Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?

3) There must exist a perfectly good, omnipotent God, who created a perfectly good universe out of a desire/need to glorify himself by rewarding in heaven the few human beings who just got lucky to believe by being born at the right time and place, and who will condemn to hell those who do not believe.

The End of Cosmology?

In the March '08 issue of Scientific American is an article describing the future of our universe. First click on the scanned in image.

Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?

I'm going to start a series of posts describing what must be the case if Christianity is true. When done I'll put them all together so Christians can see the formidable obstacles there are to their faith at a glance.

1) There must be a God who is a simple being yet made up of three inexplicable persons existing forever outside of time without a beginning, who therefore never learned anything new, never took a risk, never made a decision, never disagreed within the Godhead, and never had a prior moment to freely choose his own nature.

Reality Check: What Must Be the Case if Christianity is True?

2) There must be a personal non-embodied omnipresent God who created the physical universe ex-nihilo in the first moment of time who will subsequently forever experience a sequence of events in time.

Reviews of "The Christian Delusion" Book

Apart from the reviews you can find on Amazon, several atheists are reviewing the book The Christian Delusion. I'll update this post as others write fair and substantive reviews of it, perhaps including some quotes from thoughtful and respectful Christians when I see them.

Isn't God's Creation Wonderful?

God could not have made all creatures as vegans/vegetarians, could he? Nope. Not a chance. It was impossible for him. Right?

"John, I'm Scared to Doubt Because I Might Go to Hell"

Someone recently wrote this to me. At one time I too was scared to doubt. But I was never scared of Allah's threat of hell. In fact, I never gave it a thought. Why are people scared of the Christian hell when they have never been scared of the Muslim hell? When Muslims leave their faith they are just as scared of Allah's hell as Christians seem to be about Yahweh's hell. If Christians are not scared of Allah's hell then they should not be scared of Yahweh's hell. Both conceptions of hell are culturally inherited beliefs.

Is This What We Should Expect From God?

What do you think of the following question emailed to me by Andre:

Is it rationally defensible to believe that God would have created the entire universe, including millions / billions of years of suffering, including human and animal suffering, the extinction of the majority of species and the endless, wasteful suffering we see around us simply in order for a chosen few humans, who have managed to comply with his wishes, may spend eternity in bliss with him?

My Strategy for Debunking Christianity (Once Again)

Christians are already atheists (skeptics) of all other religions, so all I need to do is get them to be atheists (skeptics) of their own religion. If I can do this they will be forced to think for themselves and no longer rely on the Bible or Christian theology for the answers to existence. Here's how I debunk Christianity. I've decided to do for Christians what I myself experienced. It is/was liberating to become a freethinker rather than, as Voltaire quipped, "a nonthinker." You see, there is a big difference between historians and apologists. Historians want to know what happened in the past. Apologists assume their faith is true and then do whatever it takes to defend it. Apologists cannot say, "Oh, maybe the evidence isn't there after all." Nope. They feel a huge responsibility to defend the faith for their respective clientele. I can even grant believers that some sort of deity exists. Big deal if she does! As I have argued a hundred times before it makes no difference. Why? Because natural theology is (or should be) dead.

Do I Sound Like a Fundamentalist?

Since I appear so cocksure that Christianity is a delusion some people think I'm a fundamentalist on a par with the late Jerry Falwell. Here's a discussion I'm having about this with a Christian philosopher:

God's Wonderful World!

Taks a look below!

Hey, Would Someone Please Do Me A Favor on YouTube?

Given the ubiquitousness of animal suffering and pain inflicted upon each other and by human beings, would someone please put some of these images to Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World? Or how about from Disney's The Circle of Life? I think it would have its effect. There is no excuse for this world if there exists a perfectly good creator.

More On How Can We Know Who is Wrong

Here's the discussion continued from How Can We Decide Who is Wrong?

Face it John, chapters 2 & 3 in The Christian Delusion are just as true about atheists as they are about Christians. You see what you want to see and believe what you want to believe. It’s not about science. It’s about your conscious & subconscious choices. When you wrote this:

I really think that given the way you are forced to argue your case above (very lame) that you are blind. The reason we cannot agree is because you are not willing to be consistent nor can you allow yourself to even consider that you are living in a cult group surrounded on every side by many other Moonies...

...you could just as easily be talking about atheists as well as Christians. I say you’re blind, you say I’m blind. I say you’re inconsistent, you say I’m inconsistent. I say your sources are weak, you say my sources are weak. I’m willing to say it’s an intellectual stalemate, but you believe you have intellectual superiority. If the answers were as obvious as either of us thinks they are, this issue would have been settled during the Enlightenment.

My response:

How Can We Decide Who Is Wrong?

Here's an email exchange I recently had with a Christian. It's typical of many others. I said:

Although both of us could be wrong, at least one of us is wrong. How do you propose deciding which one of us is right, if one of us is?

His response:

I agree that at least one of us is wrong. Unless one of sees evidence or has an experience to convince us otherwise, neither of us will change our minds. No matter how much you and others want to paint it otherwise, atheism is not a purely scientific conclusion.

My response:

It's the method of science that shows your faith to be wrong. There is no other way but to assume a natural explanation for everything. That method has no need of a god. Historians cannot approach the past any other way, nor can scientists. If we cannot know something by the method of naturalism as applied in science and history then we cannot know something at all.

The Case For "The Case Against The Case For Christ"

Bob Price's new book The Case Against The Case For Christ: A New Testament Scholar Refutes the Reverend Lee Strobel, incinerates Lee Strobel's book The Case for Christ, along with the evangelical apologists he interviews, including Craig L. Blomberg, Gregory Boyd, Ben Witherington III, D.A. Carson, William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, J.P. Moreland, and others. However, I doubt many of the people who read Strobel's book will read Price's book, not the least of which because understanding Price might demand a better understanding of the issues than the cream puff book Strobel wrote for the average person in the pew, but also because Price seems so disgusted with evangelical apologists at this point in his career he can't hide it.

My Interview on "Conversations From the Pale Blue Dot"

Luke interviewed me about my book The Christian Delusion. Hope you enjoy it.

Matt McCormick debated Russell DiSilvestro on the Resurrection

See what you think. I liked his opening statement.

"You Can't Trust Science!"

Christians accept the results of science in a vast number of areas. That is, except for just a few that contradict their holy ancient superstitious book. This video below is a nice summary of the results of science. How does religion stack up with science? Let's see, that book says there was a universal flood (so say many Christians). Science shows that this did not happen. What to do, what to do? How do I decide? Let's see, science says virgins don't have babies. Science shows this could not happen. What to do, what to do? How do I decide? That's easy for me. You?

Ken Pulliam Answers Two Important Questions in Genesis

Does Genesis Teach the Big Bang?, and Have Jews Always Believed in Creation ex nihilo? His answer in both cases is a big fat NO!

Do Fish Feel Pain?

Yes, argues biologist Victoria Braithwaite in her new book, Do Fish Feel Pain? These important findings reinforce my chapter on The Darwinian Problem of Evil for The Christian Delusion. What did animals do to deserve their pain? I argue that it doesn't matter one whit whether humans inflict this pain on them or whether God did. There can be no moral justification for it at all, none. I also consider whether these animals, all of them, will be compensated in heaven for their sufferings, as some Christians have affirmed. All you need to do is imagine what a heaven would be like with fish in it, for example, and you can see the silliness of the whole concept. Besides, merely compensating creatures for their sufferings cannot morally justify their sufferings, otherwise we could justify torturing any sentient being by simply compensating them afterward.

Robert M. Price on Myth and Method

Nothing in Hume or Troeltsch or Bultmann, that I can see, bids us reject miracle claims without weighing the evidence. It is just that, given the limitations imposed upon us (until we invent the time machine, that is), we cannot detect “probable miracles” even if they happened! Historical inquiry cannot touch them, even if time travel would show them to have been real!...Faith claims to be able to do an end-run around the data and to obtain certainty about an ostensible miracle via some other way. But what way is that? It is, I think, nothing more than the will to believe.

Hume already allows us to accept a miracle report, provided any naturalistic explanation would sound even more far-fetched than a supernatural one. In appealing to the universal facts of human experience, Hume is being neither deductive nor circular. He is merely appealing to what everyone knows: the frequent reports of the extraordinary we hear from UFO abductees, Loch Ness Monster fans, people who see ghosts or who claim psychic powers, always seem to turn out to be bunk upon examination. From The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails, pp. 276-277.

"The Invention of Lying" is a Funny Movie

Here's a great clip in which Ricky Gervais tells lies in order to give people hope for a life after death. It's hilarious.

Hector Avalos: "In Praise of Biblical Illiteracy"

It was a featured article seen on The Bible and Interpretation.

Bible Contradiction Quiz Show

This is some funny stuff and includes a few extra brilliant jabs in the middle. Enjoy.

Christopher Hitchens vs Dinesh D'Souza Debate

Check it out: