On the Existence of Jesus, Again and Again

Update: Jerry Coyne links to William Lane Craig's dismissal of Stephen Law, and Richard Carrier again responds to Bart Ehrman. Enjoy and discuss.

The Freethought Festival Was Fantastic!

I just returned from this wonderful model of a freethought convention. The speakers were lined up by Chris Calvey who did a wonderful job of getting top-notch speakers in a wide diversity of topics. If you go to the "schedule" link they will be putting up audio and video of the talks. For now let me recommend Veronica Drantz's talk, "The Gender Binary & LGBTI People - Myth and Medical Malpractice." I wonder how effective her talk will be without the video, since she used a number of very helpful charts. I was aghast at how doctors have treated Intersex people. Richard Carrier's talk on "The Historicity of Jesus" was superb. If he documents his arguments extensively, as I know he will, then I can easily endorse his next book on the topic. It will advance the discussion, I guarantee it. Sean Faircloth is traveling around the country promoting a Ten Point Plan for Secularizing America, which I am excited about. It was good meeting Valerie Tarico, JB Eberhard, PZ Myers (who is coming out with a book titled, "The Happy Atheist"), and DJ Grothe, for starters, people I hadn't met before. Annie Laurie Gaylor sent personal greetings from Dan Barker who was in Pennsylvania this past weekend. She said to me that Dan had asked her to say hello to everyone, especially to Richard Carrier and me, which I thought was nice. While I wasn't a speaker I was interviewed on a radio program where I was asked what I thought of the Festival. When that is made available I'll link to it.

I got back and received the good news that Prometheus Books has accepted my proposal for a book on "The Outsider Test for Faith." Yep, I'm excited. Now to finish up the manuscript.

The Christian Reaction to Jesus Mythicism

Evangelical Christian apologist David Marshall, who has written several books and comments here under fire, provides for us the typical reaction to the atheist claim that there is no man behind the Jesus we find in the four canonical gospels. Writing to me he said:

Biblical Scholar Thom Stark Weighs In On Richard Carrier

I do not enjoy this at all, but since it's a hot topic Thom Stark has joined the fray concerning Jesus Mythicism. One thing we should be thankful for is that the Ehrman/Carrier exchange has brought the issue to a head so we can see the arguments pro and con. Link. In the second paragraph Stark links to criticisms of Carrier by biblical scholar James McGrath.

Bart D. Ehrman Responds to Richard Carrier *Sigh*

Link. Damn, aren't there better issues to deal with? Hey, I know, let's take aim at believers. What a novel idea? That's what I do here at DC.

Did Jesus Exist? An All Out War Is Going On

New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman in his book Did Jesus Exist? weighed in by arguing along with me that Jesus existed, although I have not had the time to read his book yet. Actually, my argument is a bit more nuanced than that, as seen in chapter 12 of my anthology The Christian Delusion, that "at best Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet." Well, my friend Richard Carrier rips Ehrman a new one, and I mean he rips into him in a fashion that is unbecoming of the cool headed detached scholar that he is. Then PZ Myers, a scientist with no specialty in biblical studies, endorsed what Carrier had written. Jerry Coyne, another scientist, one who recognizes he's no expert in the matter also weighed in, saying something I think is important:

One Reason Why the Angry Atheist Approach Doesn't Work

Previously I argued the the angry atheist era is over. Now it's true that most believers will see angry atheists no matter what atheists say. But there are atheists who rant against religion, who refuse to treat it respectfully. There is room for venting. I understand that. Sometimes it can even be effective. But generally speaking if we want to reach out to believers we'll have to respect their beliefs to the extent that we can. Here is a recent review of my book WIBA from a doubting Christian who says it best:

*Sigh* There are Just Too Many Ways to Be Christian

Christians cannot agree with themselves. So why should I take any of them seriously? Believers have no method to settle their own disputes because faith has no method. Can you at least try to understand this? Here is an example. Evangelical Christians will bristle when they read what a liberal wrote about the resurrection, which I'll quote below. But this is the same type of reasoning skeptics see when we read of your own defenses of the resurrection.

The Era of The Angry Atheist is Over!

This post in July of 2010 by Steve Zara closes with:

I propose a new strident atheism. No playing the games of theists. No concessions. No talk of evidence that can change minds, when their beliefs are deliberately placed beyond logic, beyond evidence. Let's not get taken in by the fraud of religion. Let's not play their shell-game. Link

He carries on a tradition started by Richard Dawkins himself. In February 2002, four years before his book The God Delusion was released in 2006, Dawkins called atheists to arms in a TED talk. His talk wasn’t aired until April of 2007. He makes it clear he wants a campaign much like the gays used to gain acceptability in American society. His final sentence was, "let's all stop being so damned respectful."

Grief Best Explains The Resurrection Hypothesis

Gerd Lüdemann is a scholar many of us are familiar with, having written important books like: Resurrection of Jesus; The Resurrection Of Christ; and What Really Happened to Jesus? He argues in a recent piece:

By a bold if unconscious leap, Peter entered the world of his wishes. As a result he “saw” Jesus, concluded that his Lord had risen from the dead, and by witnessing to his vision made it possible for the other disciples to “see” Jesus in the same way. It would therefore seem all but certain that the Christian church is to some extent the historical result of the disciples’ grief. Link

My Counterpart, Ibn Warraq on Islam

I've met Ibn. He's doing to Islam what I'm attempting to do with Christianity. Check out his books: Why I Am Not a Muslim; Virgins? What Virgins?; Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out; What the Koran Really Says;The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. He has a much more dangerous task than I do since Christians have been tamed by the Enlightenment. He gets the same tired responses I do too, most notably, "You just hate Allah," or "You aren't dealing with my kind of Muslim faith." Hint Folks: That's because there are too many ways to be Muslim just as there are too many ways to be Christian. What I find funny is that Christians and Orthodox Jews can like Ibn's books, just like Muslims and Orthodox Jews can like mine. So, tell us once again how Natural Theology grants a Christian anything? It's all empty rhetoric from the emperor who has no clothes on.

Professor Victor Reppert on Natural Theology

Reppert is a good guy, but as a defender of Natural Theology he just doesn't get it.

Where Was God When the Titanic Sank 100 Years Ago?

Just think, God could have foreseen this tragedy and miraculously averted the iceberg hours before the Titanic came into its path. If he had done this no one would be the wiser! He could have remained hidden if that's his goal. For believers to say God does this from time to time then his so-called "interventions" look indistinguishable from chance. In other words, there is no evidence that he intervenes at all. So having faith that God intervenes even once is exceedingly improbable.

Dr. Hector Avalos vs Keith Darrel: "Is The Bible the Source of Absolute Moral Rules for Today?"

The debate was held on April 12, 2012, at Iowa State University. Q & A below:

How To Destroy Natural Theology in One Fell Swoop

A wide diversity of theists such as found in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all argue to the existence of God using the cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments. But these arguments are mistakenly thought by them all to show their own particular God exists. For instance, I once skimmed through a massive intelligent design book that argued for Allah’s existence.

One Difference Between Science and Faith

The difference: Scientists eventually come to a consensus whereas religionists can only agree about what they've always agreed to, that supernatural beings and/or forces exist. Look at what science has accumulated by contrast:

The "Christian" God Hypothesis Vs Others

Christian, let's recap what you need to do and see if you can do it based on faith:

Is This Faith, Really?

Christians are saying I have faith because "faith is assenting to a proposition that could conceivably be false." So let's compare ordinary scientific claims to extraordinary religious claims. [Click on the chart] If I have faith then there is a gigantic difference between scientific "faith" and religious faith. At best, miracle claims are extremely improbable rare non-repeatable non-testable ones. At worst, scientific claims are extremely probable regular repeatable testable ones. Q.E.D.

Christian Apologists Are Just Plain Dumb

Dr. Michael Licona argues against the claim that accepting the resurrection of Jesus is a matter of faith in this short video. What is dumb, absolutely dumb about his explanation? It's that he automatically contrasts what he thinks with metaphysical naturalism, that's what. He doesn't contrast what he thinks with the liberal Jesus who arose spiritually, or the Jewish or Muslim denials. Scientologists deny the resurrection as do spiritualists, deists, and process theologians. But no, he thinks accepting the resurrection doesn't involve faith because he thinks science is based on faith. Such utter nonsense this is. If it's not a matter of faith then why do scientists agree so much and religionists disagree about a wide number of issues? A fact is a fact you see. If it's not a fact, then it has to be accepted by an irrational leap over the probabilities, that is, by faith. Sheesh.

Why Do Christians Love Atheist Philosopher Thomas Nagel?

The answer to this question lies in the fact that for some unexplained reason they both share an illicit grounding for knowledge. Thomas Nagel is one of the reasons I have very little respect for scientifically uninformed philosophers even if they are atheists. His forthcoming book is titled, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False.About this book we read on Amazon:

Explaining Faith So That Even David Marshall Can Understand ;-)

Written by Johnathan Pearse

David
Part of the problem is that you are extracting these issues from their real world application and in a sense making them irrelevant. Let's apply the faith vs reason to real life instances:

"Think Atheist" Interview About My Revised WIBA Book

The Think Atheist podcast was a finalist in the About.com "Reader's Choice Awards for 2011," and it's well deserved. I was recently interviewed for the program about the revised and expanded edition of my book, Why I Became an Atheist.It's Episode 53 APR 8, 2012. Enjoy.

Quote of the Day, By Yours Truly ;-)

I think the Christian delusion is harmful if for no other reason than that it weaken one's critical thinking skills. If faith is the basis for what one thinks then anything can be believed. It also adversely impacts us in polls that bolster the delusion in others, in donations to faith-based causes that are harmful, in TV, radio, and book buying habits that grant spokespersons for the delusion a bigger voice than warranted, and in voting patterns that place deluded people in power who in turn cause harm to individual people, one's particular nation, and the world at large.

Peter Boghossian, "Faith Based Belief Processes Are Unreliable"

Jesus, the Easter Bunny, and Other Delusions: Just Say No! from Philosophy News on Vimeo

This is a must see video! You can skip to 9:00 to hear Dr. Boghossian's talk if you wish. I love his passion! I love what he said about delusions at the 26:00 mark: "We are forced to conclude that a tremendous number of people are delusional. There is no other conclusion one can draw..." At 33:00 he utilizes the Outsider Test for Faith! And at 38:30 he says, "The most charitable thing we can say about faith is that it's likely to be false." I honestly think that sometime in the future there won't be such a thing as an informed Christian, especially an informed Evangelical. An informed Christian will become an oxymoron. In fact, it's already here.

The Final Outline of My Book On the Outsider Test for Faith

See what you think:

"The less evidence you have...the more faith you need"

I have argued that faith is a leap over the probabilities. And I have been told this is nonsense by Christian apologists from David Marshall to Randal Rauser and others. They have said this is a gross mischaracterization of their Christian faith. Really? Then maybe they can explain why Norman L. Geisler (arguably the biggest name in Christian apologetics) and co-writer Frank Turek say in their book, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist,"The less evidence you have for your position, the more faith you need to believe it (and vice versa). Faith covers a gap in knowledge." (p. 26) My question is was and always be, what does faith add to the probabilities? As far as I can tell leaping that gap is irrational. [Click on the tag "Faith" below to see other posts on faith].

Johnathan Pearce's Book "The Little Book of Unholy Questions"

Johnathan comments here as Johnnyp76. While I haven't yet read the book it's getting some good reviews. Check out The Little Book of Unholy Questions.While you're at it check out his previous book, Free Will?: An Investigation Into Whether We Have Free Will.One reviewer of the "Free Will" book says it's "Better than Sam Harris' book on Free Will."

On Easter 1973 I Became a Christian

That was thirty-nine years ago. 39 YEARS AGO! I have decided that unless something drastically happens to change my mind, this time next year I will quit what I'm doing. I only have one life. I think forty years spent on a delusion will have been enough. First I'll have to find something else to do that will annoy people, but what it is I haven't figured out yet. ;-)

Quote of the Day, by Sir_Russ

God isn't the 300 people who died in the plane crash. No, no, no. God is the one person who survived it. God is that unlikely event.

God isn't the death, mayhem, destruction and chaos of the tornado. No, no, no. God is the miracle puppy which lived through it.

God isn't the hundreds of US children who die every year due to medical neglect by their Christian Science parents. No, no, no. God is the one who may have suffered needlessly, but didn't die.

Christian faith is blindness to manifest horror in favor of comfort. Christian faith is picking over a cataclysm looking for anything to indulge their insatiable lust for feeling good. Link

Statistics On the Decline of Religion in England

This paper from the Equality and Human Rights Commission has some interesting statistics on the decline of religion in England. Table 7, for example, shows that 55.3% of respondents age 18-25 claim "no religion", while only 22.1% of respondents age 65+ claim "no religion" (a change of roughly 6% per decade of age). And, while someone might argue that people simply become more religious as they get older, the declining rates of religiousness and church attendance over the past few decades says that it's a real decline -- 34.4% of all respondents in 1985 claimed no religion, while 43.4% of all respondents in 2008 claimed no religion (a change of roughly 4% per decade). Table 11 also has some interesting numbers on the percentage of people in 1990 and 2008 who "believe and always have" (declining), "believe and didn't before" (a small percent), "don't believe and did before" (increasing), "don't believe and never have" (increasing). The numbers show that people are three times as likely to say that they "don't believe and did before" than they are to say that they "believe, but didn't before". --Hat Tip to Andrew Fakemam for this.

What Evidence Shows Us Atheism is Winning?

Is it? Pastor Timothy Keller argues in his book The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism that what we've seen since the rise of the so-called New Atheists are growing numbers of people among both Christians and atheists. He argues that people in the middle are being forced to choose between us so there are fewer nominal non-committal milquetoast people in the middle. So what evidence shows you that atheism is winning, really winning, in America today? Let's include anecdotal and personal evidence just for shits and giggles. ;-)

Answering Objections to the OTF

I'm working on answering objections to the Outsider Test for Faith and was wondering if anyone can do better than I have done. Here are Christian apologist Norman Geisler's objections:

1) “If ‘most of us most of the time come to our beliefs for a variety of reasons having little to do with empirical evidence and logical reasoning,’ then can we not assume that Loftus came to his atheistic views the same way?”

2) “Further, if one should have the presumption of skepticism toward any belief system, especially his own, then why should Loftus not have the presumption of skepticism toward his own atheistic beliefs? The truth is that the outsider test is self-defeating since by it every agnostic should be agnostic about his own agnosticism and every skeptic would be skeptical of his own skepticism.”

3) "One form of the outsider argument leads Loftus to claim ‘believers are truly atheists with regard to all other religions but their own. Atheists just reject one more religion.” But can’t theists use the same basic argument and reject atheism. In brief, atheists are unbelievers with regard to all beliefs other than their own. Why don’t they just become unbelievers with regard to one more belief (namely, their atheism)?”

4) “Further, Loftus’ ‘outsider test' is contrary to common sense. By it we could eliminate the credibility of any holocaust survivor’s testimony because he was an 'insider.' But who better would know what happened than someone who went through it. Likewise, by this odd test one could deny his own self-existence since from an outsiders view (which he should take according to the test) his existence could be doubted or denied as an illusion. But what is more obvious and self-evident than one’s own existence?"

I've numbered them so when you respond you can refer to these separate objections. I'm interested in listening to the debate.

A List of Things Christians Have Been Against

This is interesting from the hand of Ed Babinski.

Science Education is No Guarantee of Skepticism

That's Right.

Playing God: The Loving Psychopath

The Quest to Keep Jesus Relevant

[Written by Joe Holman]

The next time you drive around the historic part of your neighborhood, slow down just enough to get a look at the old-time churches. They’re big and old, especially old. Hell, some of them are so old that if you had the right forensic testing kit, you might genetically match the dried tears of a hand-and-foot slave as he waited on his master, listening to the “nonsense” from the pulpit about some new movement called Abolition. How time flies!

"Do people with no faith have to take the test?"

Victor Reppert asked this, yet another spin on whether atheists should have to take the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF). But I want people to see the OTF as a solution to an incredible amount of religious diversity. This is a problem that needs a solution, you see. No other methods have worked before. The goal is to offer a fair test to find out which religion is true if there is one, and that means such a test should leave room for the possibility that no religion is true. If nothing else then, the OTF is a test for religion precisely because of religious diversity. If people cannot find solutions to problems within a business they hire solution specialists who offer ways to solve it. Mediators find ways to bring people together by offering ways they can see their differences in a better light. That's what the OTF does.