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Religion

Doesn't the "problem of evil" objection to God's existence presuppose that people ought to be happy? Isn't the idea that people ought or deserve to be happy questionable?

Terrific question! And of course there are reams of responses to and analysis of this very issue ... And you're certainly right that from a religious perspective, it's not entirely clear or obvious that 'happiness' would be (say) God's ultimate goal for human beings, for many different reasons ... But you know, the problem of evil is often framed rather differently -- not merely asking (say) how God can permit so much unhappiness, or so much suffering -- but so much *injustice*. The point of life may not be to be "happy" (whatever "happiness" exactly is, for various people) -- but surely it seems quite unjust when an innocent person, or a good person, is made to suffer in any number of ways -- or when small children are murdered -- and so on. What your point very nicely does (I think) is show that at least *some* of the things that people call "evils" really amount to their merely being inconvenienced or made unhappy -- and then you are right that these sorts of things would hardly disprove the...
Rationality
Religion

One popular take on religious belief is that it can only be arrived at through faith, rather than considerations of evidence or reasons. Even admitting there to be a paucity of evidence in favor of god's existence, we are to suppose that one may legitimately believe in him nonetheless. A theist who not only holds this view about, but claims to believe in god in precisely this way, would then seem to claim something like the following: "Although I recognize there to be insufficient evidence for the existence of god, I still believe in him." I want to ask whether we can really take this claim at face value. Set aside the question of whether religious belief is justified from an objective standpoint, and ask whether it is really coherent for someone to genuinely believe both (1) that X, and (2) that there is insufficient evidence for belief in X. To me this notion has a paradoxical flavor, and I wonder if what is really going on in here is something else entirely. That is, I wonder whether theists of the...

Great question! ... Several terms could use more careful specification/definition, esp. the notion of "sufficient" evidence, not to mention "evidence" itself for that matter ... One route might be to explore "comparative confidence" -- eg Descartes claimed via his ontological argument (Med. 5) that he could be as certain of God's existence as he is of mathematical truths -- pretty 'sufficient' evidence (or argument) there! ... More realistically we might explore whether our confidence in God's existence is comparable to our confidence in the dictates of science, or of common sense about the physical world, or even of belief in the existence of a physical world, or the general reliability of our senses -- the latter three in particular have often been challenged by philosophers, and it may well be an open question whether there is "sufficient evidence" to accept any of of those three, so we might compare the degree of evidence in God's belief with degree of evidence there .... (When confronted with...
Religion

What is supernatural? All right, I know this might sound really broad but I think I can specify and clarify it a little better if I explain what I mean. According to Wikipedia supernatural is anything above or beyond what one holds to be natural or exists outside natural law and the observable universe. If a supernatural being/thing exists, there could be only two scenarios; one would be a supernatural being/thing which can interact with everyday material that we can sense (ie. matter, photons, gravity weak force, strong force, electromagnitism essentially anything that exists) and in that case it would have to have its own mechanisms wich we can observe test and learn (there is an assumption here that everything that interacts with us has a 'mechanism' or a set of rules by which it behaves), which would mean it is 'scientific' and not supernatural. The other scenario is if it couldn't interact with our physical world, in which case it would be outside the natural law of the observable universe, but...

wow, great and deep question(s). I don't have time for an appropriately thoughtful reply right now, but I would mention C. S. Lewis's book on "miracles" at least to raise a question (from a religious perspective) about the assumptions in the first part of your message. Lewis thinks the laws of nature specify how things 'naturally' work when nothing supernatural intervenes, but that a supernatural being might well intervene without employing any (natural) mechanism .... So, basically, God might override whatever the laws of physics dictate at a given moment but not by use of any natural mechanism .... As for the second part of your message, i think the really deep thing you're getting at is whether the world must be 'intelligible', ie capable of being understood -- perhaps the necessity of a 'mechanism' is just a way of saying 'if there were no mechanism there would be no way of explaining/understanding the phenomenon' -- but that raises the question of why we should assume things are intelligible in...
Religion

How can an atheist possibly make sense of a world in which the vast majority of people adhere to a religious tradition? If atheism is correct and at the basis of all these religions lie mistaken facts and historical inaccuracies- for example that Jesus was risen from the dead, that Muhammad was visited by an angel, etc.- then the majority of humans who have ever existed have based their actions and beliefs upon a lie.

You say that as if it's implausible -- but it strikes me as very plausible. The "majority of humans who have ever lived" have rarely been very careful about what they believe, have generally been illiterate, uneducated, deeply superstitious, etc. -- and given how painful the human condition is, and how unbearable it might be to acknowledge that there's simply no point to the existence of this condition, it strikes me as perfectly intelligible how many people would accept religious stories at face value -- even when (as has been amply demonstrated) the face value rendition of those stories (eg in scriptures) invariably contain numerous contradictions .... If you want some really good analysis of these issues you might check out the history of philosophical theology -- thinkers such as Aquinas, Maimonides, and Avicenna, to name representatives of the three major western religions -- who clearly understood (eg) that scriptures cannot be understood/interpreted literally, at face values, that they are...
Ethics
Religion

To many people, belief in God and belief in universal moral values is axiomatic. In fact, many believe that if God does not exist, then everything is morally permissible. But note that almost everyone believes that at least some things are morally impermissible; the best example might be raping a child. And if raping a child is not morally permissible, then not everything is morally permissible. Therefore, it seems to follow that God does indeed exist. This would be the argument form MT and it would be sounds correct? But why?

great question, and much ink has been spilled in addressing it! ... I can't speak for hte 'many people who believe that ...', but it does seem to me that you must argue rather vigorously to support the claim that without God everything is permissible -- indeed it seems more obvious to me that whatever insights we DO have into morality we glean pretty much w/o reference to God whatsoever, and so the burden of proof is on those who think morality requires some grounding in God ... (for excellent thinkers on that question, see of course Kant and more recently George Mavrodes and also Robert Adams -- I summarize some of their ideas in my recent book "The God Question") -- Moreover, sadly, I'm not sure I accept the second premise of your question either -- there have been many cultures which not only accept but have actively supported pedophilia in its various forms (and there is a vibrant subculture alive in the US to this very day), so what you're calling "raping a child" they would indeed defend as...
Religion

Theists often claim that the "fine-tuning" of the universe indicates that it was created especially for man by a divine benevolence. Doesn't the fact that the earth will eventually be incapable of supporting any life (when the sun eventually runs out of energy) disprove this hypothesis? And what of the fact that the entire universe it seems will one day be incapable of supporting intelligent life (the big-freeze)?

Yeah -- I don't think you need to go so far as the future to raise these sorts of questions. To believe in fine-tuning is to believe in being tuned to some end or purpose -- and it's strange to imagine that it's tuned to the purpose of some part or subsection of the universe: it should be all or none, the whole package, and every element of the package should be part fo the design. Well there are already plenty of places in the cosmos that are inhospitable to life, to intelligent life (most of empty space, say), and there are plenty of places on earth that are --such a tiny tiny proponent of the current cosmos seems a candidate for 'design', which ought ,you'd imagine, lessen the inclination to see the cosmos as a whole designed .... (what's all that empty space for anyway?) ap
Existence
Rationality
Religion

Is there something fallacious/illogical about how the theist/atheist debate in the west is currently framed? Let me illustrate my point with an example. Consider the Irish legend of Fionn mac Cumhaill. In making sense of this legendary figure we could start by analysing arguments for and against his existence. We could count, for example, the "Giant’s Causeway" in N.Ireland to be evidence in favour of his existence. But this approach seems slightly misguided. We have jumped right into debating his physical existence without first looking at the sources of the Fionn mac Cumhaill tale. A knowledge of Celtic mythology and folklore would reveal to us the mythological nature of this figure and it consequently becomes illogical for us to debate his actual physical existence. Is the same true of the existence of the Biblical god "Yahweh"? Once we analyse the sources of the Bible, particularly noticing the influence of Near-Eastern mythologies and the development of monotheism from its henotheistic context, we...

great point -- I think I largely agree -- but there may, still, be some disanalogy between the two cases (the Irish legend v. 'God') -- namely once you begin describing God's various attributes (omnipotence, creator, goodness, etc.) then it may well be plausible to seek independent/direct evidence of his existence in the world around you, independent that is of the 'source' of the 'tale' itself -- and that might not be equally true, or true to the same degree, as in the Irish legend case -- after all, you may not need to know who thought of the idea of a 'Creator' God first in order to evaluate, perfectly rationally, whether the world around us exhibits any evidence of intelligent design or creation -- of course, when you do learn more about the 'source' of the idea of God that may increase your skepticism about the truth of the claim that God exists, but it does seem to me that claim may also be evaluable independently of its sources -- best, Andrew
Justice
Religion

I am an atheist fully in favour of a secular society. However I have recently been alarmed by the burka ban recently put in place by the French government. This to me seems at best to be a draconian, knee jerk reaction to something that effects a very small number of people (apparently 1,900 women in France) and at worst thinly veiled racism. I am in no way in favour of the burka or any form of religious dress, but a carpet ban seems to me to be wrong. Surely it is better to live in a society in which such things are allowed, in the hope that one day the people wearing the burka feel they no longer need to. It is often cited as a reason for the ban that it stops oppression of muslim women, but it seems that taking away the option to wear something is a form of oppression also. As an atheist who wishes for as secular a society as possible, am I justified to be concerned about such a law and people lobbying for a similar ban in Britain?

haven't read the nussbaum piece alexander suggests; but i believe one of the motivations of the french law is a security one -- though not many french women wear them, there already have been incidents of men criminals/or terrorists wearing them to escape detection ... (there certainly have been many such in the mid-east where burks are more common) .... and there you have the public interest in security weighed against the individual 'right' to obscure oneself .... I can also see a case made that genuine participation in the civic life of a free society requiers being visible -- identifiable -- sure there's an important role for anonymity, but people's whose opinions are only expressed anonymously when they have nothign to fear from expressing them non-anonymously seem to me to be worth less ... (maybe) ... so that might be a second reason to reject such a ban (though weighs less heavily against the religious desire to wear one, I suppose) .... just some thoughts Andrew
Religion
Science

I really don't understand what the big deal is with the apparent 'fine tuning' of the constants of the universe, or even if 'fine tuning' is even apparent! The conditions have to be just right for life to emerge, sure, but so what? Conditions have to be just right for many things in the universe to occur, but we don't always suspect an outside agent as responsible for setting them up that way just so they'll happen. Is this the final refuge of the 'god of the gaps' habit the humans tend to fall in to? I also don't get the need for a multiverse theory either. To me it's a bit like saying, because I rolled a six on a die there must be five others each rolling the other possible numbers in order to explain it. Okay, much bigger die....

let me add a bit more in favor of the argument here ... we do tend to believe that certain very improbable things do not occur by chance -- poker/slot machine analogies common -- if your friend gets five royal flushes in a row you'd almost certainly be pulling your piece on him -- the fine tuning argument suggests that the very same sort of very ordinary, accepted reasoning applies to the universe -- that the specific tuning of the various constants is so improbable, when all others are possible (no combination of which would lead to any foreseeable valuable universe, key point), that just as you respond to your poker friend you should respond to the universe: not likely to have occurred by chance (tho always, of coure, remotely possible) -- but still the fact it is remotely possible that your friend randomly drew 5 straight royal flushes would stop no one from reaching for their piece .... i have a bit more about the argument in my book 'the god question' -- hope that helps! Andrew
Rationality
Religion

How is it that almost anything that any religious preacher says to prove the existence of God turns out to be typical examples of one or the other of the well known logical fallacies? How is it that they don't realise this simple fact when all such fallacies are enumerated in the Web in such sites as the Wikipedia? Are human being basically very irrational creatures ?

just to supplement Charles's very fine response: first, yes human beings are very irrational, but you can find irrational humans in every domain, theist and atheist ... if you're looking for 'rationality,' or at least approximations thereof, or at least 'reasonableness,' you probably don't want to be listening to local preachers (or even local 'atheists', whatever that means) -- you want to be talking to more philosophically inclined people (which is more or less what Charles is getting at) -- and there are plenty of deep, engaging, provocative things to think about, with respect to religion -- not merely the existence of God but many related topics -- even when you constrain yourself to trying to be 'rational' ... (I've tried to collect a number of these in my recent book 'The God Question,' which presents what a lot of famous philosophers have said on the subject of religion ...) hope that's helpful -- best, AP

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