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My new ebook is available now on Kindle, Nook and Kobo. James A. Lindsay (Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly) kindly wrote a foreword to support the project.

The book is an amalgam of posts concerning the idea of the God of classical theism with all of the omni characteristics. Most of the content is available here in one form or another, though I have added original content as well. It just draws it all together in one place. It was an idea suggested to me when I posted a list of different pieces I had written criticising classical theism on the Atheism group facebook page.

It moves from the foundational idea of why God should create anything, on through his characteristics to heaven, hell and Satan.

Anywho, the book is available at a reasonable price so that you can see all the pieces in one place and have that instant access to them. Presently, it is available on Kobo, Nook and Kindle.

Let me know what you think. If you like it, please review on Amazon or wherever you buy it!

If not, then, er, don’t…

Here is one of the reviews so far:

Think of this as Jonathan Pearces greatest hits all compiled together. He is one of the most interesting and convincing philosophers of modern times. Some of my favorite posts are here, which I have at my fingertips when I need its resource.

It was somewhat difficult to read this on my phone, I don’t usually read kindle books, I prefer old school books, but I managed to just finish it.

These blogs are fascinating, deep and well written and persuasively convincing of why theism fails on several accounts. The choice of topics are amazing, and no one can deliver this as good as Pearce can.

If you are a Christian, you won’t find this book rude or obnoxious, it is fair, well balanced and I encourage you to give it a chance. Challenge yourself, for no one will challenge you better than Johnny can.

Excellent selection and content, and Johnny hits another home run.

The post The Problem With “God”: Skeptical Theism Under The Spotlight appeared first on A Tippling Philosopher.

I have been engaged in an ongoing discussion with several friends about the concept of human Free Will, a cornerstone of all Abrahamic religions. If humans do not have Free Will, the whole scheme of sin and salvation collapses.

I am going to walk down some well-trodden paths here, but bear with me and you will eventually see some new and, I hope, interesting scenery. Let’s begin with some characteristics of God, as described in various sacred documents. I have selected three that are relevant to this discussion. (Source: Theopedia)

All-powerful – God has all power. He can exercise dominion over the entire universe, carry out the purposes of his wisdom, govern the hearts of men, and even create things out of nothing.

All-knowing – God knows all things. This includes the past, the present, and the future

Benevolent and Merciful  – God has all wisdom. He works everything out for the good of his people. He shows His mercy by not giving us the punishment we deserve.

The Christian concepts of Heaven, Hell and Free Will are not consistent with the divine attributes listed above.  If God is All-Powerful then he could have created us so that we could not sin, and therefore all of us would achieve salvation. Nobody would go to Hell. In fact, God could have simplified the design by eliminating Hell.

A Christian would answer that God wanted to give us the “gift” of Free Will so that we could choose freely not to sin.  But God is All Knowing, so he knows that we will exercise our free will when we are tempted, and that every single one of us will sin. Ah, but he is also Benevolent and Merciful, so he will forgive some of us and we will be saved from Hell. But according to His own words in the Bible (Matthew 7:13), many will not be saved. They will be cast into Hell to suffer eternal punishment for the sins they committed in their short lifetimes, the blink of an eye compared to the endless torture they are condemned to suffer.  How is this consistent with a God who is Merciful?  Was Free Will a gift…or a curse?  Furthermore, according to Christian beliefs, God created Satan to tempt us, making it even more difficult to avoid sinning. This is not consistent with a God who is either benevolent or merciful.

Taken literally, this belief system is cruel, absurd and immoral. There are many intelligent Christian believers. How can they rationalize these obvious contradictions?  The God described above is a malicious tinkerer, creating us without our permission and then forcing us to play his little game of life according to his rules, with our all-too-human nature that he designed, dooming most players to lose the game.  This is not the God that believers are taught to believe in, but it is the only God that makes any logical sense, if one is to believe in the concepts of Heaven, Hell and Free Will.

Now, to address the issue of “faith-based” belief:  Christians who bother to read what I have written above will probably respond…”You need to stop using logic and reason, and take the ‘Leap of Faith.’  Then, it will all become clear to you.”

I have thought about the Leap of Faith, and I view it thus: Humans start their lives on the bank of a swamp. The bank is named “Ignorance.” Across the swamp there is another bank named “Enlightenment.” The swamp is too wide to leap over, but it is easy to leap into it. The name of the swamp is “Superstition.” There is a very complicated and challenging series of floating logs that provide a passage across the swamp to the other bank. These are the logs of logic and reason. The crossing is difficult, and there are many people living in the swamp who tell those trying to cross, “Do not cross. Join us in the swamp. We are very happy here.  Take the Leap of Faith…INTO the swamp.”

The post Free Will and the Leap of Faith appeared first on A Tippling Philosopher.

Yup, it’s that time of year when the New Years Honours List comes out and we find out who the Queen will be honouring for service to the country.

“For Britain!”

Or, more accurately, “For the Tories!” because nothing says nationalism and doing your bit for the WHOLE nation like being employed, as a foreigner, for £500,000 for a few months by a particular political party and then receiving a knighthood for services to politics!

Yup, that’s Lynton Crosby for you, the Australian drafted in to strategise the Tory election campaign, and because they won (well, because 30 odd percent of people voted for them), the man gets a knighthood.

As the Independent reports:

The row over the honours system being used to reward Conservative Party ‘cronies’ is set to be reignited with the revelation that almost 30 Tory Party members or supporters have received awards.

Publication of the New Year’s Honours List confirms that the Australian political strategist, Lynton Crosby, is to be knighted for services to politics. It follows his short stint working for the Conservative Party earlier this year – for which he was paid £500,000 – during which he successfully directed their General Election strategy, resulting in an unexpected overall majority for David Cameron.

But analysis of the list shows that the future Sir Lynton is just one of many who have been honoured not for what they had done for the country, but for their services to the Conservative Party.

It seems to me rather a blatant example of insidious cronyism and Tory abuse of power. As the Indie continues:

Another Tory to receive a knighthood is Henry Bellingham, an old Etonian who has been MP for Norfolk North West for 32 years, and was a junior foreign minister for two years. Two officials working for the Scottish Conservatives received the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) – the highest award on offer below being made a knight or a dame. They are Mark McInnes, director of the Scottish Conservatives since 2003, and James Stewart, who was a director of a London-based equity firm when he took over as treasurer of the Scottish Tories in 2012.

The so-called ‘queen of the sex shop’ Jacqueline Gold, chief executive of Ann Summers, who is credited with changing the lingerie and sex toys retail chain’s brand image to make it more women-friendly, has also been made a CBE. Ms Gold and her father, David Gold, who made a fortune selling pornography, are prominent donors to the Conservative Party. She appeared alongside George Osborne at a pre-election Conservative press conference.

Two Conservative activists have received the next most prestigious order, the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire). Marion Little is a long serving party organiser, based at head office, with the title ‘campaign specialist’, and Dr Spencer Pitfield, who ran against Nick Clegg in Sheffield Hallam in 2005, was director of the Conservative National Policy Forum in the run up to this year’s election.

Lyndon Jones, for years leading figure in the Welsh Conservative Party, and its current deputy chairman, has been awarded an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire). So has Christopher Fenwick, a member of the family that owns the chain of department stores. His award for “political service” probably refers to his former role as Deputy Chairman of the secretive United and Cecil Club, which raises hundreds of thousands of pounds a year for the Conservatives.

The older I get, the more I really have an issue with the Tories.

The post The Tories and their blatant cronyism. It disgusts me. appeared first on A Tippling Philosopher.

According to a Pew Research Report released earlier this year, the percentage of the U.S. population that identifies as Christian has dropped from 78.4 percent in 2007 to 70.6 percent in 2014. Evangelical, Catholic, and mainline Protestant affiliations have all declined.

Meanwhile, 30 percent of Americans ages 18-29 list “none” as their religious affiliation (the figure for all ages is about 23 percent). Nearly 40 percent of Americans who have married since 2010 report that they are in “religiously mixed” marriages, which means that many individuals who profess Christianity are in families where not everyone does.

These changes are taking place for a constellation of reasons: greater secular education (college degrees), multiculturalism, shifting social mores, the secular space of consumer capitalism and celebrity culture, the sexual revolution (including feminism and LGBT equality), legal and constitutional changes (like the banning of prayer in public school, and the finding of a constitutional right to same-sex marriage), the breakdown of the nuclear family, the decline of certain forms of family and group identification, and the association of religion in general with nonsensical and outdated dogmas. The Pew report noted Americans are also changing religions more than in the past, and when they do so, they are more likely to move away from Christianity than toward it.

The idea is that the causal respionsibility for the loss of religious fervour in the States is complex, multi-faceted, and takes a lot of thought and analysis. Steven Reiss, in the Huffington Post, talks about these from a psychologial perspective:

1. Organized religion versus spirituality

2. Tribalism versus humanitarianism

3. Traditional versus nontraditional families

4. Trust versus loss of confidence in institutions

To which he conlcudes:

I believe these four factors have played a role in making organized religion less adept at meeting people’s basic desires. That doesn’t mean this will always be so. Religion may change and adapt — as it has before — to better meet our basic human needs.

Whether it will remains an open question.

There are many theories, and many levels of variables and, as mentioned, complexities.

How do such complexities play themselves out? Well, as Jay Michaelson claims in the Daily Beast article:

But no one likes a “constellation of reasons” to explain why the world they grew up in, and the values they cherish, seem to be slipping away. Enter the scapegoat: the war on religion, and the persecution of Christianity.

It’s much easier to explain changes by referring to a single, malevolent cause than by having to understand a dozen complex demographic trends. Plus, if Christianity is declining because it’s being attacked, then that decline could be reversed if the attack were successfully repelled. Unlike what is actually happening—a slow, seemingly irrevocable decline in American Christianity—the right’s argument that “religious liberty” is under assault mixes truth and fantasy to provide a simpler, and more palatable, explanation for believers.

Take, as an example, Christmas. The weird idea that there is a “War on Christmas” orchestrated by liberal elites—Starbucks cups in hand—is, on its face, ridiculous, even if it is widely held on the right. Shop clerks saying “Happy Holidays” aren’t causing the de-Christianization of Christmas—they’re effects of it. Roughly half of Americans celebrate Christmas as a cultural, not a religious, holiday: Santa Claus and Christmas trees, not baby Jesus in a manger. So that’s what businesses celebrate. It’s capitalism, not conspiracy.

Unfortunately, even if the war on religion is fictive, the “defense” against it is very real and very harmful. This year alone, 17 states introduced legislation to protect “religious freedom” by exempting not just churches and religious organizations (including bogus ones set up to evade the law) from civil rights laws, domestic violence laws, even the Hippocratic Oath, but also but private individuals and for-profit businesses. Already, we’ve seen pediatricians turn children away because their parents are gay, and wife-abusers argue that it’s their religious duty to beat their spouses, and most notoriously that multimillion-dollar corporations like Hobby Lobby can have religious beliefs that permit them to refuse to provide health insurance to their employees on that basis.

I think this is a really pertninent point. Humans love certainty – we know this from psychological reseaerch. Multiple variables means we have this uneasy psychological state of affairs in our brains in being unable to simplistically aportioin blame. We love to assign blame. In fact, this is something I looked at in “Have I killed someone?” which I will quote from now.

Causality. It is a funny thing. Or not so funny.

A few years back, I took my class, as a teacher, on a class trip to the Historic Dockyard in the naval city of Portsmouth, UK. My school is some 45 minutes walk and a short ferry ride from there. With the cost of coaches, it is important to be able to walk to such places to keep the costs down for parents.

We pasted it there on the way, and we were running a little behind, so the walk back at the end of the day was quicker still. One of our parents, helping with the trip, was a heavy smoker who had to stop off at strategic times throughout the day for a crafty kids-can’t-see-me smoke. Many of the children were moaning on the way back because they simply were not used to walking any such length of time. This certainly applied to some of the parent helpers too.

Anyway, we made it back for the end of the school day, so good effort.

Except, that night, we heard that the aforementioned parent helper had died. He had had a heart attack.

Ever since that moment, I have felt partly responsible for that outcome, of that man’s death. In a naive, folk understanding sort of way, that is.

In writing my book on free will, and in researching the Kalam Cosmological Argument, I have come to understand that causality is much more complex than one might imagine. A does not cause B which causes C in such a simplistic manner. At best, things are only ever contributory causes (see JL Mackie’s INUS notion of causality [1]); but even then, this assumes one can quantise time, and arbitrarily assign discrete units of existence to both events and entities.

Let’s look at the event of the class trip. Did it start when we arrived at the dockyard, when we got off the ferry, when we left, when I started organising it, or, indeed, were elements of the trip in place when I started planning the unit, given the job, got my teacher’s qualifications etc?

Of course, there is no objective answer to that. These abstract labels are subjectively assigned such that we can all disagree on them. That is, simplistically speaking, an element of conceptual nominalism. Likewise, there were necessary conditions in the parent’s life which contributed to his death: anything from his smoking, to his lack of general health, from deciding to come on the school trip, to  deciding to get married and have kids. And so on.

An event happens in time and arbitrarily ascribing a beginning and an end to that event is an abstract pastime, and thus fails to be (imho) objectively and (Platonically) real.

Causality works through people, and harnessing it so that any one individual can claim themselves (morally) responsible for future effects which themselves are caused by effects preceding the individual makes for tricky philosophy. This is the battleground for the free will debate, for sure. Arbitrarily cutting causality up in such a way is problematic.

As I have set out in my analyses of the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA), which I hope to turn into a book (based on a university thesis I did on it), causality is not a linear affair which can be sliced and diced, It is a unitary matrix which derives from either a single beginning (like the Big Bang), something I find problematic, or eternally backward, or reaching some time commencement which could itself be a reboot. Either way, the idea of causality cannot be seen, and should not therefore be seen, in a discrete manner of units which can be attributed to equally problematic notions of events or unities. We are one big family of causality, this here universe.

So, in answer to the question, no. No, I didn’t kill anyone. Perhaps we could say that the universe did. And whatever notion “I” am, and whatever “I” am represented by, sat on or, better still, was part of the threads which cross and recross intricately and almost infinitely over each other in a mazy web of interconnected causality.

Why mention all of this? Well, this idea of simplistic causal understanding is what underwrites the points from the DB article such that Christians are claiming persecution and martyrdom from the secular political machine in the sense that “atheists atre evil”.

If you ever get the chance to watch “Bitter Lake” by superb documentary maker Adam Curtis, then do so. Here is the first part:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hdcji

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Busybody: noun;  a person who mixes into other people’s affairs; meddler; gossip

Every year at this time, as predictable as snow in Saskatchewan or icicles in Idaho, it happens.  The bleating about the “oppression” of Christians starts anew.  Usually, it is triggered by some evangelist group that wants to place a nativity crèche on a courthouse lawn or a public park.

When non-Christian groups object, the cries of anguish begin.

A department store hangs a sign that says HAPPY HOLIDAYS or SEASONS GREETINGS instead of MERRY CHRISTMAS.

THEY ARE TAKING CHRIST OUT OF CHRISTMAS!

CHRISTIANS ARE OPPRESSED BY THE SECULAR AND ATHEIST LEFT WING!

Let’s take these in order.  First nobody can take the religious significance out of Christmas for a Christian.  The meaning of Christmas is whatever each individual decides that it is.  To a Muslim or a Jew or a Buddhist or an atheist, Christmas does not have the same significance that it does to a Christian.  Christmas has become a secular, as well as religious, holiday…a time when families gather, exchange presents and share in a holiday feast.  Non-Christians probably don’t think much about the religious aspects of Christmas.  What’s wrong with that?  It doesn’t prevent devout Christians from celebrating its religious significance.

This is similar to the claim that same-sex marriage “threatens” the institution of marriage.  The “sacred union” that religious people forge in a church has exactly the significance they choose to place on it.  Nobody can change that except the partners in the marriage.  How other people marry is, quite simply, none of their business.

Now, let’s address the “oppression” question.  Surveys have shown that Christians make up somewhere between 70% and 85% of the US population.  Of course, Christians come in many flavors.  Many of them don’t go to church regularly, and religious thought doesn’t play a major role in their lives, but they say they are Christians, and I see no reason to doubt them.  Now, that is a substantial majority of the electorate, and so I find it laughable that the miniscule minority of non-Christians are “oppressing” that vast majority.  I would venture that many non-Christians living in this country feel oppressed by the constant pressure from Christian religious organizations who persistently push their Bible-based ideas into the public sphere.

One of the main purposes of the Constitution is to protect minorities from oppression by the majority.  Alexis de Tocqueville warned that the “tyranny of the majority” is a real danger in “illiberal” democracies.

The founders of our nation saw that danger, and built into the Constitution some safeguards to protect minorities from persecution by the majority.  They realized that religion should never dominate government.  That is not to say that individuals in positions of power cannot let their religious beliefs influence their decisions.  Such a prohibition would be unenforceable anyway.  Instead, the founders said that government should never officially endorse religion.  Some people have interpreted this to mean that government should not endorse any specific religion.  They claim that endorsement of religion in general…with nondenominational prayers for instance…is permitted.  A simple reading of Article 1 makes it clear that this is not the case:

 “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”

The prohibition is against religion in general, and it is unequivocal.

Others have claimed that this refers only to the federal government, and that state and local governments are free to endorse religion.  Or that it only prohibits the Congress from establishing a national church.  But the courts have generally adopted a literal interpretation…until recently.

Why do some Christians feel the need to erect Christian displays in public places?  The reason often given is that it “reaffirms the fact that we live in a Christian nation.”  The quote from Article 1 above makes it clear that we most assuredly do not live in a Christian nation.  We live in a secular democratic republic in which a majority of the citizens claim to be Christians.

Is it an attempt to demonstrate their personal devotion?  Why not erect the display in their own back yard or in the churchyard?  Would it not be seen and appreciated by God there?  There must be another reason, and that reason seems obvious to me.

It’s advertising.  Like any business, churches have a product to sell.  The Bible tells them to spread the word of the gospel.

Mark 16:15 (King James Version):  “And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”

So they want the displays to be in public places where they will be seen by the most people.  But more importantly, their presence in a courthouse or other government facility connotes an implicit endorsement of the religion they represent…and, of course, that is exactly what the writers of the Constitution were trying to prevent.

A long string of court decisions have affirmed and reaffirmed the prohibition against such displays in general, but recent rulings of an increasingly right-wing and overwhelmingly Catholic Supreme Court have diluted the decisions of earlier courts.

It has occurred to me that one way to solve the problem is to allow anybody and everybody to advertise their products and services in government buildings.

Just imagine what courthouse walls would look like:

The halls of legislatures and city councils, where “In God We Trust” is often displayed would look like this:

But then, every business would claim a right to advertising space and the walls of public buildings would quickly fill up.  Who would decide which business gets the space?

There is only one answer for a capitalist society.  The space should be rented to the highest bidder.  The rental income could help alleviate the chronic deficits that government at all levels is suffering.

But wait, there is still a problem.  Churches have a huge advantage in competing with businesses.  They don’t pay taxes.  Taxes from businesses helped to build those courthouses and council chambers, and provide the funds to operate them and pay the government officials who work there.  Is it fair to make them compete with tax-exempt churches in a bidding auction for advertising space?

That opens a whole new can of worms:  Why are churches tax-exempt?  Why doesn’t a tax exemption for a church violate the Constitution?  Doesn’t that tax exemption constitute an endorsement of religion?  Isn’t a law that gives churches tax exemptions a law “respecting the establishment of religion?”

Even though a majority of American voters approve of laws that give tax exemptions to churches, doesn’t that constitute tyrannical rule by the majority that de Tocqueville warned us about?  Isn’t that exactly what the Constitution was designed to prevent?

The post Christmas Busybodies appeared first on A Tippling Philosopher.

I still stand by my claims completely.

I wrote how Islam and Christianity have core differences which allow the holy books to be interpreted in different paradigms, allowing for more ability and rationale for cherry picking concerning the Bible.

I have also written about how, if one uses the Qu’ran and the role model of Muhammad as guidance (and not to mention the Hadith), then you cannot get away from the fact that Islam has, at its foundations, violence and morality that is a far cry from the morality understood in modern, morally progressive societies.

My views on these points are the same.

The most vociferous of my critics here have been fellow liberals. As a liberal philosopher (of religion), I have claimed that extremist violence is understandably and explicably linked to the Qu’ran and Muhammad (and the Hadith) and that the problem is largely insoluble because you can’t simply drop these things or explain them away (certainly in the way that you can do this with the mere inspired word of God in the Old Testament, for example). My liberal critics often take the position that the violent jihadis are not representative of the “true Islam” that happens to be peace-loving. I contest this and claim that, more likely, they are suffering from implicit egotism bias. What true Islam is, if such a thing were to properly exist, is what this debate is about. But you cannot deny those who claim that they are doing this in the name of Islam really aren’t, and that another more peaceable version really is the correct interpretation, especially (and this has happened a lot) when you haven’t even read the Qu’ran or looked into the history of Muhammad.

But here’s the thing. I think, strongly that I am correct in this; however, I also think that this position is problematic for finding a short- (and possibly long-) term solution to the problem of religious fundamentalism, terrorism and moral atrocity which exists throughout the world.

By pointing out the truth, I think that i am also helping to alienate the very people we should be “celebrating”. What I mean by this is that we should prefer the liberal Muslims over the more fundamentalist ones, for obvious moral reasons. These, though, under my claims, are “less correct” in their theological interpretations than the fundamentalists who we are trying to argue against. But by pointing this out, by pointing out the theological soundness that jihadis arguable have, is to pit the Western world and fellow non-Muslims against all of Islam, as the liberal Muslims get tarred with the same brush, and Islamaphobia runs rife. I believe we should be afraid of Islam, as a theological Qu’ranic Hadith-driven and Muhammadan worldview, because it fosters violence. Death is the answer for every wrongdoing in the Qu’ran, as dictated by God. But pointing this “truth” out is potentially damaging between the worlds of non-Muslims and the wider branches of descriptively labelled Muslims, liberals and all.

In other words, I am saying that it is possibly worth shelving the truth in favour of social cohesion, and finding some sort of solution to the problems faced in the modern world. This is a moral dilemma in seen in terms of consequentialism; that truth has extrinsic value here, and if it causes or maintains problems, then it can have a negative moral value.

Going around talking about the dangers of Islam, as true as this might be, is dangerous to solving the issues of the dangers of Islam, if you will. I am condemning the liberal Muslims, through guilt by association, to whom we should be so strongly appealing in order to pave a cohesive way out of this political, social and theological mire.

Perhaps, I am therefore saying, it is worth me stepping back from the Islamic debate in order to reassess.

Thoughts?

The post Where I stand with Islam and violence now appeared first on A Tippling Philosopher.

Check this fascinating talk by Aaron, and please go and buy his excellent book (also available from the sidebar>>>>) which Richard Carrier claimed was the “go to book” on the subject. If Amazon say it is out of stock, it isn’t, as it is held in virtual stock, and it’s A
mazon being annoying – you can also buy from their marketplace sellers, Barnes & Noble and anywhere else.

The post The Star of Bethlehem: Lecture by Aaron Adair at Merrimack College appeared first on A Tippling Philosopher.

SIN is awesome, and here’s for why. Ed Clint has made this a truly beautiful site, with it’s clean lines, cool feel and aesthetic modernity. It really is the nicest looking network I know. And I can write what I want, in whatever way I want. No, this decision is mercenary.

Ed has collected a disparate bunch of good people here, many of whom I talk to daily on facebook, so it won’t necessarily be a social upheaval. Blogging becomes a way of life, and the amount of output I have produced, becomes rather consuming. So it’s important to me. These people are important to me.

I must really thank Ed (and John Loftus) who put this network together and originally asked me to join them. A risk, perhaps. But my blog has become one of the most popular here, and I have them to thank for the opportunity. The network has nurtured me, and given me every chance to develop and find an audience. This has been vital to allowing me to become who I am.

I hope you will come with me. I value your comments and input more than I can adequately communicate in words, here. It’s why I do what I do. You sharpen me towards a greater pinnacle of truth.

But I also hope you will stay around here and support the wonderful people here.

I would like to give my heartfelt appreciation and love to the people here. Apart from Caleb Lack. He speak funny. And pretends to do science.

Oh, go on, and Caleb.

What a lovely bunch of peeps. Watch out for continuing fiction out put from Rebecca Bradley and myself on our Loom imprint.

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