It's generally rare that I want to write against an atheist, but here is a case where someone I really like, Hemant Mehta, gets things really wrong in a way that's damaging to how atheists are perceived.
Dennis Prager put out another one of his shitty Prager University videos that is just a conservative hack going through a presentation of the moral argument for god's existence.
Hemant tries to give a takedown of the argument and he mangles it - badly.
This in itself isn't really noteworthy - lots of atheists fuck up responding to apologetic arguments. I've done it tons of times. When that happens, I hope someone comes along and points out where I've made an error and that's what I'm attempting to do here for Hemant.
A Philosophy of Religion Blog written by an Atheist
Showing posts with label Jeff Lowder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jeff Lowder. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
Thursday, October 6, 2016
An Atheistic Master Class Video on Counter Apologetics
Not too long ago I posted about cheering on Jeff Lowder in his debate with Christian apologist Frank Turek. The debate hasn't been made available yet, but Jeff had prepared so much material for the debate that he knew he couldn't fit it all in.
Not wanting his work to go to waste, Jeff took the slides he created and then created a nearly two hour and thirty minute video going through all of the material refuting Frank Turek's book "Stealing from God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case".
Jeff hits at least twenty arguments in this video, and he hits them hard. He also exposes quote mined texts used by apologists of biologists and atheist philosophers by showing where the quotes are being used in a misleading way (ie. James Rachels), or where the quotes aren’t relevant or are cherry picked (ie. Richard Dawkins).
While the material here is based on Turek's book, it's really a complete walk through of philosophically rigorous refutations to the kind of arguments you'll hear from just about any apologist.
This video is an Atheistic Master Class in how to answer apologetics. If you want to learn how you should respond to arguments, then you need to watch this.
The main problem is that this is an extremely comprehensive and rigorous video. As such, I took the time to go through and provide an outline of what is covered and where it is in the video so that you can digest it in bite sized chunks if you wanted.
Stealing
from God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case - See more at:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2016/10/01/the-victims-of-christian-apologetics/#sthash.9S5vtD69.dpuf
The first 10 Minutes are a run through Jeff’s "VICTIM" arguments showing that
Value, Induction, Causality, Time, Information & Intentionality, Morality are assumed by Christian
apologetics, not explained by it.
After that Jeff switches to answering the arguments put forward in Turek's book. Below is the argument being answered, the time stamp, and a link to that point in the video.
Responses to apologetic arguments
- Causality/Kalam – 10:43 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=10m43s
- Causality/Fine Tuning – 28:55 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=28m55s
- Reason/Laws of Logic – 34:28 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=34m28s
- Reason/Applicability of Math – 45:04 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=45m4s
- Reason/Free Will – 54:37 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=54m37s
- Information/Origin of Life – 1:02:19 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=1h2m19s
- Information/Epigenetic Information (ie. argument against naturalistic evolution) – 1:20:58 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=1h20m58s
- Information/Intentionality – 1:23:15 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=1h23m15s
- Morality – 1:23:45 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXWTc6-toDo
- Morality/Implications of Atheist Morality – 1:51:31 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=1h51m31s
- Morality/Laws requiring Law Giver – 2:01:37 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=2h1m37s
- Evil – 2:02:43 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=2h2m43s
- Evil/Examples of Apologetics committing the Fallacy of Understated Evidence – 2:06:43 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=2h6m43s
- Science/Science Presupposing God – 2:16:10 - https://youtu.be/xXWTc6-toDo?t=2h16m10s
Overall the video is fantastic. It has some audio level issues, but in terms of content it is completely spot on.
Bravo Jeff!
Tuesday, September 20, 2016
Cheering for Jeff Lowder
Tomorrow, renowned Internet Infidel Jeffrey Jay Lowder will be debating Christian Apologist Frank Turek at Washburn University on September 21, 2016.
Unfortunately the debate will not be live streamed, but it will be recorded and should be posted online afterwards. Suffice it to say if you can attend this one live, go do so.
Why am I posting about this? Because it's hard to overstate the amount of respect I have for Jeff Lowder. When it comes to doing counter apologetics on the internet, Jeff is one of the OG's. In 1995 he co-founded and was President of Internet Infidels, one of the most accessible and comprehensive resources of serious atheist thought in philosophy of religion online. When I was deconverting, infidels.org was invaluable.
This isn't just a case of someone being the first to do something, Jeff currently blogs over at The Secular Outpost and I consider him to be one of the best people making atheist content on the internet.
He is extremely precise in his work and in his charitable representation of the views of his opponents. He's also extremely well versed in apologetic arguments and counter points. He's literally got at least 20 years of studying this topic, and if you search Internet Infidels or his posts on The Secular Outpost you'll see he has an educated position on all of the common arguments.
Basically, Jeff knows his shit.
He's squaring off against Frank Turek, a very successful apologist. Frank isn't a Alvin Plantinga or a Richard Swinburne, that is he's not a professional philosopher. He's someone who takes philosophical arguments and presents them in accessible ways. This is not to insult Frank Turek at all, or to say that he doesn't understand his material - he does. He's a clearly a professional communicator, and from what I've seen of his debates he's a pretty damn good one at that. If I was an Evangelical Christian, I'd be glad to have someone as effective as Frank Turek communicating my views.
Jeff isn't a professional philosopher either, but I think Jeff knows the material so well that he will be able to point out the problems with Frank's arguments in ways Frank probably hasn't had much experience with. This will serve to deflate the aura of certainty that Franks apologetic style comes off as selling to evangelicals, and that's a service we should applaud as atheists.
This will definitely be one to watch if you care about precision in the philosophy underlying the theism vs atheism debate. I eagerly look forward to the video or audio being released online, it should be quite the debate.
Go Jeff Go!
Unfortunately the debate will not be live streamed, but it will be recorded and should be posted online afterwards. Suffice it to say if you can attend this one live, go do so.
Why am I posting about this? Because it's hard to overstate the amount of respect I have for Jeff Lowder. When it comes to doing counter apologetics on the internet, Jeff is one of the OG's. In 1995 he co-founded and was President of Internet Infidels, one of the most accessible and comprehensive resources of serious atheist thought in philosophy of religion online. When I was deconverting, infidels.org was invaluable.
This isn't just a case of someone being the first to do something, Jeff currently blogs over at The Secular Outpost and I consider him to be one of the best people making atheist content on the internet.
He is extremely precise in his work and in his charitable representation of the views of his opponents. He's also extremely well versed in apologetic arguments and counter points. He's literally got at least 20 years of studying this topic, and if you search Internet Infidels or his posts on The Secular Outpost you'll see he has an educated position on all of the common arguments.
Basically, Jeff knows his shit.
He's squaring off against Frank Turek, a very successful apologist. Frank isn't a Alvin Plantinga or a Richard Swinburne, that is he's not a professional philosopher. He's someone who takes philosophical arguments and presents them in accessible ways. This is not to insult Frank Turek at all, or to say that he doesn't understand his material - he does. He's a clearly a professional communicator, and from what I've seen of his debates he's a pretty damn good one at that. If I was an Evangelical Christian, I'd be glad to have someone as effective as Frank Turek communicating my views.
Jeff isn't a professional philosopher either, but I think Jeff knows the material so well that he will be able to point out the problems with Frank's arguments in ways Frank probably hasn't had much experience with. This will serve to deflate the aura of certainty that Franks apologetic style comes off as selling to evangelicals, and that's a service we should applaud as atheists.
This will definitely be one to watch if you care about precision in the philosophy underlying the theism vs atheism debate. I eagerly look forward to the video or audio being released online, it should be quite the debate.
Go Jeff Go!
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