Chelsea are due to play Arsenal in a soccer match. Mr A prays for Chelsea to win, while Mr B prays for Arsenal to win. Chelsea won the match. Why were Mr A's prayers answered but not Mr B's?

Hi, I'm going to answer this question as a non-theologian, but I should note that there are many, many different theological approaches to the theory of prayer, and I'm sure some would disagree with, or offer a different answer than, mine. For the purposes of your question, it seems important to first point out that you are conceiving of prayer *merely* as an attempt to affect the course of events in one's (or another's) favor. So one prays for success at a soccer match, or that one's relative recovers from an illness, and so on. This first sort of prayer is what is commonly portrayed, I think, in movies, casual conversations (including jokes), and, I think, it is what most atheists/critics have in mind when discussing prayer. My first point is just that there are other purposes of prayer in many religious traditions; in most traditions, one regularly prays without having a specific request in mind ,in order to be intimate with the divine, our of love (or something like that). I think you have a Judaeo...

How strong of an argument for theism is the fine-tuning argument, and what is the current opinion of it?

Great question! "How strong" is a difficult question to answer precisely, and I'm sure different philosophers will have very different takes on this. The answer will probably have to be comparative (that is, compare how good this argument is to others), and philosophers disagree about how good the other arguments are. For example, some philosophers still think that the old ontological argument is great! Others think it is decisively refuted. In addition, there is disagreement about the merits of the fine tuning argument itself. So, I don't think there's consensus about either side of the comparison that determines how strong the argument is. That said, I think most of us can agree that it is among the most promising versions of an a posteriori (or empirical) argument for the existence of god, since it has some advantages over the more traditional argument from design. The argument for design appeals to the apparent complexity in nature and posits an intelligent designer on that basis. A major objection...

Is it always non-racist to criticize a religion? Even if we disregard ethnic religions such as Shinto or Judaism, the reality remains that any religion and its branches will always have one predominant majority ethnic group practicing it, usually of the religion's or the branch's founding race. To say that one can simply change to another religion or no religion anytime at will is to assume that one's culture of which race is a central component whether one realizes it or not, and one's religion are mutually exclusive, as if the matter is a logic game. One might argue that it's the culture, not the race that's being criticized, but then culture arises from race (among other factors), doesn't it?

Your opening question, I think, is relatively easy to answer: it's not *always* non-racist to criticize a religion. Sometimes it is racist because the criticism is motivated by racist attitudes. You may, for example, loathe race X, and you know that all of them are, say Christian. With that clearly in mind, you criticize Christianity, and this is an expression of your racism towards X. Another example: you are trying to compare religions, to see which ones you think are particularly "bad." You notice that Religion "R" is practiced predominately by white people, and you hate white people. This biases you to criticize R more harshly than other religions, and you conclude that R is the worst religion. This is again a criticism of a religion that is, at least in some sense, racist. So it is possible to launch a racist criticism of religion. I'm not so sure about your suggestions relating to this question, though. Consider the two most popular religions on earth (I may actually be wrong about this... but at...

I often heard atheists argued that even if a God exists, it does not mean it has to be a good or infinite or one God. They are implying that it is possible that there be an evil or finite or many gods. Are these reasonable assumptions or is it the case that God has to be necessarily good, infinite and one?

Eugene Marshall's very helpful response explains that many different kinds of Gods, or even many Gods, might be compatible with the various different arguments for God's existence. I'd like to add just a minor, other point. If you take the Hebrew bible (or "old testament") very seriously, you might think there is also a biblical basis for rejecting the idea that God is wholly good, and even (depending on what parts you take seriously) that there is more than one god. So, some people might even think that there is a biblical basis for some of these accounts of God(s). Howard Wettstein has a nice essay on the former (I mean on God's not being wholly good), entitled "God's Struggles." Jeanine Diller also has some stuff on this. As for the idea that multiple Gods can be found in the Hebrew Bible, I think that's more of a stretch but I've heard some atheists appeal to that interpretative possibility.