Dr. Avalos Goes in Search of a "True Christian Conservative."

Link.

Debunking the Kalam Cosmological Argument

Listen to a Pre-Recorded Interview With Me on Irreligiosophy

Enjoy

Proof Evangelicals Will Do Whatever it Takes to Continue Believing: "Evangelicals Question The Existence Of Adam And Eve"

They are doing what each generation of Christian thinkers have done from the very beginning. The future of Christianity will not be the same as it is today. It's just that like all other evolving organisms and systems of thought, they evolve so slowing it's hard to detect it. Evangelicals would be appalled at the Christianity of a century or more ago, and they will be equally appalled at the Christianity a century or more from now. Evangelicals, give it up. Enjoy

I Tire of Answering this Crap, I Really Do

William Lane Craig revisits the "Slaughter" of the Canaanites. Isn't it obvious what Craig is doing? This is a problem for his faith so he seeks to reduce his cognitive dissonance by doing almost anything he can with the text in order to keep the faith. It's just obvious. Then Randal Rauser claims he is offering a skeptical review of The End of Christianity. Say that again? He's doing a skeptical review of the book? This is clearly Orwellian Doublespeak where the word "skeptical" now replaces the word "believing". It is a believing review of my book! And can you or not clearly see that his criticisms miss the mark? I tire of this shit, big time. I'll not even offer a critique since it's so lame. You either see it or you are blind, bat shit blind. Sorry, but that's what I think. That Christian scholars make these kind of arguments only reinforces my claim that defending the faith makes otherwise brilliant people look dumb. Enjoy discussing these things below.

I'll Be Inactive in August

August will be time for me to get some needed things done, so I'll be inactive this month. Not that I won't post some things, just not that much. Become a follower or subscribe by email not to miss a thing. If you have something to share do it below. Cheers.

Are Christian Colleges/Seminaries Afraid of My Work?

Who knows for sure, but maybe they should be. ;-)

By far the single biggest challenge to my Christian faith, during this early part of my de-conversion process, came in the form of a book, by John W. Loftus, Why I Became An Atheist. I believe that most Christians have little difficulty maintaining their faith, even when challenged, since it is propped up by dozens, if not hundreds, of individual pieces (& thought patterns) they deem to be solid on their own (and even stronger together)...if one of those pieces takes a hit, hey, no big deal, there are still plenty of reasons to continue believing!...But what happens when a sizable number of those pieces, propping up your worldview, are attacked simultaneously? Well, this can cause one to question their entire paradigm, and in my case, that paradigm was the truth of Christianity.

Harry McCall: "John’s books would have as much of a chance of ever seeing the light of day in any conservative Bible believing seminary or church as a prohibitionist in a liquor distillery!"

Weston Bortner stated: “John, you can't just assume that people are scared and avoiding you. That's a little silly. Perhaps they have a valid reason and you just don't know it.”

If this is what John assumed, then he made a great assumption!

Animals Don't Think, Or Do They?

Check this site out.

What a Good Christian Apologetics Program Should Include

Over at Apologetics 315 is a listing of some Christian colleges that offer degrees in Christian Apologetics. If we add the ones mentioned in the comments, here they are:

Morality Without God

Part 1 can be found here. Part 2 is below:

Definitional Apologetics, Excessive Skepticism, and the OTF

[Written by John W. Loftus] Philosophers love to define words. It's a good thing too, since Aristotle said something to the effect that "Many a dispute could be solved in a few sentences if the disputants merely defined their terms." Sometimes though, in the hands of Christian philosophers the goal is obfuscation. They try to define away a problem for their faith. I call this Definitional Apologetics, and they are quite good at it. They will feign ignorance about what an extraordinary event is in the face of a concrete example, like a virgin birth or a resurrection from the dead. They will also feign ignorance about what the scientific method is to the point of claiming there is no such thing, even though science continues to progress, purportedly without one. And using Orwellian doublespeak they claim to have a "full-blown skepticism" where they are skeptical of skepticism, thinking this allows for their faith but blind to the fact it also allows for anyone's faith. This is all pure sophistry.

Along these same lines let me respond to one major objection to the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF), as stated in the comments of a recent post:

I think you’ll find that if you try to apply [the OTF] rigorously to every aspect of your life (not just the religious bits), you’ll soon discover what “analysis paralysis” is. You’ll be unable to entertain, even for a moment, any political, aesthetic or moral opinion or value, unless you can back it up by a complete chain of logical deduction from perfectly flawless axioms. Once you get addicted to the “test of skepticism”, *how will you know* where to draw the line and refrain from excessive skepticism? So my question about where to draw the line between healthy and excessive skepticism is a genuine one, not some sort of ploy by the christian-apologist-boogeyman ;) Skepticism is indeed a slippery slope – the question is where do you draw the line? Link.

50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God

Answering My Critics, Two Reviews of TEC

vorjack, the managing editor of Daniel Florien's blog Unreasonable Faith, wrote a review where he said, "All told, there are fourteen strong articles here, plus Loftus’ OTF in the introduction and a brief closing from Robert Price. It’s a solid collection of essays that work well together...On balance, the book is a solid addition to the atheist library, and it makes an excellent companion to The Christian Delusion." That's cool, but I get the sense he's tired of me or something, for he also wrote: "No one has ever accused Loftus of being timid," and, "By this point Loftus can only muster a three paragraph introduction..." and, "Richard Carrier, who Loftus credits with doing the actual editing of the book..." and, "One of the advantages of these collections is always the chance to hear new voices, and that gets lost when you turn it over to the usual suspects...if Loftus et. al. wants to publish another book, it may be time to develop the field a little more and bring in some new blood."

Old Testament Scholar Michael Heiser and I Discuss OT Prophecy

He has been kind to discuss this issue with me even though it was an aside to a post of his on Bible study. It's hard to replicate the order of our comments since it was two different discussions, but I tried. See what you think:

Kris D. Komarnitsky Replies to William Lane Craig

"The Cognitive Dissonance Theory of Christian Origins," Link.

Want To Know What Blind Faith Is?

At my recent talk in Indy a Christian named Phil heard it and said that given how passionate I am I'll come back around to Christianity. He also said the atheist movement was from God, presumably God's judgment on America in the last days before Jesus comes back. Jerry Wilson was there and shouted, "How do you know that?" That's a great question! There is no evidence leading Phil to believe what he said, none. Which reminds me, Bill Craig said there is still hope for me too! Yep, and that's why I reject faith. It can and does lead people to believe almost anything. Who in their right mind would say such things? If I haven't committed the unforgivable sin then no one has.

Where Do Morals Come From?

They certainly do not come from the Bible, that's for sure. But Christians claim otherwise. In order to do this they must cherry-pick the Bible for minority voices and reject the majority voices since much of Biblical morality comes from a barbaric era. Let's take a different tack and say there was never a Bible and never a Christian religion at all, or any religion. Is it really plausible to say we needed the Bible to tell us anything about slavery such that without it we would still embrace slavery, or any other socially needed change? Where do social advancements come from? How about human creativity and need, just like the advancement of science? We noticed slaves were human beings. We noticed women were not inferior to men. We noticed people are not evil so much as they may be maladjusted. We noticed that democracy is a better way to solve our disputes. We noticed that medicine heals people and that science works. We noticed that animals feel pain. We noticed that the environment is important to sustain all life. Isn't that enough for social and ethical change? No, Christians did not get their morals from the Bible. They noticed the same things and simply picked the few good cherries out the Bible and rejected the overwhelming number of bad ones.

Dr. Jaco Gericke - Confessions of a Died-Again Christian

Jaco was interviewed on the Point of Inquiry program recently. Enjoy. Click on the tag below for more from him.

Quote of the Day on Hitler, by Richard Carrier

Even if Hitler had to pretend to be a Christian to get people behind his program against the Jews (and it was a public program, as Mein Kampf makes clear, and of course the fact that thousands of Germans happily carried it out), then the idea that atheism caused the holocaust is clearly refuted. [via email]

Quote of the Day

With over 30,000 different denominations and sects to choose from, Christianity bears no orthodoxy, no consistency and no authority whatsoever. It has hundreds of 'official' denominations who disagree, sometime violently on all foundational tenets of the religion. Given the general level of ignorance people have about the religion they adopt and their propensity for moulding it to be what they want it to be, one could argue that each Christian has their own denomination. We can state confidently, with evidence and reason that Christianity hasn't a clue what it believes or why. Until the Christianity’s can actually internally agree and harmonise what they believe and state why, they all remain a laughably absurd and unsubstantiated proposition to those who do not believe. Your argument is not with atheists, it's with the other 29,999 sects who view your Christianity as a joke. Link.

My Responses to "You Were Never a Christian"

As an ex-Christian you've heard the same spiel, "You were never a Christian." How do you respond? I respond in four ways: 1) That's just one of your delusions. There are many more; 2) Your God promised that if I believed he would save me. I believed, so why didn't he keep his promise?; 3) I don't care what you think. Deal with my arguments; 4) You're right, because there isn't any truth to Christianity. I was never saved because Jesus doesn't save anyone and that includes you.

My Talk for CFI Indiana

I enjoyed speaking for CFI Indiana last night. Reba Boyd Wooden is the executive director. I'm told it is the most active CFI group in America. This is got to be due to Reba, a retired teacher, who has a great group of people behind her. She kept saying things like "let's hope we have a good turnout" before the meeting. So I began wondering whether we would, especially 20 minutes before the program was to begin when we only had 6-7 people there. But they came and packed the small room we had with about 90 people. They paid $5 (members) to $10 (non-members) to come hear Lil Ole me speak. So far my experience from Los Angeles to Denver to Chicago to St. Paul to Cleveland to Buffalo to Grand Rapids to Madison (and elsewhere) has been that more people show up for my talks than was expected. That's cool. Thanks for your encouragement. Book me now! :-)

Win a Free Copy of The Christian Delusion

Hemant Mehta, The Friendly Atheist, announced how you can win a free copy of my book, which was very nice of him. As you can see, the Kindle version is doing very well right now:

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

[Written by John W. Loftus] Below I've put together all thirty theses (so far) that most Christians agree on and why they are all improbable:

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.

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.