Interesting Discussion about My Article on the Possibility of Theistic Freethinkers

LINK: click here

Open Letter to Theists about Abusing Atheists

In his contribution to Philosophers Without God (ed. Louise Antony, Oxford University Press, 2007), Walter Sinnott Armstrong describes the sort of bigotry he encountered after his debate book God (co-authored with William Lane Craig) was published. One theist sent him an email calling Sinnott-Armstrong

a "small minded" "egotist," "an arrogant fool," and a "pompous PhD," then added "it is pathetic that the College allows you in a classroom," and "That you don't [believe in God], I am sorry to have to inform you, calls into question your intelligence." Then it concluded, "Please be assured that this theist will impartially consider any persuasive response you can offer and, as such, I look forward to continuing this dialogue with you."

Commenting on this email, Sinnott-Armstrong writes:

This exchange indicates a larger problem: Many theists feel perfectly justified in abusing atheists. I would never consider writing such a diatribe against a theist who argued for belief in God. I would remain calm even if a theist misrepresented atheism. Most atheists I know let ridiculous religious views go unchallenged.

I'd like to pose the following question to all theists, especially evangelical Christians:

What are your thoughts about the email sent to Sinnott-Armstrong? Do you condone the email? Do you condemn it? Or are you indifferent? Do you agree with Sinnott-Armstrong that "Many theists feel perfectly justified in abusing atheists"? Why?

In raising this issue, I recognize that there have been atheists who have been guilty of committing the same kind of abuse against theists. Nevertheless, I'd like to focus the discussion on the treatment of atheists by theists. Please share your thoughts with me.

Companion Website for THE EMPTY TOMB Launched

I have just launched the official companion website for our book, The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave. The site may be accessed at the following URL:

http://theemptytomb.googlepages.com/

Can a Theist be a Freethinker?

The following link goes to a featured editorial I wrote several years ago for the Secular Web. I argue that (1) a theist can be a freethinker, and (2) not all nontheists are freethinker.

LINK

New Blog: "The Consolations" by James Lazarus

James Lazarus is a former (?) producer of "The Infidel Guy" Internet radio show. He recently started his own blog.

LINK

Interesting Article on Debating Presuppositionalists

Gene Witmer is a philosopher at the University of Florida who has recently written a paper critiquing presuppositionalism. It appears that the paper is not a formal paper intended for publication in its current form, but rather is a preprint prepared for a "talk" to the Atheist, Agnostic and Freethinking Student Association at the University of Florida.

I have always had mixed feelings about taking presuppositionalism seriously. On the one hand, it appears that presuppositionalism is not taken seriously by the majority of Christian philosophers, as evidenced by the conspicuous absence of any articles defending the transcendental argument for God's existence in respected journals like Faith and Philosophy. On the other hand, there are many Christian apologists who use a presuppositionalist approach in debates with atheists, so a hard-hitting critique of presuppositionalism is a useful resource for atheist debaters.

While I think the overall quality of the essay is good, I did notice at least two problems.

1) Witmer quotes Paul Copan on the relationship between atheism and morality, in a way that implies that Copan is a presuppositionalist. I'm 95% confident that Copan is not a presuppositionalist, so in that sense the article is a bit misleading. On the other hand, it would not be too difficult to find similar quotations from bona fide presuppositionalists, so Witmer's general points still stand.

2) Witmer lambasts Barker's debate performance against Manata as "terrible," but he never really gave specific reasons to justify that rating of Barker's performance. In fact, he didn't discuss Barker's arguments at all! I haven't seen or heard that debate, so it is possible that Barker's performance was "terrible." Since Witmer doesn't give details, however, it is impossible assess Witmer's reasons for that assessment.

Theism vs. Naturalism Debates: An Apples to Oranges Comparison?

I received an email from a nontheist that is somewhat critical of the idea of "naturalism vs. theism" as a debate topic because (1) not all non-naturalistic views are theistic, and (2) the topic involves a comparison of a general hypothesis (metaphysical naturalism) with an incompatible but very specific hypothesis (theism). In his opinion, the debate topic should be either "naturalism vs. supernaturalism" or "nontheism (or atheism) vs. theism."

I don't find these objections convincing in the least. (1) is, of course, true. From the fact that not all non-naturalistic views are theistic, however, it isn't clear why "naturalism vs. theism" debates should be avoided in favor of "naturalism vs. supernaturalism" or "atheism vs. theism" debates. A significant number of supernaturalists are theists. In the West, the majority of supernaturalists are theists. For that reason alone, I think "naturalism vs. theism" is a valuable topic. (I am well aware, of course, that there are parts of the world where traditional theism is not the dominant supernatural belief. That is no reason, however, for not having debates on "naturalism vs. theism" in parts of the world where traditional theism is the dominant supernatural belief.)

Moreover, I think there are additional points from a Bayesian perspective that make "naturalism vs. theism" as a debate topic particularly compelling. First, I won't attempt to defend this claim here, but I believe that theism has a much higher prior probability than supernatural alternatives to theism. Second, it is a commonplace in confirmation theory to measure the ratio of one explanatory hypothesis to another logically incompatible explanatory hypothesis, even if those two explanatory hypotheses are not jointly exhaustive. Again, even if the two explanatory hypotheses are not jointly exhaustive, demonstrating that the ratio of the probability of one hypothesis to the probability of another is greater than one can be used as part of a larger argument to show that the former hypothesis has a high final probability.

Turning to objection (2), it is true that naturalism is a general hypothesis whereas theism is a specific hypothesis. Again, however, it is not clear why (2) is supposed to be a reason for avoiding "naturalism vs. theism" debates in favor of "naturalism vs. supernaturalism" or "atheism vs. theism" debates. Outside of the philosophy of religion, we probably compare general hypotheses to specific hypotheses on a regular basis. It isn't obvious why we should avoid doing so, either in general or in the specific case of "naturalism vs. theism."

Gary Habermas's Critique of G.A. Wells

In 1985, Antony Flew debated Gary Habermas on the resurrection of Jesus; that debate was later published as a book in 1987. G.A. Wells felt that Flew did so poorly in the debate, on a topic outside of Flew's area of expertise, that Wells felt compelled to write a commentary on the debate on the Habermas-Flew debate. I have just discovered that Habermas has, in turn, written a response to Wells's case for the nonexistence of Jesus, which includes a very brief reference to Wells's commentary on the Habermas-Flew debate.

It has been so long since I skimmed the books by Wells in question I can't really comment on the legitimacy of Habermas's specific criticisms, but it wouldn't surprise (or offend) me if those criticisms were correct. What I do remember, however, is thinking the following. If someone were going to argue for the non-historicity of Jesus, one would expect a detailed, almost comprehensive discussion of the extrabiblical sources, but that isn't what one finds in his earliest books. After reading Wells' earlier books (such as Did Jesus Exist? and The Historical Evidence for Jesus), I thought to myself, "There doesn't seem to be a lot of 'meat' to his discussion of the extra-biblical evidence for Jesus' existence." And then, when I read his later books (such as The Jesus Legend and The Jesus Myth), I remember reading his rebuttal to responses to his earlier discussions the extrabiblical evidence for Jesus, asking myself, "Why didn't he just discuss all of these objections the first time?"

I have consistently granted that the Jesus described in the gospels is based upon a real, historical individual, so I am living proof that one does not need to deny the historicity of Jesus in order to reject the resurrection of Jesus. Thus, despite the huge philosophical differences between Habermas and I, I have no problem accepting the conclusions of Habermas's article. (Of course, to be fair to Jesus mythers, it is also possible that there is a better case against the historicity of Jesus than the one made by Wells.) In any case, I encourage readers interested in arguments for and against the historicity of Jesus to read Habermas's critique of Wells.