On Secular Blogging: “If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly”

[Written by John W. Loftus] I've liked this quote by GK Chesterton from the day I read it. Doing something badly is at least doing something productive, if what you're doing is the right thing to do. It's better than not attempting something at all. At least you will learn from your efforts. All of the most important things we learned to do we started out doing them badly, like walking, talking, singing, dancing and riding a bicycle. You improve as you go. You cannot improve until you start. You begin by starting out badly. You have to be willing to fail, sometimes often, to achieve what you want to. So if you decide to do something, anything, be prepared to start out by doing it badly. If you wait until you can do something perfectly you'll do nothing at all.

An Illustrated Guide to Dr. Hector Avalos's Book, "Fighting Words"

In Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence, Dr. Avalos did a careful analysis of the fundamental texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and shows how four 'scarce' resources have figured repeatedly in creating religious violence: sacred space (churches, temples, holy cities); the creation of holy scriptures (exclusive revelations); group privilege (chosen people, the predestined select few); and salvation (only some are saved). If you want to see his thesis illustrated in the city of Jerusalem you need only look as far as Simon Sebag Montefiore's new book Jerusalem: A Biography. One reviewer wrote of his book:

The amount of murder, massacre etc for 2,000 years is appalling. Religious madness is the theme. Christians murdering Jews and being murdered and both murdering Muslims and being murdered in their turn. WHY? Because Christ was crucified here, Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac here and Mohammed road a horse with a human face aerially around the city, receiving insights as he went. So the murders and massacres are about the places where religious events are believed to have taken place.

Adam and Eve Again

Before eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve either knew that disobeying God was evil or they didn’t. If they didn’t, then they can’t be blamed for disobeying him. If they did, then they already possessed the knowledge that God had forbidden. Either way, God could not justly banish them from Eden. (Adduced by Richard R. La Croix.) Link.

William Lane Craig On Whether the Witness of the Spirit is Question-Begging

[Written by John W. Loftus] Dr. Craig attempts to answer that question right here. What you will see when you read his answer, ladies and gentlemen, is something I have told you about before. Step right up for an extra $1 and see this oddity, folks. Christians repeatedly are forced into claiming that their faith is possible and demand that we show their faith is nearly impossible before they will consider it to be improbable, which is an utterly unreasonable epistemological standard. Here we see it in plain sight. Craig highlights Alvin Plantinga's argument, now get this, that "Christian belief can be shown to be unjustified, irrational, or unwarranted only if it is shown that Christian beliefs are false." Craig says:

Science Brings Results: Quantum Levitation

What is there about science that we trust? Results, time after time after time. When we compare the results of science with what religious faith gives us, all faith produces is more and more diverse and even mutually exclusive religions with no method to settle their differences. Remember me saying I had levitated? You doubt this can happen, right? Well it can, and it's no magic trick nor is it done by a religious state of higher consciousness. It's called Quantum Levitation, akin to the "Back to the Future" movie stuff.

Am I At the Forefront of the Current Atheist Movement in America?

That's what one Christian who comments here said to me in an email:

When Christians Criticize Each Other I Think They're All Right

One way to tell whether a theory is in crisis to to observe how many versions of that theory have been proposed. When it comes to how the death of Jesus supposedly atones for sins there have been a lot of versions proposed by Christians who, for good reasons, have disputed the others. So let's recap. The earliest proposals were The Ransom Theory and the The Recapitulation Theory. Then came a host of them afterward, like Anslem's Satisfaction Theory, The Penal Substitutionary Theory, The Governmental Theory, The Moral Influence Theory, and recently The Relationship Theory. There are others: The Acceptance Theory. The Declaratory Theory. The Mystical Theory. The Guaranty Theory. The Vicarious Repentance Theory. The Christus Victor Theory. The Healing Theory. The Penal Non-Substitution Theory. The Kaleidoscope Theory. The Participatory Model. The Scapegoating Theory. Check some of them out! See also this book of four views, and watch as Christians trash the other views! You see, there is nothing left for me to do. Christians do it to themselves. All I need to do is point it out.

Given nearly two millennia I’d venture to say with good reason that there will never be a cogent, well-argued version that can ever pass muster in the future either. I think the whole idea of Jesus dying for my sins to restore me to God is built upon the beliefs of a superstitious ancient world, where gods and goddesses were pleased with sacrifices, whether they were human or animal ones. This ancient world is long gone now, so it’s time to give up believing in an incarnate God who offered a sacrifice for us on the cross to atone for our sins.

"Think Atheist" On the Top Books Debunking Christianity

Link. Besides the books he mentioned which ones would you recommend and why? And to think, William Lane Craig doesn't believe I'm qualified to debate him. Who does he think taught me a lot of what I know anyway? ;-)

Just Give Me The Stats, Ma'am

The Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) is "Equally Brilliant and...Self-Apparent"

It's discussed at 49:20 in episode #93 of Reasonable Doubts Podcast. It was said that the Religious Dependency Thesis (RDPT) can be discarded in favor of focusing in on the nature of justification. But without it believers wouldn't be jolted into considering the OTF at all. Another reason for including it is because the RDPT is a fact, since it follows (not of logical necessity but of overwhelming probability) from the Religious Diversity Thesis (RDVT). However, the best reason for including it is that if the OTF was made to be about the nature of justification then the debate would still focus in on the RDPT anyway. So why not argue for it and preempt the objections?

Avalos's book, "Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship"

This long awaited scholarly book is now available. Dr. Avalos' book definitively refutes the claims of Rodney Stark and others who credit biblical ethics and Christianity as a main factor in the abolition of slavery. See it here.

Hey I just Levitated! No Really, I Did!

It was amazing! I did, I tell you. I did! For about five minutes I was suspended in mid-air! It was wonderful! Do you believe me on my word, or not, and if not, why not? As you think about this ignore the Christopher Hitchens quote, as well as the need for a religious context.

For The Record I'm Not Famous Now, Nor Do I Think I'll Ever Be

In the sidebar it may look as if I think highly of myself. There seems to be a lot of self-promotion going on over there. The reason that you see it is precisely because I know I'm not that important. There are new visitors here every hour who have never heard of my work. So it's to introduce them to it. Until I make it on the cover of Time Magazine, or until I am the president of an atheist organization that has billboards all over California, or until I am interviewed on Nightline, not very many people in the over-all scheme of things know of my work, especially the people in Europe. And I don't think that will happen. My books have never been on the "New Books" table at any national chain bookstore. They sit on an atheism shelf in the back of the store, if there is an atheism shelf at all. I'm not complaining. That's just the way it really is. And since I have no new arguments defending metaphysical naturalism and have decided to kick a dead horse, evangelicalism, I'm only dealing with a small slice of the pie. I know that. But I want to get the attention of the people feasting on that slice of pie.

Hitchens Quote

I Stand in the Gap

I am set for the express purpose of destroying the influence of evangelical Christianity in America and in the world at large. I hope atheists can appreciate this. I'm doing what I think it takes as a former evangelical insider. Whether I can do this is not the question, since I just want to be a part of what many others are doing. I embrace a multifaceted approach to accomplishing this shared goal of ours.

Randal Rauser: "Why Won’t Paul Copan Respond to Thom Stark?"

Link. We're still waiting.

I'm Giving Away Some More Books

Well it feels like that anyway, for a donation. I'm moving so I need the money.

It's Possible That Evangelical Christianity is the True Faith

Okay, I've said it. It's possible Christians are right after all. But then it's possible the Loch Ness Monster exists and is evading our attempts to detect her too! Christians must be convinced that their faith is nearly impossible before they will ever consider it to be improbable, which is an utterly unreasonable standard. There are at least two reasons why they demand such a high standard of disproof. The first is what I call the Omniscience Escape Clause (read all the links in this post!). The other reason is Pascal's Wager, in that unless the Christian faith is shown to be nearly impossible the threat of hell still holds sway over the minds of believers. I would think however, that if their faith is shown to be improbable that should be good enough. Here then are several ways where believers, especially evangelicals (my target audience), try escaping out from underneath the weight of probabilities:

Quote of the Day, From My Wife

As we drove past a church having their service yesterday she made me laugh when she said:

Looks like they can't remember how to be good and need to be reminded every week. Some of us are smarter than that.

[First posted 9/6/10]

Did Jesus Do Miracles?

There are some doubts that Jesus was known as a miracle worker in his day. David Friedrich Strauss (1808- 1874 CE) was the first to systematically argue this case. Against the rationalist approach of explaining them all away naturally, and against the supernaturalist approach which took these claims literally, Strauss argued in what can be considered a book of its own (a chapter containing 121 pages), that these miracle stories were myths.1

A Helpful Review of My Book WIBA

The author writes:

This was one of the first books I read when I began to doubt. It was extremely comprehensive and I found many of the chapters very helpful. John appeared extremely well-cited and read and I cannot even imagine amassing such a collection on my list of read books as the quantity that fills his footnotes. Link.

I'm Co-Writing a Book With Dr. Randal Rauser

Nine months ago at Randal's initiation we finished a book proposal tentatively titled: God or Godless: One Atheist, One Christian, and Twenty Irreverent, Interesting, and Somewhat Informative Debates. In it we each propose ten topics for debate. This has been a slow process but we finally got a contract from Baker Book House, a major Christian publisher.

"The End of Christianity" is Now Available in Kindle

Link. Finally!

FFRF's "Fool Me Once" Campaign Looks Excellent!

Link.

A New and Better Pascal's Wager: If God Asked You to Wager Before Being Born What Would You Choose?

Why didn't we get a choice in whether or not we would be born on earth? Wouldn't the reasonably good thing to do is to create us and then ask us if we would want to be born knowing the risks involved?