Stephen Law

  (apologies for mixed metaphors) This is a chapter from my book Believing Bullshit:How Not To get Sucked Into An Intellectual Black Hole. It may be of use to anyone teaching religious language at A Level (RS or Philosophy). Moving the goalposts The expression “moving the goalposts” refers to a certain disreputable strategy in an argument. Suppose I claim Fred has never been to Brazil. It’s pointed out to me that Fred went to Brazil on his honeymoon. My claim has been shown to be false, but rather than admit this I just switch claims: “Well, he’s never been to Brazil on business .” I have just moved the goalposts. The analogy is with football. It looks like someone’s going to score a goal, but suddenly, at the last moment, the goalposts are moved and the ball misses the target. We’re all familiar with this sort of strategy. I focus here on a certain kind of example. It involves shifting ones meaning . I call it Moving The Semantic Goalposts . Moving The ...

[warning - this is long: over 4k words] Introduction Theists – particularly Christians – often appeal to “faith”. Here are three fairly typical examples: • Theists regularly say “But belief in the existence of God is ultimately a matter of faith, not reason”, when confronted by someone demanding to know whether they can muster a cogent argument in support or defence of their belief. • Theists sometimes also insist that theism and atheism are both “faith positions”, and so equally rational/irrational. • And theists are fond of suggesting that, just as it’s a positive thing to place your faith in those around you (otherwise life would be impossible), so it must also be positive to place your faith in God. In this paper, I question whether these appeals to faith are as legitimate as they might first appear. Reasonable belief Let’s begin by looking at reasonable belief. Often, when you believe something with reason, you possess good grounds for supposing your belief is true. Take, for exam...