Post tagged with skepticism

  • Is doubt good? Is skepticism a virtue?

    September 14th, 201103:33 PM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    While reading through Michael Shermer's enjoyable book How We Believe: Science, Skepticism and the Search for God (New York: Henry Holt, 2000) I came across the following passage: "Doubt is good. Questioning belief is healthy. Skepticism is okay. It is more than okay, in fact. Skepticism is a virtue and science is a valuable tool that makes s...

  • Has Stephen Law been sucked into an intellectual black hole? A Review of Law’s “Believing Bulls**t”

    August 02nd, 201111:04 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    Stephen Law. Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole. Prometheus, 2011, 271 pp. ISBN: 978-1-61614-411-1. In the vein of Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World (Ballantine, 1997) and Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things (Holt, 2002), comes this new book by Stephen Law, senior lecturer in philosophy ...

  • Does a really old universe show that human beings are not important?

    July 05th, 201110:07 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    Mark Twain thought so. In one of his finest rhetorical moments (in a career sparkling with them) he wrote: "Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is. I dunno. If the Eiffel Tower were now representing the world's age, the skin of pa...

  • Does extraordinary uncleanliness require extraordinary soap?

    March 30th, 201103:28 PM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    Once again the claim has surfaced: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." And once again I have had to shoot it down. Now what could be the problem with a principle so symmetrically reasonable? Grey days produce grey moods. Cold weather requires a cold weather jacket. Why wouldn't extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?...

  • On the general skepticism about ancient miracle reports

    March 02nd, 201103:17 PM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    Many highly educated ancient historians (by which I mean historians that study ancient history, not historians that are really old) believe that the historical evidence supports the conclusion that Jesus was resurrected. For example, they point to the strong evidence for the empty tomb, post resurrection appearances, and the beliefs of the earliest...

  • Anarchists and atheists and Bibles, Oh My!

    September 02nd, 201007:04 PM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    It is a danged shame that I can’t give all the fine comments that find their way into my blog the attention they deserve. But I do what I can, and last week I made a note to get back to the comments of AnAtheist.Net. I’ve included them below and numbered them for ease of reference (just like a medieval monk numbering biblical passages you might...

  • Does meticulously-tuned evil count as a defeater for meticulously-tuned good?

    July 06th, 201011:34 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    There are two key issues I want to explore further in relation to the waving statute, St. Tom's Orphanage, and other cases of synchronicity. The topic of this thread is evil and other potential defeaters to positive events with putative high MDS. Let's begin with SilverBullet: "You've clearly spent some time thinking this over, so in the meantime...

  • Divine Action and St. Tom's Starving Orphanage

    July 04th, 201005:35 PM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    Sadly, I don't find the responses to the last post on miraculous synchronous events really addressing the question at issue, that is, the question of whether (or rather, when) it is warranted to infer divine action based on the experience of synchronous events. So let me simplify matters with a case which will help us fine-tune the ground for...

  • When 'skepticism' is the mark of a closed mind

    July 03rd, 201002:04 PM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    The waving statue conversation reminds me of the BC cartoon where BC looks up to the heavens and cries out: "Is anybody up there?" Immediately a marquee sign falls from the heavens and lands in front of him which says "I'm up here." Could BC reasonably conclude that this was an answer to prayer? It seems rather obvious to me that he could conclude...

  • Methodological Naturalism and the Case of the Waving Statue

    June 30th, 201010:19 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    I have noted the case of Michael Shermer twice now and I thought I would return to it and provide the full transcript. This is very instructive because Shermer, a well known skeptic and agnostic/atheist, shows just how recalcitrant so-called open-minded skeptics can be to evidence. The excerpt comes from a program on miracles which was broadcast a...
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An exploration of faith, knowledge, reason and doubt (with the occasional trite pop culture reference thrown in for good measure).