Lindsay's Book Delivers the Goods With Both Knowledge and Passion

If I were to write a blurb for Dr. James A. Lindsay’s God Doesn't; We Do: Only Humans Can Solve Human Challenges,it would be,

This book offers a passionate and erudite set of important challenges to people of faith, complete with a nice touch of humor and a sense of urgency that we don’t see often in similar books by intellectuals. In it most readers will find some fresh arguments that provoke thought and deserve our attention. Unlike the four "New Atheists" Lindsay, who holds degrees in physics and a Ph.D. in mathematics, understands Christian theology much better than they do. In the end, Lindsay is correct; God doesn’t do anything because he doesn’t exist. Only we can solve our problems.

Lindsay has a blog where he sums up his wonderful book:

Dr. David Heddle, "Shit Happens"

Dr. David Heddle, an associate professor of physics and the Chair of the Mathematics Department at Christopher Newport University, has recently been dogging my steps. He's a Christian. As far as I know he has not read any of my books. He seems to like me better than some other critics, saying, "John Loftus is a much easier to take (I mean that as a genuine compliment) critic of Christianity (and, by leaps and bounds, a far better writer) than the detestable Richard Carrier." That's nice, I guess, even though for every person who might say this, another would say it's the exact reverse. Oh well, you can't piss off everyone after all, even though I try at times. Let's see what he thinks of me when I'm done here. I just cannot let Richard have all the glory. ;-)

What brings Heddle to say "shit happens" has to do with my comment regarding last month's Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, where I wrote:

In a godless universe shit happens without rhyme nor reason. Life is predatory from the ground up. Creatures eat one another by trapping unsuspecting victims in unusual ways, launching surprise attacks out of the blue, and hunting in packs by overpowering prey with brute force and numbers. Sometimes a creature just goes wacko for no reason at all. Humans are not exempt. Sometimes the wiring in our brains goes haywire and we snap. We too are violent and we inherited this trait from our animal predecessors. We also show care and concern to our kith and kin but we can lash out in horrific ways at what we consider an uncaring world.

Heddle actually agrees, saying I am

Is Evolution a "Belief," or is it "Knowledge"?

I've heard many times, especially from scientists, that scientists don't "believe" evolution, they "know" it. I think this involves a bit of terminological confusion, and I think this confusion is bad for the overall discussion about evolution in the public arena. In this article, I'll briefly discuss why scientists do indeed believe in evolution and, in the process, say a few things about the nature of (religious) faith and its relation to knowledge.

Tiger & Gibbon, A Funny Act

NFL Football, I Love It!

But since the Colts didn't progress to the Super Bowl and the season is almost over, take this:

A Challenge to Christian Apologists, by J.M. Green

Look, debates are all well and good, but being such fervent supporters of the Bible as the Inspired Word of God, why not settle things the good, old-fashioned biblical way?

"Here it Comes" My Book is Going to Print Today

This clip from "The Wrath of Khan" expresses my thoughts as I ponder the impact of my book, The Outsider Test for Faith: How to Know Which Religion Is True:

On Justifying the Use of Ridicule and Mockery

Hey, I KNOW Christians don't like being mocked. I get that. So it's no surprise they would object to it by saying it doesn't cause them to change their minds, that it makes them dig their heels in deeper, and that it just makes them think less of the one doing the mocking. You would expect them to say this. The facts however are different. Ridicule and mockery have been very effective in any cultural war and they will forever be effective and necessary, despite Jeffrey Jay Lowder, the lone atheist holdout.

Professor Keith Parsons joins with others in advocating ridicule. He advocates this as one response to fundamentalism. He writes:

“A single belly-laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms” said H.L. Mencken. Fundamentalism and fundamentalists should be ridiculed in the media, by comedians, or wherever. You don’t have to worry about fairness, since, as Poe’s Law famously notes, no satire can possibly be more absurd than the real thing. Come on. You just can’t come up with anything more ridiculous than someone who honestly thinks that all human woes stem from an incident in which a talking snake accosted a naked woman in a primeval garden and talked her into eating a piece of fruit. Again, most ridicule would consist of pointedly drawing attention to what they really believe. Nothing could be fairer than that. As a sign admonished on The Simpsons, put the fun back in fundamentalism. Laugh it to death. LINK.

It's not just the so-called "new atheists" like Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher, and PZ Myers who advocate ridicule. I do too (see below). So does Richard Carrier, as does Stephen Law. Keep in mind we don't advocate this as the only response.

Craig, the Kalam, and Quantum Indeterminacy

William Lane Craig, as we all know, is an apologist with a predilection for the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which goes like this:

1) Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence;
2) The universe has a beginning of its existence;
C) Therefore: The universe has a cause of its existence.

The point I want to make today is about quantum indeterminacy. This is the notion that, at the quantum, microscopic level, things could be indeterminate, or 'uncaused'. This potentially invalidates the first premise.

Why the Classification of Christianity as a Disease is Necessary

First, let’s established an objective definition:

Disease: 1. An abnormal condition of an organism or part, especially as a consequence of infection, inherent weakness, or environmental stress, that impairs normal physiological functioning. 2. A condition or tendency, as of society, regarded as abnormal and harmful. (The American Heritage Dictionary, 2ed. 1985)

My Inaugural Speech, On the State of the Case for Christianity

Ladies and gentlemen, dignitaries and non-dignitaries, believers and nonbelievers, I am honored to briefly speak to you tonight on the inaugural of my next year's term as president and owner of this blog. About seven years ago, almost to the day, I started this Blog. Each year you have reelected me to another term. I have posted something about 1.5 times a day ever since. I have fought many battles with both believers and nonbelievers in order to stay on track with my goal of debunking Christianity in all of its forms. It's been very time consuming but very rewarding work. You already know my goals and what I have to offer, and you also know I have critics on both sides of these debates, but you still reelected me for yet another term here at DC, for which I am very grateful.

So my heartfelt thanks goes out to the various writers who have been team members at DC over the years, most notably Hector Avalos, Harry McCall, and more recently Jonathan Pearce. Thanks also to my readers for seven years of comments and debate, especially my peeps, including the amazing and indefatigable articulett, also a team member. You have helped to make this blog one of the top places to discuss the best arguments for and against Christianity. This means a great deal to me personally. Without you I would've thrown in the towel a long time ago out of fatigue, discouragement and/or financial ruin.

Part 3 of 4 "Superstition" by Robert Ingersoll

Sent to me by Julian Haydon, enjoy:

Just How Human Was Jesus?, by J.M. Green

Johnnie Moore, vice president at Liberty University, writes of how he astounded his colleagues by suggesting that Jesus may have stopped to take a crap by the side of the road, on the way to Jerusalem. Granted, he didn’t use the word ‘crap’ but more provocatively, he also posited that Jesus may even have suffered the ravages of diarrhea. His article goes on to point out that Christians often don’t think of Jesus as fully human. I would heartily agree.

Now I suppose that Professor Moore’s musings might seem edgy and possibly even blasphemous to the average evangelical fundamentalist, but I would like to suggest that he is playing it way too safe.

Richard Carrier on the Argument From the Scale of the Universe

For what it's worth, at least I'm not the only one who thinks Jeff Lowder's arguments don't work against my particular case. Here's Carrier from page 290 of my anthology, The End of Christianity:

An Open Letter to Jeffery Jay Lowder

Lowder and I are at odds with each other. I don't like it. He may not either. But we are. Perhaps he's liking the attention. I, however, don't need it. People who don't blog have no idea how that by using Ads it increases the desire for more hits, but it does. In a few recent posts and comments I have repeatedly said I respect Lowder. Not once has he said that of me. So let me use Lowder as a potential example of how badly people reason, all of us, and how that ulterior motivations can cloud our judgments. Then I'll issue a challenge to him.

Sadly for Christians, The Bible’s Theology is Nothing More Than Warmed-Over Ancient Myths

The irony of this is perhaps best noted in the Hebrew Bible itself:

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1: 9)

I have selected two books dealing with ancient Sumerian and Akkadian myths dating back over 2,000 years BCE as recycled in New Testament .

The Monster Upstairs, by J.M. Green

On August 29th, 1984, Austrian Josef Fritzl drugged his eighteen- year-old daughter Elisabeth and imprisoned her in a secret dungeon beneath his home. Over the next twenty-four years, he physically and sexually abused her. Repeated rapes resulted in one miscarriage and the birth of seven children. The details of this nightmarish and horrific story can be read here. The indomitable human spirit and will to survive, under the most extreme circumstances is truly amazing. When one of her daughters became ill and had to be hospitalized, Elisabeth managed to convince her father to allow her out of her subterranean prison. Shortly thereafter, the truth was uncovered and Josef was arrested.

Jesus' Crucifixion: It Could Have Been Worse

Like so many around the world, I've been deeply saddened by the unfathomable, horrific gang rape that recently occurred in India. After the initial shock wore off, I got to thinking once again about how much worse Jesus' suffering and death, as described in the Gospels, could have been. I have a brief discussion about this at the end of A Crisis of Faith -- it's a point that I've heard few atheists make, but it seems to me quite compelling.[1]

Richard Carrier, James Lindsay, on the OTF

Richard Carrier writes:

James Lindsay has been doing some great blogging on how to apply Bayesian reasoning to model John Loftus’ Outsider Test for Faith (or OTF).

Formulating and extensively defending the OTF is Loftus’ greatest contribution to the philosophy of religion and atheism. His best and most thorough treatment appears as chapter four in The Christian Delusion (a book I always recommend anyway as it contains lots of great chapters by great authors; and two by me). He is writing a whole book on it now. It should be out this year (I’ve seen advanced drafts and it’s good; I’ll blog it when you can buy it). The OTF is featured at Iron Chariots (which provides examples of looser expressions of the concept throughout history) and Loftus discusses it often at Debunking Christianity.

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. 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. Link

Stephen Law On the Use of Mockery

[Redated, originally posted on 10/31/12] I really recommend Dr. Law's book, Believing Bullshit. In it he lays out eight key strategies that immunize believers in weird things from rational criticism by creating "a veneer of faux reasonableness." Number 6 is pseudoprofundity, which is "the art of sounding profound while taking nonsense." One of the most effective methods of disarming pseudoprofundity "is to translate what is said into plain English...clarity is likely to unmask them." Mockery and satire can have a role to play too. He writes:

How the Gospel of Luke Transformed Jesus’ Spoiled Brat Image

In the earliest Synoptic Gospel of Mark 11: 12 - 13 ( = Matt. 21: 18 – 22) we are informed that, after leaving Bethany with his disciples, a hungry Jesus sees a fig tree in the distance. Jesus (followed by his disciples) makes a beeline to it thinking he’s going to get some tasty figs for lunch. But ironically, this all knowing Son of God has screwed up big time! The fig tree has no delicious figs to feed his ravenous appetite; but only leaves. Mark even amplifies Jesus’ mistake in noting that: Hey, it’s not the season for figs, Jesus (you dummy)!

Quote of the Day On Christian Logic, by Steven Carr

For a long time Carr was focused on arguments for a mythical Jesus. It was his one note song. I am so happy to report he's using his wit and intelligence on other issues. A Christian recently said we atheists cannot condemn anything or anyone. Here is how Carr responded, that it's

A bit like somebody saying that, as nobody can say that passing plays in football are more effective than running plays (football plays are a matter of subjective opinion), you are in no position to condemn a quarterback who fumbles the ball on every play. After all, if one coach likes one system, and another coach likes another system, neither can condemn a linebacker who never makes a single tackle.

Richard Dawkins On Religion

On How to Answer a Presuppositionalist

Tim Shaughnessy is posting at DC a one note song. It doesn't matter what tune we sing, his song remains the same:

Christianity only has ONE presupposition. We presuppose the truth of the bible. God and his word cannot be divorced and are synonymous with one another so we could also say that we presuppose the God of the bible as true.

Okay then, let's sing this note. Let's presuppose the Bible and the God in it, yes! But let's first understand the Bible and the God in it. Q.E.D.

World Distribution of Religion and Science

The following two maps have been placed in the Appendix of my book, The Outsider Test for Faith: