God as Purpose or Cause

Educated Christians are often fence-builders. They are hesitant to impose on science’s domain by asking scientists to validate their religious dogmas. They are equally wary of any signal that anti-theists operating under the banner of science will encroach on their…

Consensus Argument

Consensus Argument When lots of people reach consensus on a topic, we should grant their judgment due consideration. That’s just common sense. Unfortunately, that commonsense dictum has a cancerous mutant form known as the consensus argument. One proponent of the…

Quranic Inerrancy

  Muslims, no less than Christians, fancy that their holy book is inerrant. Zakir Naik, a conservative Muslim scholar, declares that the Quran is never to be critiqued. He demands that non-Muslim houses of worship be forbidden in Muslim lands…

The Morality of Science

I once heard a TV preacher—I believe it was Garner Ted Armstrong—chastise all scientists within broadcast radius, admonishing them that morality cannot be retrieved from a database. He cautioned that the rockets returning from the moon never brought home any…

Eternal Mind

Theologians postulate an Eternal Mind as the first cause. This eternal mind is offered as an alternative to the unpalatable idea of eternal matter. Unfortunately, the presumption that an eternal mind is more plausible than eternal matter is not merely…