Changing the Boy Scouts of America’s Policy on Gays from Within
Interesting news on the BSA: A high-profile member of the Boy Scouts of America’s governing board says he doesn’t support the Scouts’ policy of excluding gays and will work from within to seek a change. Ernst & Young CEO James Turley, whose accounting firm has welcomed gays and lesbians in its own work force, becomes … Changing the Boy Scouts of America’s Policy on Gays from Within
LINK: Are Mermaids Real?
PZ Myers pretty much sums it up. LINK
Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence (ECREE), Part 3: Is ECREE False? A Reply to T. Kurt Jaros
As a follow-up to my last post on extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (ECREE), I’m going to respond to a blog post by T. Kurt Jaros. As in my previous posts,let B represent our background information; E represent our evidence to be explained; H be an explanatory hypothesis, and ~H be the falsity of H. … Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence (ECREE), Part 3: Is ECREE False? A Reply to T. Kurt Jaros
How to Think or What to Think?
John Loftus raises an issue that I would like to address: Should professors teach students how to think or what to think? http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2012/06/open-challenge-to-dr-keith-parsons-and.html John gives a link to an article by philosopher Peter Boghossian: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/07/192/boghossian Boghossian challenges what John calls the “received” view of pedagogy. The received view can be summed up by the slogan … How to Think or What to Think?
Argument Against the Resurrection of Jesus – Part 24
In Joseph “Rick” Reinckens’s webpage A Lawyer Examines the Swoon Theory we get a short snippet from Origen that allegedly confirms a Roman practice of stabbing victims of crucifixion with a spear: In his Commentary on Matthew, Origen, one of the early Church Fathers, says the lance thrust to Jesus was administered “according to Roman custom, below the armpit.” … Argument Against the Resurrection of Jesus – Part 24
“Alvin Plantinga on Paul Draper’s evolutionary atheology: implications of theism’s noncontingency” (DOI) 10.1007/s11153-012-9361-6
My article with the above name will appear in an upcoming issue of The International Journal of Philosophy of Religion, and has just been made available online to anyone with access to an institution with a SpringerLink license. Here is the abstract taken from SpringerLink (http://www.springerlink.com/content/237w067637655738/): In his recently published Where the Conflict Really Lies: … “Alvin Plantinga on Paul Draper’s evolutionary atheology: implications of theism’s noncontingency” (DOI) 10.1007/s11153-012-9361-6
The Poverty of Theistic Morality
In an effort to increase visibility of an article that has been largely ignored by theists, I thought it would be interesting to discuss what Adolf Grünbaum has to say about the theistic implications of morality in his excellent essay, “The Poverty of Theistic Morality.” He writes: One vital lesson of that analysis will be … The Poverty of Theistic Morality
Victor Reppert on Atheist Responses to Moral Arguments
Commenting on how atheists have responded to William Lane Craig’s moral argument, Victor Reppert writes this. Yet, when I hear atheists talking about moral arguments, they always assume that the advocate of the moral argument is saying that we have to believe in God to lead moral lives, (and indignantly argue that we don’t have … Victor Reppert on Atheist Responses to Moral Arguments
Mark Driscoll, the Pope of Seattle says Get on the Bus or I will Drive the Bus Over You
I informally debated Mark Driscoll (and Lief Moi) when they were co-hosts of a Seattle-based Christian talk radio show in the ’90s. So it was interesting to read what Bruce Gerencser had to say about Driscoll, who he calls “the Pope of Seattle.”LINK (Warning: off-color word use)
William Lane Craig’s Critique of Bart Ehrman on the Probability of Miracles
As the saying goes, I have to “call ’em as I see ’em.” I just read, for the first time, the transcript of William Lane Craig’s debate with Bart Ehrman. I read, with great interest, Craig’s first rebuttal, where he makes extensive use of Bayes’s Theorem (BT) to critique two of Ehrman’s statements. Those two … William Lane Craig’s Critique of Bart Ehrman on the Probability of Miracles