Upcoming Virtual Beers 9/1/13 - with Justin Schieber and Jonathan Pearce

UPDATE: The Hangout has been postponed until Monday 9/2/13.  Time is 4PM EST!
There will be another live Google Hangout with Justin Schieber, Jonathan Pearce, and myself discussing the Problem of Evil.

The plan is to have the hangout at Monday 9/2/13, time 4PM EST.  It's a bit of an odd time but we have to account for the different time zones for each of us.  The hangout will be available to watch after the fact, but if you can get questions to us live and before hand by commenting on our blogs here or over at Jon's blog, or you can use Twitter and the hashtag #CAVirtualBeers

Be sure to tune in!

Virtual Beers - Counter Apologist, Justin Schieber, & Moonwalking Unicorn

I did another Google Hangout! This time with Justin Schieber and Moonwalking Unicorn, so it was all atheists.

This was a ton of fun and I think we had some really good discussions going on.  We started with a discussion on the types of atheistic arguments: Offensive vs. Defensive and then touched on some arguments that atheists can use that are as intuitively appealing as some theistic arguments.




Our Twitter Handles:
@Counterapologis
@doubtcast
@UnicornOnMoon

Our Blogs:

http://doubtcast.org/
http://unicornonmoon.blogspot.com/

Debate Review: Justin Schieber vs. Max Andrews

If you're like me then you probably already subscribe to the Reasonable Doubts Podcast and you've seen the latest RD Extra episode which is a scripted audio debate between Justin Schieber and Max Andrews.

If you haven't already I highly recommend giving it a listen, but be warned - you will have to do a lot of work to follow these two.

I wanted to put out a few of my thoughts on the whole thing.

Great video on Loop Quantum Cosmology

YouTube user Skydivephil has produced another amazing video where they interview some of the scientists working on Loop Quantum Gravity, and the kind of quantum cosmological models that come out from it.

They touch on the Borde, Guth, Vilenkin theorem that apologists love to cite as evidence that the universe "must have had a beginning" and most importantly they explain why the theory doesn't necessarily lead to that conclusion.

There's a lot we don't know here, but this is an example of how science is progressing on the issue in cosmology rather than throwing our hands up in the air and saying "god did it".

Misunderstandings regarding Craig, Kalam, and Relativity

Jonathan Pearce is having a "Why I am a Christian" series and in the inevitable discussion on Vincent Torley's piece it seems Vincent has done some criticism of my Countering the Kalam series.  Vincent alleges that I've gotten my science wrong and that I have misrepresented William Lane Craig.

I believe this is all based on a misunderstanding of some of the science involved and in a superficial reading of Craig's work in which he's talking about how different philosophies of time impact the cosmological argument.

Miracle Pluralism

I know that lately it seems that all I've been posting about has been goings on from other blogs I like, but I swear that I'm actually working on some a substantive piece of counter apologeitcs.  That said, there has been a nice back and forth between Jonathan Pearce and Randal Rauser on a specific kind of "miracle" that was Randal discussed in the book God or Godless that I reviewed.

I put both these guys in the category of "smart motherfuckers" and they both write stuff I find engaging to read.  So here's my take on the back and forth with a perspective that hopefully adds something to the discussion.

"No gods or kings, only man."

As usual lately I've been inspired to post a bit from stuff over at Randal Rauser's blog.  I posted this as a comment there in response to the idea of "How much freedom would you surrender to live comfortably?".

Randal has the very right-headed sentiment that giving up freedom for extra security is not something worth doing, and I pointed out that this is a bit of an odd view for him to take, considering the Christian god knows all our thoughts, before even we do, and that it is a punishable sin to merely even think certain thoughts. You don't even have to act on them, just thinking about something Yahweh doesn't like is enough to get cast into hell if you don't accept Jesus to forgive your thoughtcrime.

After a brief exchange, the entire thing reminded me of something rather profound that was pointed out to me by other atheists online when I had just deconverted and was reaching out for help - the idea that my thoughts and my mind are my own.

To see the reply to Randal keep on reading.

Author's side note: This is not an attack on Randal, it's just another area we disagree.  It's just that his posts helped me remember something rather profound when I had just deconverted.