My daughter is a freshman philosophy student who is currently writing her second-ever essay in philosophy.  The topic is Descartes Meditations.  We have been discussing the deceptive god and evil genius skeptical arguments for the past week.  So, my disagreement with Stephen Law about the relevance (or irrelevance) of the Kalam cosmological argument to the … A Red-winged Blackbird

http://news.msn.com/politics/darwin-gets-4000-write-in-votes-in-ga Unfortunately, Darwin lost the election.

Catholics see Jesus on burnt toast. Muslims don’t do images, so they see “Allah” in Arabic script on various objects. Inside vegetables that have been cut open is a perennial favorite. Here is one of these miracles from Turkey: a cow, intended for sacrifice in the present Eid, which appears to vaguely perhaps have “Allah” … God on a cow

Well, monotheistic weirdness is but a subset of the weirdness we humans are capable of. And damn, are we capable of an awful lot of brain-melting, asinine notions that tie into spiritual beliefs. For example: (Sounds of me banging my head against a wall…)

When you live in a parallel universe where dinosaurs were on the Ark with Noah, and talking snakes crawl into your garden, and vaccinating girls for HPV makes them promiscuous, and the Rapture could happen tomorrow, and the whole universe is 6000 years old, and trick-or-treating is a Satanic plot to make you gay, I … Halloween: Satan’s Plot To Turn You Gay

I just read Jacques Berlinerblau’s How to be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom. It’s a good book and well worth reading, precisely because it will rub a lot of atheists the wrong way. I see little to object to in Berlinerblau’s description of the poor state of secularism in the United States. … How to be Secular

I have lately had the unenviable task of trying to explain Anselm’s ontological arguments to undergraduates. Over the years I have read many expositions of ontological arguments and many critiques. However, I had never sat down and gone through Anslem’s arguments line-by-line. Now I have done so in an effort to make a hand-out that … Anselm for Undergrads

This paper interacts with (and appears to defend) Paul Draper’s version of the evidential argument from evil, the argument from the biological role of pain and pleasure. From the introduction:  It is a truism that the influence of Darwin’s work on evolution is profound and ubiquitous. Thus, it should come as no surprise that the … Eric Russert Kraemer’s Darwin’s Doubts and the Problem of Animal Pain

HT: Tris Stock

(redated post from March 26, 2006) Jim Still’s recent entry on this blog, “Everything is Permitted Under God,” reminded me of a Larry King interview of Benjamin Netanyahu from several years ago (2001?), in which Netanyahu made a very interesting comparison of the behavior of atheistic communists vs. the behavior of theistic terrorists. Ever since … Benjamin Netanyahu on Communists vs. Theistic Terrorists