One of the dirty little secrets of historical Jesus scholarship

Dr. Hector Avalos was asked by Brad Haggard, “do you think Tacitus wrote more 'Annals' than we have now? He was such a prominent historian, but we only have one contemporary (Pliny) mention anything about him. How strange. Surely you are 'agnostic' about Tacitus' writings, or that he wrote more history than what we have.” His response:

Why Religion Makes Enemies Instead of Friends, by Robert Ingersoll

After his promising political career was cut off because of his agnostic views, Robert Ingersoll became the most successful American lecturer of the nineteenth century. His secretary, I. Newton Baker, wrote:

I entered office in 1879 as Mr. Ingersoll's. secretary, and remained with him continuously until in 1892, a period of nearly fourteen years. . . . He loved to speak. It was to him an exultation. After one or two presentations of a new lecture he had it by head and tongue and heart and, needed no prompting thereafter.

Paul Kurtz, a Great Man, a Visionary, a Pioneer, Has Died

Paul Kurtz, founder and longtime chair of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, the Council for Secular Humanism, and the Center for Inquiry, has died at the age of 86. He was one of the most influential figures in the humanist and skeptical movements from the late 1960s through the first decade of the twenty-first century. Among his best-known creations are the skeptics’ magazine Skeptical Inquirer, the secular humanist magazine Free Inquiry, and the independent publisher Prometheus Books. Link.

I had a great deal of admiration for him. He will be missed.

SIN Is Awesome!

If you haven't recently checked out Skeptic Ink Network (SIN) then you are missing a big bit of awesome! In the right-hand sidebar is a listing of the sites and below that are the most recent posts. Don't miss out on the goods. You'll be glad you did. LINK.

Dinesh D'Souza Resigned Under Pressure From King's College Amidst Scandal

While attending a conference last month, the president of the King’s College was spotted in the company of a woman other than his wife. At a typical institution of higher learning, a sighting like that might not have turned into a major controversy. But the King’s College is not a typical institution of higher learning. It is a tiny Christian college based in a downtown Manhattan office building, whose mission statement articulates a “commitment to the truths of Christianity and a biblical worldview. The King’s College announced Mr. D’Souza’s resignation on Thursday, two days after World Magazine, a Christian-oriented publication, reported that he had checked into a Comfort Suites in South Carolina in September with a woman he introduced as his fiancée, despite the fact that he was already married. Link.

Dinesh is in the process of getting divorced. He said, “I had no idea that it is considered wrong in Christian circles to be engaged prior to being divorced.” Really? ;-) Now he's saying I am not having an affair with his new girl. Really, no sex before re-marriage? What a prude, or a liar, or something.

Study Shows How Prayer, Meditation Affect Brain Activity

While we're at it see what else we can learn from science:

Why All Oppressed Minorities Should Reject Christianity

Harry McCall's post, Why Women Should Especially Reject Christianity, now has the second highest hit count of any post at DC. I agree. They should. There are other minorities the same thing could be said of them. African Americans should reject Christianity given their history as slaves in Christian America. The same thing goes for Native Americans who were conquered by American Christians (ala Manifest Destiny), as well as Mexican and Hispanic Christians who are largely Catholics because of the Spanish Conquistadors who killed, raped and plundered their ancestors. There are gay (or "gay friendly") Christian churches like The Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco. All oppressed minorities should reject Christianity, even the liberal or radical ones, given what "true" Christians have done to them. I know I would if I were them. It's almost absurd to me that they embrace the faith of their oppressors.

The Case Against Miracles (a modern retelling of Hume's famous argument)

This is a brief video explaining why rational people should never believe miracle claims.  Essentially what it boils down to is that you should always believe the explanation with the highest probability.  Since miracles by definition violate the laws of nature, they must have a lower probability than any conceivable natural explanation.  When hearing miracle claims, it is always more likely someone is being intentionally dishonest (lying, joking, exaggerating, etc), or honestly mistaken (were tricked, suffered a hallucination, or simply misperceived or misremembered an actual event), than that a real miracle occurred.  (continued below)

Mazzaferro Loses Bible Bet

WHY CHECKING PRIMARY SOURCES PAYS OFF

Recent comments about Harry H. McCall’s post on the lack of biblical texts before 250 BCE have prompted some to request that I comment on this issue. See: McCall’s post

I have been occupied with medical issues recently, but I can comment on a few items, and especially those pertaining to Mr. Howard Mazzaferro’s attempted refutations of some of McCall’s claims. In general, McCall is stating what is standard knowledge in modern biblical studies:The oldest manuscripts of the Bible we have are among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and they are dated to no earlier than about 250 BCE.

On the Diversity of Perspectives at Skeptic Ink Network (SIN)

One of our aims at Skeptic Ink Network (SIN) was/is to get a diversity of perspectives. One kind of diversity is that we have writers from several parts of the globe.

Blurbs for My Book "The Outsider Test for Faith"

Here are the blurbs for my book The Outsider Test for Faith: How to Know Which Religion Is True (OTF) in no particular order:

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Formulating and extensively defending the OTF is Loftus’ greatest contribution to the philosophy of religion and atheism. The basic idea is that you can only have a rational faith if you test it by the same standards you apply to all other competing faiths; yet when you do that, your religion tests as false as the others, and the same reasons you use to reject those become equally valid reasons to reject yours.

This is the greatest book Loftus has ever produced. It's without question a must-read for believers, and atheists who wants to debate them. Superbly argued, air tight, and endlessly useful, this should be everyone's first stop in the god debate. Loftus meets every objection and proves the Outsider Test for Faith is really the core of every case against religious belief, and the one argument you can't honestly get around. It takes religion on at its most basic presuppositions, forcing the believer into a dilemma from which there is no escape: either abandon your faith or admit you don't believe in being logically consistent. After reading it, and sincerely applying its principles, anyone who really wants to be rational will be on the road to atheism in no time.

Though this idea has been voiced before, Loftus is the first to name it, rigorize it, and give it an extensive philosophical defense; moreover, by doing so, he is the first to cause a concerted apologetic to arise attempting to dodge it, to which he could then respond. The end result is one of the most effective and powerful arguments for atheism there is. It is, in effect, a covering argument that subsumes all other arguments for atheism into a common framework. http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/2981/

 -- Dr. Richard Carrier, author of Why I Am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons to Reject the Faith.

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John Loftus's Outsider Test for Faith is well-written; it is passionate; it is important; it is engaging; and it is surprising. It's well worth the relatively short read and a lot of consideration. It's a silver-bullet argument on its central theme: which religion is true? None of them! Get it; read it; and press the OTF out into the world where it can do some good. I strongly recommend it for anyone interested in discussions about religious faith.

For the believers this book presents itself as a test for determining which religion is true. Specifically, it sets out to engage readers on the question of the distribution of world faiths, asking them to look at their faith as would an outsider. This removes the double standard and allows believers their one shot at strengthening their faith-based claims in an increasingly secular world. Every believer today owes it to himself or herself, as well as to his or her faith community, to engage Loftus's arguments openly and honestly. It is a total game-changer.

  --Dr. James A. Lindsay, Author of  Everybody Is Wrong About God.

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 John Loftus will be remembered a century from now for his Outsider Test for Faith.

 -- Frank Zindler, former president of America Atheists and editor of American Atheist Magazine.

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The Outsider Test for Faith should earn Loftus a permanent place in the history of critiques of religion.

 -- Christopher Hallquist, author of UFOs, Ghosts, and a Rising God: Debunking the Resurrection of Jesus.

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Without doubt one of the best books I've ever read on faith. A masterpiece.

 -- Dr. Peter Boghossian, author of A Manual for Creating Atheists.

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John Loftus has done it again! He has produced a lucid and exhaustive explanation of the simple proposition that individuals should examine their own faith with the same skepticism they show toward the claims of other faiths. No significant objection is left unexamined, and no major objector escapes unscathed. This is a potent antidote to those who elevate faith above reason, and superstition above science. It is a bravura performance.

 -- Dr. Hector Avalos, author of The End of Biblical Studies.

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I am a big fan of John Loftus’s “Outsider Test for Faith”-the view that because one’s religious faith is almost completely an accident of birth, believers should be highly skeptical about whether their own faith is correct. The wisdom of this rational and quasi-scientific approach is unquestionable. But if it's used honestly, its outcome is inevitable.

 -- Dr. Jerry A. Coyne, Professor of Ecology and Evolution at The University of Chicago and author of Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religions Are Incompatible.

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Loftus makes a convincing case that believers who are willing to honestly apply the outsider test cannot but fail to see the irrationality of their faith.

 -- Victor J. Stenger, author of God and the Folly of Faith.

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Over the past ten thousand years there have been tens of thousands of religions and thousands of gods. Which one is the right one? To believers in each one they all appear unique. To an anthropologist from Mars they all look the same. . . . John W. Loftus’s clever Outsider Test for Faith gives you the intellectual firepower you need when engaging believers, pointing out, for example, that they are religious skeptics, too—of all those other faiths. Some of us go one faith further in our skepticism. You will, too, after reading this testament to the power of reason.

 -- Dr. Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, and author of The Believing Brain.

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The Outsider Test for Faith is an ingenious way of helping the religious take a step back so that they can fairly and impartially examine what they believe, which can only be a good thing.

 -- Dr. Stephen Law, senior lecturer in philosophy, University of London, and author of Believing Bullshit.

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John Loftus has written a bold book based on a simple premise: The unexamined faith is not worth believing. Of course, every Christian apologist gives lip service to this premise and claims to have given the tenets of faith a full and fair hearing. Loftus shows just how cheap and hollow such talk usually is. He demands that believers examine their own faith with all of the rigor and skepticism that they direct towards other faiths. To those who condemn the beliefs of others while elevating their own dogmas, Loftus’ message could come straight from the Gospel: Remove the beam from your own eye before you seek to remove the speck from another’s.

 -- Dr. Keith Parsons, PhD, Professor of Philosophy, University of Houston-Clear Lake; author of books in the philosophy of science, history of science, and philosophy of religion.

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Perhaps the most intractable argument against Loftus’s outsider test of faith is some version of “I can’t do it. I can’t get far enough outside of my emotions and beliefs to examine my own religion like I would any other.” As a psychologist I find that credible. We all have a very imperfect and fragmentary ability to see ourselves as others see us. But this in no way undermines Loftus’s foundational argument that the outsider test should be the gold standard.

 -- Dr. Valerie Tarico, psychologist and author of Trusting Doubt.

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When an evangelical minister can ask tough questions about religion and leave the faith, then so can you. John Loftus is the religious believer’s genuine friend, respecting your intelligence enough to show you how religions really work. His new book questions every religion with the same challenge: what reasons could it really have for claiming to possesses the unique truth? When the façades of familiarity and unquestionability are ripped away, exposing faith’s weaknesses to both insiders and outsiders, can any religion pass this test?

 -- Dr. John Shook, PhD, Center for Inquiry and American Humanist Association and author of The God Debates.

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This is an excellent exposition of a relatively obvious argument. The OTF is intuitively simple. The multitude of religions require explaining, from a theistic point of view, and until adequate answer is given, skeptical agnosticism is the most reasonable position. That is common-sense. Loftus takes this idea and thoroughly defends it in a fully convincing and very readable manner.  

 I wasn't expecting to like this book as much as I did because I thought that the argument was simple and obvious, but the way Loftus drew in quotes and arguments from a plethora of different sources meant that this book packs a really hefty punch and left me thinking, on many, many pages, that I must remember this quote or that quote.

 I think this book deserves to be very widely read as the argument seems not to have any significant counters.

 --Johnathan Pearce, an Amazon review, author of many books including The Resurrection: A Critical Examination of the Easter Story.

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Loftus Brings the Hammer Down! Simply one of the most powerful books I have ever read. I was stunned as on page after page his sensibility, his logic, and his obvious way of finding out what the real and true religion is, is literally shunned by all religions! Loftus has very well written his very finest with this one. Profoundly influential thinking. Detailed rebuttals of those lying Christians who love to pretend they have taken the test and passed it. Not a chance, and Loftus demonstrates step by step exactly why. The problem is faith, the most problematic concept in all of religion, and Loftus absolutely demonstrates with beautiful detail. What a powerful book! READ IT. Faith lacks the power to discriminate between true and false, as all the various thousands of Christian denominations demonstrate for us all to see with our own eyes. All use faith for their own views and condemn all others, who also use faith for *their* own views, and no one has a clue. Not a pea-pickin clue at all! Loftus shreds faith and demonstrates that reality is never confirmed by mere possibility, but only through probability. A most stimulating and powerful book! It was so doggone good when I finished it, I immediately started over and re-read it again. And I will do so yet again soon as well.

 --Kerry Shirts, an Amazon review. 

To say I'm excited is an understatement of gargantuan propositions.

Why Women Especially Should Reject Christianity

The first mark for Paul against women is that THEY ARE NOT created in the image of God, but have been taken from Adam (who alone is created in the image of God). In 1 Corinthians 11: 7b – 9 Paul states this fact: “…he (the man) is in the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man.”

Some Mistakes of Moses Concluded

Note from Julian Haydon who is providing these excerpts:

This was written 133 years ago; for a public beginning to receive "explanations" for absurdities; but still when many, as now, believed every word in the bible true. Robert Ingersoll relentlessly drives home the full implications of what they believe -- but some of the learned doctors he quotes are in no way embarrassed.

Honest Evangelical Scholarship is a Ruse. There is No Such Thing!

Biblical professors and apologists in evangelical institutions are not allowed to be honest scholars. That is a fact. They are not allowed to think and write freely. If they step out of line they are fired. But more and more of them are doing just that. Here's some proof that evangelical colleges requiring their professors to sign a confessional statement cannot be trusted to be honest scholars and should therefore be ignored, all of them. Below are links with discussions about a few evangelical scholars who were fired, suffered censorship, and/or intense scrutiny because they tried to interact honestly with the wider scientific and scholarly communities.

My last talk is now a podcast: "Free Will?"

My last public talk which I gave, on free will, has now been made into a podcast which can be heard here. The talk, given to Portsmouth Skeptics in a Pub on 14th June 2012, was a nice informal gathering of about 50-odd people of varying skeptical persuasions. I have not listened to it yet, but the Q and A was an interesting and challenging time with some good questions which I think I dealt with pretty well.

As a Forged Document of the Second Temple Period, the Bible’s Historically Based Theology is Worthless (Revised)

Let's be honest and face reality: There is no Biblical manuscript (I repeat), not one single section of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) older than 250 BCE at the earliest! An ironic and alarming reality check for a text claiming to record over 4,000 years of divinely guided history! This presents a huge problem for believers in that a falsified historical record means a death blow for theology.

(In giving credit where credit is due, part of the idea that Biblical text was very late was inspired by a statement from Qumran scholar J.T. Milik who stated that the Book of Genesis should be re-dated and placed with the rest of the late Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. (quote to be located) In fact there is only one artificial term which really makes the Hebrew Bible different from the rest of the forged Pseudepigrapha texts: Canon!)

To Overcome Cognitive Bias Examine Your Faith As An Outsider

That's what Julia Galef says about other things we accept as true. She's the President of the Center for Applied Rationality. Christians, take the Outsider Test for Faith if you want to do the same.

Ed Clint Interviewed About Skeptic Ink Network (SIN)

"In this podcast, Chas interviews Ed Clint, co-founder of Skeptic Ink. Ed explains his history in the movement, why he and John Loftus decided to create a new network of bloggers and how he and John hope to maintain a network of positive, skeptical thinkers who are willing to explore any thoughts/philosophies being bounced around in the movement. We also touch on Atheism+ and Ed Clint's run in with Free Thought Bloggers." Link.

Some Mistakes of Moses (Continued)

A note from Julian Haydon, who is choosing these excerpts each week from Robert Ingersoll: "This was written 133 years ago; for a public beginning to receive "explanations" for absurdities; but still when many, as now, believed every word in the bible true. Ingersoll relentlessly drives home the full implications of what they believe -- but some of the learned doctors he quotes are in no way embarrassed."

New Writers Join Skeptic Ink Network (SIN)

Check them out: Beth Ann Erickson of Incongruent Elements. Caleb Lack, the Great Plains Skeptic. Damion Reinhardt of Background Probability. And for a different perspective The Prussian. More are coming. Subscribe. Tell others.

Professor Matt McCormick's Double Whammy

He just keeps getting better and better. His book Atheism and the Case Against Christ is the best of its kind, a superior debunking of Christianity and why it leads to atheism. He has also argued for two tests for faith, the moral test and the defeasibility test, which I've endorsed. Recently he has two posts which I consider a double whammy.

Tomorrow I’ll Post My Most Devastating Article on the Bible I’ve Ever Written

I have come across a MAJOR fact that will destroy the Bible’s very foundation as a religious document of truth. In all my 42 years as a student of Biblical history and languages, I’ve NEVER heard any apologist address this fact nor have I ever heard any atheist or agnostic use it! The tentative title is:

When One Major Fact Is Considered, The Bible Must Be Rejected As Both History And Theology,

Stephen Law on the Apologist Claim that Animals Don't Feel Pain

You can see his post and watch the video below:



Dr. Law thinks William Lane Craig should admit he made a mistake. It's the honest thing to do. Ahhhh, but intellectual honesty isn't a trademark of the deluded mind. He's not unlike Randal Rauser. For more on this topic read chapter 9 in my book The Christian Delusion, titled "The Darwinian Problem of Evil."

How Would the Gospels Look Different if...

Jason Rennie is did a series of interviews with believers and skeptics exploring the question, “How would the Gospels look different if …?” My interview can be heard here. He also did one with Robert M. Price that can be heard here. Enjoy.

Christian Apologist Douglas Groothuis Brought his Dog to Class

That's true, he says on Facebook, and asked his readers to guess why. He did it "to illustrate a principle from the ontological argument." I commented thusly: "You illustrated that if dogs could conceive the greatest possible being their conception of that being would be like them? ;-)"

Xenophanes, who preceded Socrates by over one hundred years, said something similar:

But if horses or oxen or lions had hands or could draw with their hands and accomplish such works as men, horses would draw the figures of the gods as similar to horses, and the oxen as similar to oxen, and they would make the bodies of the sort which each of them had.