atheism · criticism · Francis Bacon · literature · Northrop Frye · religion · William Butler Yeats

The Melancholy Choice

If men are compelled to make the melancholy choice between atheism and superstition, the scientist, as Bacon pointed out long ago, would be compelled to choose atheism, but the poet would be compelled to choose superstition, for even superstition, by its very confusion of values, gives his imagination more scope than a dogmatic denial of… Continue reading The Melancholy Choice

apologetics · atheism · Christianity

“No True Scotsman” Gambit

And Mark Chu-Carroll has had enough if it: If you talk to a christian about, say, the holocaust, they’ll say that the Nazi’s weren’t really christian. The crusaders who raped and pillaged their way across Europe? Not really christian. The inquisitioners, who tortured and killed all of those innocent people in the name of christianity?… Continue reading “No True Scotsman” Gambit

atheism · religion

John Gray

Up for this afternoon’s lecture will be John Gray on the New Atheists. A couple of years back he had a good piece in the Guardian, which I imagine will come up during the Q&A. The influence of secular revolutionary movements on terrorism extends well beyond Islamists. In God Is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens notes… Continue reading John Gray

atheism · philosophy

Thus, the New Atheists’ favorite argument turns out to be just a version of the old argument from infinite regress: If you try to explain the existence of the universe by asserting God created it, you have solved nothing because then you are obliged to say where God came from, and so on ad infinitum,… Continue reading