Index: Assessing Theism in General and Christianity in Particular

Note: This is a work in progress.

0. Preliminaries:

0.1 On caring about and pursuing truth: here

0.2 On faith and reason: here and here.

0.3 On the theistic conception of God: here

0.4 On a Common Apologetic Strategy: here

0.5 On Theism and the Burden of Proof: here.

1. Evaluation of Arguments for Theism

1.1 Cosmological arguments

1.1.1 The Leibnizian cosmological argument: part 1, part 2, part 3. Also: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.

1.1.2 The kalam cosmological argument: here, here, here, here, here, here and here (scroll down to the comments), here.

1.1.3 Thomistic cosmological arguments (and others): here, here.

1.1.4 O'Connor's abductive cosmological argument: here.

1.2 Design arguments:

1.2.1 Paley-style versions and fine-tuning versions: Here, here, here, here, here. See also here, here, and here, here, here, here, here.

1.2.2 Behe's irreducible complexity version: Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6. See also here, here.

1.2.3 Dembski's explanatory filter version: here, here, here.

1.2.4 Meyer's DNA version: here.

1.3 The ontological argument: here, here, here, here.

1.4 The moral argument: here, here, here.

1.5 Arguments from religious experience: here, here, here.

1.6 Arguments From Consciousness: Here, here, here.

1.7 The argument from abstract objects: here, here.

1.8 The argument from reason: here.

1.9 Plantinga's argument from anti-realism: here.

1.10 Plantinga's argument from proper function: here, here, here, here.

1.11 Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.

1.12 Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism (EAAN): here, here, here, here, see the comments section here, here, here, here.

1.13 Presuppositional apologetics: here, here.

1.14 Moser's case for rational belief: Here.

1.15 The argument from common consent: here.

1.16 Cumulative case arguments:

1.16.1 a general point: here

1.16.2 Swinburne's version: here, here.

1.17 Pragmatic arguments (overview here)

1.17.1 Pascal's Wager: here, here.

1.17.2 James' Will to Believe argument: here (skip down to section 1.3 of the outline), here, here.

1.17.3 Craig's arguments against atheistic morality, moral motivation, meaning, and purpose: here.

2. Evaluation of Arguments Against Theism

2.1 The Logical Problem of Evil: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5. See also here, here, here.

2.2 The evidential problem of evil: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.

2.3 The argument from religious diversity: here

2.4 Arguments from divine hiddenness, religious ambiguity, and reasonable non-belief: here, here.

2.5 The argument from evolution: here

2.6 The argument from the mind's dependence on the brain: here

2.7 The argument from the demographics of theism: here, here.

2.8 The argument from unreliable mechanisms for religious belief: here.

2.9 The argument from reasonable religious disagreement: here, here.

2.10 The argument from the impropriety of worship: here.

2.11 The argument from the impropriety of belief: here.

2.12 The argument from ordinary morality: here, here.

3. Evaluation of Arguments for Chrisitanity

3.1 Arguments for the reliability of the New Testament: here, here, here

3.2 Arguments for the deity of Jesus: here

3.3 Arguments for the resurrection of Jesus: here

4. Arguments Against Christian Theism

4.1 The argument for Jesus as a failed apocalyptic prophet: here and here (scroll down to the comments -- not the post)

4.2 Arguments against the reliability of the New Testament

4.3 Arguments from divinely-caused and/or mandated evil in the Old Testament: here, here, here, and here here

4.4 The argument from the doctrine of everlasting punishment

4.5 The argument from evolution: here

4.6 Hume's argument against the rationality of belief in miracles: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, 

4.7 The problem of identifying miracles given the Bible's hypothesis of "the Devil's Lying Wonders": here.

4.8 The argument from scientific evidence for the ineffectiveness of prayer: here, here, here. here.

4.9 The argument from the powerlessness of the gospel

4.10 The argument from non-obviousness: here.