A few remarks:
1. Atheist philosophers tend to make a big deal over the Problem of Evil which, at least in its normal logical and evidential modes, has never been a major concern for Classical Theists (if anything it collapses into the more interesting problem of whether God is constrained by his nature to create the best of all possible worlds).
2. Quentin Smith once said that the two ways to argue for atheism were from evil and from scientific cosmology. The former has been touched on above and his arguments for the latter are bad (why would God want a universe that behaves randomly at its beginning?) to the extent that he gets called out by other atheists on the subject. If Smith’s statement were true then it would mean that professional atheist philosophers differ at best only in degree from random troll bloggers like ex-apologist or outshinethesun.
The main difference is that even when this is the case the professional atheist knows to avoiding making general stupid statements about metaphysics.
3. Atheism suffers from what might be termed ‘the lack of illustrious forefathers’ problem – that is that very few of the great philosophers of history have actually been atheists. This is why many atheists have to rely on a meta-narrative to provide back-drop for their position.
4. It is the mark of a bad philosopher e.g. Michael Martin that they should think parody objections to the Ontological Arguments have any validity. ‘Couldn’t the argument be adapted to show that this contingent being exists of its own necessity?’
Last edited by DanielCC (8/11/2015 5:18 am)
