ethics

What is Christianity? Part 10

As Ninian Smart points out, there are secular worldviews as well as religious worldviews.   According to Smart, a religion is a religious worldview as opposed to a secular worldview.  Marxism and Secular Humanism are examples of secular worldviews.  Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam are examples of religions or religious worldviews. Smart, however, asserts that What is Christianity? Part 10

Jerry Coyne on Goodness without God

(Originally published on 17 October 2011) Jerry Coyne recently wrote an op-ed in USA Today entitled, “As Atheists Know, You Can Be Good Without God.” Christian philosopher Matt Flanagan wrote an excellent critique, not of Coyne’s claim that nonbelievers can be good without God (which Flanagan grants), but of pretty much everything else Coyne wrote Jerry Coyne on Goodness without God

Bibliography on Arguments for Atheism

(redated post originally published on 7 November 2011) The purpose of this bibliography is to provide a comprehensive listing of academic resurces which contain presentations, formulations, or defenses of various arguments for atheism. The bibliography currently omits any references to resources which criticize those arguments; I hope to fix that in the future as time Bibliography on Arguments for Atheism

“Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe” by Erik J. Wielenberg

(redating post originally published on 18 March 2006) This is the tile of a new book published by Cambridge University Press: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0521607841/InternetInfidels/ Here is the book description: Suppose there is no God. This might imply that human life is meaningless, that there are no moral obligations and hence people cando whatever they want, and that “Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe” by Erik J. Wielenberg

What is Christianity? Part 7

In the previous post in this series,  I argued that the Christian apologist James Sire makes a fundamental mistake in his book Naming the Elephant, by defining “a worldview” as being a kind of commitment.  A worldview is something that can be true (or false), but a commitment is NOT something that can be true What is Christianity? Part 7

What is Christianity? – Part 1

Since I am planning to invest the next ten years (or more) of my life in an effort to investigate and answer the question “Is Christianity true or false?”,  I need to start out by clarifying and defining the word “Christianity”. There are those who would argue that Christianity is not the sort of thing that What is Christianity? – Part 1