Philosophy of religion has a rather addictive nature.
John Loftus published his memoir in 2006 and published a third edition in 2012. Robert Price has, for a number of years, authored many publications refuting Christian apologetics, and continues to do so, despite having said a while back that he was “eager to get out” of the business.
Round about 2007 I first started blogging on young earth creationism with my blog, answers in genesis busted, and I have continued to blog on the philosophy of religion from time to time… seven years later. I’ve got a couple of projects in the pipes, and I am possibly thinking about finishing up my long-awaited index to theistic claims, but then again… I wonder if it isn’t just a waste of time. My feeling is that very few Christians actually read the critical responses to their beliefs, and that most Christians are simply not persuadable anyway. Thus, if I completed another book it would probably be more “preaching to the choir.”
It bothers me tremendously that I have seen so many people get wrapped up in the god debate that winds up becoming a hobby that takes up a rather unhealthy amount of one’s time. I don’t know why we do it: is it a sense of outrage at how bad the theists’ arguments are? We just want to make sure that no one gets taken in by them? Well, in my experience most believe what they want to believe, and the few people who are in search of the truth don’t need me (or Bob Price) to spoon-feed it to them.
Plenty of exhaustive treatments of both Christian theism and God belief in general have been written (see Daniels, Tobin, Loftus mentioned earlier for extensive treatments of Christian theism and in particular conservative Christian belief); Plenty of books have been written that exhaustively debunk the arguments for the existence of God, see Graham Oppy’s Arguing About Gods, Michael Martin’s Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, Herman Philipse’s God In An Age of Science? at the advanced level and see The Atheist’s Primer and Atheism Explained at the beginner level. I suspect it’s best to refer the honest seekers to those books and graciously bow out, because no more books need be written.
I’d like to review Richard Carrier’s upcoming book, and perhaps finish up a few odds and ends, but other than that I am seriously considering not blogging on philosophy of religion anymore and moreover not blogging on philosophy at all.
