Bill Pratt | December 29, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt Some statements about the world are objectively true, meaning they are true for all people, places, and times, regardless of whether anyone actually believes the statements. Other statements about the world are subjective, meaning they merely refer to a person’s preferences or tastes. An objective statement would be: “The sum of [...]
Bill Pratt | December 27, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt If morality is not grounded by a transcendent standard, a standard that is above all humanity, then it collapses to relativism. This concept is not at all difficult to understand, but relativism retains a negative enough connotation these days that atheists, who deny a transcendent, objective standard of morality, are still [...]
Bill Pratt | September 26, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt Many people in our western civilization are optimistic that things are always getting better. If we continue to invest in education, if we produce more advanced technology, and if we push scientific understanding as far as it can go, then we will eventually reach a paradise on earth. This paradise is [...]
Bill Pratt | August 19, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt In the first 2 posts of this series, I presented Richard Dawkins’ “answer” to the question “If There Is No God, Why Be Good?” At the end of part 2, I said that Dawkins did not actually answer the question, even though that’s what he led the reader to believe he [...]
Bill Pratt | August 17, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt In Dawkins’s next chapter, “The ‘Good’ Book and the Changing Moral Zeitgeist” he “exposes” the Bible’s moral commands to be largely immoral and hopelessly outdated. What the reader will find in this chapter is Dawkins riffing on how morally backward the Bible is. In fact, Dawkins concludes that “those who wish [...]
Bill Pratt | August 15, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt In Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, there is a section entitled “If there is no God, why be good?” I eagerly devoured this section as I sincerely wanted to see what answer Dawkins would give. After all, he is the most prominent intellectual atheist in the world today, right? What did [...]
Bill Pratt | June 29, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt I recently heard another excellent podcast of Unbelievable? where apologist Os Guinness debated “atheist” Mary Warnock. I put “atheist” in quotation marks because of Warnock’s beliefs, which you will see are central to her positions on morality and public policy. Warnock insisted that she is a Christian because she regularly attends [...]
Bill Pratt | February 11, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt Most atheists appeal to the process of Darwinian evolution as the source of our moral instincts, but this idea poses some intriguing questions. What if humankind had evolved in different circumstances, in different environments? One could imagine a different set of moral instincts having developed in humans. What about other animals? [...]
Bill Pratt | February 9, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt On atheism, there is no guarantee that evil will ever be punished or that good will ever be rewarded. Philosopher William Lane Craig quotes Richard Wurmbrand’s comments on the state torturers in Soviet prisons who understood this all too well: The cruelty of atheism is hard to believe when man has [...]
Bill Pratt | February 7, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt Nowhere, as far as I can tell. Consider this scenario. A young man grows up and forms radical political beliefs. Upon reaching his 30′s, he seizes political power in his country. He remains in power throughout his entire life. During his reign, he routinely lies, cheats, steals, murders, and rapes. Since [...]
