Let me preface this by saying that in most other aspects of philosophy, I have an enormous respect for Peter van Inwagen. His work is extraordinarily insightful and often brings a great deal of relevant discussion to the topic at hand. This is precisely why I find his attempt to rectify our understanding of the … Peter van Inwagen’s Miracle Monkeys

http://www.examiner.com/article/christian-leader-wants-to-tax-atheists-for-not-going-to-church Well, if it comes to that, atheists should go to church! They should go to the local fundamentalist barn and sit on the front row in gym shorts and T-shirts. The T-shirt will read: “I won’t teach evolution in your church if you don’t teach creation in my school.” Or maybe: “Jesus, protect me … Tax Atheists!

(Note: this section will be updated over time.) Academic Publications Brooks, E. Bruce. “Arguments from Silence.” Warring States Papers 4 (2013). Carrier, Richard C. “Did Jesus Exist? Earl Doherty and the Argument to Ahistoricity” The Secular Web (2002). —. Proving History. Buffalo: Prometheus, 2012, 117-19. Garraghan, G.J., S.J. A Guide to Historical Method. J. Delanglez, … The Argument from Silence: Related Resources

I want to provide a Bayesian interpretation of the argument from silence. Let S be some truth about the silence of a potential source of evidence fact and H1 and H2 be rival explanatory hypotheses. (1) S is known to be true, i.e., Pr(S) is close to 1. (2) H1 is not intrinsically much more … The Argument from Silence, Part 1: The Bayesian Interpretation

Something tells me we won’t see similar changes at the Boy Scouts of America anytime soon. LINK

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?

I just learned about this. Apparently the apologist who runs the site www.truefreethinker.com has described Geisler’s response to The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave as a “murder of atheists.” (See here and here.) To be clear, the author is not calling for the murder of atheists. Rather, he says, I am employing the term … Open Question to Theists: Do You Condone the Use of the Phrase a “Murder of Atheists”?