My Resume On a Card, Five Published Books in Five Years

This was a lot of hard work and I am especially grateful for the contributors to TCD and TEC. The last two books will come out early next year, which I'm the most excited about right now. I'm very grateful to Randal Rauser for inviting me to co-write God or Godless with him. These books will have an impact over the coming years. The main problem is getting people to read them. Most people don't read more than a book or two a year. ;-)

Victor Reppert and finding it tough to love your enemy

I was perusing Victor Reppert’s blog in order to catch a feeling of what apologists around are saying, in response to the feedback the other week. Something that Reppert was talking about over on his blog dangerous idea the other day struck me as slightly nonsensical. Reppert was dealing with Keith Parsons talking about the commandment to love thy enemies, and how far this should be taken. Parsons gives examples of really terrible actions of certain people and Reppert counters that loving these people is “above his pay grade”:

Parsons: A further issue I have always had with Christianity is the one you express as follows:

"Christians are enjoined by their faith to love others, and I take it that means that regardless of how badly a person has gone wrong, we think that, by the grace of God, that they could someday be brought to disconnect themselves from their sin by repentance."

Taken literally, this means that Christians are enjoined to love, say, people who throw acid into the faces of little girls to keep them from going to school. Indeed, Christians are enjoined to love tyrants, serial killers, traffickers in sexual slavery, drug cartel thugs, terrorists, fanatics, con men who cheat the elderly out of their life savings, etc.

Christian Scholars Are Defending Me? Now I Know I'm Doomed! ;-)

In writing to Jeffrey Jay Lowder who is the co-editor and contributor to the best skeptical book so far on the resurrection of Jesus, Christian philosopher Victor Reppert used me as a contrast with the “so-called” New Atheists:

I think the New Atheists are doing things which are a fundamental betrayal of the basic rules which must underlie all discourse concerning matters so serious as religion. It affects people like John Loftus, who has some interesting ideas, but invariably ruins the possibility of serious discourse with him by propagandistic tactics. A kind of atheist fanaticism is brewing, which undermines the very process which makes atheist-theist dialogue at all rewarding. Link

David Marshall, a Christian apologist who has written several books defending his faith, said:

Christianity-- A Disingenuous Religion Based on Lies and Deception

According to the video below, C. Michael Patton, Th.M. and Tim Kimberley, Th.M of Credo House, describe how, when believers are presented before Yahweh, their own resumes could never measure up, so instead, they must submit the resume that belongs to Jesus in order to be "saved" and this post will explain how this analogy illustrates how disingenuous the Bible and Christianity is at its core. The video is based on the verses in Ephesians 2:8-9, which many Christians believe relieves them of any responsibility for their "sins"--for they believe that as long as they have this "gift" of "grace," they will be "saved."

Does the New Testament Misquote Jesus?

An oldie but goodie.  Bart Ehrman delivers a salvo of arguments against biblical inerrancy in his 2010 debate with Craig Evans.  

The full debate can be found here.

Why the Crucifixion of Jesus was a Waste and Rejected as Atonement by Yahweh (God)

A. The Roman method of crucifixion, which included the beating Jesus received before he was nailed to the cross, was done by non-consecrated pagan gentile men who were not set apart as holy in God’s sight. Plus the fact that Jesus’ beating and crucifixion generally was not any different from the thousands of other rebels and criminals the Romans made examples out of. (1)

A Simple Question for Christians about God’s Goodness

First, the doctrinal background for my question:

The Bible: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” (Genesis 1: 31a) This phase ". ..it was good." is used seven times in Genesis 1.

Hell, Craig, Bradley and creating from a subgroup of freely loving individuals

I was going to post something else but A for Atheist’s post made me remember this post I did some time ago on my own blog. Although it refers to hell, it can actually refer to heaven if one switches the “don’t create the bad lot” to “DO create the good lot” and thus we have, it seems, some kind of logical evidence for God creating those of Godly nature that A was referring to herself.

I have just listened to Ray Bradley debate William Lane Craig. I heard this several years ago but didn't really pay it close attention. This time round I was quite shocked at how many points Craig evaded, or logical demands from Bradley that he met with the terms "God may" and so on.

Craig squirmed big time when Bradley pressed him on subsets of compossibles. This is a REALLY important point. I will try to set it out here:

Yahweh and the Problem of Evil--Why Yahweh is an Egotistical, Evil, Sadistic, Masochistic God

Yahweh is said by Christians to have certain attributes such as being all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful, but the attributes of the god Yahweh, as depicted in the Bible, present a god that is not only supposedly loving--but also angry, jealous, vengeful, and just plain evil. According to Christians, Yahweh is an all-powerful, all good, all knowing god--which is inconsistent with a world of suffering--and this is known as the Problem of Evil. The dilemma for Christians is that if Yahweh is all powerful and all knowing, he could accomplish any of his tasks without the need for suffering--or he would not be all powerful and all knowing. If he was all good, he would want to create a world without any pain and suffering, since it would be within his power and knowledge to do so. But clearly we have pain and suffering. Therefore, Yahweh is not all knowing, all good, or all powerful.

Apr-Jun 2012 Index

This is the index of posts from April to June 2012. It is a work in progress, as it takes an inordinate amount of time to do. Hopefully, after a while, the whole backlog of DC's catalogue, so to speak, will be much easier to peruse.

One suggestion would be to use 'ctrl+f' (the find shortcut) to search for a term. For example, if you wanted to find posts on the 'Kalam' or 'Reformed Epistemology', you could press ctrl+f and put 'kalam' or 'reformed' into the box and it will highlight the terms of the page so you can easily see the posts on this and other index pages with relevant terms that you might be researching. Alternatively, use the search bar in the sidebar.

How To Self-Destruct As a Movement

I write this as an attempt to open up a real dialogue among atheists with no axe to grind (as best as possible). It's about self-destructing as a movement. Is there any danger the atheist movement in general can self-destruct? No, not a chance. Over-all there is no danger for atheism as a whole since atheists have gained and are gaining too many victories. I think however that some atheist communities can do so, yes.

King David and Jesus: The Bible’s Mythic Super Heroes

A decade ago, I read Steven McKenzie’s King David: A Biography(Oxford University Press, 2002). What I soon realized was that the Bible creates propaganda to sell faith in its God, especially though famous characters created to promote belief in Israelite monotheism; be they Abraham, Moses, David or Jesus. These embellished Super Heroes function like our comic book (now in movies) Super Heroes such as Superman, Batman and Spiderman battling the forces of evil for a world of good. But these idealized figures simply function to serve our fantasies in a world where reality is fraught with suffering and injustice

Steven McKenzie continues his discussion of the quest for any Historical King David (a highly idealized king, but a man who was nothing short of a ruthless criminal) Here.

The Contradictory And Chaotic Gospel Lies Used to Prove the Resurrection

The Gospels can’t even get their post-resurrection stories straight! In fact, they have used lies to cover earlier lies in selling Christianity. (I view both telemarketers and the Gospel writers driven by the same ideology: Sell the product at any cost. Lies are totally OK if it creates a sell / belief!)
Here are a few of the many lies the post-resurrection Gospel stories use:

William Lane Craig and the Kalam Cosmological Argument (#1)

Recently, William Lane Craig has produced a video, based on an essay in a book he and Paul Copan have edited this year (“Come Let Us Reason: New Essays in Christian Apologetics”) entitled “Terrible objections to the Kalam Cosmological Argument”. I am yet to read the essay, but I must assume it to broadly follow the line of his video of the lecture “Worst objections to the Kalam Cosmological Argument”.

I have a mild obsession with the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA) and am potentially one of the internet infidels to which he derogatorily refers in his introduction. What I found in his exposition of these “worst” arguments is that the talk was a fantastic array of straw men, ad hominem, mischaracterisation of cogent arguments, and poor reasoning. I will tell you for why.

A Response to Justin Griffith a Freethought Blogger

You can read our respectful exchange right here. My response follows:

What is the Mission Statement of Freethought Blogs (FtB)?

Before reading any further this present post was prompted by responses to my post In Defense of DJ Grothe. I'm not picking a fight with the FtB but I would really like to know what the mission statement of the mammoth skeptical Freethought Blog is. What unites them? What is it? Most organizations have a mission statement. I think the FtB's should come together to produce one. I would really be interested beyond the fact that they are non-believers. I'm not talking about what they agree about, since they are united about non-belief and the need for diversity, but rather what their agendas are, their goals for being there. However, my guess is that if they produced one it would be so broad of a statement that it would end up being equivalent to something like this:

Elaine Pagels’ The Book of Revelation

The Book of Revelation, the final book of the New Testament, has some of the most dramatic and frightening language in the Bible. In her new book Revelations: Visions, Prophecy and Politics in the Book of Revelation, Elaine Pagels places the Book of Revelation in its historical context and explores where the book's apocalyptic vision of the end of the world comes from. Listen on NPR

Elaine Pagels is Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion at Princeton University and has been called one of the world's most important writers and thinkers on religion and history. She won the National Book Award for her book The Gnostic Gospels. She is also the author of Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas.
Harry McCall

Jesus the Homosexual: Evidence From the Gospels

Jesus is created / redacted in each of the Gospel author’s mind to give credence to their own story of Jesus which – for them – would have trouble standing on its own merits. Thus in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is the New Moses and his life is set in a Roman Palestine context that mimics Israel in Egypt complete with the killing of the toddlers to Jesus even being taken down to Egypt by his family so – like Moses and the Israelites – Jesus comes out of Egypt.

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: