Showing posts with label Peter Boghossian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peter Boghossian. Show all posts

Sunday, February 08, 2015

Sceptics, Seekers and Opponents

Some fences are not for sitting
Vox Day has an interesting piece on the subject of A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian, a book written with the purpose of teaching, in Boghossian’s own words, “how to talk people out of their faith”.

Day makes the point that Boghossian’s position could not be more distant from that of authentic scepticism: “Boghossian’s very stated purpose is in direct and explicit opposition to everything Sextus Empiricus advises, beginning with ‘suspension of judgment’ ”.

Naturally a reader engages him on this.

Friday, January 17, 2014

The Ninth Circle

Maybe you’ve heard the expression ‘the Ninth Circle of Hell’ used to describe an excruciating week at the office, a brutal exam or a particularly acrimonious divorce — hyperbolically, one hopes.

The Origin of the Expression

Over six hundred years ago, an Italian named Dante Alighieri wrote an epic poem entitled Divine Comedy. Inferno (Italian for ‘hell’) is the first part of the three-part poem, and it’s from Dante’s allegorical exploration of hell that the concept of the nine circles comes. Hell is depicted as a series of concentric circles representing a gradual increase in wickedness — and corresponding torment — that have their culmination at the very centre, where Satan is held in bondage.

The Ninth Circle of Hell is reserved for the treacherous: Cain, who killed his brother, is there in Dante’s poem, along with Mordred, murderer of King Arthur, Brutus and Cassius, traitors to Julius Caesar, and Judas Iscariot, betrayer of the Lord himself. Judas is charmingly pictured being gnawed at by Satan, Satan’s claws skinning his back, in perpetual agony for eternity.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Sceptics, Seekers and Opponents

Vox Day has an interesting piece on the subject of A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian, a book written with the purpose of teaching, in Boghossian’s own words, “how to talk people out of their faith”.

Day makes the point that Boghossian’s position could not be more distant from that of an authentic sceptic in the traditional sense: “Boghossian’s very stated purpose is in direct and explicit opposition to everything Sextus Empiricus advises, beginning with ‘suspension of judgment’ ”. A reader imprudently engages him on this and Day responds (with my italics):
“Scepticism does not mean ‘I am dubious about X.’ It does not mean ‘I am going to convince you that X is better than Y’. It does not mean ‘I will only believe X if there is sufficient evidence to justify it’. It means: ‘I have no opinion about either X or Y, and if you assert that X is better, I will argue that Y is better in order to produce a contradiction of equal weight and thereby allow me to suspend my judgment.’ What virtually no one who talks about scepticism seems to understand is that for the sceptic, suspension of judgment is not the method or the initial approach, it is the objective.”
— Vox Day
I had not thought of this before, but it provides a good jumping-off point for looking at the issue of how people respond to the preaching of the gospel.