Counter Apologetics

Non-believing Christian Philip Goff joins us to discuss religious fictionalism, literalism, religious language, Jordan Peterson, the resurrection, the spread of Christianity, the transcendent, and Christianity without theism. After the interview, I try to work through my thoughts on secular Christianity. I reflect on antitheism, fundamentalism, and what replaces religion after the death of god. Philip is a philosopher who teaches at Durham University. He is the author of Galileo’s Error and Consciousness and Fundamental Reality. He’s published more than forty academic papers, and his writing has appeared in many newspapers and magazines, including The Guardian and The Times Literary Supplement. You can follow Goff on Twitter @Philip_Goff and Emerson @waldenpod Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness – Goff [Amazon] Consciousness and Fundamental Reality – Goff [Amazon] Robin Le Poidevin on Religious Fictionalism [PDF] Ozymandias Ramses II on New Atheism [YouTube] Sean Carroll’s Speech (begins at 1:23:13) [YouTube] philipgoffphilosophy.com Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here Rate the show on iTunes here Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here Support the show at patreon.com/counter Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook Follow me on Twitter @waldenpod Music by Whalers. Additional music by ichika Nito. Both were used with permission.

In his 1997 debate with William Lane Craig, Paul Draper considers seven lines of evidence and asks if they are more expected on theism or on naturalism. He argues that the meager moral fruits of theism, mind-brain dependence, evolution, the biological role of pain and pleasure, tragedies, divine silence during tragedies, and religious confusion are not what we would expect to find if theism were true. The world looks about as one would expect it to look if god did not exist. Christians and atheists are both capable of accounting for what we observe. Certainty is not on the table. So what are we to do? According to Draper, we should ask: Is this fact likely given naturalism? Or is it surprising given naturalism? Is that datum to be expected on theism? Or is it not exactly what we would expect? Then we should survey the total evidence and see which worldview fares better overall. Draper vs. Craig – 1997 [YouTube] J.J. Lowder’s Summary and Assessment of the Debate [Patheos] Elephant Philosophy – Draper’s Case for Naturalism [YouTube] Paul Draper [Infidels.org] Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here Rate the show on iTunes here Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here Support the show at patreon.com/counter Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook Follow me on Twitter @waldenpod

This Halloween, we’ll be discussing the life and work of the great horror author, H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft’s atheism 00:00 – 07:38 Biographical details 07:39 – 12:50 Lovecraft’s reanimation and influence on culture 12:51 – 18:02 Lovecraft and the unknown 18:03 – 20:22 Forbidden knowledge and a New Dark Age 20:23 – 26:14 Fast zombies 26:15 – 27:27 More on the Lovecraftian mythos 27:28 – 29:13 Lovecraft’s writing style 29:14 – 38:54 Lovecraft’s racism 38:55 – 43:19 The Old Church Lady and art 43:20 – 45:46 Horror and its critics 45:47 – 48:20 / / /  FREE LOVECRAFT AUDIOBOOKS Dagon The Rats in the Walls The Shadow Out Of Time The Shadow Over Innsmouth At the Mountains of Madness The Call of Cthulhu / / /  MORE LOVECRAFT PODCASTS Chapo Trap House on Lovecraft [YouTube] Lovecraft Literary Podcast [HP Podcraft] Patton Oswalt [HP Podcraft] Patton Oswalt with Chapo Trap House [Patreon] / / /  READINGS ABOUT LOVECRAFT hplovecraft.com Emma Stefansky – Primer on the works of HP Lovecraft [Polygon] HP Lovecraft’s 125th Birthday [The Atlantic] Nnedi Okorafor – Lovecraft Award [blogspot] Criticism of Lovecraft’s Writing Style [The Guardian]   Criticism/Praise for Lovecraft [The Guardian] The Philosophy of Horror – Noel Carroll [PhilPapers] Against Religion – HP Lovecraft [Amazon] The Portable Atheist – Christopher Hitchens [Amazon]  Complete List of Lovecraft’s Short Stories [hplovecraft] / / /  Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here Rate the show on iTunes Support on Patreon Dark Lofi (outro music) [YouTube] Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook Follow on Twitter @waldenpod My Top 25 Horror Movies [Letterboxd] Check out my review of Hereditary, the most overrated horror film in cinematic history, over on Walden Pod. / / /   

This is the audio from my appearance on The Empathetic Atheist YouTube show. Justin & Andy ask me what I take to be the best argument against god and what I take to be the worst argument for god. I apologize for the audio (as well as the video) quality. I don’t know how to properly stream and my internet is terrible! The EA Show – Interview with Emerson Green: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f59q8x1yqSY

Young earth creationists believe that the earth, humankind, and the universe are approximately six-thousand years old. Scientifically, this is a fringe view, not taken seriously by anyone outside religious circles. However, the majority of Christians in the United States are young earthers. Today, we discuss one particular problem for young earth cosmologies: the distant starlight problem. We can see stars that are millions and millions of light years away. If it’s true that the universe is only a few thousand years old, then why can we see stars more than a few thousand light years away? 40% of Americans Believe in Creationism [Gallup] William Lane Craig on young earth creationism [YouTube] Ken Ham on young earth creationism [YouTube] Light-In-Transit and Anisotropic Synchrony Convention – Jason Lisle [AiG] Jason Lisle – The Speed of Light and the ASC [YouTube] The One-Way Speed of Light [YouTube] Conventionality of Simultaneity [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy] Starlight and Time – Russell Humphreys [GoogleBooks] William Lane Craig on the Kalam & Theories of Time [YouTube] Kalam & the A Theory – Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (pgs. 183-184) [PDF] PBS – How we know the universe is ancient [YouTube] PBS – How we know the earth is ancient [YouTube] The Age of the Universe – Sixty Symbols [YouTube] / / /  Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here Rate the show on iTunes here Support on Patreon here Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here Additional music by ichika Nito and was used with permission. Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook Follow me on Twitter @waldenpod

Abiogenesis is the process by which life arises from non-living matter. Though life’s origin is an open question, abiogenesis research is a thriving interdisciplinary enterprise. In spite of this, many apologists have argued that it’s unlikely we will ever have a scientific explanation of abiogenesis. Abiogenesis is so improbable on naturalism, they say, that we should be open to supernatural explanations. I argue that abiogenesis is not improbable on naturalism, and also attempt to unravel the numerous errors creationists make when discussing the origins of life. Astrobiologist Stuart Bartlett on What “Life” Means [Mindscape Podcast] Astrobiology at NASA – Defining and Detecting Life [NASA] Darwin’s Warm Little Pond Revisited: From Molecules to the Origin of Life – Hartmut Follmann & Carol Brownson [PubMed] Michael Russell on Alkaline Hydrothermal Vents [JPL] Clay may have been birthplace of life on Earth [ScienceDaily] Michael Russell on Emergent Structures in Nature [YouTube] Meteorites Reveal Another Way to Make Life’s Components [NASA] The Origins of Life [GreatCourses] The Elemental Ingredients of Life are Common [wiki] Jackson Wheat – A Few Ideas in Abiogenesis Research [YouTube] The Replicators (Chp. 2 of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins) [text] Why Abiogenesis is Impossible – Creation Research Society Quarterly [PDF] Intelligent Design, Abiogenesis, and Learning from History: A Reply to Stephen Meyer – Dennis R. Venema [PDF] Peanut Butter – The Atheist’s Worst Nightmare [YouTube] Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here Rate the show on iTunes here Support on Patreon here @waldenpod “We left the last hint of polar land behind us, and thanked heaven that we were clear of a haunted, accursed realm where life and death, space and time, have made black and blasphemous alliances in the unknown epochs since matter first writhed and swam on the planet’s scarce-cooled crust.” — H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness

We complete our trilogy on igtheism and discuss epistemic questions about god’s attributes, the historical development of god’s nature, the experience of god, god’s relationship with logical truths, absence of evidence, and address the inevitable retreat into transcendence. Follow me on Twitter @waldenpod Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here Rate the show on iTunes here Support on Patreon here Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook Music by Whalers and ichika Nito and was used with permission. . . .  Unintelligible God – Reasonable Doubts [Podchaser] Bart Ehrman on the Origins of the Trinity [YouTube] Ozymandias Ramses II on Logical Truth and Omnipotence [YouTube] Logical Truth and Omnipotence [Reasonable Faith] YouTube Playlist on Igtheism [YouTube] Atheism: A Philosophical Justification – Michael Martin [Amazon]

We define our terms, address Graham Oppy’s claim that igtheism is self-defeating, discuss logical positivism and its relationship with igtheism, and present an igtheist divine hiddenness argument. Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here Rate the show on iTunes here Support on Patreon here Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook Follow me on Twitter @waldenpod Music by ichika Nito and was used with permission. . . .  Ozymandias Ramses II on Theological Noncognitivism – Steve McRae Show [YouTube] Unintelligible God – Reasonable Doubts [Podchaser] Rabbi Sherwin Wine coins the term ‘ignostic’ [New York Times] Atheism: A Philosophical Justification – Michael Martin [Amazon] Response to Matt Dillahunty’s Criticism of Igtheism [YouTube] TMM on Igtheism [YouTube] YouTube Playlist on Igtheism [YouTube] Atheism: The Case Against God – George Smith [Google Books] A Disproof of God’s Existence – Colin McGinn [Skeptic] / A Note on Terminology / I use my terminology in a consistent way throughout. As I mentioned, there is no widely recognized standard usage, so it’s important for one to define at the start words like igtheist, incoherent, meaningless, etc. I’m using the terms igtheist, ignostic, and theological noncognitivist as interchangeable, since many already treat them as interchangeable, for better or worse. Trying to establish one as strictly referring to incoherence and another as strictly referring to meaninglessness seems like a hopeless struggle to me, but I apologize for any confusion that resulted from the use of ‘theological noncognitivist’. I only insist on distinguishing two branches of thought that are too often conflated: the related but distinct views that god’s attributes are meaningless and god’s attributes are incoherent. Respectively, one means god talk is without content and the other means god’s attributes don’t cohere, which assumes some content. I’m primarily interested in the latter.  

Can we make any sense of the idea of god? God is supposed to be an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, timeless, spaceless, immutable, disembodied conscious mind. We begin our series on igtheism by discussing several problems with these divine attributes. Is god unintelligible? Is this episode unintelligible? You’ll have to be the judge. Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here Rate the show on iTunes here Support on Patreon here Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook Follow me on Twitter @waldenpod Music by ichika Nito and was used with permission. / Resources on Igtheism / Atheism: A Philosophical Justification – Michael Martin [Amazon] Ozymandias Ramses II on Theological Noncognitivism – Steve McRae Show [YouTube] Response to Matt Dillahunty’s Criticism of Igtheism [YouTube] TMM on Igtheism [YouTube] YouTube Playlist on Igtheism [YouTube] Atheism: The Case Against God – George Smith [Google Books] A Disproof of God’s Existence – Colin McGinn [Skeptic]

Why did the Romans kill Jesus? When I was a Christian, I was taught that the Jews were primarily responsible for the death of Jesus. The Romans may have carried it out, but it was ultimately motivated by Jesus’s conflict with Jewish authorities over his transgressions of Jewish law (calling himself god, blasphemy, etc.). Crucifixion, however, was a Roman punishment carried out by the Roman government for violating Roman laws — not a Jewish punishment carried out by Jewish authorities for violating Jewish laws. If Jesus was crucified, it was because he ran afoul of the Romans, not the Jews. So why did the Roman authorities want to execute Jesus? We also discuss the historical Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea, human sacrifice, and the bad faith of William Lane Craig. This week I’ll also be appearing on Embrace the Void with Aaron Rabinowitz and The Right to Reason with Robert Stanley. Past Easter episodes: CA48 William Lane Craig’s Four Facts about the Resurrection CA26 The Spread of Christianity CA25 “Who would die for a lie?” CA24 The Resurrection of Jesus Is there historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus? (This is where Craig repeatedly lies about Joseph of Arimathea) [Reasonable Faith] Why Was Jesus Killed? [Bart Ehrman Blog] Anti-Judaism in the Gospels [Ehrman Blog] Jesus Smuggling – Rationality Rules [YouTube] Listen to our sister show, Walden Pod here Rate the show on iTunes here Support on Patreon here or if you prefer to give a one-time donation, you can do so with Venmo (@emersongreenpodcast) Music by Whalers (theme) and ichika Nito (transitions) and was used with permission. Subscribe to CA and Walden Pod on YouTube here Transcripts available at emersongreenblog.wordpress.com Contact me at emersongreen@protonmail.com or on Facebook Follow me on Twitter @waldenpod