Perhaps you can answer why God would not be able to create a state of affairs that violates the law of non-contradiction in some way?

Sure, but perhaps in a way that you might not expect.

Let nT stand for some self-contradiction.

It is not the case that God is unable to actualize nT. Rather, it is that nT is incapable of actualization. The former is a statement about God (and incompatible with omnipotence). The latter is a statement about nT (and says nothing about God). This is why Thomas Aquinas notes, "It is more exact to say that the intrinsically impossible is incapable of production, than to say that God cannot produce it."

The distinction that Aquinas underscores here is the fact that its impossibility is not due to some extrinsic feature (that which it has in relation to some thing outside itself); in other words, the idea that no agent can produce it is not what makes nT impossible. Rather, it is due to an intrinsic feature (that which it has in and of itself); in other words, the idea that it is incapable of production in and of itself, regardless of any agent, is what makes nT impossible.

Read the rest of this entry

There is such an abundant wealth of information available on the internet that I often miss material which would otherwise have caught my attention and interest—like this one did, although its original date of publication was nearly a year ago now. I was following a considerable series of link trails this evening so I am uncertain about where I found this, but it may have been a link someone provided at the message board forums of the Stand Up! With Pete Dominick radio program on Sirius XM Radio (of which I am a volunteer staff member, incidentally, routinely updating the show’s web site with each day’s guest information).

In an article published last year (18 September 2008) in the Wall Street Journal, journalist Mollie Ziegler Hemingway wrote [1] about a Baylor University survey study released the day prior [2] whose results show, among other things, that non-religious people are more likely to believe in pseudoscience, cults and superstition than religious people. In contrast to what the New Atheists would have us believe, she says, their anti-religious campaign "might actually encourage new levels of mass superstition. And that’s not a conclusion to take on faith—it’s what the empirical data tell us."

The Gallup Organization, under contract to Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion, asked American adults a series of questions to gauge credulity. Do dreams foretell the future? Did ancient advanced civilizations such as Atlantis exist? Can places be haunted? Is it possible to communicate with the dead? Will creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster someday be discovered by science?

Read the rest of this entry

LAST UPDATED: 7 September 2009

PREFACE: The following article was originally published in three different places, two which died internet deaths and one that still exists as an inactive blog. [1] Shortly after publication it caught the attention of Austin Reed Cline, a Regional Director for the Council for Secular Humanism and editor of the Atheism section of the About.com site, who published an excoriating and profoundly inaccurate review thereof. [2]

I invited Cline to interact with me on the subject because I intended to compose a rebuttal and wanted his input before publication; I also asked if he would be willing to provide a link to my rebuttal. On both counts he refused, and with some rather insulting remarks. So I had to complete my rebuttal without any input from Cline. Unfortunately that rebuttal was published at one of those now-dead locations, a web site that died when my hosting company went out of business.

I am republishing the original article here along with a new rebuttal against Cline (which I will finish by this weekend) for the thoughtful consideration of our readers and members. Please feel free to weigh in with your thoughts on my original point, on Cline’s review, and on my rebuttal.

Original Article (27/Jan/2005):

The really frustrating thing about most atheists, at least those who enjoy debating against Christian theism, is that they presuppose the truth of their system of belief and then tacitly insist their Christian opponent work within the framework of that system. In other words, the Christian is expected to provide arguments in defense of Christian theism which accord with the atheist’s epistemology in particular and world view in general. This is implicitly demonstrated in challenges such as, "Provide evidence that God exists." The relevance of evidence, and even what constitutes evidence, are defined by his system of thought.

However, if it is permissible for the atheist to presuppose the truth of his system of thought and expect the Christian to work within the framework of that system, then it is also permissible for the inverse of that situation. Otherwise, the atheist would shoulder the epistemic responsibility for explaining why the only presuppositions permitted in the field of debate are his own—and I would not anticipate a rational argument for that.

Read the rest of this entry

For all Americans who are absolutely fed up with the multi-billion-dollar private health care industry raking in staggering profits for its CEOs and shareholders off keeping Americans sick.

Which do you prefer having between you and your doctor? (1) A duly elected government body representing and subject to We the People that wants health care for everyone, or (2) a multi-billion-dollar profit-minded private corporate body representing CEOs and shareholders that routinely denies health care for so many through unethical exemptions, loopholes, and similar practices?

Send a strong message to "Blue Dog" Democrats in the House of Representatives, using an already filled out web form provided by the FreedomWorks web site but inverting the message:

1. Click on the following link: http://tinyurl.com/lfxh3t (FreedomWorks web site)
2. Change the Subject line to "Vote YES on Obamacare"
3. Copy-and-paste the following altered form of the message body:

Public support for Obamacare has been faltering the last few weeks, and I believe that much of that is due to the incoherent scare tactics by the opposition. I hope that the American people can count on your courageous support of a government takeover of health care.

Small businesses can’t afford the trillions of dollars being wasted through the private health care industry. Given the growing size of our deficits and debt, neither can the taxpayers. Please provide your political support of a government plan that would put a votes-minded government body between me and my doctor, which is far better than a profit-minded corporate body. Government represents we the people, corporations represent CEOs and shareholders.

A little over a month ago I discovered and joined a new atheist message board, which has been around for barely a year itself. It is called AtheistForums.org (a free plug for your site, Adrian)—and there I go by the name of Arcanus. That site will invariably become fodder for articles here, of course, as a source for either thought-provoking material like this article, or as comedic material for the new segment I will be creating and adding to over time called Fundy Atheists Say the Darndest Things (coming soon). Having disclosed the origins for what I am about to share, let me show you how to stump an atheist.

A member there by the name of Dagda posed the following question [1]. There is no evidence that the world really exists the way we perceive it. For example, it could be nothing more than an elaborate Matrix-like simulation, and we have no means by which to determine otherwise. That is to say, we have no way to tell that the universe we perceive is the real world. For all we know, the world may indeed be an illusion.

Read the rest of this entry

NOTICE: The following is for those interested in responding to the article I wrote on 7 November 2006 under the same title (http://apologia.wordpress.com/2006/11/07/an-agnostic-what). I am republishing it here because that blog is not only inactive but very dead. It does not exist for me to log into. Therefore it is impossible to authorize the comments or respond to them. Thanks to WordPress policy, that article continues to exist. And thanks to Google, it receives a great deal of traffic. But since that blog is dead, only comments submitted here can be authorized and published—and responded to.

Roberto Teixeira’s blog likewise no longer exists, so I have removed the link to his article which was originally entitled "The New Atheists." However, you may click on this Internet Archive link and scroll down to that article title.

It is a very popular idea—far too popular—that somehow ‘agnosticism’ is neutral territory on the question of God and where one stands with respect to belief in him. Cruising through Technorati this evening, I discovered a post by Roberto Teixeira on the subject of agnosticism in his blog (which is not usually devoted to subjects like these, so perhaps he has not explored the finer points of philosophy). After giving a little background information about how and why he turned his back on God, and the weakness of the arguments for God that he has encountered, he made a rather disappointing remark:

Agnostics cannot prove or disprove god; thus, they neither accept nor deny it.

Read the rest of this entry