During the episode I made a comment about the seeming weirdness of Christianity that I feel it would be helpful for my thinking to try to elaborate. I’ve said in several posts here that I think that the new atheist movement is primarily political: it’s not about advancing new arguments to philosophers, but about shifting the tide of opinion so Continue Reading …
Judging Religion vs. Judging “Twilight”
Some of our ongoing atheism discussion here brought to mind an analogy that I think is best illustrated by a comic from Lore Sjoberg’s Bad Gods. See the comic on Lore’s site. Punch line aside, the point should be clear. To argue effectively against religion, you have to be familiar with religion, and to argue it on a point-by-point basis Continue Reading …
Who’s Qualified to Speak about Religion?
The most recent comment to yesterday’s post on atheism was a quote (thanks, Jonathan!) from Jose Ortega y Gasset used on this blog to argue that scientists shouldn’t be weighing in on matters of religion and ethics which are, after all, not their specialty. The point is well taken, reflecting Socrates’s general criticism that every expert in one area thinks Continue Reading …
Baggini interviews “new atheist” AC Grayling
We’ve gotten into a little discussion of the new atheist movement, an area well covered by other podcasts (meaning we likely won’t devote substantial time to it on our podcast, though we’ll certainly discuss religious philosophy). To get clear on one of its key arguments, that it’s religious moderates that create a climate where extremism can exist, I’ll point to Continue Reading …