Epistemology

A collection of 180 posts

Epistemology

What Is Fairness? Tackling Verbose Stoic's Mission.

In my recent series about the unevenness of evidence apportioning throughout time and place, Verbose Stoic (VB) called me out on my claim about fairness. His whole comment was much longer, but I want to narrow down to just one aspect here - the fairness. The context of this was

Dave Armstrong

The Uneven Evidence Debate: Responding to Paul Hoffer

As I am sure you are aware by now, I have been embroiled in a debate with myself Dave Armstrong about the uneven apportioning of evidence to humanity over time and place. It moved more into the philosophical domain, so Armstrong invoked a comment from, one presumes, a more philosophical

Biblical Exegesis

It Turns out the Whole Unfairness of Evidence Apportioning Boils down to "Free Will"

Who knew. The background: Catholic apologist Dave Armstrong and I have been arguing about the unfair distribution of evidence for God in the world and over time. This has been a somewhat protracted argument due to too much time spent erecting straw men and not enough time doing the legwork.

Dave Armstrong

Putting the Doubting Thomas Episode to Bed, and Opening a Can of Worms

This is a long piece, but we get onto some good stuff, so stay on target. Catholic Dave Armstrong, over at his own Patheos Catholic channel blog, has been attempting to refute my recent pieces both on Doubting Thomas and on picking apart his own responses. Unfortunately, Dave is pretty

Biblical Exegesis

Doubting the Lessons from Doubting Thomas: Responding to Dave Armstrong Again

I started off this debate the other day with a short piece about the unfairness of the distribution of evidence as exemplified by the Doubting Thomas episode in gJohn. Catholic Dave Armstrong replied, and I duly responded. I then finally found a comment in one of my threads, by Dave,

Biblical Exegesis

Doubting Thomas: A Response to Catholic Dave Armstrong

Yesterday, I wrote a very short piece concerning the episode of doubting Thomas in John 20: 24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, who was called e]">[e]Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples were saying to him, “We have seen

Epistemology

The Double Standards Involved with Doubting Thomas

Here's the thing - we often hear that God wouldn't put a cross on the moon as overwhelming evidence for his existence because it is just too overwhelming and doesn't give people the "choice" to believe. But this is thoroughly problematic, as

Epistemology

Materialism As a Position of Faith

I am, brought on by a section on phenomenology in a forthcoming book, looking back into the school of philosophy known as idealism. It's been a long time since I have written and researched on this particular subject and I am enjoying it immensely. What are phenomenology and

atheism

The Most Pathetic Christian Argument I Have Heard

I recently had a debate with a Chriatian apologist, Lydia McGrew, on the Unbelievable? show on Premier Christian Radio. The debate is on YouTube and I made the mistake of getting involved with some of the comments there. Lo and behold, the most pathetic and egregious of arguments was put

Biblical Exegesis

Hitchens's Razor vs Bayes's Theorem

John W. Loftus has just endorsed my forthcoming book on the Resurrection in the following manner: Hitchens’s Razor, not Bayes’s Theorem, is the proper tool to use against the “absolute baselessness” of the resurrection belief (per David F. Strauss, as quoted in this book). There’s no objective

channel - politics blue

Epistemology: Trump, Fraud and Believing his Swamp

Trump seems to have fully jettisoned himself off the deep end. The latest example of his growing desperation and idiocy is the unhinged phone call he had with the Republican Georgian Secretary of State for which he has now been reported to the FBI for. I have listened to parts

Biblical Exegesis

Possibiliter Ergo Probabiliter and the McGrew Nativity Debate

Possibiliter ergo probabiliter is a fallacy that Richard Carrier coined to express the ubiquitous technique that theists use to try to explain away issues that pop up in the Bible and this is no more evident in Christian approaches to defending problems within the infancy narratives of Luke and Matthew.

Epistemology

Today's Interview on WLC, the Resurrection, Faith, Evidence & Belief

Here is the interview I had today with Andy Hall. As ever, I really enjoyed this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLMEwCkufio Let me know what you think.   Stay in touch! Like A Tippling Philosopher on Facebook: A Tippling Philosopher You can also buy me a cuppa. Or buy

Biblical Exegesis

Totally Disingenuous: William Lane Craig Woefully Mischaracterises Me in His Podcast

I have just been made aware of a podcast in which William Lane Craig takes a couple of my short articles to task. The ones in question are: * The Resurrection, Fideism and Circularity * Supernaturalism (and Motivated Reasoning) He absolutely hammers me. Well, he thinks he does. Because what really happens

2020 Election

Truth Decay and the Normalisation of Conspiracy Theories

So much has gone on recently that I don't know where to start and can't hope to include everything. Conspiracy theories are being flung at as many walls as possible to see what sticks and where, and it's all so depressing. We really are

Epistemology

Pearced Off! #10 - How Much Evidence To Believe in God Is Twisting Your Arm?

I am running a series of the old podcast segments from my Pearced Off! section of the Skepticule Podcast (a British skepticism-based podcast now on hiatus) that I used to contribute to. Some of the earlier ones have some quieter audio. Apologies. They run at around ten minutes. Something to

Consciousness

An Immaterial Mind Causing the Universe

The other day, I was sent an argument by a commenter on my video discussing the Kalam Cosmological Argument. For the full details of his arguments, please see my post here. William Lane Craig uses an extension to his Kalam Cosmological Argument to conclude that this an immaterial mind, qua

Crime & Punishment

Inductive Reasoning and Black People Hanging

For those of you who don't know, there has been some very dubious activity concerning two black men who were found hanged within ten days and 50 miles of each other. One was found near a homeless encampment in Victorville, the other across from Palmdale City Hall. Both

Epistemology

Concerning Metaphysical and Methodological Naturalism

I was having a Tippling Philosophers' debate concerning naturalism elsewhere and my friend stated this, which is worthy of debate and unpicking: Naturalism is a picture of the whole of reality that cannot, according to its own intrinsic premises, address the being of the whole; it is a metaphysics

Biblical Exegesis

Pearced Off! #6 - Circularity of Believing the New Testament

I am running a series of the old podcast segments from my Pearced Off! section of the Skepticule Podcast (a British skepticism-based podcast now on hiatus) that I used to contribute to. Some of the earlier ones have some quieter audio. Apologies. They run at around ten minutes. Something to

Biblical Exegesis

Being Skeptical of the Resurrection Accounts; An Online Easter Talk, Tonight

Tonight, I am giving a talk that will be jointly hosted for two different skeptical organisations here and here at 8pm UK time. My talk will be a tough one to squeeze into the allotted time, so I will be rattling through it at a rate of knots, no doubt.

Coronavirus

Coronavirus Is a "Partisan Pandemic"

I have subjected myself to listening to each and every press briefing from the White House in their entirety over the last few weeks. It is definitely a source of pain. You don't need me to repeat myself again in exasperation that people could vote for the utter

belief

Pearced Off! #2 - Doxastic Voluntarism

I am running a series of the old podcast segments from my Pearced Off! section of the Skepticule Podcast (a British skepticism-based podcast now on hiatus) that I used to contribute to. Some of the earlier ones have some quieter audio. Apologies. They run at around ten minutes. Something to

Epistemology

"Numbers Are Continuing to Rise!" Leadership Matters. Truth Matters.

"Numbers are continuing to rise..." You might be forgiven for thinking this was an assessment of the death statistics (in the US); after all, this was a comment by the POTUS. But no, it was on Twitter and it was, yet again, a comment from Trump rather narcissistically

abstracts

Philosophy 101 (philpapers induced) #11 - Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?

Having posted the Philpapers survey results, the biggest ever survey of philosophers conducted in 2009, several readers were not aware of it (the reason for re-communicating it) and were unsure as to what some of the questions meant. I offered to do a series on them, so here it is