Another introduction

John W. Loftus has kindly allowed me to post on this blog.

My introduction and deconversion story.

No, I won’t start off with the “I was born in a log cabin I built with my own hands and a Bible,” although the factual history of how I deconverted is similar to what has been stated by others before. It is easier to explain what went on in my head.

I am a trial lawyer. This means I argue. I argue my position to judges (who have heard it all) to jurors (who have heard enough) to clients (who only want to hear the positive) and to other lawyers (who only hear themselves.) We have a saying, there are three sides to every story—my side, your side and the truth. Rarely do those three even meet, let alone shake hands.

I first hear the story from my client. Being human, they tend to focus on the positive and down-play the negative. I never quite get the “whole truth” in those meetings. I get their side of the story.

I had a client* who was charged with drunk driving. I asked, repeatedly, if he had ever been charged or convicted of a drinking and driving related offense. He assured me every time he had not. Based upon this statement, I assured him he would not see the inside of a jail. (Rarely do on a first time offense.)

At the sentencing, the Judge asked if he had ever been convicted before.

Client: No.
Judge: What about in California?
Client: What about California?
Judge: Weren’t you convicted of three drunk drivings there?
Client: Oh. That California.
Judge: 93 days in jail.
Client (to me): YOU said I wouldn’t go to Jail!
Me: YOU said you hadn’t been convicted before! Pack a toothbrush.

Time and time and time again, I find things out later, because the client didn’t think it was “important” at the time. Really, it was because the client thought it would hurt their case, and why share something that may never come up?

So I know, right from the start, that I am hearing a biased version of the facts. I also know that someday I will be facing an opponent that will not share our rosy one-sided report, and will be introducing facts and arguments that counter our position. Therefore I start questioning early on:

Client: I paid her with a check.
Me: Will she agree that you paid her?
Client: No, she will say I didn’t.
Me: Do you have a copy of the check, bank statement, records of it?
Client: Naw. I don’t keep that stuff.
Me: Can you get a copy from the Bank?
Client: I don’t remember what bank it was.
Me: How long did you bank there?
Client: Maybe six years.
Me: Where was the bank?
Client: At the corner of First and Brown. But it is not there anymore.
Me: Can you remember anything about this Bank so we can locate it?
Client: Not a thing.*

Do you see how it may be a problem showing that this payment was made, when every single fact (other than my client’s testimony) points against it? And it is hardly believable he would fail to remember any of these items about a bank where he transacted business for six years.

Since anyone can walk through our door, eventually we get to argue cases from both positions, pro and con. After doing so for a period of time, one starts to get the knack of what “sells” to a jury, and what does not. What arguments work, and what ones will not. When defendants are charged with a crime, many, many of their mothers will come forward with an alibi. The juries listen, feel badly for the mother, but disregard the testimony. They know it is the maternal instinct protecting the child. I already know this argument won’t work.

To succeed in this business, we have to become adapt at framing arguments based upon the facts as they exist, and assessing what works, and what does not. Jurors are not stupid; you can’t sell it just because you say it.

Through happenstance, I stumbled upon the Internet Infidels forum. I was fascinated right from the start. Here was a group of atheists and agnostics that knew quite a bit about Christianity and some of them knew far more about the Bible than I did! How could that be? There must be something incorrect in their circuits, because with what I knew, Christianity was a fore-gone conclusion. There must be a missing part, a chink that has been overlooked.

In lawsuits, the first thing we do is share information. No sense wasting my time considering the argument of non-payment, if they have copies of bills and checks. We gather the facts (as best we can) and see where the arguments start to shake out. Often, by plugging such things as payments into a spreadsheet, trends can appear that offer insight as to what happened.

Or, if the prosecutor provides me with a handwritten confession by my client, that certainly has a large bearing on what arguments I can make!

So I lurked. And lurked and lurked. Occasionally I would offer a question, but more to gather more information, rather than debate. After seeing book suggestions, I would go read them. If I was told “there is an argument…” I would look to see if there really was. I would go to Christian sites to see if anyone was providing defenses to the claims presented, and what those defenses were. Then I would read the Christian books.

An alarming development. I began to realize that the arguments presented by the Christians were extremely weak. In fact, so weak, that if they are my client, I would recommend they not use them. No jury would buy it! I had no idea Christianity could be this wrong.

It is one thing to present a position to people that already believe it. “Preaching to the choir” comes to mind. It is another to present a position as simply being a possibility, assuming the other side is predisposed to disagree with you. However, I have neither luxury. I am in a position were I must assess the claim, knowing there will be someone equally as adamant my argument is incorrect, and attempt to convince a neutral third party of the viability of my position over my opponent’s. That is not easy to do.

The American Judicial system is a humorous creature. We throw two (semi-) intelligent combatants on polar opposite sides of an issue, make them both spew their best arguments for their position, while at the same time tearing down the arguments for the contrary position, and hope that the truth emerges from this dogfight. I realized that for all of my life, all of the arguments against Christianity had been presented to me by Christians.

The arguments I saw now would never be convincing to a third party. For example, one of the first debates I actually entered was on inerrancy. What I saw, is that in a trial, if the skeptic stated, “This was written by two humans, who, as humans do, contradict” that argument would far and away prevail over a claim that two (or three or four) humans were writing from completely different angles, and one wrote about God, but forgot to mention Satan, and the other wrote about Satan, but forgot to mention God, and the third forgot to mention both of them!

Ever hear the claim, “Any policeman will tell you that if two witnesses completely corroborate on every detail, they will assume collusion.”? True enough. What they don’t say is that we also realize that contradictions demonstrate unreliability. We don’t say, “This witness claims it happened at 2 p.m., and this witness claims it happened at 3 p.m., so it must have happened.” No, we start to analyze why the witnesses claim two different times. One, or both could be wrong. About the time AND if it happened.

It is in the details. Too many times I can count; I have caught witnesses being untruthful by the details. The times don’t add up. The directions are the wrong way. The cars are on the wrong side of the street. The buildings would block their view.

Witness: I was late because I ate at the restaurant on the way home from work.
Me: Doesn’t that restaurant close at 5 p.m.?
Witness: Well….er…..yeah. But I left work early, and stayed longer at the restaurant.
Me: Didn’t you fax Exhibit A out at 4:45 p.m.?
Witness: Oh.
Me: You can’t get from your work to the restaurant in 15 minutes, can you?
Witness: Maybe they stayed open late?

The details catch people out every time. As I reviewed the various arguments for inerrancy, canonization, archeology, history, textual criticism, higher criticism, and reading, reading, reading, it became evident in argument after argument that the Christian position would be unconvincing to a real jury.

If the Christian argued a point, all the skeptic would have to say is, “These are humans attempting to say this is what God does/says/is. Not a God. Humans.” A neutral jury would agree that it most probable a human effort.

I came to the realization that in a full frontal assault of logic and rationale, Christianity would lose. So I reverted to blind faith. (You may be asking yourself, “If this was causing you so much consternation, why keep going back? Why not ‘trust in God’ and let go?” Because the questions were already in my mind. To ignore them was to grant them superiority over the Christian world view. If God provided the Truth to Christians, it should withstand questions, not avoid them.)

For a time, I looked for another God (since there still had to be one), but it was too late. I had established a methodology by which I could use (convince a jury) to eliminate every possible God that was proffered.

I don’t want to give the impression this was a cold, hard, logical decision. There is a great deal of emotion involved in giving up a faith of 37 years. It was traumatic, devastating, humiliating, depressing, and then exhilarating, fulfilling and peaceful.

(A parenthetical note. I wrote this prior to reading exbeliever’s last blog. A number of his points resonated with me.

I, too, am currently anonymous. While my family is painfully aware of my deconversion, it is a colossal embarrassment to them. They would prefer to never see their name attached, in any way, to a site debunking Christianity. Out of consideration for them, I do not.

But more importantly, my wife remains a fundamentalist Christian, and this is considered by both her, and the community she thrives in, as a failure on her part. There have been people that actively encourage her to divorce me, if I so much as hint of the possibility that Hell does not exist to our children. Many, many deconversion stories end in divorce between the deconvert and the continuing Christian. I do not want my story to end that way.

Therefore, in the weighing of whether to preserve my marriage, or having the best argument my opponent can compile is that I am anonymous, my marriage will prevail hands down. Every time. If you feel my arguments are lessened by not knowing whether my name is “Tom,” “Dick,” or “Harry” you may be amazed at how well I sleep at night with that thought. Next to my wife.)

*Not the actual facts, but a conglomeration of clients, due to privilege.

A Response to Dr. James White

In my last post, I reflected on my Christian past after reading a comment by a Christian professor I had in seminary, Dr. James White. He responded here.

I wanted to address a few points he makes in his post.

Dr. White,

You wrote:

"Now, first, I truly wonder why anyone would wish to remain anonymous and yet be a contributor to a blog 'debunking' Christianity. . . But why the anonymity? Fear of family reprisal? Is he a 'secret' apostate? I suppose I could do some digging around, but I truly have no interest in investing time in such an effort. . . I would say to 'exbeliever' that I would think a great deal more of him if he were not hiding behind a non-descript moniker, first and foremost. . ."

I have a few reasons for wanting to remain anonymous on this site:

1) My mother and in-laws do not know about my "apostasy." While I try not to openly lie to them about my lack of faith, I do try to avoid conversations that reveal the depth of my rejection of the Christian faith. It's not that I am ashamed of my lack of faith, but rather that I know this would cause my mother and in-laws a lot of pain and heartache. I would rather let them know gradually over a period of years instead of allowing them to be pounded in the face with my apostasy after typing my name in a search engine.

2) I came from a very conservative Christian college and, for some reason, every time someone from there hears about me, they feel it their duty to confront me. This bothers my wife a great deal. She doesn't enjoy being gossip-ed about (oops, I mean "prayed for") and pitied by her former Christian friends. I remain anonymous for her sake as well.

3) I have very little time for blogging. When I do post, I rarely have the time to put a lot of research into my posting. I often write "on-the-fly." At the same time, however, I am pursuing a PhD in philosophy and have to publish more scholarly materials as part of my studies. I really don't want something I carelessly throw out on this blog to come back to haunt me when I'm in the middle of a professional academic discussion with someone else.

4) "Well, it's hard out here for a [atheist]!" (Oscar humor). As much as Christians enjoy decrying America's antipathy towards them, it's far more detrimental to profess atheism in this country than it is Christianity. There are certain high-profile positions unavailable to atheists (e.g. the presidency (which, by the way, I have absolutely NO aspirations)). I have an interest in academic administration and may, one day, be "up for" a high-profile position. I don't want my atheism to be a factor in the committee's decision (though, I would certainly be honest if I were asked about my position).

So, these are some of the reasons that I have chosen anonymity on this blog. If it is really important to you to know my identity, I don't mind emailing you privately. I trust your discretion. I can't see, however, why it would matter whether or not you know my name.

If it helps narrow your focus any, you rightly identified the class (L1311, "Christian Philosophy of Religion") and the location of the school is identified in your list. It was an intensive class (as I mentioned in my previous post--"During that (albeit, short) class. . ."). It was the week after you had laser surgery and you were having some problems with your eyes. I made a really stupid comment in the school parking lot about some of your debates that we were viewing in class, and you were stepping out of your car at the same time (I still cringe when I remember that; I really don't even know why I said it; I think I was just trying to make conversation with a classmate that I had nothing in common with; I said something like, "Time to go and watch some more stupid debates."). You joked with me about it in class, and I apologized for my comment. Maybe that helps, but if you want an email, let me know.

You wrote:

". . . secondly, I would say even asking if he "fooled" me demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the theology he should have gotten in the course of that class."

As I stated in my original post, it is not that big of a deal that I "fooled" you. You are right to point out that ". . . there could not be any logical connection between taking a class in a seminary setting and one's true spiritual state. . ." Reading your previous post in which you wrote, ". . . rarely do you find a high regard for fairness or accuracy in ["'former' Christians[']"] writings," simply made me reflect on your complementary statements about my work in your class.

My bigger point was not that I "fooled" you. I really don't think I fooled anyone. I believe that I was as much a Christian as anyone I ever met. My current belief, however, is that Christianity is a sham and that everyone who believes it is believing a lie.

The point of my post was to point out a "problem" for Christians. I would hardly present this as an argument, but rather just as a cause for reflection.

As much as the Reformed Christians who read this blog try to deny it, it certainly seems to be the case that Jesus and the early Christians felt that the Holy Spirit plays a vital role in the life of the church (this is something that I think you would agree with if I remember your book, The Forgotten Trinity, correctly). The Holy Spirit is said to indwell believers. The Spirit is supposed to guide the church into truth, right?

If not the Holy Spirit, then, at least, one would think a Christian believes that God gives some kind of guidance to the church other than the Bible. The Bible does not tell a church which minister to hire, but only which qualities a minister should have. If many ministers, who all share the same qualities, apply to a church, that church normally looks for God's guidance through prayer.

In another (childish) post (on another blog) about my last post, one of the brain-dead reformers made it sound as though the church receives absolutely no guidance from their god except through the Bible. I am willing to bet dimes to doughnuts, though, that his church prays for guidance before they ordain a new minister or hire a new pastor.

Even when I was a full cessationist, I respected the work of the Holy Spirit speaking through a local body of believers. While I was extremely skeptical of any one person who claimed to have "a word from God," I tended to put a lot of weight in the prayerful decisions made by a body of believers. While I didn't believe those decisions were infallible, I did believe that when a whole body of believers agree on something after prayerful consideration, that I should be very hesitant to doubt that decision.

In this light, then, the fact that many Christians believe I could never have been a "true" believer, causes a problem for those who believe (like I did) that God does give guidance to his church in prayer. They must reconcile this belief with their belief that I could not have been a "true" Christian.

The dilemma, then, only applies to those who believe (1) that a person cannot be a "true" believer and then leave the faith (1 John 2:19), and (2) that their god still gives the church guidance through prayer.

They must, then, not only doubt the validity of my former faith, but also all of the Christians and churches who truly believed that their god was confirming my testimony and ministry. My past should give any Christian who believes these two propositions cause for hesitation.

While it is certainly reasonable to believe that the Christian god can use a "pretender" to do his work in the church, it puts believers in a very uncomfortable position to think that their god could have intentionally deceived all those Christian churches who said their god confirmed their affirmation of me and my past ministry.

You wrote:

"'Exbeliever' goes on to present a bit of his 'Christian credentials,' as so many who leave the faith and then seek to defend their apostasy do . . ."

I see this complaint a lot in reference to this blog. Many Christian bloggers seem to have a real problem with our anecdotal descriptions of our apostasies. I have a couple of comments about this:

Christians often use their testimonies as part of the "proof" that their god exists. Recently, I read Paul Manata's fascinating testimony of coming to faith. While he did not (and most Christians do not) present the testimony as incontrovertible "proof" of the existence of god, it is still meant as some sort of verification. Though the Christian testimony is rarely presented as a formal argument ("My life has changed, therefore God exists"), it is often seen as a legitimate and effective means of evangelizing.

So, too, should the anecdotal posts on this blog be taken. I don't offer my Christian past as undeniable proof that the Christian god does not exist. I offer my "testimony," however, to counter those Christians who offer their testimonies as a proof of their god's existence.

All the bloggers, then, that continue to complain about the "testimonies" we post here can simply ignore them. There are some Christians who use testimonies exclusively as evidence of their Christian faith. Any atheist who seeks to "debunk" Christianity (though, I'm not really comfortable with that term), must answer those Christians who rely on testimony. Offering our testimonies is a direct challenge to those Christians.

Other Christians who are "offended" by anecdotal "evidence" can read and comment on some of my more substantive posts (that rarely get any comments from theists). Here, I wrote about my foundation for the laws of logic and morality (in answer to the myopic questioning of the presuppositionalists). Here, I wrote about the authorship of the Pentateuch. Here, I wrote about the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Though, as I stated above, I do not have the time to do the research required to convincingly discuss these issues, these posts are definitely not anecdotal.

The Christians who don't like atheist testimonies are free to ignore them, but they should realize that many Evangelicals do, in fact, put stock in testimonies, and that they are a powerful tool in both conversions and de-conversions. Instead of thinking our anecdotal posts are directed to every Christian, those who do not appreciate these posts should simply understand that these objections are not directed at them, but rather at those Christians who use testimonies as a primary means of evangelism.

I am kind of an "old school" atheist. I believe that the Christian has the primary responsibility to prove their assertion that a god exists. Presuppositionalism asks legitimate questions about the foundations of an atheists' reasoning, so I took the time to offer a possible solution. Having addressed that concern, I have turned to other, positive arguments for the existence of a god. As Christians give an account for the hope that is in them, I will consider those accounts and respond, in turn. Because most of the bloggers attracted to this site are unwilling to provide any evidence for their assertion that a god exists, I have taken it on myself to counter the traditional arguments for a god's existence. So far, I have only discussed cosmological arguments. In the future (if Christian bloggers continue to avoid giving any evidence for their assertion), I plan on discussing other traditional arguments for a god's existence.

Dr. White, thank you for taking the time to respond to me on your blog.

A Question For Calvinists

I have a question for Calvinists from a previous discussion.

Have you considered what the sovereignty of your God entails? If God decreed that we should do an action, then this also means he decreed that we wanted to do it. This is an inescapable conclusion. Why? Because, unless your God decrees that we should want to do an action, then we wouldn't do that action. So any wrong that human beings do, God must have decreed that they wanted to do the wrong they did.

To continue to blame human beings for the wrong that they do by claiming they wanted to do the wrong that they did, fails to understand how it's even possible for God to make sue we do an action in the first place. We do what we want to do. For God to decree we do an action it must mean he decrees our desires to do that action. Therefore, God is to be blamed for all of the evils in human history.

The alternative is that God decrees that we act contrary to our desires, and if this is the case, God is still to be blamed.

Dr. James White, How Ya Like Me Now?

In the comment section of my last post Dr. Andy Jackson stated that he had kindly given us some "link love" over at his site SmartChristian.com (thanks for that, by the way, it appears that we are the only atheist site linked to your site).

I went over and browsed through some of his site (which appears to be an excellent Christian resource with a political bent). I noticed a link there that mentioned some comments that Dr. James White made about one of John Loftus' posts here.

I clicked over to Dr. White's site and found Dr. White's comments for myself (sorry, I couldn't figure out how to link it, so you will have to do some searching for it if you want to read it).

Though Dr. White is primarily addressing Loftus' post, he made one comment that I found interesting. He wrote, "That has been my experience: 'former' Christians, freed from the constraints of morality, express their hatred for the faith in the most outrageous ways, and rarely do you find a high regard for fairness or accuracy in their writings."

I found this quote interesting for personal reasons. Though, as I've explained, I hope to keep my anonymity, it might interest some readers that I was once one of Dr. White's students. I took a class in Christian Philosophy which Dr. White taught as an apologetics class.

During that (albeit, short) class, Dr. White was very complementary of my work. Because of my background, the two of us often chased rabbit trails that most of the other class members could not follow. I got an "A" in that class.

After reading Dr. White's quote, I couldn't help wondering what he would think of me now. He, obviously, doesn't believe that one can be a "'former' Christian," so would he, now, believe that I had fooled him?

More generally, do Christians think that I fooled people throughout my whole life. Did I fool my mother when I was five-years-old and I asked her to help me pray the "sinner's prayer" so that Jesus could live in my heart? Did I fool my whole church and pastoral staff when at age 13, I "felt a call to Christian ministry" and they prayed for me and held a dedication service for me? Did I fool my Baptist Student Union when they prayerfully selected me to be a summer missionary? Did I fool the first church that (after a great deal of prayer) hired me as their youth pastor and music minister? Did I fool the conservative Christian college that prayerfully selected me to be a campus leader? Did I fool the churches that, after prayer, asked me to preach at their "revival services"? Did I fool the seminary that designated me one of their outstanding students when I graduated? Did I fool the panel of pastors that questioned me, prayed about their decision, said they got God's confirmation of that decision, and then recommended me for ordination? Did I fool the church that prayed for God's guidance and unanimously ordained me to the ministry? Did I fool the missions' committee that prayerfully selected me to be a church planter for their denomination?

And most importantly, did I fool myself? I know that many of the Christian readers, here, have theologies that say that this can't be the case, but I tell you that during all of those years, I honestly believed that I was a Christian. I believed that I was a sinner unworthy of grace, that Jesus died for my sins, that I had been elected for salvation by the God of the universe. I was serious about my sanctification. I prayed that God, who had began a good work in me, would be faithful to complete it. I wept over my sin. I wept over the lost. I attempted to study to show myself approved so that I would be a faithful minister of God's Word. I prayed over every decision I made in life. I attempted to seek first the kingdom of God.

So, all that time, was I fooling myself? Or was I like the seed that grows in shallow soil with no roots so that I was blown away at the first "trial" (though there really was no "trial" to speak of)? I know that your theology may not allow for the non-perseverance of the saints, but honestly, I can describe it in no other terms. Where I once had faith, hope, and love in and for the Christian God, I now only have skepticism.

But how can one fool oneself like this? If one thinks they are expressing faith, how is that different to the person than actually expressing faith?

Whatever your theology dictates, don't you think it is telling that hundreds (if not thousands) of Christians have prayed over me and believed they received word from God that "his hand was on" me, and that God was directing them to confirm my ministry? If all of these Christians can be fooled after firmly believing that God has given them confirmation of my Christianity and my "call" to ministry, how can any Christian trust that they are hearing anything from God?

No, James White probably never prayed to God to confirm my salvation, but he did consider me an intelligent person, well-versed in Christian apologetics. But all of these churches that firmly believed that God had indicated that I was a believer and called to do Christian work, what can be said of all of them?

It seems that the Christian is only left with three options: (1) those churches didn't really get any guidance from God and only believed they did, (2) they did hear from God, but he tricked them into thinking that I was a Christian and a "called" Christian minister, or (3) that a true Christian can lose his or her faith.

Anyway, James, if you are reading this, I want to say that I enjoyed your class and still think fondly of it. Your post simply got me thinking about my past. If, by any chance, you can figure out who I am, I would appreciate it if you kept it secret. Thanks.

Did God Sovereignly Decree What I'm Doing, or Not?

Let me throw this out for discussion, regarding my previous post concerning God's sovereign decree that I should lead others away from Christianity.

A Calvinist asked:

Is Loftus going to argue that God’s perceptive will and his decretive will are within the realms of “the same respect“?

BTW: I had a master's level class with the late Calvinistic professor Kenneth Kantzer, the "dean of evangelicalism," where we read through and thoroughly discussed Calvin's institutes.

Logical gerrymandering. That's what you do with these two distinctions. Your theology is a sham. Try to actually understand it, okay. I mean, really try to understand it. Either your God ends up acting just like the Arminian God with these distinctions, or your God is completely sovereign. Which is it, in the end?

If God is completely sovereign then God decreed what I am doing (could I have done otherwise?). I am leading people away from him. If I'm effective, more people will die without Christ. People will be in hell as a result of my efforts (according to this God). But I cannot do otherwise. God purportedly decrees this because the people who suffer in hell for all eternity bring him more glory than if they didn't suffer in hell for eternity. This is just laughable to me.

Think about it folks! The belief in the eternal suffering of billions of people for slighting God is one of the biggest problems atheists have with God, and one of the main causes to malign him. How could angels and the redeemed ever praise him for this, especially when those who suffer will be their spouses, children, parents, and friends? And God decreed this? These people could not have done otherwise? But this brings more glory to God than having everyone in heaven? Well glory to God, then. With that kind of glory who needs shame? So shame on God. Shame. Shame. Shame.

God should be ashamed of this...extremely ashamed. People who do such things to other people on earth get locked up in prison and/or are executed. The fact that he is God and thus bigger and more powerful than us makes no difference in the way he should treat us. It just makes him a thug, a horrible gang leader, a despicable potentate. That this brings God any glory at all is simply and absolutely laughable. He's a devil in disguise, who revels in refuse, feces and garbage under the guise of praise.

This sovereign God could have equally decreed that we all loved and obeyed him and that there was no sin on earth and no need for a Savior. Or, he could've decreed that everyone on earth heard and believed the gospel of Jesus. But these two scenarios purportedly don't bring him as much glory as the one we find ourselves in, where he decrees that I should lead people away from him who will suffer for all eternity with the billions (?) in hell.

Where's my laugh machine. I know I have it somewhere. Oh. Here it is.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Nostalgic Today

Okay, here’s a personal post, for what it’s worth. I belonged to the Christian Church/Churches of Christ, known as the Restoration Movement. We were the conservatives who used the musical instruments in worship (i.e. “the centrists”).

I studied at Great Lakes Christian College (GLCC), and Lincoln Christian Seminary (LCC/LCS). I still know many of the faculty and administrators at these colleges, along with those at several other colleges, since several of my peers and former professors went on to teach at these colleges. The Presidents of two seminaries were close personal friends of mine when I was in school, including Dr. Keith Ray who is now the President at LCC/LCS. One of my former professors is the President of Kentucky Christian University . I considered many Christian college professors and a great many more ministers as my friends. Then there are the many Christian friends I knew in the churches I served as an associate minister, a minister, a senior minister, and as an interim minister for about 18 years.

Anyway, these colleges continue to send me their quarterlies. I just received GLCC’s KEY today. President Larry Carter and I were both instructors together at GLCC, and now he’s the President of GLCC. He was also my brother’s minister in Grand Rapids, MI.

In my Deconversion story link you’ll also read how the Kalkaska Church of Christ discovered I was an atheist and the creator of this Blog for the first time (see the comments down toward the end). The associate minister at Kalkaska credits me for inspiring him to enter the ministry, and there are two other men in the ministry who credit me in the same way. One of them is in a Ph.D. program.

Christ’s Church at Georgetown in Ft. Wayne, IN is my ordaining church. The former minister of this church is Jerry M. Paul, who baptised me and preached at my ordination. He became the President of Great Lakes Christian College for a few years, and was the President while I taught there. He now serves a church in Ft. Wayne, IN, again, last time I knew.

I’m feeling kind of nostalgic today, not for the faith I rejected, but for these people whom I considered my friends.

My problem is that I still feel a love for these folks. They were my friends. Some of them were close friends. And I’m troubled, because the closeness is all over now. I have no animosity toward any of them. I just disagree with them. As I’ve said, the arguments were just not there, period. They are deluded, like I was for too long. It’s a shame, really. But we must go on.

--------------------------------

As an edited afterthought to this....I had some successes while a Christian minister. Had I stayed in ministry I could've made even greater contributions to the Church. So, why didn't God protect me from the darts of the Devil? If I was a valued member of his people, why not protect me from my doubts? Why did he let me slip through his hands like he did? I am now a fairly effective advocate against the Christian faith. Did he not know this could/would happen? Does he not care whether I lead people toward him or away from him?

No doubt, Christians will respond that I rejected Christianity of my own free will. But does free will really solve this problem for the Christian? Then let them tell me exactly what God can do for us as free willed creatures. For example, if we pray for safety when we travel, then exactly how can God grant us safety from someone hell-bent on robbing us when we stop for food at a restaurant? If God cannot do something to prevent that robber from exercising his free will to rob us, then he is a useless God.

And if instead God sovereignly decreed that I should be an apostate, then he is his own worst enemy. With decrees like that there must be a great amount of internal conflict within the Trinity itself! ;) For such decrees are contrary to his stated desires (II Pet. 3:9). In fact, that means God decreed I should start this Blog too! Maybe God should just see a shrink, along with those who believe he can decree two contradictory things (and they are indeed contradictory things to decree, not merely unexplainable, unless one says God has a different logic than He's given us).

Pascal's Wager (Assorted quotations, beginning with Pascal)

PASCAL'S ORIGINAL WAGER

If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having, neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is… [So] you must wager. Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that he is.

Blaise Pascal (Catholic philosopher)
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I have a personal hope or “wager” that God, or a higher power, exists, and that an afterlife remains a possibility, but that does not make me a Catholic like Pascal. Pascal simply ignored the possibility that God could have criteria for “salvation and damnation” different than those proposed by his Roman Catholic faith (or God could have no criteria).

Secondly, Pascal’s argument can be used equally by all religions that promise “bliss” to those who accept only their particular doctrines and practices.

Thirdly, even Pascal acknowledged that evidence of “God” was questionable, apparently even indeterminate, because he wrote, “We are incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is.” Pascal added that no one can tell the difference between a world “with a God” and a world “without one.” But would any intelligent and compassionate Being hide their existence in the bushes so well that no one could tell if the bushes were occupied or not, and then jump out and say “Ah ha! You’re going to hell!” To put it another way, would it be both an “intelligent and a compassionate” act to damn those who had used the brains God had given them, and who had determined CORRECTLY AND HONESTLY that the question was “indeterminate?”

Fourthly, Pascal’s own church never officially accepted his approach to the question of the existence of God. Instead, the Catholic Church favored attempts to prove rationally the existence of God rather than requiring people to “gamble” or “bet” on the matter.

E.T.B. (See Pickover, The Paradox of God and the Science of Omniscience. Also visit Pickover's website, "Reality Carnival"-- easily recalled, and easily googled, simply by name.)

I have always considered “Pascal’s Wager” a questionable bet to place. Any God worth “believing in” would surely prefer an honest agnostic to a calculating hypocrite.

Alan Dershowitz, Letters to a Young Lawyer
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“Belief” is not something you can turn on and off like a spigot. No person can truly “believe in God” unless the evidence convinces his or her mind. If you don’t believe me, try believing that the stars are holes punched into a heavenly dome, with the light of heaven shining through. Pascal’s recommendation is inherently impractical.

Dave Matson, “Pascal’s Wager,” The Bauble Box: A Collection of Short Gems Written for the Freethought Exchange
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In the tradition of Pascal, perhaps a new wager can be posed. If mortal life is all that exists for individuals, we lose nothing by seeking to make that life as meaningful and rewarding as possible. But if eternal life exists, we have lost nothing by seeking a fulfilling existence here on Earth. Thus, one might wager on the richness of life here and now.

Like Pascal’s original bet this evolutionary-genetic wager involves some questionable assumptions. It assumes that nothing is to be lost by a mistaken belief in the absence of a god or of an eternal existence for the individual’s soul. Many religions posit that only through complete faith can final redemption be attained. A far less severe philosophy holds that no deity would damn a soul for a lack of faith on matters unresolved to an open and reasonable, yet finite, human mind.

John C. Avise, “An Evolutionary-Genetic Wager,” Skeptical Inquirer, Vol.25, No. 5, Sept./Oct. 2001
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Bait and Switch

Let me begin by making it clear that Pascal's wager is not really about believing in God, it's about accepting religion. It might be an old religion with lots of cathedrals and a globe-spanning ministry, or a tiny little cult that meets in someone's front room. At the very least it will be a definition of God that you must accept, along with the infrastructure needed to propagate that definition. Don't believe me? Next time some Mighty Zombie asks if you believe in God tell them this: "Sure: I believe God is sex, and I definitely believe in sex." If they're cute and you're available, wink.

Choices

Suppose I decided that Pascal is right, that I should "get religion" just in case. Which one should I choose? On a worldwide basis, roughly equal numbers of people are Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, and Hindu, each having roughly one billion adherents. Another billion have some religion other than one of the big four. The remaining billion or so have no religion.

None of the religions call to me. I have no basis for choosing one over the other. When _I_ knelt and prayed for guidance God told me he didn't exist: http://www.jhuger.com/mat_enlight.php

All-Powerful = All-Stupid?

If God does exist, presumably He'll know I don't really believe in Him, or that I'm pretending to believe in Him on the off chance that He might really exist. If He's willing to accept me if I just "Go through the motions" then I suspect just being a good person will also be enough.

Pascal's own answer to this point was that this is why we have churches, to help us grow in faith. In other words, if I submit to a church-approved brainwashing program, they can make me believe. I do not find this comforting.

Hidden Costs

The cost to "place the bet" is not as low as some would claim. Tithes and other contributions are just the beginning. People are dying, now, as I type, because of their religion, or because of somebody else's religion. There are people refusing medical treatment either for themselves or their children, because it's "against their religion." There are people killing other people over religion. The"ethnic cleansing" in Eastern Europe was very much a war between groups that identified themselves primarily with either Christianity or Islam. Similar conflicts are taking place in Indonesia. And let's not forget 9/11, the Taliban in Afghanistan, nor Sunnis and Shiites blowing each other up in Iraq.

If You Bet, Bet Responsibly

Let's suppose someone offers you the following wager: Roll a single die. If it comes up a six, they will give you ten thousand dollars. If it comes up 1 through 5, you give them one thousand dollars. Should you take the bet? The odds of winning are 1:6 and the payoff is 10:1. If you've got a thousand bucks to spare, it's a good bet. But if that money is supposed to go towards rent and utilities, then it would be irresponsible of you to make the bet.

If we atheists are right, this is the only life you have. Using it to place a risky bet is irresponsible.

Rev. James Huger, selections from his essays, "Pascal's Sucker Bet."
To read the entire essay, and other pieces by Rev. Huger,
visit: http://www.jhuger.com/pascal

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THE AFTERLIFE


I believe in an afterlife. Because the combined royalties of everything I’ve ever had published in this life, aren’t worth living for.

E.T.B.
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If you live right, death is a joke to you as far as fear is concerned.

Will Rogers
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He deserves paradise who can make his companions laugh.

The Koran
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We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

Tombstone epitaph of two amateur astronomers, quoted in Carl Sagan’s Cosmos

A Non-Believing Minister!

I received this e-mail today:

As a former fundy (and a currently ordained, although deconverted minister pastoring a church!), I greatly appreciate your honest and excellent writing! I'm very much in the theological closet and wish to remain totally anonymous for now, and I'm sure you can understand that.

I wonder how many other ministers are out there in churches who no longer believe, but who don't know what else to do with their lives?

The God Who Is Not

There are Christians very unlike the christian bloggers that we regularly read and hear from. In fact, I think that most Christians are very unlike the ones in the blogosphere.

These are good people who hold to good humanistic principles. They believe the best about people. They want people to experience happiness.

Their idea about the Christian God is also very different from the Christian bloggers we are most often in contact with here. Unfortunately, it seems that their idea of the Christian God is also very different from the ones (for there are many different concepts of God in the Bible) presented in the Bible and throughout church history.

It seems, to me, that these people are trying to squeeze an idea of a good god into a religion that is antithetical to that conception. We, intuitively, know that if a god exists, that god is the zenith of wisdom and morality and, as such, would not be petty about things like human mistakes, homosexuality, etc. We also, intuitively, know that if a god with that kind of greatness did actually exist, our world would look very different than it does.

I believe there is the idea, in the heart of every human, of what a god must be if one does exist, but there is also a nagging realization that this god doesn't exist (e.g. because of the prevalence of rape, murder, molestation, etc.).

What I think many Christians are doing is taking this idea of what a true god would be (i.e. what we know this true god would be if one existed) and trying to force it into Christianity. The problem, however, is that the Bible and church history are clearly opposed to this notion of god. This is a religion that believes its God told people to kill disobedient children and homosexuals; who told rape victims to marry their attackers; who invented the idea of hell to punish those who disagree with him.

There is this tension, though, because most Christians cannot make themselves believe that a true god (the god they know would exist if one existed) would do such awful things. They try to ignore the God of the Christian Bible and Christian history and put this other concept of god into their religion.

I can't help but believe that this is a blasphemous act, not toward the Christian God, but toward the god we know would exist if one existed. It is paramount to calling a true god a devil (i.e. one who calls for the death and torture of others).

It does not seem difficult to imagine what a god would be like if one existed. She would be a good god, a god that is not petty, a god very unlike the Christian God.

Unfortunately, the state of the world seems to be a clear indication that this "true" god does not, in fact, exist (things would be much different). I think most Christians also know this intuitively, but want so desperately for this true god to exist, that they try to squeeze it into a religion that is antithetical to it. I believe this is a great disservice to the idea of the true god, the god we know would exist if one existed.

So, while I don't believe a god exists, I feel compelled to defend the idea of a true god. I feel compelled to point out that Christians (and other members of the world religions) are blaspheming the real god, i.e. The God Who is Not.

Atheists are simply people who think too highly of "The God Who is Not" to attach her to one of the hideous world religions. We think too highly of her to associate her with this chaotic, uncaring world.

If any being worthy of the title "god" existed, I can't help but believe that she would be happier with the atheists of this world than the Christians, Muslims, religious Jews, etc. We are the only ones who refuse to disgrace her by attributing horrific deeds to her.

Atheists are the true worshippers of the true god, The God Who is Not. Our praise to her comes in our refusal to debase her by connecting her with backwards, morally-bankrupt world religions or with this uncaring, painful universe. Our thoughts of her are too high. We are better, more faithful worshippers than any religious person who profanes the concept of the true god by associating it with their hideous faith.

Let every knee bow and tongue confess that the true god is too good for this world and any of its religions! All praise and glory be given to The God Who is Not!

What if you are wrong?

I just joined this blog.

I had a GREAT debate . . . three debates in a row, actually . . . against John Rankin of the Theological Education Institute in Connecticut this week. Topic: "Is the bible full or errors and deceit?" A recording of one of the events will be available.

As I get my notes together, or a transcript, I will post some of the examples here.

- - - - - - -

I won't have a lot of time to jump in to this blog . . . but here is my first contribution.

Based on the mere possibility that there might be a god of judgment, many believers ask, "What if you are wrong?"

As if we nonbelievers have never thought of such a question.

So I turn it around and suggest another possibility, one that would not be any less likely than theirs:

"Maybe there is a god, but he is only going to reward those people who have enough courage NOT to believe in him."

"What if YOU are wrong!?!"

Dan Barker

The Quest for the "Original Text" of Scripture

Most evangelical Christians consider the Scriptures to be the verbally inspired and inerrant Word of God. When pushed on the subject, they will acknowledge that this inerrancy only applies to the "original text" or autographa of Scripture. (This seems to be a convenient excuse first popularized by B.B. Warfield last century in response to the on slaught of "higher criticism".)

The problem, however, with this claim is that no one has seen the "original text"; it is not available for scrutiny. The Evangelical will answer that due to the great number of manuscripts and the science of textual criticism, the original text can be reconstructed.

As a former instructor in NT Greek, I dabbled some in the science of "textual criticism." Textual criticism is "The study of manuscripts or printings to determine the original or most authoritative form of a text, especially of a piece of literature" (Dictionary.com). The goal of NT textual criticism is to remove spurious readings and identify the "original text" or "autographa" of the New Testament. A very interesting article questioning this stated goal of textual criticism is The Multivalence of the Term "Original Text" in New Testament Textual Criticism, by Eldon Jay Epp in the Harvard Theological Review , July 1999. (article no longer available on the web).

Epp points to a paper read at a conference at Notre Dame University in 1988 as a stimulus that caused him and other textual critics to rethink what they meant by "original text." (He uses the term now only in quotation marks). The paper that influenced him was presented by Helmut Koester and was entitled: Gospel Traditions in the Second Century.
Epp writes:

"Koester's discussion of "The Text of the Synoptic Gospels in the Second Century"(32) was introduced by the fully acceptable observation that (except for the fragment [P.sup.52]) no second-century manuscript evidence for the New Testament exists(33) and, therefore, severe problems attend the reconstruction of the textual history of the gospels in the first century of their transmission. Koester then startled many by turning on its head the New Testament textual critics' standard claim that they are fortunate to have so many early manuscripts so close to the time the writings originated. In contrast, he aptly observed that "the oldest known manuscript archetypes are separated from the autographs by more than a century. Textual critics of classical texts know that the first century of their transmission is the period in which the most serious corruptions occur." He then added the provocative note that "textual critics of the New Testament writings have been surprisingly naive in this respect."(34)

Koester went on to say:

"The text of the Synoptic Gospels was very unstable during the first and second centuries. With respect to Mark, one can be fairly certain that only its revised text has achieved canonical status, while the original text (attested only by Matthew and Luke) has not survived. With respect to Matthew and Luke, there is no guarantee that the archetypes of the manuscript tradition are identical with the original text of each Gospel. The harmonizations of these two Gospels demonstrate that their text was not sacrosanct and that alterations could be expected ... New Testament textual critics have been deluded by the hypothesis that the archetypes of the textual tradition which were fixed ca. 200 CE ... are (almost) identical with the autographs. This cannot be confirmed by any external evidence. On the contrary, whatever evidence there is indicates that not only minor, but also substantial revisions of the original texts have occurred during the first hundred years of the transmission."(36)

Epp concludes from this:

"Whether or not textual critics acquiesce in all of these charges, a strong challenge remains, for they are left not only with text-critical questions--for example, which variants of Mark are most likely original?--but also with penetrating canonical questions, such as, which Mark is original?Similar issues arise with respect to the composition of the other Synoptics, the Fourth Gospel, the Pauline letters, and other portions of the New Testament. The relation to the Fourth Gospel of the well-known Egerton Papyrus 2 (currently dated ca. 200) is one such example. Although usually understood as a later excerpt from all four gospels, Koester (retaining a dating in the first part of the second century) views the papyrus as representing a text older than John because, "with its language that contains Johannine elements but reveals a greater affinity to the Synoptic tradition, it belongs to a stage of the tradition that preceded the canonical gospels."(37) If so, the gospel of which these surviving fragments were a part would have been read, without question, as authoritative in some early church(es) and possibly also could have played a role in the composition of our gospels. Again, the question arises, what or where is the original Mark? Or Matthew? Or Luke? Or John?Now, if the goal of textual criticism is to recover the most likely "original" text, what in actuality is the object of textual critics' research--a text of the gospels that is somewhat earlier than but very likely similar to the text of the earliest manuscripts, or a text of even earlier and now largely lost predecessor forms of these gospels'? In other words, textual critics face two or more questions rather than one: first, a prior question as to which Mark (or John, or Corinthian letters, or Ephesians, etc.) is "original," followed by the more traditional inquiry as to which variant readings of a particular work are "original." More clearly than before, the multivalence of the term "original text" emerges and confronts textual critics with its complexity.

Thus, the stated goal of textual criticism, to arrive at the "original text" of Scripture, may in fact be impossible. Why is this important? Because it is the "original text" which is deemed to be inspired and inerrant by most Christians. If one cannot be certain of what constituted the “original text” of Scripture, then one cannot be certain of what constitutes the inerrant Word of God. Epp concludes his fascinating article by saying that the latest scholarship in Textual Criticism indicates that the goal of textual criticism must be redefined.

"As New Testament textual criticism moves into the twenty-first century, it must shed whatever remains of its innocence, for nothing is simple anymore. Modernity may have led many to assume that a straightforward goal of reaching a single original text of the New Testament--or even a text as close as possible to that original--was achievable. Now, however, reality and maturity require that textual criticism face unsettling facts, chief among them that the term "original" has exploded into a complex and highly unmanageable multivalent entity. Whatever tidy boundaries textual criticism may have presumed in the past have now been shattered, and its parameters have moved markedly not only to the rear and toward the front, but also sideways, as fresh dimensions of originality emerge from behind the variant readings and from other manuscript phenomena. "

The simple fact is that the earliest mss. that we have are hundreds of years removed from the time of the "originals" and there is no way to ascertain what with certainty what the original said. Why is this significant? Because the evangelical's faith is in a book (they will tell you its in a person but its really in a book). A book they claim is directly from God and inerrant. If only the originals are inerrant and there is no way to reconstruct the originals with certainty, then the whole thing collapses like a house of cards.

The Story of Cain (Gen. 4:1-25)

God’s judgment upon Cain for killing his brother Abel was to be a wanderer. Cain is deathly afraid of this and says: “whoever finds me will kill me.” So God places a mark on him so that “no one who found him would kill him.” (v.14). Now who is Cain afraid of here? Supposedly the only people on earth were his mom and dad, and a few sisters. Then it says, “Cain lay with his wife.” (v.17). Where did he get a wife? Nothing was said about that, but presumably the author isn’t interested in such matters. Why? It’s because the author of chapters 3-11 was stressing the sinfulness of human beings. God created the world good, but look how his highest creation behaves—he behaves very very badly. Human beings are very sinful beginning with Adam and Eve’s disobedience, to Cain killing his brother, to the flood where God destroyed everyone but Noah and his family, to the tower of Babel. Human beings are very sinful and ungrateful for what God has done. To try to make sense of where Cain got his wife is to miss the point of these chapters. It has the feel of a story with a point, not a statement about marrying sisters. Then it says when Cain’s wife gave birth to his firstborn, Enoch, Cain was in the process of “building a city.” (v.17). If we try to make sense of this we simply cannot do it. Cain is banished from his parents and marked so that no one who finds him will kill him. He gets a wife and starts to build a city, and while doing so Enoch is born. None of this makes much sense given the whole setting. A city? Instead, maybe it should have read, “Cain was building a house.” But a whole city?

According to Donald Gown this whole scenario “seems to presuppose a different background from that provided by chapters 2-3, one in which Cain and Abel live in an already well-populated world. Furthermore, the genealogy at the end, leading to the founding of guilds of cattle-raisers, musicians, and metallurgists, seems strangely irrelevant when we realize that all the descendants of these people will be wiped out by the flood. Originally, then, the story of Cain and Abel was probably told as a self-contained narrative, without having any relationship to the stories of the garden or the flood.” [From Eden to Babel: Genesis 1-11 (pp. 62-63)].

This should surprise no one. Even the Gospels do not present the same chronology of events in the life of Jesus or stress the same things about him. The events in the life of Jesus were arranged by each of the four authors to stress certain distinct things in the life of Jesus, and very few, if any N.T. authorities think otherwise. [See almost any scholarly introduction to the Gospels for this].

But with the story of Cain we have an additional problem. If so many things in this story are inserted without the need to correct the setting, like his wife, the people he fears, and the city he is building, then when the editor/author earlier said that "Eve would become the mother of all the living"(Gen. 3:20)we can see it for what it really is. It is just a folk story with a point, like one of Jesus’ parables. John Gibson: “Genesis is essentially folk literature. The vast bulk of it consists of stories which still carry about them the marks of having been composed to entertain and to instruct ordinary folks.” “In effect we are treating this and other opening chapters of Genesis as imaginative stories, approaching them as we would a modern short story or, to use a Biblical parallel, one of our Lord’s parables.” [Genesis 1-11, (pp. 2, 11).

This view undercuts what both Jesus and Paul purportedly thought about Adam & Eve, Cain and Able too. Either they were both wrong to think of them as real historical people, or they thought these were imaginative folk-tales.

What other reasonable explanations are there?

Reasonable Faith?

In his book Reasonable Faith, Christian author William Lane Craig argues that reason is to play a "ministerial" role in the Christian faith. The problem with this is that it's the biggest proof anyone has ever been given, indeed, that anyone should ever need that Craig is a spin-doctor for the Christian Right. The problem is that reason should be only be to discover facts and testing our understanding of those facts. Reason can be used as a means to an end or as an end in itself. If we let the facts speak for themselves and we seek only to test our understanding of any facts (i.e. how to explain those facts), we are using reason as an end in itself. It's usually when people begin with a conclusion and then look to verify that conclusion, then are they using reason as a means to an end.

The problem here is that one's approach to how to use reason determines if one is an honest inquirer or if one is a spin-doctor. If someone seeks to use reason as an end in itself, that person is an honest inquirer; if someone seeks to use reason as a means to an end, that person is a spin-doctor. The only honest way to use reason is to use it as an end in itself. This is to use it, in theological terms, in a "magisterial" sense. To use reason in a "ministerial" sense, is to use reason as a means to an end, to verify a conclusion you're already committed to. To use reason in a "ministerial" sense is to use it dishonestly. Thus, those who use reason in a "ministerial" approach are abusing reason. They are engaging in what I call "the rape of reason".

Many Evangelical Christians simply display their hypocrisy in condemning "critical New Testament scholars" for ruling out the miraculous before they have given any evidence a honest look and rival hypotheses a fair shake. But if many Christians follow Craig's lead and use reason in a "ministerial" sense, they are guilty of the same damn thing! They have a precommitment to the resurrection, to biblical inerrancy, to Christian theism, and rule out any naturalistic hypotheses before they engage any historical evidence in their studies.

This was brought home to me one night as I was reading Norman Geisler's book Inerrancy. I read a chapter called "Biblical Inerrancy and Higher Criticism". The author condemned the critical-historical approach to the Bible and, instead, advocated a grammatico-historical approach to the Bible. The latter approach begins with the axiom that the Bible is inerrant. What convinced me that apologetics was a sham and nothing but hopeless hackwork was this very chapter. I realized that Christian apologists have no interest in honestly assessing history. If many New Testament critics were dishonest in their approach to any historical investigation of the New Testament, Evangelicals would simply try to reform the critical-historical method so as to not rule out miracles and skewer the results in advanced.

What Evangelicals like Geisler, Archer, and other hacks who contributed to this volume were doing was trying to replace any "naturalistic" presuppositions with those that were biblically-based. This struck me as hypocrisy. How can any Evangelical chew out advocates of the critical-historical method because such a method allegedly rules out the miraculous beforehand and then substitute it for their own method which rules out the naturalistic beforehand and presupposes biblical inerrancy and perhaps the resurrection beforehand?

This is what convinced me that night that Christian apologetics was truly a sham. It's pseudo-intellectual hackwork aimed at raping reason and keeping people in the fold. The problem is that exposes hypocrisy in the long run and shows that it's moreover Evangelists who are the real spin-doctors and hacks and probably not so much of the critics. There are no doubt that some critics truly are guilty of the charges leveled at them by Evangelicals. The problem is that quite a number of Evangelicals aren't really in a position to compain about it.

I appreciate any questions, comments, and criticisms. Insults needn't apply!

Matthew

Questions Your Pastor will Hate.

Just for a little fun I found some questions your Pastor will hate, written by a former Pastor:

"Who was Cain afraid would kill him when God put him out of the Garden for killing Abel? There were mom, dad, bro and himself on the whole planet at the time." Answer: Cain just wasn't thinking that day.

"Why would God stop the whole earth for a day so Israelites could finish a genocide against the enemy?" I mean, I can see stopping it so there is more time to hug, or feed the hungry, or plant the crops, but more time to kill? Dumb story.

"How come the horses in the Exodus die twice in the Ten Plagues and still survive for Pharoah to mount a final attack against the Israelites, and then die again."

"If Herod killed all the little children under two to get at Jesus, who escaped, can we not say the little children had to die for Jesus before he died for them?" Answer...No we can't, sheesh.

"Why does the Apostle Paul, who writes most of the New Testament, NEVER quote Jesus, tell a story of his life or death, discuss a miracle or teaching?" Answer...Where do you get this stuff?

"Why does neither Mark nor John know anything about Jesus birth, while Matthew and Luke do but tell contradictory stories?" Answer...Because the Gospels are like four people who see a car wreck...

"Why does Paul only say Jesus was born of a woman like everyone else?" Answer...Paul was concerned about the risen Jesus, not the earthly one. He was too busy to check up on the details.

"Did Paul ever spend five minutes with the real human Jesus?" Answer..well no, but Paul's Jesus is the risen Jesus, it doesn't matter.

"Isn't it strange the man who writes most of the New Testament and tells us all how to live, think and believe about Jesus, never met him, while the Twelve who did, vanish into thin air and write nothing?" Answer...You ain't from around these parts are you boy.

Is a Christian Society a Better One?

Christians who argue that no society can be a good society without Christianity need a history lesson. They need to study some of the great societies of the past, like Greece during the golden ages, or The Roman Empire, or several of the dynasties in ancient China, or the Islamic Empire under Muhammad, or the historic Japanese culture. None of these societies were Christian ones, but they were great societies by all standards of history. And yes, there was corruption in every one of these societies too, just like any ancient or modern society, even Biblical Judaism and Christian America.

If Christians want to maintain that a Christian society is a better society, then just let them volunteer to go back in time to medieval Christianity and see if they like it. Probably all Christians today would be branded as heretics and persecuted or burned to death. And if today’s Christians will say that medieval Christianity doesn’t represent true Christianity, then which Christian society does truly represent true Christianity? Even in the first few years of the early church there was corruption. There was sin in the camp (Acts 5); grumbling about food (Acts 6); and a major dispute that threatened to split the church (Acts 10-11, 15; Galatians 2). Then there were the constant disputes among these Christians over a very wide assortment of issues (I & II Corinthians). I could go on and talk of Calvin’s Geneva, the Crusades, the Inquisitions, witch trials, or any period in the history of America too, with black slavery, the Salem witchcraft trials, Manifest Destiny, and our treatment of women and minorities, to mention just a few.

Christian inclusivist scholar, Charles Kimball, argues that certain tendencies within religions cause evil. “Religious structures and doctrines can be used almost like weapons.” (p. 32). Religion becomes evil, according to Kimball, whenever religion: 1) has absolute truth claims; 2) demands blind obedience; 3) tries to establish the ideal society; 4) utilizes the end justifies any means when defending their group identity; or 5) when they see themselves in a holy war. He says, “A strong case can be made that the history of Christianity contains considerably more violence and destruction than that of most other major religions.” (p. 27) [When Religion Becomes Evil (Harper, 2002)].

Richard Dawkins, a world-renowned evolutionary biologist, has released a two-part video series in 2006, called “The Root of All Evil?: The God Delusion.” Dawkins describes God as the most unpleasant fictional character of all and he attacks religion as the cause for much of the pain and suffering in the world.

I just don’t see where a Christian society is a better one. And even if Christianity was the main motivator in starting most all early American universities, most all of our hospitals and many food kitchens, and the like, these things still would have been started anyway, if for no reason other than necessity. It just so happened that Christianity has reigned in America for a couple of centuries, that’s all.

Poisoning the Well

There are people on the web who feel their job is to poison the well, so to speak. They berate and pick and insult and quote us out of context in order to get a rise out of us. When we respond because they have finally irritated us to that point, they take a snapshot and post it for everyone to see. It's their mission, since they cannot deal directly with what we have to say. Those who are stupid enough to look at the snapshot and conclude that this is who we are, can then ignore what we say. It's a convienent informal-fallacy-based apologetical device used against anyone who threatens them.

So, our choice is to tolerate their treatment of us and to respond kindly to anything they throw at us, which is a real feat in and of itself, or for them to take that snapshot of us when we are upset at them for treating us like dirt. Me? No one treats me like dirt. I respect myself too much. Hence, you see the snapshots that people like Frank Walton have of me. It's a win/win situation for them, so why should I care which side they win on? The problem is that only stupid people will believe them. Smarter people will sit up and take notice that the whole reason they do this is because such a person is 1) a threat, and 2) he has self-respect.

Kalam Cosmological Argument--Premise One

The Cosmological Argument is one of the classical "proofs" for the existence of God. It has been re-worked several times to reach its present, most widely recognized form--i.e. the Kalam Cosmological Argument. The most popular proponent of this argument is William Lane Craig.

When I considered myself a Christian I went to one of his debates and believed he did a very good job with it. He used the Cosmological Argument very effectively against his opponent--though, in fairness, the guy Craig debated was a radio announcer who did not have any kind of former philosophical training (this was apparently before Craig decided to only debate PhDs).

This is how the Cosmological Argument is commonly presented:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.

2. The universe began to exist.

2.1 Argument based on the impossibility of an actual infinite.

2.11 An actual infinite cannot exist.

2.12 An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite.

2.13 Therefore, an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist.

2.2 Argument based on the impossibility of the formation of an actual infinite by successive addition.

2.21 A collection formed by successive addition cannot be actually infinite.

2.22 The temporal series of past events is a collection formed by successive
addition.

2.23 Therefore, the temporal series of past events cannot be actually infinite.

3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.

Formally:

Let B = the predication "begins to exist"
Let C = the predication "has a cause of existence"
Let u = "the universe"



"For every x, if x begins to exist, then x has a cause of existence. The universe begins to exist, therefore the universe has a cause of existence."

The most devastating critique I've ever read of this argument was, ironically, from Christian philosopher, Alvin Plantinga, in his book God and Other Minds. He concentrated his critique on the second and third premises and their defenses, though he only begrudgingly conceded the first premise.

Usually, people do accept the first premise and deal with subsequent premises and their defenses (e.g. that there cannot be infinite regress, etc). I'm not sure, however, that even this first premise can be maintained.

[I am indebted to Dan Barker for the following critique. The idea and some of the examples are his and can be found here.]

In the first premise, the proponent of this argument appears to be making a category mistake. The theist says that "whatever [thing--the word is implicit]" that begins to exist must have a cause. The theist, then, switches that "thing" to "the universe." The problem, here, is that it may be inappropriate to treat the universe in the same way one treats some "thing" in the universe.

For example, let's say that I have a number set in this form: [2,4,6,8 . . .]. From studying "inside" the set, I draw the conclusion that every thing is two counts away from the next thing. My statement is perfectly valid inside the set. Two is two counts from four, four is two counts from six, etc.

But the rule that is valid within the set is not necessarily valid of the set itself. Let's say that my set above is in a list of sets. Set 1 is in the form [1,2,3,4 . . .], the set I mentioned above is Set 2, the next set in the list, Set 3, is in the form [3,6,9,12 . . .].

Now, I extracted a rule from Set 2 that says everything is two counts away from the next thing. If I applied this rule to the set itself, however, my statement would not be true. Set 2 is neither two counts away from Set 1 nor two counts away from Set 3.

This, however, is exactly what the theist is doing when he goes from the statement that "Whatever [thing] begins to exist has a cause of its existence," to his next statement and conclusion that "The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence." This argument treats the universe as a "thing," and not "the set of all things." This is the category mistake.

[Note that it is true of all sets that a set is made up of the sum of its parts. Sometimes rules of the sets do apply to the set itself, but not necessarily so.]

Let me try to be more clear. If I asked a theist to prove his statement, "Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence," he would have to appeal to things inside the physical universe. He might say that a hurricane is caused by ocean temperatures, etc. His statement is a physical statement that relies on induction and on physical laws.

In other words, the first premise is not a tautology (though it may seem to be one), but rather an empirical statement demonstrated by induction.

The problem comes when the theist tries to apply natural laws to the universe itself. He is doing the same thing that I did with the number sets above. He is finding a rule that is true inside the universe (i.e. inside "the set") and saying that it must apply to the universe itself (i.e. to "the set" itself). There is no way to prove that that is the case, though. There is no way to prove that a rule inside the set (i.e. the universe) must apply to the set itself.

Let me try another way of explaining this. I saw this "ball" in a toy store the other day. It is made of plastic pieces on joints. If a child pulled on the joints, the ball would begin to expand. The ball keeps expanding to a rather large ball and can retract to a small, dense ball. The inside of the ball is hollow.

Many physicists believe the universe is similarly "ball-shaped." What the theist is doing is taking a rule that is true inside the ball and applying it to the conditions outside the ball. This may not, however, be the case. The outside conditions may be entirely unlike the inside conditions.

Let me try a hypothetical. Let's say that the universe did begin, but it began inside something I will call a "yniverse." A yniverse is a type of meta-universe.

Let's say that the physics of the yniverse are very different from the physics of our own universe. First of all, there is no indication that a yniverse had a beginning. It is like what some physicists used to call a "steady-state" universe.

Now, imagine that the physical laws in that yniverse allow for things to come into existence without a cause (I think we already made clear that the theists' assertion that something requires a cause is a statement that is true only because of our physical laws in our universe). So, in this yniverse, a universe can come into existence without any cause. If this were the case, our universe, because it is a part of another "set" with different rules, can come about without a cause at all.

I'm not saying that this is what I believe happened, but I'm simply pointing out that just because it is the case that everything that comes into existence within the universe has a cause, that does not mean that the universe itself had to have a cause. You cannot assume that a law at play within a set is true of the set itself.

The Cosmological argument falls apart if the first premise cannot be maintained.

Testing Arguments

Recently I made my first stab at an argument in "The Resurrection vs. History". I regret not taking this into consideration but I more-or-less took it for granted that most people contributing to the discussion on here would assume that these posts of mine are attempts by myself to test arguments I am working on.

My first post in which I made an argument was such an attempt. I noticed that on a Christian blog, a fellow by the name of Steve wrote a response, but it was prefaced by an ad hominem attack. I was labeled an "insidious villian" and then he proceeded to critique what I wrote. I am grateful that he wrote a response although I wish that he might have posted what he wrote in the feedback section of our blog. I'm not sure why he didn't. I'm not sure why he felt the need to name-call. I made my intentions known in a post on why I contribute here and I don't believe I deserve any title like "Insidious Villian"! I was thinking of writing something in response and even perhaps taking any good points he might have into consideration as I refine my thinking on the subject. I would try to be the first to confess that an argument of mine has been destroyed, especially if I am testing them out.

The majority of my posts here will consist of testing arguments. For instance, I am working on an answer to a challenge of Dr. William Lane Craig to skeptics over the nature of visions. He has a challenge for skeptics that he complains has never been taken up. I plan to do my best to answer any arguments. It's my hope that if my argument is posted, the folks at Triablogue will provide a friendly critique of what I have written so I can best refine my argument, correct any errors I have made, and if there are any ignorant gaps in my thinking, I can be politely prodded to cure my ignorance with further reading, studying, and thinking on the subject.

Look, I want to say that I do not consider myself an expert on Christian apologetics or ancient history. I am hoping that my participation here can help me to acquire expertise or at least set me on the path to where I need to be. For what it may be worth, I see no shame in admitting that I am a undergraduate student. Graduate school seems a year and a half or so away for me.

Matthew

A Primer for Understanding Ontological Arguments for the Existence of God

Here’s a very brief history of the Ontological Argument for the existence of God: Italian Anselm originated it around the 11th century. Italian Thomas Aquinas rejected it in the 13th century. Frenchman Rene Descartes resurrected it in the early 17th century. Prussian/German Immanuel Kant refuted it in the latter half of the 17th century. Then in the past several decades Americans Norman Malcolm, Charles Hartshorne, and Alvin Plantinga have all defended it. Criticisms and debate about it abound in almost every philosophy textbook.

It is generally agreed that the Ontological Argument never converted anyone (even though Bertrand Russell once thought it was correct, but later changed his mind). It is an amazing argument—a philosopher’s delight! This is the “most famous, the most mystifying, the most outrageous and irritating philosophical argument of all time.” “It remains as one of the most controversial arguments in all of philosophy.” Yet, “whenever I read the Ontological Argument, I have the same feeling that comes over me when I watch a really good magician. Nothing up this sleeve, nothing up the other sleeve; nothing in the hat; presto! A big fat rabbit. How can Anselm pull God out of an idea?” [Robert Paul Wolff in About Philosophy, (pp.284ff)].

Anselm’s Ontological Argument for the Existence of God:

1) On the assumption that that than which nothing greater can be conceived is only in a mind, something greater can be conceived, because
2) Something greater can be thought to exist in reality as well.
3) The assumption is therefore contradictory: either there is no such thing even in the intellect, or it exists also in reality;
4) But it does exist in the mind of the doubter;
5) Therefore that than which nothing greater can be conceived exists in reality as well as in the mind.

Anselm argued that even those who doubt the existence of God would have to have some understanding of what they were doubting: Namely, they would understand God to be a being than which nothing greater can be thought. Given that it is greater to exist outside the mind rather than just in the mind, a doubter who denied God's existence would be caught in a contradiction, because he or she would be saying that it is possible to think of something greater than a being than which nothing greater can be thought. Hence, God exists necessarily.

The basic Kantian criticism of Anselm's argument is that someone cannot infer the extra mental existence of anything by analyzing its definition. Yet defenders reply that Anselm is not defining God into existence. He’s asking whether we can reasonably suppose that something than which nothing greater can be conceived exists only in the intellect. Consider these statements: “No square circles exist,” and “an infinite set of prime numbers exists.” If we can move from concepts to statements about reality here with math, then why not with God?

However, if we asked an Easterner what he conceives to be the greatest conceivable being, his conception will start off being different than those of westerners from the get-go. I think Anselmian arguments, including those of Hartshorne, Plantinga and Malcolm's all begin with Occidental not Oriental conceptions of God, and their western conceptions of God are theirs by virtue of the prevalence of the Christian gospel in the west. If ontological argumentation is sound, then the eastern conceptions of God will entail that their God (or the One) also exists. Since these two conceptions of God produce two mutually exclusive conclusions about which kind of God exists, then the ontological argument itself does not lead us to believe in the Christian God alone.

John Hick says this about Plantinga’s formulation: “the reasoning looks suspiciously like an attempt to prove divine existence by definitional fiat. I believe that the suspicion is justified. Plantinga’s argument for a maximally excellent being, if valid, would also work for a maximally evil being.” [Which Hick offers in An Interpretation of Religion (Yale Univ. Press, 1992), pp. 78-79]. But there cannot be two omnipotent beings, one being good and one being evil, even though the ontological argument could prove that they both exist. Since the ontological argument can be used to prove that two mutually exclusive beings both exist, the reasoning itself is faulty.

The Resurrection vs. History

I consider evidentialist apologetics flawed. My chief reason for thinking so is that evidentialism contradicts the attributes of God. God, as defined in Christian theology, is the creator of the universe. As such, God is believed to be metaphysically necessary. What this means is that God does not require a special explanation for his existence nor can God be reduced to more prime substances, laws, or existants to explain his existence. God is believed to be metaphysically necessary because he is eternal; God has no beginning and, therefore, no need of a cause for his existence. If God was not eternal, then at one point God began to exist, and therefore would need a cause to explain his existence. That cause, and not God would be the creator then. If God needed a cause for his existence, God would be a metaphysically contigent Being. The universe, in Christian theology, is metaphysically contigent; it began to exist and is not eternal. Therefore, it needs a cause for its existence to explain why it exists. Christians believe that God is this Cause.

Metaphysical necessity, therefore, is an attribute of God's existence. Another attribute, closely related to metaphysical necessity, is moral necessity. God is believed to be a morally necessary being. What this implies is that God cannot do anything wrong. God is the ultimate source of all that is moral in Christian theology. Note that moral necessity implies that God cannot do anything wrong, not that he could if he wanted to, but simply chooses not to. Otherwise, God would be a morally contigent being like humans are. This makes perfect biblical sense and explains a number of biblical passages. For instance, in the New Testament epistle of James, it says that God does not tempt nor can he be tempted to sin. If God was a morally necessary being, then God canno be tempted. If God was a morally contigent being, then God could be tempted to sin and would have to resist it like human beings would. It also makes sense of a passage in the New Testament letter to the Hebrews. It says that it's impossible for God to lie. This makes perfect sense if God is believed to be a morally necessary being. If God was a morally contigent being, then God could lie but would have to chose not to. Thus, moral necessity is an attribute of God as is metaphysical necessity.

This poses tremendous problems for evidentialist apologetics. Why? Consider the following: If it's impossible for God to lie, then whatever God says is true by definition. If God says something, then what God says cannot be false and must be necessarily true. Thus, if God, speaking through Peter, by the Holy Spirit in the Pentecostal Sermon, declares that God has raised Jesus from the dead, then "God raised Jesus from the dead" is necessarily true. There is no way it can be false. Therefore, the resurrection, as an explanation of 1.) the empty tomb, 2.) the postmortem "sightings" of Jesus, and 3.) the origin of the resurrection faith, must be a necessary historical explanation. It cannot be a historically contigent explanation, such as an inference-to-the-best-explanation. To argue that the resurrection is the best explanatory explanation is to say that it's possible that the resurrection didn't happen but in all probability did. To say that it's possible that the resurrection didn't happen but in all probability did, is logically the same as saying that it's possible that God lied but in all probability told the truth about Jesus being raised from the dead. Therefore, in Christian theology, the resurrection is a necessary historical explanation. There is no way out of this!

The problem this creates for evidentialism is twofold. First of all, it shows that the resurrection cannot qualify as an historical explanation proper because the defining hallmark of any historical theory is falsification and testability. Secondly, to say that there is "evidence" and "facts" in favor of the resurrection, is to say that the empty tomb, postmortem "sightings' of Jesus, and the origin of the Christian faith are historically contigent events, which directly contradicts the divine attribute of moral necessity. Let me elaborate on both of these points and then spell out my conclusion as to what the implication of this argument is for Christians in terms of consequences.

First of all, an historical hypothesis is an explanation that is formulated to explain a given set of facts. Often with a given set of facts there is bound to be more than one possible explanation. The task of the historian is to use the Historical Method to test the explanations and see which one best fits the facts. Thus, in order to be an historical explanation proper, an historical hypothesis must be testable and, hence, vulnerable to falsification. The resurrection doesn't qualify as such because the resurrection is a necessary historical explanation. There is no possible way for it to be false or else God cannot be a morally necessary being. Yet to be an historical explanation proper, a hypothesis or theory must be capable of being testable and vulnerable to falsification. If it's impossible for a theory to be false, then it cannot qualify as an historical explanation. Hypotheses and theories must be capable of being falsifiable and the resurrection isn't testable or else it would be falsifiable and such an epistemic status would directly contradict the divine attribute of moral necessity.

The second reason the resurrection cannot be an historical explanation is because there cannot be, in principle, evidence for the resurrection, or any facts for the resurrection, as an hypothesis or theory, to explain. The reason for this is that "facts" and "evidence" presuppose historical contigency. Historical contigency means that the course of history could've turned out a different way. If Julius Ceasar had not crossed the Rubicon in Roman history, history would've turned out differently and any "facts" and/or "evidence" that he did cross the Rubicon in northern Italy with his army would simply not exist. If history had turned out different, certain "facts" or "evidence" would simply not be available to an historian to test hypotheses or theories against, using the Historical Method. To say that the empty tomb in the synoptic Gospels is a "fact" is to imply that had history turned out differently, and say, Jesus' body was left to rot on the cross and never buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb, there would be no "fact" of an empty tomb to serve as "evidence" for the resurrection of Christ. "Facts" and "evidence" presupposes, by it's very nature, historical contigency. Christians have to believe that the empty tomb, postmortem "sightings" of Jesus, and the earliest Christian faith in the resurrection, are historically necessary. There could've been no other way it might have turned out differently! Christians cannot grant that the empty tomb, the postmortem "sightings" of Jesus, and the earliest Christian faith in the risen Jesus, are a matter of historical contigency, because that would directly contradict the divine attribute of moral necessity. Christians have to argue that the empty tomb, postmortem "sightings" of Jesus, and the earliest Christian faith are morally necessary. I'm not sure what they might regard these events as- perhaps "self-evident truths" of history, which is consistent with historical necessity and is not consistent with historical contigency?

In conclusion, I believe that the resurrection cannot qualify as a historical hypothesis/theory proper because to do so would imply testability and vulnerability to falsification; no necessary truth is capable of being proven false or vulernable to being tested. There cannot be any "facts" or "evidence" in favor of the resurrection because such terms presuppose historical contigency which directly contradicts the divine attribute of moral necessity. Where, then, does this leave the Christian? I believe that the Christian must presuppose the resurrection. The resurrection, as a necessary historical truth, would, therefore, transcend all attempts to test, verify, or refute it! It is therefore presuppositional apologetics which has the upper hand. On the contrary, evidentialim in apologetics is self-refuting and hopelessly destructs on further scrutiny. Any questions or comments are very welcome. Fire away!

Matthew

We Are Not Insidious Villians!

In several posts this past week or so, one of my Christian critics has been bashing me. And he informs me he's got more stuff he's going to post about me. Well, in the first place, this stuff he's posting is mostly ad hominem and doesn't say much of anything by way of answering this Blog. In the second place, I have thick skin. You can call me what you like, even if I don't like it. I've been called worse things. In the third place, I thank him for thinking my Blog is deserving of such treatment, for it means he views me, my forthcoming book, and this Blog as having some importance.

This treatment he's doling out comes from the fact that he has demonized me. I no longer matter to him. I'm an evil doer. This is the exact same attitude Christians in the past had toward heretics, but unlike today they had the political power and could beat and torture and burn them alive. I'm just glad he is somewhat more civil and/or doesn't have that kind of political power.

This antagonism of his toward me only inspires me to argue more forcefully against Christianity...do you see why? I'm a nice person and I don't deserve this treatment, so the more he does this the more resolved I am to debunk Christianity, the very faith that motivates him to demonize me. The irony is that he'll only have himself to thank as my efforts to lead more people into the truth and away from his ignorance become more intense! Because this is exactly the effect that personal attacks by him and other Christians like him have had, and are having on me. The level of my activism and militancy has grown immensely this last year in direct proportion to how I have been treated by Christians. I am certain that if Christians would've treated me with respect, even if they disagreed vehemently with my arguments, I would not have written this book that will soon be out, and I would not have this Blog right now. When I am personally attacked, it only intensifies my desire to go for the jugular vein--the very faith that allows someone to feel they can personally attack me with ethical impunity.

An anonymous poster has asked me this: What I don't understand is, if the christian religion isn't true as athiests believe, then why don't they just leave it at that? Why do they spend their time trying to prove us wrong? We don't try to prove the existense of our god we simply know he is there.

Team members on this Blog have different motivations for being here, and I'm trying to construct something we can mostly agree on as to why: Our Policy Here.

In the first place, some Christians do in fact shove it down our throats. They personally attack us, call us names, and they would want to marginalize us if they could. My antagonist above said to me that I'm a "low life," and he treats me like one. So I argue back that I am the exact same person he would've previously admired as a minister, minus the specific set of Christian beliefs he still accepts.

In the second place, I'm still testing my beliefs...maybe I'm wrong? But I no more think I'm wrong than Christians do. Still, I'm testing.

I'm an educator. I'm a teacher and I like to teach. So here on this Blog I'm teaching what I have come to believe. I'm against ignorance (in the sense of "not knowing"), because I believe ignorance leads to harmful behavior in varying degrees.

Some ex-Christians feel like they were duped and that they wasted a number of years of their lives on Christianity, and so they argue against it. What's wrong with this motivation, anyway? Although, this is not me.

Other ex-Christians feel they were abused by Christians and/or the Christian faith for various reasons. Although this is not me.

There are other reasons, and I'd like to hear them from others. In the previous post, Matthew posted his reasons.

Listen to Robert W. Funk and Robert M. Price's motivations:

Robert W. Funk in his book, Honest to Jesus (p. 19) wrote: “As I look around me, I am distressed by those who are enslaved by a Christ imposed upon them by a narrow and rigid legacy. There are millions of Americans who are the victims of a mythical Jesus conjured up by modern evangelists to whip their followers into a frenzy of guilt and remorse—and cash contributions. I agonize over their slavery in contrast to my freedom. I have a residual hankering to free my fellow human beings from this bondage. Liberation from fear and ignorance is always a worthy cause. In the last analysis, however, it is because I occasionally glimpse an unknown Jesus lurking in and behind Christian legend and piety that I persist in my efforts to find my way through the mythical and legendary debris of the Christian tradition. And it is the lure of this glimpse that I detect in other questers and that I share with them.”

Robert M. Price: “We are viewed as insidious villains seeking to undermine the belief of the faithful, trying to push them off the heavenly path and into Satan’s arms. But this is not how we view ourselves at all. We find ourselves entering the field as the champions and zealots for a straightforward and accurate understanding of the Bible as an ancient text. In our opinion, it is the fundamentalist, the apologist for Christian supernaturalism, who is propagating false and misleading views of the Bible among the general populace. We are not content to know better and to shake our heads at the foolishness of the untutored masses. We want the Bible to be appreciated for what it is, not for what it is not. And it is not a supernatural oracle book filled with infallible dogmas and wild tales that must be believed at the risk of eternal peril.” [The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave (Prometheus, 2005), p. 15].

My Purpose in Posting

I'd like to lay some cement here in terms of my posting. First off, I want everyone to understand that I am an atheist. However, I am an intrasigent atheist; this means that I am an uncompromising, to-the-deathbed, staunch atheist. I am not a militant atheist. Just to be clear, I am fighting for reason, freethought, and rational skepticism. I am not out to attack or destroy religion, if we take this to mean deconverting people. I am not out to challenge, destroy, or deconvert the faith of people. My purpose here in "debunking" Christianity is not to be understood in the sense of militant skepticism and active evangelical atheism. My purpose is to help educate other Skeptics, not necessarily to deconvert people from the Christian faith. My contributions should be understood as being mostly thoughtful, intelligent, and schoarly critiques of various Christian doctrines or creeds.

I may, for instance, post an essay about the Trinity and some intellectual problems I may have with it or, perhaps, about why I feel the doctrine of inerrancy is badly flawed.

My chief purpose on here is to help serve as a source of counter-apologetics. I wish to provide "the other side" so to speak. I want to provide answers to Christian arguments so Skeptics can have something to rebut and counter the tactics and arguments of would-be evangelists who are trying to convert them and perhaps even militant apologists who are determined to argue, and perhaps even intellectually bully, a nonbeliever or Skeptic into the Christian faith. I also want to reach out to those who are undecided and give them some information and arguments so they can make an educated and well-informed decision. It's precisely this reason that I am a participant in Tekton's "Scholarly Diplomacy Series".

Look, I see no reason to be a militant Skeptic or evangelical atheist, at least not yet. I haven't any desire to argue with anyone. I am very content just to live in peace with others and help to foster understanding and respect. This means that I am willing to do it even if respect isn't exactly mutual. The chief reasons for my posting here are that I like working with apostates who have some advanced training or academic education such as John Loftus and others on here and I want to engage in counter-apologetics. I just want to get feedback on counter-apologetic arguments and see if there are any flaws in my reasoning.

With respect!

Matthew