Six Thoughtful Links

Professor Matt McCormick's slides for a lecture on What is Atheism?

Christianity Disproved.

Debunking the Arguments of Fundamentalists by Winston Wu.

Adam Tells God Goodbye.

Brilliantly Stupid: How To Kill a Creationist Bill

On January 31, 2012, the Indiana Senate voted 28-22 in favor of Senate Bill 89, which was previously amended to read: “The governing body of a school corporation may offer instruction on various theories of the origin of life. The curriculum for the course must include theories from multiple religions, which may include, but is not limited to, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Scientology.” As a Hoosier from Indiana I'm pleased to learn this bill is now dead in the water. You can read more about it right here.

Private Subjective Experience is No Evidence At All: Against William Lane Craig's Inner Witness of the Spirit

Since I've written a lot against Craig's claim of the inner witness of the Spirit I've decided to gather together the most important posts about it here. Christians are claiming I am ignorant about what he claims. Nope, I'm not. That's a typical response. I understand that Craig is not claiming this inner witness is sufficient to convince other people to believe. He's claiming instead that this supposed inner witness is sufficient to convince him. Thomas Larsen even asked if I've read Alvin Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief, as if that would straighten me out. He said the questions I pose about this "are elementary and, frankly, quite embarrassing for you." But given the looks of Larsen he was still in diapers as I was taking a master's level class with Bill Craig at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School on Plantinga's epistemology. And I have read through the important parts of Plantinga's book and dissected them in Why I Became an Atheist.

My argument in a link below is that it doesn't matter how you dress it up philosophically. A delusion is a delusion is a delusion. I'm arguing that Bill Craig is deluded to claim such a thing and that he should know better. I know he's not trying to convince anyone else that he experienced it. He distinguishes between knowing Christianity is true from showing it to be true. He claims to know it's true by the inner witness of the Spirit. I'm trying to disabuse him of this claim, as impossible as it is to do so with a deluded person. And even if I can't, there are more reasonable Christians listening in who might be persuaded against Craig. I'm trying to point out to reasonable people how deluded such a claim is, regardless of whether any Christian sees it for what it is.

Listen up, God spoke to Moses privately, and privately to Paul, and likewise to Joseph Smith, and to Mohammed, and to many Pentecostals, and to David Koresh, and to many of the prophets we read in the Old Testament. Why does God always speak to people privately? Why do most people claim to know God in a private way? A private subjective experience has no more evidence for it than none at all. Given that most people are delusional when they make such claims it's extremely probable Craig is too. The ONLY reason evangelicals buy into this is because they need to believe. They would never entertain Craig's claim if they were a Mormon, or Muslim, Catholic, or Jew.

Answering Some of My Critics

Around the web I have several detractors. They accuse me of a few things which I’d like to take the time to answer. I’m accused of being an egotistical self-promoting control freak who censors comments at DC and bans people off his Blog who disagree with me. I’m accused of wanting fame and financial gain. I'm accused of being childish and abrasive. Granted this comes from a small fringe of people but since their noise is discovered by search engines I should respond.

I’ve tried to resist responding to such ignorant and false drivel before. I know I cannot satisfy the people making such accusations. I also know that by responding I’ll give them more fodder. But here goes.

Some Atheists are Schmucks ;-)

Some of them remind me of Christians when disagreement arises. Enjoy.

David Marshall "Knows" God is Not Silent!

One of the arguments why Richard Carrier is not a Christian is that God is silent. David Marshall, author of several Christian apologetic books, says instead that he knows God is not silent. He said of Carrier and me that our claim is one we "cannot possibly know to be true. " Really?

The Scale of the Universe

Link. Drag the square at the bottom from left to right and back. Where is God? ;-) Nikita Khrushchev later said after Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin flew into space in 1961 that "Gagarin flew into space, but didn't see any god there." Such a comment was laughed at by believers, but there would have been a time in the ancient past when it would be startling news.

The OTF for Mormonism

Mormons assume other religions have the burden of proof. They assume human not divine authors to their holy book(s). They assume a human not a divine origin to their faiths. They critically evaluate all other religions by reason and science.

In Defense of Rebecca Watson

This is one of my posts when I was at Freethought Blogs.

On Divisive Atheists and Some Freethought Bloggers

In February 2002, four years before his book The God Delusion was released in 2006, Richard Dawkins called atheists to arms in a TED talk. His talk wasn’t aired until April of 2007. He makes it clear he wants a campaign much like the gays used to gain acceptability in American society. His final sentence was, "let's all stop being so damned respectful."

At that point there was a split among atheists. A line was drawn in the sand. Although I admit that his approach has been very effective in getting people to take notice of atheists, at the same time I object to the demand that other atheists must adopt that same attitude or approach.

Quote of the Day, With Examples

If the same kind of reasoning produces support for two different conclusions then the reasoning is delusional. By your host here, John W. Loftus ;-)

--Example 1) Ontological arguments for God's existence equally support the Oriental conception of God, or a trickster god.
--Example 2) The same kind of arguments exonerating God from being evil also work in reverse to exonerate an evil God from being good.
--Example 3) Arguments deflecting the problem of divine hiddenness for the Christian God also work to deflect the problem of divine hiddenness for Zeus, Odin, Thor, Re, Hathor, Apollo, and Artemis.
--Example 4) Pascal's beneficial argument to support belief in the Christian God also works to support the evil Egyptian god Set (Seth), and the Greek gods Minos, Styx, Tartaros and Thanatos.
--Example 5) Arguments supporting the proper basically of belief in the Christian God also work to support the proper basically of belief in Allah. Somebody stop me!

BBC Program "Phantoms in the Brain" Hosted by V.S. Ramachandran

This is an episode from a BBC program hosted by neurologist V.S. Ramachandran that explains his key findings in certain instances of brain damage that have long been viewed as mere curiosities by the scientific community.

Is William Lane Craig Dishonest With the Facts? I've Drawn a Line in the Sand.

Most people know that I defend William Lane Craig against the charge that he is dishonest as an apologist. Among skeptics I am his biggest defender, perhaps the only one. But I have just asked him three questions about the inner witness of the Holy Spirit that if he refuses to answer I can only conclude he is not being honest with the facts, and will defend him no more. He might have other reasons for not answering them, but I can only conclude he can't do so reasonably. Here they are:

*Sigh* The Inner Witness of the Spirit Again

Christian, do you agree that objective evidence is external to the knower and can be verified by a third party at least in principle? Yes or no? How then can any third party verify a claim such as someone else's inner witness of the Spirit? At least someone's claim to be abducted by aliens is able to be verified in principle by a third party. Anyone in any religion or sect within one can claim to have had a veridical religious experience. These claims are a dime a dozen when they cannot be verified even in principle by a third party. That makes all of these claims subject to the charge of delusion, and as such, no evidence at all EVEN TO SOMEONE WHO CLAIMS TO HAVE HAD ONE! Q.E.D.

The 2011 About.com Readers' Choice Awards for Agnosticism / Atheism

[Edit: just a reminder] You can nominate your favorite book, blog, podcast, community, Ad and so forth, until February 15th, right here. Then you can vote for your favorites from February 22nd until March 21st. Winners will be announced March 30, 2012. My anthology The Christian Delusion won last year. With the publication in 2011 of The End of Christianity I'm hoping it could win this year. Nominate away. The more nominations it gets the better chance it will be selected for the voting that follows.

Richard Carrier's Book "Why I am Not a Christian" is Excellent!

Carrier's book can be found here,which I highly recommend. Here's a brief summary of it:

Bradley Bowen: "the devil is in the details"

Before reading what he wrote, Bowen tells us about himself:

I was a devout Evangelical Christian from 1970 to 1982. The study of philosophy, especially philosophy of religion, led me to see that my Christian faith was founded on weak and faulty arguments. I followed where reason led me, and left Christianity in favor of skepticism, critical thinking, and a secular humanist worldview. Background in Philosophy - B.A. in philosophy from Sonoma State University. M.A. in philosophy from University of Windsor. Candidate for PhD in philosophy from University of California at Santa Barbara.

What Are the Chances That Christianity is True?

;-)

An Interview With Richard Carrier About His Book, "Proving History"

Richard Carrier has kindly agreed to answer some questions I posed after reading his soon to be released book Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. 2012). This book introduces Bayes’s Theorem as a basis for assessing whether or not Jesus existed, a subject he will deal with in a forthcoming book titled, “On the Historicity of Jesus Christ.”

Quote of the Day, by articulett on the OTF ;-)

You can believe whatever goofy shit you want-- but if you want us to take your beliefs more seriously than you take the goofy shit that others believe in, you would need to give us the kind of evidence that you would require from them to take their beliefs seriously.

You Can Now Pre-Order My Revised Book, WIBA

Click here: Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity.It has 536 pages, a 110 more than the previous edition. It's such a massive revision my publisher is treating it as a new book.

Jesus Christ, CEO, By Dr. Hector Avalos

Faith-based companies are "courting" legal troubles, he argues.

Chris Hallquist: Does Dr. Craig Win All His Debates?

Chris describes himself as one having "a masters degree in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, but hates academic philosophy." I like that. From my experience there is either scientifically informed philosophy or there is scientifically uninformed philosophy. Scientifically uninformed philosophy is a crock, and that's my philosophy. The problem is that way too much academic philosophy is scientifically uninformed. That's why I don't place too much value on it as I've said. Now on to Chris on whether Dr. Craig wins all his debates:

Is Scientific Evidence Enough To Show That A Miracle Didn't Happen?

I previously endorsed Richard Carrier's "slam dunk" case against a solar eclipse at the death of Jesus. But an interesting discussion took place in the comments concerning scientific evidence and miracles. Here it is for further discussion.

Quote of the Day, by Kel

Self-authenticating private evidence is useless,
because it is indistinguishable from the illusion of it.