Showing posts with label "Reality Check". Show all posts
Showing posts with label "Reality Check". Show all posts

Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?

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[Written by John W. Loftus] Below I've put together all thirty theses (so far) that most Christians agree on and why they are all improbable:

1) There must be a God who is a simple being yet made up of three inexplicable persons existing forever outside of time without a beginning, who therefore never learned anything new, never took a risk, never made a decision, never disagreed within the Godhead, and never had a prior moment to freely choose his own nature.

2) There must be a personal non-embodied omnipresent God who created the physical universe ex-nihilo in the first moment of time who will subsequently forever experience a sequence of events in time.

My Top Ten List of Christian Delusions

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There are so many delusions to mention that it's hard to choose just ten, and it's hard to rank them since they're all equally delusions. But in keeping with David Letterman's series of top ten lists here they are for your enjoyment:

Why Are There Natural Explanations For Everything?

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Perhaps you Christians can suggest reasons why a God like yours created the universe and man in such a way that there are natural explanations for why we exist, how we think, who we are, and why we behave as we do. As far as I know there are natural explanations for everything you claim a supernatural deity did. You don't think these explanations are good ones, okay, but they exist and they persuade many if not most scientists working in those fields.

Why then is it that your God created this world as he did and revealed himself as he has done that are indistinguishable from him not creating the universe or revealing himself at all? This is what I want to know. In fact, why does reasonable nonbelief exist at all?

The Omniscience Escape Clause

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We've heard this escape clause so many times before. "My ways are not your ways," an ancient superstitious canonized Biblical text says of God. "How do we know what an omniscient God might do?" an apologist chimes in. It could be how God purportedly communicated to us in ways that are indistinguishable from anything else we see in the ancient world, or the tragedy of the Haitian earthquake, or a child suffering and soon to die from Leukemia. How can we judge an omniscient God's ways we're asked over and over, with an implied "We can't." The answer is obvious. We must be able to understand enough of God's ways to know that his ways are good and that he knows what he's doing. It's that simple. If God does not act as a loving person would do then all we can reasonably conclude is that God is not acting like a loving person would do. And if God does not respond in discernible loving ways when tragic events take place then it looks entirely as if tragic events happen randomly without his ever-watchful eye.

Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?

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28) That God's punishments are good, right, and just, even though it means sinners are thrust into a surprisingly dangerous world and in death will be blindsided by an eternal punishment in hell, which is "Christianity's most damnable doctrine." In this world how do you think human beings first learned that venomous creatures like certain kinds of spiders, snakes, ants or scorpions could kill us? People/children had to die, lots of them. How do you think human beings first learned that polluted water or lead poisoning could kill us? Again, people/children had to die, lots of them. It was inevitable since God never told us what to avoid in order to stay alive. We had to learn these kinds of things firsthand. The same thing can be said for hell. People do not know their choices will send them to an eternal punishment in hell. For if we knew this, and if it was possible not to sin at all, we wouldn't sin. Do you doubt this? Then consider that if you knew with certainty that by crossing a line drawn in the sand you would get beaten to a pulp by a biker gang, you would not do it!

Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?

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27) Christianity is a faith that must dismiss the tragedy of death. It does not matter who dies, or how many, or what the circumstances are when people die. It could be the death of a mother whose baby depends upon her for milk. It could be a pandemic like cholera that decimated parts of the world in 1918, or the more than 23,000 children who die every single day from starvation. These deaths could be by suffocation, drowning, a drive-by shooting, or being burned to death. It doesn't matter. God is good. Death doesn't matter. People die all of the time. In order to justify God's goodness Christianity minimizes the value of human life. It is a pro-death faith, plain and simple. Link

Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?

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26) That although it's claimed God got the attention of Abraham, Moses, the Pharaoh, Gideon, Mary, Joseph, and Saul (who became Paul) and that he knows how to get the attention of anyone and everyone, there is no objective evidence he's trying to get the attention of the billions of people who don't believe. In fact, Christians are much more concerned than God is that non-believers are converted. Just compare the lengths to which Christians will go in order to convert non-believers, with a God who has the means to convert everyone and yet does nothing to help them do this. If you say God is helping to convert non-believers then tell us how to objectively know God is actually doing this.

Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?

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25) That although God's supposed revelation in the canonical Bible is indistinguishable from the musings of an ancient, barbaric, superstitious people, the Bible is the word of God.

Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?

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24) That although the only method we have for determining the truth in factual matters is methodological naturalism, which assumes a natural explanation for any phenomena, and although this method is the hallmark of the sciences, the phenomena of the Bible can be exempted from this method as applied through Biblical Criticism, and believed anyway.

Christianity is At Best Only Possibly True

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Yep, that's what I think and I can demonstrate this.

Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?

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23) That although there can be no moral justification for the sufferings of animals in this created world, a perfectly good God created this world anyway. We don't even see God's care for the lower animals in his supposed revealed word, which is described in Psalm 119 as his "perfect will." Think otherwise? Then read what I wrote here.

Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?

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22) That Jesus is the Son of God even though the textual evidence in the New Testament conclusively shows that the founder of the Jesus cult was a failed apocalyptic prophet who prophesied that the eschaton would take place in his generation, which would involve a total cosmic catastrophe after which God inaugurates a literal kingdom on earth with the "Son of Man" reigning from Jerusalem over the nations.

Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?

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21) That even though Christianity shows evidence that it is nothing but a cultural by-product of human invention there is a divine mind behind it anyway.

Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?

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20) That while scientific tests on petitionary prayers have produced at best negligible results and at worst completely falsified them, God answers these kinds of prayers anyway.

Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?

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19) That although there is no cogent theodicy that can explain why there is such ubiquitous and massive human and animal suffering if a perfectly good omnipotent God exists, God is perfectly good and omnipotent anyway.

Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?

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18) That although historical reconstructions of the past are are notoriously difficult because they depend on the poor evidence of history, and even though historians must assess that evidence by assuming a natural explanation for it, and even though historical evidence can never establish how to view that evidence, the Christian faith can be established historically anyway. My argument is that when it comes to miraculous claims, yesterday’s evidence no longer can hold water for me, for in order to see it as evidence, I must already believe in the framework that allows me to see it as evidence. In other words, in order to see yesterday’s evidence as evidence for me, I must already believe the Christian framework that allows me to see yesterday’s evidence as evidence for Christianity.

Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?

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17) That although there is no rational explanation for why Jesus had to die on the cross to atone for our sins, his death atoned for our sins.

Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?

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16) That while the results of science are assured when it comes to chemistry, physics, meteorology, mechanics, forensic science, medical science, rocket science, computer science, and so forth, when it comes to evolutionary science that shows all present life forms have common ancestors, or when science tells us that dead bodies do not arise from the grave because total cell necrosis is irreversible, the results of science are wrong because the Bible says otherwise.

Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?

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15) That while there is no rational explanation for how a person can be 100% man and 100% God, and although ancient pagan superstitious people believed this can take place (Acts 14:11-12; 28:6), Jesus was incarnate God in the flesh.

Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?

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14) That although there were many false virgin birth claims about famous people (like Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Plato) mythical heroes (like Mithra, Hercules) and savior gods (like Krishna, Osiris, Dionysus) in the ancient world, Jesus was really born of a virgin.