“The error of the Darwinist school has become a problem for me: ” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche, “how can one be so blind as to fail to see clearly here? … That the species represent progress is the most unreasonable assertion in the world:” (Nietzsche 2003, 258) In a period of ten years, Nietzsche drifted from admiring Darwin and his company as “great names of England” to … [Read more...]
Assessing Thomson’s Defense of Abortion
Does the personhood of foetuses give them right to life? Does that right to life override women’s rights to control what happens in and to their bodies? In A Defense of Abortion, Judith Jarvis Thomson argued that even if we grant that foetuses are persons and thus have a right to life, it does not follow that they have the right to use the pregnant women’s bodies. Thomson's … [Read more...]
Is Abortion Women’s Right To Control Their Bodies?
Women’s rights clearly include their right to health and to make fully informed decisions regarding their bodies. Does a woman's right to decide what she will and will not do with her body extend to cover actions affecting the fetus who may reside in her body? Does a woman’s right to control her own reproduction include a right to induced abortion? Granting the notion that our … [Read more...]
Abortion and A Flawed Brain-life Theory
Tracking Baruch Brody’s view, brain-life theorists claim that, being fully human, a being must possess properties “such that their loss would mean the going out of existence (the death) of a human being”(Brody 1975, 102). The property of being human, they argued, is human brain function. J Savulescu, for example, contended: If we cease to exist when our brain dies, we only … [Read more...]
What is Wrong With Abortion? A Philosophical Case
Is it possible to make a case for the prima facie wrongness of killing a human fetus that does not depend on theological premises? In 1989 atheist philosopher Donald Marquis introduced a philosophical case for immorality of abortion that neither depended on the personhood nor consciousness of the fetus. Consider these five cases, borrowed from Pedro Galvão (2007): (A) The … [Read more...]
God’s Omnipotence and Problem of Evil
“A wholly good omnipotent being," contended J. L. Mackie, “would eliminate evil completely; if there really are evils, then there cannot be any such being.” (Mackie 1982: 150) Is it necessarily true that a wholly good omnipotent being who is able eliminate evil, would eliminate evil? Is it necessarily true that a wholly good omnipotent being who cannot prevent pain and … [Read more...]
Omnipotent God and The Paradox of the Stone
The concept of an omnipotent being, namely a being with maximal perfection with respect to power, is sometimes believed to involve a contradiction. The most popular reductio ad absurdum case against the existence of omnipotent being is known as “the paradox of the stone.” The paradox unfolds as follows: 1. If God exists, then He is omnipotent 2. If God is omnipotent then God … [Read more...]
Case For Atheism: Incompatibility of Bodiless Person?
In Philo, the Society of Humanist Philosophers published journal of Philosophy, Theodore M. Drange presented 10 incompatible properties arguments against the existence of God. In this article I explored Drange’s 7th argument, namely the incompatibility of a nonphysical person. Drange outlined “The Nonphysical-vs.-Personal Argument” as follows: If God exists, then he is … [Read more...]
Cosmic Genesis And Grousing Of Religious Atheists
Michael Palmer’s The Atheist’s Creed records the first article of faith, which characterizes what I call religious atheism, namely “I BELIEVE THAT the cosmos is all that is or ever was and ever will be.”(Palmer 2012:5, emphasis in original), which is contrary to modern cosmology. I recommend reading the first part: Cosmic Beginning And Grousing Of Religious Atheists, before … [Read more...]
Cosmic Beginning And Grousing Of Religious Atheists
The first article of faith in Michael Palmer’s “The Atheist’s Creed” is that he believes, echoing Carl Sagan, that “the cosmos is all that is or ever was and ever will be.” (Palmer 2012:5) “The fact of the matter is that the most reasonable belief is that we came from nothing, by nothing and for nothing” (Smith 1993: 135), so we are told by Quentin Smith. Was Bertrand Russell … [Read more...]