Saturday, March 1, 2008

God or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence

A solicitation for questions from Keith Augustine at infidels.org:

Last summer a series of philosophical debates titled "God or Blind
Nature?" was launched on the Secular Web. All four of the exchanges have now been published. Within the broader question of whether naturalism or theism is more likely to be true, eight issues are considered: the nature of the mind and its relationship to the brain; the irreducibility of consciousness and freedom of the will; the extent of apparently needless suffering in the world; whether reliable cognitive faculties could evolve purely by natural selection; whether there is room for anything external to the universe in an explanation of its existence; whether the universe is fine-tuned for life; whether the existence of nonresistant nonbelief entails the nonexistence of a loving God; and whether one ought to accept the existence of God simply because of the worldy benefits to happiness and longevity it purportedly produces.

See http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/debates/great-debate.html

Contributors include Alvin Plantinga, Quentin Smith, John Schellenberg, Andrew Melnyk, Paul Draper, Stewart Goetz, Charles Taliaferro, Robin Collins, and Jeffrey Jordan.

We are currently soliciting questions to pass on to any of these contributors about the issues they engage in these debates. We would greatly appreciate it if the subscribers to this list would pass this information on to their colleagues, and especially on to their students, as we would like average readers to have a unique opportunity to query these prominent philosophers and, if their questions are selected for publication, have these questions answered:

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/debates/great-questions.html

Since we anticipate publishing Q&A sessions in the Spring or Summer of this year, any assistance in getting a last-chance questions in as soon as possible would be greatly appreciated.

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