When Miracles Don’t MEASURE Up

God can’t quite manage to SHOW up

It’s pretty easy to spot how religion works: it usually stresses the importance of faith, urging people to skip the crucial step of asking for evidence. The author of John’s gospel is explicit about this approach. The apostle Thomas happened to be out when Jesus made a post-resurrection visit to the group, and was skeptical of their story. A week later, Thomas was present when Jesus showed up again, and the latter said to him (20:27-28): “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” And then he got a bit of a scolding from Jesus: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Miracles and Hume's Reasoning about Testimonial Evidence

On his blog Dr. Bart D. Ehrman posted Michael Shermer's Foreword to my new anthology The Case Against Miracles. You can see teasers on his Facebook page (Dec. 22nd and 23rd). He has made contributor Darren Slade and myself temporary administrators, which is cool. Ehrman has three more selections to post about the book.

In the first one on his blog (not the one on Facebook) I got into a discussion with a believer, brenmcg. I think it went rather well, and helps clarify and expand on why we need objective evidence before we should believe any miracle tales. Enjoy.

Evangelicals are Unprincipled People, In Bed With "Satan"

I think evangelical Christians are in bed with "Satan". What? Don't they believe in God anymore, and that if they remain faithful to his moral principles he will straighten out their political problems? I think not. By embracing "Satan" they are forsaking any help their god might give them.

But not all evangelicals are faithless: Christianity Today gets this.

Dr. Bart Ehrman is Posting Excerpts of My Book!

Five separate excerpts of my book on miracles will be posted by Professor Bart D. Ehrman for comment, beginning today. The first one is from Michael Shermer's Foreword. A big thanks goes out to Ehrman for doing this. Please share. Facebook link.

The Evangelical Flagship Magazine "Christianity Today" Calls For Trump to be Removed From Office!!

Finally!! There is Hope! Get rid of the Mutherf*cker. I wouldn't allow that bastard to babysit my grandkids, would you? Link.

Christianity: Ten Knockout Punches, Number 4

The confusion and incoherence of theism

Belief in God might be sustainable if folks could just settle on a simple affirmation, such as “God is…” Perhaps an unknowable Force or Power that ignited the cosmos exists, and we can take heart that cosmologists are on the hunt to discern what actually happened. However, theologians and laity alike—from ages long ago to the present—have never been satisfied with “God is…” They have decided, without telling us how they know for sure, that God has multiple traits. “God is…” e.g., all-powerful, loving, knows everything, is slow to anger, has a plan for everyone, picked out a promised land, had a son; the list goes on forever. Unfortunately there never has been a Supreme Religious Council to say, “Stop! What a mess! All of these things can’t be true.”

Weekly Religion Photos Show Animal Slaughter and Animism

Judeo-Christian theologies aren't the only ones requiring blood sacrifice! So does Hinduism. That's crazy! More crazy is a human sacrifice! It's unbelievable people still believe this is necessary. The only explanation is that they were raised to believe it, by parents who were raised to believe it, stretching back parent by parent to a previous barbaric superstitious century. Likewise with the animism of Shintoism, even though its worship of nature stands opposed to such sacrifices.

“The Bible Is a Self-Destructing Artifact”

The resurrection can be found in the rubble

The appeal of holy books, according to John C. Wathey, is that

“…it does not matter what they say. As long as they are perceived as imparting divinely inspired instructions and wisdom, they will evoke in readers the infantile solace and comforting emotions of a small child receiving help and instruction from a parent—the less comprehensible, the better.” (p. 133, The Illusion of God’s Presence: The Biological Origins of Spiritual Longing)

Of course, preachers and priests draw attention to Bible texts that make the faith look good. These texts are read from the pulpit, set to sacred music, and embedded in stained glass—and the Bible itself, in splendid binding, is adored on the altar. None of which means that it is comprehensible—in fact, far too much of defies comprehension, which doesn’t take too much digging to discover. But the laity commonly settle for devotional study of the Bible, hence they are in a category Randel Helms has called “inattentive readers,” those who would be

"Send a copy of 'The Case Against Miracles' to your favorite Christian apologist!!!"

"Send a copy of 'The Case Against Miracles' to your favorite Christian apologist!!!" So challenges Gary M, a former conservative Lutheran, who is now a counter-apologist. He writes for his blog Escaping Christian Fundamentalism, which I highly recommend everyone visit.

On Amazon Gary wrote a 5-Star review of my anthology The Case Against Miracles (CaM), saying:

I am a counter-apologist and have read a long list of books by Christian scholars, apologists, and fellow skeptic counter-apologists. This book, The Case Against Miracles, is absolutely devastating to the theistic belief in miracles, and more specifically, absolutely devastating for the greatest alleged miracle of all, the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The convoluted arguments made by Christian apologists for their belief in the supernatural are disassembled. Order this book for yourself and send a second copy to a Christian friend or family member! Help to facilitate the demise of fear-based, superstitious thinking.

To see the books he's read, just check out his current top post! It's pretty impressive. He likes CaM so much he sent copies to several top Christian apologists whom he names:

Christianity: Ten Knockout Punches, Number 3

The scripture fallacy

It took me a long time to detect the fatal flaw in the claim that the Bible is the revealed Word of God. I was well beyond my teenage-Bible-geek years when it happened. While I had never been a fundamentalist—I could admit the flaws and errors in scripture—I studied the Bible because I assumed that God’s thoughts and wishes for humanity could be discerned in its pages. In some sense, God had inspired the authors; the ideas they had committed to writing were God’s ideas.

But eventually I had to come to grips with the mechanics of that. Just how would inspiration work? It turns out to be beyond verification, and other problems pile on as well, virtually eliminating the Bible as a source of trustworthy information about God. It has no standing whatever; Christianity is without famous anchor. Demonstrating that, in detail, is Knockout Punch Number 3.

Doesn't It Take Just as Much Faith to Be an Atheist?

[The following is an excerpt from my small book, Atheism: Q & A, the Kindle version of which is, for promotional purposes, free December 4 through December 8. The book consists of short entries (like this one) that answer common criticisms of atheism. The paperback isn't free, but it is inexpensive — and might make a nice Winter Solstice gift for anyone who holds misconceptions about your views.]


The complaint that it takes just as much faith to be an atheist is a strange one. After all, it seems to imply that there’s something wrong with believing on faith — even though in every other context faith is regarded by believers as a virtue. Maybe all that is meant, however, is that everyone is in the same boat, ultimately basing their views on something other than reason and evidence, and that the atheist therefore has no right to single out the religious for criticism.

But is this really true? Does atheism rest on no firmer foundation than religion?

Greg Koukl's "Tactics" Strategy is to Obfuscate the Truth By Substituting Fallacies for Sound Reasoning

This meme is floating around apologetics sites with a huge number of likes and positive comments. It is the brain child of Greg Koukl, who is training Christians in the tactics of debate.

The point of this meme is that we believe the religion (or nonreligion) of the relatives who raised us. Koukl is stating the obvious as if this is significant. He ends by rhetorically asking atheists "Now what?" as if it takes away our thunder. Koukl's answer to atheists is to use the fallacy of tu quoque, known as the “you too” fallacy, which is claiming an argument is flawed by pointing out that the one making it is not being consistent with the claims of the argument. The reason why this is a fallacy is that the one who argues in this way, as does Koukl, is skirting the argument by not dealing with it honestly. For example, if someone argues "Your Mom is a bad cook", it does nothing to show your Mom is a good cook by retorting, "Your Mom is a bad cook too." Yet that's exactly what Koukl does.

This is the kind of tactical advice Greg Koukl offers. We've seen it before [click on the Tag below]. Koukl explains what he's doing with these kinds of meme's in the introduction to his book Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions:

My Ten Books

With the recent release of my anthology, "The Case against Miracles", I've noticed a small spike in sales of my other books. So if you want more of them here are all TEN, listed in order of publication date.