osteen’s Prayer Line [YouTube]
/ Clips of glossolalia /
/ / /
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CA39 The Story of God — Conversation with Chris Matheson
Chris Matheson is a screenwriter and author whose credits include Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Rapture-palooza, The Story of God, and The Trouble with God.
You can buy The Story of God here and The Trouble with God here [Amazon]
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“The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
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