The new atheist project appears to be failing anyway. It might help Dawkins’s numbers if he did debate. But not our business, of course.
Atheism
Further on Sev (and EG) vs the Christian Faith in community
Some of our frequent commenters have recently made fairly explicit claims against/challenges to the Christian Faith, especially as it intersects community. For one, in responding to my earlier headlining of a response to his claims, Sev has now gone on record: Sev, 2: >> where some Christians imply that the faith as a whole has Read More…
On Sev’s “privileg[ing]” vs liberty as the due balance of rights, freedoms and duties (also, on truth vs warrant)
Sometimes, one of our commenters raises a significant matter that is worth headlining and further analysing. In a recent thread, Seversky dismissies Christian concerns about anti-Christian bigotry, bias, lockouts and the like, with: Sev, 14: ” This doesn’t sound like a crusade against Christianity so much as the faith playing the victim because they are Read More…
Coffee!!: A grievance studies hoaxer explains what happened to the New Atheists
We miss the New Atheists. They made absolutely everyone else look so sane and reasonable.
Monod’s “objectivity” (= naturalistic scientism) and begging big questions
Jacques Monod won a Nobel Prize in 1965 for work on the mechanism of genetic replication and protein synthesis. By 1970 – 71, he published a pivotal book, known in English as Chance and Necessity, which is a part of the context in which Design Thinkers have argued that no, intelligently directed configuration, design, is Read More…
Peter Atkins vs Jonathan McLatchie debate: “Is there a God?”
A friend writes to comment on Atkins’s “smarmy condescension.” Indeed. In an age when serious scientists wonder whether the universe itself is conscious—because they cannot otherwise account for intelligence in nature— it’s not clear what smarmy condescension would achieve.
Dawkins raises an issue without intending to: Can one “outgrow” God without “outgrowing” morality?
Rebecca McLaughlin: To Dawkins’s credit, he comes dangerously close to acknowledging that religious belief is correlated with better moral outcomes—though he would like to think humans are better than that (117). He finds it rather patronizing to say, “Of course you and I are too intelligent to believe in God, but we think it would be a good idea if other people did!” (122).
At Scientific American: Can science rule out God?
If Alpert’s speculation pans out, naturalism could end up with a religion where God is an unprincipled Narcissist. Cool.
David Bentley Hart offers an honest assessment of Richard Dawkins’s new book
The book is Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide. Hart thinks Dawkins has finally found his authorial voice but you had better read the rest.
Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor explains why new atheism was doomed to die young
Anyone who didn’t immediately accept all this new atheist rubbish as Big Insight was a moron, right? But Dr. Egnor goes on to warn that reason will not emerge victorious from a horse laugh at the declining new atheists’ expense.
Come to think of it, there is no necessary relationship between atheism and Darwinism
Thinking about books recently, I recalled that philosophers Jerry Fodor (What Darwin Got Wrong (2010)) and Thomas Nagel Mind and Cosmos: : Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False are examples of intellectually serious philosophers who are no way Darwin groupies.
How did new atheism become the godlessness that failed?
Ever since the new atheists declined (or whatever), discussions of Darwinism and evolution have become much more open-minded. For example, researchers seem to talk more openly about work that points in a direction other than Darwinism. Perhaps they don’t worry so much about 20,000 semi-literate trolls writing their Dean of Science to get them fired just for saying that their research points in another direction.
Logic and First Principles: Summarising first principles and duties of reason
As we continue to ponder the core of responsible rationality, it is helpful to ponder a summary of what we have won: I recall, way back, being taught how the seventeen first equations of Boolean Algebra [which can all be verified as equivalence relations through truth tables] were of equally axiomatic status. But then, I Read More…
The issue of epistemic rights and duties
Back in 2007, “todangst ” of the “rational response squad” atheistical site wrote: To say that I am within my ‘epistemic rights’ to hold to a claim, I am saying that I violate no epistemic responsibilities or obligations in believing in my claim. (Rights and responsibilities go hand-in-hand.) An epistemic obligation is an intellectual responsibility Read More…
Bad news: New atheism is still over
It’s been so easy to get people to take the claims for design in nature seriously after they’ve witnessed a huge dump of new atheism. But hey, the easy stuff never lasts.