Pascal’s Wager and the Ad Baculum Fallacy

I’m sure you’ve all heard of Pascal’s Wager. The gist of it is that if you bet on there being a God (meaning, to Pascal, the Medieval Catholic God), you have an infinite expected return on investment, because at worst it costs you nothing (or at...

Naturalism Is Not an Axiom of the Sciences but a Conclusion of Them

I recently found an article from 2011 making a point I’ve long made myself, that the entire notion of a “presumption of naturalism” being axiomatic to history and the sciences is both an error made by some historians and scientists and an apologetic...

Theism & Atheism: Science

Part 3 of my series on the new Macmillan reference Theism & Atheism: Opposing Arguments in Philosophy: my discussion of the Argument from Science, which holds that the collective consequence of the advance of the sciences is the substantial reduction in the...

Theism & Atheism: Miracles

Part 2 of my series on the new Macmillan reference Theism & Atheism: Opposing Arguments in Philosophy: my discussion of the Argument from Miracles, which turns that argument on its head. Far from being evidence for theism, the collective evidence regarding miracle...

Theism & Atheism: Doxastic Foundations

This year Macmillan produced a peer reviewed collection of position papers between atheists and theists titled Theism and Atheism: Opposing Arguments in Philosophy (2019), in which I contributed several chapters. Like most academic monographs these days it’s...

Who Is an Atheist?

Is everyone who lacks belief in a god an atheist? Or is there always some middle category—we’ll call it “agnostic”—such that (a) they don’t believe any gods exist but also, at the same time, (b) they can never be called an atheist?...

The Carrier-Marshall Debate: My Ninth Reply

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 the rest, our index. We are now discussing what I call the...

The Carrier-Marshall Debate: Marshall’s Seventh Response

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. Now we are focusing on...

The Carrier-Marshall Debate: My Eighth Reply

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 the rest, our index. We are now discussing what I call the...

The Carrier-Marshall Debate: Marshall’s Sixth Response

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. Now we are focusing on...

The Carrier-Marshall Debate: My Seventh Reply

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 the rest, our index. We are now discussing what I call the...

The Carrier-Marshall Debate: Index

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...

Misunderstanding the Burden of Proof

In matters of knowledge and belief, everything is probability. They who do not understand this, will commit innumerable errors, and waste gobs of time arguing to no purpose. This is especially evident in debates over who holds the burden of proof in any given matter,...

The Real Basis of a Moral World

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...