As always with questions about free will, the answer to this one depends on how one understands free will. If one defines free will as a God-given power, then yes, atheists who accept that definition would conclude that there is no free will. But that's not a very good definition of free will. If one thinks free will requires a non-physical soul, then atheists who believe there are no such souls, would also think there is no free will. Atheists could believe in such souls, however (just not that they are God-given). Some scientists who say free will is an illusion (I call them 'willusionists') seem to think that the materialist worldview that science seems to provide evidence for rules out free will, because they assume free will, by definition, requires non-physical powers. But I don't see any good reason to define free will as God-given or instantiated only in souls (and some of my work studying folk intuitions about free will suggests that most people agree with me). Rather, free will is...

I like the ploy of asking an apparent Supreme Being (SB), "What would be the best question to ask you?" but only if you can also make sure that the SB answers that question. How frustrating would it be if SB responded, "You should ask me, 'What is the meaning of life?'" and then laughed at you as you realized you'd used up your one and only question! But I don't see how this question would help you determine if the SB was really God or whether your vision was real or a hallucination, dream, or matrix-like experience induced by a powerful but not supreme being. Heck, you could ask me what question you should ask, and I could give you a good answer. (Ask what is the meaning of life!) So, what would constitute proof that your vision of an SB was genuine? Nothing, if your standards are set at Descartes' level of proof--you could be dreaming or in a matrix and never be able to tell, no matter what the SB said or did. But you could use a more reasonable standard, like best explanation for the observed...

I think the logic is fine, but I'm not sure about the content of the argument. The argument structure is: 1. X is an institution with an essential goal that is clearly immoral. 2. It is wrong for individuals and institutions not to do what they can to prevent an institution from achieving immoral goals. 3. So, it is wrong for individuals and institutions not to do what they can to prevent X from achieving its immoral goals. If we fill in Nazism for X and wiping out Jews for their essential immoral goal, the valid argument also looks sound (i.e., the premises and therefore the conclusion are true). But if we fill in Christianity for X, that argument is less clearly sound, mainly because Christianity is a much more diverse institution than Nazism with more varied essential goals. Some Christians take their religion to require fighting against homophobic practices, just as some fought against slavery and racism, while other Christians take it as an essential implication...

It doesn't. There are several possibilities here. One is that there is a causal relationship between the physical brain and a non-physical mind, which can still make sense of the idea that when alcohol is coursing through your veins into your brain it causes your conscious experiences to be funky or when a part of your brain is lesioned it causes mental disorders. This view is Descartes' dualism. If it is true, then presumably your non-physical mind (or soul) can survive after your physical body dies (though it's hard to imagine how things would be for your bodiless soul in "heaven"--e.g., how do you find grandma? and what would you do for fun?). This view becomes less plausible the stronger the correlations between brain states and mental states become (the soul seems to have nothing left to do). So, supposing such dualism is implausible and we assume this evidence of a causal relationship between brains and consciousness is evidence of a physicalist view, one that says the mind just ...

What if a burning bush appeared out of nowhere in Central Park in front of hundreds of people and said, "It is God speaking. I have come to tell you that you should believe that I exist. Also, love one another. And, by the way, the health care bill does not say anything about a 'death panel'"? Well, a scientifically minded person would want to consider various alternative explanations for this event. For instance, perhaps it's an elaborate hoax involving holograms or even mass hypnosis. But another hypothesis worth considering is that it was God, and God is able to perform miracles that cannot be explained by anything the sciences study (or could study). There might be ways to test whether this event was a hoax, but presumably a 'hoaxster' would try to cover his tracks. So, what if an agnostic scientist in the crowd said to the burning bush, "I would like to believe in God but I need evidence that the best explanation for this event is that you really exist and that this isn't just a hoax...

I think there are (at least) three ways one could be an agnostic about the existence of God, though we often use the word "agnostic" to apply to someone uncommitted about the truth of other propositions, and my categories should apply to many of these types of agnosticism as well, so I will use the general formulation "A is agnostic about X": 1) A is agnostic about X because A thinks X is either true of false (e.g., either God exists or God does not exist), but A believes no human could ever know whether X is true or false (e.g., perhaps we are built such that we simply could not discover the truth of X or never be justified in believing X or ~X). Note that some philosophers think that if X is not even in principle something we could discover to be true or false, then X is meaningless or X has no truth value or something like that, in which case this sort of agnosticism could look like a form of subjectivism. But I am interpreting A in this case to believe that there is an objective...

I take a more pessimistic view than Professor Leaman. I think that an avowed atheist would have absolutely no hope of election to President or likely to any major office in any (or almost any) state, regardless of his or her other attributes or views, and that an avowed agnostic would have no hope of election to President or most major offices in most states, and that a candidate who did not strongly avow being a Christian (or perhaps Jew) would have almost no hope of being elected President. And I think that these facts are causes for concern for a number of reasons. For instance, it indicates a specific type of intolerance, one that I think is largely based on a failure to understand what atheists do (and can) believe. Though Professor Leaman's is correct when he says atheists are "believers in nothing" if he is referring only to supernatural deities, atheists can and usually do believe (often strongly): that life has meaning and purpose that there are moral truths or at least...

I can't be sure whether the pronouns in Richard's second sentence are supposed to refer to me or to Dawkins. If he (Richard H.) is referring to me, I'm not sure why. I don't see anything in what I said that suggests I believe all religious people share the same beliefs or that I am "ignorant of the varieties of religious belief." To clarify, there are some religious people in this country--I would say, too many--who act as though atheism (or perhaps any other failure to share their own faith-based beliefs) is a sign of moral terpitude (e.g., of the sort that disqualifies you for public office). Of course, it works the other way too. I certainly hold it against a political candidate if he or she avows certain religious doctrines (e.g., intelligent design). On that note, I think another potential concern of the influence of fundamentalist religious organizations and individuals on politics in America is their ability to undermine scientific research and science education.

I am an atheist, but I think that before Darwin I probably would have been convinced by the Design (teleological) argument to believe in at least a Deistic God. Without the theory of evolution by natural selection to explain the wonders of nature, a creator God may have been the best explanation for the (apparent) design of living organisms. Today, however, the best argument available for the existence of God seems to be a modern version of the Design argument (NOT intelligent design) called the 'fine tuning' argument. It claims that there are astronomically many ways that the fundamental physical constants of the universe could have been and that the vast majority of these ways would lead to a universe without the requisite materials for the evolution of life (e.g., matter, stars, planets, etc.). So, the fact that the universe has the 'right' physical constants for these materials and hence for evolution and hence for the evolution of intelligence is supposed to be evidence that a creator made...