Let the Mystery Be, Why Conclude More Than the Evidence Calls For?

Quote of the Day, by Jerry Coyne

If, as liberal theologians tell us, the “necessary” evils of this world are exactly what God would produce given his penchant for human free will and for physical “freedom” like the movement of tectonic plates, then would a nicer world disprove the God Hypothesis? Don’t hold your breath, for the nature of the God Hypothesis is that no observation could ever disprove it. That’s why it’s not scientific at all, and why religion and science will never find an amiable concordat. Link.

Site of the Day, Clergy Gone Wild

Enjoy. What does this prove?

I'll Be Less Active Here This Month

I'm involved the copy-editing phase of my anthology, The End of Christianity, and I'm teaching an online class on What is Atheism? for the CFI Institute. I'm pumped. For now use the comments below for anything you wish to argue. Don't get crazy on me. ;-) I'll be in and out.

Are Christian Apologetics Getting Better and Better?

That's what I heard William Lane Craig say (although I can't remember where). I think the truth lies elsewhere. Christian apologists have been forced into gerrymandering around the evidence against their faith, that's what has happened. And yes, they do this very well. So it sounds like they're getting better only to the deluded. Take for instance the scientific mysteries of today, like the puzzle of quantum mechanics, the physics of black holes, the possibility of wormholes, the possibility of life on another planet, of the multiverse theory, and so on. I think it's just that science has created a greater number of new mysteries that they are in the process of solving, for one thing. Back a thousand years they had mysteries to solve too, but they pale in comparison to the number of gigantic mysteries today. And faith always finds a foothold in mystery. The point is that it was science, not faith, that solved the mysteries of the past, and it's science, not faith, that has opened up the number of new and greater mysteries today. What do you think?

Quote of the Day, by Russ

If Bible-god was real wouldn't it know best how I would accept its reality? If it was real wouldn't its message be free to anyone and everyone? So why does it send it's message through people we have to pay for it, the Christian clergy? If god was real it would speak to me with full understanding of what I know and understand; it wouldn't work in mysterious ways. It would be very clear and its actions would make its reality obvious. It amazes me that I'm told that Bible-god is my father, but everything I can know about him comes through third party clerics and theologians. If Bible-god was real, I would know because it would tell me, its son, in a way that I could understand and know was real.

The Anatomy of a Conversion: Richard Morgan, From Atheist to Christian

I read with some interest Richard Morgan's conversion to Christianity. I wanted to know how deeply committed he was as an atheist and what caused him to change his mind. I'd like to know more about him, but all we have is this article he wrote for a publication called The Monthly Record, beginning on page 8 and highlighted by several Christian websites. Morgan seems to have been a committed atheist, who was a frequent visitor on Richard Dawkin's site forum. There was a Christian guy named David Robertson who also posted there who was kind and thoughtful. And what he said and how he said it had an impact on Morgan, when everyone else there ridiculed this guy. Then for some reason the atheists began to belittle Morgan, perhaps because he was becoming sympathetic to David Robertson and his views. So Morgan defected to a theistic site where he encountered two questions that changed his life, as he tells us:

Surprise, Evangelicals Are Divided!

Yep, see what it's about this time. Where is the Holy Spirit? Again it looks like he's failing to do his job. Par for the course. He should be fired! ;-)

Quote of the Day, by Bart Ehrman

Many of the books of the New Testament were written by people who lied about their identity, claiming to be a famous apostle — Peter, Paul or James — knowing full well they were someone else. In modern parlance, that is a lie, and a book written by someone who lies about his identity is a forgery.

Most modern scholars of the Bible shy away from these terms, and for understandable reasons, some having to do with their clientele. Teaching in Christian seminaries, or to largely Christian undergraduate populations, who wants to denigrate the cherished texts of Scripture by calling them forgeries built on lies? And so scholars use a different term for this phenomenon and call such books “pseudepigrapha.” Link. This is based on his book Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are.

Quote of the Day, by Richard Swinburne on Faith ;-)

I suggest that, if the probability of the existence of God on someone’s evidence is not too low after adequate investigation, it would indeed be a best act to worship and repent before God. After all, if you receive a very expensive and much-desired present and it is unclear who has sent it, it would be bad not to write a very grateful letter to the person most likely to have sent it (even if it is not very likely that that person has sent it). You might express your gratitude in a conditional way (‘I’m assuming that you sent this’), but not to express any gratitude at all would be a bad thing. And if you have damaged the present, it would be bad not to apologize. A fortiori, if—although it is unclear who (if anyone) gave you life but the most likely candidate is a God—it would be very bad indeed not to express a very great amount of gratitude, and very considerable repentance.

--From the 2nd edition of Faith and Reason, page 223.

What's this about sending a letter to thank someone for a gift who is not very likely to have sent it, but the most likely to have done so? What's that mean? What does it mean to think the probability is "not too low"? How low can you go? Is this considered good apologetics? Oh, and one more thing, since we're talking about god here, which one? Usually believers will just conclude that they should thank the culturally dominant one. ;-)

Dr. Mano Singham on Why Atheism is Winning

I met Professor Singham in my travels recently. He is a delightful man. We traded books. He has a great deal to share and I look forward to reading his blog as often as I can. He has written eleven blog posts on why atheism is winning that I think are great (seen in reverse chronological order). In his concluding post he writes:

Why atheism is winning is because when a belief structure has no empirical basis, it only survives by everyone agreeing to maintain the illusion that it makes sense. It is the emperor's new clothes syndrome. But such beliefs are highly prone to sudden collapse as soon as it begins to be pointed out that there is nothing there. Once a tipping point is reached, changes in unsupported beliefs (whether it be god or racism and homophobia) can occur very rapidly.

The communication revolution, in addition to spreading the ideas of modernity to an ever-widening audience, will create a greater awareness, especially among young people, that one's religious beliefs are largely a product of where one is born and brought up, and not because they are self-evidently true.. Once you give up the idea that your own religion is obviously true, it is a short step to not viewing religion as a source of truth at all.

On the level of simply ideas, religion is losing because fewer are converting into religion than are converting out, especially amongst the young. That is the demographic time bomb that is going to doom religion

Religion is clearly on the defensive partly because the new atheists have taken the arguments against god out of the academic and philosophical and theological arenas and put them out in the public sphere and into the hands of ordinary people, and they are able to confront believers much more confidently.

My Interview With "Think Atheist Radio Show"

I was told the interview will air at 5 PM PST (or 8 PM EST) today. I have the honor of being their first guest. This is where you will find the episode. Enjoy.

Professor Matt McCormick's Morality Test for God

If a human did what God is allegedly doing right now, would we consider that a morally good action?...If God is good, then why doesn’t he do the things that we consider to be good?...The failure of God on the morality test gives us strong prima facie evidence against God’s existence that weighs heavily against these alleged independent grounds. Link

Sooooo, we have The Outsider Test, The Morality Test, and The Defeasibility Test. Faith fails!

Leaving Amish Paradise

There are so many lessons here about the mind of the believer. Enjoy.

A Challenge to Theists

Great Reading While I'm Away

I'll be back Sunday but in the meantime some of the best stuff here at DC is from Dr. Hector Avalos and Dr. Jaco Gericke. (On Hector's posts click at the bottom of the first page for "Older Posts" to see more). Enjoy and comment below at will.

The Thing That Made the Things for Which There is No Known Maker

Surely this can make us all laugh, right?

Time For Some Fun

Fun Bible Questions, by my friend Matt Hensley:

So, I thought I would help John with his blog and add a little humor today. I mean let’s face it: It’s been WAYYYY to serious around here lately. So I put together a list of fun questions to ask about the Bible. Feel free to cut loose and answer them in a fun way. After all, even super serious all knowing Atheists like us need to cut loose a little, right? Here we go:

"Christianity is Not Great": My New Proposed Book is Taking Shape

Yes, we're pretty excited. Check it out. It'll be a humdinger. ;-)

Poll on The Tea Party and Religion

It must be Poll day here at DC!

...they are much more likely than registered voters as a whole to say that their religion is the most important factor in determining their opinions on these social issues. And they draw disproportionate support from the ranks of white evangelical Protestants. Link

Notice the distinction between white and minority evangelicals? There is one, most definitely.

How Religious is Your State?

Check this out and then get busy! ;-)

"Religion May Become Extinct in Nine Nations, Study Says"

A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers. The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation. Link

The countries? Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.

"America Becoming Less Christian, Survey Finds"

America is a less Christian nation than it was 20 years ago, and Christianity is not losing out to other religions, but primarily to a rejection of religion altogether, a survey published Monday found. Link

In searching for this poll I'm having a bit of trouble. Perhaps it's this one done by the Pew Forum called U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. See what you think. One conclusion is that it's more socially acceptable than ever to admit having no religion.

A Few Observations About Evangelicalism

I know beyond a shadow of doubt that evangelical (or conservative) Christianity is wrong, false, and that only deluded people think otherwise. I have to be. For I'm risking their particular hellfire, so to speak. Almost everyone agrees with me too. Global religious diversity shows us this. Even among people claiming to be Christians most of them are not evangelicals. Evangelicalism is a small slice of the religious pie, and even they have disputes between themselves over who are true Christians, so for them it's even a smaller slice of the pie. These are all well-known facts from which we can make a few observations.

One of the Most Asinine Christian Claims I've Heard

It's claimed that people like Dawkins, or Hitchens, or Harris don't know enough to reject Christianity. How much should a person know about a religion or the various branches of it in order to reject it? Really. I'd like to know. These very Christians do not know much about other branches of their own religion, so how can they reject them? And they do not know much about the various other religions around the world or the branches within them, so how can they reject them? Most Christians do not know enough about their own religion! All a person has to do to reject their own inherited religion is to subject it to the same level of skepticism they use when rejecting all other religions. This represents The Outsider Test for Faith I argue for. Just think what Christians are saying. They're saying that in order to reject any given religion a person must know a lot about it. How much, I ask? Should we spend our lives getting doctorates in them one by one? How reasonable is that? How long would it take to learn enough about all religions in order to reject them all? Wouldn't Jesus himself be opposed to granting salvation only to people who knew a lot about the religions of the world? Wouldn't he be opposed to the idea that human beings must gain the proper amount of knowledge that Christians require in order to find the correct one, if there is one? Didn't Jesus come for the lowly, the outcasts, and the babes? Such inconsistency knows no bounds. No wonder my claim is that Christians demand that we prove their faith is impossible before they will see it as improbable.