Reading Time: 4 minutes The Language of God, Chapter 4 By B.J. Marshall This chapter is entitled “Life on Earth: Of Microbes and Man.” Right from the beginning, you should probably know that there’s a lot in this chapter that Collins gets right. It’s like how William Lane Craig is totally in his element when he talks about cosmology, […]
philosophy
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Could Creationism Be Rational After All?
Reading Time: 4 minutes By Richard Hollis (aka Ritchie) I thought I’d kick off the guest posts with a little philosophical thought experiment (hark, is that the sound of you all clapping your hands in glee?). When I wrote the following, I mean it fairly light-heartedly, but with an eye to the fact that we should perhaps remember we […]
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Whence Comes God's Nature?
Reading Time: 4 minutes According to the vast majority of religious believers (though perhaps not to the tiny minority of elite theologians), God is basically in nature like a larger and more powerful human being. He has plans and desires which he takes actions to fulfill; he likes some people and things and dislikes others; he experiences emotions like […]
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Epicurus' World
Reading Time: 4 minutes The story goes that the renowned physicist Richard Feynman was once asked to summarize the most important finding of modern science in a single sentence. Feynman replied, “The universe is made of atoms.” Although there are many other scientific discoveries that are arguably of equal importance, Feynman’s choice makes a lot of sense. The discovery […]
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The Happiness Machine
Reading Time: 4 minutes As any regular reader of Daylight Atheism knows, the topic of morality is a major concern of mine. In essays on Ebon Musings, I’ve sketched out a secular moral theory I call universal utilitarianism. Here on this site, In the past, I’ve written about the roots of this morality and the virtues that can be […]
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Forms and Essences
Reading Time: 3 minutes In the past, I’ve written about the origins of religion and how belief in gods likely arises from one of humanity’s most common psychological fallacies, the tendency to attribute agency where none exists. (When was the last time you got angry at your computer and felt as if it was trying to balk you? It […]
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On Agent Causation
Reading Time: 3 minutes Among the band of philosophers who hold that free will is supernatural, one of the reigning ideas is called agent causation. This hypothesis states that volitional acts are a special category of event, one that is caused not by any other event but – in some deeply mysterious way – by the agent itself. Philosopher […]
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All Things in Moderation
Reading Time: 3 minutes In last month’s post “Down to Earth“, I discussed Thomas Jefferson’s ideal of rich simplicity, what Buddhism calls the Middle Way. Rather than the vain pursuit of happiness through the acquisition of power or material possessions, the true source of contentment lies in the simple pleasures of life that are available to everyone, regardless of […]
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On Analogies, and the Uses Thereof
Reading Time: 2 minutes In essays such as “Three In One“, I’ve scorned the Christian doctrine of the Trinity: If a claim is labeled beyond our ability to understand, then how are we supposed to tell if it is true? What assurance do theists have that the Trinity is a true fact about the world that is genuinely beyond […]
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Doubting the Sun
Reading Time: 2 minutes Imagine, in some medieval monarchy or modern-day oligarchy, that the government passed a law which made it a crime to deny that the sun exists. No country either ancient or modern has ever done this, and it’s easy to see why. Who would ever be tempted to deny the existence of the sun? The evidence […]