"Cutting Jesus Down to Size" by G. A. Wells is Wonderful!

I've written and edited several books against the Christian faith. So when I bought G.A. Wells' book Cutting Jesus Down to Size I was only expecting to learn a few things. What I didn't expect was how much I would learn, which was quite a lot. Most of the book simply compares and contrasts the gospels and lets them debunk themselves. It's densely packed with scholarly references and fairly easy to read. His book brings the reader up to speed regarding higher criticism, and deconstructs the gospels like no other book I've read. It's too bad many Christians won't get it and read it. Many of them will simply dismiss it because Wells had been the leading Jesus mythicist of our generation. But he has "repudiated" (p. 334) his former view and now thinks there was a Galilean Jew who did in fact exist, whose sayings are found in Q, the lost document that most scholars conjecture formed the basis for the synoptic gospels. Very highly recommended! It's very impressive. To wannabe Christian apologists I challenge you to read and argue against it. On the gospels you won't find anything better.

Is God to Blame for Weather that Kills People?

If you are a Christian and you believe the Bible is truth then the answer is an emphatic YES. The people recently killed by tornadoes? God’s doing. The people killed by Hurricane Katrina? God’s doing. The Bible is clear.

Derren Brown - Miracles for Sale

Watch it below:

Tatarize: "I'm Only On the Fifth Chapter."

A guy named Tatarize on the Atheism About.com forum wrote this:

I'm part way through the book and already amazed. I thought the coolest thing in my copy would be Richard Carrier's signature. But, it's actually teaching me a lot about religion. It's the weirdest feeling. It's been years since one piece of media has seriously enlightened me on more than one or two topics. It's a rare gem to find something that dispels a misconception or suddenly clears up some issue, or corrects a mistake, or changes one's mind... but this book has already done all of those things and I'm only on the fifth chapter.

What book is he talking about? This one. That's very gratifying to know, thanks.

What Do We Mean by Our Book Title, The End of Christianity?

Great looking book!

Hey-- can you answer this question -- what will you be saying, to make a quick response to the inevitable question to you, "What do you think will be the End of Christianity -- it just fades away into secularism, or mutates into something else, or gets absorbed into some other religion?" -- From John S.

I'll be saying the same thing that Hector Avalos does in his book, The End of Biblical Studies. It's time that biblical studies as we know them should end. It's time to treat all ancient documents the same way, favoring none of them in the interests of learning how people in the ancient world thought, but not treating any of them as inspired. Avalos has a chapter in this book that sums up what he wrote. In it he calls for secularism. That's the goal anyway. Whether it takes place or not is the question.

I think all three of your suggestions will take place depending on person and time, something which has been happening since the Enlightenment. There will probably always be pockets of people who embrace some of the Christianities that have previously existed. It's just that those groups will put themselves into the cultural backwaters. That is, so long as there is still something called a "Western Culture." If that becomes mutated into a global identity then Yahweh may even fade out of existence altogether, like Zeus, Thor and Odin have.

"Here it Comes," I Just Sent the Final Files of TEC to Be Published in July

Mind Control Cults

Watch it below:

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Sam Harris' Recommended Non-Fiction Reading List

And guess who's on it? See here. There are two pages to it.

Thomas Talbott's Critique of the Outsider Test for Faith

I am honored that Christian universalist Philosopher Thomas Talbott, of Willamette University, has offered a critique of my Outsider Test for Faith. Which can be found here. I plan on responding but I might not get to it for a month (it's not on my high priority list given the other projects I'm involved in right now). [Edit, sorry to say I didn't find anyone's criticisms to deserve the book I had offered for the best one.]

PZ Myers - Global Atheist Convention 2010

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Thom Stark: "Is God a Moral Compromiser? A Critical Review of Paul Copan’s “Is God a Moral Monster?”

Remember when William Lane Craig held up Paul Copan's book, Is God a Moral Monster?, during his debate with Sam Harris? Remember?

Now take a good hard look through Stark's review of it. Any questions?

Books like Copan’s will only take Christianity ten steps back-wards. In the name of inerrancy, the truth is trampled. Contemporary popular apologists tend to look for any way to salvage the text, no matter how unlikely or untenable the argument. They’ll use scholarly sources selectively, or pounce on one scholar’s argument and run away with it, without any concern for the fact the vast majority of scholars haven’t been persuaded by it. They’re not interested in what’s plausible, only in what’s “possible,” if it serves their immediate purposes. They trade in eisegesis, wild speculation, and fanciful interpretations, reading into the text what isn’t there, indeed, what’s often contradicted by the very passages they cite—something Copan himself does not infrequently, as we’ll see.

The question is whether or not Copan realizes he’s stealing home before the pitch. Is he aware that he’s presenting selective evidence, taken out of context, from sources that completely disagree with him? Is he aware that by ignoring certain questions and discussions, he’s able to give the impression that the evidence he loves to allude to (without citing) actually undermines his position? Perhaps he is. Perhaps he isn’t. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to believe that he isn’t aware, but I’ll reserve judgment and leave the question open-ended. Ultimately, however, whether Paul Copan is or is not a moral apologist, the fact of the matter is that he has failed, thoroughly failed, to demonstrate that the God of the Old Testament is not a moral monster.

Richard Dawkins - Global Atheist Convention 2010

Watch it below:

Christopher Hitchens: "Christianity is False and Immoral"

Bart D. Ehrman on the Historian and the Resurrection of Jesus

[Written by John W. Loftus] Here's what Ehrman wrote:

Bart Ehrman: Was Jesus Raised From the Dead?

A Letter From Christopher Hitchens

Link.

brdeadite99 vs GearHedEd on Ken Ham/Kent Hovind

GearHedEd in response to brdeadite99:

Bring it, Shuggoth!

Time Magazine Cover: Is Hell Dead?

Christians have been reinventing their faith from the beginning. It won't stop. That's my prediction. So what will become orthodoxy in 20-30 years? This will. The orthodoxy of today started out as the unorthodoxy of yesterday.

Richard Carrier vs JP Holding Debate Audio, Q & A on Doubt

Link

Arizona Atheist: The Truth Behind the New Atheism: A Refutation

Since David Marshall comments here perhaps he'd like to discuss a review of his book here too.

Link.

Johann Hari: "Christianity Has Lost the Argument...It Will Go Into the Dustbin of History"

These are clips from the BBC documentary "Does Christianity Have a Future?" The full 60 minute documentary can be found here.

The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science, by Chris Mooney

We're not driven only by emotions, of course—we also reason, deliberate. But reasoning comes later, works slower—and even then, it doesn't take place in an emotional vacuum. Rather, our quick-fire emotions can set us on a course of thinking that's highly biased, especially on topics we care a great deal about.

In other words, when we think we're reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing. Or to use an analogy offered by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt: We may think we're being scientists, but we're actually being lawyers (PDF). Our "reasoning" is a means to a predetermined end—winning our "case"—and is shot through with biases. They include "confirmation bias," in which we give greater heed to evidence and arguments that bolster our beliefs, and "disconfirmation bias," in which we expend disproportionate energy trying to debunk or refute views and arguments that we find uncongenial. Link.

Review of The Belief Instinct, by Jesse Bering

Lady Atheist reviews this book by Jesse Bering, The Belief Instinct. Looks really good.

On God Answering Prayers Retroactively

Christians like C.S. Lewis and recently William A. Dembski in his book The End of Christianity, claim God can answer prayers retroactively. Kevin Timpe explains by saying "past directed prayers, as I understand them, are requests for God to have done something at a time prior to the time of the prayer." And he argues like Lewis and Dembski that God does in fact answer these prayers on most accounts of God's foreknowledge. ["Prayers for the Past" Religious Studies (2005) 41, 305–322]. This raises some interesting problems and allows me to propose a scientific test for prayer.