---

 

A Manual for Creating Atheists: A Critical Review

Since its release last November, Peter Boghossian’s A Manual for Creating Atheists has quickly become one of the most popular new books on atheism (as of now it has 200 reviews on amazon.com). As someone who has also recently written a book on atheism, though from a far different perspective, I was eager to see Boghossian’s method for “creating an atheist.” In this book review I’ll cover the good, the bad, and the ugly in A Manual for Creating Atheists. The Good   Surprisingly,... Read More

Does God Tempt People to Evil?

According to James 1:13, “Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am tempted by God'; for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one.” Skeptics, aiming to disprove the Bible, may reply that God certainly does tempt people to do evil, and his actions during the Israelite's exodus from Egypt is proof of that. Let My People Go!   In Exodus 3-4 God calls Moses from his life as a fugitive in Midian and tells him to return to Egypt in order to lead the Israelites to freedom. God... Read More

Answering Two Objections to Aquinas

I'd like to share an excerpt from my new book Answering Atheism, which answers two common objections to Thomas Aquinas’s first way of proving the existence of God. This way is usually called the argument from motion. Objection #1: What moved God?   The “new atheists,” like Richard Dawkins, sometimes make a caricature of Aquinas and claim he is arguing that, “Everything needs a cause. Therefore, there had to be a first cause called God. God is the exception and has no... Read More

Should Catholic Schools Be Allowed to Discriminate?

Should Catholics be allowed to discriminate? The short answer: Of course they should. Now, let me define what I mean by “discriminate.” In one sense, to discriminate means to note a difference between two things. When a Catholic school doesn’t hire an incompetent applicant, they discriminate between that applicant and a more qualified one (just as your taste buds discriminate between chocolate and sulfur). However, when most people think of discrimination, they think of unfair discrimination,... Read More

Would God Create a Gigantic Universe?

Some critics claim that if God existed, then the universe would not be 13.7 billion years old or be 93 billion light years across as it is currently. Hasn’t science shown that this immense universe was not created for us but that we are an inconsequential part of an uncreated universe? The problem with this argument is that science can show us only the universe’s dimensions; it cannot reveal any meaning or lack of meaning inherent in those dimensions. In response to this argument, the believer... Read More

Are Animals Moral?

A study conducted last year is now being used to support the claim that chimpanzees have morality just like humans do. But have commenters been monkeying with the study’s conclusions? In the study conducted at Georgia State University (which has been covered on websites such as CNN), scientists tested chimps with what they call the “ultimatum game.” The game has been played in cultures worldwide and involves three roles: the experimenter, the proposer, and the respondent. In the game, the... Read More

Raising Children Without God?

On a recent CNN iReport, a user named TXBlue08 provides seven reasons why she chooses to raise her children without belief in God. Her essay has already been viewed over 800,000 times. Given its popularity, I'd like to examine her seven reasons: "1. God is a bad parent and role model. Good parents don’t allow their children to inflict harm on others. “He has given us free will,” you say? Our children have free will, but we still step in and guide them." Parents discipline their children,... Read More

Is Atheism a Belief or a Lack of Belief?

When asked to prove atheism is true, many atheists say that they don’t have to prove anything. They say atheism is not “belief there is no God” but merely “no belief in a God.” Atheism is defined in this context as a “lack of belief” in God, and if Catholics can’t prove God exists, then a person is justified in being an atheist. But the problem with defining atheism as simply “the lack of belief in God” is that there are already another group of people who fall under that definition:... Read More

Does Quantum Physics Refute the Kalam Argument for God?

In a previous post I argued that a common atheist intuition about what would count as proof for the existence of God also provides a foundation for the intuition that something cannot come into existence from nothing without a natural cause. If this intuition is true, then it would provide much more support for the first premise of the Kalām Cosmological argument (KCA). For those who are unfamiliar with this argument for the existence of God, it goes like this: P1. Whatever begins to exist has... Read More

Four Reasons to Believe in Jesus: A Reply to Richard Carrier

EDITOR'S NOTE: Today ends our four-part series on the historical evidence for Jesus. Popular atheist writer Richard Carrier began Monday with an article titled "Questioning the Historicity of Jesus". On Tuesday, Catholic writer Jimmy Akin responded with his piece, "Jesus Did Exist". Next, Richard offered a post titled “Defending Mythicism: A New Approach to Christian Origins". Finally today, Trent Horn provides a rejoinder.   I’d like to thank Dr. Carrier for responding to my article “Four... Read More

« Previous Page — Next Page »