The Evolution of Awe vs. The Aesthetic Argument for God

Over a decade ago I wrote my last update on the science of aesthetics and how it confirms naturalism over theism (“Musical Aesthetics”), building on and updating my argument from visual science in Sense and Goodness without God with a discussion of music science. I...

Think for Yourself!

A new show is out that has an extended interview of me (and adding others). Which reminded me to update my Videos Page (adding and subtracting and rearranging some things). So check out that page, and the new interview, on Think for Yourself! That’s mainly about...
On Getting Confused by the Idea That Atheism Predicts Nothing

On Getting Confused by the Idea That Atheism Predicts Nothing

One of the most persistent reasons any Christian remains stuck in that delusion is that they are really bad at thinking their way out of any false position. Christians are prone to deciding what to believe based on groupthink, cult-think, and intuition (otherwise...

Touch, All the Way Down: Qualia as Computational Discrimination

Today I am going to offer a naturalist theory of qualia—the particulars of “what it is like” of conscious experience, like the redness of red or the floweriness of a flower’s scent or the twanginess of a guitar, or even what love or fear, or...

Theism, Naturalism, and Explanatory Power

Last week I published an eristic analysis of an exchange of videos between Rationality Rules and Capturing Christianity, on Which Is ‘Rational’: Theism or Atheism? This time I will analyze a previous Capturing Christianity video, “Why Theism Best...

Which Is ‘Rational’: Theism or Atheism?

Of course, atheism. But in any debate with the deluded, they will claim it’s the other way around. Flat Earthers will claim the rest of us are deluded, that believing in a spherical Earth is irrational, and so on. So someone not already up to speed might not be...

The Argument from Non-Locality

It is common to just assume God is timeless and spaceless. But I aver that’s logically impossible. You Have to Exist Somewhere to Exist at All If God has no location, then by definition there is no location at which God exists. And if there is no location at...

Was Daniel Dennett Wrong in Creative Ways?

The great cognitive scientist and philosopher Daniel Dennett passed away this year. And shortly after, Cameron Bertuzzi interviewed a Christian apologist, Bob Stewart, on his channel Capturing Christianity, regarding “Daniel Dennett’s Philosophical...

What If We Reimagine ‘Nothing’ as a Field-State?

Yesterday I published my take on a recent debate I had with Andrew Loke, before an audience of philosophers, on whether my conclusion is sound that We Should Reject Even the First Premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. I took the stance of a nothing-first...

Ten Ways the World Would Be Different If God Existed

Imagine you just became a god. No, really. One second from now you become all powerful—for no reason at all; no one did this to you, you didn’t earn it, it literally just randomly happens. And by having all powers logically possible, you immediately also...

Boyce and Swenson’s Theological Argument against Multiverse Theory

In 2020, Christian philosophers Kenneth Boyce and Philip Swenson presented a thesis at a conference, which has yet to appear under peer-review (though a version is in review), arguing that “fine tuning” is actually evidence against a multiverse. This is...

How the New Wong-Hazen Proposal Refutes Theism

A new law of nature has been fleshed out and proposed, in a research paper by Wong, Cleland, Arend, and Hazen, which theory I will just label for convenience the Wong-Hazen thesis. To read the original paper, see “On the Roles of Function and Selection in...

Why Nothing Remains a Problem: The Andrew Loke Fiasco

I’ve long defended an argument theists seem to have no ability to escape: The Problem with Nothing: Why The Indefensibility of Ex Nihilo Nihil Goes Wrong for Theists. Robert Koons couldn’t get around it (Koons Cosmology vs. The Problem with Nothing). And...

Is Science Impossible without God? The Argument of Tomas Bogardus

Yesterday I surveyed a whole category of arguments for theism, the “Science Needs God” complex. And I concluded by mentioning a (sort of) new one, by a well-credentialed professor of philosophy, Tomas Bogardus (another fashionable Protestant convert to...