Today’s Bizarro comic, by Dan Piraro, is funny but also a bit sad. Sophisticated Theologians™ tell us that God is indescribable, that he’s “outside of space and time,” a Being Whereof We Cannot Speak, a “ground of being”—anything but a humanoid being. Well, for most believers that’s not true. I’ll quote here from the book […]
Yes, it’s John Haught again: we haven’t seen him for a while, but I’ve been forced to read a chapter of his in yet another book on science and theology (there have been more than 10,000 books published since 1975 whose topic is “science and religion”). In this chapter (reference below), Haught shows how biological […]
Well, we already knew this (I think), since that asseveration is part of the Nicene Creed, that litany of beliefs that should embarrass any thinking person. Still, it’s nice, at least for us atheists, that the Pope has once again made himself and Catholicism figures of fun by affirming that Jesus was born of a […]
From Alternet via an alert reader, here’s Mittens talking about his Mormon faith—after he declared his candidacy for President—to Jan Mikelson of WHO radio in Des Moines, Iowa. Mittens thinks that Jesus will return in Missouri! But that’s what Mormons believe. (I note here that I was born in St. Louis.) The reader who sent […]
The Templeton Foundation’s Big Questions Online site went moribund for a while, and now has come back in a much subdued form, with only an occasional post. The author of the latest: Father John Behr, described as “Dean of St Vladimir’s Seminary, Professor of Patristics at St Vladimir’s Seminary and Distinguished Lecturer in Patristics at Fordham University.” […]
Last year the infamous theologian William Lane Craig debated philosopher Stephen Law, and made the extraordinary claim that many mammals can’t feel pain, or, if they do “feel” pain, then they aren’t aware that they feel pain. Only “the higher primates and human beings,” claims Craig (“higher” of course, is a scientifically inaccurate term), are aware […]
I am really flattered to see that Uncle Karl Giberson has devoted an entire column on the HuffPo Religion page attempting to debunk me. I’m not quite as famous as Maru or Henri, but this will do. Giberson is exercised by a recent post in which I criticized an Oxford Catholic theologian’s attempt to show […]
Perhaps some of you are groaning under the weight of Sophisticated Theology™ that I’ve pile upon you. But I do it for a good reason: we unbelievers are constantly accused of ignorance about the “best thought of modern theology”, and on those grounds the religious dismiss our arguments. This was, for example, the gambit used […]
Because I wrote about Alvin Plantinga yesterday, and one commenter wondered if I wasn’t mistaken in saying that Plantinga finds naturalism and evolution incompatible, I’m showing a short interview with the man. Here Simon Smart, of the Australian Centre for Public Christianity, gets Plantinga’s take on several issues. Three items are worth noting: Plantinga’s reason […]
Theologians don’t get more sophisticated than Alvin Plantinga, philosopher of religion (emeritus) at Notre Dame and Calvin College. He’s loaded with honors, and was once president of the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association. He’s written a gazillion books, many of which say the same thing, and I’ve posted about his bizarre defenses of […]
