While I agree that Coyne’s view is wrong and “behind the times” philosophically, he and sam harris are the most recognized atheists now that Hitch has passed. I didn’t mention it but I was reminded of Carl Menninger’s theory that all criminal behavior is a sign of mental illness since only the mentally ill would not form the conscience necessary to refrain from criminal behavior. Menniger argues that given the fact that criminal behavior is determined we should neverpunish only sentence criminals to therapy. If Coyne is correct then the therapy model might lead to better consequences.

As for Frankfurt, I’m glad you brought him up. He is an antidote to the a great deal of determinism.

According to many contemporary philosophical accounts, free will is both compatible with both metaphysical naturalism and determinism. This would doubtless surprise Coyne, but shouldn’t surprise anyone who has spent any degree of time studying action theory in a philosophy department in the past two or three decades. For example… In “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person” (1971) Harry Frankfurt denies that for us to be free and responsible we must be able to have done/chosen otherwise. His argument explicitly addresses cases of addiction, in which a person experiences their behavior as caused by an overpowering desire. We judge the addict by how they respond to this desire… do they want to be addicted? Or do they experience their addiction as an alien force over which they have no control? The person seems to act freely in the first case but not in the second. The unwilling addict experiences something akin to compulsion or coercion, albeit from an internal rather than external source. Frankfurt claims that in cases of unwilling addiction, the addict does not act of their own free will. Frankfurt’s account, if successful, appears to reconcile moral responsibility, determinism, and addiction. It’s far more interesting than Coyne’s arguments.

Jonathan: You appear to be suggesting that it is possible for a desire to lead unstoppably to behavior. This is an empirical question, as is the question of how common uncontrollable desires are (if they are possible). It is telling, though, that for many addiction treatments (e.g. Alc/Narc Anon) one of the first steps is admitting that one has no control over one’s desire for drugs and alcohol.

I agree. Thanks for chiming in.

The “No True Scotsman fallacy” doesn’t apply to Christians because we are not defined by what sins we fall into (unless you are a moralist).

I believe we are defined by the Image of Christ in scripture. Does that make me a hypocrite?

Also, I’m not saying that anyone should treat Christians with hatred and contempt…. rather, I think this kind of thing needs to be pointed out because it’s a major double standard. You know society would flip it’s lid if droves of atheists came out calling for this kind of treatment to a Christian. I also want to point out that I don’t blame this on faith, although I believe it claims a small role. I think this is the fault of something leading to thinking that other human beings are less than human… as one poster put it, “she’s garbage.” As far as the having hatred and contempt for Christians… that would be mighty hypocritical of me wouldn’t it? I have actually been talking to some of the people who posted this ugly stuff towards Jessica, and have been doing so in a very kind and civil manner. If I had wanted these people to be treated badly, I would have tagged their names with text under their pictures so that a google search would yield these results. I do not wish this on them, I wish for them to learn their lesson and stop treating people like this.

I don’t think all Christians are like this… but I will not stop until I see a good number of Christians pointing out that what these people did was unacceptable. I would call out other atheists for acting like this, as I have in the past… and I expect other people to do the same for their groups… assuming they don’t want to be labeled in this way.

(1) Christianity claims, perhaps rightly, that actions of type X are immoral.
(2) Christians, by definition, believe the claims of Christianity.
(3) Nevertheless, Christians perform actions of type X quite often.

Atheists seem to pull two different conclusions out of these premises:
(4a) Christianity is worthless because it doesn’t stop believers from performing X-type actions.
(4b) Every individual Christian is a proven or suspected hypocrite, and hence worthy of contempt.

I think (4a) is just silly. You’re absolutely right: believing X-type actions are wrong is no guarantee that a person will refrain from performing actions of that type. Any atheist who seriously puts forward (4a) is either adopting a primitive, ridiculous form of motivational internalism, or is else mistaken about where the worth of a belief-set comes from (i.e. ultimately, its correspondence with the truth.)

(4b) is not as silly, although it doesn’t follow as easily as an atheist might like. I think lurking behind the conclusion is a confusion concerning the nature of hypocrisy. A hypocrite isn’t someone who sincerely believes X is wrong but still does X. That’s weakness of will, not hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is specifically a type of dishonesty.