Fans de Waal is a crucial figure in the research into morality, fairness, reciprocal altruism and suchlike within the realm…
Thinking about the tomb, in the context of the last post, it is incredibly suspect that the place of the greatest spiritual and religious significance in the whole world seems not to have been venerated at least not until the 4th century CE onwards). This then prompts these questions:
William Lane Craig, as we all know, is an apologist with a predilection for the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which goes like this:
1) Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence;
2) The universe has a beginning of its existence;
C) Therefore: The universe has a cause of its existence.
The point I want to make today is about quantum indeterminacy. This is the notion that, at the quantum, microscopic level, things could be indeterminate, or ‘uncaused’. This potentially invalidates the first premise.
Here is a great question I saw in the Guardian which raises a whole set of other questions, like all good questions do:
Are Christian souls in the afterlife as segregated by gender as we are on earth?
Souls. What are they, and do they engender gender, so to speak?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A Jewish preacher being the human incarnation of an all-powerful being, dying on a cross and being resurrected from the dead, is probably one of the most extraordinary claims ever made. But a collection of ancient documents like the Gospels is everything but extraordinary evidence.
In my opinion, documents like the gospels could never be sufficient to establish such an extraordinary claim beyond reasonable doubt. And this has nothing to do with a “bias towards naturalism”. I also don´t believe extraordinary claims which do not violate the laws of nature in any way, simply because an ancient document claims they happened.
In this post, I am going to look at the resurrection account given by Matthew, in particular his addition found in no other Gospel account, that there were guards stationed at the tomb.
According to Matthew, the chief priests were worried that the disciples might steal Jesus’ body to fake a resurrection, so they went to Pilate and got permission to post a guard on the tomb. When Jesus rose from the dead, the guards reported it to the priests, and the priests bribed them to claim that disciples stole the body while they were asleep. Matthew claims that “to this day” Jews report the body as stolen (as opposed to resurrected).
Here are some extracts from a fascinating paper – “Mentalizing Deficits Constrain Belief in a Personal God” by Ara Norenzayan, Will M. Gervais and Kali H. Trzesniewski. Gervais is certainly a name which keeps popping up in conversations about the cognitive functioning of people with regards to their beliefs and so on.
The basic conclusion to be made form this work is that people on the autistic spectrum (think particularly Asperger’s Syndrome) have, due to their cognitive functioning, a much higher disposition not to believe in a personal God. The is largely due, it appears, to a lack of empathy. Empathy seems to underscore our beliefs in a personal God. This can be seen in believers needing to put themselves ‘in God’s shoes’, so to speak. In other words, in all your words and deeds as a believer, what would God think of you? This intersubjectivity, placing yourself out of your body and imagining ‘you’ from another point of view, is something that particular groups of autistic people struggle with. And this, it seems, is why they have less propensity to believe.
More than 850 delegates flocked to a seminal conference in London on Saturday about the compatibility of modern evolutionary theory and Islamic theology – despite scaremongering and the refusal of Islamic student societies to participate. Determined organisers had overcome pressure to cancel by changing the venue from Imperial College toLogan Hall at the University of London. The event was the brainchild of the Deen Institute, which runs courses to promote critical thinking among Muslim students and kindle rational dialogue within Islam. The need for dialogue is urgent, because to date there has been little open discussion within British Muslim communities on this divisive subject. Recent debates in the US suggest that evolution is not as much of a problem theologically to Muslims as it is to Christian creationists, but there is work to be done to clarify the situation.
Matt Dillahunty, renowned presented of the Atheist Experience, disconnected a Christian caller when they retorted, when discussing a rape case, that the girl was “just as evil as you”, and thus implying that she deserved it.
To be fair, in many understandings of Christianity, this is the natural conclusion that many must come to, given some of the problematic premises. This is how The Raw Story reports it:
From the Guardian: Organisation launches landmark consultation on oath as part of wider shift to change outdated imaging of…
So having posted the Philpapers survey results, the biggest ever survey of philosophers conducted in 2009, several readers were not aware of it (the reason for re-communicating it) and were unsure as to what some of the questions were. I offered to do a series on them, so here it is – Philosophy 101 (Philpapers induced). I will go down the questions in order. I will explain the terms and the question, whilst also giving some context within the discipline of Philosophy of Religion.
The first question is “a priori knowledge: yes or no?”
That’s true. You heard it right here. An exclusive.
William Lane Craig is something of a knight in shining armour to the Christian fraternity. He is ubiquitous – whenever there is an event, he has something to say about it (the Sandy Hook massacre, for example), and whenever there is a philosophical argument, Christians reference him and his apologetics. It seems that he says “jump” and Christians say “how high?”
Brain cells that fire only when monkeys act unselfishly may provide clues to the neural basis of altruism, according to a new study. In the study, the cells fire in rhesus monkeys when they gave juice away, but not when they received it. The findings, published Dec. 23 in the journal Nature Neuroscience, may shed light on why many animals (including humans) exhibit kind, unselfish behavior that doesn’t directly benefit them.
I was listening today to The Reasonable Doubts podcast and I had a really interesting discussion that made reference to…
So the philpapers survey of philosophers is somewhere I often go to see what the general trend is for modern philosophers. Not so much as an argumentum ad populum – quite a number of the results are evenly split – but to get an idea of which positions are deemed most tenable by those in the know. It really is fascinating reading. I might start doing a series on what each question means. Yes, that’s a good idea. Done. Aah, these good ole streams of consciousness out of which good ideas spout forth.
This is what my great co-blogger at Incongruent Elements. Beth Erickson, has reported. Great news for SIN: The Skeptic Ink…
Philosopher Russell Blackford, author (editor) of the awesome book 50 Voices of Disbelief, has joined the writing team here at…
This is a very amusing philosophical take on the phenomenon of twitter, by James Anderson. on his blog Analogical Thoughts The…
Earlier this month, Pope Benedict XVI joined Twitter in an effort to galvanize the faithful and modernize the Catholic Church for a younger, increasingly secular generation, making him the last person after your grandpa to join the social networking site. The Vatican also hired a former Fox News correspondent to bring their communications strategy into the 21st century, since that network did such an impressive job during the 2012 US presidential election.
Psalm 137 is one of the most famous Psalms, it has been set to music by many composers (you have most likely heard the famous interpretation by Boney M), but virtually always, the last verse is omitted. Why is that? Well, let´s look at the Psalm:
This is an interesting book review as found in a Hume Society release. I really want to read this book – a defence of Hume on his work on miracles. Hume often gets criticised for his work in this area. Fogelin, by all accounts, takes a different approach in his defence. And it is a short book, which gets the thumbs up from me.