Stephen Law

Sceptical Theism and Divine Deception 1. Sceptical Theism Evidential arguments from evil often take something like the following form: If God exists, gratuitous evil does not exist. Gratuitous evil exists. Therefore, God does not exist God is a being that is omnipotent, omniscient and supremely good. Gratuitous evil is evil there is no adequate reason for God, if he exists, to permit (the evil is not necessary to secure some compensating good or to prevent some equally bad or worse evil). Why suppose the second premise is true? A no so-called ‘noseeum’ inference has been offered in its support. It is suggested that if we cannot identify any God-justifying reason for much of the evil we observe, then it is reasonable to believe no such reason exists.

CHELTENHAM SCIENCE FESTIVAL Event Title: S109 DOES SOCIETY NEED RELIGION? Time: 16:00 Venue: Pillar Room Date: Saturday 7 June 2014 What is the role of religion? Religion has been helping us find our place in the world for millennia. But with the scientific understanding we now have, could we be growing out of a need for religion? Without its guidance and moral teachings would society collapse? Author of The Young Atheist's Handbook Alom Shaha leads a discussion, with philosopher Stephen Law and sociologist Linda Woodhead, about the role of religion in modern society.

Here is a template for an argument from the minimal facts used for example, to argue for the resurrection (see Gary Habermas here for example). 1)      These facts are agreed on as our starting point. 2)      There is a variety of explanations of these facts, including the explanation that [insert preferred extraordinary and/or miraculous event E] happened 3)      All of these explanations fail to have the explanatory scope or power for all of the facts, apart from the explanation that [E] happened. 4)      There is no compelling reason to exclude the explanation that [E] happened. 5)      Therefore (probably) [E]. This is a an interesting schema, I think. You find it employed to justify a wide variety of "extraordinary" claims. I am compiling a list of examples, so if you have any, do please let me know (include as a comment, with web link, or w...

Notes on Ontological Argument from today's A2 Teachers First conference Bloomsbury (from ppt) n   Ontological argument n   Stephen Law n   Heythrop College, University of London n   The ontological argument n   An argument that attempts to prove the existence of God a priori , from the definition or concept of God. n   An “armchair” proof!

Notes for Holy Cross School on Religious Language from ppt •        Wittgenstein on religious language •        Stephen Law •        Threats to religious belief

This is a one-off guest posting. It's well worth reading. Apologies for awful unfixable formatting. We are the creators of a series of videos debunking the neuroscience claims made by William Lane Craig (WLC) in his debate with Stephen Law.  WLC claimed animals are not aware of pain and that neuroscience backs his claim.  In Feb 2013 William Lane Craig devoted an entire podcast to addressing our video on the neuroscience of animal suffering; we quickly uploaded a video response, addressing the flaws in his arguments.  You can see all this back and forth here: http://www.skepticink.com/tippling/2013/02/11/boom-craig-is-um-owned-on-animal-suffering-twice/ Craig promised his source author Michael Murray would write a written reply to our video response and one year later, this has now been published on Craig's web site: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/animal-pain-re-visited     We would like to thank both Michael Murray and William L...

Centre for Inquiry UK and Conway Hall present The Surveillance Society Including Caspar Bowden, Tom Sorell, Judith Rauhofer. Post Snowden, where do we go now? When is surveillance acceptable, and when is it wrong? Should whole swathes of public policy regarding surveillance now be junked? Three leading experts in the field present accessible and fascinating talks on our emerging surveillance society – and what to do about it. Organized and chaired by Stephen Law Saturday May 3rd 2014 Conway Hall (Main Hall) 25 Red Lion Square Holborn London WC1R 4RL (Nr Holborn Tube) £10 (£5 students) Free to friends of CFI UK. 10.30am registration. 11am – 3.45pm Tickets available at https://humanism.org.uk/events/?page=CiviCRM&q=civicrm/event/info&reset=1&id=57 11.00 Caspar Bowden . Caspar Bowden is an independent advocate for information privacy rights, and public understanding of privacy research in computer science. For nine yea...