Posted: Dec 17, 2011 10:08 pm
Here's Lowder in 1995:
William Lane Craig, who in my opinion is the best Christian apologist today, is a top-notch scholar, and a highly competitive debater to boot (the same Craig who defeated Zindler). He has written several books on the Christian faith in general and the historicity of the resurrection in particular, at both the popular and scholarly levels, including Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection: Our Response to the Empty Tomb, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, and The Son Rises: The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus. In my opinion, Craig makes a very strong case for the historicity of the resurrection, a case which I don't think the secular literature has given serious consideration.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ ... chap1.html
It's a dated reference, no doubt. However, I do know that he have a favorable review of Risen Indeed even though he disagreed with the author on many points. If you examine Lowder's writing elsewhere you'll notice that he takes the case seriously. it receives fair treatment. http://www.amazon.com/review/R340227GKO ... &linkCode=
I disagree. I'm interested in a rigorous definition of atheism, not some dumbed-down strawman caricature thereof that simply makes life easy for duplicitous purveyors of supernaturalist apologetics. I propose as a corollary, that atheism, in its rigorous formulation, consists quite simply of a refusal to accept uncritically unsupported supernaturalist assertions.
Mr. Jeff Lowder,
I have criticized this poster's definition elsewhere, though he doesn't see the obvious complications of this definition. For one, as you may have already noted yourself, there's nothing about not believing or denying that claims such as 'A god exists' is true. Consequently, unless he wishes to add something else to this droll definition, it's logically consistent for theist to be an atheist too. If he wishes to claim a priori that 'a god exists' cannot be uncritically supported, and so no theist could consistently be an atheist on his definition, then he's built in question begging assumptions within this definition itself. Also: his definition broadens the scope of atheism to all supernatural claims rather than just to claims of deities. Such a scope is unfounded within the conventional and historical understanding of the word.
Since this user does not seem to wish to adhere to the historical or conventional understandings of the word, I'm unsure why he'd ask you if his definition is wrong (for by what measure could it be wrong?) It seems to be no more than Humpty Dumptyism on his part, and he is remarkably stubborn to change.