The Church’s Fan Base Is Slipping Away

Christian sins, intolerance, and confusion are largely to blame

It has been said that the Internet is a place where religion goes to die. That’s because it’s an easily accessible portal to ideas and information that clergy would prefer to keep hidden from their congregations. Of course, deeply committed religious believers have their presence on the Internet as well, but atheists have achieved a level of prominence, for example, Hemant Mehta (The Friendly Atheist), Seth Andrews (The Thinking Atheist), John W. Loftus, prolific author and founder of the Debunking Christianity Blog, Annie Laurie Gaylor (author and co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation), Valerie Tarico, author and blogger, Greta Christina, author and blogger—to name but a very few. It would seem that Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris—with their devastating critiques of religion—provided the impetus for the atheist publishing surge we’ve seen since the turn of the century.

This is now an Ad free Blog!

The Ads here at DC had taken over. I don't know how that happened, nor did I want it. No more. David Madison and Michael Trollan took care of it yesterday. Yay! This is now an Ad free Blog and will remain so into the indefinate future. Enjoy! This is not to say we're rich. It's rather that Ads are annoying and not reader friendly.

I want to thank everyone for your readership and your "clicks". Thanks for any donations you've sent to help sustain me while I did my work here. Thanks also to the readers who have commented over the years. They are the best online, making possible intelligent discussions and debates with believers.

With this loss of income I must still ask something of you. If this Blog has been helpful please consider helping out financially. You can do so by buying something off Amazon.com. (USA)I get pennies on the dollar for every purchase, and this can add up. Amazon has most anything you want at some of the best prices too. You can also donate $5-$20-$50-$100 or more. This is by far the best way you can help! Just click on the donate button below:

Christian ministries rake in a great deal of money. I'd like to think atheists financially support writers who help them as well. I have no institutional support nor am I a paid employee of any atheist organization.

You can encourage me by e-mail [loftusjohnw at gmail dot com]. You could also buy a book or two from my Amazon wish list. Your support is still very important to me personally! It just will no longer be in your face, with Ads out of control!

Heads up this coming Monday! I'll be posting a YouTube video of the paper Seth Andrews read on God and Horrendous Suffering. Michael Maletin put it to some really good images! It's awesome!

Why Aren’t Christians Obsessed with Throwing Out Their Trash?

Their faith is damaged by the crazies

I sometimes wonder why there isn’t a League of Decent Christians Against Abusive Evangelicals. Not too long ago, I saw a photo of Franklin Graham praying with Donald Trump, whom he had embraced as a defender of his brand of Christianity. In 2019, when Trump was still president, John Pavlovitz wrote a scathing article about Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, Jr., in which he wrote:

“History is recording the Evangelical Right’s abomination of a marriage with this godless President, and though there were what surely felt like short-term wins, the lasting damage to the Church will be irreparable. People outside Christianity suspecting that religious people are all hypocritical frauds, are being given plenty of evidence for it. Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, and the multitude of lesser known spiritually compromised leaders, need the barrier-breaking, wall-obliterating Jesus whose name they invoke, even as they praise a President who is completely antithetical to him. They need the knees-in-the-dirt repentance they so demand of the world, so that they can admit culpability in the violence of these days and push back against the walls and the bans and the barriers.”  (emphasis added)

I Know What Best Describes a Reasonable Person!

Well, I know an essential characteristic anyway. You want to know what best describes reasonable people? I know.

Reasonable people are the ones who accept the results of science.

Conversely, unreasonable people are the ones who reject the results of science. Since religious believers (theistic or otherwise) believe in at least one doctrine that goes against the consensus of scientists working in their fields, then religious believers are not reasonable people to believe them.

Agnostics are also not reasonable people by the same standard. For by claiming not to know about a specific doctrine that has been shown to be false by science, they are not reasonable either. Saying they don’t know, when science knows, is to be a science denier.

More Jesus Quotes Christians Could Do Without, Part 3

Many of the devout would be shocked at what Jesus would do

I suspect most devout believers adore their Jesus, as he is portrayed in stained glass, great art, hymns (e.g., What a Friend We Have in Jesus)—and, of course, how is he lovingly described from the pulpit. Thus they skip careful study of the gospels. Years ago, when I was a pastor, it was a tiny minority of the congregation that attended my Bible study classes. When folks do study the gospels carefully/critically, they may notice things that seem farfetched. How many of us have heard the voice of god booming from the sky? That seems a mark of fantasy literature. In Mark, the first gospel written, this is how Jesus’ baptism is described (1:10-11): “And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.’”

About David Corner, Author of Chapter 1 in The Case Against Miracles

Dr. David Corner wrote a fantastic chapter in my book. I didn't know he died two months before it was published. I learned later. I have an email record of what he believes, and I think readers might be interested. I ask authors to tell readers something about themselves. Here is what he sent me:

David Corner received his PhD from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He’s a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy of California State University, Sacramento. He is the author of The Philosophy of Miracles.

I asked him what he thought of my chapter 3, on Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence. He said to me:

I am reading your chapter, but I have to teach tomorrow so I won't finish until at least Tuesday. Looks pretty good so far, though I'm shocked at how poor some of the arguments are that you are criticizing. I don't even read that stuff... but it's a good thing someone is. You are doing a good service.

I asked him what he believes.

Did the Good Christian God Relocate to Another Galaxy?

He hasn’t been paying much attention to planet Earth

When anyone says, “Can you prove God doesn’t exist?” I am tempted to reply, “Just look around you. What do you see?” Answers from the devout might include, “Beautiful sunsets, glorious flowers, majestic mountains—-how wonderful—this is my Father’s world!” But take a closer look: the god who supposedly engineered the marvels that prompt believers to sing “how great thou art”—isn’t that the same god who made huge blunders? Just look around you, they’re so easy to spot. One of the great curses on humankind has been mental illnesses, which have plagued us for millennia, causing horrible suffering. Couldn’t our brains have been better designed? Then there are thousands of genetic diseases: that newborn baby who looks “so perfect” may be programed by his/her genes to a life of pain and disability. Diseases spread by microbes also don’t make sense if there was an Intelligent Designer. Millions of people died in agony during the Black Plague in the 14^th century, with no understanding as to its cause. The church was clueless as well, proclaiming the bad news that the plague was god’s punishment for sin. Moreover, marveling at the beauties of the natural world is misplaced when we realize how much suffering and death have been caused by hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis. Why would a good god who cares about humans have placed us in such a brutal environment? How can it be argued that he’s paying attention? Maybe he took off for another galaxy a long time ago.

Of Miracles: In Defense of David Hume against Graham Oppy

 David Hume (1711-1776) offered some good philosophical arguments against miracles that still resonate today. His arguments focused on the unreliability of human testimony on behalf of miracles. He did not live in a technological age like ours with modern forensics that include blood analysis, with tests that can determine one’s type, and detects diseases, poison, drugs and alcohol. We also have x-ray technology, DNA evidence, CAT scans, dash cams, and security cameras at convenience stores, on street intersections, and neighborhood homes. Especially noteworthy are the ubiquitous number of cell phones that give us immediate access to the police by a 911 call, cameras that can capture any event on video, and GPS tracking capability showing where we are at any given time. So Hume didn’t have the capability we do to establish miracles, or debunk them.

In our day the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) offered a one-million-dollar prize “to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event.” From 1964, when it first offered such a challenge, until 2015 when they stopped doing it, no challenger had even gotten past the preliminary test.[1] That should settle the question of miracles. If not, why not?

One might ask why we even need philosophical arguments. Why not just teach how science works and why the methods of science are the best we have to get at the truth? In a real sense we don’t need philosophical arguments, per se, including those from Hume.[2] However, given so many possible existential threats to life on our planet, we should do everything we can to reach people who value blind faith over scientific evidence.[3] So practically speaking, some believers might be attentive to listen to Hume, rather than to Darwin, Sagan, Shermer, Dawkins and others.[4]

One of the best philosophical arguments that can help believers acknowledge the value of sufficient evidence, objective evidence, scientific evidence, is found in my book, the Outsider Test for Faith. [5] It challenges them to doubt their own culturally indoctrinated childhood faith for perhaps the first time, just as if they never heard of it before. It calls on them to require of their own religious faith what they already require of the religious faith’s they reject. It forces them to rigorously demand logical consistency with their doctrines along with sufficient evidence for their faith, just as they already demand of the religions they reject.

Horrendous Suffering Caused by—Wait for It—the Church

When you're sure God is your boss, others can take a big hit 

Two of the riskiest things Christians can do—from the standpoint of preserving and protecting their faith: (1) Read/study the gospels carefully, critically, with curiosity fully engaged, (2) Read/study Christian history, i.e., what has been done in the name of Jesus over the centuries. There’s a pretty good chance that faith will be abandoned when this kind of homework is done. The clergy know that there are 1,001 embarrassing Bible verses, so many of which are in the gospels—so these are not preached from the pulpit. But it’s not hard to figure out that Jesus fails to qualify as a great moral teacher, based on so much of the Jesus-script we find in the gospel accounts.