Tag counter-apologetics

Loftus has written some cracking books

It’s no secret that I am a big fan of John Loftus’ books. He has written some corkers. In fact, his class Why I Became an Atheist (or WIBA) is exactly that, a classic. It remains one of the best counter-apologetics books out there and was hugely significant in contributing to my movement toward being so interested in the philosophy of religion.

Let me go through them one by one.

50 Great Myths About Atheism

Russell Blackford, one of the many superb writers we have here at SIN (over at The Hellfire Club) is going through a prolific writing period, a right purple patch. One of his recent titles just hitting the bookshelves and online retail listings is 50 Great Myths of Atheism.

Here is the book description from the back cover:

Apologist Knechtle owned in debate with Beahan

SO this is a few years old now, but this debate is great. Jeremy Beahan, presenter on Reasonable Doubts podcast and radio show, calmly deconstructs every argument this rather smarmy apologist gives. I enjoyed listening to this one, and I hope to hear Beahan do more debates. Good stuff.

Interview with skydivephil, creator of superb videos

Many of you will have come across the superb videos of skydivephil on You Tube and embedded across various forums. That is, unless you have had your heads buried in the sand. I first came across them when they critiqued william Lane Craig on the Kalam Cosmological Argument as can be seen here:

Problems with the Fine-Tuning Argument

Here are some notes I made some time ago, based on various sources, some of which are linked below. Richard Carrier’s book “Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism” provided an excellent backbone to the first set of points.

The methodological and other problems:

4 counter-apologetics segments available on podcast!

So sorry to Skepticule podcast for being behind on plugging the podcast! I, as you may well know, contribute to the Skepticule podcast by recording a counter-apologetics segment for them, Pearced Off. My segment is always followed by an interesting discussion of ideas brought up by the ‘panel’ of Pauls.

The ‘Why I am a Christian’ series – Randal Rauser

As mentioned in my last post, I was graciously asked by Randal Rauser on his blog recently to provide a synopsis of a few paragraphs to run in his series “Why I am an atheist” (or not a Christian. The series has been interesting and has elicited testimonies from Justin Schieber, Counter Apologist, Jeff Lowder, Ed Babinski and others. I have since asked Randal to return the favour and he has gladly accepted, furnishing me with a much more lengthy expression of the reasons for his Christian belief.

Guest Post – The Thinker’s Evolutionary Argument Against God (EAAG)

It’s time to welcome our first guest post here. The Thinker has occasionally dropped a line and commented on various arguments. He runs his own blog called Atheism & The City, being a secular urbanite living in New York. His philosophically minded blog is worth reading here. His formulation of today’s post can be found here. This post concerns the incompatibilism of God given the truth of evolution. Ie evolutionary theism is problematic. Anyway, over to The Thinker:

Why I am an Atheist

Randal Rauser, with whom I have had a radio debate about the Nativity, is running a series on his blog asking atheists why they are atheist (or not Christian). He has asked several atheist bloggers and authors, including myself, to produce a paragraph. Justin Schieber, Counter Apologist and Ed Babinski did a little more than that, so I added a tiny bit extra to mine, but it still remained more concise than theirs! See what you think – it is hard to be super concise: