Hi John,
The fact that you banned me and will not answer my e-mails, proves to me
that you are nothing but a coward....You do not know jack
shit about God, as you freely admit. You are an atheist because of your
ignorance, not because of your knowledge. Your arguments against God are
laughable nonsense. When I come on your site with intimate proof of God,
you can't handle that! You can only handle "intellectual" arguments. My
"testimonies" scared the living shit out of you and you ran for the
hills! You are truly a major league coward. I will talk to you man to
man, face to face, anywhere and any time! Bart Ehrman is not afraid of a
REAL debate, and I respect him for it. You are the other hand, have no
balls whatsoever. Grow up and be a man. I do not mind your being an
atheist, I mind that you are such a pussy about it.
May 31, 2009
For Those Who Might Think I Banned DenCol Inadvisedly...
...read what this pious humble believer in Jesus just emailed me:
William James's Argument Has No Force to it.
James argued that we either have to act as if God existed or act as if he did not. If God exists we just might have to "meet that hypothesis halfway" with faith. This argument was pretty powerful to me until I realized that it could be used to convince someone into being a Muslim, or a Mormon, and it probably has. A live option is one that the perceiver thinks is a live one, so it depends on which culture we were raised in which option is a live one for us. When I realized this, his argument lost all of its force. At that point the issue before me was more like who the best athlete was of all time. On that I must suspend judgment. At that point I became an agnostic. Today I'm an agnostic atheist.
May 29, 2009
"What Evidence is There Against the Existence of God?"
[This is a redated post which degenerated into 197 comments. To see the original post with its comments click here]. Let's start over.
Dr. William Lane Craig asks this question in his debates. Let me attempt to answer it.
In the first place, what is the evidence against the existence of fairies or unicorns? If by looking and not seeing any isn’t considered evidence against their existence, then I don’t know what is required here. Let Dr. Craig first provide evidence against the existence of fairies or unicorns and I’ll provide evidence against the existence of God. Someone cannot provide evidence against the existence of an non-entity, since if it doesn't exist then it cannot leave any traces of its non-existence for us to examine. Think about this.
Now I do happen to think there is evidence against the existence of the Christian God, since that God depends upon the revelation found within the pages of the canonized writings in the Bible. There is the empirical evidence of intense undeserved suffering in the world which cannot be explained by a perfectly good omnipotent creator; there is archaeological evidence against the Biblical stories of the world-wide flood, the Exodus and the conquest stories in the Bible; there is geological evidence showing the earth has existed for 5 billion years; there is biological evidence showing one species evolved into the next one which disconfirms there was ever a time when there was no death in the Garden of Eden; there is psychological evidence that no wrathful God could exist given the fact that we believe and behave as we do based upon early childhood experiences; there is neurological evidence in that strokes and seizes disconfirm the notion of a soul; there is historical evidence against the believability of the virgin birth story, Satan, hell and the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead too. Christians will try to dispute this evidence and/or try to show it doesn't amount to much. I vehemently disagree, but it is evidence, plenty of it. And there is more I haven't mentioned. The evidence is against the God we find in the Bible, period.
Dr. William Lane Craig asks this question in his debates. Let me attempt to answer it.
In the first place, what is the evidence against the existence of fairies or unicorns? If by looking and not seeing any isn’t considered evidence against their existence, then I don’t know what is required here. Let Dr. Craig first provide evidence against the existence of fairies or unicorns and I’ll provide evidence against the existence of God. Someone cannot provide evidence against the existence of an non-entity, since if it doesn't exist then it cannot leave any traces of its non-existence for us to examine. Think about this.
Now I do happen to think there is evidence against the existence of the Christian God, since that God depends upon the revelation found within the pages of the canonized writings in the Bible. There is the empirical evidence of intense undeserved suffering in the world which cannot be explained by a perfectly good omnipotent creator; there is archaeological evidence against the Biblical stories of the world-wide flood, the Exodus and the conquest stories in the Bible; there is geological evidence showing the earth has existed for 5 billion years; there is biological evidence showing one species evolved into the next one which disconfirms there was ever a time when there was no death in the Garden of Eden; there is psychological evidence that no wrathful God could exist given the fact that we believe and behave as we do based upon early childhood experiences; there is neurological evidence in that strokes and seizes disconfirm the notion of a soul; there is historical evidence against the believability of the virgin birth story, Satan, hell and the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead too. Christians will try to dispute this evidence and/or try to show it doesn't amount to much. I vehemently disagree, but it is evidence, plenty of it. And there is more I haven't mentioned. The evidence is against the God we find in the Bible, period.
Would You Like to Reach a Potentially Huge Audience?
Blogger tells me that DC is getting over 200,000 pageviews per month. It consistently ranks among the top atheist sites on the web.
To find out how you can reach these people with your product or service, no matter what page in the archives they visit at DC, e-mail me [johnwloftus at comcast dot net]. Serious inquiries only. Send me a description of your product or service, and/or a link to your site or Blog. The cost is reasonable, just ask.
Thanks so much.
To find out how you can reach these people with your product or service, no matter what page in the archives they visit at DC, e-mail me [johnwloftus at comcast dot net]. Serious inquiries only. Send me a description of your product or service, and/or a link to your site or Blog. The cost is reasonable, just ask.
Thanks so much.
May 28, 2009
Christian Belief Through the Lens of Cognitive Science: Part 2 of 6
Why God has a human mind.
Jesus was a human, fathered by a god and born to a virgin. He died for three days and was resurrected. His death was a sacrifice, an offering or propitiation. It brings favor for humans. He lives now in a realm where other supernatural beings interact with each other and sometimes intervene in human affairs.
Gradually the mainstream of the American public is becoming aware that none of these elements is unique to Christianity. Symbologists or scholars who specialize in understanding ancient symbols, tell us that the orthodox Jesus story, as it appears in our gospels, follows a specific sacred or mythic template that existed in the Ancient Near East long before Christianity or even Judaism. In part this is due to the flow of history. Religions emerge out of ancestor religions. Though the characters and details merge and morph, elements get carried through that allow us to track the lineage. The Gilgamesh and Noah flood-hero stories are similar because the Hebrew story descended from the Sumerian story . The same can be said of the Sumerian “Descent of Inana” and the Christian resurrection story. Even religions that exist side by side borrow elements from each other -- a process called syncretism.
But another reason for similarities among religious stories is that all of them are carried by human minds. To quote cognitive scientist, Pascal Boyer, “Evolution by natural selection gave us a particular kind of mind so that only particular kinds of religious notions can be acquired. (p. 4) . . . All human beings can easily acquire a certain range of religious notions and communicate them to others” (Religion Explained, p. 3) Our supernatural notions are shaped by the built-in structures that let us acquire, sort, and access information efficiently, especially information about other people.
You may have heard the old adage: If dogs had a god, God would be a dog; if horses had a god, God would be a horse . . . . Humans are more inventive than dogs and horses, and not all human gods or magical beings have human bodies. They do, however, have human psyches—minds with quirks and limitations that are peculiar to our species. Philosopher John Locke believed that the human mind was a tabula rasa, a blank slate. We now know this not to be the case. (Leda, Principle 4). Because we need to learn so much so fast, certain assumptions are actually built in. This allows us to generalize from a few bits of data to a big fund of knowledge. It lets us know more than we have actually experienced or been told.
Let me give you an example that will illustrate the point. If I tell you that my "guarg," Annie, just made a baby by laying an egg and sitting on it, your brain says: Guargs (not just Valerie’s guarg) are non-human animals that reproduce by laying eggs. You have different categories in your brain for animal reproductive systems, and putting one guarg in the egg laying category puts them all there. To oversimplify, we have a built in filing system. Most of the labels actually start out blank, but some of them don’t. The preprinted labels appear to include: human, non-human animal, plant, man-made object, natural object.
A large percentage of our mental architecture is specialized “domain specific” structures for processing information about other humans. We homo sapiens sapiens are social information specialists; that is our specialized niche in this world. Our survival and wellbeing depend mostly on smarts rather than teeth, claws, stealth or an innate sense of direction, and most of the information we need to survive and flourish comes from other humans. Our greatest threats also come from our own species--people who seek to out-compete, exploit or kill us. For this reason, our brains are optimized to process information from and about other humans.
How does all of this affect religion?
Here is a concrete example. Our brains have a specialized facial recognition module. Studies of infants and brain injuries have taught us much of what is known about the inborn structures of our minds, and we know about the facial recognition module from both. Shortly after birth, babies are uniquely attracted to two round circles with a slash beneath them. Later on, brain injury or developmental anomalies can produce a disorder in which people cannot recognize faces, including their own(!)—even though other kinds of visual processing are perfectly intact. This is called prosopagnosia. Most of the time, though, our facial recognition module overfunctions rather than underfunctioning. In ambiguous situations—looking at clouds, rocks, lumps of clay, or ink blots--we have a tendency to see faces. Our brains automatically activate the facial recognition scanner even though it doesn’t really apply. Through history people have seen gods, demons, ghosts looking at them. Christians, whose interpretation of hazy shapes is further shaped by belief in specific supernatural persons see Jesus, the Virgin Mary, an angel, a demon, or even Satan.
This illustrates a broader point that cannot be overemphasized in understanding the psychology of religion: when faced with unknowns and ambiguities, our brains activate inborn information modules whether or not they fit. We take unfamiliar situations and even random data and perceive patterns that are inherent, not in the external world, but in our own minds. Furthermore, our pattern recognition systems err on the side of being overactive rather than underactive. This is called apophenia. It is alarming to look at a face and not see it immediately as a face; it is quite common to see a face in an array of leaves or shadows.
When we look at the world around us, we instinctively see more than faces. We also “see” kindred conscious beings. Humans (and some intelligent animals) have developed a capacity called “theory of mind.” We not only have minds, we imagine that others have them, and we think about what they might be thinking. To guess what someone else might do (or to influence what they might do) it is tremendously helpful to think about what they want and what they intend. Theory of mind is so important in navigating our way through society that we can think about it several steps removed: I can imagine what Brian is thinking about how Grace intends to respond to Janet’s preferences. Furthermore, because our brains process information about minds differently than information about bodies, we can imagine human minds inside of all kinds of bodies (think stuffed animals, pet rocks or cartoon characters) or without any body at all, (think evil spirits, poltergeists or spirit-gods).
Because our theory of mind is so rich, we tend to over-attribute events to conscious beings. Scientists call this hyperactive agency detection. What does that mean? It means that when good things happen somebody gets credit and when bad things happen we look for someone to blame. We expect important events to be done by, for and to persons, and are averse to the idea that stuff just happens. We also tend to over-assume conscious intent, that if something consequential happened, someone did it on purpose.
This set of default assumptions explains why the ancients thought that volcanoes and plagues must be the actions of gods. Even in modern times, we are not immune from this kind of attribution: Hurricane Katrina happened because God was angry about abortions and gays; the Asian tsunami happened because he was disgusted with nude Australian sunbathers. If gods are tweaking natural events, then we want to curry their favor. Around the world, people make their special requests known to gods or spirits by talking to them and giving them gifts. Athletes huddle in prayer before a game, just in case those random bounces aren’t random. After a good day at the casino, a thank-you tip may go into the offering basket. Or it may be that the offering goes into the basket beforehand.
All of this builds on the idea that gods or other supernatural beings are akin to us psychologically. They have emotions and preferences. They take action in response to things they like and dislike. They experience righteous indignation and crave retribution. They like some people better than others. They respond to our loyalty by being loyal to us. They can be placated or cajoled. They like praise, affirmation, and gratitude. They track favors and good-will in a kind of tit-for-tat reciprocity.
Abstract theologies are a fairly recent invention in the history of human religion, and they tend not to govern religious behavior. Even people who describe their god as omniscient or who insist that everything is predestined actually behave as if they need to communicate their desires and can influence future events by doing so. The god of Christian theology and the god that ordinary Christians worship are two different creatures.
If the structure of our minds predisposes us to certain kinds of religious beliefs, it also precludes others. Nowhere in the world is there a supernatural being who exists only on alternate Tuesdays, or who sees everything but forgets it all in ten minutes, or who rewards us for ignoring and disobeying him. Nowhere is there a god who knows the future, but only the next hour, or a god who starves people to death whenever he is pleased with them, or who is exactly like an ordinary person in every way. Some ideas are simply not interesting to us. They may be counter-intuitive in ways that make them forgettable instead of “sticky.” Maybe they don’t make good stories or maybe we don’t have good places to file them in our index of memories.
According to Pascal Boyer, a good religious concept must strike a balance between being interesting and expected. It must activate an existing ontological category (let’s say “river”), add some counterintuitive tag (when dark and bubbling river turns to blood and heals people), and retain the default assumptions of the category except those that are otherwise specified (river is wet, flows, is longer than it is wide, has a bottom, etc.) We start with a familiar class of being or object then tweak it to pique our interest but leave intact our other basic assumptions about that kind of object or being. If the supernatural thing we are discussing is a conscious being, it also needs to have a basically human mind. Only under these conditions will it stick and get passed from one person to another. (Religion Explained)
Christian beliefs are highly successful at getting retained and transmitted. They fit our information processing structures and yet are counterintuitive in intriguing ways. They capitalize on our tendency to attribute events to human-like causal agents who have minds much like our own. They allow us to take machinery that is designed for processing social information and apply it to the problems of understanding inanimate objects and natural phenomena. They leverage our tendency to see patterns in ambiguous or random events. Consequently they are intuitive and broadly applicable and are easily remembered.
But if our brains allow for a wide range of religious concepts, how come so many people believe exactly the same thing? And what makes them so sure that those ideas are not only interesting—they are true? As we shall see in future articles Christian beliefs don’t just fit our mental categories. They also leverage powerful emotions and social relationships so as to become the core reality for those who believe.
Essentials: Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained .
Andy Thomson, Why We Believe in Gods; American Atheists, 2009.
If you don’t want to miss any of this series, subscribe to Valerie Tarico at this blog or send email to valerietarico at hotmail.com and request to be added to her mailing list for weekly articles.
Jesus was a human, fathered by a god and born to a virgin. He died for three days and was resurrected. His death was a sacrifice, an offering or propitiation. It brings favor for humans. He lives now in a realm where other supernatural beings interact with each other and sometimes intervene in human affairs.
Gradually the mainstream of the American public is becoming aware that none of these elements is unique to Christianity. Symbologists or scholars who specialize in understanding ancient symbols, tell us that the orthodox Jesus story, as it appears in our gospels, follows a specific sacred or mythic template that existed in the Ancient Near East long before Christianity or even Judaism. In part this is due to the flow of history. Religions emerge out of ancestor religions. Though the characters and details merge and morph, elements get carried through that allow us to track the lineage. The Gilgamesh and Noah flood-hero stories are similar because the Hebrew story descended from the Sumerian story . The same can be said of the Sumerian “Descent of Inana” and the Christian resurrection story. Even religions that exist side by side borrow elements from each other -- a process called syncretism.
But another reason for similarities among religious stories is that all of them are carried by human minds. To quote cognitive scientist, Pascal Boyer, “Evolution by natural selection gave us a particular kind of mind so that only particular kinds of religious notions can be acquired. (p. 4) . . . All human beings can easily acquire a certain range of religious notions and communicate them to others” (Religion Explained, p. 3) Our supernatural notions are shaped by the built-in structures that let us acquire, sort, and access information efficiently, especially information about other people.
You may have heard the old adage: If dogs had a god, God would be a dog; if horses had a god, God would be a horse . . . . Humans are more inventive than dogs and horses, and not all human gods or magical beings have human bodies. They do, however, have human psyches—minds with quirks and limitations that are peculiar to our species. Philosopher John Locke believed that the human mind was a tabula rasa, a blank slate. We now know this not to be the case. (Leda, Principle 4). Because we need to learn so much so fast, certain assumptions are actually built in. This allows us to generalize from a few bits of data to a big fund of knowledge. It lets us know more than we have actually experienced or been told.
Let me give you an example that will illustrate the point. If I tell you that my "guarg," Annie, just made a baby by laying an egg and sitting on it, your brain says: Guargs (not just Valerie’s guarg) are non-human animals that reproduce by laying eggs. You have different categories in your brain for animal reproductive systems, and putting one guarg in the egg laying category puts them all there. To oversimplify, we have a built in filing system. Most of the labels actually start out blank, but some of them don’t. The preprinted labels appear to include: human, non-human animal, plant, man-made object, natural object.
A large percentage of our mental architecture is specialized “domain specific” structures for processing information about other humans. We homo sapiens sapiens are social information specialists; that is our specialized niche in this world. Our survival and wellbeing depend mostly on smarts rather than teeth, claws, stealth or an innate sense of direction, and most of the information we need to survive and flourish comes from other humans. Our greatest threats also come from our own species--people who seek to out-compete, exploit or kill us. For this reason, our brains are optimized to process information from and about other humans.
How does all of this affect religion?
Here is a concrete example. Our brains have a specialized facial recognition module. Studies of infants and brain injuries have taught us much of what is known about the inborn structures of our minds, and we know about the facial recognition module from both. Shortly after birth, babies are uniquely attracted to two round circles with a slash beneath them. Later on, brain injury or developmental anomalies can produce a disorder in which people cannot recognize faces, including their own(!)—even though other kinds of visual processing are perfectly intact. This is called prosopagnosia. Most of the time, though, our facial recognition module overfunctions rather than underfunctioning. In ambiguous situations—looking at clouds, rocks, lumps of clay, or ink blots--we have a tendency to see faces. Our brains automatically activate the facial recognition scanner even though it doesn’t really apply. Through history people have seen gods, demons, ghosts looking at them. Christians, whose interpretation of hazy shapes is further shaped by belief in specific supernatural persons see Jesus, the Virgin Mary, an angel, a demon, or even Satan.
This illustrates a broader point that cannot be overemphasized in understanding the psychology of religion: when faced with unknowns and ambiguities, our brains activate inborn information modules whether or not they fit. We take unfamiliar situations and even random data and perceive patterns that are inherent, not in the external world, but in our own minds. Furthermore, our pattern recognition systems err on the side of being overactive rather than underactive. This is called apophenia. It is alarming to look at a face and not see it immediately as a face; it is quite common to see a face in an array of leaves or shadows.
When we look at the world around us, we instinctively see more than faces. We also “see” kindred conscious beings. Humans (and some intelligent animals) have developed a capacity called “theory of mind.” We not only have minds, we imagine that others have them, and we think about what they might be thinking. To guess what someone else might do (or to influence what they might do) it is tremendously helpful to think about what they want and what they intend. Theory of mind is so important in navigating our way through society that we can think about it several steps removed: I can imagine what Brian is thinking about how Grace intends to respond to Janet’s preferences. Furthermore, because our brains process information about minds differently than information about bodies, we can imagine human minds inside of all kinds of bodies (think stuffed animals, pet rocks or cartoon characters) or without any body at all, (think evil spirits, poltergeists or spirit-gods).
Because our theory of mind is so rich, we tend to over-attribute events to conscious beings. Scientists call this hyperactive agency detection. What does that mean? It means that when good things happen somebody gets credit and when bad things happen we look for someone to blame. We expect important events to be done by, for and to persons, and are averse to the idea that stuff just happens. We also tend to over-assume conscious intent, that if something consequential happened, someone did it on purpose.
This set of default assumptions explains why the ancients thought that volcanoes and plagues must be the actions of gods. Even in modern times, we are not immune from this kind of attribution: Hurricane Katrina happened because God was angry about abortions and gays; the Asian tsunami happened because he was disgusted with nude Australian sunbathers. If gods are tweaking natural events, then we want to curry their favor. Around the world, people make their special requests known to gods or spirits by talking to them and giving them gifts. Athletes huddle in prayer before a game, just in case those random bounces aren’t random. After a good day at the casino, a thank-you tip may go into the offering basket. Or it may be that the offering goes into the basket beforehand.
All of this builds on the idea that gods or other supernatural beings are akin to us psychologically. They have emotions and preferences. They take action in response to things they like and dislike. They experience righteous indignation and crave retribution. They like some people better than others. They respond to our loyalty by being loyal to us. They can be placated or cajoled. They like praise, affirmation, and gratitude. They track favors and good-will in a kind of tit-for-tat reciprocity.
Abstract theologies are a fairly recent invention in the history of human religion, and they tend not to govern religious behavior. Even people who describe their god as omniscient or who insist that everything is predestined actually behave as if they need to communicate their desires and can influence future events by doing so. The god of Christian theology and the god that ordinary Christians worship are two different creatures.
If the structure of our minds predisposes us to certain kinds of religious beliefs, it also precludes others. Nowhere in the world is there a supernatural being who exists only on alternate Tuesdays, or who sees everything but forgets it all in ten minutes, or who rewards us for ignoring and disobeying him. Nowhere is there a god who knows the future, but only the next hour, or a god who starves people to death whenever he is pleased with them, or who is exactly like an ordinary person in every way. Some ideas are simply not interesting to us. They may be counter-intuitive in ways that make them forgettable instead of “sticky.” Maybe they don’t make good stories or maybe we don’t have good places to file them in our index of memories.
According to Pascal Boyer, a good religious concept must strike a balance between being interesting and expected. It must activate an existing ontological category (let’s say “river”), add some counterintuitive tag (when dark and bubbling river turns to blood and heals people), and retain the default assumptions of the category except those that are otherwise specified (river is wet, flows, is longer than it is wide, has a bottom, etc.) We start with a familiar class of being or object then tweak it to pique our interest but leave intact our other basic assumptions about that kind of object or being. If the supernatural thing we are discussing is a conscious being, it also needs to have a basically human mind. Only under these conditions will it stick and get passed from one person to another. (Religion Explained)
Christian beliefs are highly successful at getting retained and transmitted. They fit our information processing structures and yet are counterintuitive in intriguing ways. They capitalize on our tendency to attribute events to human-like causal agents who have minds much like our own. They allow us to take machinery that is designed for processing social information and apply it to the problems of understanding inanimate objects and natural phenomena. They leverage our tendency to see patterns in ambiguous or random events. Consequently they are intuitive and broadly applicable and are easily remembered.
But if our brains allow for a wide range of religious concepts, how come so many people believe exactly the same thing? And what makes them so sure that those ideas are not only interesting—they are true? As we shall see in future articles Christian beliefs don’t just fit our mental categories. They also leverage powerful emotions and social relationships so as to become the core reality for those who believe.
Essentials: Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained .
Andy Thomson, Why We Believe in Gods; American Atheists, 2009.
If you don’t want to miss any of this series, subscribe to Valerie Tarico at this blog or send email to valerietarico at hotmail.com and request to be added to her mailing list for weekly articles.
Christian Belief Through the Lens of Cognitive Science: Part 1 of 6
Why Cognitive Psychology is Necessary for Understanding Christianity
My father died in a climbing accident when he was 59 and I was in my mid twenties. In one of our last deep conversations before his 300 meter misstep, he expressed his abiding hope that I would “get right with God.” Dad was the son of Italian immigrants, all Catholics, who got converted by door-to-door Pentecostals some years after their arrival in Chicago. His mother lived out her life in the Assemblies of God denomination that had recruited them all, while Dad settled into a closely allied form of Evangelical fundamentalism without the speaking-in-tongues bit. As far as I know, he never questioned his belief that the Bible was the literally perfect word of God and that Jesus died for his sins. And yet of his six children three of us, by Evangelical standards, are now slated for eternal torture. We are on the wrong side of a battle being waged on a spiritual plane, a battle in which those who are not on the side of God are agents of evil. If Dad were alive, our lack of belief would grieve him.
Religious belief is one of the most powerful forces in our world. Believers think that it has the power to save us all. Increasingly, doubters fear that the opposite may be true: a tribal mindset, unaccountable to ordinary standards of reason and evidence but armed with state of the art weapons may hasten our extinction. In the United States, religious affiliation is the best predictor of political party alliance. Almost half of Americans insist that humans were created in their present form sometime within the last 7000 years because the Bible says so. In the Middle East, Sunnis and Shia split over theological differences that seem trivial to the rest of us but that in their minds create tribal boundaries worthy of lethal conflict.
Why is religious belief so wide-spread and powerful? The traditional Christian answer is: because it’s true, and people who haven’t hardened their hearts against God recognize this when God’s plan of salvation is presented to them.
But the recent explosion of knowledge in cognitive science offers a new way to look at this question, not from a moral or theological standpoint but from a practical standpoint. What is the mental machinery that lets us form beliefs? What does evidence and reason have to do with it? How is it that six devoted Christian kids can turn into three devoted Christian adults and three agnostics?
The more we learn about the hardware and operating systems of the human brain--the more we understand about human information processing--the more we glean bits of insight into the religious mind.
This article is the first in a series of six. Each takes a look some part of our mental machinery, how it relates to our tendency toward religious belief. The articles will focus on the following questions:
· How does the structure of human information processing pre-dispose us to religious thinking? Given how our minds work, what kinds of religious beliefs are possible and what kinds are we immune to?
· How do we know what we know? What gives us a feeling of certainty? What is the relation between reason, evidence, and our sense of knowing?
· How do conversion experiences work? What makes religious conversion transformative?
· How does our social group influence or even control our religious beliefs? How do beliefs get transmitted from one person to another?
· Why do missionaries target children? How does religious identity develop in childhood? How is belief in childhood different from belief acquired as an adult?
· What makes beliefs resistant to change? What causes people to lose belief? When are people open to reexamining religious assumptions?
Before looking at these questions, it is helpful to understand why belief is so important in Christianity. For traditional Christians, belief is the heart of the Christian religion. It is the toggle that sends people to heaven or hell. In the final analysis, believing that Jesus Christ died as a “propitiation” for your sins is the thing that matters to God. No matter how kind and loving your life may be, no matter that you strive to love your neighbor as yourself, no matter what great things you may accomplish in the service of humanity or the world at large – if you believe wrong you are doomed.
This focus on belief is not characteristic of all religions. In the Ancient Near East, the birthplace of Christianity, pagan religions placed little emphasis on belief. The existence of a supernatural world was broadly assumed because there seemed to be little other way to explain the good and bad things that happen to people or natural events like storms, earthquakes, illness, birth and death. But the point of religion wasn’t belief; it was to take care of the gods so that they would take care of you and your community. The word “cult” (Latin cultus, literally care) is related to the word “cultivation.” We talk now about cultivating ground so that it will bear fruit. Nonprofits talk about “cultivating donors.” That was what the gods cared about, and so it was the heart of religious practice.
From the beginning, Christianity was different. Jesus worshipers cared tremendously about right belief, also known as orthodoxy. Bart Ehrman’s book, Lost Christianities, offers a fascinating window into the struggles that went on during the first and second centuries as groups with different beliefs about Jesus criticized and competed with each other, and one of them won out. Some of groups (e.g. Ebionites) believed that Jesus was a fully human Jewish messiah and that Jesus worshipers must follow the law. Others (e.g. Marcionites) believed that Jesus was a being from the spirit world who only took on human likeness. Still others (Gnostics) believed that the human Jesus was inhabited by a divine “Eon” during the years of his ministry—revealing to his followers secret knowledge that would let them escape this corrupt mortal plane. Others, now known as proto-orthodox or Roman, had ideas about Jesus that lead to the views of Christians today. (“Roman Catholic” means Roman universal.) What all of these groups agreed on was that it was tremendously important to believe the right thing about who Jesus was and what Christianity should be.
This emphasis on right belief was and is unique to monotheism. It existed in a rudimentary form in Judaism, but even today Judaism is more concerned with living right than believing right. Christianity’s exclusive truth claims and emphasis on right belief helped it to out-compete other religions in the Roman Empire. Polytheists often are quite agreeable to adding another god to their pantheon. Christians could persuade pagans to add the Jesus-god and then could wean them off of the others. Today, in India, for example, Evangelical missionaries are much more likely to target Hindus than Sikhs or Muslims who would have to immediately abandon their primary religion in order to embrace the idea of Jesus as a god.
Eastern religions don’t share Christianity’s concern with belief. The emphasis is more on practice or “praxis” –spiritual living, self-renunciation, insight or enlightenment-- and among ordinary people, a sort of cult or caretaking of the gods like that practiced by ancient pagans. Right belief isn’t what lets you move up through cycles of reincarnation or attain nirvana. Nor is it what gets you the favor of gods.
Just as biological organisms have many different adaptive or reproductive strategies, so religions compete for human mind-share in different ways. An emphasis on propagating belief (ie. evangelism) and purity of belief (ie. orthodoxy) is only one of those.
In the late 19th and early 20th Century, a movement called modernism emerged within Christianity. Modernist theologians began reexamining traditional orthodox beliefs in light of what we now know about linguistics, archaeology, psychiatry, biology, and human history. In this light, traditional Christian certainties looked less certain, and many modernist Christians are more like members of Eastern Religions in that their primary concern is with spiritual practice rather than belief. But a backlash emerged in response to modernism. People who proudly called themselves “fundamentalists” insisted that no-one was a real Christian who didn’t hold the traditional beliefs. Evangelicals inherited the fundamentalist torch, and even some of the more inquiring denominations have reverted back toward emphasis on right belief.
This is the mindset that dominates Christianity in the public square. It is the mindset that sends Christian missionaries out into the world seeking converts in impoverished corners of the planet. It is the mindset that prints Bibles to be distributed in Iraq and has organized to establish control of the American military hierarchy, seeking to create an “army of Christian soldiers.” To understand American Christianity specifically or Western religion more broadly, it is necessary to understand the psychology of belief.
Essential Reading: Bart Ehrman, Lost Christianities.
If you don't want to miss any of this series, subscribe to Valerie Tarico at this blog or send email to valerietarico at hotmail.com and request to be added to the mailing list for weekly articles.
My father died in a climbing accident when he was 59 and I was in my mid twenties. In one of our last deep conversations before his 300 meter misstep, he expressed his abiding hope that I would “get right with God.” Dad was the son of Italian immigrants, all Catholics, who got converted by door-to-door Pentecostals some years after their arrival in Chicago. His mother lived out her life in the Assemblies of God denomination that had recruited them all, while Dad settled into a closely allied form of Evangelical fundamentalism without the speaking-in-tongues bit. As far as I know, he never questioned his belief that the Bible was the literally perfect word of God and that Jesus died for his sins. And yet of his six children three of us, by Evangelical standards, are now slated for eternal torture. We are on the wrong side of a battle being waged on a spiritual plane, a battle in which those who are not on the side of God are agents of evil. If Dad were alive, our lack of belief would grieve him.
Religious belief is one of the most powerful forces in our world. Believers think that it has the power to save us all. Increasingly, doubters fear that the opposite may be true: a tribal mindset, unaccountable to ordinary standards of reason and evidence but armed with state of the art weapons may hasten our extinction. In the United States, religious affiliation is the best predictor of political party alliance. Almost half of Americans insist that humans were created in their present form sometime within the last 7000 years because the Bible says so. In the Middle East, Sunnis and Shia split over theological differences that seem trivial to the rest of us but that in their minds create tribal boundaries worthy of lethal conflict.
Why is religious belief so wide-spread and powerful? The traditional Christian answer is: because it’s true, and people who haven’t hardened their hearts against God recognize this when God’s plan of salvation is presented to them.
But the recent explosion of knowledge in cognitive science offers a new way to look at this question, not from a moral or theological standpoint but from a practical standpoint. What is the mental machinery that lets us form beliefs? What does evidence and reason have to do with it? How is it that six devoted Christian kids can turn into three devoted Christian adults and three agnostics?
The more we learn about the hardware and operating systems of the human brain--the more we understand about human information processing--the more we glean bits of insight into the religious mind.
This article is the first in a series of six. Each takes a look some part of our mental machinery, how it relates to our tendency toward religious belief. The articles will focus on the following questions:
· How does the structure of human information processing pre-dispose us to religious thinking? Given how our minds work, what kinds of religious beliefs are possible and what kinds are we immune to?
· How do we know what we know? What gives us a feeling of certainty? What is the relation between reason, evidence, and our sense of knowing?
· How do conversion experiences work? What makes religious conversion transformative?
· How does our social group influence or even control our religious beliefs? How do beliefs get transmitted from one person to another?
· Why do missionaries target children? How does religious identity develop in childhood? How is belief in childhood different from belief acquired as an adult?
· What makes beliefs resistant to change? What causes people to lose belief? When are people open to reexamining religious assumptions?
Before looking at these questions, it is helpful to understand why belief is so important in Christianity. For traditional Christians, belief is the heart of the Christian religion. It is the toggle that sends people to heaven or hell. In the final analysis, believing that Jesus Christ died as a “propitiation” for your sins is the thing that matters to God. No matter how kind and loving your life may be, no matter that you strive to love your neighbor as yourself, no matter what great things you may accomplish in the service of humanity or the world at large – if you believe wrong you are doomed.
This focus on belief is not characteristic of all religions. In the Ancient Near East, the birthplace of Christianity, pagan religions placed little emphasis on belief. The existence of a supernatural world was broadly assumed because there seemed to be little other way to explain the good and bad things that happen to people or natural events like storms, earthquakes, illness, birth and death. But the point of religion wasn’t belief; it was to take care of the gods so that they would take care of you and your community. The word “cult” (Latin cultus, literally care) is related to the word “cultivation.” We talk now about cultivating ground so that it will bear fruit. Nonprofits talk about “cultivating donors.” That was what the gods cared about, and so it was the heart of religious practice.
From the beginning, Christianity was different. Jesus worshipers cared tremendously about right belief, also known as orthodoxy. Bart Ehrman’s book, Lost Christianities, offers a fascinating window into the struggles that went on during the first and second centuries as groups with different beliefs about Jesus criticized and competed with each other, and one of them won out. Some of groups (e.g. Ebionites) believed that Jesus was a fully human Jewish messiah and that Jesus worshipers must follow the law. Others (e.g. Marcionites) believed that Jesus was a being from the spirit world who only took on human likeness. Still others (Gnostics) believed that the human Jesus was inhabited by a divine “Eon” during the years of his ministry—revealing to his followers secret knowledge that would let them escape this corrupt mortal plane. Others, now known as proto-orthodox or Roman, had ideas about Jesus that lead to the views of Christians today. (“Roman Catholic” means Roman universal.) What all of these groups agreed on was that it was tremendously important to believe the right thing about who Jesus was and what Christianity should be.
This emphasis on right belief was and is unique to monotheism. It existed in a rudimentary form in Judaism, but even today Judaism is more concerned with living right than believing right. Christianity’s exclusive truth claims and emphasis on right belief helped it to out-compete other religions in the Roman Empire. Polytheists often are quite agreeable to adding another god to their pantheon. Christians could persuade pagans to add the Jesus-god and then could wean them off of the others. Today, in India, for example, Evangelical missionaries are much more likely to target Hindus than Sikhs or Muslims who would have to immediately abandon their primary religion in order to embrace the idea of Jesus as a god.
Eastern religions don’t share Christianity’s concern with belief. The emphasis is more on practice or “praxis” –spiritual living, self-renunciation, insight or enlightenment-- and among ordinary people, a sort of cult or caretaking of the gods like that practiced by ancient pagans. Right belief isn’t what lets you move up through cycles of reincarnation or attain nirvana. Nor is it what gets you the favor of gods.
Just as biological organisms have many different adaptive or reproductive strategies, so religions compete for human mind-share in different ways. An emphasis on propagating belief (ie. evangelism) and purity of belief (ie. orthodoxy) is only one of those.
In the late 19th and early 20th Century, a movement called modernism emerged within Christianity. Modernist theologians began reexamining traditional orthodox beliefs in light of what we now know about linguistics, archaeology, psychiatry, biology, and human history. In this light, traditional Christian certainties looked less certain, and many modernist Christians are more like members of Eastern Religions in that their primary concern is with spiritual practice rather than belief. But a backlash emerged in response to modernism. People who proudly called themselves “fundamentalists” insisted that no-one was a real Christian who didn’t hold the traditional beliefs. Evangelicals inherited the fundamentalist torch, and even some of the more inquiring denominations have reverted back toward emphasis on right belief.
This is the mindset that dominates Christianity in the public square. It is the mindset that sends Christian missionaries out into the world seeking converts in impoverished corners of the planet. It is the mindset that prints Bibles to be distributed in Iraq and has organized to establish control of the American military hierarchy, seeking to create an “army of Christian soldiers.” To understand American Christianity specifically or Western religion more broadly, it is necessary to understand the psychology of belief.
Essential Reading: Bart Ehrman, Lost Christianities.
If you don't want to miss any of this series, subscribe to Valerie Tarico at this blog or send email to valerietarico at hotmail.com and request to be added to the mailing list for weekly articles.
May 27, 2009
What is the Scope and Definition of Evil?
Over in the "In a world without God...why does evil exist?" article, Brad Haggard said Lee, make that post into an article so we can discuss it without having to scroll down 80 comments", so I did. Enjoy.
What is evil?
What can be evil?
Is something produced as evil?
Does it become evil?
When does something become evil?
What qualifies as evil?
Can time and/or evironment change a thing to or from something other than evil?
Is needless or pointless suffering evil?
What is the Scope and Definition of Evil?
Is that scope and definition objective?
Does the scope and definition depend on a context?
Who decides?
If God, then how does that knowledge get to us if he's going to remain silent?
If a thing has scope and definition then it can probably be measured, quantified and or evaluated, assessed and compared.
Can we do that with evil?
is it evil to stick a needle in a baby?
Is it evil to kill someone?
To kill a spider?
Is it evil to kill for sport?
Why or why not?
Why does something qualify as evil?
Can evil be useful? If its useful and leads to greater good, is it really evil?
Can good come from an evil proposition?
Can any of the components of something good be evil?
Is an act evil if the intent is not evil?
If a bear kills a human, is it evil?
Or is it just Chance?
It seems to me, evil is in the eye of the beholder.
now I'm standing by for the shower of mischaracterizations, strawmen and equivocation.
What is evil?
What can be evil?
Is something produced as evil?
Does it become evil?
When does something become evil?
What qualifies as evil?
Can time and/or evironment change a thing to or from something other than evil?
Is needless or pointless suffering evil?
What is the Scope and Definition of Evil?
Is that scope and definition objective?
Does the scope and definition depend on a context?
Who decides?
If God, then how does that knowledge get to us if he's going to remain silent?
If a thing has scope and definition then it can probably be measured, quantified and or evaluated, assessed and compared.
Can we do that with evil?
is it evil to stick a needle in a baby?
Is it evil to kill someone?
To kill a spider?
Is it evil to kill for sport?
Why or why not?
Why does something qualify as evil?
Can evil be useful? If its useful and leads to greater good, is it really evil?
Can good come from an evil proposition?
Can any of the components of something good be evil?
Is an act evil if the intent is not evil?
If a bear kills a human, is it evil?
Or is it just Chance?
It seems to me, evil is in the eye of the beholder.
now I'm standing by for the shower of mischaracterizations, strawmen and equivocation.
May 26, 2009
"In a world without God...why does evil exist?"
Christian professor Dr. Dan Lambert is using my book for a class introducing the students to atheism at John Brown University, which is an evangelical college. I've mentioned this before. His students wanted to know my answer to the above question.
Dan's full question is this:
However, just because there isn't any ultimate evil doesn't mean there isn't suffering for which we think is unnecessary. On this view evil is suffering, intense suffering, suffering that turns our stomachs. If your students have a hard time contemplating this then don't use the word "evil" at all. Just use the word "suffering." I don't like to suffer. I don't want my loved ones to suffer, nor do I want their friends to suffer. As a human being who is part of the natural world who can reflect on this world I can have a say about the sufferings of myself and others. Since I don't like suffering I want to help alleviate the sufferings of others. I think that by doing so it increases the amount of pleasure for me in this world, since a world that doesn't have as much suffering is a world where I and the ones I love can have more pleasure. And pleasure, holistic Aristotelian pleasure, is it's own reward needing no additional justification.
Dan's full question is this:
Many of them want to know how you answer the problem from an atheist perspective. So, in a world without God, created and sustained by purely natural laws and evolving as scientists explain it, why does evil exist?The short answer is that objective or ultimate evil does not exist. Everything that happens is natural. Nature destroys people on whom the existence of millions of lives depend as well as it destroys people who want relief from their painful existence. Nature is indiscriminate in its dealings with us without any meaning or purpose. This best fits what we experience, I think.
However, just because there isn't any ultimate evil doesn't mean there isn't suffering for which we think is unnecessary. On this view evil is suffering, intense suffering, suffering that turns our stomachs. If your students have a hard time contemplating this then don't use the word "evil" at all. Just use the word "suffering." I don't like to suffer. I don't want my loved ones to suffer, nor do I want their friends to suffer. As a human being who is part of the natural world who can reflect on this world I can have a say about the sufferings of myself and others. Since I don't like suffering I want to help alleviate the sufferings of others. I think that by doing so it increases the amount of pleasure for me in this world, since a world that doesn't have as much suffering is a world where I and the ones I love can have more pleasure. And pleasure, holistic Aristotelian pleasure, is it's own reward needing no additional justification.
293 People Have Signed the Facebook Petition So Far
I want to thank Larry M from VCU for setting this petition up. Petitioners would like to see a debate between my former professor William Lane Craig and me. They include both Christians and nonbelievers. The only question you need to ask yourself is whether this would be entertaining and educational. If so, then sign up. Here is a list of people who have done so, and they include some well known names like Eddie Tabash, Richard Carrier, Victor Reppert, Reginald Finley, Ed Babinski, Jason Long and so on.
May 25, 2009
William Lane Craig Responds to Robert Cavin's Argument Found in The Empty Tomb
Spencer Lo called my attention to Dr. Craig's recent Q & A in answer to Cavin. He also sent me his response to it, since he's been pushing it. See what you think:
You might want to begin by reading Dr. Craig's answer.
Here is Spencer Lo's response:
You might want to begin by reading Dr. Craig's answer.
Here is Spencer Lo's response:
William Lane Craig thinks my argument "needn’t be of concern to most Christians, who don’t base their belief in Jesus’ resurrection on historical evidence." Construed narrowly, this is (somewhat) true: no Christian attempts to establish the resurrection -- "in the full Jewish sense of that term" -- in the same way that historians attempt to establish some widely attested historical event, via documents and testimony. But construed more broadly, the claim is false, as Craig tacitly concedes. What Craig attempts to demonstrate in his debates, on historical grounds, is what he identifies as the Resurrection Hypothesis, the statement that “God raised Jesus from the dead.” Once this more modest claim is established, one then infers that Jesus rose from the dead "in the full, Jewish sense of that term." Hence, Christians who base their belief in Jesus' resurrection -- "in the full Jewish sense of that term" -- on what Craig identifies as the Resurrection Hypothesis, the more modest statement that "God raised Jesus from the dead," DO indirectly base their belief on historical evidence.
Craig is also wrong when he says the Resurrection Hypothesis is all he means by "resurrection" -- apparently he forgot what he has written in one of his books:
"Resurrection is not resuscitation. The mere restoration of life to a corpse is not a resurrection. A person who has resuscitated returns only to this early life and will die again."
In contrast,
"Jesus rose to eternal life in a radically transformed body that can be described as immortal, glorious, powerful, and supernatural. In this new mode of existence he was not bound by the physical limitations of this existence, but possessed superhuman powers." (Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection, p 15)
What Craig identifies as the Resurrection Hypothesis, therefore, is more aptly named the Restoration Hypothesis, and his argument for the resurrection -- "in the full Jewish sense of that term" -- can be construed as the following:
(i). The Restoration Hypothesis is true.
(ii). If the Restoration Hypothesis is true, then the Resurrection Hypothesis can be established.
(iii). Therefore, the Resurrection Hypothesis can be established.
Craig therefore objects to premise (2) of my argument with the above one -- he thinks it CAN be established, albeit indirectly, that Jesus transformed into a supernatural body. Before responding, I should say a little about Craig's second charge that my argument "misconstrue[s] the case for Jesus’ resurrection...as a deductive argument rather than as an inference to the best explanation." This is false. The term "established" in this context does not mean "shown to be true with logical certainty"; it is more charitably understood to mean "inductive establishment." I think Craig realizes that if the Resurrection Hypothesis cannot be properly inferred, via inference to the best explanation, then the resurrection cannot be established. Hence Craig's second complaint is wide off the mark.
Regarding the above argument, I addressed it in the other thread, and is therefore a pity that Don neglected to mention my responses in his question. My contention is with (i), the claim that Jesus rose from the dead supernaturally, or via supernatural intervention. Assuming Jesus really did rise from the dead, there are two distinct reasons why we would be unjustified in concluding that Jesus probably rose from the dead supernaturally, or via supernatural intervention.
First, the inference - which is unsupported by any independent evidence - violates one of the methodological principles of science we all accept. Whenever we encounter a seemingly unexplainable event, or even an event that contradicts our cherished scientific views, it is not proper to automatically conclude that the event is therefore a supernatural one (we do not conclude this even after years and years of being confounded by the mystery). Hence, the more appropriate response is to seriously consider the possibility that our cherished views might be fundamentally wrong. Have we done this in the case of Jesus? No, we have not.
Second, suppose we grant for the sake of argument that, for normal, everyday human beings, rising from the dead naturally is impossible. Does it then follow that beings who don't fit this description probably can't rise from the dead naturally? For instance, does this conclusion apply to non-humans, superhumans, or space-aliens? Of course not. The fact that normal human beings can't rise from the dead naturally does not mean those beings can't either. Jesus does not fit the description of "normal, everyday human being" -- in fact, we do not know if he was even human, and therefore we cannot conclude he rose from the dead supernaturally just because "normal, everyday human beings" (let's suppose) can't rise naturally. To conclude otherwise on the basis of the data we have is to commit the hasty generalization fallacy.
I'll mention one more problem with (i). Why suppose Jesus really died? It is entirely possible -- and prima facie plausible -- that Jesus was close to death but hadn't actually died, and spent those three days in the tomb regenerating. This possibility is perfectly consistent with the *alleged* observed events. One cannot rule it out as probably false for the same two reasons given above: 1. concluding that Jesus must have died violates a very stable methodological principle we all accept, and 2. we need to take into consideration the fact that Jesus was not a "normal, everyday human being", but a supernormal (possibly natural) being who might not have even been human.
Craig writes: "This conclusion is especially manifest if Jesus predicted his death and resurrection by Israel’s God...Third, this same point applies with respect to justifying Jesus’ claims to divinity...given the religio-historical context of Jesus’ own radical self-understanding and blasphemous personal claims, not to mention his activity as a miracle-worker, exorcist, and herald of the in-breaking of God’s Kingdom, God’s raising Jesus from the dead is most plausibly understood as God’s ratification of those claims."
Craig is referring to the Restoration Hypothesis in the first line, and I would simply ask: how does he know Jesus predicted his restoration "by Israel's God?" To predict his own restoration is one thing, but to predict his restoration via divine intervention is something quite different. To conclude that one naturally follows the other is like saying, "I predict Steve will drive me to Canada. I was driven to Canada. Therefore, my prediction that Steve drove me to Canada came true." Hence, Craig needs to provide evidence that if Jesus predicted his restoration via Israel's God, then his prediction, with respect to how he was restored, was accurate. With respect to Jesus' claims to divinity, Craig faces similar obstacles: how does he know Jesus was a "miracle-worker" (i.e. performing supernatural, as opposed to natural, events)? Does he not argue this on the basis of the Restoration Hypothesis? That is, since he attempts to establish Jesus' other "miracle" activities on the basis of the Restoration Hypothesis, he cannot use those activities as a basis for justifying Jesus' divinity without first showing that they occurred, and he cannot do this without first establishing the Restoration Hypothesis. And, as I said, even if he could show Jesus' other activities (e.g. healing the sick, etc) without showing the Restoration Hypothesis, how does he know they were supernatural (and not natural) events? I doubt he can show this, for the same two reasons I mentioned before.
May 24, 2009
Is God Really Good? Is Sinful Man Smarter Than God?
For a general discussion, I would like to pose the following question:
Is it morally and ethically right for sinful man to wipe an entire portion of God’s creation off the face of the earth and feel great about it?
Let’s see how you Christians answer this one! (Watch yourself! You just might back into a bee's nest here.)
Is it morally and ethically right for sinful man to wipe an entire portion of God’s creation off the face of the earth and feel great about it?
Let’s see how you Christians answer this one! (Watch yourself! You just might back into a bee's nest here.)
A Good List of Blogs I Frequent
Reasonably Aaron and I frequent the same sites. He listed his favorites and stated how frequently they're updated. While there are others I could put on it I like his list.
May 23, 2009
One Final Thought on Whether Jesus Did or Did Not Lie
And now up dated with a third lie of Jesus!
Forget the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection for now!
Lets go straight to the facts as stated by Jesus himself!
To set the record straight as to whether or not Jesus (or the Gospels writers) used lies to get people to join Christianity: Are or are not the following two statements made by Jesus true and correct promises and claims (as simply stated with no apologetic excuses please)?
1. John 14: 13 -14:
“Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.”
2. Matt. 16: 28:
“Most certainly I tell you, there are some standing here who will in no way taste of death, until they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom."
3. Mark 13:2:
"Jesus said to him, "Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone on another, which will not be thrown down." (Just what is the Wailing Wall then?! Duh!)
Finally, based on what Jesus promised people if they converted and what he claimed about the Devil (aka: Satan); who would you trust more: A used car salesman or Jesus?
In the end, my challenge (per John 8:44) remains: Based on the Hebrew text and it alone:
1. No one has yet proven to me Satan is a liar! (See my notes on Genesis!)
2. No one has yet proven to me Satan is murder! (See my notes on Job!)
Forget the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection for now!
Lets go straight to the facts as stated by Jesus himself!
To set the record straight as to whether or not Jesus (or the Gospels writers) used lies to get people to join Christianity: Are or are not the following two statements made by Jesus true and correct promises and claims (as simply stated with no apologetic excuses please)?
1. John 14: 13 -14:
“Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.”
2. Matt. 16: 28:
“Most certainly I tell you, there are some standing here who will in no way taste of death, until they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom."
3. Mark 13:2:
"Jesus said to him, "Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone on another, which will not be thrown down." (Just what is the Wailing Wall then?! Duh!)
Finally, based on what Jesus promised people if they converted and what he claimed about the Devil (aka: Satan); who would you trust more: A used car salesman or Jesus?
In the end, my challenge (per John 8:44) remains: Based on the Hebrew text and it alone:
1. No one has yet proven to me Satan is a liar! (See my notes on Genesis!)
2. No one has yet proven to me Satan is murder! (See my notes on Job!)
May 22, 2009
The "free gift" of salvation not so free
I've thought that there is a fundamental contradiction in the evangelical message of salvation because, according to them, it is NOT Christ's atoning death that saves you, it is YOUR BELIEF in it. (otherwise everyone would be saved). Therefore, this is not a salvation by grace, it is another salvation by works, albeit cognitive work. You must DO several things - find out about and understand the atonement, accept that Jesus dies for your sins, feel guilt and express your sorrow for being responsible, ask forgiveness, and invite Jesus "into your heart" to rule for the rest of your life.
IF you are sincere enough and it works, you get your life insurance (or fire insurance). Many people do this many times because they aren't sure. What do these things mean? What does it mean to "believe," "confess sin," or "accept Jesus"? These are mental events with no objective evidence. And how does one force oneself to believe if the story makes no rational sense? Can you believe in Santa Claus again just because you need to save your life? With the threat of hell-fire condemnation, this is terrifying, crazy-making stuff. It's no wonder that "believers" exhibit so much mental illness, including psychosis. Taught to children, I consider it child abuse of the worst kind.
I've wandered a bit from my initial point, which was that this doctrine is a salvation by works, ie, it is the accomplishment of the believer. Maybe that is why fundamentalists are so smug.
Aside from the obvious problem of people being unsaved because they are too rational, smart, enlightened or integrous, what about those who, because of the requirements of this deal, are too dumb to understand it, don't know about it, only believe a little bit, etc. etc.? Even in our human justice system, people are not condemned for what they are thinking.
Here's an analogy. Say you are in danger of a calamitous death and someone comes along and puts a present near you which will save your life - a FREE GIFT our of pure benevolence!! But you can't have it until you notice it, find horrible fault in yourself, feel sorry and grateful, manage to get to it and pick it up, and then promise to devote your life to the gift-giver. If you are blind or lame or just don't want a gift, good luck to you. How can they ever say this kind of gift is unearned??? And isn't it pretty weird that the gift-giver is one and the same as the creator of the torment you get if you don't accept the gift? Talk about strings attached. Imagine if we gave each other gifts like that.
I just had a birthday recently, and I'm glad ordinary humans have a better idea of giving.
Marlene Winell, www.marlenewinell.net
IF you are sincere enough and it works, you get your life insurance (or fire insurance). Many people do this many times because they aren't sure. What do these things mean? What does it mean to "believe," "confess sin," or "accept Jesus"? These are mental events with no objective evidence. And how does one force oneself to believe if the story makes no rational sense? Can you believe in Santa Claus again just because you need to save your life? With the threat of hell-fire condemnation, this is terrifying, crazy-making stuff. It's no wonder that "believers" exhibit so much mental illness, including psychosis. Taught to children, I consider it child abuse of the worst kind.
I've wandered a bit from my initial point, which was that this doctrine is a salvation by works, ie, it is the accomplishment of the believer. Maybe that is why fundamentalists are so smug.
Aside from the obvious problem of people being unsaved because they are too rational, smart, enlightened or integrous, what about those who, because of the requirements of this deal, are too dumb to understand it, don't know about it, only believe a little bit, etc. etc.? Even in our human justice system, people are not condemned for what they are thinking.
Here's an analogy. Say you are in danger of a calamitous death and someone comes along and puts a present near you which will save your life - a FREE GIFT our of pure benevolence!! But you can't have it until you notice it, find horrible fault in yourself, feel sorry and grateful, manage to get to it and pick it up, and then promise to devote your life to the gift-giver. If you are blind or lame or just don't want a gift, good luck to you. How can they ever say this kind of gift is unearned??? And isn't it pretty weird that the gift-giver is one and the same as the creator of the torment you get if you don't accept the gift? Talk about strings attached. Imagine if we gave each other gifts like that.
I just had a birthday recently, and I'm glad ordinary humans have a better idea of giving.
Marlene Winell, www.marlenewinell.net
May 21, 2009
Facebook Petition: The William Lane Craig/ John Loftus Debate Wish Group
Yep, I just got notice today that there is a petition on Facebook for both Christians and nonbelievers to sign who want to see me debate my former professor. Click here to join.
May 20, 2009
Jesus: A Superstitious Man Living in an Eschatological Hotbed
Despite my last post challenging Christians to prove to me that Jesus did not lie in John 8:44, no one has been able to debunk my post or, as I see it, truth can not be debunked!
So, just how mortal was Jesus once the Christology has been striped away? Just where did he get his un-Biblical information from? In fact, as noted at the end of this post, Jesus was not an all knowing Christ who fabricated stories about Satan, but a superstitious Jew who believed in the oral and written lore of his people.
Thus, based on a careful reading of the Gospel texts, we find a fallible Jewish man making mistakes about the end times and a man who was highly influenced by the myths and Jewish folklore of the day (see below).
As an example of oral lore here, the creator Gospel of Matthew, without a personal Hebrew Bible to check himself against, misquotes a proof text in trying to prove the credence of his work. An example (as noted by the late Bruce Metzger) is found in Matthew 27: 9 where the creator of Matthew’s Gospel wrongly attributes a verse found in Zechariah 11: 12 -13 to Jeremiah.
Based on the challenge of my post about John 8: 44, we know that what Jesus believed and taught was not some divine revelation passed down directly from God, but Jesus simply used popular stories circulating in the general population to impress, entertain and teach from just as many wondering ancient bards would use Hesiod's Theogony and his Works and Day or just like the cuneiform text of the Atrahasis story and the Epic of Gilgamesh was used by folk moralist to reveal why thing are in the world the way they are and what the gods really wanted from humans.
At the time of Jesus, the Palestinian Jewish world was awash in rapidly developing Jewish folk- lore. Apart fro the Essenes at Qumran rewriting and re-editing the Hebrew Bible into Hebrew Peshim (commentaries: pesher פשר = "Commentary" or theological works including over 900 other documents) to prove that God had now chosen them alone.
Well know Jews such as Philo, Josephus, and latter Pseudo-Philo were also re-editing Jewish folklore to make what they considered orthodox theology and truthful histories like the ancient Israelite schools had done who fused the Hebrew Bible from fragments making a whole running narrative form what we now know from different views of who and what the gods (E =Elohim) or god (J=Yahweh) wanted and thought.
In the time of Jesus, eschatological dogmas were revealed in apocalyptic literature in which long dead ancient Jewish figures such as Enoch, Elijah, Adam and Eve, Moses and the Jewish Patriarchs seemed to have arisen out of their long lost graves to pin divine revelations from God about the mysteries of Heaven and Hell. Just like the rest of first century Jewish Palestine, Jesus swam in this world filled with competing Jewish religious legends where both God and Satan wrestled for control of human minds and the world.
Not only were forged texts written in long dead (and mythological) names, but the Jews themselves were entering into a time of collecting and editing their oral legends into what was to latter be called the Talmud.
If one knows Jewish theology, then one is aware that Jews believed Moses received both the Written and the Oral Torah on Mount Sinai. In other words, just as tradition plays a major factor in the formulation religious truth in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, so too does tradition play a major factor in teaching the truth of God to the Jews as recorded in the Talmud.
It is at just such a time in first century Palestine that a thirty year old man named Jesus (much like William Miller in 1843 & 1844, Joseph Smith or David Koresh) thought the world as he knew it, was going to end in his life time and the judgment of God would be pored out on sinful humanity.
So, while no one can give any Biblical to my post as to why Jesus can claimed Satan was a lair and a murder, the answer is to be found in how popular Jewish folklore of the day influenced him and shaped the beliefs of Jesus. Although most of this folklore has long been lost, the Jewish Talmud gives us a good idea how Jesus came to understand God, theology and himself as an End Time prophet.
So just where did Jesus get his theology about God, the world and himself? As I stated above; from oral living religious legends such as the lore that made up both the Palestinian and Babylonia Talmuds. Although they were formed in the fifth century, both contain oral and written sources that go back much earlier, to and even beyond the time of Jesus.
The Talmud on Satan:
Although satan does not appear in Gensis 3, later rabbinic sources identified satan with the serpent in Eden (Sofa. 9b; Sanh. 29a). He is identified in a more impersonal way with the evil inclination which infects humanity (B. Bat. 16a). In a more personal way, he is the source behind God’s testing of Abraham (Sanh. 89b). Additionally, satan is responsible for many of the sins mentioned in the OT. For example, it is satan who was responsible for the Israelites worshiping the golden calf because of his lie that Moses would not return from mount Sinai (Sabb. 89a). He is the driving force behind David’s sin with Bathsheba (Sanh. 107a), and it is he who provokes the gentiles to ridicule Jewish laws, thus weakening the religious loyalties of the Jews (Yoma 67b). (The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol.5, Satan p. 988.)
In the final analysis, it is only when Jesus is placed in the context of the average religious Jew swimming in an eschatological world where the apocalyptic mind ran wild with stories and fears of Satan, devils, demons and judgments from God that Jesus is not really a pathological liar, but a man simply caught up in the lore of popular Jewish superstitions.
So, just how mortal was Jesus once the Christology has been striped away? Just where did he get his un-Biblical information from? In fact, as noted at the end of this post, Jesus was not an all knowing Christ who fabricated stories about Satan, but a superstitious Jew who believed in the oral and written lore of his people.
Thus, based on a careful reading of the Gospel texts, we find a fallible Jewish man making mistakes about the end times and a man who was highly influenced by the myths and Jewish folklore of the day (see below).
As an example of oral lore here, the creator Gospel of Matthew, without a personal Hebrew Bible to check himself against, misquotes a proof text in trying to prove the credence of his work. An example (as noted by the late Bruce Metzger) is found in Matthew 27: 9 where the creator of Matthew’s Gospel wrongly attributes a verse found in Zechariah 11: 12 -13 to Jeremiah.
Based on the challenge of my post about John 8: 44, we know that what Jesus believed and taught was not some divine revelation passed down directly from God, but Jesus simply used popular stories circulating in the general population to impress, entertain and teach from just as many wondering ancient bards would use Hesiod's Theogony and his Works and Day or just like the cuneiform text of the Atrahasis story and the Epic of Gilgamesh was used by folk moralist to reveal why thing are in the world the way they are and what the gods really wanted from humans.
At the time of Jesus, the Palestinian Jewish world was awash in rapidly developing Jewish folk- lore. Apart fro the Essenes at Qumran rewriting and re-editing the Hebrew Bible into Hebrew Peshim (commentaries: pesher פשר = "Commentary" or theological works including over 900 other documents) to prove that God had now chosen them alone.
Well know Jews such as Philo, Josephus, and latter Pseudo-Philo were also re-editing Jewish folklore to make what they considered orthodox theology and truthful histories like the ancient Israelite schools had done who fused the Hebrew Bible from fragments making a whole running narrative form what we now know from different views of who and what the gods (E =Elohim) or god (J=Yahweh) wanted and thought.
In the time of Jesus, eschatological dogmas were revealed in apocalyptic literature in which long dead ancient Jewish figures such as Enoch, Elijah, Adam and Eve, Moses and the Jewish Patriarchs seemed to have arisen out of their long lost graves to pin divine revelations from God about the mysteries of Heaven and Hell. Just like the rest of first century Jewish Palestine, Jesus swam in this world filled with competing Jewish religious legends where both God and Satan wrestled for control of human minds and the world.
Not only were forged texts written in long dead (and mythological) names, but the Jews themselves were entering into a time of collecting and editing their oral legends into what was to latter be called the Talmud.
If one knows Jewish theology, then one is aware that Jews believed Moses received both the Written and the Oral Torah on Mount Sinai. In other words, just as tradition plays a major factor in the formulation religious truth in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, so too does tradition play a major factor in teaching the truth of God to the Jews as recorded in the Talmud.
It is at just such a time in first century Palestine that a thirty year old man named Jesus (much like William Miller in 1843 & 1844, Joseph Smith or David Koresh) thought the world as he knew it, was going to end in his life time and the judgment of God would be pored out on sinful humanity.
So, while no one can give any Biblical to my post as to why Jesus can claimed Satan was a lair and a murder, the answer is to be found in how popular Jewish folklore of the day influenced him and shaped the beliefs of Jesus. Although most of this folklore has long been lost, the Jewish Talmud gives us a good idea how Jesus came to understand God, theology and himself as an End Time prophet.
So just where did Jesus get his theology about God, the world and himself? As I stated above; from oral living religious legends such as the lore that made up both the Palestinian and Babylonia Talmuds. Although they were formed in the fifth century, both contain oral and written sources that go back much earlier, to and even beyond the time of Jesus.
The Talmud on Satan:
Although satan does not appear in Gensis 3, later rabbinic sources identified satan with the serpent in Eden (Sofa. 9b; Sanh. 29a). He is identified in a more impersonal way with the evil inclination which infects humanity (B. Bat. 16a). In a more personal way, he is the source behind God’s testing of Abraham (Sanh. 89b). Additionally, satan is responsible for many of the sins mentioned in the OT. For example, it is satan who was responsible for the Israelites worshiping the golden calf because of his lie that Moses would not return from mount Sinai (Sabb. 89a). He is the driving force behind David’s sin with Bathsheba (Sanh. 107a), and it is he who provokes the gentiles to ridicule Jewish laws, thus weakening the religious loyalties of the Jews (Yoma 67b). (The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol.5, Satan p. 988.)
In the final analysis, it is only when Jesus is placed in the context of the average religious Jew swimming in an eschatological world where the apocalyptic mind ran wild with stories and fears of Satan, devils, demons and judgments from God that Jesus is not really a pathological liar, but a man simply caught up in the lore of popular Jewish superstitions.
Another Review of My Book: "I'm really not the target audience for this"
Here's an excerpt below:
[T]his book attacked what is in my mind a straw-man of Christianity. But what I've fast come to realize over the last 5 years or so, what I perceive as a straw-man is the intellectual and moral foundations for hundreds of millions of people. So to read a book criticizing fundamentalism is not even attacking the Christianity I know, to me it's attacking the extreme right who have no basis in reality to begin with.
I have been an avid reader of Loftus' blog, Debunking Christianity, for some time now and find him to be a reasonable and level-headed man. Which is why the first thing that shocked me about the book was the way he would talk about what he used to believe...as I went on through the book, what stood out was how poor the intellectual reconciliation between the modern understanding of the world and the bible actually is. The reconciliations take an absurdity and make it sound even more absurd. To preserve the notion that the bible is the word (in some sense) of an omniscient deity, the most asinine explanations are presented. The book didn't even need Loftus' debunking those claims - they could not stand up on their own.
This is not to say I hated the book, Loftus is an excellent writer and wrote a mostly engaging argument. There were some parts that made the book worth getting - the outsider test for faith is possibly the best argument against religion, and that goes for all religion. The philosophy and explanation of the control beliefs was also really thorough and well presented. And finally at the end, the way he tackled the idea of ultimate meaning was done very well.
To read the whole review click here.
Used Goods
It's been two months since I herniated disks L4 and L5 in my lower back. I’ve always had a great back until that one unfortunate day—3/18/09. I was cleaning out a shed when I went to hoist a heavy box of books. They were books I had in storage from my preaching days, incidentally. I knew right when I did it that things were not going to be good. I drove home barely mobile, and four hours later, if the house had been on fire, I wouldn’t have been able to leave. Family had to tend to me some of the time. I’m doing much better today, having been nursed back to health on plenty of strong painkillers, muscle relaxants, and prolonged bed rest after a brief hospital stay. Word to the wise—don’t lift wrong!
Having briefly mentioned the experience in my discussion forums, our token Christian debater Noel Cookman made the remark that God wasn’t responsible for making bad human bodies because he only “made” Adam and Eve in a perfect state. I love it when Christians make this statement. It’s the ultimate pass-off for the poor design of our bodies. Adam and Eve were perfect. The rest of us just weren’t fortunate enough to be Adam or Eve.
The remains of Adam and Eve we don't have, and if we had them preserved, we'd know it (they'd have no navels, for starters). We would also find genetic perfection (no arthritis, no hemorrhoids, no cancer, nothing that comes from time and the breakdown of genetic coding).
Strangely enough, not one fossilized human being has ever been unearthed that a creationist will point to in support of the “Adam and Eve were perfect” position. They have no problem showing off Darwinism’s many “shortcomings,” but they can’t make a case of their own. This is because every human specimen we have ever found doesn't fit what they would want to hold up and say: “This is an antediluvian body. Look how well-designed it is, atheists!” Every human specimen we ever found had to get put into that ever thickening Post-diluvian file to explain poor health and rickets, shortness and mass deformities due to lack of salt, and the affects of having no medicine and general malnutrition.
Adam supposedly lived 930 years—and no, you can't divide those years down into lesser “years” to make them closer to our “normal” age range. You can try, but you come up with all sorts of absurdities. For instance, if 1 year in the first few chapters of Genesis represents 6 months of our standard year, then the problem doesn't go away because you have 900+ year-old people (half of that is 450—still way out of the ballpark for a human being). Or, if 1 year in the Bible is the equivalent of 3 months of our time, then Kenan who lived 70 years and then had his first child (Genesis 5:12-14) really had his first child at age 23, but didn't die until he was covered in cobwebs at the ripe old age of 298. Even sea turtles don’t live that long! But let's say that a single Genesis year equals only 1 of our months. That means Kenan was not even 6 years old when he had his first son Mahalalel. Still won’t work. We seem to be fighting the tides here.
Our problem is that the smelly genocidal scribblers who wrote Genesis believed that the patriarchs lived lives of great length compared to our own. This is seen to be false when we consider that life spans are longer now than they have ever been, and as stated, we have not one fossilized example to counter this claim. What significance does this have? It means Genesis is wrong and that there were no long-lived patriarchs. But if you believe the Bible, you have to believe that eating forbidden fruit was what destroyed our immortality and later our health.
Because of “the fall of man” we all suffer from weak, piss-poor genetics. These Jehovah-made genetics break down, allowing us to get things like cancer and Brittle Bone Disease. And many Christian crazies buy into the idea that our minds are “fallen” along with our crappy bodies. This is why, we are told, that we don't all see the “truth” that Jesus Christ is the light of God unto salvation. It's because our minds have been ruined by the fall. If it weren't for that, we would have a world full of Christian apologists! Perish the goddamn thought!!!
But maybe the Christians are wrong in their thinking that we are just suffering from “bad” genetics. Maybe God purposely allowed bad backs that lack structural support to remind us when we lift wrong that we are a sinful race, spiritually depraved and worthy of hell. Some still believe that. Our grandparents and great grandparents certainly believed that and would say that.
Maybe God actually created/allowed physical defects to be, as well as mental defects, like retardation and schizophrenia and borderline personality disorders, as some theologians tell us. Maybe Jeebuz had other reasons for these quirky creations. Maybe God created retards because he knew that most of us would be overqualified to work as store greeters or mascots or those people who ring bells and stand in Santa suits, staring off into space, or who stand in traffic in the heat selling newspapers and flowers. You could say that God had to create mental hard drives with lesser capacity so that those lowly occupations could be filled. Doesn't God give us all talents of different kinds?
But in all seriousness, we can't say that. No one with an IQ above 67 can say that bad backs happened because our ancestors sinned or that the mentally defective are merely people of “different talents.” No one can say these things with a straight face, not today.
What does make sense is to say that God is like my old boss Stan. Now Stan owned an advertising company in South Texas for a while and he bought a company car for us new from a Dodge dealership at a very discounted rate. The car was great for the first 50,000 hard-driven miles, but soon the warranty was up, and it began to have problems. In just a few short years, Stan was getting back-talked by every employee around the water cooler because he was just too damn cheap to flip the bill for a new one that could stay out of the shop for longer than 3 days.
That's how God is—too cheap to manage the successful up-keep of our bodies and keep us free from death, debilitating diseases, and crippling conditions. God once did the equivalent of buying new cars, but he's been a cheapskate ever since. Things have only been downhill from there. He supposedly did a good job with Adam and Eve, and the patriarchs got to feel some of that. But we aren't so lucky.
With the possible exception of Jack LaLane, God hasn't sprung for a single solitary machine of quality since ancient times. That means we're all used goods. God's a cheapskate, and nobody really likes a cheapskate except other cheapskates—in this case, theologians and apologists who are responsible for justifying Jeebuz’s thriftiness.
So instead of healing our diseases and giving us good bodies, what does God give us? He gives us the Bible to tell us just how much he loves us and how he used to be willing to make bodies that put ours to a crying shame and would make Lou Ferrigno want to hide in the bushes. And better than that, he gives us theologians and apologists to come up with reasons why God made window-smooching retards and bad backs. Lame!
Time for more Vicodin. Thanks for reading.
(JH)
Having briefly mentioned the experience in my discussion forums, our token Christian debater Noel Cookman made the remark that God wasn’t responsible for making bad human bodies because he only “made” Adam and Eve in a perfect state. I love it when Christians make this statement. It’s the ultimate pass-off for the poor design of our bodies. Adam and Eve were perfect. The rest of us just weren’t fortunate enough to be Adam or Eve.
The remains of Adam and Eve we don't have, and if we had them preserved, we'd know it (they'd have no navels, for starters). We would also find genetic perfection (no arthritis, no hemorrhoids, no cancer, nothing that comes from time and the breakdown of genetic coding).
Strangely enough, not one fossilized human being has ever been unearthed that a creationist will point to in support of the “Adam and Eve were perfect” position. They have no problem showing off Darwinism’s many “shortcomings,” but they can’t make a case of their own. This is because every human specimen we have ever found doesn't fit what they would want to hold up and say: “This is an antediluvian body. Look how well-designed it is, atheists!” Every human specimen we ever found had to get put into that ever thickening Post-diluvian file to explain poor health and rickets, shortness and mass deformities due to lack of salt, and the affects of having no medicine and general malnutrition.
Adam supposedly lived 930 years—and no, you can't divide those years down into lesser “years” to make them closer to our “normal” age range. You can try, but you come up with all sorts of absurdities. For instance, if 1 year in the first few chapters of Genesis represents 6 months of our standard year, then the problem doesn't go away because you have 900+ year-old people (half of that is 450—still way out of the ballpark for a human being). Or, if 1 year in the Bible is the equivalent of 3 months of our time, then Kenan who lived 70 years and then had his first child (Genesis 5:12-14) really had his first child at age 23, but didn't die until he was covered in cobwebs at the ripe old age of 298. Even sea turtles don’t live that long! But let's say that a single Genesis year equals only 1 of our months. That means Kenan was not even 6 years old when he had his first son Mahalalel. Still won’t work. We seem to be fighting the tides here.
Our problem is that the smelly genocidal scribblers who wrote Genesis believed that the patriarchs lived lives of great length compared to our own. This is seen to be false when we consider that life spans are longer now than they have ever been, and as stated, we have not one fossilized example to counter this claim. What significance does this have? It means Genesis is wrong and that there were no long-lived patriarchs. But if you believe the Bible, you have to believe that eating forbidden fruit was what destroyed our immortality and later our health.
Because of “the fall of man” we all suffer from weak, piss-poor genetics. These Jehovah-made genetics break down, allowing us to get things like cancer and Brittle Bone Disease. And many Christian crazies buy into the idea that our minds are “fallen” along with our crappy bodies. This is why, we are told, that we don't all see the “truth” that Jesus Christ is the light of God unto salvation. It's because our minds have been ruined by the fall. If it weren't for that, we would have a world full of Christian apologists! Perish the goddamn thought!!!
But maybe the Christians are wrong in their thinking that we are just suffering from “bad” genetics. Maybe God purposely allowed bad backs that lack structural support to remind us when we lift wrong that we are a sinful race, spiritually depraved and worthy of hell. Some still believe that. Our grandparents and great grandparents certainly believed that and would say that.
Maybe God actually created/allowed physical defects to be, as well as mental defects, like retardation and schizophrenia and borderline personality disorders, as some theologians tell us. Maybe Jeebuz had other reasons for these quirky creations. Maybe God created retards because he knew that most of us would be overqualified to work as store greeters or mascots or those people who ring bells and stand in Santa suits, staring off into space, or who stand in traffic in the heat selling newspapers and flowers. You could say that God had to create mental hard drives with lesser capacity so that those lowly occupations could be filled. Doesn't God give us all talents of different kinds?
But in all seriousness, we can't say that. No one with an IQ above 67 can say that bad backs happened because our ancestors sinned or that the mentally defective are merely people of “different talents.” No one can say these things with a straight face, not today.
What does make sense is to say that God is like my old boss Stan. Now Stan owned an advertising company in South Texas for a while and he bought a company car for us new from a Dodge dealership at a very discounted rate. The car was great for the first 50,000 hard-driven miles, but soon the warranty was up, and it began to have problems. In just a few short years, Stan was getting back-talked by every employee around the water cooler because he was just too damn cheap to flip the bill for a new one that could stay out of the shop for longer than 3 days.
That's how God is—too cheap to manage the successful up-keep of our bodies and keep us free from death, debilitating diseases, and crippling conditions. God once did the equivalent of buying new cars, but he's been a cheapskate ever since. Things have only been downhill from there. He supposedly did a good job with Adam and Eve, and the patriarchs got to feel some of that. But we aren't so lucky.
With the possible exception of Jack LaLane, God hasn't sprung for a single solitary machine of quality since ancient times. That means we're all used goods. God's a cheapskate, and nobody really likes a cheapskate except other cheapskates—in this case, theologians and apologists who are responsible for justifying Jeebuz’s thriftiness.
So instead of healing our diseases and giving us good bodies, what does God give us? He gives us the Bible to tell us just how much he loves us and how he used to be willing to make bodies that put ours to a crying shame and would make Lou Ferrigno want to hide in the bushes. And better than that, he gives us theologians and apologists to come up with reasons why God made window-smooching retards and bad backs. Lame!
Time for more Vicodin. Thanks for reading.
(JH)
May 19, 2009
Another Review of My Book: “For even the seasoned Christian apologist, this work still presents a solid challenge”
Again, I'll place this review below for new visitors to DC:
For more reviews of my book click here.
Overall, Loftus’s cumulative case against Christianity highlighted several issues that I did not have an adequate answer for. Some of the topics I have found satisfying answers to from the Christian perspective, while some issues I agree with him completely. Loftus’ book offers the college level a solid introduction to Atheist arguments, while offering thorough responses to popular Christian Theist claims.The author also mentions some weaknesses which, of course, I don't agree with at all. To read her review click here.
Why I Became An Atheist is an important read, especially for Christians. This resource introduces Atheist objections to Christians, which many have never dealt with them. For even the seasoned Christian apologist, this work still presents a solid challenge.
For more reviews of my book click here.
Another Review of My Book: "Christianity Has Been Debunked"
Again for people tired of reading these reviews I'll place it below. It's for people new to DC:
If there was one book that I would recommend to a Christian to make him see his religion from the outside it would be this. It's written in a language that a Christian would understand.To read some more reviews Click here.
John chooses to attack Christianity from a sceptical bias and uses the tools of philosophy and even theology itself to give increasing credibility to the extremely low probability of the existence of the theistic god.
Step back and think... dear Christian, if Christianity were true it couldn't be attacked on any front. I believe that John's approach is the best and more notably I think it will have the greatest affect on the Christian. My only reservation is that they just won't read it because John doesn't have the mass-media appeal of Dawkins, Dennet, Hitchens and Harris. The approaches used so far are: the open scepticism backed with keen insight from Harris; the openly acerbic attack of Christianity's core professed by Hitchens; the cowardly philosophical, softly-softly approach of Dennet and the overtly scientific approach used by Dawkins. John's approach wins hands down and he even explains why.
This is a well rounded work as each argument is laid out and the responses to it from the intellectual Christian community (sounds like an oxymoron to me) are given and John duly gives his responses. The writing and argumentation shows many years of dealing with the debate at the highest level.
It's written for a university level undergraduate audience. John writes that many lecturers in courses in theology and philosophy have recommended the book for reading and study. The level that it is aimed at maybe off-putting and heavy-going for the more general audience. However, I feel if its depth of study was lessened then John would be accused of attacking a strawman version of Christianity.
Come on Christian, read it. You won't encounter a better attack of your faith. If your faith is the sort that doesn't stand up to attack then it is a faith not worth having. If it does stand up to the attack then you can rejoice and your faith can grow. Link
May 18, 2009
Was Jesus a Pathological Liar?
This is as close to a general resurrection as Christians will ever see!
No matter how many times I have quoted John 14: 13 -14: “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.” Christians turn a deaf ear and simply ignore Jesus’ promise of help. Yet Christians are convinced they will go to Heaven and have salvation when Jesus NEVER gave a plan of salvation in the Synoptic Gospels and one is hard pressed to even find one in the Gospel of John.
However, despite this very vague and strange soteriology of Jesus, Christians are convince they will go to Heaven and they are equally convinced the unsaved will go to Hell.
But just how many lies of Jesus and the Gospels can simply be ignored and Christians can still be confident that everything Jesus states is true?!
So here is my challenge to the Christian community: Since the Gospel of John is generally consider the last Gospel written and contains a more fully developed Christology (such as the famous verse of John 3:16), I want any Christian to prove that neither Jesus nor the Gospel writers are pathological liars.
Lets start with one verse from John’s Gospel and I want any Christian to prove this statement of Jesus is true and correct based on the Canonical 66 book Biblical text.
“You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” John 8: 44
A. Please prove from the Biblical text where Satan EVER killed or murdered anyone!
B. Please prove from the Biblical text where Satan EVER told a lie!
Christians, if Jesus is everything you claim he is (God in flesh, the living sinless Word of Truth and the only hope for eternal salvation) this should be easy for you to do.
On the other hand, if you can't give direct proof text examples, how can you trust anything Jesus or the Gospels text tell you? How can you remain a Christian in spite of known Biblical lies?
Get your priest or preacher involved here. Tell him to earn his money!
No matter how many times I have quoted John 14: 13 -14: “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.” Christians turn a deaf ear and simply ignore Jesus’ promise of help. Yet Christians are convinced they will go to Heaven and have salvation when Jesus NEVER gave a plan of salvation in the Synoptic Gospels and one is hard pressed to even find one in the Gospel of John.
However, despite this very vague and strange soteriology of Jesus, Christians are convince they will go to Heaven and they are equally convinced the unsaved will go to Hell.
But just how many lies of Jesus and the Gospels can simply be ignored and Christians can still be confident that everything Jesus states is true?!
So here is my challenge to the Christian community: Since the Gospel of John is generally consider the last Gospel written and contains a more fully developed Christology (such as the famous verse of John 3:16), I want any Christian to prove that neither Jesus nor the Gospel writers are pathological liars.
Lets start with one verse from John’s Gospel and I want any Christian to prove this statement of Jesus is true and correct based on the Canonical 66 book Biblical text.
“You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” John 8: 44
A. Please prove from the Biblical text where Satan EVER killed or murdered anyone!
B. Please prove from the Biblical text where Satan EVER told a lie!
Christians, if Jesus is everything you claim he is (God in flesh, the living sinless Word of Truth and the only hope for eternal salvation) this should be easy for you to do.
On the other hand, if you can't give direct proof text examples, how can you trust anything Jesus or the Gospels text tell you? How can you remain a Christian in spite of known Biblical lies?
Get your priest or preacher involved here. Tell him to earn his money!
Information Professionals Caught Not Checking Sources
The Fallacy Files, Wikipedia Watch has revealed ANOTHER case of Journalists using Wikipedia as an original source. This is a real life example of how people that should know better will reproduce poor quality information. I'm sure there was no malice involved, just people trying to get a message accross that they believed likely to be true, similar to the authors of scripture.
The Fallacy Files regularly exposes Wikipedia faults, but Wikipedia is not authoritative and doesn't claim to be. As The Fallacist points out, it should be used as a starting point. Wikipedias strength is also its weakness. It depends on people to originate and maintain the information. So while Wikipedia was found by the Journal Nature to be as accurate as the Enycyclopedia Britannica in the Field of Science, occasionally something turns up inaccurate.
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The Fallacy Files regularly exposes Wikipedia faults, but Wikipedia is not authoritative and doesn't claim to be. As The Fallacist points out, it should be used as a starting point. Wikipedias strength is also its weakness. It depends on people to originate and maintain the information. So while Wikipedia was found by the Journal Nature to be as accurate as the Enycyclopedia Britannica in the Field of Science, occasionally something turns up inaccurate.
.
May 17, 2009
Court Rules Faith in God and Prayer as Child Abuse!
In the Gospel of John 14: 13 -14 we find the propaganda religious sells pitch: ““Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.” But the legal system has ruled that Jesus is a liar and the claims of the Bible are a myth!
Daniel Hauser was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma and has a 90 percent chance of surviving his Hodgkin's lymphoma with chemotherapy or only a 5 percent chance of living with only faith in Jesus and Biblical promises.
In a 58-page ruling, Brown County District Judge John Rodenberg found that Daniel Hauser has been "medically neglected" by his parents, Colleen and Anthony Hauser, and was in need of child protection services.
Better yet, can an all loving God cure a disease he let happen in the first place? (Oh, that’s right Freedom of Choice: Daniel Hauser had Free Will to wish this cancer on himself in the first place and the virus was given Freedom of Choice or Will by God to choose on which person it would inflict cancer on!)
Daniel Hauser was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma and has a 90 percent chance of surviving his Hodgkin's lymphoma with chemotherapy or only a 5 percent chance of living with only faith in Jesus and Biblical promises.
In a 58-page ruling, Brown County District Judge John Rodenberg found that Daniel Hauser has been "medically neglected" by his parents, Colleen and Anthony Hauser, and was in need of child protection services.
Better yet, can an all loving God cure a disease he let happen in the first place? (Oh, that’s right Freedom of Choice: Daniel Hauser had Free Will to wish this cancer on himself in the first place and the virus was given Freedom of Choice or Will by God to choose on which person it would inflict cancer on!)
One Step Closer To Making Life In The Lab
From Nature.com (requires login), "RNA world easier to make": Ingenious chemistry shows how nucleotides may have formed in the primordial soup. Here's a link from "Wired" that is freely accessible "Life’s First Spark Re-Created in the Laboratory"
May 16, 2009
Another Review of My Book: "Brilliant: the Book I Was Waiting For!"
For people tired of these kinds of posts I'll place the review below. For others like the reviewer herself who are first time visitors to DC and/or never heard of my book, this is for you.
"Why I became an Atheist" by John W. Loftus is excellent from cover-to-cover. A few weeks ago I came across "Why I Became an Atheist" by Mr. Loftus while browsing the local bookstore - I must admit, I hadn't heard of this title before I laid eyes on it (sadly). At first sight of the book I was hopeful and expectant, and my expectations were NOT failed. I would say that this book picked-up/filled-in where all the other Atheist-type books left-off/missed-out, if that makes sense.To read other reviews Click here.
This is one of my absolute favorite books that deals with Atheism and I will continue to suggest it to others and use it as a source-book for my own future reference as well. On a final note: if you are, like me, a fan of Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, etc.. you'll love this book too! But don't expect to find the same rehashed arguments; this book is fresh, audacious and thought-inspiring, and I recommend it to all. Enjoy! Click here for the full review.
May 15, 2009
An Excerpt From a Chapter in a New Book I'm Compiling: "At Best Jesus Was A Failed Apocalyptic Doomsday Prophet"
See below:
And when we look at the New Testament we see this theme reflected in many places. In what has become known as the “Little Apocalypse,” Mark chapter 13 (cf. Matt 24), we find Jesus instructing his disciples about the time when the temple would be destroyed and the “Son of Man” comes. Making a crystal clear reference to a prophecy in the book of Daniel ('the abomination that causes desolation') Jesus tells them it will be shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem that took place in 70 A.D:
Theologians have tried to construe the word “generation” in the above passage to mean “race,” as in “this race of people will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” But that is not the obvious natural reading, given the whole context. Edward Adams, Senior lecturer in New Testament Studies at King’s College, London, states it forthrightly: "It is virtually certain that 'this generation' means the generation living at the time of utterance. The time frame in this verse is thus the lifetime of Jesus' own contemporaries." [Edward Adams, The Stars Will Fall From Heaven: Cosmic Catastrophe in the New Testament and its World (New York: T & T Clark, 2007) p. 164.] We can see this from a study of the Greek word itself, in which the primary usage means “generation” rather than “race.” The translation “race” wouldn’t make any sense here anyway, since no Jew of that day would ever consider the possibility that their race of people could “pass away” given their assuredness of special divine promises of favor. We also see this from the whole context of the Jewish milieu and from what we read in the rest of the New Testament itself. We read of Jesus saying: “I tell you the truth, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes” (Matt. 10:23). Speaking to the Sanhedrin during his trial Jesus reportedly said, “you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven." (Mark 14:16; Matt. 26:64). The meaning is obvious.
And when we look at the New Testament we see this theme reflected in many places. In what has become known as the “Little Apocalypse,” Mark chapter 13 (cf. Matt 24), we find Jesus instructing his disciples about the time when the temple would be destroyed and the “Son of Man” comes. Making a crystal clear reference to a prophecy in the book of Daniel ('the abomination that causes desolation') Jesus tells them it will be shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem that took place in 70 A.D:
"But in those days, following that distress, " 'the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.' "At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.” And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens. "Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it is near, right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.”Given what we already know about the apocalyptic milieu in which Jesus preached and granting for the moment that this passage comes from the lips of Jesus, his disciples would understand exactly what he meant. The sign of the coming “Son of Man” was the distress and tribulation surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The lesson of the fig tree merely reinforces the point that just as they can predict when summer is coming when the fig leaves blossom, so also can they know the “Son of Man” is coming when they see the destruction of Jerusalem. [Critical studies of this passage lead many scholars to think Jesus probably didn’t speak of the destruction of Jerusalem here, only that he predicted the imminent coming of the “Son of Man.” Such a prediction may have been added by the author of this first gospel after the fact, leading his readers to conclude the eschaton would take place immediately based on Jesus’ prior eschatological preaching]. And as such the very generation of people living in his day will witness this apocalyptic event, which echoes clearly what we read earlier in Mark 9:1 (cf. Matt. 16:28; Luke 9:27) when Jesus says to his disciples, "I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power."
Theologians have tried to construe the word “generation” in the above passage to mean “race,” as in “this race of people will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” But that is not the obvious natural reading, given the whole context. Edward Adams, Senior lecturer in New Testament Studies at King’s College, London, states it forthrightly: "It is virtually certain that 'this generation' means the generation living at the time of utterance. The time frame in this verse is thus the lifetime of Jesus' own contemporaries." [Edward Adams, The Stars Will Fall From Heaven: Cosmic Catastrophe in the New Testament and its World (New York: T & T Clark, 2007) p. 164.] We can see this from a study of the Greek word itself, in which the primary usage means “generation” rather than “race.” The translation “race” wouldn’t make any sense here anyway, since no Jew of that day would ever consider the possibility that their race of people could “pass away” given their assuredness of special divine promises of favor. We also see this from the whole context of the Jewish milieu and from what we read in the rest of the New Testament itself. We read of Jesus saying: “I tell you the truth, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes” (Matt. 10:23). Speaking to the Sanhedrin during his trial Jesus reportedly said, “you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven." (Mark 14:16; Matt. 26:64). The meaning is obvious.
Another Skeptic Weighs in On a Craig/Loftus Debate
If you want to get my attention comment on whether you would like to see me debate my former professor, William Lane Craig, since that's what I'd like to see happen. People on both sides of the fence are calling for such a debate, although some skeptics are hesitant to do so because of recent losses to Craig. Reasonably Aaron weighed in on this and said something amazing about me:
I'm a huge fan of John W. Loftus and think he brings more to New Atheism than the four horseman combined. In fact I would like to see more of Loftus around the place. Why Loftus is not as big if not bigger than Hitchens is beyond me. Link
May 14, 2009
Where is Jesus's Diary? Information As A Product, Not A Byproduct
I'd like to propose an analogy to represent the relationship between God, Us, the Bible and the World. God would be in charge, and the source and producer of information, and the majority of us would be his potential customer, subscriber or consumer. We would have a value to him and lets assign the value the number 1. So if one of us 'subscribes' to Gods information, then he correspondingly gets to add that to his return on investment.
God Continues To Operate In The Red After 4000 Years.
God is and has been working at a loss since he supposedly made himself known to Abraham. He continues to lose his investment. This year alone potentially AT LEAST 4.5 billion people are going to hell, some of them will be unborn fetuses, some of them will be Muslim Children that don't care anything about differences between religions and politics, and unless their interpretation is correct, some of them will consider themselves Christians. Most of them simply don't find Biblical Information to be believable, in the same way they simply don't find other information to be believable.
World Population: 6,790,062,216 (July 2009 est.), CIA World Fact Book [1]
Christians make up only 1/3 of the world [2] (2,263,354,072 people), and even then they are divided about who the true Christians are, so True Christians make up less than 33% of the world. The cause of divisions between the Christians is the interpretation of the text. If the text were of high enough quality, no interpretation would be needed. It would accurately reflect real world states and the Quality of Knowledge would be high and therefore the outcomes from the use of Biblical Information would improve. There would be fewer denominations, and more Christians. Gods return on investment would improve.
Quality Information and Knowledge
Civilizations are advanced by taking advantage of Quality Information and Knowledge. The machine age and the industrial revolution translated, captured and reproduced with machines the accumulated knowledge of artisans which standardized and sped up production of Goods. The increased productivity and efficiency gave companies competitive advantages. Quality Knowledge was derived from Quality Information and that Quality Information was intrinsically useful.
The Computer revolution and the Information Age transformed how information is captured, stored, distributed and reproduced. It has torn down the traditional boundaries of accessible information and put information on demand at peoples fingertips. It has increased communication and fostered collaboration and created a Global Community of people that produce, provide, maintain and consume information. To ensure quality information, the principles of manufacturing are adapted to guide information production. Quality Information is information that has been treated with some care and control to ensure its accuracy and usefulness. To ensure Information Quality, Information must be treated like a product not a byproduct. Capturing real world states as accurately as possible and as timely as possible using DUE CARE and DILIGENCE is one way to do that. Companies that treat information as a product have a competitive advantage. Quality Knowledge is derived from Quality Information and that Quality Information is useful.
Since the formulation of the principle of Falsifiability and its endorsement by Karl Popper, Science acquired scope and definition. Since that time, co-opting the computer revolution and accessible information, science has also enjoyed a revolution of a sort. Using sound principles and Quality Information, science is a method for creating Quality Knowledge and that information has proven useful. The past fifty years have arguably been the most fruitful in creating useful Quality Information and Knowledge.
Two propositions follow from this. To increase successful outcomes,
1. Organizations must create a reservoir of Quality Information
2. Organizations must use that information to create a reservoir of Quality Knowledge.
Create Knowledge with Quality information
Supposedly God wants to produce Christians, and the bible was created to aid in producing Christians. But the Bible was not created using principles of Information Quality even up to the standards of common inventory, household finance, or tax keeping of the time. The fact that accurate records are important has been understood since merchants started trading. However, scripture didn't use those simple record keeping principles about accuracy. Obviously, The Bibles accuracy and clarity was not of primary importance and the limited and splintered success of Christianity is what you'd expect and typical of organizations that create their information similarly.
Make an Inventory of What You Know In Real Time
Capturing the information about God and Salvation was not given the same importance as God and Salvation or even equivalent importance that a merchant has for his inventory, or even a household shopping list. The representation of God and Salvation in the medium of language is as important as God and Salvation itself, because the medium is supposed to represent it. If the medium doesn't represent its object accurately, then there is no accurate representation of the object to be understood. Therefore the real world states of God and Salvation are not represented anywhere for human understanding. Similar to the inventory, if records don't accurately reflect the real world state of an inventory, then the state of the inventory is unknown. It is demonstrably an open question.
It should be self-evident that the INACCURATE production of information directly NEGATIVELY impacts the PURPOSE for the production of that information.
For example, if I go to a biology lecture and I don't record it or take notes, there is not much point in going. If I don't capture the information as it occurs, then I won't be able to accurately recreate it later on the exam. My score on the exam depends on how well I record that information and am able to review it before the exam. If I were to use someone else's notes, then I'm lucky if they've "taken good notes" and I'm lucky if I don't have to INTERPRET them or look to the book for interpretation due to missing information, inconsistent representation or ambiguity. If the information is treated as a product, and DUE CARE and DILIGENCE is used to ensure that it is captured accurately in real time, then it will be of higher quality than if it is treated as a byproduct and captured after the fact from memory. The Quality of that information directly impacts the quality of Knowledge that is derived from it, and this principle is put into practice and used every second of every day and is measured periodically by such things as tests in school.
Where is Jesus' Diary? Examples of Treating Information As A Product
At the time of Christ, the Roman Centurion, in charge of one hundred troops kept a daily log book and passed that information up to his commander and that information made its way up the chain of command to be used in logistics and decision making[3].
Optometrist
When I go to the Optometrist, I do a few tasks, and the optometrist records some values on a piece of paper. Those values represent the real world state of my lenses. Any interpretation by the manufacturer of that prescription will lead to increased risk of inaccurate production of the lenses.
Airline Safety
Similarly in the airline industry, inspecting and recording the states and results of maintenance is treated as a representation of the state of the aircraft itself. If the records show that aspects of the airplane are out of tolerance, the airplane is taken out of commission.
Medical Records
In the medical field, the record that represents the health of the patient must necessarily be as accurate as possible because it is used to make decisions on the welfare of the patient.
Copying a Song From A CD
When you want to make a copy of a song off of a CD you have many options about the sampling rate. The Sample rate is how often the computer records the state of the song in realtime. The more often the the computer samples the song, the higher the quality of the copy, and you can hear the difference. It is a perceptible demonstration of Information Quality principles.
In each of these cases information is treated as a product. The person who gathers the information acts in the role of the information provider. In the case where the information is inconsistent, ambiguous or missing, a reassessment is necessary before any sound decisions or conclusions can be made. The Quality of that Information directly impacts the Quality of Knowledge derived from that information which directly leads to measurable outcomes.
Information Quality is Quantifiable and Measurable.
High Quality Information has several characteristics that distinguish it from lower quality information. Biblical Information has few of these characteristics. For example, even Christians, the consumers of information in the bible, are divided about what is accurate, and what is metaphor and this is the underlying reason for the different denominations within Christianity.
Its not a "representation of the body of Christ", its the result of Information that has a low Interpretability score.
Therefore, God continues to operate in the red after 4000 years,
not because human beings reject him,
but because they simply don't get it.
Because the Information Providers simply and demonstrably didn't do a good job.
List of Information Quality Dimensions And Their Categories That Are Used To Derive Metrics
INTRINSIC
- Free-of-Error (a dimension of Accuracy)
- Objectivity
- Believability
- Reputation
REPRESENTATIONAL
- Interpretability
- Ease of understanding
- Concise representation
- Consistent representation
CONTEXTUAL
- Relevancy
- Value-added
- Timeliness
- Completeness
- Amount of information
ACCESSIBILITY
- Access
- Security
Further Reading and References
1. CIA World Factbook
2.Religion by Adherents
3. The Laws Of The Roman People, Callie Williamson, page 209
Quality Information and Knowledge, Chapters 1, 2 and 3.
Kuan-Tsae, Yang W. Lee, Richard Y. Wang
Prentice Hall PTR, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 07458
MIT Total Data Quality Management Program
God Continues To Operate In The Red After 4000 Years.
God is and has been working at a loss since he supposedly made himself known to Abraham. He continues to lose his investment. This year alone potentially AT LEAST 4.5 billion people are going to hell, some of them will be unborn fetuses, some of them will be Muslim Children that don't care anything about differences between religions and politics, and unless their interpretation is correct, some of them will consider themselves Christians. Most of them simply don't find Biblical Information to be believable, in the same way they simply don't find other information to be believable.
World Population: 6,790,062,216 (July 2009 est.), CIA World Fact Book [1]
Christians make up only 1/3 of the world [2] (2,263,354,072 people), and even then they are divided about who the true Christians are, so True Christians make up less than 33% of the world. The cause of divisions between the Christians is the interpretation of the text. If the text were of high enough quality, no interpretation would be needed. It would accurately reflect real world states and the Quality of Knowledge would be high and therefore the outcomes from the use of Biblical Information would improve. There would be fewer denominations, and more Christians. Gods return on investment would improve.
Quality Information and Knowledge
Civilizations are advanced by taking advantage of Quality Information and Knowledge. The machine age and the industrial revolution translated, captured and reproduced with machines the accumulated knowledge of artisans which standardized and sped up production of Goods. The increased productivity and efficiency gave companies competitive advantages. Quality Knowledge was derived from Quality Information and that Quality Information was intrinsically useful.
The Computer revolution and the Information Age transformed how information is captured, stored, distributed and reproduced. It has torn down the traditional boundaries of accessible information and put information on demand at peoples fingertips. It has increased communication and fostered collaboration and created a Global Community of people that produce, provide, maintain and consume information. To ensure quality information, the principles of manufacturing are adapted to guide information production. Quality Information is information that has been treated with some care and control to ensure its accuracy and usefulness. To ensure Information Quality, Information must be treated like a product not a byproduct. Capturing real world states as accurately as possible and as timely as possible using DUE CARE and DILIGENCE is one way to do that. Companies that treat information as a product have a competitive advantage. Quality Knowledge is derived from Quality Information and that Quality Information is useful.
Since the formulation of the principle of Falsifiability and its endorsement by Karl Popper, Science acquired scope and definition. Since that time, co-opting the computer revolution and accessible information, science has also enjoyed a revolution of a sort. Using sound principles and Quality Information, science is a method for creating Quality Knowledge and that information has proven useful. The past fifty years have arguably been the most fruitful in creating useful Quality Information and Knowledge.
Two propositions follow from this. To increase successful outcomes,
1. Organizations must create a reservoir of Quality Information
2. Organizations must use that information to create a reservoir of Quality Knowledge.
Create Knowledge with Quality information
Supposedly God wants to produce Christians, and the bible was created to aid in producing Christians. But the Bible was not created using principles of Information Quality even up to the standards of common inventory, household finance, or tax keeping of the time. The fact that accurate records are important has been understood since merchants started trading. However, scripture didn't use those simple record keeping principles about accuracy. Obviously, The Bibles accuracy and clarity was not of primary importance and the limited and splintered success of Christianity is what you'd expect and typical of organizations that create their information similarly.
Make an Inventory of What You Know In Real Time
Capturing the information about God and Salvation was not given the same importance as God and Salvation or even equivalent importance that a merchant has for his inventory, or even a household shopping list. The representation of God and Salvation in the medium of language is as important as God and Salvation itself, because the medium is supposed to represent it. If the medium doesn't represent its object accurately, then there is no accurate representation of the object to be understood. Therefore the real world states of God and Salvation are not represented anywhere for human understanding. Similar to the inventory, if records don't accurately reflect the real world state of an inventory, then the state of the inventory is unknown. It is demonstrably an open question.
It should be self-evident that the INACCURATE production of information directly NEGATIVELY impacts the PURPOSE for the production of that information.
For example, if I go to a biology lecture and I don't record it or take notes, there is not much point in going. If I don't capture the information as it occurs, then I won't be able to accurately recreate it later on the exam. My score on the exam depends on how well I record that information and am able to review it before the exam. If I were to use someone else's notes, then I'm lucky if they've "taken good notes" and I'm lucky if I don't have to INTERPRET them or look to the book for interpretation due to missing information, inconsistent representation or ambiguity. If the information is treated as a product, and DUE CARE and DILIGENCE is used to ensure that it is captured accurately in real time, then it will be of higher quality than if it is treated as a byproduct and captured after the fact from memory. The Quality of that information directly impacts the quality of Knowledge that is derived from it, and this principle is put into practice and used every second of every day and is measured periodically by such things as tests in school.
Where is Jesus' Diary? Examples of Treating Information As A Product
At the time of Christ, the Roman Centurion, in charge of one hundred troops kept a daily log book and passed that information up to his commander and that information made its way up the chain of command to be used in logistics and decision making[3].
Optometrist
When I go to the Optometrist, I do a few tasks, and the optometrist records some values on a piece of paper. Those values represent the real world state of my lenses. Any interpretation by the manufacturer of that prescription will lead to increased risk of inaccurate production of the lenses.
Airline Safety
Similarly in the airline industry, inspecting and recording the states and results of maintenance is treated as a representation of the state of the aircraft itself. If the records show that aspects of the airplane are out of tolerance, the airplane is taken out of commission.
Medical Records
In the medical field, the record that represents the health of the patient must necessarily be as accurate as possible because it is used to make decisions on the welfare of the patient.
Copying a Song From A CD
When you want to make a copy of a song off of a CD you have many options about the sampling rate. The Sample rate is how often the computer records the state of the song in realtime. The more often the the computer samples the song, the higher the quality of the copy, and you can hear the difference. It is a perceptible demonstration of Information Quality principles.
In each of these cases information is treated as a product. The person who gathers the information acts in the role of the information provider. In the case where the information is inconsistent, ambiguous or missing, a reassessment is necessary before any sound decisions or conclusions can be made. The Quality of that Information directly impacts the Quality of Knowledge derived from that information which directly leads to measurable outcomes.
Information Quality is Quantifiable and Measurable.
High Quality Information has several characteristics that distinguish it from lower quality information. Biblical Information has few of these characteristics. For example, even Christians, the consumers of information in the bible, are divided about what is accurate, and what is metaphor and this is the underlying reason for the different denominations within Christianity.
Its not a "representation of the body of Christ", its the result of Information that has a low Interpretability score.
Therefore, God continues to operate in the red after 4000 years,
not because human beings reject him,
but because they simply don't get it.
Because the Information Providers simply and demonstrably didn't do a good job.
List of Information Quality Dimensions And Their Categories That Are Used To Derive Metrics
INTRINSIC
- Free-of-Error (a dimension of Accuracy)
- Objectivity
- Believability
- Reputation
REPRESENTATIONAL
- Interpretability
- Ease of understanding
- Concise representation
- Consistent representation
CONTEXTUAL
- Relevancy
- Value-added
- Timeliness
- Completeness
- Amount of information
ACCESSIBILITY
- Access
- Security
Further Reading and References
1. CIA World Factbook
2.Religion by Adherents
3. The Laws Of The Roman People, Callie Williamson, page 209
Quality Information and Knowledge, Chapters 1, 2 and 3.
Kuan-Tsae, Yang W. Lee, Richard Y. Wang
Prentice Hall PTR, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 07458
MIT Total Data Quality Management Program
Embedded Parasites
Watch this video on Embedded Parasites by Jim McKerrow. Very interesting stuff here.
May 12, 2009
A Lesson From Dr. Dan Lambert on Dealing With My Book
[Written by John W. Loftus] Dr. Lambert is a professor for John Brown University; what looks like a good Evangelical college. He's using my book in a class titled: "Capstone Seminar in Christian Life." He sent me an email about the class:
I appreciate his intellectual integrity and congenial spirit toward me on the issues that separate us, which is also something Christians can learn from him. We have a somewhat shared background but we have never personally met. He's sending his students here to DC to check us out. Welcome to you all.
The class I’m using your book for is a special May Term class. Only 4 weeks long and about 30 class hours. I have chosen to only use your book and no others since it’s such a short class. You give readers enough to digest without adding in others like Flew, McGrath, or Dawkins (yea, I chose you over them!). It’s a senior-level class and we typically have 5-8 students take it in May. I have 15 students this time due to the topic. We have met twice already and they are engaging well, so I am excited to see where we go.He also sent me his syllabus where he offers some great advice to his students and to Christians everywhere who want to deal with the arguments in my book. I consider his advice to be a model for Christian would be apologists:
Reading Reflection Papers: Read VERY thoroughly the assigned chapters for each day. Use a highlighter or pen to mark in the book. Write one page on each chapter about what you read. Do this in a format as if you were having lunch with Loftus and discussing his book with him. You cannot use the Bible to try to refute his points or to support your own. You must use logic and critical thinking primarily. THIS WILL BE MUCH HARDER THAN YOU ANTICIPATE!Whether it'll be much harder than they anticipate I don't know, but read again what this Christian professor said:
You cannot use the Bible to try to refute his points or to support your own. You must use logic and critical thinking primarily.I especially like the fact that Dr. Lambert did the reasonable thing by forbidding Bible quotes to refute my points, since if they did so it will not have an effect on someone who doesn't believe the Bible. Kudos to him on that. I think this is the difference between ignorant Bible thumpers and intelligent Christians. Lambert wants to educate and train intelligent Christians for ministry, not Bible thumpers.
I appreciate his intellectual integrity and congenial spirit toward me on the issues that separate us, which is also something Christians can learn from him. We have a somewhat shared background but we have never personally met. He's sending his students here to DC to check us out. Welcome to you all.
May 11, 2009
On Recent Debate Losses to William Lane Craig
Atheist Bloggers have been hesitant in recent weeks about recommending or promoting one of their own to debate Craig, given recent losses in Hitchens and even Carrier. Some of them have taken it personally, describing these losses as "our losses," and that "we've failed."
Knowing atheists and freethinkers like I do so well, who is the "our" in "our losses," and who is the “we” in “we’ve failed”? Herding us is like herding cats, right? Others failed. I didn’t. You didn’t. Atheists didn’t. I choose who speaks for me. So does every atheist. The media doesn’t choose them for me. Book sales don’t do it either. From these atheists I still haven’t seen any reasonable connection between "Hitchens lost" to "I lost," or to "atheism lost." I really haven’t. I think some atheists do though. That’s why they're hesitant to promote another debate against Craig so that THEY don’t lose again. Christianity will not be debunked in proportion to the degree with which atheists win against Craig anyway. Debates are both entertaining and educational. Like a boxing match we get to watch two people spar for the approval of the audience. But truth is not decided by debate. I think atheists know this, but the words they use say otherwise.
There is a liberalizing tendency with evangelicals over the years. It won’t be atheists that lead them down this road, which can and does lead to atheism. The liberals do this just fine without us. The real debate isn’t between atheists and evangelicals anyway. It’s just that both groups in America seem the most passionate about these issues. The real debate is between evangelicals and other conservatives within the Lutheran, Methodist, Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist and Disciples of Christ churches, and so forth. Then the debate switches to the evangelicals against the liberals, and the liberals will literally clean their clocks. Ever wonder why Craig doesn't debate liberals? That's why I use the arguments of the liberals in my book so often. Further down the road the debate becomes one between evangelicals and every religion in the world. Evangelicals cannot even win the debate between themselves, much less with the liberals, and even less with the many other world religions. But as soon as they apply the same skepticism against their own evangelical faith that they use against other religious faiths they will become agnostics and atheists. This is what I think will happen if they apply my Outsider Test for Faith.
So relax atheists. Religion is here to stay, probably as long as there are human beings. In the meantime let's enjoy the debates and learn from them how to effectively debunk the Christian faith, since after all, that's the one we're most familiar with in the English speaking world.
Knowing atheists and freethinkers like I do so well, who is the "our" in "our losses," and who is the “we” in “we’ve failed”? Herding us is like herding cats, right? Others failed. I didn’t. You didn’t. Atheists didn’t. I choose who speaks for me. So does every atheist. The media doesn’t choose them for me. Book sales don’t do it either. From these atheists I still haven’t seen any reasonable connection between "Hitchens lost" to "I lost," or to "atheism lost." I really haven’t. I think some atheists do though. That’s why they're hesitant to promote another debate against Craig so that THEY don’t lose again. Christianity will not be debunked in proportion to the degree with which atheists win against Craig anyway. Debates are both entertaining and educational. Like a boxing match we get to watch two people spar for the approval of the audience. But truth is not decided by debate. I think atheists know this, but the words they use say otherwise.
There is a liberalizing tendency with evangelicals over the years. It won’t be atheists that lead them down this road, which can and does lead to atheism. The liberals do this just fine without us. The real debate isn’t between atheists and evangelicals anyway. It’s just that both groups in America seem the most passionate about these issues. The real debate is between evangelicals and other conservatives within the Lutheran, Methodist, Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist and Disciples of Christ churches, and so forth. Then the debate switches to the evangelicals against the liberals, and the liberals will literally clean their clocks. Ever wonder why Craig doesn't debate liberals? That's why I use the arguments of the liberals in my book so often. Further down the road the debate becomes one between evangelicals and every religion in the world. Evangelicals cannot even win the debate between themselves, much less with the liberals, and even less with the many other world religions. But as soon as they apply the same skepticism against their own evangelical faith that they use against other religious faiths they will become agnostics and atheists. This is what I think will happen if they apply my Outsider Test for Faith.
So relax atheists. Religion is here to stay, probably as long as there are human beings. In the meantime let's enjoy the debates and learn from them how to effectively debunk the Christian faith, since after all, that's the one we're most familiar with in the English speaking world.
May 10, 2009
A New Book On the Resurrection I Recommend
Kris D. Komarnitsky just published a new book on the resurrection titled, Doubting Jesus’ Resurrection: What Happened in the Black Box? As you'll see when you read my review by following the link, I think it's a great introduction to the topic from the skeptical side of the fence.
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