What Strain of God Virus Was Spread in Your Home?

I was raised in a genuine American cult. The made-in America kind of religion that is unique to the spirit of this country. If you don't fancy the religious offerings of the day, invent a new one. Eventually, people will begin to follow you if you've got the courage to preach your truth and the intestinal fortitude to stick it out until the right group of people stumble across your church and decide to cast their lot with you.  

Christian Apologist Vincent Torley Says I've "rendered a service to philosophy"

We've been discussing private miracles. [See tag below]. I’ve argued private miracles must pass the same tests that third parties require. People—I didn’t say children—who claim to have experienced a private miracle—I didn’t say a mere extraordinary event—can only say it was real after rigorously verifying it, by asking a whole slew of honest questions. They need a sufficient amount of third party independent corroborative objective evidence for them. This is what reasonable adults should require when it comes to a miracle of the private kind, just as they should require with a miracle claimed by a multitude of people—which happens never.

Torley is arguing that there are private miracles people should believe despite the requirement for sufficient objective third-party evidence. In the course of this debate Torley rewards me with a backhanded slap instead of praise when saying I've "rendered a service to philosophy". He wrote about an Indian Prince who experienced frost for the first time:

There's a famous passage in Hume's Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals (1777) where he writes:

The Indian prince, who refused to believe the first relations concerning the effects of frost, reasoned justly; and it naturally required very strong testimony to engage his assent to facts, that arose from a state of nature, with which he was unacquainted, and which bore so little analogy to those events, of which he had had constant and uniform experience. (Section X, Part I.)

Hume was willing to "bite the bullet" and acknowledge that people following his epistemic principles would sometimes reject as absurd things that later turned out to be genuine - nevertheless, he insisted, they "reasoned justly." Perhaps John is willing to "bite the bullet," or perhaps he wishes to reconsider his views. But what he has done, albeit inadvertently, is show that Humean skepticism, when taken to its logical conclusion (for that's where John's epistemology is derived from) leads to a reductio ad absurdum. And for that, I thank him: he has rendered a service to philosophy. Cheers.

Private Miracles Must Pass the Same Tests That Third Parties Require

In a previous post I made the claim that private miracles must pass the same tests that third parties require. People who claim to have experienced a private miracle can only say it was real after rigorously verifying it, by asking a whole slew of honest questions. They need a sufficient amount of third party independent corroborative objective evidence for them. If there's no objective evidence to convince others, there would be no objective evidence to convince oneself either. Rather than being an experience of a real private miracle, the experience could come from an accident, hallucination, brain malfunction, wish-fulfillment, sleep deprivation or a drug. So whether private or public all miracle claims should be able to show a sufficient amount of third party independent corroborative objective evidence.

Consider an example of an extraordinary kind, one that might be within the realm of possibilities. Let's say you experienced an alien abduction while walking home from a birthday party, in the afternoon on a clear day. The aliens take you to their planet in a different solar system of the Milky Way Galaxy to do experiments on you, 10 light years away. When done with you they bring you back. You are convinced this really happened. So you immediately run to tell everyone what you experienced. But no one saw the alien space-ship pick you up, or drop you off. No one has aged either. No astronomer can confirm the solar system with its star exists. You have no scars from their experiments. You have no scientifically advanced artifacts from your travels. You have no scientifically advanced information to share.

Should YOU continue believing it?

'Great' Bible Texts…that Really Aren't So Great

Extreme religion in disguise

So, be honest now: How many Christians cheerfully open their doors to Jehovah’s Witnesses who come knocking? It’s not so easy to knock on doors in Manhattan, so it’s common to see these intrepid missionaries at their literature tables in the New York City subway. I have yet to see passers-by interacting with them, so their hit ratio (getting people to hear their pitch) is probably no higher than when they ring doorbells.

The irony, of course, is that Christians who rebuff or ignore Jehovah’s Witnesses are on the same family tree of faith; they share belief in the ancient Jesus cult. It’s just that the JWs are more aggressive about it. And, of course, there are now thousands of variations on the old cult, as Christianity has splintered endlessly. This fragmentation can be traced to endless Christian fighting about theology, but above all to the disagreements in the original source documents, i.e., the gospels and epistles.

Another Case Study In How To Defend Obfuscate The Christian Faith, Part 2

Previously I had written a post titled, Subjective Private Religious Experiences Prove Nothing! Randal Rauser objected to it, so I wrote another one titled, Another Case Study In How To Defend Obfuscate The Christian Faith, Part 1. I'm finally getting around to Part 2, where I offer four tests for the veracity of private subjective miracle claims.

Darren Slade wrote an Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion entry on Miracle Eyewitness Reports, containing a wealth of information packed into a small entry. It speaks to what remains of any attempt to say someone experienced a private miracle. There are way too many distortions and psychological variables that the so-called witness himself should question his own judgment on the matter. If the so-called eyewitness himself cannot find any independent third party objective corroboration of the alleged miracle, not even he should believe it occurred.

Quotes from Slade on weighing the accuracy of miracle reports:

Dr. Paul Copan: "De-Conversion: Why People Leave the Christian Faith and (Re)Turn to It"

Paul Copan is a friend of mine. Like me, he earned a master's degree under William Lane Craig. Then like me, he went on to study at Marquette University for his PhD. He also wrote a few books, as I have done. See his Wikipedia page for more.

Recently Paul gave a talk with the above title. Apparently he's feeling the heat from polls showing what appears to be the demise of evangelicalism. In his talk he discusses several important ex-Christians and why they left the fold. He includes me at 8:10, and then again when discussing The Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) at 22:10.




Copan considers the challenges that ex-Christians present for the Christian faith. He considers mine to be challenge #1. He does not object to the OTF in his talk. He's embracing it, so it seems, just as Dr. Wallace Marshall has done. That's very significant since Copan served for six years as the President of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. Here are his slides on the OTF:

Christianity and the Witch-Hunt Mentality

It’s alive, potent, and dangerous

It isn’t hard at all to come up with a hundred verses in the gospels and epistles that would shock Christians. We would hear, “How can that be?” or “Well, I don’t believe that!” or “That’s not part of my religion.” Robert Conner doesn’t exaggerate: “The overwhelming majority of Christians know bupkis about what’s in the New Testament.” Even if, at one time or another, they’ve come across the alarming texts, they become masters of denial; their ‘nice religion’ remains invincible. Jesus too remains intact, despite many of the despicable things he (supposedly) believed and said.

Why Do Humans Crave Domination?

Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. 
— John 15:14 

Anyone who embraces the above scripture as the central theme to their relationship with a god must be a submissive at heart. The kind of friendship described in the verse has never appealed to me, but then I have a fairly dominate personality. 

They say the world can be divided into cat lovers and dog lovers, beer drinkers and wine drinkers or dominants and submissives.

Another Bible Chapter that Wouldn’t Be Missed

Somebody please get the scissors

My challenge to Christians—my plea, actually: Read the gospels and epistles carefully, meticulously, critically. Bring to these texts the same due diligence that you would apply when reviewing a mortgage or employment contract; you don’t want to be cheated or fooled. Let’s face it: pastors and priests are paid propagandists; yes, I keep saying this, because their urgent concern is to make all the stories come out right and banish doubts. Christians, you can do better than that: do the tough homework. The pews might empty fast—except for the folks who want to be conned, and don’t even notice that it’s happening.

Debunking Christianity, One Graphic at a Time! (Installment 2)

What Richard Carrier said!

What Guy Harrison said!

What David Madison said!

For Installment 1, click here.

Hey, feel free to copy these and spread them around!

Could You Think Your Way Out Of These Religions?

Here are some more religion photos of the week. Let's say people who don't believe in Jesus go to hell when they die. Then how would you go about convincing yourself you were born into the wrong religion? Try the Outsider Test for Faith. If your faith is the true one then your god should make it pass the test while others will fail it.

Debunking Christianity, One Graphic at a Time!

What John Loftus said!

What Robert Conner said!

What David Fitzgerald said!

Hey, feel free to copy these and spread them around.

"The most charitable thing we can say about faith is that it's likely to be false."

The title quote above comes from a talk by Peter Boghossian. He also said "We are forced to conclude that a tremendous number of people are delusional. There is no other conclusion one can draw." In this week's religion photos of the week you should see why. LINK. Christian, just ask what if you were them? You could've been.

When True Christians Beat Up on True Christians

A review of Tim Sledge’s Goodbye Jesus

How was it possible? How did I fall from grace so totally, i.e., go from being a Methodist pastor—with a PhD in Biblical studies no less—to denying the reality of God? Well, that’s no mystery according to some devout folks. One Christian blasted my story of how it happened: “‪If he can write a book this full of lying opinions, he could never have been a Christian to begin with! Answer to God if your book leads even one soul astray!”

‬‬‬‬ We can assume that this irate believer hadn’t actually read the details of my departure from the faith, but, had she done so, she would have said, “Aha, I knew it!” From the get-go, as a youth, my approach to Christianity was bookish, and I never had anything like an alter-call moment, ‘giving my life to Jesus.’ Eventually, when I saw through the Christian version of the cosmos, I was able to walk away from it—without too much anguish. I had never ‘belonged to Jesus.’ So by that measure, I admit to the snobbish True Christians, “No, I wasn’t a ‘Christian to begin with.’”