Many believe that the moral guidance provided by religious belief makes us better people. Many also believe that Islamic religious beliefs are not to blame for the immoral actions such as suicide...
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2017/06/what-do-muslims-believe.html
In my last post on Jesse Prinz, we learned about the distinction between immediate, phenomenal awareness in consciousness in contrast to our more deliberative consciousness that operates with th...
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2015/06/why-would-ai-system-need-phenomenal.html
Jesse Prinz has argued for that consciousness is best understood as mid-level attention. Is Attention Necessary and Sufficient for Consciousness? The Conscious Brain: How Attention Engend...
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2015/06/artificial-intelligence-and-conscious.html
Eliminativists eliminate. In history, the concepts and theories that we build about the world form a scaffold for our inquiries. As the investigation into some phenomena proceeds, we often f...
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2015/06/evil-demonology-and-artificial.html
In 1950, mathematician Alan M. Turing proposed a test for machine consciousness. If a human interrogator could not distinguish between the responses of a real human being and a machine bui...
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2015/06/turing-and-machine-minds.html
The public mood toward the prospect of artificial intelligence is dark. Increasingly, people fear the results of creating an intelligence whose abilities will far exceed our own, and who p...
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2015/06/building-self-aware-machines.html
This just came out. I wrote the lead chapter in it. Buy it at Amazon: The Myth of the Afterlife
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2015/04/this-just-came-out.html
Here's video, shot by Nathan Lusher (Thanks Nathan!), of my talk from Manteca a few days ago. I spoke to the Stanislaus Humanists at the Manteca Public Library. This year there wasn't a huge...
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2015/03/the-f-word-lecture.html
The F Word. I'm speaking to a secular humanists group tonight in Manteca at the Manteca Public Library at 7:00. I'll be talking about the problems with believing by faith. My presentation ...
Analyses of God beliefs, atheism, religion, faith, miracles, evidence for religious claims, evil and God, arguments for and against God, atheism, agnosticism, the role of religion in society, and related issues.
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2014/04/three-lectures-on-plantingas-reformed.html
I'm recycling this post from 2007. This guy put his finger on something: A group of philosophers sympathetic with the Christian take on things have constructed a complicated and technical acc...
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2014/04/ad-hominem-your-sins-keep-you-from.html
I got interviewed by Alan Litchfield recently for his podcast: http://www.malcontentsgambit.com/2014/03/11/philosopher-argues-against-christianitys-double-standard/ Take a listen to hear me ...
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2014/03/double-standards-for-jesus.html
Analyses of God beliefs, atheism, religion, faith, miracles, evidence for religious claims, evil and God, arguments for and against God, atheism, agnosticism, the role of religion in society, and related issues.
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2014/02/new-lecture-on-motivated-reasoning.html
My recent lecture to the Stanislaus Humanists in Manteca, CA on Jan. 15 has caused some controversy locally. See some of the heated letters to the editor here: www.mantecabulletin.com unde...
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2014/01/thinking-critically-about-god.html
On my recent visit to Manteca to speak to Stanislaw Humanists about the resurrection, we had a bit of drama with some local church members. When I arrived at the library to speak, there were 3...
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2014/01/talking-them-out-of-god.html
Very interesting study forthcoming from Jennifer Wright, Psychology, College of Charleston, and Ryan Nichols, Philosophy, CSU Fullerton: How Perceived Religiosity Influences Moral Appraisal: ...
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2014/01/bias-against-atheists.html
Believe in Witchcraft? Believe in the Resurrection?
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2013/12/talk-for-stanislaus-humanists-manteca.html
Due to his tenacity, and enormous popularity with Christian apologists, William Lane Craig gets a lot of attention for his arguments for God. Here's an explanation of his Kalam argument, and se...
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2013/12/problems-with-cosmological-and-kalam.html
Analyses of God beliefs, atheism, religion, faith, miracles, evidence for religious claims, evil and God, arguments for and against God, atheism, agnosticism, the role of religion in society, and related issues.
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2013/12/inline-image-1.html
A video lecture of my Salem Witch Trials argument:
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2013/12/the-salem-witchcraft-argument-against.html
Here's my lecture about Antony Flew's Parable of the Invisible Gardener and some speculations about understand religious utterances as non-cognitive.
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2013/12/are-religious-utterances-non-cognitive.html
Craig, Plantinga, and others have said that the Witness of the Holy Spirit is such a powerful, immediate, and veridical feeling, it provides them with an intrinsic defeater defeater to any count...
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2013/12/witness-of-flying-spaghetti-monster.html
I've been developing an online Philosophy of Religion course. This is one of the lecture/videos I created recently for it. A discussion of the problems with Craig's view on faith.
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2013/12/problems-with-faith.html
I just discovered the work of sociologist Gregory Paul. THEODICY’S PROBLEM: A STATISTICAL LOOK AT THE HOLOCAUST OF THE CHILDREN, AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF NATURAL EVIL FOR THE FREE WILL AND BES...
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2013/11/the-holocaust-of-children.html
I recently did an interview with the guys at NonTheology. The podcast with some more information is here: http://nontheology.com/2013/10/27/episode-35-jesus-v-salem-with-dr-matt-mccormick/ T...
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2013/10/podcast-jesus-salem-philosophy-of.html