35 found
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  1. A Moral Argument for Atheism.Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    First: there is ample precedent for what I am doing. Socrates, for example, examined the religious beliefs of his contemporaries-- especially the belief that we ought to do what the gods command--and showed them to be both ill-founded and conceptually confused. I wish to follow in his footsteps though not to share in his fate. A glass of wine, not of poison, would be my preferred reward.
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  2.  91
    Can God Condemn One to an Afterlife in Hell?Raymond D. Bradley - 2015 - In Keith Augustine & Michael Martin (eds.), The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 441-471.
    This paper argues that God is not logically able to condemn a person to Hell by considering what is entailed by accepting the best argument to the contrary, the so-called free will defense expounded by Christian apologists Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig. It argues that the free will defense is logically fallacious, involves a philosophical fiction, and is based on a fraudulent account of Scripture, concluding that the problem of postmortem evil puts would-be believers in a logical and moral (...)
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  3. "Can there be an objective morality without God?" By.Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    The question before us is "Can there be an objective morality without God?" By the term "God" we shall mean the God in whom Christians believe, the God of the Bible, not some abstract Higher Power or New Age deity. Dr. Chamberlain believes that the biblical God exists, and that if he didn't exist, there could be no objective moral truths. For myself, I once believed in such a God, but no longer do. My non-belief, however, doesn't mean that I (...)
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  4. God, Design, and Evolution: A Teleological Argument for Atheism.Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    Many things in the natural world work so well that they seem to have been designed. But by what? Could nature itself, by processes including those of evolution, be the designer? Or must their complex structure and function be attributed to some intelligent designer or God? Is natural design compatible with intelligent design? How good is the argument from the presence of design to an intelligent designer? And if we could legitimately infer the probable existence of an intelligent designer from (...)
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  5. The Free Will Defense Refuted and God's Existence Disproved.Raymond D. Bradley - 2007 - Internet Infidels Modern Library.
    1. The Down Under Logical Disproof of the Theist's God 1.1 Plantinga's Attempted Refutation of the Logical Disproof 1.2 Plantinga Refuted and God Disproved: A Preview 2. Plantinga's Formal Presentation of his Free Will Defense 3. First Formal Flaw: A Non Sequitur Regarding the Consistency of (3) with (1) 4. Further Flaws Regarding the Joint Conditions of Consistency and Entailment 4.1 A Non Sequitur Regarding the Entailment Condition 4.2 Telling the Full Story in Order to Satisfy the Entailment Condition 4.3 (...)
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  6.  77
    Why Survival is Metaphysically Impossible.Raymond D. Bradley - 2015 - In Keith Augustine & Michael Martin (eds.), The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 297-328.
    Human bodies have a totally different mode of existence from those collections of mental properties (intelligence, will power, consciousness, etc.) that we call minds. They belong to the ontological category of physical substances or entities, whereas mental properties belong to the ontological category of properties or attributes, and as such can exist only so long as their physical bearers exist. Mental properties “emerge” (in a sense that makes emergence ubiquitous throughout the natural world) when the constituent parts of a biological (...)
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  7. Infinite Regress Arguments.Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    Infinite regress arguments are used by philosophers as methods of refutation. A hypothesis is defective if it generates an infinite series when either such a series does not exist or its supposed existence would not serve the explanatory purpose for which it was postulated.
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  8. Cosmological Arguments.Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    Although most cogently formulated by philosophers such as St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), al Ghazali (1058-1111), and Gottfried Leibniz (1646- 1716), cosmological arguments have a powerful appeal also to those nonphilosophers who feel that the "ultimate" explanation for the existence of the natural universe is that it was created by some sort of supernatural entity, viz., God.
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  9. "Can a loving God send people to hell?" A reply to William L. Craig.Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    Some Christians do in fact think of the question euphemistically, like this. And some like to suppose, further, that when the children find that Hawaii is a bit like hell - it's far too hot and the locals are giving them a hard time - Father will relent and welcome them to his mansions on high.
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  10. Avowals of immediate experience.Raymond D. Bradley - 1964 - Mind 73 (April):186-203.
  11.  52
    Contingency.Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    The MODAL property of contingency is attributed to something X (for instance, a PROPOSITION, STATE OF AFFAIRS, EVENT, or - more debatably - an object) just when X is neither impossible nor necessary, i.e., is both possible and nonnecessary.
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  12.  95
    Determinism.Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    The abstract noun "Determinism" functions like a family name for a group of philosophical doctrines each of which asserts that, in some sense or other, events occur of necessity when and as they do. Different members of the family stake out different doctrinal territories, some construing the necessity involved in purely logical terms, some in causal terms, and still others in terms of predictability. Each has to do with necessary connections between past, present and future.
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  13.  24
    Did Einstein Believe in God?Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    On the face of it, the answer is "Yes." Hence it is not surprising that many people who say they believe in God like to appeal to Einstein's authority in defense of their own beliefs. It gives them comfort to be able to say that such a great man shared their religious beliefs.
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  14. Does God Play Dice with the Universe?Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    His disagreements with them were philosophical. Just as he rejected their claim that experimental results in quantum mechanics implied that nothing exists unless it is being observed by a conscious human being, so also he disagreed with their claim that these results implied that the so-called “deterministic” philosophy of Newtonian mechanics was false.
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  15.  78
    Does the Moon Exist Only When Someone Is Looking at It?Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    He did so because he had long disagreed with a lot of the most important and influential physicists of his time, about the interpretation of that area of physics known as quantum physics that deals with the behaviour of objects in the microphysical, subatomic, world. Many of these physicists were committed to an interpretation from which it follows that nothing - the moon included - exists unless it is being observed. Einstein wanted to know whether Pais was on his side (...)
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  16.  74
    Essentialism and The New Theory of Reference.Raymond D. Bradley - 1984 - Dialogue 23 (1):59-77.
    Kripke, Putnam and others have proposed what is often called The New Theory of Reference. Professor Matthen thinks that this theory needs to be modified in various ways: so as to avert misunderstandings about the New Theory's commitment to essentialism; so as to clarify the semantic function of what he calls “nonconnoting terms”; so as to answer Quinean doubts about the determinacy of ostension; so as to correct Putnam's “simplistic” account of ostension; so as to solve Kripke's puzzle about the (...)
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  17. Fatalism.Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    The belief in fatalism, like many others, has its roots in the quasi-religious mythologies of ancient peoples many of whom personified the notion of fate. Thus Greek mythology supposed that three Fates, daughters of the goddess of Necessity, had control of our lives from beginning to end and that it was therefore impossible for us to do anything contrary to what they had prescribed for us. We may think we are in control of our own destinies. But we are mistaken. (...)
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  18.  7
    3 From Fundamentalist to Freethinker (It All Began with Santa).Raymond D. Bradley - 2010 - In Peter Caws & Stefani Jones (eds.), Religious Upbringing and the Costs of Freedom: Personal and Philosophical Essays. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 50-72.
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  19.  53
    (1 other version)Geometry and necessary truth.Raymond D. Bradley - 1964 - Philosophical Review 73 (1):59-75.
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  20.  63
    How Good Are Your Logical Intuitions?Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    Some children seem blessed, almost from birth, with a capacity for critical thinking. They won't let a fallacious argument pass unnoticed or unscathed. And some are fortunate enough to be exposed at an early age to fine examples of good reasoning. In their listening and their reading they learn, by intellectual osmosis as it were, to think logically. Yet even these fortunate ones, like the rest of us, can benefit by having their logical intuitions and reasoning skills sharpened by precept (...)
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  21.  41
    How should our question be construed?Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    Some Christians do in fact think of the question euphemistically, like this. And some like to suppose, further, that when the children find that Hawaii is a bit like hell - it's far too hot and the locals are giving them a hard time - Father will relent and welcome them to his mansions on high.
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  22. How to Lose Your Grip On Reality? An Attack On Anti-Realism in Quantum Theory.Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    [Abstract: Anti-realism – the denial that reality exists apart from our conceptions of it – is rampant, not just among Postmodernists and other literati, but also among many of the leading spokesmen of orthodox quantum theory – from Born, Bohr, and Heisenberg to Wheeler and Wigner. Undoubtedly they've done good physics. Why, then, do they indulge in bad metaphysics? This paper offers some answers.].
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  23.  69
    Is Everything Relative, Including Truth?Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    The ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates (477-399 BCE), liked to pose questions in abstract terms. What is Justice? What is Beauty? What is Goodness? And so on. Not surprisingly, many who tried to answer tied themselves up in knots. And so it is also with the highly general question: What is truth?
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  24. Is God the Source of Morality?Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    I come not to praise God but to bury him along with the dead gods of now forgotten religions. Not to praise him as the source of all that's good in the world, and hence the ultimate guide to human morals, but to indict him as the self-confessed source of all that's wrong with it. When the Christian God says in his Holy Scriptures, that he is the creator of evil, I am prepared to take him at his word.
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  25. (1 other version)Peter Carruthers, The Metaphysics of the Tractatus Reviewed by.Raymond D. Bradley - 1992 - Philosophy in Review 12 (2):83-85.
     
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  26.  43
    Reasoning: Good and Bad.Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    These are questions we won't even try to engage here. For whatever else the disputants may disagree about, they will almost certainly agree about this: that developing the skills of reading and writing (the first two "R"s) is not only a precondition of being well-educated, but also a precondition of being able to function satisfactorily in a civilized society. Someone who cannot read or write is said to be "illiterate" in a quite strict sense of the word (or perhaps "literacy (...)
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  27.  32
    Recently Published Articles Go Go.Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    As a professional philosopher, now well past his allotted years of three-score-and-ten, I am often asked for words of wisdom about the meaning of life. Yet no sooner do I begin to answer, than I'm asked further questions--questions about God, immortality and free will. Not surprising, really, since each of these bears upon our conception of reality and of our own status and significance within it.
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  28.  87
    Science, Morality, and the Death of God.Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    Back in 1922, American essayist H. L. Mencken wrote a little essay titled "Memorial Service". Here's how he began: Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters their mounds? There was a day when Jupiter was the king of the gods, and any man who doubted his puissance [power] was ipso facto a barbarian and an ignoramus. But where in all the world is there a man who worships Jupiter today? And what of Huitzilopochtli [wee-tsee-lohpoch'-tlee]? In one (...)
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  29. (1 other version)Sybil Wolfram, Philosophical Logic: An Introduction Reviewed by.Raymond D. Bradley - 1989 - Philosophy in Review 9 (11):473-475.
  30.  54
    Tractatus 2.022 - 2.023.Raymond D. Bradley - 1987 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17 (2):349 - 359.
    In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Wittgenstein writes:2.022 It is obvious that an imagined world, however different it may be from the real one, must have something – a form – in common with it.2.023 Objects are just what constitute this unalterable form.As F.P. Ramsey pointed out, in his insightful review of the Tractatus, it is evident:[i]that Wittgenstein is here envisaging a multitude of possible worlds other than the real one;[ii]that Wittgenstein is claiming that, notwithstanding their diversity, all such worlds have a (...)
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  31.  70
    The Causal Principle.Raymond D. Bradley - 1974 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 4 (1):97 - 112.
    Philosophical theses are sometimes assailed from so many sides that, even if they have not been refuted, it becomes difficult for them to gain a fair hearing. A case in point seems to be the thesis that the sentence ‘Every event has a cause' may on occasion be used to assert something which, as a matter of contingent fact, is either true or false. In the interests of logical chivalry, I want to take up its defence.My aim, it should be (...)
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  32.  84
    The Nature and Status of Logic.Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    Logic is the science of correct reasoning in any field whatever. But what are the foundations of its laws? Are they, as some have claimed, best viewed as "the laws of thought", laws grounded in facts about human psychology? Do they have their warrant merely in the conventions for linguistic behavior? Are they, as others have claimed, grounded in facts about reality more generally? Or are they, as still others would say, grounded in facts about how this and any other (...)
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  33.  35
    The Rivalry Between Religions (2007).Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    The rivalry between religions is obvious on a number of fronts: in wars between Christians, Muslims, and Hindus; in sectarian violence between Catholics and Protestants, or between Shia and Sunni; in the persecution of doctrinal heretics; in the splintering of new sects along doctrinal lines; in efforts to proselytize; and so on.
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  34.  48
    What Is Truth?Raymond D. Bradley - unknown
    Availing ourselves of the previously introduced notion of a statementvariable, we can express Aristotle's point even more simply. We can say that, where the letter "P" stands for any statement whatever, the concept of truth is captured by the following schematic statement (we'll call it "Equivalence Schema" or "E" for short) of the necessary and sufficient conditions for a statement's being true: E: It is true that P iff P.2..
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  35.  86
    Wittgenstein's tractatarian essentialism.Raymond D. Bradley - 1987 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 65 (1):43 – 55.