A Conversation With My Pastor, Part 3

I have been posting a series of emails between my former pastor any myself, discussing my unbelief. Last week, I posted part 2. Here is the 3rd installment:

If you are new to this conversation, I recommend you start with part 1.

Lance's reply:

Eric - 

Hey buddy. Clearly my plate has been full if it took me a billion years to get back to you. I’m very sorry about that, but I knew you understood. I wanted to set this email aside until I had a quiet moment. Well, give months later I got one, unfortunately it’s short. But here I am in a Starbucks, reading what you wrote and pondering.

Happy International Blasphemy Rights Day!

Today is International Blasphemy Rights Day. In the United States, our speech is protected, and this allows us to say whatever we wish about religious figures, doctrines, holy books and the like. Here is a list of some of the countries that not only disregard this freedom to blaspheme, but often punish blasphemers, sometimes by execution.

A Conversation With My Pastor, Part 2

Last week, I posted the first in a series of emails between myself and my former pastor. Here is my response to his email:

Hey Lance, thanks for responding in the manner that you did. "Coming out" to you was difficult, and while I didn't really think you would ostracize me, I am relieved nonetheless. 

I do not mind you asking questions about my change of mind, but I should be clear right off the bat: I am not "assured" there is no god. No one, who really thinks about it, can actually claim to be assured that there isn't. It's not possible to prove. With that said, let me spell out what I actually do think a little more clearly.

Faith and Epistemological Quicksand by Sean Carroll

On his blog, Physicist Sean Carroll talks about something that I think is really important for those of us who have discussions with theists. If you have been doing it for any time at all, you will recognize the things that Sean points out. He just words it better than I can.

Read "Faith and Epistemological Quicksand" here.

A Conversation With My Pastor, Part 1

Update: Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 have been added.

Back in December 2011, I was thinking about the church atmosphere that I grew up in. I realized that the open, honest and loving group of believers I grew up with was something I always took for granted. I could have just as easily been brought up in a backwards fundamentalist community, where skepticism and free thinking are actively discouraged, so I am grateful of my roots.

A central figure in my developing spiritual life was my pastor, Lance. He was charismatic, genuine, honest, and accepting. He's the kind of person that makes you feel like you could tell him anything, and he wouldn't judge you. He's a teacher, but also a listener. He never reacted to questions or challenges, he simply answered them. He is, in a word, a Christian.

Is this a good answer? What do you think?

A twitter conversation I recently had with a christian apologist, Brett Kunkle, has been featured on his ministry's website for their weekly apologetics challenge. We were talking about morality, and whether it was objective or not. Brett was claiming that objectivity of moral values (It's wrong to torture babies for fun, no matter if anyone agrees with it or not) is self-evident. I was objecting to the use of moral intuitions or gut feelings as evidence that there actually are objective moral values in reality. I claim that this connection between what we intuit and what is actually real is not clear cut, at least when it comes to our moral sense.

Part of their challenge format is a video answer given by Brett a few days after the readers have chewed on it a bit. Today Brett released his answer to my objection. What do you think? Did he adequately answer the question that I posed:

"Why would the fact that I intuit something to be true be considered evidence that it really is true?"

Please read my original objection here. The discussion of my challenge (with clarifications) at STRPlace is here. Reading those will make my objection seem clearer, and save me time walking newcomers through the finer points. Thank you for reading, and please feel free to leave your thoughts about this in the comments!

Neil Armstrong: 1930 - 2012

A truly inspiring human died today.