Christian historian Dr. Wallace Marshall and I are debating whether or not enough evidence points to the existence of a god. For background and format, and Dr. Wallace’s opening statement, see entry one. For subsequent entries, see index. We’ve covered the...
Christian historian Dr. Wallace Marshall and I have engaged a debate on whether or not enough evidence points to the existence of a god. Background and format are explained with Dr. Wallace’s opening statement. For convenience all entries in the debate will be...
Christian historian Dr. Wallace Marshall and I are debating whether or not enough evidence points to the existence of a god. For background and format, and Dr. Wallace’s opening statement, see entry one. For all subsequent entries, see index. That the Evidence...
Beginning today and for the next three months I will be engaging a formal serial debate here with Dr. Wallace Marshall over whether the evidence points to there being a God—or the absence of one. Marshall has a Ph.D. in history from Boston College and an M.Div....
What worldview is better for the world? That’s a question I debated with Joel McDurmon of American Vision just the other day in Houston. I’ll announce the video when it goes live. But one of the matters that came up centrally in that debate was moral...
I will be speaking for the Free Inquiry Group on the science and philosophy of moral reasoning in Cincinnati, Ohio, this coming October 23rd, Tuesday 7pm, at the First Unitarian Church of Cincinnati on 536 Linton Street. Details on Facebook and Meetup. Description:...
We all know the Golden Rule, taught supposedly by the Jewish Rabbi Jesus in the West and the Confucian scholar Mo Tzu in the East: “do to others as you would have done for yourself.” Or as the equally ancient Rabbi Hillel, or Confucius himself, said, “do not do to...
Part 3. I just addressed Plantinga’s ontological and metaphysical arguments (A through I) and his epistemological arguments (J through Q). Here I conclude with his moral and other arguments (R through Z; and finally, his whopper of all arguments, the Argument...
Years back George Dvorsky wrote a popular article at io9 titled “8 Great Philosophical Questions We’ll Never Solve.” It’s interesting because all eight are triggers for the same cognitive biases sustaining irrational theistic belief. Is it true...
Last Saturday, I was recruited to live-debate Ray Comfort on Facebook. That’s right. The banana man himself. Warlock to Kirk Cameron’s imp. Mr. “Everyone Is an Adulterer” (including Mother Theresa and that unborn fetus over there). Topic? “Can...
After my post on Timothy Keller’s bewilderment at how atheists can have and justify morals and civil rights, many Christians struggled to understand the point, that morals and rights are totally made up, just like language and wheels and eyeglasses and laws, and at...
I began my critique of Keller’s The Reason for God with an exposé of everything up through Chapter 1, then 2, 3 through 5, 6, 7, and 8. Here I will cover Chapter 9. Next will be 10 through 12. And I’ll close with one more post on the rest of the book,...
A few years ago, Sam Harris put on a contest, that awarded $2000 to the best essay critiquing his “moral landscape” theory of moral facts—and could have awarded them $20,000 had it convinced him. It didn’t. I agree it shouldn’t have. But...
Is there an objectively true morality? The question usually goes astray where those who ask or answer it never stop to clarify what they even mean by “objectively true.” In fact, people who ask or answer this question almost never define what they mean by...
Is moral truth a priori and not a natural property of the universe? So says Dr. Russ Shafer-Landau (as articulated in Whatever Happened to Good and Evil in 2003; and Moral Realism: A Defence in 2005). Even though I’m sympathetic to his project, he’s just...
In my work I have repeatedly pointed out two things about what philosophers think the options are in developing a theory of moral truth: (1) that their standard assumption of only three options (consequentialist, deontological, and virtue ethics) curiously omits a...
Richard Carrier is the author of many books and numerous articles online and in print. His avid readers span the world from Hong Kong to Poland. With a Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University, he specializes in the modern philosophy of naturalism and humanism, and the origins of Christianity and the intellectual history of Greece and Rome, with particular expertise in ancient philosophy, science and technology. He is also a noted defender of scientific and moral realism, Bayesian reasoning, and historical methods.