Stephen Law

Theologian Prof John Milbank and I exchange blows on God here. http://iainews.iai.tv/…/law-vs-milbank-belief-and-the-gods-… We do not hold our punches. Parts 3 and 4 will be up shortly but if you can't wait here is my response to Milbank's reply now (ie part 3): Thanks to John Milbank for responding to my opening piece on God and science. I initially suggested many God beliefs are empirically - and even scientifically - refutable in the sense that we might establish beyond reasonable doubt, on the basis of observation, that the belief is false. I gave three examples: belief there's a God that answers petitionary prayer; belief that there's a God who created the world 6,000 years ago; and belief there's a God that's omnipotent and omni- malevolent . I then suggested that, for similar reasons, we can reasonably rule out a god that's omnipotent and omni- benevolent . John rejects that last suggestion and defends the view that his particular ...

I like, share, and retweet quite a bit of left-wing stuff. Why? Well, I am aware that doing so is often just indicative of cognitive bias - pay attention to that which supports your preferred narrative ignore what doesn't. Am I guilty of that? Almost certainly - we all are. However, the MAIN reason I like and share political stuff is that: (i) I am also aware that in certain academic circles people self-censor on th is stuff given social/peer pressure, and I'm afraid that brings out the rebel in me (I'm wired in such a way that if I feel I am under pressure not to say something, I'm more likely to say it), and (ii) MOST IMPORTANTLY, because I am VERY sure that the dominant narrative across the media is very skewed to the right and narrow in focus, so feel I need to do my bit to get other messages and evidence out there and discussion going. It's about moving the Overton Window. Here 's something I wrote back in 2012 on this subject.

Here's the penultimate draft of something in Free Inquiry, out now. Evil God and Mirror Theodicies Stephen Law The problem of evil is perhaps the best-known objection to standard monotheism, that's to say, to belief in God defined as omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnibenevolent (all-good). In fact there are two problems of evil, the logical and the evidential. Here I focus on the 'evidential' problem, which is often presented as follows: If gratuitous evil exists, then God does not exist. Gratuitous evil exists. Therefore, God does not exist. 'Evil', in this context comes in two varieties: (i) moral evils such as the morally bad things we do as free moral agents (we start wars, murder, steal, etc.) and (ii) natural evils such as natural diseases and disasters that cause great suffering. So-called 'gratuitous' evils are evils for which there exists no God-justifying reason . Perhaps God has goo...

John Gray has a review of Richard Dawkins's An Appetite For Wonder at New Republic here . I review Gray's awful review here.   Gray begins with a quotation from Dawkins that, suggests Gray, exhibits several of Dawkins's 'traits' in his 'campaign against religion'. Here's what Gray quotes from Dawkins:   Intelligent life on a planet comes of an age when it first works out the reason for its own existence. If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilisation, is: “Have they discovered evolution yet?” Living organisms had existed on earth, without ever knowing why, for over three thousand million years before the truth finally dawned on one of them. His name was Charles Darwin.   Gray claims this passage reveals three things:   1. Gray says: 'There is his equation of superiority with cleverness: the visiting aliens are more advanced creatures than humans b...

Louise Mensch tweeted this on Jeremy Corbyn . She appears to have taken the image from an article in the Spectator published the day after the rally. In the Spectator article, Corbyn is not even mentioned. So how did Mensch know it was Corbyn in the image? Not from the image, presumably: see the enlargement of his face, which is just pixels (below). Perhaps Mensch just guessed it was Corbyn? In fact, I think it was Corbyn, given the clothes match ones Corbyn can be seen wearing that day. However, it is NOT a banner Corbyn spoke in front of, as many will have assumed from Mensch's tweet. You can easily find via Google pictures of Corbyn speaking that day 1st May 2014, in which it's clear the offending banner is nowhere in sight (please look here and here ). What's the significance of this? Not very much. Frankly I couldn't care very much if Corbyn had spoken in front of the ludicrous banner. However, he didn't, and in fact it is clear that in the p...

I here draw five morals concerning how atheists and the religious might usefully approach each other in debate and argument (from forthcoming book chapter). 1. There's a tendency among the religious to take offence at comparisons drawn by atheists between religious belief and other supernatural beliefs such as belief in ghosts, fairies, etc. No doubt some atheists do just want to belittle and bait the religious by making such comparisons. However, it seems to me that, given that the X-claim explanation of why Peter fails to recognise the unreasonableness of his Christian belief looks fairly plausible and certainly is no 'just so' story (I'll be posting on this shortly, but it's an explanation of religious belief based on drawing a parallel between beliefs in fairies, ghosts, and other invisible persons on the one hand, and belief in gods on the other), drawing such a comparison can be very appropriate . I certainly intend no offence by drawin...

SOME NOTES FOR REASON AND ARGUMENT COURSE (BASED ON PART OF MY DK BOOK) STEPHEN LAW TEXT BOX What is an argument? Outside of philosophy, the word “argument” is used in a variety of ways. An argument in a bar may involve little more than people hurling insults at each other. In philosophy, the word tends to be used more specifically. Usually, when philosophers talk about an argument, they are referring to a sequence of one or more premises and a conclusion. The premises are supposed rationally to support the conclusion. Arguments can be simple. But they can also be highly complex. Often, a philosophical book or treatise consists of one big argument made up of a series of smaller ones, which may in turn involve further subsidiary arguments, and so on. In order to assess the overall argument, you need to check whether each of the component arguments works properly. Caption. The detective Sherlock Holmes relied on his powers of reason to uncover the truth. Reason, ...