March 05, 2010  The Kierkegaard Gambit-3: The Nineteenth Century
Variation  The Kierkegaard Gambit (explained in yesterday's
post) is a tactic used to deflect attention away from the
awkward request made by atheists to believers to provide
evidence for god by challenging the competence of the people
making the request. I freely acknowledge that I am neither a
theologian nor a philosopher nor have I studied the works of the
famous philosophers in depth. But the claims that atheists make
are fundamentally empirical and can be credibly made by anybody,
although they do have theological and philosophical
implications.  As commenter Eric reminded me yesterday, Richard
Dawkins points us to the intellectual paucity of the Kierkegaard
Gambit by saying "Would you need to read learned volumes on
Leprechology before disbelieving in leprechauns?" Jason
Rosenhouse and P. Z. Myers provide other responses to it. Myers
has fun pondering what those who use the Kierkegaard Gambit
would have said if Dawkins had been the child w