(For previous posts in this series, see here.) In the previous post I made the point that scientists can, and should be able to, translate between colloquial and scientific descriptions of phenomena but religious believers sometimes get misled into thinking that the looser language represents what is believed by scientists. The worst example of the …
Monthly Archive: May 2008
May 29 2008
The end of god-20: Science and scientific language
(For previous posts in this series, see here.) In the previous three posts in this series, we saw the failure of attempts to raise religious beliefs to be on a par with science. The second line of defense taken by the new apologists against the attacks of the new atheists is to try and lower …
May 28 2008
The end of god-19: Why religious institutions do not seek evidence for god
(For previous posts in this series, see here.) In the previous post, I said that sometimes the argument is made that the scientific community should pursue even tentative clues for the existence of god or the paranormal because the people who originally stumble over them do not have the kinds of resources and expertise to …
May 27 2008
The end of god-18: Passing the buck
(For previous posts in this series, see here.) When it is pointed out that religious people have never provided any credible evidence for the existence of god, some religious apologists argue that the evidence for god is not definitive at present but only tentative and preliminary and needs to be pursued further to become more …
May 26 2008
When good people do bad things
(Today is Memorial Day, a holiday in the US. Since I am traveling this weekend, I am reposting an old item, updated.) Amongst Catholics, it had long been thought that children who die without being baptized have not had their original sin expunged and are thus excluded from heaven. While the church had no formal …
May 23 2008
The end of god-17: The god who loves playing peek-a-boo
(For previous posts in this series, see here.) There used to be a time when religion and belief in god reigned supreme and science was secondary. It was believed to be incontrovertibly true that god existed, and one did not really need to argue in favor of that proposition. Scientists of the period earlier than …
May 22 2008
The end of god-16: The tortured reasoning of the new apologetics
(For previous posts in this series, see here.) In the previous post I discussed the fact that the new religious apologists start by arguing that a God of the Ultimate Gaps cannot be ruled out as a logical possibility and then simply assert that this means one can believe in a Personal God as well. …
May 21 2008
The end of god-15: Switching gods in mid-argument
(For previous posts in this series, see here.) In my previous post in this series, I argued that sophisticated religious apologists know that the only kind of god that they can argue for that can co-exist with our current state of knowledge is a God of the Ultimate Gaps, who created at one instant the …
May 20 2008
The Hagee chronicles
I have written before about John Hagee, head of the group called Christians United for Israel (CUFI). This is a group that is politically aligned with the extreme right wing of American and Israeli politics, opposes any land for peace deal with the Palestinians, opposes withdrawing from any of the occupied territories, and does not …
May 19 2008
The end of god-14: Sleight-of-hand arguments for god
(For previous posts in this series, see here.) When religious apologists like D’Souza appeal to Augustine’s statement that the universe had a beginning as evidence that Christianity is right, they do not spell out the full implications of what they are saying because that would show the ridiculousness of the argument. If they really believe …
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