MythCon IV: What Organizers & Outreach Directors Need to Know

This fourth Mythinformation Con was fascinating, and overall quite excellent, even when it was disturbingly bizarre (video here). Most readers might want to know my take on the strange hour and a half of anti-feminist cult leader Sargon of Akkad battling feminist...

Why Plantinga’s Tiger Is Pseudoscience

You remember a while back when I dared to call Alvin Plantinga a terrible philosopher spewing pseudoscience? (Plantinga’s Tiger and Other Stupid Shit) Soon after, the Christian presuppositionalist Josh Sommer was having none of that. So he wrote three whole...

How Can Morals Be Both Invented and True?

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...

Timothy Keller: Dishonest Reasons for God (Chapter 9)

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,...

Timothy Keller: Dishonest Reasons for God (Chapter 8)

I began my critique of Keller’s The Reason for God with an exposé of everything up through Chapter 1, then Chapter 2, Chapters 3 through 5, Chapter 6, and Chapter 7. Here I will cover Chapter 8—and some material he adds in between Chapters 7 and 8. Next...

Plantinga’s Tiger and Other Stupid Shit

In the course of composing my critical series of Timothy Keller’s Reason for God, I noticed his reliance on that awful philosopher Alvin Plantinga at a key point, warranted an article all its own. It’s an argument you’ll have heard many times before,...

Crank Bayesians: Swinburne & Unwin

Deepak Chopra uses “science” to spew bullshit. That does not discredit science. The Kalam Cosmological Argument uses “logic” to spew bullshit. That does not discredit logic. Politicians use “statistics” to spew bullshit. That does...

Timothy Keller: Dishonest Reasons for God (Chapter 6)

I began my critique of Keller’s The Reason for God with an exposé of everything up through Chapter 1, then Chapter 2, and Chapters 3 through 5. Here I will cover Chapter 6 (and next 7). I’ll continue to other chapters in future installments. In these two...

Timothy Keller: Dishonest Reasons for God (Chapters 3 to 5)

I began my critique of Keller’s The Reason for God with an exposé of everything up through Chapter 1. I continued with Chapter 2. Here I cover Chapters 3 through 5. Next will be Chapter 6. I’ll continue to other chapters in future installments. Today the...

Timothy Keller: Dishonest Reasons for God (Chapter 2)

I began my critique of Keller’s The Reason for God with an exposé of everything up through Chapter 1. Here I continue with Chapter 2. Next I’ll cover Chapters 3 through 5. I’ll continue to other chapters in future installments. Here the same themes...

All Godless Universes Are Mathematical

At futurism.com, there is a brief article explaining why the universe is mathematical, by saying, essentially just, that’s what we invented math for, to explain the universe. But this isn’t really an answer to the question. Theists have long used the lack...

Epilogue to the Sam Harris Moral Facts Contest

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...

Update: I’ll Be Speaking in Michigan in April

Susan Jacoby was originally slated to speak at the Birmingham Temple Congregation for Humanistic Judaism the evening before the Michigan Atheists Conference this year. But alas, she had to reschedule to speak the Friday before that (the 21st of April, 2017)....

Speaking at Ohio State University in Columbus

My talk entitled “Philosophy’s Not Dead: Why Scientists Need Philosophy & How Philosophers Need Science,” with Q&A after and the selling and signing of my books, will be delivered on Tuesday, February 21 (2017) from 11:30am-12:30pm in 107...

Objective Moral Facts

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...