Michael Lou Martin

Michael Lou Martin (February 3, 1932 – May 27, 2015) was an American philosopher and former professor at Boston University. Martin specialized in the philosophy of religion, although he also worked on the philosophies of science, law, and social science. He served with the US Marine Corps in Korea. Martin graduated from Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Science in business administration in 1956. He earned a Master of Arts in philosophy from the University of Arizona in 1958, then earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1962. He was appointed assistant professor at University of Colorado in 1962 and in 1965 he moved to Boston University. He was appointed Professor of Philosophy Emeritus after a lifelong career at Boston University. Martin died on 27 May 2015, aged 83. Martin took part in a number of written and internet debates with Christian philosophers. In his *Atheism: A Philosophical Justification*, Martin cites a general absence of an atheistic response to contemporary work in philosophy of religion, and accepts the responsibility of a rigorous defense of non belief as his "cross to bear." Martin used the concepts of negative and positive atheism as proposed by Antony Flew rather than the terms weak or soft atheism (negative) and strong or hard atheism (positive). He is the author or editor of a number of books, including *Atheism: A Philosophical Justification* (1989), *The Case Against Christianity* (1991), *Atheism, Morality, and Meaning* (2002), *The Impossibility of God* (2003), *The Improbability of God* (2006), and *The Cambridge Companion to Atheism* (2006). He sat on the editorial board of the philosophy journal *Philo* and wrote many reviews and articles for journals and magazines including *Free Inquiry*. Martin published *The Big Domino in the Sky: And Other Atheistic Tales* in 1996. This is a collection of short stories in various styles presenting philosophical arguments. In 2011 Martin self-published a fiction novel, *Murder In Lecture Hall B*, about a murder in the classroom of a philosophy professor whose interests are Religions and Atheism. Martin also wrote 8 short plays with moral or philosophical themes that are available on his website.