How are we doing and what do you want?

So John is taking a rest and we wish him very well. He has left you, wisely or not, in our hands (by and large). As any good organisation knows, feedback is vital to providing a great service that people want and which is useful. I don't want to get all corporate on you, but this will hopefully be a useful exercise for us all.

Why Christianity has Contributed to the Development of the Porn Industry

For the most part, Christians have always felt uncomfortable with their sexuality. In this post, I will explain why this is so, and why the attitude Christian society has towards the human body and human sexuality has led to sex being viewed as something "dirty," and that the human body itself is "filthy."
The Christian view that humans are "born sinners" and that the body is filthy, and sex is "dirty" then leads people to act on their so-called "sinful nature"--which has inevitably contributed to the development of the porn industry.

Why was Jesus' tomb not venerated?

Thinking about the tomb, in the context of the last post, it is incredibly suspect that the place of the greatest spiritual and religious significance in the whole world seems not to have been venerated at least not until the 4th century CE onwards). This then prompts these questions:

1) Was Jesus actually buried in a tomb?
2) Was the position of the tomb unknown?

And these sorts of questions lead onto others, such as

3) Did the death of Jesus actually happen as reported?
4) Did the resurrection take place?

So let us look at the veneration of the tomb, or lack thereof.

My New Secular Student Alliance Speakers Bureau Page

Link. My offer only applies to NEW speaking requests and it starts today. I only ask for expenses. There should be no good reason why secular groups around the country wouldn't take advantage of this. I'll do it as my schedule permits.

Are the Differences Between the Christianities Insignificant?

Here at John Loftus' blog Debunking Christianity it's been emphasized many times by blog post authors and commenters alike that there exists no such thing as a Christianity, there being instead many Christianities. In fact there are so many Christianities with so many differences between them that the word "Christian" is useless, even for the purposes of rough outline, as a guide to what someone self-identifying as Christian thinks or believes about their own religion. This includes what they believe about gods, heaven, hell, the Bible, prayer, and miracles. In response Christians have maintained that of course there is variation in belief among the various Christian groups, but the differences are insignificant, subtle alternative interpretations. In this post I'm going to share with you an essay from Harry T. Cook which demonstrates that the differences between those calling themselves Christian are anything but insignificant.

Matthew and the guards at the tomb

In this post, I am going to look at the resurrection account given by Matthew, in particular his addition found in no other Gospel account, that there were guards stationed at the tomb.

According to Matthew, the chief priests were worried that the disciples might steal Jesus’ body to fake a resurrection, so they went to Pilate and got permission to post a guard on the tomb. When Jesus rose from the dead, the guards reported it to the priests, and the priests bribed them to claim that disciples stole the body while they were asleep. Matthew claims that “to this day” Jews report the body as stolen (as opposed to resurrected).

So what is really going on here? This post will investigate the historicity of this claim and conclude that the guards at the tomb, as according to Matthew, were ahistorical.

In Defense of DJ Grothe

Greg Laden, a Freethought Blogger, is calling for the resignation of DJ Grothe who is the President of the James Randi Foundation (JREF) which hosts The Amazing Meeting (TAM) every year. A few other Freethought Bloggers have cooperatively written posts that criticize him. Do you ever wonder why several Freethought Bloggers write on the same topic from time to time? It's because they all share an email where they talk among themselves and ask other Bloggers to chime in. As far as I can tell, what provoked this debate was a post by Ashley Miller after the Women in Secularism Conference, where she wrote:

This is wrong on so many levels

i had to post this. Hat tip to B__e for this one. It makes me feel sick. It is really quite wrong.

God loves abortion!

Or it is necessary for foetuses to die for a greater good. Well that's certainly one of the conclusions that must come from the statistics for natural, spontaneous abortions, or miscarriages; abortions that God has the power to stop, and seemingly designed in to the system in the first place in actualising this biological world.

The statistics for miscarriages are notoriously difficult to assess completely accurately. This is mainly due to the fact that many miscarriages go unreported due to simply not even being known by the mother. 

So why am I writing about this? Well because, statistically, it means that anywhere up to 75% of all pregnancies, of all fertilised eggs, die. This is a staggering number of pregnancy losses (for example, it is estimated that 3 out of 4 eggs that are fertilized do not fuse their DNA correctly, and therefore either do not attempt to implant or fail at implantation - see attached image taken from here). Of course, being exact on these numbers is rather academic. Whether it be 50 million a year in the US or 25 million is irrelevant since both numbers are ridiculously high!

The reason for talking about this is twofold. Firstly, for people who critique abortion on religious grounds, it makes somewhat of a mockery of their arguments. Secondly, again from a religious perspective, it does make God look a little callous. Nay, brutal and unloving.

The Ledge - why aren't there more atheistic films?

So I just received the blu-ray for The Ledge whose description is below. It is probably one of the first films to openly tackle the philosophy of religion and I am looking forward to watching it. However, it got me thinking, what atheistic films are there out there, and why aren't there more films that deal directly with these sorts of issues.

I suppose, in essence, the answer to that could be quite simple - because they don't command decent enough incomes; because the negative press they would get from the Bible Belt might damage the film's chances of making good money, and so on. Indeed, the film (based on a Carl Sagan book) Contact, was unable to remain faithful to Sagan in exploring the science vs religion debate by softening the debate and changing the ending (apparently - I have not seen it). The superb The Invention of Lying by Ricky Gervais had some extraordinarily good scenes (the 10 Commandments scene is one of my favourite all-time scenes) and I would hail it as the first openly atheistic film (and the internet infidels list these as atheistic films). Many others probably have covert undercurrents of exploring such subject matter, but disguise the subtext so as to appeal to the largest audience possible.

Providence Road Baptist Church, N.C. Pastor Charles Worley’s Sermon on Gays and Lesbians

Separation of Church and State . . . Yea, Right!

Yahweh is Proven to be a Pernicious, Lofty, and Fickle God

This is an excerpt from a book that we have written which is near completion, and was inspired by a heated online conversation we had with a well known Christian. In this excerpt, it will be proven that Yahweh, touted as the “ultimate and only true god,” is nothing short of a fickle, and pernicious god, with an added air of loftiness about him when it concerns the subjects of knowledge and wisdom. To prove this, I can show where in the Bible Yahweh views wisdom as being good, and also views it as being bad.

Who Says Our Efforts Aren't Worth it?

Here's another email I received that says otherwise:

Christianity and homosexuality - the inconsistencies of a Christian

I am writing a post in reaction to something about which I was talking with my Christian friend (let’s call him Colin). We were talking about homosexuality and his approach to it given his Christian background. Some points were interesting and some I fundamentally disagreed with. Here are his views:

• As according to the Bible, homosexuality is wrong.
• This morality is grounded in God.
• He is not homophobic and detests that label as it automatically halts any further informed discussion.
• People can have genetic or environmental variables which help to influence a persons likelihood to homosexuality.
• However, to commit to a homosexual act is an act of free will, and thus falls within the moral sphere.
• As a result, it is not necessarily the disposition of being homosexual which is wrong, but the decision to act upon it.
• He has no ‘problem’ with homosexuals and has / has had homosexual friends.

Hopefully I am not building up a straw man of his position, but it does demand some serious unpicking.
Obviously, as a determinist, this is all moot to me, but let me at least give this a good seeing to, so to speak.
To start, this clearly begs the question as to the authenticity of the truth claim of the bible. Can we trust biblical accounts? If not, which ones do we trust and which ones do we accept as being potentially errant? Let us look at the various mentions homosexuality gets:

Bible Believing Fundamentalist Dr. Peter Ruckman, PhD Lectures on the Bible

If Dr. Ruckman makes more sense than his enemies (as noted at end of the video), it’s only because his enemies are Christians! (Even atheists can learn something about the Bible and Christianity with Dr. Ruckman!) .

Hell (literally) makes no sense

In response to John's post, a bit tongue in cheek, I thought I'd post a video I did some time ago about the incoherency of hell. See what you think.

I Have Been to Hell and Back, Literally!

This is true. I have been to hell, literally! Want to see?

Welcome to the World of Christianity

As a Christian, you are now following THE supreme God who created the universe. Here are the absolute truths that make your God special:

Evolution as part of a necessary mechanism (and putting Creationism to bed)

We have had a resurgence in discussing evolution recently, thanks in no small part to the Creationist mental contortions of Creationbabble over on this thread. what this seems to show, to me at any rate, is that Creationists, and any shade of person who disbelieves the theory of evolution, simply does not understand the philosophy behind it.

In short, they just don't get it. Let me explain.

Jesus as a Jewish Religious Bigot

The most harsh and racially charged position Jesus takes is in his love and protection of the faith of his nation Israel built on the exclusive covenant to the Jews have by its god Yahweh.

Why I HATE Christianity

I recently wrote a post on my blog explaining why I HATE Christianity which received over 3500 hits in one day, so I thought I would also submit it to DC to gauge the reaction here. I have put some of the Christian responses, and my counters at the bottom of the post. Enjoy!

Richard Carrier exposes New Testament problems

Here is a video, a couple of years old now, which provides some excellent questions. I am not a Jesus mythicist, but really rate the thought-provoking nature of this video. It is Carrier at his best. Much of it needs savouring and following up with detailed research and analysis.

From a God in a Box to the Universal Sky God: Eternal Blessing and Suffering for All

God is a consequentialist part 2 - the Old Testament inconsistencies

So now having exposed in the last post how God values moral actions, let me look into internal evidence from the Bible which shows that God espouses a moral absolutist code, and yet proceeds to contradict that ruling somewhat hypocritically in his actions.

Let me recap. By seeing moral value in the greater good that supposedly (this is just an assertion from theists to explain away the Problem of Evil) comes about from a moral action, God is deriving the moral value of that action not from any intrinsic character, but from the context; from the consequences. For example, the suffering and death of Jesus is excused from the greater good this supposedly entails (the confusing notion of atonement) and the 2004 tsunami killing 230,000 people and millions of other organisms is explained as morally good in the consequences which this brings about. We do not know what these consequences are since God decides it is a good idea not to tell us, but suffice it to say that we must (as theists claim) understand that this is part of God’s greater plan, mysterious as it is. Since God is morally perfect, the plan must also be morally perfect. Thus any action or omission (inaction, or choice not to act) is defined as being morally perfect. Therefore, the tsunami was both designed tectonically by God in actualising the physics of this universe, and allowed to happen by God choosing not to intervene and stop it due to some greater good which we struggle to fathom. As a result, we are assured (by theistic experts with no small dollop of question begging) that here is a greater good, and subsequently, as I have surmised, the good of such an action or omission is derived by the consequences.

Why John 3:16 is a Lie in Its Biblical Context

Compare this famous evangelical Gospel tract verse as cited in the late Gospel of John with both the older Bible traditions themselves as well as the New Testament itself.