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Science, Morality, and the Death of God » Internet Infidels

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In this greatly expanded version of his contribution to The Antipodean Philosopher, Raymond D. Bradley uses H. L. Mencken's classic "Memorial Service" as a jumping off point to explain why he is an atheist, and not an "agnostic," about the existence of any members of the category "gods." Since which gods happen to predominate in the society into which one was born depends upon accidents of birth, how can anyone justifiably have confidence that any of the gods on Mencken's list actually exist? Turning to our own Western monotheistic tradition, Bradley goes on critique the intellectual and moral defense that believers have mounted for the biblical God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, with particular emphasis on "intelligent design" and "fine-tuning" arguments and how the pastorate feign ignorance about what their own biblical scholarship has uncovered about the all-too-human origins of their "revealed" sacred texts.

(2021) [This essay is a greatly expanded version of Chapter 2 of The Antipodean Philosopher: Interviews on Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand, Volume 1. It is published on The Secular Web to mark the 10-year anniversary of its original publication in that volume. Readers should note that due to the expanded content, the full version presented here is a very different essay from the original chapter.] Memorial Service Back in 1922, American essayist H. L. Mencken wrote a little essay titled “Memorial Service.” Here’s how he began: Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What lingering…

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