How Evangelical Christians Can Be Better Prepared For College

The answer, in short, is to become better informed. [My specific advice is below, but first here is some important background information]. I have spoken about the continued retreat of believers who have refashioned their theology down through the generations because of the skeptical onslaught, and I mean this. It happens in every generation. It has happened in my generation. The only people who don't know this are young kids who are raised within cloistered Christian communities, attend parochial schools (and/or home-schooled), and who attend parochial Bible Colleges and Seminaries. They are taught the parochial theology of their day as accepted by their parents and teachers as if it has always been the truth, that the different theologies of yesterday were wrong, and/or that their particular evangelical faith is the culmination of all Christian thought and reflection of the past. They are taught that what they believe is exactly what Jesus, Paul, and James all believed. I wrote about the changing theological tide in the Introduction to The Christian Delusion, which is evidenced further by my own alma mater: What Happens When Evangelicals Attract the Best and the Brightest? The Test Case of My Alma Mater, Lincoln Christian University. Now listen to what an evangelical like Peter Enns writes below, with a title that says it all: "Rethinking Biblical Christianity."

Most Skeptical Thought Is But A Footnote to Robert G. Ingersoll

Everyone should know something about Robert G. Ingersoll, who helped produce what's been described as the Golden Age of Freethought (ca. 1856-1899), an era that might be seen akin to the modern so-called "New Atheism" but eventually ended (will our era be overtaken once again sometime in the future by superstition? I doubt it.) There are tons of his masterful lectures to be found in several volumes, which are extremely erudite and insightful, prefiguring much of what skeptics are arguing for today. In fact, it could be said that most skeptical thought is but a footnote to Ingersoll, aside from the continued findings of science, the different historical realities, and the continued retreat of believers who have refashioned their theology based on the skeptical onslaught. One difference about Ingersoll with some of the New Atheists is that he understood the Christianity of his day as well as most theologians did. I have excerpted the following paragraphs from a debate he had with a Mr. Black on "The Christian Religion," the full text of which can be found here. You will enjoy this, I guarantee it:

The Nativity: A Critical Examination

Whilst some of you may think Christmas has come early, the reality is that I have a new book out which deals with the historicity of the nativity accounts found in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. As if all the other arguments that we and you produce here at DC aren’t enough, there’s nothing like topping it all off with a healthy dose of critical historical analysis.

So the book is called The Nativity: A Critical Examination and the more involved in writing and researching it I became, the more amazed I was that anyone actually buys a historical ideal of those accounts! In this post, I will look to just one niche aspect of the two Gospels that report the birth of the Godmanspirit on earth.

How To Avoid Just Talking To Ourselves

It is inevitable that when people form a community they have a tendency to eventually forget why they formed that community in the first place. It depends on the type of community of course, but usually this is this case. So communities are in danger of becoming myopic and focused on themselves, their needs, and their issues. Being involved in a community demands that people in that community talk to one another about their community needs. They must talk about the issues of that community for they are relevant to the people in it. I have noticed this when it comes to some of the Freethought Bloggers, but other places as well.

Jesus as a Huge Colony of Bacteria: Unclean!

Trillions of bacteria live in our bodies. They outnumber our human cells, 10 to 1. So who’s in charge? What are we? Maybe you thought your body was a noble castle poised against the onslaughts and invasions of the world. Well, think again. It turns out, we are the world. Our bodies are loaded with a jungle of microbial life, inside and out, that is essential to healthy life. New science has found ten times as many bacteria cells as human cells in and on the human body. A load of microbes that work with us from the moment of birth in all kinds of key ways.
Listen to this fascinating discovery on NPR .
(It's claimed Jesus was not tainted by Original Sin, however - based on modern facts - he sure was during vaginal birth!)

Mike Mcrae Interviewed About His Wonderful Book

Previously I highly recommended Mike Mcrae's book Tribal Science: Brains, Beliefs, and Bad Ideas. Now you can hear an interview with him about it.

25 Questions For Theists, by Jeffery Lowder

Link. Any others you'd like to add?

An Open Challenge to Dr. Keith Parsons and Other Atheist Philosophy of Religion Professors

On September 1st 2010 Keith Parsons announced he was no longer going to teach in the area of the Philosophy of Religion. He wrote:

The “Snopes” of the Christian Urban Faith Claims

From a Reviewer:
There are two types of people who need to read this book - Christians who keep circulating "messages of faith" on the internet without first checking to see if they are true, and "everyone else" because they will find the truth behind some of those emails quite funny (and embarrassing for the Christians). I find it ironic that people of faith, who purport to adhere to the Ten Commandments, have no problem with circulating outright lies which happen to support their beliefs - and in doing so violate the 9th Commandment (Thou shalt not bear false witness). If you care if what you believe is true read this book, and if you are okay with being a liar by all means pass it by.

Most all chapters can be read for free on line at Amazon .
Harry McCall

Peter Boghossian, "Faith is Pretending To Know Things You Don't Know"

This is a follow-up to his talk, Faith Based Belief Processes Are Unreliable.

Infant Salvation in Evangelical Theology, pt. 1: The Reformed Consensus

I have been conversing with Cody Rudisill, a poster here at DC, recently. He approached me with an argument he has been working on as a student at Ligonier Academy (headed by R.C Sproul). I think it is pretty fatal for the Reformed Theologian (Calvinist) who adheres to infant salvation with regards to young children escaping eternal damnation upon their untimely, early deaths. See what you think.

The Case Against Christianity in 15 Minutes or Less

One of my favorite foils in the Christian blog world is JW Wartick, (one of many apologists who have blocked me) so I thought I would take one of the favorite posts on his blog, and have a little fun with it. I find it interesting that Christianity is constantly on the defensive, because if it was a logical, with consistently held belief, it would be easier to defend against skeptics without using Humpty Dumpty semantics and/or ad hoc measures. However, since this is not the case, Christians such as Wartick and others of his ilk are constantly trying to defend their inconsistent and illogical beliefs, so Wartick came up with his, "The Case for Christianity in 15 Minutes (or Less).  Well, we'll see about that....lol.

The Original Sinner and the “Original Sin” in Eden Exposed

Preface
What totally amazes me is the fact that I know of many highly intelligent people who are Doctors of Medicine, Law, Physics, Chemistry, Accountants and many more who have not only proven to have a high I.Q. with advance degrees and who have also passed their State Boards. However, ironically these normally smart professionals are extremely “dumbed down” by swallowing far-fetched stories (that they would clearly have rejected in their daily business lives) simply because they are labeled “religious”. In this way, these highly intelligent professionals function much like autistic savants, only in reverse in that while they are usually brilliant in their professional fields, they tend to have little cognitive skills in reality when exposed to wild religious stories they swallow hook, line and sinker! Thus, the theme of my Post in reading the Eden account with some logic:

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.