I have known the author of the piece below for many years. Both he and I are most interested in what you think of its strongest and weakest parts, so please comment. The content in this essay deserves the utmost serious consideration.
--John W. Loftus.
SOMETHING NEW AND DECISIVE ABOUT FREE
WILL
LETHAL
TO THE NEED FOR SAVIOR JESUS
WHY
ARE YOU WHO YOU ARE?
COMPARE
THE EFFECTS -- ONLY YOU KNOW – OF THE
FACTORS MAKING YOU
AND
IMPOSED NOT CHOSEN – CAN ANYONE HAVE
FREE WILL?
By
Stanley W. Ayre -- March 2023
I'm done writing and editing books, so I'm highlighting each one of them in thirteen separate posts.
This anthology was named after Sam Harris's book The End of Faith like some others of mine. The so-called New Atheists took aim at God. My books took aim at Christianity in specific, because I knew the most about that religious faith.
After my first anthology, The Christian Delusion, I started telling authors the due date for their submissions was one month earlier than the actual deadline, to avoid last minute submissions. If I was concerned how the chapter was going I would ask for an outline, or rough draft along the way.
This took place on William Lane Craig's Facebook wall.
John Loftus: There is meaning and value and purpose in life. There just isn't any ultimate meaning and value and purpose for all sentient beings who have existed, or currently exist, or will exist into the distant future.
Guest Essay Written by Cat_Lord:
1.
Introduction
Throughout the course of Christian
history, there have been many and various attempts to argue for the truth of
Christianity. In this post, I will
discuss one popular form of apologetic argumentation named presuppositionalism.
The main points I want to write about are what this apologetic is as it relates to Cornelius Van Til, its
relationship to what are called “transcendental
arguments” in the philosophical literature, give examples of how presuppositionalists
often proceed with their argumentation, and finally point out some problems
with this apologetic.
The following is the text of a portion of their 1999 Ohio State University debate on the question “Did Jesus of Nazareth Rise from the Dead?” the audio of which was published on October 17, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1vaqsnhgJY. This text was published as an Appendix in my book, Unapologetic: Why Philosophy of Religion Must End.
[Republished post from 3/03/ 2012]
In a very well-written comment EricRC, a Ph.D. student in philosophy with promise, sums up what he calls the fundamental objection to the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF). Before sharing and then critiquing what he wrote let me refresh my readers on what it is:
[This post of mine in this series accidently got deleted, so I'm posting it again] We're celebrating the 12 days of Solstice rather than the 12 days of Christmas, so I'm highlighting each one of them leading up to the 25th of the month. [See Tag Below].
This anthology was named after Sam Harris's book The End of Faith like some others of mine. The so-called New Atheists took aim at God. My books took aim at Christianity in specific, because I knew the most about that religious faith.
After my first anthology, The Christian Delusion, I started telling authors the due date for their submissions was one month earlier than the actual deadline, to avoid last minute submissions. If I was concerned how the chapter was going I would ask for an outline, or rough draft along the way.
The Fallibility of First Principles, by Gunther Laird (gunther.laird@gmail.com)
The late Norman Geisler was one of the most popular
proponents of Evangelical Christianity, wedding Calvinistic argumentation with
technical concepts drawn from the Catholic philosopher Thomas Aquinas.
His son David Geisler continues his work, and recently contacted John W. Loftus
with a syllogism for God’s existence Norman had made in the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics.
David asked my editor if he had “any atheistic friends that would be willing to
critique this more comprehensive argument for God’s existence and explain what’s wrong with it,” and I was one such friend, so John contacted me.
What follows is a brief critique of the entry “First
Principles” in the Encyclopedia,
which David copied verbatim in his email to John. The entry is quite
substantive, as Norman Geisler provided very detailed descriptions of a variety
of first principles, such as the Principle of Noncontradiction, the Principle
of Causality, and the Principle of Contingency, and explains why they cannot be
coherently denied under any circumstances.
I'm posthumously posting six chapters from an unfinished book sent to me for comment in 2008 by the late John Beversluis (see Tag below). This is chapter 6, his last chapter on John the Baptist.
