Michael Martin (philosopher)

Michael L. Martin (born 3 February 1932) is an analytic philosopher and professor emeritus at Boston University.^[1] He completed his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Martin has concerned himself largely with philosophy of religion, though the philosophies of science, law, and sport have not escaped his attention. On the former, Martin has published a number of books and articles defending atheism and various arguments against the existence of God in exhaustive detail (among them, the Transcendental argument for the non-existence of God). Martin, in his Atheism: a Philosophical Justification, cites a general absence of an atheistic response to contemporary work in philosophy of religion, and accepts the responsibility of a rigorous defense of nonbelief as, jestingly, his "cross to bear:"

The aim of this book is not to make atheism a popular belief or even to overcome its invisibility. My object is not utopian. It is merely to provide good reasons for being an atheist. … My object is to show that atheism is a rational position and that belief in God is not. I am quite aware that atheistic beliefs are not always based on reason. My claim is that they should be. — Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, 24

Martin is a pluralist naturalist, as opposed to a physicalistic naturalist. He believes in non-physical abstract objects, as to explain the Principles of Logic and objective morality.