The Apologist Two-Step Dance--Timothy McGrew and David Marshall on Boghossian

Here's James Lindsay on this dance of theirs:

The two-step is their game. The way it's played is simple: give multiple characterizations for everything, including God, faith, Christian, etc., and then whenever someone calls you out for the problems in any one of them (and there are always problems), switch to another. Dance, dance, dance. Pretend, pretend, pretend. Whatever it takes to avoid having the cherished beliefs treated with intellectual honesty, which would destroy them. [Read this!]

Crazy Stories, Crazy Christians: A Review of John Alan Turner's Book "Crazy Stories, Sane God"

My review of Crazy Stories, Sane God: Lessons from the Most Unexpected Places in the Biblecan be read right here. Christians will downvote it just because, so any upvotes if you like it would be appreciated.

Frank Schaeffer Now Claims to Be an Atheist Who Believes in God

*Sheeh* When will his shenanigans end:

I believe that life evolved by natural selection. I believe that evolutionary psychology explains away altruism and debunks love, and that brain chemistry undermines the illusion of free will and personhood. I also believe that a spiritual reality hovering over, in and through me calls me to love, trust and hear the voice of my creator.

Franky should just trust the results of science. Where science is inconclusive suspend judgement. It's really that easy folks! LINK

On "Getting Excited About Jesus"

George W. Bush with Frank Page and Wife
 in the Oval Office

(This post was originally published in 2007 (from a letter) when Rev. Frank Page was pastor of the Taylor's First Baptist mega church here in Greenville county. Later, he was elected President of the Southern Baptist Convention.  This post illustrated how Christian propaganda is over sold; not even being believed by the pastor preaching it!) 

Dear Dr. Page,

I heard you preach Sunday morning on our local channel about “getting as excited about Jesus as people do about their favorite ball teams”. I (as a former Baptist preacher) must say there is a major difference between the world of everyday reality and the religious world view claimed by faith.

Quote of the Day, By Thomas Hobbes On Revelation

When God speaketh to man, it must be either immediately; or by mediation of another man, to whom he had formerly spoken by himself immediately. How God speaketh to a man immediately, may be understood by those well enough, to whom he hath so spoken; but how the same should be understood by another, is hard, if not impossible to know. For if a man pretend to me, that God hath spoken to him supernaturally, and immediately, and I make doubt of it, I cannot easily perceive what argument he can produce, to oblige me to believe it....To say he hath spoken to him in a Dream, is no more than to say he dreamed that God spake to him; which is not of force to win belief from any man ... [Leviathan, chap. 32.6]

Dr. Valerie Tarico On Bible Verses That Atheists Love

She asked some outspoken anti-theists and other champions of secularism what they think are the best verses in the Bible, and why. Here are their responses.

Finally! Sam Harris Responds to the Moral Landscape Challenge

A few months back Sam issued a challenge for someone to prove him wrong. Ryan Born rose to the challenge, as his essay was chosen out of hundreds of responses by Russell Blackford. Here is Ryan's essay. Read it and then read Sam's response Just a brief comment. I thought Sam's response is an effective one. The most interesting and controversial claim Sam makes is this one:

I am, in essence, defending the unity of knowledge—the idea that the boundaries between disciplines are mere conventions and that we inhabit a single epistemic sphere in which to form true beliefs about the world.

Richard Carrier vs Zeba Crook: Jesus of Nazareth: Man or myth?

Richard Carrier has written about it here.

Randal Rauser's Book, “What on Earth Do we Know About Heaven?” is FREE June 5 (eBook only)

The book looks like pure speculation based on the need to believe, but what the hey, see for yourselves, today only.

Three More Blurbs for "Christianity is Not Great"

I've previously mentioned that Richard Dawkins and David Mills wrote blurbs for my new anthology, Christianity Is Not Great: How Faith Fails.Here are three more in the order I received them:

The Evolution of Venom: This is How Science Works

All believers denigrate science in at least a few areas. The more fundamentalist the believer then the more that person denigrates science. Methinks they just don't understand how it works. Below is a video showing an example with regard to venom in some animals. Notice that science makes predictions. In this case the prediction was based on evolution that venom must have existed before there were fangs, and further that snake venom was inherited from an earlier ancestor. This prediction went against common wisdom. But the evidence was found. Notice the scientist does experiments looking for evidence rather than believing any authorities. Notice also that this science is helping make our lives healthier by the development of medicines, something you will not find in the Bible, God's supposed wisdom. Seriously, do you see a mad scientist here, someone seeking to destroy people's faith?

Why Faith is a Delusion, Case in Point: William Lane Craig

Craig said:

Plantinga talks about intrinsic defeater-defeaters. That is to say, a belief which is so powerfully warranted for me that it intrinsically defeats any defeater brought against it. You don't need another extrinsic defeater to defeat the defeater. You have an intrinsic defeater-defeater in the witness of the Holy Spirit which allows you to retain faith rationally even in the face of unanswered objections.

The context of this quote is as follows:

Eleven Kinds of Verses Bible-Believers Like to Ignore, By Valerie Tarico

John Alan Turner wrote this book I'll be reviewing soon (click on the image). Usually though, Christians ignore these kinds of stories and verses. Here's Tarico on it:

Bible-believing Christians play fast and loose with their sacred text. When it suits their purposes, they treat it like the literally perfect word of God, and, in a peculiar twist of logic, they quote the Bible itself to back up their claim. Then, when it suits their other purposes, they conveniently ignore the parts of the Bible that are—inconvenient.

Here are twelve [misprint?] kinds of verses that Bible-believers ignore so that they can keep spouting the others when they want to. To list all of the verses in these categories would take a book almost the size of the Bible, one the size of the Bible minus the Jefferson Bible, to be precise. I’ll limit myself to a couple tantalizing tidbits of each kind, and the curious reader who wants more can go to the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible or simply dig out the old family tome and start reading at Genesis, Chapter One....Thank God most Bible-believing Christians don’t actually take the Good Book as seriously as they claim to. LINK.

The Idea of Heaven Seems Strange To Me Now

Now  that I've been out of Christianity for a while, one thing that seems very strange to me is the Christian conception of a Heaven in which, day and night, people will be singing songs to God and telling him how great he is.  For one thing, wouldn't that get old rather quickly?  More importantly though, what kind of person would want people groveling and constantly going on about how awesome you are?  I could see a North Korean dictator enjoying that sort of thing (Kim Jong-un certainly does), but normal people?  No way!  What kind of person needs their self-esteem propped up by that sort of subservient, fawning adulation?   Imagine if when your friends were with you, all they did was bow down before you,  sing songs in honor of you, and constantly shower you with praise.  Wouldn't it make you uncomfortable; embarrassed?  Healthy relationships certainly don't work that way. 

Quote of the Day, by Robert Ingersoll

Black comes to the conclusion that the Hebrew Bible is in exact harmony with the New Testament, and that the two are “connected together;” and “that if one is true the other cannot be false.” If this is so, then he must admit that if one is false the other cannot be true; and it hardly seems possible to me that there is a right-minded, sane man, except Mr. Black, who now believes that a God of infinite kindness and justice ever commanded one nation to exterminate another; ever ordered his soldiers to destroy men, women, and babes; ever established the institution of human slavery; ever regarded the auction-block as an altar, or a bloodhound as an apostle. [Ingersoll, Debate with Jeremiah Black, theingersolltimes.com]

What is Faith/Belief? Can Believers Even Tell Us?

[A redated post] In David Eller's words, Malcolm Ruel in his book, Belief, Ritual and the Securing of Life,

...demonstrates that the concept of belief in Western civilization and Christianity has evolved, from a kind of "trust" in god(s) to specific propositions about God and Christ to the notion of "grace" based on the personal experience of and commitment to God and Christ to a conception of belief as an "adventure of faith" which does not have any particular destination or make any specific claims. The evolutionary trajectory of belief in Christianity is, then, distinctively "local" and historical--that is, culturally and religiously relative--and not to be found in every religion. Many religions do not have any "creed" of explicit propositions about their supernatural worlds, and many do not mix fact, trust, and value in the English/Christian way. Ruel concludes that the English and Western concept of belief is "complex, highly ambiguous, and unstable" and "is demonstrably an historical amalgam, composed of elements traceable to Judaic mystical doctrine and Greek styles of discourse." [Source: Introducing Anthropology of Religion, p. 33.]

Peter Boghossian and Tim McGrew on the Christian Program "Unbelievable"

There's a lot of blathering about Tim McGrew's so-called trashing of my friend and colleague Peter Boghossian. For the record, I view myself as Boghossian's bulldog and I have posted a few reviews of his book, A Manual for Creating Atheists.Randal Rauser's headline is this: Tim McGrew gives Peter Boghossian an unbelievable public drubbing. On the other side, James Lindsay carefully reviews their debate. You can listen to it on the program Unbelievable right here. I think he did well but McGrew threw him for a loop once or twice.

What's the Difference?

As a Total Literary Fraud Filled with Stolen Religious Ideas, the Bible Offers the World Nothing New

It’s simple.  Can anyone name one technological advancement, one scientific achievement, or a single advancement in morals and ethics not already covered earlier and better in a neighboring cultures near Palestine ?  

Without A Mythical Jesus, What Has Modern Scholarship Left Us With?

Meet the Son of God:  Jesus

"And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Matt. 8: 20)

When Jesus is stripped of all his miracles, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, his descend to Hell, and his accent to Heaven (all of which the majority of New Testament scholars inform us are later theological embellishments), popular modern scholars such as Dale Allison and Bart Ehrman tell us that Jesus was nothing but a Failed Apocalyptic Prophet whose eschatology about the End of the Age was materialize in his own crucifixion.

The Case for Naturalism (Sean Carrol)

This is the opening statement by Sean Carroll at "The Great Debate: Has Science Refuted Religion?", sponsored by the Skeptic Society on 25 March 2012.  Other participants in the debate were Michael Shermer, Dinesh D'Souza, and Ian Hutchinson.

You can see the full debate here.

Beyond an Absence of Faith

This project has been a couple of years in the making, but it is one that myself and my co-editor are very proud of. Beyond an Absence of Faith: Stories About the Loss of Faith and the Discovery of Self is a collection of deconversion accounts from people of various worldviews from people from a number of countries.

Jerry Coyne Reports: The Adam-and-Eve War Continues at Bryan College

The money quote:

The College is in a ferment over a topic close to my heart: the historicity of Adam and Eve. Even conservative Christians, it seems, have trouble believing that Adam and Eve were the literal ancestors of humanity. That historicity has become increasingly problematic since the appearance of new papers in population genetics, showing that over the last few hundred thousand years, the population of Homo sapiens could not have been smaller than about 12,250 (10,000 who remained in Africa and 2,250 who migrated out of Africa to populate the rest of the globe).

In other words, the human population never comprised only two people. And if Adam and Eve weren’t the literal ancestors of humanity, then a critical part of the Genesis story is wrong: the acquisition of Original Sin. And if there were no Original Sin accrued by a literal Adam and Eve, then all of us—their supposed descendants—aren’t sinful by birth, and Jesus’s return wasn’t necessary. LINK.

My, How the Truth of the Bible Has Fallen!

Biblical Archaeologist Nelson Glueck 

on the Cover of Time Magazine 1963

A famous quote by one of the 20^th century’s leading Biblical Archaeologist, Nelson Glueck:

“It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And, by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries.”  (Nelson Glueck from his 1959 book, Rivers in the Desert)

According to the late George Ernest Wright, Professor at, and Curator of Harvard’s Semitic Museum, “Glueck’s explorations are second to none, unless it is those of Edward Robinson.”

The question is now:  What can be proven historically true in the Bible (if anything)?

Quote of the Day, by Loftus

A god worthy of worship is a god that someone thinks is worthy of worship. As the world got bigger people needed a bigger god to worship. That's about it.