The Inadequancy of Jesus’ Sacrifice

My TikTok has finally figured out that I am interested in religious debate. And the video it has presented to me today that has sparked a rebuttal in me is the claim that Jesus’ Sacrifice was not actually to done on the Cross, but to be born at all; it was the choice to become…

Pascal’s Wager is a lie

Pascal’s Wager is a lie. Here’s the issue: the wager is essentially a gambling matrix, with two options in reality and two options that you can believe in. The two possible realities are Christianity or Atheism (if you’re a Muslim, the options are Islam and Atheism ― continue to substitute your own God in as…

Ontological Arguments

Ontological Arguments for the existence of God are an odd grouping. Not much holds them together except for their most common rebuttal: that they attempt to define a God into existence. This is not my favourite rebuttal to the arguments, although it is true: ontological arguments for God try to sneak the idea of existing…

The Progressive House

This is my second draft of this post, and that’s not how I normally operate. I normally write one draft with very few revisions (or even spell checking ― you may have noticed). Initially, I wrote a point by point rebuttal to Caroline Smith’s The House Progressives Built. But, in writing that, I noticed there…

What are the odds against a Life Permitting Universe

There is a claim that forms an integral part of the Teleological Argument for the existence of God, an argument that claims the universe has clear signs of purpose. This claim is that a life-permitting universe is so unbelievably unlikely that no thinking person should be able to say it happened due to chance. The…

Are theism and science incompatible?

It’s a long standing argument: can theism be justified within scientific thinking? There have been attempts to bypass the argument, by calling the two concepts “non-overlapping magisteria”: the claim that the two concepts simply answer different questions and therefore are never justified by each other and never in conflict (Gould, 2011). However, that is not…

No way!? Is that ‘Possible’?

Introduction There is an argument for the existence of God called ‘The Modal Ontological Argument for the existence of God’ (MOAG). A major part of MOAG is the idea that something is ‘possible’. The “something” is a ‘maximally great being’, or something similar depending on which version you read. The vagueness of the “something” ―…

Is it good because it is God’s nature? or is it God’s nature because it is good?

The Euthyphro Dilemma is a Theology 101 problem, without a satisfactory answer. Posed in Plato’s dialogues, it is often formulated like this: “Does God command something is good because it is good, or is it good because God commands it”. Plato was writing from a polytheistic culture, so this is a variation (and translation) on…

“Goldilocks” is not evidence

My Shadow to Light Watch series is beginning to bore even me. But Michael, the author at Shadow to Light never ceases to amaze and infuriate with his Trump-esque spout-nonsense-with-confidence-then-divert approach to “persuasion”. Today (or, about a month ago ― because scheduling weekly posts has its drawbacks) Michael put something new under the chopping block…

Sherlock Holmes, ‘inference to the best explanation’, false dichotomies and God

There’s a way of thinking called abductive reasoning, commonly referred to as “the inference to the best explanation”. Sherlock Holmes famously uses it, and his use is fallacious. There are many structures of argument that would fall under abductive reasoning, which this post will look at, briefly, focussing on their errors. It will then focus…