Quote For a New Year, Hey, This Time It's By Me!

Science focuses on that which is detectable and its method is doubt. It is the skeptical adult approach rather than the gullible childish approach to an issue that if a god existed he would be pleased with. If God is not detectable and if he cannot be apprehended by such an adult attitude then I can't help him.

The 2011 Debunking Christianity Challenge

Three years ago I challenged Christians to take the Debunking Christianity Challenge. Luke over at Common Sense Atheism developed a very nice Ultimate Truth Seeker Challenge. Luke equally selects the best Christian books for skeptics to read, which is something I don't do because it's for Christians to pick them rather than me. After all, Catholics and Protestants will choose different books as will Protestants and Evangelicals, or Calvinists and Arminians, so I'm not in the habit of giving preference to one professing Christian sect over the others especially since professing Christians themselves can't agree. Anyway, this year I'm proposing twelve college level books, one for each month. Make it your New Year's resolution to read the other side.

My New Computer Tower

I want to thank everyone who donated to help me get a new computer. I bought a tower that cost me $425. It’s a Dell Inspiron 560 with a dual core processor and a dvd/cd writer. It has a whopping 320 gig hard drive! I’m getting it to where I need it, but this is a joy. Thanks so much!

And yes, that's my pool table. $10-$50 a game anyone? I need some more money. ;-)

What Nontheists Can Learn from the Success of the Homosexual Rights Movement

Check this out written by Gregory S. Paul. On a similar note Robert Price insightfully argues that the thing that will sooner or later bring the Evangelical Wailing Wall down is sex. Because sex is such a problem, Catholics and Baptists are changing the rules so they don't lose members as Darrel W. Ray argues.

Quote of the Day by articulett

Ugh... there's just so much wrong with the Jesus story. You have to be indoctrinated, skilled in apologetics, and unwilling to ask yourself a lot of questions even to try and get it to make sense. Link.

A Visual Study Guide to COGNITIVE BIASES

This visual guide is excellent. Believers ought to study up on these biases and apply them to their faith. It is a great antidote to faith based reasoning. Follow this link. At the bottom there are arrows to turn the page. You might want to click on "Full Screen" icon too. I think a study of each one of them could be helpful to see how pervasive they are with people who claim to be rational and why the best bet we have for escaping these biases are the sciences.

What's Controversial About This?

Anthropological studies show us that religion and culture are almost synonymous. Sociological studies confirm it when we look at the geographical distribution of religion. Psychological studies show we are self-centered gullible people who believe what we were initially taught and that we believe what we prefer to be true. They show us we are ignorant of our own ignorance. The conclusion is that given these scientific disciplines we should all be skeptics. We should trust the sciences even if they are sometimes fallible because there is no other way out of such a morass. The ONLY reason this is controversial is because believers know it undermines the rationality of what they believe. They kick against the goads not to join us and be skeptics.

Victor Reppert is "Irate" Claiming This is "Nonsense. Hogwash. BS."

To what did he respond to? This comment of mine:

Vic, you get your "priors" from your upbringing. With different priors you would be defending something else. Link

Admit it Vic. You get your "priors" from your upbringing. This is undeniable. We were all raised as believers. Whatever our parents told us we believed. That's your starting place. Sure, we question them as we go, but we don't upchuck them all.

I'm the one telling you the truth. No, you do not believe what your parents told you anymore. But they did give you your initial priors. Did they teach you to sing "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so," or not!

My claim is that without your Christian upbringing you would not have the priors that make you believe all of the things you do. I want you to think chronologically about your priors. Ignore your upbringing. What would be an adequate defense of your faith starting from your most basic prior? List them in some kind of order. My claim is that there is no way you can assess the historical evidence for the Bible and come away with a "faith prior" because you need faith prior to coming to your historical conclusions.

Now don't get irate with me on this. Think through my questions and answer them.

The Trouble With Atheists

1) We don’t provide a united front. We are a diversified bunch of people. Some of us support different atheist organizations, subscribe to different atheist magazines, while others don’t support or subscribe to any at all. 

2) We have no leaders. While there are certainly some standouts in the atheist community there are always disagreements on who we regard as our intellectual heroes.

3) We cannot agree on anything else but religion. We can’t even agree on what to call ourselves. We disagree on such things as the basis for morality (or lack thereof), on politics, and on whether or not Jesus existed (and if so, what we are to think of him).

4) We have no agreed upon causes. Some focus on the separation of church and state, others on politics, others on science, and still others on specific kinds of religion and/or paranormal claims.

5) We cannot agree about tactics. There are the friendly atheists, spiritual atheists, evangelical atheists, and others who merely want to educate, not necessarily persuade, believers.

We are human beings of every age, shape, gender, skin color, health, wealth, education and social social status. We simply do not believe. We think for ourselves based on solid evidence and good reasons. We cannot be herded like believing sheep. Nor can we be fleeced.

But this is our strength. We are everywhere. We are the wave of the future. There is no turning back the hands of time. We cannot be ignored any more.

News Flash: Victor Reppert Continues to Kick Against the OTF Goads

Let's see if I can make a few numbered statements that might help him understand.

The Day America Told the Truth: Doing Polls on Religion Correctly

Polling agencies like Gallup, The Pew Forum, and The Barna Group listen up. We need a new updated survey of religion in America to be modeled after the book The Day America Told the Truth.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Author of Infidel, at the 2010 Freedom From Religion Convention

She received the "Emperor Has No Clothes" award from Dan Barker. She's talking about Islam and laughing about it. This is what we do with Christianity. We laugh at it too. Christian, watch and laugh with us and then see why we laugh at you. This is a great talk!

Link. Find "Day One" then click on the word "watch."

Santa Lives!

Yep, so argues Richard Carrier.

Was Jesus Born in Bethlehem?

[Written by John W. Loftus] Let's take a look at a few details in the Gospels with regard to the birth of Jesus.

Toby Keith's Remedy For the War on Christmas...Bah, Humbug to Him!

He's a great song writer, but come on now...such ignorance knows no bounds:

The Five Most Asinine Christian Arguments I've Seen

[Written by John W. Loftus] Although there are so many to chose from let me highlight five of the most asinine types of Christian arguments I’ve seen:

1) "You were never Christians."

This comes from Calvinists who think only real Christians will persevere and be in heaven. We've addressed this till the cows come home. Just look at our responses in our FAQ sheet. See especially my particular response. The problem with this claim is that the ones making it cannot do so based on what they believe. For all they know we really were/are Christians, saved in Jesus with our names written in the Lamb's book of life. It's just that right now we're backsliding. They have no idea whether or not we'll return to the fold before we die. But the bottom line is that we did in fact believe the gospel just as Christians now do. God never kept his promise to save us even though we believed.

2) "I know God in Christ exists because I've experienced him in my life."

The whole problem with using this repeatedly as an argument is that it does nothing to change the mind of a person who doesn't have such a religious experience. It's one thing to believe because of a religious experience, which can be had by people who have different and even contradictory ideas as a result of the same experience. But it's another thing entirely to argue that because you had such an experience I should believe. This is not only asinine, it's very annoying. You can believe because of whatever experiences you have had. But when you attempt to engage people who claim not to have had these experiences (or that they were not veridical) you must meet us on common ground. You must argue on behalf of what you believe with reason. When it comes to these religious experiences you must argue that yours are veridical and that others who claim them are not. This means you must provide a philosophical argument, not antecdotal evidence.

3) “You don’t understand what true Christianity is all about.”

People making this claim think we’ve chosen an easy target when we debunk evangelical Christianity, and that Christianity is much different than that. Some of the most ignorant ones making this claim think that if we only understood true Christanity we would become believers (lol). I’ve seen this argued by existentialists, liberals, Catholics and other believers normally thought of as part of a "cult" by mainstream Christians.

Here is my usual response to these believers. Christianity is “a many splendored thing.” Like a chameleon it changes with the times and adapts to specific geographical locations (how evolutionary of it!). How can we debunk something that has these moving goals posts? We can't. So, we’ve chosen to debunk conservative, evangelical, or “Biblical” Christianity. It has the most obnoxious presence in politics and on the web. One former team member put is this way:

Not only is fundamentalist Christianity the greatest threat in the United States to science, tolerance, and social progress, but it is also the most prevalent form of Protestant Christianity to be found in our nation, whether you like it or not. It is the fundamentalist religious right that holds the reigns of the Republican party (which currently controls the nation, in case you didn't realize), and it is this same fundamentalist religious right that lobbies for the teaching of lies in public school and fights against funding for embryonic research that could potentially save the lives of millions.

Whether you like it or not, it is this flavor of Christianity that makes the loudest, most obnoxious, most dangerous impact on the world today, giving us plenty of good reason to direct the brunt of our attacks in its vicinity.

If you’re a liberal, existential or Catholic believer then we just might share some of the same criticisms of that which we take aim at, so join us in this goal, just like James McGrath does from time to time. Otherwise, start a Blog titled “True Christianity,” and invite all professing Christians there to hammer out your differences. If you can come to a consensus then come back here and we’ll debunk that consensus (lol). But don’t be so ignorant as to do that here. We know the differences. We just target a specific kind of Christianity because that’s the only way to be effective in debunking any of them. And don’t kid yourself, either. There are some aspects to our debunking that debunk all religions and all Christianities. Many of the beliefs we debunk are affirmed in the Apostles, Nicene and Athanasian creeds. So to you I say, if the shoe fits, wear it; if not, then don’t.

4) “Quoting Bible Passage X shows that we are wrong.”

These people I call the “Bible Thumpers." They are responding to our arguments with the very evidence we are questioning. A believer simply cannot reasonably respond to an argument that the Bible is unreliable by quoting from the Bible. If you don’t accept what I say about this then listen to Christian professor Dr. Dan Lambert, who told his students how to respond to the arguments in my book in these words: "You cannot use the Bible to try to refute his points or to support your own. You must use logic and critical thinking primarily." Here's the Link

5) For the most asinine Christian argument I've probably ever heard, here's a link.

Okay? Do you understand?

[First posted 6/16/09]

Richard Dawkins Debunks Noah's Ark

Victor Reppert is Feeling the Heat of the Outsider Test for Faith

Yep, just look at the title to his latest post: If I had been born in Saudi Arabia, would I have been a Muslim? Hell, no! "Hell No"? Hmmm. That's an expletive! To quote Shakespeare, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." A reasonable person would simply say "I don't think so," although that wouldn't be reasonable either. See Brenda's comment below, which is a perfect response:

Consider This, God is the Ultimate Troll ;-)

If he speaks like one and acts like one then he is one! ;-) Link.

Thanks Again My Friends!

I just want to offer a shout out to the skeptics here who help in answering the personal attacks on me and the arguments of some utterly ignorant Christians. It means a lot to me, really. What buffoons some of them are. I have no clue what they hope to accomplish but they certainly view me as a threat, and of that they are right. It's just that I'm reading what they write and it's completely ignorant for the most part. I would've said that as a Christian professor when I was teaching apologetics. It's a shame that with a Bible in hand they think they can answer us, isn't it? They are unaware how ignorant they are. Is there anyone else out there who can reason with us? Oops, sorry, they're all ignorant.

Most Christians are Brainwashed or Indoctrinated to Believe, Here's Proof:

This Week In Holy Crimes

What business do religious leaders have in telling us what to believe or do? Sheesh.

Joseph Lewis on the 10th Commandment

I've written before about Joseph Lewis who was a pioneering American freethinker. Read this except from his monumental 644 page book The Ten Commandments concerning the 10th one, where he writes:

This Commandment was never intended to prevent envying another's possessions, but rather to avoid the evil consequences of "coveting" in the magical sense. Coveting was not mentioned as an undesirable trait to be avoided because it is unethical, immoral or antisocial; it was recorded and made part of the Decalogue because the superstition prevailed in Hebrew tribal society that envious thoughts would bring ill luck and misfortune, through sorcery and witchcraft, to the person against whose property the "coveting" was directed. Covetous desires, they believed, would call into existence the malevolent spirits of the "evil eye," which by devious and diabolical methods would cause the loss of the coveted possessions. Link.

The Positivist Canard

Christian apologists keep crowing on about their criticisms of positivism as if that ends the matter. What best describes positivism:

Positivism refers to a set of epistemological perspectives and philosophies of science which hold that the scientific method is the best approach to uncovering the processes by which both physical and human events occur.Link

There is something to positivism these apologists have overlooked. We cannot offer a logical DEDUCTIVE proof that science is the only game in town. To criticize positivism as if it did is to knock down a straw man. Yes, the positivists did make sweeping statements so they fell prey to some criticisms. But what we really want to say is that it's very probable science is the only game in town. That cannot be refuted. And that is all we need to say. If they want to continue hanging their hats on what is "possible" time and again, have at it. That's the definition of faith. We will keep insisting on that which is probable not that which is possible.

Christian Apologists Must Denigrate Science and Scientists Themselves

That's right. I've said this before. Anything apologists can do to denigrate science is what they'll do to defend their faith. That's why there is the science vs religion debate in the first place. That's why creative science had to fight an uphill battle against church censure and threats of violence. Case in point is Victor Reppert in disputing the results of the social sciences which have confirmed several biases we have as human beings, especially cognitive bias [<---READ THE LINK!] which has conclusively shown us we believe what we prefer to believe and when faced with contrary evidence we actually dig our feet in deeper into what we believe, depending on our vested interests. Now why does he feel the need to dispute these findings without offering any counter-evidence? It's because he has faith, that's why. Faith can be used to trump almost any evidence and if not, then just denigrate science--or scientists themselves. Hey, don't believe me? Then read what he said: