Was Mark's Gospel a Work of Fiction?

As I've argued before, history is a slender reed to hang a religious faith on. The evidence for an event happening in the past is always going to be less than what we personally experience--always! We know all to well about forgeries, faked evidence, and fraudulent claims to take anything at face value, especially when it comes to the past, and exponentially when it comes to some miraculous story in the ancient superstitious world.

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

12) That although people around the world are raised in different cultures to believe in their particular god(s) there is only one God and he will judge all people based upon whether or not they believe Jesus is Lord.

Secular Nation Podcast Featuring David Eller on "You Atheists Just Aren't Natural"

For today’s Podcast Dr. David Eller will read his article, “You Atheists Just Aren’t Natural”. Dr. Eller holds a PhD in anthropology and teaches in Denver Colorado. Dr. Eller has been featured in several freethought magazines including Secular Nation and is also featured in John Loftus’s newly published book “The Christian Delusion.” Listen here.

Some New and Interesting Books

A last six of these books I already have. The others look really interesting to me and are on my wish list.

An Open Challenge to William Lane Craig

[Written by John Loftus] Dr. Craig answers one question a week here. I had asked him a question about Lessing's ugly broad ditch, which he answered nearly three years ago here. Immediately afterward I asked him a follow-up question. So far there has been no response. Maybe he'll get to it? At least I hope so. I issue a public challenge for him to answer it:

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

11) That God created human beings with rational minds that require evidence before they accept something, and yet this same God does not provide enough evidence but asks them to have faith instead.

Christianity Disproved

I like this site Christianity Disproved. There's lots to see and to digest. The problem is that Christianity has been disproved in every generation, especially since the Enlightenment. Christian apologists simply reinvent their faith in every generation to save it from refutation. What we have in subsequent generations is a slightly different form of the inherited branches of Christianity. As generation piles upon generation what we have are different forms of Christianity such that the Christianities of today would have suffered under the Office of the Inquisition they are so far removed. And the Christianities of the future will be just as different as today's forms.

CNN Launches Belief Blog, Controversy Ensues

Welcome to CNN’s Belief Blog, where we'll cover the role that faith and belief play in the news - and in our readers’ lives.

We believe that understanding the role of faith in today’s world isn’t optional or nice to know. It’s need to know.

Because of the outcry from atheists like PZ Meyers and others, this Blog may also give voice to atheist and nonbeliever issues.

"Religions that preach retribution for non-belief cannot in fact lay claim to being reasonable"

When I threaten you, I automatically remove reason as an allowable means to accepting my claim. I’ve in effect determined your choice. If you were truly free to exercise reason, I would have to accept its outcome no matter what, even if I considered you gravely mistaken. Punishment for arriving at a wrong conclusion turns reason into a thought-crime.

So when believers like Christians or Muslims contend their faiths are based on reason, one may simply object that this can’t be so because their god in fact doesn’t allow it. Using reason to arrive at any other belief than the correct one will earn you an eternity in hell. Thus, reason is in reality an evil to be avoided....Blind, unquestioning, and unexamined belief is what the theist’s retributive god truly desires, not a belief grounded in reason. Link

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

10) That an omniscient God could not foresee that his revealed will in the Bible would lead believers to commit such atrocities against others that reasonable people would conclude there is no divine mind behind the Bible. I call this The Problem of Miscommunication.

Theories of Punishment and the Substitutionary Atonement

Ken Pulliam broaches this subject by asking,

Why do we punish wrongdoers? What is the purpose of the punishment? It is crucial to understand the theories of punishment in order to properly understand the rationale behind the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) of the atonement. Link

Christians Impaled on the Horns of a Moral Dilemna

Take for instance chapter eight in The Christian Delusion written by Hector Avalos. He argues that Yahweh is a moral monster, contrary to Paul Copan.

Here then is the dilemma: The Christian thinks there is an objective absolute morality that stems from their perfectly good God, which is both eternal and unchangeable. But the morality we find in the Bible is something quite different than what they claim. Morality has evolved. What we find in the Bible is not something we would expect from a perfectly good God. So Christians must choose, either 1) hold to a philosopher's god divorced from the historical realities of the Bible, or 2) continue to worship a moral monster.

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

9) That although a great number of miracles were claimed to have happened in the different superstitious cultures of the ancient world, only the ones in the Bible actually happened as claimed.

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

8) That when it comes to verifiable matters of historical fact (like the Exodus, the extent of the reign of David, Luke's reported world-wide census, etc) the Biblical stories are disconfirmed by evidence to the contrary as fairy tales, but when it comes to supernatural claims of miracles that cannot be verified like a virgin birth and resurrection from the grave, the Bible reports true historical facts.

Christian, Become a Preacher, I Dare You

Could it be The Worst Job in the World?

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

7) That although we see completely different perspectives and evolving theologies in the Bible, including many things that are barbaric and superstitious to the core, it was authored by one divine mind.

Answering Two Objections That Jesus Was a Failed Apocalyptic Prophet

Two objections to my chapter 12 in The Christian Delusion have surfaced. You can read a summary of it right here, but keep in mind that dealing with a summary of a chapter is not dealing with the case I present in that chapter. Let me answer these two objections.

How NOT to Argue Against Me: A Critique of Shandon L. Guthrie's Critique

You can find several summaries of my new book The Christian Delusion out there. But if you think dealing with a summary of a book is the same thing as dealing with the arguments in it, then think again. One professor did this with my previous book Why I Became an Atheist, and this is how I responded:

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

6) That although there are many other similar mythological stories told in Ancient Near Eastern Literature that pre-date what we read in the Bible, the stories in the Bible are about real events and real people.

The Best Case for Atheism

I like the concept of this post.

The Library of a Preacher Friend

Today I visited a "tent-making" pentecostal preacher/contractor friend and I was surprised to find he had a massive library filling up nearly a whole bedroom sized office space in his home. I browsed the books and did not find one book written by a liberal or a skeptic. I found Bible commentaries from conservative publishers, self-help psychology based Christian books (like how to have a good marriage, or raise good Christian kids), expositor's preaching books, spiritual warfare books, and a handful of apologetic books written by conservatives. He is a conservative and only reads conservative books. So no wonder he's a conservative. He does not have to read what the liberals say, or the skeptics. Others do that for him who tell him why they are wrong. His library assumes that the Bible is true. All he needs to do is understand the Bible and apply it. His reading is based on trust. He trusts conservatives to tell him how to understand, apply, and preach the truth. He does not trust anyone else. Others will deceive him. Sheesh.

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

5) That there was a first human pair (Adam & Eve) who so grievously sinned against God when tested that all of the rest of us are being punished for it (including animals), even though no one but the first human pair deserved to be punished. If it's argued that all of us deserve to be punished because we all would have sinned, then the test was a sham. For only if some of us would not have sinned can the test be considered a fair one. But if some of us would not have sinned under the same initial conditions then there are people who are being punished for something they never would have done.

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

4) That the highest created being, known as Satan or the Devil, led an angelic rebellion against an omnipotent omniscient omnibenelovent omnipresent God, and expected to win--which makes Satan out to be pure evil and dumber than a box of rocks.

What Best Debunks Religion: Studying Science Or the Humanities?

Science steadily but effectively acts as a corrosive to religion. That's why we must insist our students become more scientifically literate. But a recent study done by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research shows that what produces the most religious skepticism among college students is when they study the social sciences.

In other words, humanities and social sciences, much more than biological and mathematical sciences, challenge you to imagine the world though the eyes of others. And this exercise in imagination undercuts religious dogma far more effectively than any science lesson can.

A Paraphrase of the Kalam Cosmological Argument

What do you think of "Ed's paraphrase of the Kalam Cosmological Argument":

(1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
(2) The universe may have begun to exist, but the verdict is still out on that.
(3) Therefore, no conclusion about whether the universe has a cause can be advanced at this time. ;-) Link.