Issues
Issue 78: April/May 2010
EDITORIAL
Meet the New Atheism / Same as the Old Atheism?
by Tim Madigan
NEWS
News: April/May 2010
Stolen Descartes letter found • Philosophy football: the big match • Schrödinger’s strip • Shock finding: choice causes anxiety! — News reports by Sue Roberts
THE NEW ATHEISM
A Catholic Clergyman Responds to the New Atheists
by Rev. Dylan Schrader
Good Religion, and the Good It Can Do
by Fr. Jeffrey Kirby
Is God Coming or Going?
David Ramsay Steele surveys American Belief to explain New Atheism’s popularity.
Is Religion Bad For Society?
by Rev. Bob Eckhard
New Atheists and Old Atheists
by Fr. Andrew Pinsent
The Not So New Atheists?
Jon Wainwright considers the resonance of a Victorian ‘ethics of belief’ debate.
The Varieties of Atheist Experience
Paul Cliteur asks: if an atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in God, which God don’t they believe in?
Two Priests Respond (I)
Rev. Dr. John R. Mabry opposes the New Atheist caricature of religion.
Two Priests Respond (II)
A force for good? Fr. Thomas Crean says it depends whether a religion is true or not.
What’s New About The New Atheism?
Victor Stenger answers the question.
Where’s The Evidence?
Michael Antony argues that the New Atheists miss the mark.
ARTICLES
Leibniz and the Science of Happiness
Roger Caldwell is happy to introduce Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716).
Mathematics, Morality & Machines
William Byers, mathematician, and Michael Schleifer, moral theorist, use their judgement to calculate the improbability of a machine thinking like a human being.
Other Creatures: A Few of Many Philosophical Beasts
Paul Matthews opens his philosophical bestiary.
CROSSWORD
Crossword
Our thirty-second big boxed babel of brilliant bibliophilic brain battering by Deiradiotes.
LETTERS
Letters
Get The Drift • Tractatus Tunes • Determined To Be Free • Love and its Disappointments • Psychology, Science & Behaviour • Feyerabend and Nightmares • The Missing Month
COLUMNS
Dear Socrates
Having returned from the turn of the Fourth Century B.C. to the turn of the Twenty-First A.D., Socrates eagerly signed on as a Philosophy Now columnist so that he could continue to carry out his divinely-inspired dialogic mission. Now, a decade later, he hears a distant summons…
Am I a Plagiarist?: ‘Teleporter on Trial’ on Trial
by Joel Marks
A Smile At Waterloo Station
Raymond Tallis on the true mystery of memory.
REVIEWS
I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter
Scott O’Reilly loops the loop with Douglas Hofstadter.
The Meaning of Life by Terry Eagleton
Ernest Dempsey finds out the meaning of life from Terry Eagleton.
New Atheist Books
Tim Madigan has a New Atheist round-up.
Se7en
Terri Murray responds to a shocking film in a shocking way, with the help of Lewis Rose.
FICTION
The Death of Pythagoras
Bruce Pennington tells us how Pythagoras became a has-bean, while another Bruce Pennington drew the portraits…
On reading Ayer at 7.00 am
by Maggie Adams