Here it is…the final episode of Reasonable Doubts, featuring new Counterapologetics, God Thinks Like You and Polyatheism segments mixed with goodbyes from our fans and outtakes from the past eight years of doubtcasting. Thank you to everyone who made this show what it was. Special thanks to Jonathan MS Pearce for the spoken word introduction to the show and to Hugh McDonald for allowing us to use his song “Schrodinger’s Cat” for this episode.

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This podcast features a previously unreleased interview with Australian singer and songwriter Shelley Segal. Shelly shares about her experience growing up in a conservative Jewish household and how her music naturally turned to turned to secular themes when she decided she was an atheist. She also performs two songs from “An Atheist Album.”

Check out more of her music at shelleysegal.com

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This ones all about Charlie.

Interview: Daniel Fincke – The Reaction to Charlie Hebdo

Dan Fincke from Camels With Hammers joins us to defend Charlie Hebdo’s right to blaspheme and answer many of the criticisms we’ve heard over the past weeks.

Links:
Camels With Hammers Blog
DanielFincke.com
Answering 16 of the Worst #JeSuisCharlie #CharlieHebdo Memes by Daniel Finke

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God Thinks Like You: What Causes Religious Extremism?

Dr. Galen walks us through the debate in psychology over what most influences one to join extreme religious groups.

Links:
Religion in the Face of Uncertainty 
Precis of the Myth of Martyrdom 
Morality and Conformity: The Asch Paradigm Applied to Moral Decisions 

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Polyatheism: The Enuma Elish part 1

The first of a series that explores the gods and heros of the Mesopotamian epic the Enuma Elish.

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Dale McGowan, executive director of the Foundation Beyond Belief talks about some of the exciting ways the organization plans to put humanist principles into action in 2015. Also, statistics on the public’s attitudes towards the Christmas holiday, the John Templeton Foundation donates millions of dollars to philosophers who study free will and the Norse god Oden might just be the world’s first Christmas ornament.

Interview: Dale McGowan – Foundation Beyond Belief

The Foundation Beyond Belief is attempting to raise 75,000 dollars for its years end fund drive. Executive director, Dale McGowan joins us on the show to share some of the exciting new projects (including the humanist service core and the disaster relief) the foundation is planning for 2015. Please consider donating to Foundation Beyond Belief. You can find out more about what they are doing to advance humanist at the links below.

Links:
Foundation Beyond Belief
Humanist Service Corps
Humanist Disaster Relief 

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God Thinks Like You: The High Cost of Free Will

Philosopher Alfred Mele believes the public has been misled into believing that neuroscience disproves free will. Now Mele is at the helm of a multi-million dollar research project to study the nature of freedom, a project funded by the theological wing of the John Templeton Foundation…prompting the doubtcasters to once again make the case for determinism in response to some of Mele’s objections.

Links:
Alfred Mele’s Big Questions in Free Will Project
Free Will & Punishment

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Polyatheism: Odin

The Norse god Odin is the subject of this episode’s polyatheism.

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Physical pain plays an important biological role, but should we expect it to in a world created by God? Also, a recent paper in the journal cognition posits distinct cognitive attitudes underlying religious belief and factual reasoning, but is the evidence from cognitive science and philosophy sufficient to support this claim?

Counter-Apologetics: Theism, indifference and the biology of pain

 

Pain serves an important biological purpose. Even animals who lack moral agency experience pain, and moral agents often experience gratuitous pain that serves no biological or moral purpose. Paul Draper’s paper “Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists” explores the philosophical implications of these facts for theism.

Links:
The Biological Role of Pain and pleasure by Paul Draper

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God Thinks Like You: Imagination and Religious Belief

 

The power of imagination can make fictions seem real to us–even prompting behaviors and powerful emotions. The paradox of fiction asks how we can have such powerful reactions to what we know to be false. The journal Cognition recently featured two papers inspired by the paradox of fiction. One demonstrates how imagined events can fool our unconscious mind into believing the events are real, even when we factually know the experiences never happened. Another claims that religious beliefs are formed by cognitive processes more similar to imaginings than factual beliefs.

Links:
Religious Credence is not Factual Belief by Neil Van Leeuwen
If I Imagine it, then it Happened by Shidlovski, Schul & Mayo

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Polyatheism: The Heroic Adventures of Cú Chulainn

This polyatheism is the final instalment in a three part series on the zany adventures of the Irish mythological hero Cu Chulainn.

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Religion in the Headlines – Ebola Edition

 

Leo Igway on faith healers and bishop Duncan-Williams

ebola conspiracy theories are causing people to stop vaccinating

Props: National Association of Evangelicals calls for greater regulation of predatory lending.

 

 

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Our cognitive faculties evolved to help us detect agents in our environment and to predict the content of their minds but those same faculties also generate beliefs in supernatural minds and divine agents. While this seems to suggest that religious intuitions are untrustworthy by-products of ordinary cognitive processes, Cognitive psychologists like Justin Barrett argue  the existence of these “god-faculties” in the brain should not make the atheist more comfortable with their skepticism. In fact, Barrett believes they actually provide a defeater for atheism.

Counter-Apologetics / God Thinks Like You Crossover: Do Cognitive Faculties for Religious Beliefs argue for Theism or Atheism?

The fact that our cognitive faculties produce immediate, non-inferential beliefs supporting some of our most basic assumptions (an external world, the existence of mind, the validity of logic, etc.) should provide some epistemic assurances against extreme skepticism. Since our faculties seem aimed at forming true beliefs about the world, we have reason to trust them until we find evidence to the contrary. Building from this epistemlogical foundation, Justin Barrett and Kelly Clark argue we also have warrant to believe in God, since the same faculties that produce beliefs in agents and other minds also produce belief in Gods. Furthermore, Barrett insists the atheist cannot claim the mind’s god-faculties are unreliable without undercutting the foundations of a naturalistic worldview. Jeremy Beahan and Luke Galen look at the philosophy and science behind these arguemnts, and draw a differnt conclusion.

Links:
Reidian Religious Epistemology and the Cognitive Science of Religion by Kelly James Clark and Justin L. Barrett
Should CSR Give Atheists Epistemic Assurance? by Justin L. Barrett and Ian M. Church

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Polyatheism: The Heroic Adventures of Cú Chulainn

This polyatheism is the first in a three part series on the zany adventures of the Irish mythological hero Cu Chulainn.

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Stranger Than Fiction: Children’s Satanic Activity Book

Links:
Satanic Coloring Book distributed to Florida children (and a pdf of the book)

 

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Does God approve actions because they are good? Or is an action good because God approves it? Euthyphro’s Dilemma is perhaps the oldest challenge to a theistic conception of morality, but many modern philosophers of religion believe the dilemma to be a false one. While the traditional formulation of the dilemma may have an answer, Socrates’ challenge lives on in a new form.

Counter-Apologetics: A New Euthyphro Dilemma

 

Philosophers such as  William Alston, Robert Adams and William Lane Craig, believe they can split the horns of Euthyphro’s Dilemma by looking to God’s nature as the standard of goodness, but in a fascinating paper Jeremy Koons has devised a new version of the dilemma which exposes this conception of divine goodness as unintelligible.

Links:
Can God’s Goodness Save the Divine Command Theory From Euthyphro? By Jeremy Koons

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God Thinks Like You: The Moral Psychology of an Anthropomorphic vs. Theological God Concept

 

How one conceives the nature of God can have a powerful impact on how one views violations of his commandments. When believers embrace a more anthropomorphic view of God, they are more prone to judging minor violations of religious teachings as immoral.

Links:
Anthropomorphic God Concepts Engender Moral Judgment by Carey K. Morewedge

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Special Focus: How religion stunts innovation, and other musings on the conflict between science and religion

 

A new study argues highly religious countries have less scientific innovation then more secular ones, even after numerous variables are controlled for. While its unclear what is the cause behind the relationship, carefully designed experiments have shown how a scientific view of the world can be at odds with religious views, especially in regards to ones view of the soul and our connection to nature.

Links:

Science and Religion Really are Enemies After All by Chris Mooney
Neuroscience and the soul by Preston, Ritter & Helper
Faith and Nature by Vess, Arndt & Cox

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Religion in the Headlines – Big Fuzzy Beard Edition

 

The continuing misadventures of Sam and Johnny Mullet

A prisoners Beard Offers the Next Test of Religious Liberty for the Supreme Court

Church Of England Will Allow Women To Serve As Bishops

Mormon woman excommunicated for activism seeking priesthood for women

 

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How did Jesus, an apocalyptic prophet from Galilee, come to be regarded as a God by his followers? Bart D. Ehrman (Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) joins us on the show to discuss his new book How Jesus Became God, which traces the historical evolution of early Christian thought about the nature and identity of Jesus.

If you enjoyed this interview please consider donating to Reasonable Doubts to help cover our costs. Also be sure to check out Bart Ehrman’s excellent blog on New Testament studies.

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