Reading Time: 4 minutes The question of personhood is central to a variety of current controversies. American courts recently considered the question of whether elephants are persons. Google fired an engineer for suggesting that a machine is sentient. And the U.S. Supreme Court argued that Roe v. Wade failed to adequately consider fetal personhood. These disputes involve a conflict […]
Philosophy
Posted inBooks
‘On Consolation’: Comfort for nonbelievers from great thinkers
Reading Time: 4 minutes As an omnivorous reader, I unconsciously categorize my books: the ones I quit partway through, those I finish but donate to a library, books I keep for repeat reads, and, top of the heap, the treasured titles I underline and dog ear, the better to savor and re-savor certain passages. Michael Ignatieff’s On Consolation belongs […]
Posted inPhilosophy
God is not great at seeking informed consent
Reading Time: 4 minutes No, I will be not talking about the dubious circumstances involving Mary’s pregnancy while Joseph was out carpenting, though I could. Instead, let’s talk about skeptical theism as a mechanism for excusing all of the suffering in the world. Skeptical theism is the “God moves in mysterious ways” gambit that believers provide in the absence […]
Posted inReligion
Phenomenal conservatism: It seems like suffering is gratuitous
Reading Time: 5 minutes Skeptical theism is defeated by phenomenal conservatism. Big words, phrases, terminology, jargon. But also, big ideas. If you’re not familiar, skeptical theism is the philosophical term for “God moves in mysterious ways.” When confronted with the problem of evil (why does so much suffering exist given “OmniGod” is all-knowing, -powerful, and -loving?), the theist often […]
Posted inPhilosophy
The art of conversion
Reading Time: 5 minutes Like most Afghans, Rahim was born a Muslim. Not that he cared much about religion. What he did care about was flying. And being a bright adventurous young man, he became a pilot. With Aryana, the Afghan Airlines, that flew, among other routes, from Kabul to London. The line started operating three years before I […]
Posted inPhilosophy
Is simulation theory just another form of religion?
Reading Time: 4 minutes You’ve likely heard of simulation theory—the idea that the world we live in isn’t actually real but was created by hyper-intelligent beings for their own ends. If this is a new idea for you, also know that the theory is taken very seriously by some very serious thinkers. Adherents of the theory usually argue that […]
Posted inReligion
Concrete thorns for skeptical theism: Why does suffering still exist?
Reading Time: 6 minutes The problem of evil is the thorniest of challenges for the theist: It is the issue of why suffering or evil exists in the world of OmniGod, where God is supposedly all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving. God knows what to do about this suffering, is powerful enough to do it, and loving enough to care to […]
Posted inEducation
What’s the point of education?
Reading Time: 6 minutes No, really, what is the point? I ask this in light of recent UK government potential demands on universities that they are putting out to consultation. Known as “public comment” in the U.S., this is where the government seeks input from the public and stakeholders concerning a proposed change of policy or similar, partly to […]
Posted inPolitics
Will faith in a ‘divinely-inspired’ Constitution save us?
Reading Time: 3 minutes During a recent hearing of the House January 6 committee, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) stated that the U.S. Constitution is “divinely inspired.” She was referring to testimony from Rusty Bowers, the Speaker of Arizona’s House. In his testimony, Bowers said, “it is a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired.” Bowers was […]
Posted inCritical thinking
The atheist case for free speech
Reading Time: 10 minutes It was about 15 years ago, at Pitzer College, a small liberal arts institution in California, in my Sociology of Religion class. The morning’s lecture was “The Origins of Mormonism.” A main point of the lecture was to illustrate the way in which this recently-established world religion emerged not because of any supernatural magic, but […]