Internet Infidels

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Internet Infidels, Inc. is a Colorado Springs, Colorado-based nonprofit educational organization founded in 1995 by Jeffery Jay Lowder and Brett Lemoine. Its mission is to use the Internet to promote a view that supernatural forces or entities do not exist (metaphysical naturalism). Internet Infidels maintains a website of educational resources about agnosticism, atheism, freethought, humanism, secularism, and other nontheistic viewpoints particularly relevant to nonbelievers and skeptics of the paranormal. Relevant resources include rebuttals to arguments made by religious apologists and theistic philosophers, transcripts of debates between believers and nonbelievers, and responses from opponents of a naturalistic worldview. The site has been referred to by one of its critics, Christian apologist Gary Habermas, as "one of the Internet's main Web sites for skeptics", [1] and by skeptical physicist Taner Edis as "a major Web site serving nonbelievers". [2] Its tagline is "a drop of reason in a pool of confusion". [3]

Contents

Mission

Richard Carrier, former editor-in-chief, said that "the mission of the Internet Infidels has always been to defend and promote Metaphysical Naturalism". [4] The organization formally adopts agnostic philosopher Paul Draper's definition of metaphysical naturalism as "the hypothesis that the natural world is a closed system, which means that nothing that is not a part of the natural world affects it. ... [This] implies that there are no supernatural entities, or at least none that actually exercises its power to affect the natural world." [5] Internet Infidels aims to inform readers that similar views have been adopted around the world and across historical eras, to make hard-to-find information more easily available, and to encourage those who profess belief to review all of the arguments and evidence and come to their own conclusions.

Secular Web

The primary product of Internet Infidels is the Secular Web website, infidels.org. Its Modern Library section includes contemporary articles (1970–present) offering arguments that all religions are false (particularly Christianity, Mormonism, Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism), arguments against the existence of God, critiques of arguments for the existence of God, and arguments for metaphysical naturalism. A series of written debates between prominent theistic and nontheistic philosophers covering these issues and available in the Modern Library is titled "God or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence". [6]

The Secular Web also includes a section containing historical works critical of religion by Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Mark Twain, Bertrand Russell, and Albert Einstein.

The Secular Web Kiosk section features short, informal articles. These general interest articles include editorials, book reviews, commentary on social issues or public policy, satire, and fiction, among other things.

Bruce B. Lawrence, the Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Humanities Professor of Religion at Duke University, described the site as "hard to top" for "thoughtful material, extensive networking, and interdisciplinary flair." [7]

IIDB

Until 2008 Internet Infidels hosted a discussion board, IIDB (Internet Infidels Discussion Board), but during 2008 IIDB was transferred to a new site, Freethought and Rationalism Discussion Board (FRDB). Both of those sites were eventually archived [8] as FRDB became Talk Freethought [9] in 2014. Talk Freethought continues in the tradition of IIDB and FRDB, hosting discussions on a number of subjects including philosophy, science, politics and of course, religion.

Related Research Articles

Philosophy of religion is "the philosophical examination of the central themes and concepts involved in religious traditions". Philosophical discussions on such topics date from ancient times, and appear in the earliest known texts concerning philosophy. The field is related to many other branches of philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

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Secular humanism is a philosophy, belief system or life stance that embraces human reason, secular ethics, and philosophical naturalism while specifically rejecting religious dogma, supernaturalism, and superstition as the basis of morality and decision making.

The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God (TAG) is the argument that attempts to prove the existence of God by arguing that logic, morals, and science ultimately presuppose a supreme being and that God must therefore be the source of logic and morals.

Alvin Carl Plantinga is an American analytic philosopher who works primarily in the fields of philosophy of religion, epistemology, and logic.

Nontheism or non-theism is a range of both religious and non-religious attitudes characterized by the absence of espoused belief in the existence of god or gods. Nontheism has generally been used to describe apathy or silence towards the subject of God and differs from atheism. Nontheism does not necessarily describe atheism or disbelief in God; it has been used as an umbrella term for summarizing various distinct and even mutually exclusive positions, such as agnosticism, ignosticism, ietsism, skepticism, pantheism, pandeism, transtheism, atheism, and apatheism. It is in use in the fields of Christian apologetics and general liberal theology.

The existence of God is a subject of debate in theology, philosophy of religion and popular culture. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God or deities can be categorized as logical, empirical, metaphysical, subjective or scientific. In philosophical terms, the question of the existence of God or deities involves the disciplines of epistemology and ontology and the theory of value.

Ignosticism or igtheism is the idea that the question of the existence of God is meaningless because the word "God" has no coherent and unambiguous definition.

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Metaphysical naturalism is a philosophical worldview which holds that there is nothing but natural elements, principles, and relations of the kind studied by the natural sciences. Methodological naturalism is a philosophical basis for science, for which metaphysical naturalism provides only one possible ontological foundation. Broadly, the corresponding theological perspective is religious naturalism or spiritual naturalism. More specifically, metaphysical naturalism rejects the supernatural concepts and explanations that are part of many religions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Carrier</span> American historian and philosopher (born 1969)

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The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to humanism:

Paul Robert Draper is an American philosopher, most known for his work in the philosophy of religion. His work on the evidential argument from evil has been widely influential. He is currently a professor at Purdue University. He is co-editor of topics in the philosophy of religion for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to atheism:

Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists.

Victor Reppert is an American philosopher best known for his development of the "argument from reason". He is the author of C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea (2003) and numerous academic papers in journals such as Christian Scholars' Review, International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, Philo, and Philosophia Christi. He is also a philosophy blogger, with two blogs.

Agnostic atheism is a philosophical position that encompasses both atheism and agnosticism. Agnostic atheists are atheistic because they do not hold a belief in the existence of any deity, and are agnostic because they claim that the existence of a demiurgic entity or entities is either unknowable in principle or currently unknown in fact.

This is a list of articles in philosophy of religion.

Nontheistic religions are traditions of thought within a religious context—some otherwise aligned with theism, others not—in which nontheism informs religious beliefs or practices. Nontheism has been applied and plays significant roles in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. While many approaches to religion exclude nontheism by definition, some inclusive definitions of religion show how religious practice and belief do not depend on the presence of a god or gods. For example, Paul James and Peter Mandaville distinguish between religion and spirituality, but provide a definition of the term that avoids the usual reduction to "religions of the book":

Religion can be defined as a relatively-bounded system of beliefs, symbols and practices that addresses the nature of existence, and in which communion with others and Otherness is lived as if it both takes in and spiritually transcends socially-grounded ontologies of time, space, embodiment and knowing.

Skeptical theism is the view that people should remain skeptical of their ability to discern whether their perceptions about evil can be considered good evidence against the existence of the orthodox Christian God. The central thesis of skeptical theism is that it would not be surprising for an infinitely intelligent and knowledgeable being's reasons for permitting evils to be beyond human comprehension. That is, what may seem like pointless evils may be necessary for a greater good or to prevent equal or even greater evils. This central thesis may be argued from a theistic perspective, but is also argued to defend positions of agnosticism.

References

  1. ↑ Habermas, Gary R. (2004). The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. Kregel Publications. p. 298. ISBN   0-8254-2788-6.
  2. ↑ Edis, Taner (2005). Science and Nonbelief. Greenwood Press. p. 174. ISBN   0-313-33078-6.
  3. ↑ Starobin, Paul (7 March 2009). "Rise of the Godless". National Journal.
  4. ↑ Carrier, Richard. "Defining Our Mission". Internet Infidels.
  5. ↑ Draper, Paul. "Natural Selection and the Problem of Evil". Internet Infidels.
  6. ↑ Draper, Paul. "God or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence". Internet Infidels.
  7. ↑ Lawrence, Bruce B.; The Complete Idiot's Guide to Religions Online, Alpha Books, 2000, ISBN   978-0789722096. p. 267
  8. ↑ IIDB and FRDB Archive
  9. ↑ Talk Freethought
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