List of arguments against physicalism about consciousness

LINK

Some of these arguments are clearly better than others. #5 seems like the best way, if only I could believe any of the data it cites in support. In contrast, #4 and #6 strike me as the weakest of the bunch; and #7 simply begs the question.

The Guardian: Atheism Itself Isn't a Movement

LINK

Quentin Smith's Atheistic vs. Theistic Explanations of the Beginning of Spacetime

LINK

Why Assisted Suicide Should Be Allowed

LINK

Veracity Stew: Is Mitt Romney Shortchanging the Mormon Church?

LINK

Off-Topic: Woman's Missing Fingers Grow Back in Phantom Form

This has no connection to naturalistic atheism, but this story reminds me why I find the science of neuroscience so fascinating.

McGeoch said the study indicates there is a hardwired representation in the brain of what the body should look like, regardless of how it actually appears in real life. It showed more about the balance between the external and innate representations of a limb, he said.

LINK

Wes Morriston's Lecture Notes on Moral Relativism

(Another backlog item from 2004-2006.)

I think these are well-written.

http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/wes/moral-relativism.html

Is Evil Evidence for God?

(Another backlog item)
 
Over at The Secular Outpost, I recently blogged about a 'turnaround' argument used by some critics of the argument from evil (AE). According to this turnaround argument, not only is evil not evidence against God's existence, but evil is evidence for God's existence. In this post, I want to examine one specific attempt to use this strategy, by Melinda Penner at Stand to Reason.

My basic plan will be as follows:

1. Provide an overview of a specific version of the argument from evil.
2. Provide an overview of Melinda's use of the turnaround strategy.
3. Assess the evidential value of Melinda's turnaround strategy against the argument from evil.

Three Debate Invitations in One Week, But I'm Not Currently Debating

In the last week, I've received an amazing three separate invitations to participate in some kind of debate! (See here, here, and here.) Alas, as I mentioned in my very belated post on a possible Craig-Lowder debate, I'm not actively participating in the debate circuit right now. The two main obstacles are (1) I've been out of the loop for quite a while, having only just recently returned to the blogosphere; and (2) I don't have the time needed to prepare for and devote to a debate.

I do hope to do more debates in the future, but that is probably years, not months, away.

Craig-Lowder Debate?

I found the following post in my Drafts folder; it appears I never finished writing the post before I became inactive with blogging for over 5 years. At the outset, I want to make two points regarding this post so that it is put into the proper context.

First, I am posting this now solely to clear out the backlog of articles that were left in various stages of completion before I became almost completely inactive for several years on the blogosphere. I am not posting this article now as part of some attempt to pressure Craig into debating me right now; in fact, I'm in no rush to debate him, having been "out of the loop" for quite a while.

Second, I want to emphasize I am not calling into question Craig's integrity. First, I apparently was unable to locate my reply, if any, to a student's proposal for me to debate Craig at Harvard in 1999. Second, I was invited to debate Craig on Lee Strobel's television show, "Faith Under Fire," but I objected to the venue. Third, I have made no effort at all since 2005 to follow-up with Craig about debating.

What follows is the text I found in my Drafts folder from late 2005/early 2006.

How to Argue that Someone Lied

Step 1. Show that person P said X.

Step 2. Show that X is false.

Step 3. Show that the best explanation for P's saying X is that P intended to deceive P's audience, e.g.,

3.1. Show that lying explains why P said X when X is false.
3.2. Show that 'P was simply mistaken about X' (because P forgot, was misinformed, etc.) is not a good explanation for why P said X when X is false.
3.3. Show that 'P is not self-deceived about X' is not a good explanation for why P said X when X is false.
3.4. As appropriate, show that other alternative explanations are not good explanations.

Index: Evidential Arguments for Naturalism

This is a link to my series on The Secular Outpost about evidential arguments for naturalism.

LINK

Migrated to Disqus for Comments on Posts

This is just a quick housekeeping announcement to say that I just migrated this blog over to Disqus for comments. I've imported existing comments from Blogger into Disqus and saw a message stating the import process may take more than 24 hours to complete, due to high traffic volume at Disqus.

Victor Reppert on the Argument from Evil as a Reductio

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on June 12, 2012 and then republished on February 22, 2016. It was republished here on November 7, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date. The link was also updated to its current location.]

(Redated post originally published on 12 June 2012)

Can atheist who rejects moral realism press the argument from evil? Many theists, including William Lane Craig and Ravi Zacharias, have argued that the answer is "no." In my old critique of one of Zacharias's books, I wrote the following.

Zacharias presents two objections to AE. First, he suggests that it is incoherent for atheists to appeal to evil as evidence of the nonexistence of God since objective moral evil could not exist if there is no God (p. 48). Yet, as I argued above, objective moral values are logically possible even if there is no God. And the atheist need not postulate the existence of objective moral values in order to use evil as evidence for atheism. An argument from evil might not contain any normative premises; the atheist could appeal to God's loving nature rather than God's moral nature.[13] For example:

(1) If a perfectly loving God were to exist, then he would not permit the occurrence of any unjustifiable suffering.
(2) But unjustifiable suffering does occur.
(3) Therefore, a perfectly loving God does not exist.

To emphasize the point (though I consider this unnecessary), the atheist might even change the name of the argument from "the Argument from Evil" to "the Argument from Unjustifiable Suffering."[14]

Most importantly, AE may be understood as a challenge to the internal coherence of a theistic worldview. An AE can be understood as saying something like the following:

Look. You theists believe that X, Y, and Z are evil. You theists believe that God is good. You theists believe that good persons are opposed to evil. So you theists need to explain why a god who is good (in your sense of 'good') would allow so much apparently pointless evil (in your sense of 'evil'). If you can't explain it, then that is a problem for the internal coherence of your worldview.[15]

When AE is understood in this way, it doesn't presuppose that there are objective moral values.

In an old post, Victor Reppert says that he is aware of running the argument from evil as a reductio ad absurdum argument, but he is unconvinced. He writes:

I still maintain that important phenomena that give rise to the problem of evil are themselves deeply problematic for naturalism, including consciousness, objective moral values (and yes I know all about running it as a reductio without presupposing objective moral values--I still think subjectivism undercuts the argument).

Here's my question to Reppert: why? How does subjectivism undercut the argument? For example, how does subjectivism undercut Draper's version of the evidential argument from evil (summarized here)?

Mike at "Foxhole Atheism" is Reviewing my Debate with Fernandes

On his Foxhole Atheism blog, Mike says that he has started listening to my debate with Phil Fernandes and that I am "'winning' decisively." He then proceeds to comment on one of Fernandes' regarding the Goldilocks Zone.

LINK

The Secular Outpost: Atheistic Teleological Arguments: Index

I just completed my series of articles on atheistic teleological arguments on The Secular Outpost

The Secular Outpost: Atheistic Teleological Arguments: Index

Enjoy!

The Secular Outpost: Paul Draper, the Fallacy of Understated Evidence, Theism, and Naturalism

The Secular Outpost: Paul Draper, the Fallacy of Understated Evidence, Theism, and Naturalism

Richard Gale's Sovereignty-Benevolence Argument

Richard Gale presents the following argument to show that objective moral truths are not the sort of things that could be created.

(1) God determines the truth-values of ethical propositions.
(2) God is essentially benevolent.
(3) God is omnitemporal, i.e., his eternality involves beginningless and endless duration in time.
(4) God is benevolent prior to his decision as to what truth-values ethical propositions will have. [From (2) and (3)]
(5) Nothing is good or bad, right or wrong, prior to God's decision as to what truth-values ethical propositions will have. [From (1)]
(6) Therefore, it is impossible for God to exist. [From (1), (2), and (5)]

LINK: Michael Antony's Review of Reasonable Atheism by Aikin and Talisse

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on November 8, 2011. It was republished here on November 9, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date. The link has also been updated to reflect its current location as of November 8, 2011.]

An Argument for the Incoherence of the Trinity

The purpose of this post is to sketch a argument for the incoherence of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

The Doctrine of the Trinity Formulated

Let us begin by defining the doctrine of the Trinity as three theses:

(T1) There is exactly one God.
(T2) Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not identical to one another.
(T3) Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are consubstantial.

The Argument for the Incoherence of the Trinity (also known as the "Logical Problem of the Trinity")

(1) If the doctrine of the Trinity is true, there is exactly one God, the Father Almighty. [from T1]
(2) The Father is a god. [From (1)]
(3) If the doctrine of the Trinity is true, the Son is consubstantial with the Father but not identical to the Father. [From T2 and T3]
(4) If there are x and y such that x is a god, x is not identical to y, and y is consubstantial with x, then it is not the case that there is exactly one God. [Premise]
(5) Therefore, it is not the case that there is exactly one God. [From (2), (3), and (4)]
(6) Therefore, it is impossible that the doctrine of the Trinity is true. [From (1) and (5)]

Because I am aware that Christian scholars have written numerous clarifications and defenses of the doctrine of the Trinity against arguments such as this, I shall make no attempt to argue that the argument is sound; rather, I only claim that the argument is valid.

Source: with the exception of premise (6), this material was taken from Michael Cannon Rea, Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology: Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 3-4.