The Confused Atheism of NFL Star Arian Foster

The latest, August 18 edition of ESPN Magazine, one of the most popular sports periodicals in the world, features a cover story titled "The Confession of Arian Foster" (which you can read in full online.) The article is a sort of "coming out" for NFL star Foster, running back for the Houston Texans, who admits he doesn't believe in God. According to some pundits, his confession makes him "the first active professional athlete, let alone star, to ever stand up in support of gaining respect... Read More

Bart Ehrman, Benedict XVI, and the Bible on the Question of Miracles

“At its core, the debate about modern exegesis is not a dispute among historians: it is rather a philosophical debate.” - Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) My reflection today revolves around this poignant line from Joseph Ratzinger’s 1988 Erasmus Lecture in which he famously called for a “criticism of criticism.” In penning these words, the German cardinal was looking for a self-criticism of the modern, historical-critical method of biblical interpretation. On the part of... Read More

The Challenge of Ontological Disproofs

Dr. Peter Kreeft once noted that, “When Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote his great Summa Theologica, he could find only two objections to the existence of God, even though he tried to list at least three objections to every one of the thousands of theses he tried to prove in that great work” (Fundamentals of the Faith, p. 54). The two objections that Aquinas had in mind were the problem of evil and the apparent ability of science to explain everything without God. During my doctoral... Read More

Prayer, Science, and the Existence of God

Can science find God? If God is defined as a being (or perhaps “the ground of being”) that is neither composed of matter nor confined to a spatial location, then the answer seems to be no. After all, science is limited to explaining the natural, physical world. If God exists beyond that world and is not composed of anything found within it, then he seems to be out of the reach of scientific inquiry. But even if science can’t “find” God in the same way I can find my car in a parking... Read More

Varieties of (Non)Belief

NOTE: Today we share a guest post from one of our non-theist commenters, Paul Rimmer.     Does the world need another article on how to define atheism? Does Strange Notions? These questions had to open the article, in part because there have already been several different Strange Notions articles on how to define atheists, including the most recent article about self-identified atheists who believe in God. Yet here I am, talking about how to define the terms “atheist”, “theist”,... Read More

Top 10 Tips for Atheists When Engaging Christians

As an intellectual movement, Christianity has a head start on atheism. So it's only natural that believers would find some of the current arguments against God less than satisfying. But in the interests of a more robust debate, I want to offer my tips for atheists wanting to make a dent in the Faith. I've got some advice on arguments that should be dropped and some admissions about where Christians are vulnerable. Before beginning, though, I want to point out that these tips don't necessarily... Read More

Atheism, Philosophy, and Science: An Interview with Dr. Michael Ruse

As a young undergraduate at Florida State University, studying mathematics and engineering, I had no idea that one of the world's leading philosophers of science worked just a couple buildings away. Had I known about Dr. Michael Ruse then, I would have jumped at the chance to meet him. He's since become one of my favorite atheist writers, displaying a sharp mind and a good will, free of needless polemics. (He's also not afraid to tattoo extinct marine arthropods on his arm if dared.) This... Read More

The Road from Atheism: Dr. Edward Feser’s Conversion (Part 1 of 3)

NOTE: Today we share the first part of Dr. Edward Feser's conversion story from atheism to theism. We'll post Part 2 this Friday and Part 3 on Monday. We'd also like to note that Dr. Feser's contributions at Strange Notions were originally posted on his own blog, and therefore lose some of their context when reprinted here. Dr. Feser explains why that matters.     As many friends and readers know, I was an atheist for about a decade—roughly the 1990s, give or... Read More

Will We Have Free Will in Heaven?

Will we have free will in heaven? If so, does that mean we might sin and fall again? If not, what kind of free will would we have there? And if God can harmonize our free will and sinlessness in heaven, why doesn't he do so in this life? Here are some thoughts . . .   A Robot "Loves" Me. Big Deal. NOTE: This is part of a series on the problem of evil. Click here to read the previous posts in the series. In a previous post, we looked at a common answer to the problem of evil--that God... Read More

Why Does God Allow Sin and Suffering?

The most perplexing problem in apologetics is the problem of evil: Why would an all-good, all-powerful God allow evil to exist? There is a real mystery here, and we can only give partial answers. Here are some of mine . . .   Two Kinds of Evil We need to recognize that there is more than one kind of evil. When we use the word "evil," we often mean moral evil (sin), but historically it was frequently used for other things, such as suffering. These two forms of evil are linked: It... Read More

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