The 2015 Debunking Christianity Challenge

Seven years ago I challenged Christians to take the Debunking Christianity Challenge and I've been doing so ever since. Just like previous years I'm proposing twelve reasonably priced college level books to read, one per month. You can read them in any order you like but read them!

My challenge is for Christians to read our books and test their faith to see if it can withstand our arguments. As I have argued most believers do not seriously question their faith. Do you want to be different than other believers? Do you want to do what most of them don't do? Then take the 2013 DC Challenge. I challenge you! Hey, what do you have to lose? If the books cause you to become stronger in your faith that's good, right? But if your faith cannot survive our assault then we've done you a favor. No more soundbites. No more reading one blog post at a time. Sit down for yourselves and read through whole books written by the skeptics.

Jeff Lowder is the Devil in Disguise

[Edited in November of 2015: Read the following link to see how my disputes with Jeffery Jay Lowder ended up. I finally came to the opinion that Jeff Lowder is a dishonest person and a hypocrite. Other posts of mine about him can be read by clicking on the tag "Lowder" below. I think people should beware of him. You can see these traits only partially in what I wrote in the post below. I know he appears to be a nice guy. But appearances are deceiving. He's not. He will step on people to get his way. I never expected how true it was to say Lowder is the devil in disguise. He disguises himself for the purposes of almost pure self-promotion and financial gain. It took a personal conflict between us for me to see who he really is, but sometimes it takes that when someone such as he disguises himself so well as to persuade intellectuals that his motives are pure and that he's their equal when he is not.]

Jeff Lowder has been dogging my steps so to speak, first by commenting on Vincent Torley's response to a post of mine, saying: "It seems to me that Torley clearly has the upper hand in this exchange so far. As a debate judge, I would 'flow' the entire 'debate' to Torley up to this point." What exchange? An exchange demands a response then counter-response. Up until that point I had merely written one blog post. And just as I counter-responded that Torley couldn't even read, neither could Lowder. What gives? Now he's over at Randal Rauser's blog playing the "devil's advocate" against me. Let me state for the record that I despise the devil and his advocates. The devil should advocate for himself.

So I want to respond to Lowder and issue an open challenge to him. Victor Reppert once placed my approach between the extremes of PZ Myers (a new angry atheist) and Jeff Lowder (an old respectful atheist). I think Reppert is right. I am the golden mean between two extremes. I'm golden ya see. ;-) And I want to pull Lowder in my direction in what follows.

John and Charles Wesley on “the lesser Breeds” (Indians and Negroes)

While moving my library, I came across a booklet containing the 1987 lecture for the Inaugurating of The LeRoy A. Martin Distinguished Professorship of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga by Professor Thor Hall (PhD, Duke University) entitled Tradition Criticism: A New View of Wesley

Does the Size of the Universe Lead to Atheism?

Take a look at this video posted by Randal Rauser, who argues that the size of the universe does not lead to atheism:

How do you solve a problem like Herod?

I've been absent from here for some time. Let me re-enter the fray with a seasonally topical post. Over on a previous post and thread at SIN, one (Christian) commenter declared that the likes of JP Holding and Jason Engwer had basically dealt with all of the harmonisation issues within the context of the historical problems in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew and their infancy accounts. I will now, as Randal Rauser did in our recent debate, refer to the accounts as M and L.

In my book, The Nativity: A Critical Examination, I did not really deal with the work of Holding and Engwer other than a few passing comments and a reference to Engwer in relation to the spectrum of Christian approaches to the exegesis of these accounts, from the literal and historic approach of Engwer (and Holding) to the more theological approach of scholars like Raymond Brown.

Engwer, on his Triablogue blog, carries many posts and articles which seek to solve the insoluble. I would like to look at the issue of Herod, and see what Derek, from the other thread, has to offer in rebuttal. So what are the issues with Herod, in the context of M and L.

With Mounting Debt and Declining Enrollment, Bob Jones University is Giving Up on God

Since 1948, the conservative Christian station in the Up State of SC has been Bob Jones University’s WMUU. The station’s call letters stood for World's Most Unusual University.

Superstition, Part 2 by Robert Ingersoll

As before, Julian Haydon is sending me these excellent excerpts. Enjoy.

On Leaving Christianity...All Religion

That was the title of an email from Casey S. Smith. With his permission here is what he wrote:

Since April 6th, 1997 I've been serving Christ. I have studied and visited just about every Church in Christendom. I went to Criswell Seminary for three years, studied Church History, but my main passion was textual criticism. However after almost 16 years of trying to find "The Truth" I'm done. There are apologists for every Christian denomination including those considered "cults" or "heresy". Every denomination says they have the truth using the same Bible. My question to you however is how does one live at peace or in tranquility without a God? What meaning does life have? Or worse, what if we're wrong and there is a resurrection and us "wicked" are separated from this loving God?

Sincerely: One who is scared and burnt out!
Mr. Casey S. Smith

I responded as follows.

Dr. Vincent Torley, Please Learn to Read!

I had previously argued that given a godless universe the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting is What We'd Expect Would Happen. Dr. Vincent Torley over at the Intelligent Design blog Uncommon Descent wrote a long response to it. Now it's my turn.

The Fallacy of Understated Evidence

Jeff Lowder has produced a helpful chart that illustrates Paul Draper's "fallacy of understated evidence." According to Draper, proponents of a theistic arguments are guilty of this fallacy if they "successfully identify some general fact about a topic that is antecedently more likely on theism than on naturalism, but they ignore more specific facts about the topic, facts that are more likely on naturalism than on theism. Check it out.

Christians Debunk Themselves! There's Nothing Left for Me To Do But Report What They Say!

What is there about ancient documents that can be interpreted in so many different ways by people who think they are divinely inspired? If Christians cannot agree with each other inside the house of faith, how can they possibly expect the textual evidence of the Bible to lead anyone outside the faith to accept the resurrection of Jesus? I recommend every Christian get all of the following books. Read them for yourselves. Opposing Christian scholars dismantle and effectively critique each others views leaving no reason to believe any of them. All. Get. Them. Now!

Happy New Year Everyone!

Here's to the people who made it into 2013 alive. A few of the ones who didn't make it fell short by just one day. At this time I like looking back into previous years, so you might start with CBS's review of 2012. It was a good year. It was a bad year. Aren't they all? Then to see other years in review click here and enjoy. I also like to predict what will take place this year in advance, so without further ado here are my predictions:

Sin: An Imaginary Problem with an Invented Solution

Picture right is the typical Salvation Gospel Tract found at bank ATM’s, left on tables at restaurants and ironically, in restrooms. This one was left under a wiper blade on my wife’s car at work by Freedom Baptist Church (as stamped on the back) located just a quarter mile from where she works.

The Irony of Faith And Serving God

Evangelist Dr. Oliver B. Green (Feb. 14, 1915 – July 26, 1976) was the president and founder of The Gospel Hour (still on many Christian stations today) who loved good fundamentalist Bible theology and defended the King James’ Version of Bible. Rev. Green preached solid Baptist's truth backed by eternal salvation for all true believers and eternal Hell fire for all non-believers. (I used to listen to him in the early ‘70s on my way to college where, as a Christian, I majored in Bible.) His website states:

What is Superstition? by Robert Ingersoll Part 1 of 4

Again I thank Julian Haydon for sending me these items from Ingersoll.

Lawrence Krauss on Caveman Common Sense

Prayer is NOT the Answer to Gun Violence

The Des Moines Register has published my latest editorial on the relationship of prayer to gun violence: Des Moines Register editorial.

Jerry Coyne on the Odd Couple: Why Science and Religion Shouldn't Cohabit

Why Randal Rauser is Impervious to Reason

To the left is a typical discussion with Dr. Randal Rauser on his blog (click to enlarge). It concerns how poorly he defended the historicity of the nativity narratives in the gospels against Jonathan Pearce. This isn't to deny he did a superior job of it, because he did. It's to say that at even at its very best this was a poor attempt. So I asked him why he really believes and you can see the result. At the end I linked to what he's doing, which can be found here.

Rauser is an epistemological solipsist just as I argued with regard to William Lane Craig, a second post of which can be read here. I had previously argued Rauser is impervious to reason. This is why. If anyone is living in a house of delusion they are. They are both impervious to reason. They are epistemological solipsists. I don't really care if they are, and I like them both, but so long as this is true I'll keep pointing it out to more reasonable people.

Too bad for Christianity if this represents its best defenders.

William Lane Craig, The Last Great Christian Apologist We'll Ever See!

The Trouble with Christmas

At this season let me leave you with some study material on Christmas.

For great reading on the history of Christmas see Thomas Flynn's book, Trouble with Christmas.
See also the Wikipedia Article on it. Check out Richard Carrier's essays on The Date of the Nativity, and The Problem of the Virgin Birth Prophecy at the Secular Web. Happy 25th!

Jonathan Pearce vs Randal Rauser Debate the Nativity Narratives

Jonathan Pearce debated Randal Rauser who co-wrote God or Godless?with me. They debated the historicity of the birth narratives found the gospels. The format was a 20 minute opening, 15 minute rebuttals, and so on. To the left is the amusing picture that Justin Schieber did at Reasonable Doubts, who hosted it. The link to the debate is right here! Jonathan writes at Skeptic Ink Network and wrote a good book on this topic: The Nativity: A Critical Examination.

The Kalam Argument and Counting Backward to Infinity

One of the philosophical arguments used to show the impossibility of an infinite past, per the Kalam Cosmological Argument, is that if an immortal being counted an infinite number of events we could never find her counting if we counted events backward in time. For no matter how many events we counted, the immortal being would already have finished her count to infinity. I've diagrammed it here. So let's suppose an immortal being has been counting events from the beginningless past. Then it's true that no matter how far backward in time we counted events from the present, she would already have finished counting an infinite number of events. However, there is nothing in the Kalam argument that forces us to think the immortal being stopped counting events. If she continued counting into the present then yes, we could find her still counting events. She could continue counting events into the infinite future too. So unless there is a reason to think otherwise this particular argument fails to show anything about whether the past is finite. It might be. It might not be. But this philosophical argument is irrelevant to establishing the case needed.

Top 10 Zombie Scenes in the Bible

Professor Gilmour of Providence University, Manitoba, Canada, has listed his favorite zombie imagery of the Bible. See his Top 10 Zombie Scenes in the Bible.

What Would Christianity Have Without Its Myths?

Christian "truth" is fabricated and propagated by Christian tradition and one of my favorites deals with my experience at Saint George Greek Orthodox Church here in Greenville, S.C.

While attending its annual spring Greek festival, I noticed the church was open so visitors could venture inside to get an introduction to the Greek Orthodox tradition and its icons, so I decided to check it out. As I entered, I was given a brief printed history which included the claim that the Greek Orthodox Church was the ONLY TRUE Christian Church established by Jesus Christ himself. (Wow, and I thought it was the Mormons!)