The Warfare Is Mental

The Biblical Distinction Between Soul And Spirit: My Response To A Ghost In The Machine, I

October 4, 2008

Ebonmuse has on his site another much-talked-about essay titled A Ghost In The Machine which is a valiant argument against Cartesian duality, or the generally-theist idea that humans have a soul substance that can survive or somehow transcend the death of the physical body. While leaving a comment in the thread of On Expertise I noticed another comment by Heliobates which read,

“…if you want to read what I consider to be THE SLAM DUNK argument against theism, check out our host’s A Ghost In The Machine. Without Cartesian dualism, religion is dead in the water.”

To this I responded,

“IMO the error… is in assuming all religion dependent upon the Cartesian paradigm. Yes, I can and will offer a detailed counter-explanation, but it is far beyond the scope of the thread..”

So here we are. I said I would offer a detailed counter-explanation, and now I’ve got to stick to my word.

The Theist’s Guide To Converting Atheists: My Response To Ebonmuse

September 17, 2008

The atheist blogger Ebonmuse has for nearly a decade now hosted an essay on his website titled The Theist’s Guide to Converting Atheists. I was originally pointed to the essay from a link on another atheist blog asking believers to consider potential facts or situations that would sway them from belief.

What follows is my initial set of responses to this essay.

On The Old Testament, Slavery And Gospel Music

September 3, 2008

The Bible is an object, and like any object, it can be used for many purposes.

After the Flood in Genesis 9, Noah planted a vineyard, got drunk and fell asleep naked. Apparently, Noah became angry with Ham, one of Noah’s sons, for telling his brothers about their father’s nakedness and having him covered. It doesn’t seem like that big an offense to me, but in the next verse we find Noah pronouncing a curse on Canaan:

"Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
will he be to his brothers." (v9:25)

Thoughts on the Nature of Evidence

August 5, 2008

Today I thought about evidence. Not any evidence about anything in particular at first, but more about the root characteristics of evidence – what it is, what it isn't, when it is strong, when it is weak, etc. What we call evidence is merely nothing more than some fact or feeling, and it occurred to me that many of us (myself included) misunderstand the nature of evidence we often hang belief upon. Even more interesting was the discovery that in debates between atheists and believers, much evidence is inconclusive as opposed to genuine. Genuine evidence lends well to incontrovertible conclusions. On the contrary, inconclusive evidence cannot reliably sustain incontrovertible conclusions. Also note that several pieces of inconclusive evidence pointing to a conclusion carry greater weight than just one piece.

On Evangelism

July 8, 2008

I was in the blogosphere this morning and came across a question:

"Is it okay for atheists to try to change people's minds? To try to convince people that their religion is mistaken, and that they should de-convert and become atheists instead? And is there any difference between that and religious evangelicalism?"

To begin, I'd respond by saying atheists are fundamentally incapable of any form of evangelism. This is because the word itself is inextricably intertwined with positive affirmations of faith. Now this is not to say that atheists can't or don't undertake similar methods as evangelists in getting their points across. Nonetheless, the question the author asks is valid.

Are We Alone In The Universe?

June 20, 2008

In general, I take a non-committal stance on the question of extraterrestrial life. Like nearly every other question entangled in religion and metaphysics, the question of humanity’s role in the universe is inevitably muddied by pop culture, mass ignorance of science and ulterior motive. It’s fine if UFO enthusiasts and little green men supporters want to believe that carbon-based biogenetics also happened to evolve metazoa capable of traveling to Earth in mechanical craft ala Newtonian means, but don’t say the facts of astronomy, physics or statistics support it!

Atheism And Theism – Both Logically Flawed

June 16, 2008

Many and possibly all traditional expressions of theism and atheism suffer from inherent logical flaws. The idea is in general accord with a debate I’m currently re-hashing with myself over whether a successful ontological argument exists, or whether one is even capable of existing, and if yes or no, then also on what grounds. My area of expertise is not philosophy or logic, and the presupposition in this particular argument is that I correctly understand the terms I use to support my thesis.

Televangelist Transgression: The Health And Wealth, Abundant Life Tropes

June 15, 2008

Interestingly, this new age of televangelist reminds me of the classic New Age, realize-all-your-dreams-and-desires guru: Impeccably clean and dangerously persuasive, with just a slightly discernible veil of cunning. I wanna spout off about some of the typical American religious chutzpah I'm listening to right now, conveniently on Sunday morning.

Hinduism

June 11, 2008

Rooted in India, Hinduism is one of the older primary religions in our world. Most every major religion has a collection of sacred texts and Hinduism is no exception. Over the centuries, Indian sages formulated a series of teachings and suggestions about life, which were slowly written to insure their preservation. Perhaps the oldest of them, the Brahmanas are a set of rules the priests gave for worship written between 1200 and 1000 bce. Estimated as being written around 800 bce, the Upanishads are a collection of answers from famous Indian teachers concerning questions about life and the universe. The ancient poems and hymns known as the Vedas were composed around 500 bce, and The Great Epics, a series of philosophical and religious poems mainly about legendary heroes and gods, had been passed down verbally for centuries before they were finally written about 100 bce. The Bhagavad-Gita is a short section from one of these epics, and it has become the preferred religious text of India. Its influence has spread to the west as well.

Hello Intuition, Meet Empiricism: My Response To “A Different Way Of Knowing”

In A Different Way Of Knowing, the author begins with slamming insights about the value of the intuitive-creative processes, arguing persuasively that irrational decision-making processes can be valuable. Love, art and music all reject empiricism and involve listening subjectively to our hearts, feelings and intuitions, and nobody would argue that they lack value just because they aren’t arrived at through empiricism. Conceding that some aspects of life are better left to the intuitive method of gathering information, the author proceeds to argue that "the God hypothesis" is not one of them, and is better evaluated via empiricism and the scientific method. I object to the piece on several grounds, five of which follow.

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