Samson and Delilah, By DarkMatter2525

A Torturing Faith?

Dr. Hector Avalos has written a newspaper column about the role of religion in the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program.

Doubting Jesus' Resurrection: A Naturalistic Explanation of Christian Origins - Free Kindle book

 

Doubting Jesus' Resurrection: What Happened in the Black Box?

This excellent book on the naturalistic origin for Christianity is available free today for Kindle. *edit, no longer free.  Current price $8.99*

Author Kris D. Komarnitsky's main thesis is that the early Christian movement was spurred by cognitive dissonance reduction in the disciples after the crucifixion.  Everything involved with the origin and growth of Christian beliefs can be explained via well known (and well documented) psychological phenomena. 

If you would like a brief overview of the author's case, see his article on the secular web here.
William Lane Craig has responded to this book.  And the author interacts with Craig's reply here.

Meet brmckay: A Religious Philosophical Bullshitter Trying to Reinvent God

“I can be quite foolish at times.”

Theists come in many forms and this blog has had some great examples in the classic sense of the word.  But in all honestly, I have never come across a man who could twist the semantics of the English language in such a way the after reading almost one-hundred of his comments on different blogs (mostly under those supporting atheism), neither I nor most anyone he engages with have yet to understand his philosophical bullshit.  If you need some examples, simply click on his Disqus Profile, then under Recent Activity, read a dozen or so of his ramblings for yourself or (better yet) read some of the responses from people he engages with who keep asking what he's trying to express.  

Irish Comedian Dave Allen Tells a Series of Religious Jokes, Some LOL Funny

Quick Rebuttals to Common Christian Claims

Richard Carrier concisely rebuts six common claims apologists make. 

00:28 "Spacetime had a beginning" 

1:38 "The Universe is fine tuned for life" 

3:43 "Life requires a creator" 

5:20 "Consciousness requires a spirit/soul" 

7:34 "God is needed for objective moral values" 

9:07 "Jesus was resurrected" 

This is part of a "Case Against Christianity" playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf113iNh-64ba5FppqyEFnuJLf3UY5tDR

The full Richard Carrier vs Lenny Esposito debate can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS2z3WCHJ5Y

Dear Christian: How Does Either a Believer or Atheist Get God to Function?

Facing Reality is Hard

“God is weak and powerless in the world.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1944

Let’s face it, the totality of a functioning Biblical God is anchored both the distance past and future that without any proof the Biblical mighty acts of God are true, leaves this record built on a mythical past and future; not reality.

Time and time again, I’ve challenged believers to tell me how to make their God (or Jesus Christ) function.  In other words, how can one provoke God into action just like God did in the Biblical past (Old Testament, Gospels and Acts) or the future (Revelation)?  (Oddly, St. Paul seems not to be able to make God function either.)

Happy Holidays to One and to All

Happy Holidays to one and to all (except people killing in the name of god and other ne'er do well folks). Happy times to you! Be safe. Collect warm fuzzy memories. Have fun. Be good (and you know what I mean).

The John Loftus/Bill Cunningham Interview

The John W. Loftus/Bill Cunningham interview on Cunningham's National Premiere Radio Networks Show, on 700wlw

Have Yourself A Merry Little Mythmas

Quote of the Day, By Former Bishop John Shelby Spong

Christian churches in first world countries are facing problems in dealing with churches in third world countries, not unlike how modernized Muslims are facing problems in dealing with barbaric Muslims in the Middle East. In those churches homosexuality is "taboo" at best, and a crime requiring death at its worst. So what do first world churches say about this? Some of them are afraid to offend these churches out of fear of being patronizing and/or racist, even though this means not speaking out boldly on behalf of the LGBTI people.

When Walter Kasper, a catholic cardinal/theologian, said some patronizing things about churches in Africa he felt the heat of these accusations so much he even lied that he said such things. But what he said was caught on tape, sorry about your luck, Walt. LINK. Now that's some pressure, right? This is quite the contrast to what Spong said in response to some patronizing remarks he said in 1998. He had said of those churches: "They’ve moved out of animism into a very superstitious kind of Christianity. They’ve yet to face the intellectual revolution of Copernicus and Einstein that we’ve had to face in the developing world: that is just not on their radar screen." When asked if what he said was patronizing, Spong fired back, “If they feel patronized that’s too bad. I’m not going to cease to be a 20th-century person for fear of offending somebody in the Third World.” LINK.

An Excellent Atheist Ad Placed In the South Bend Tribune: "The Great Christian Deception"

From books to blogs to broadcasts to billboards and beyond, believers can no longer hide their heads in the sand. They are being confronted daily with the arguments and the presence of the godless. Here is an a advertisement recently placed not far from where I live, in The South Bend Tribune. South Bend, Indiana, is home to Notre Dame University, Catholic territory. Imagine one day looking through the newspaper and coming across the following Ad. What do you do? I was told by the friend of mine who placed the Ad that some parishioners in local churches have asked their priests and pastors to answer it. One of them is struggling to do so.

Books Won't Save School Children's Lives; Drones, Just Might

I have written before about my respect for Malala Yusufzai, the Pakistani girl shot in the face by the Taliban for simply wishing to have an education. I have also said that courage and vision, of which she has plenty, do not translate into infallibility, and Malala's campaign for education and against violence, which has won her a Nobel Peace Prize, is based on extremely shaky views. The sad news from her own country today only shows how misguided the pacifist mindset is when it comes to Islamist militants.

Technically Speaking We Cannot Prove or Disprove the Existence of Trolls, Fairies or Elves

A Christmas Debate for You

A few years ago, around the time of the release of my book The Nativity: A Critical Examination, Reasonable Doubts hosted a radio podcast debate, pre-recorded, between myself and Randal Rauser. Here is the fruits of our labour, detailing the arguments for and against the historicity of the Nativity accounts. Let me know what you think:

Church Members Hoped to Beat Gay Member Straight (More News from the Bible Belt)

"Man: Parishioners beat him in church to cure homosexuality"

SPINDALE, N.C. "Five members of a Rutherford County church have been indicted by a grand jury for kidnapping and beating a man because he's gay.  

(To see the mug shots of those accused in the beating, click here.)

The five people belong to Word of Faith in Spindale, a church that has been accused of enforcing extensive control over its congregation.      

The Rutherford County Sheriff's Office said the grand jury returned the indictment this week.       

Matthew Fenner said Thursday he was beaten in the church last year after a service. He says it was part of the church's way of trying to cure him of being gay.       

Word of Faith was investigated twice in the late 1990s for its treatment of children, but was cleared of any wrongdoing.  Church leaders have not yet commented on the indictments.

Spindale is about 40 miles north of Spartanburg."

In the Bible Belt, Atheists Can Not Legally Hold Public Office

Atheist group seeks change in state constitutions

"An atheist group is challenging a line of the North and South Carolina constitutions that says people who don’t believe in God can’t hold a public office."   

New's Video Here

Peter Lik's 'Phantom' Sold for $6.5 million. Damn, Why Didn't I Do That!

Peter Lik's 'Phantom' is the most expensive photograph sold in history.

First find a spectacular cave with a hole for sunlight to shine down.

Blow a little smoke toward it.

Take a black & white picture.

Repeat until you get a cool image that would be sold for over 6 mil.

I could have done that!

Hector Avalos: Christmas TV Shows are Animated Religion

This essay appears in the Ames [Iowa] Tribune. LINK.

To Celebrate Or Not To Celebrate: When Christmas Epitomized Christian Bloodshed

Here we go again: Christian Right's Annual Whining Fest (aka, "War on Christmas") is in full swing. Except that this year, the hilarity is without precedent: our traditions are being “neutered”!

The Montgomery County Board of Education in Maryland has cut Christmas and Easter, as well as Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana, from next year's school calendar. No religious holiday will be mentioned by name. NPR reported on the origin of the decision: "The path to the board's decision started about two years ago on something that was somewhat unrelated. Members of the county's Muslim community -- roughly estimated at around 10 percent of the more than 1 million population -- were seeking to have two of their religion's holy days added to the calendar of days off. They wanted Eid al-Adha the most." Instead of adopting new religious days for Muslims, however, the board approved the removal of all Christian and Jewish religious holiday references by a 7-1 vote. The students will continue to get the same religious days off, but there will be generic references to them, such as "winter break." Board members have even gone so far as to reinterpret the historical recognition of the holidays by saying that the days off are not meant to observe those religious holidays. The board's president, Phil Kauffman, explained, "The best way to accommodate the diversity of our community is to not make choices about which communities we're going to respect in our calendar and which ones we're not going to respect." But does religious neutering accommodate diversity or merely endorse secular progressivism and political correctness as America's new religion? Choices are the very actions our Bill of Rights was created to protect. In the end, however, rather than affirm Americans' freedom of religion, society has spawned their freedom from religion. NPR reported that nearly all of the 16 districts across the country that are larger than Montgomery County Public Schools have already discarded any mention of religious holidays on their calendars.

That's not the America our Founding Fathers created for us.

The "Founding Fathers" were not creating an America where Christmas could not be publicly celebrated! Well, except for the earliest ones, who were doing precisely that. The very ones who came to the new continent for the sake of religious freedom. And not just that, but celebrating Christmas, in those days, was a sure sign that you were against them!
A bit of context would help understand how.

Quote of the Day, By Hector Avalos, and a Podcast About His Book

Avalos: "Our job as biblical scholars is to undermine the value of any scripture that endorses violence."

Dr. André Gagné and Calogero A. Miceli produce the Inquisitive Minds podcast every week, discussing issues pertaining to religion, history, culture and science. Recently they have interviewed Dr. Hector Avalos about his book Fighting Words: The Origins Of Religious Violence. In this last episode (12/8)they review Avalos' last few chapters.

Frank Zindler, in an attempt to be as "Fair and Balanced" as FOX NEWS, interviews the Rt. Rev. Madrigal Fritzlschleimer! ;-)

"The Not-So-Virgin Birth of the Christmas Story": A Response

Not only when dealing with the Virgin Birth, reality proves we have entirely no New Testament textual evidence from the very center of Roman Palestine before circa 200 CE.  What we do in fact have are early manuscripts from Hellenistic Egypt (home of the Septuagint whose Greek theology is quoted almost exclusively as New Testament proof texts) as the location of our earliest manuscripts of the Gospels whose Greek Classical culture also gave birth to the Gnostic Gospels view (theology) that the material world and all flesh is evil or, as the New Testament puts it; sinful.

The Not-So-Virgin Birth of the Christmas Story, by Valerie Tarico

LINK.

Eddie Tabash's Review of the New Book by Sam Harris

LINK.