Category Archives: people

Speaking ill of the dead

Posted by Chris Hallquist on December 17, 2011 Comments Off

I strongly recommend Glenn Greenwald on Hitchens’ death, both for what it says about Hitchens specifically and an important general point: We are all taught that it is impolite to speak ill of the dead, particularly in the immediate aftermath of someone’s death. For a private person, in a private setting, that makes perfect sense. [...]

Plantinga’s ontological argument, take three

Posted by Chris Hallquist on December 16, 2011 19 comments

Rather than respond directly to comments on my previous post, I’m rewriting it, taking the issue “from the top” so to speak. The last four paragraphs are what I’d most like people to read and comment on, but the earlier parts are changed quite a bit too by adding a discussion of William Lane Craig. [...]

Soundness is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition being a good argument

Posted by Chris Hallquist on December 15, 2011 11 comments

I had been meaning to write something about this, but I decided to bump it up my to-do list after seeing this comment from Ashtad: If you aren’t denying its validity (and by your apparent admission in the comment I replied to above, you aren’t), then you’re admitting that it is, at least, “halfway good” [...]

Why Alvin Plantinga’s ontological argument isn’t even halfway good

Posted by Chris Hallquist on December 12, 2011 24 comments

Someone asked me to write about Alvin Plantinga, so I’ve decided to write another explanation of who his ontological argument isn’t any good, due to not being satisfied with what I’ve previously written on this. Please tell me if the following is clear enough. If people understand it, it will appear more or less as [...]

Biblical scholarship is an enterprise for believers

Posted by Chris Hallquist on December 2, 2011 6 comments

A remarkable quotation form an article by Biblical scholar Jacques Berlinerblau: “Show of hands: Who here’s an atheist?” If a keynote speaker were to pose that unlikely query to an audience of 1,000 scholars gathered at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature my guess is only about a couple of dozen or [...]