I’m Right and You’re Wrong: Christians Converting Christians to “True Christianity”

“What we need is a religion that is not only right where we are right, but right where we are wrong.” G.K. Chesterton

In Christianity one thing is for sure, belief in the saving power of Jesus IS NOT the real dogma in Christianity any more than a football is the real dogma in the game of Football! Theological reality proves it’s which sect or denominational team you are a member of and pulling for.

From the outside, Christianity appears to offer a very simple theology in that one only needs faith in Jesus Christ to get him or her to Heaven, but reality proves this raw faith is usually considered worthless (or even damnable) before God. Thus, when the doorbell rings and the unsuspecting person is facing two Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons or Evangelical Christians (with their sect's exclusive Gospel (Good News)) then he or she soon learns that a hard choice must be made apart from simple faith in Jesus.

How Long Does it Take for a Myth to Grow?

I was planning to address in greater this oft-repeated claim about the alleged "two generations" that are needed for a myth or legend to be established. However, Kris Komarnitsky at The Bible and Interpretation website has done a good job explaining why it is flawed. Here is the first paragraph:

"One major topic that impacts on the reliability of the Gospels is the rate at which myth or legend can grow over time and displace the historically accurate accounts of events. Some argue that the Gospels cannot be mostly legend, as many scholars have proposed, because that would require a myth growth rate that is implausibly high given their relatively early composition in relation to the events they claim to recount. For example, New Testament scholar William Lane Craig says, “One of the major problems with the legend hypothesis…is that the time gap between Jesus’ death and the writing of the Gospels is just too short for this to have happened."

You can read the rest at: Myth Growth Rates.

What is Cultural Relativism?

One of the objections to the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) is that when applied to morality it leads to cultural relativism, which conjures up unpleasant notions of a world where anything goes. I argue in my book that such an objection is an illegitimate one. You can catch a glimpse of my response from this post. I go on to argue that rejecting the OTF because it leads to cultural relativism (if it does) is like rejecting arguments to the existence of God because they lead us to the unpleasant conclusion that there is no afterlife. One cannot legitimately reject an argument merely because it leads to an unpleasant conclusion. Just bite the bullet. But let's say a consistent application of the OTF leads to cultural relativism anyway. Then I argue we should try to understand what cultural relativism is. Here is a good explanation of it from Renato Rosaldo, who is one of the world's leading cultural anthropologists. See, it's not so bad as supposed.

Randal Rauser On "Facing Evil: Why Christians and Atheists Need Each Other"

This is the title to Rauser's Beliefnet article to be found here. He doesn't understand that our respective problems with regard to evil are not equivalent. For me evil is suffering/harm, especially unnecessary suffering/harm caused by human beings (who are moral agents). I don't need an absolute unchanging standard for identifying suffering/harm. The truth is, neither does he. Like other theists Rauser embraces progressive revelation, that his God continues to reveal moral truths just as he does theological truths. That means the Christian morality of yesterday was true for them, as is the morality of today for him, as will be the morality of tomorrow for others. That's moral relativism, plain and simple. At no time in the past, present, or future can any Christian theist say, "This is God's unchanging objective moral truth." Concerning the moral standard of love (one proposed unchanging standard), it has always been qualified by questions like, "who is my neighbor?" "who is deserving of our love" and "how should we show our love to people?" Those qualifiers have changed throughout the centuries too.

“God or Godless” is Reviewed by Jr. Forasteros

Here are some salient excerpts:

We don’t have many examples of civil, truth-seeking dialog with the Other, especially in the realm of religion. Until now. We can do better than this. A lot better.

Randal Rauser is a Christian who teaches history and theology. John W. Loftus is a former-evangelical minister-turned Atheist apologist. These two men are friends and colleagues who deeply, passionately disagree about fundamental truths. And yet they’ve co-authored a brief, fun, profound book that can and hopefully will serve as the basis for bridges between Atheist and Evangelical communities. In other words, each chapter is short, sweet and packed with rhetorical goodness. Both Randal and John are experts in their field, so their arguments are tight, clear and very accessible (though a few of the later chapters sent me scrambling to Wikipedia to look up one term or another).

God or Godless?gives us a clear model for moving forward in honest, truth-seeking relationships across the religious divide.

What makes the book really good is the quality of the questions both John and Randal bring to the table. Sometimes Randal is the clear winner; other times it’s John. Always, both men have clear, well-thought-out positions and treat each other with kindness and respect (excepting the occasional fun snark).

I’m currently rereading the book with a group of 20-somethings. Some of us are Christian, some are atheist or agnostic. But reading and discussing God or Godless together is helping us to build transformative friendships founded on mutual love and admiration. Plus, it’s a lot of fun. LINK.

Countering Vic Reppert's Divine Hiddenness Arguments

I think there is a counter-argument to Divine Hiddenness arguments. Vic argues God must hide himself. He also argues God knows the appropriate distance to keep so people can still reasonably choose to believe.

Well then, I have argued there isn't a bad "personal" reason to reject the faith of his God. I made this argument in four parts. Read them in reverse chronological order. What then of Vic's claim that God hides himself appropriately so we can still reasonably choose to believe in him? LINK.

C. S. Lewis and the Case of the Missing L’s.

I confess.

When I was a Christian, I was overly impressed with the writings of C. S. Lewis, and in particular, his ‘trilemma’, as presented in the book Mere Christianity:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

While I still enjoy Lewis’s writing style, I can now see how he stacked the deck by limiting the options regarding Jesus to Lord, liar, or lunatic. One doesn't have to be much of a detective to see that there are a couple of missing L’s.

Jesus’ Resurrection and Marian Apparitions: Medjugorje as a Living Laboratory

In a previous post, “Craig versus McCullagh,” I argued that William Lane Craig’s tests for historicity could be satisfied by other events that he might otherwise reject as historical.  See: Craig v. McCullagh

As DC readers may recall, I was responding to Travis James Campbell’s “Avalos Contra Craig: A Historical, Theological, and Philosophical Assessment,” in a book titled Defending the Resurrection. I henceforth abbreviate Campbell’s chapter as ACC.

Campbell challenged my comparison of the Jesus resurrection stories to the reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Medjugorje, a town in what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina. Since 1981, millions of people have reported having all sorts of visionary and other types of miraculous experiences there.

In particular, I contended that the experiences at Medjugorje satisfied McCullagh’s criteria for historicity used by Craig in the case of the resurrection of Jesus. Medjugorje amply illustrates how people can use the most objective and physical language to describe encounters with persons others would regard as non-existent.

I am an anthropologist by training, as well as a biblical scholar. So, I am always  looking for good living examples from around the world of phenomena that apologists for the resurrection deem to be not credible or comparable. 

Medjugorje offers a living laboratory for these reasons:

A. The alleged witnesses are still alive.

B. The Marian visions reported there have been better documented than any in history. Reports were audio-recorded and written down almost immediately after the first events. Audio-visual documentation overall is abundant.

C. A Scientific team examined the visionaries during some of the alleged apparition events. No such systematic and thorough scientific study ever been performed for prior famous Marian apparitions (e.g., at Lourdes, Fatima).

D. Millions of believers were produced within a decade.

I published a study of these apparitions in my article “Mary at Medjugorje: A Critical Inquiry,” Free Inquiry (1992). An abbreviated version appears on-line at: Avalos on Medjugorje.

I believe that they have a natural explanation. However, here I will show how I could easily defend their claimed supernatural character if I used some of the theological assumptions and biblical concepts that Campbell, Craig and other Protestant apologists use to defend the resurrection of Jesus.

Sinner, Do You Know Jesus?

"And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved." Acts 4: 12

A Pragmatic Approach to Evangelicals, Calvinists, and Presuppositionalists

There are various perspectives among people who criticize religion. 1) There are critiques of religion coming from within each one of them over specific doctrines; 2) There are critiques coming from former believers of a specific religion; 3) There are deistic critiques of all "revealed" religions, 4) There are agnostic critiques of all metaphysical claims; 5) There are atheist critiques of all religion, and with it faith itself.

My present perspective is represented by (2) and (5). But I have embraced all five of them in my intellectual journey from believer to atheist. So, being the pragmatist that I am, let me introduce just a few selected Christian works on biblical issues that should shake most evangelicals, Calvinists, and presuppositionalists to the core, representative of (1) above.

A Very Powerful Explanation of One's Deconversion Away From Faith!!

Jesus Versus Paul: The Greatest Love?

According to the famous Whitney Houston song, the greatest love of all is to love oneself. Travelling back in time long before Grammy awards were handed out, we find that Jesus, (according to the Gospel of John), had a different idea:

“Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13 (NIV)

The Apostle Paul (not-surprisingly) had his own take on it:

Victor Reppert Argues That Sufficient Evidence for Faith is a Bad Thing!

Vic commented saying that the perspective of the Outsider's Test for Faith unreasonably requires that "God would virtually have to write his name in the heavens in order to make any belief in him believable." No, not at all. I have previously indicated the kinds of evidence that would convince me Christianity is true. Vic goes on to say:

My "Atheists Talk" Interview on "The Outsider Test for Faith"

Enjoy

Another Review About "God or Godless?" (Co-written with Dr. Randal Rauser)

One reviewer on Amazon said:

I don't know who initiated this book. If it was John, he chose a lightweight opponent, if it was Randal, he took on a fighter two leagues above. 'Winning' is not actually the aim of such discourse, but here, Randal is knocked k.o. in every round. John gives amazingly rich arguments in short space with facts and quotes while Randal is telling silly stories on the intellectual level of an 8 year old. Link.

Check the other reviews out for yourselves: God or Godless?: One Atheist. One Christian. Twenty Controversial Questions.

The Shallowness and Stupidity of a Brain on Faith

On Facebook I had placed this quote from Aldous Huxley: "The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence." Wes Skolits commented: "What evidence does he have for *that*? methinks he overstates." Not to be outdone my Christian philosopher friend, Dr. James Sennett, sarcastically commented: "Don't question, Wes. Just believe." Whether this is an rhetorical overstatement or not, it is both shallow and stupid not the see the evidence for Huxley's claim. Anyone want to help them out? I've linked this post to their comments.

The Duplicitousness of David Marshall

I don't mean to pick on my apologist friend Marshall, but he provides so much fodder it's hard to resist. On the one hand he rates my book, "The Outsider Test for Faith," with two stars over at Amazon, saying it's "Interesting but [has] fatally flawed arguments, yet on the other hand in a recent article for Touchstone with a title that says it all, he argues, Into All the World: Testing John Loftus's "Outsider Test for Faith" Shows Why There Are Billions of Christians Today. Which is it? Is the OTF fatally flawed or does the existence of billions of Christians show their faith passes the test? Rank-and-file Christians want to know.

Are Christian defenders this bad? What I've seen over the years is that Christians should not trust their own apologists to tell them the truth. I am not attributing any deliberate attempts by these apologists to deceive them (although in some cases I do wonder). It's just that educated Christian apologists are more, not less deluded. Education has a way of doing that to them in most cases, if for no other reason than that they have more invested in defending their faith. They become like defense lawyers who are experts at finding loopholes, and since there will always be at least one loophole they can find room for their faith. But because the rank-and-file have "trust issues" with atheists and seek to confirm their faith rather than honestly investigate it, they will read what their apologists say rather than what we write almost every time. This is cyclical, unending and maddening.

The Slavery of ‘Revealed Truth.’

“God said it. I believe it. That settles it!”
Christian bumper sticker

“All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell... And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”
Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) member of the House Science Committee

“In this respect fundamentalism has demonic traits. It destroys the humble honesty of the search for truth, it splits the conscience of its thoughtful adherents, and it makes them fanatical because they are forced to suppress elements of truth of which they are dimly aware.”
Paul Tillich

I would like to present a few thoughts on the marked difference between the fundamentalist view of truth and the scientific pursuit of truth.

A Question on Historical Reality

Which of the following names have objective credence in historical reality?
A. Abraham
B. Moses
C. Jesus
D. Polyphemus (The Cyclopes in Homer’s Odyssey)

The Illusive Search for Truth in the Biblical Foundations of Judaism and Christianity

Christian apologists will find themselves relying of on faith, theological dogmas and outright denials as they attempt to deal with the following facts.

Plus (to further prove my case) I have then listed 295 sacred Jewish and Christian texts of which the bulk of these are Jewish works which were produced at the very time the Jesus myth was emerging. While the Jews could only present their God in terms of past events, Christianity quickly learned that miraculous present events won converts.

"Reason on the Bayou" Was Awesome!

Last Sunday I was among a very nice line-up of speakers for the first ever secular rally in the state of Louisiana, held on the campus of LSU. It was put together by Chad Thibodeaux along with several helpers, and executed very well. Here is a link to the write-up in The Daily Reverie, a campus newspaper. Below are some pictures from this awesome event:

I'll Be Live On "Atheists Talk" Sunday, April 21st

"Atheists Talk" is produced by Minnesota Atheists. I'll join them this Sunday, April 21st at 9AM central time, to discuss my newest book, The Outsider Test for Faith: How to Know Which Religion Is True. This book seeks to help readers view religion from an outside perspective, to better understand the irrationality of believing in one god (or set of gods) over all others. And it encourages believers to apply the skepticism they have toward other religions to their own. LINK.

Richard Carrier vs David Marshall - "Is the Christian Faith Reasonable?"

Of this debate Dr. Hector Avalos said to David Marshall: "I’ve seen your debate with Carrier, in which you were clearly outmatched intellectually, theologicaly, historically, and scientifically." Having seen it myself I agree.

What religion has contributed to the world this month

My Second Major Post at DC on the Bible Will be Up by This Weekend

Tentative Title: Embarrassing Facts About Christianity’s Biblical Birth and Foundation