What Does It Mean To Be Open-Minded? Or Closed-Minded?

Open-minded people are willing to honestly consider evidence that could change their minds. Closed-minded people will not. No one is completely open-minded. No one is completely closed-minded.

There are two problems we face in order to cultivate the intellectual virtue of open-mindedness. The first is to learn what constitutes evidence, since most people are unreasonably persuaded because of anecdotal evidence, or fallacious arguments substituting for the lack of evidence, or even peer-pressure or the accidents of birth into a particular family or a different culture. The second is to learn to avoid confirmation bias as much as possible, which Michael Shermer calls "the mother of all biases." [In The Believing Brain, p. 259].Once we learn about these problems and recognize them as the serious ones they really are, and that they stand in the way of a clear-headed investigation of the truth, we can proceed to be honest investigators of the truth. We would know what kind of evidence to look for and be better able to see any bias we might have and adjust for it.

Quote of the Day, by ephemerol On the OTF

The Outsider Test Reppert Style, Another Confirmation Bias Sighting

Here is a minimal facts approach to testing faith. Just decide between two religious faiths at a time. Do it from within your own faith perspective as an outsider to the religion chosen for testing, where any evidence for the other religion is judged by different standards and rejected. Test your own religious faith differently, since you have no objective safeguards in place to minimize your own cognitive bias, which skews the results in favor of your own faith. Just compare two at a time this way, over and over. Don't bother yourself with the multifaceted number of religious faiths. Do it this way so you don't have to fully grasp the problem of religious diversity, nor do you have to account for it. Do it this way so you can sweep this massive problem under the rug.

Victor Reppert Accuses Me of Lying

I find Vic's recent rounds of attacks on the Outsider Test for Faith interesting, but shallow. Why the renewed interest?

Another Confirmation Bias Sighting!

Everyone knows I only respond to Vic Reppert when he writes something about the OTF. If he wrote nothing about it there would be nothing for me to respond to. Obvious, right? Not so fast:

ephemerol Takes Christianity Down So What's Left For the Philosophy of Religion?

What is this "evidence" of which you speak? Pray, tell, where is this bounteous cornucopia of ignorance masquerading as knowledge?

What do you make of how genetics, geology, archaeology, comparative religions, and even biblical textual criticism contradicts your bible?

1. Genetics falsifies both the Adam&Eve myth and the Noachian flood myth by disproving these population bottlenecks
"Adam and Eve: The Ultimate Standoff Between Science and Faith", Jerry Coyne.

2. Noah's Ark as recounted in the bible has no possibility of being anything more than a story on practical grounds
Moore, Robert A. "The Impossible Voyage of Noah's Ark." Creation Evolution Journal Vol.4, No.1, Winter, pp 1-43. 1983.

3. The Noachian flood myth as told in the bible is not historical on geological and hydrological grounds
Collins, Lorence G. "Yes, Noah's Flood May Have Happened, But Not Over the Whole Earth." Reports of the NCSE Vol.29, Iss. 5, September-October, pp 38-41. 2009.

4. There's no trace of Israelites having been slaves in Egypt, of the Exodus, 40 years of wandering, of the Canaanite conquest, or of the story of David and Solomon.
"PATTERNS OF POOR RESEARCH — A Critique of Patterns of Evidence: Exodus", Hector Avalos.
"Why David Rohl's Response Fails.", Hector Avalos.
"How Archaeology Disproves Biblical History", Israel Finkelstein.
"Historical problems with the Hebrew Bible and the Conquest of Canaan", Bart D. Ehrman.

My Interview of Professor Keith Parsons About The Philosophy of Religion

Dr. Keith M. Parsons is on the faculty of The University of Houston--Clear Lake, where he is Associate Professor of Philosophy. He has written a number of books and essays and was the founding editor of the philosophical journal Philo. He also did very well in two debates against William Lane Craig. Keith has honored me with the opportunity to interview him on the philosophy of religion, a topic I'll be writing about in a book titled, Unapologetic: Why the Philosophy of Religion Must End. What prompted this interview was that I noticed he was teaching a Philosophy of Religion (PoR) class after saying he wouldn't teach these classes any longer, or so it appeared seen here. I want to let him clear the air in case he changed his mind (his prerogative if he so chooses), or correct any misunderstandings readers might have. Going beyond this I want to get his present perspectives on the PoR discipline.
The following interview took place as I asked Keith a question via email, to which he responded as his time allowed. Then I would ask him another one, and so on. This was not debate, because I was restricted to asking questions. Even though I threw a few hardball's it wouldn't be fair to characterize this as anything more than a discussion. I interviewed him for the purposes of learning his views more or less, and that's it.

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John: The first question I must ask is why are you teaching a PoR class? Is it just one class, or are there others? Didn't you say you would no longer do so?

College Accreditation Should Be Denied To All Evangelical Institutions!

Earlier I had called for ending college accreditation of Evangelical colleges that require professors to sign creedal statements. [See tag below]. Now I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is that Wheaton College Professor Larycia Hawkins, the school’s first tenured African-American female professor, was effectively ousted under a mutual agreement with school officials. The good news is that this incident is thrusting into the limelight calls to stop accrediting evangelical schools, something I argued for in my book, How to Defend the Christian Faith. Just read Vic Sizemore's article for the Humanist, The Case against Evangelical Higher Education and see for yourself. It's 'bout time.

"Apologists should be running for cover"

My readers know I'm not a self-promoter of my own works. Yet, I like to promote what others say about them. There's a difference, right? ;-) A new review of my book, How to Defend the Christian Faith, is titled "Apologists should be running for cover." I like that!

Loftus takes on the apologists in their own domain, showing why their arguments are flawed. He speaks very much from the point of view of someone who was, himself, one of them, addressing the (erroneous) criticism frequently leveled against other writers that they lack an understanding of religion and theology...The title of the book is also deliberately provocative; critics would say disingenuous. It isn't intended to help people become apologists, it's a masterful demonstration to those with an open mind of why the apologist position is untenable. LINK.

Victor Reppert Is Determined to Crack The Outsider Test for Faith, But Once Again Fails

Over the years no other Christian apologist has tried to find a fault with the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) as much as Victor Reppert has, even though I'm fairly convinced he has not read the book on it. I would think if a scholar wants to critique an idea he should read the book first, wouldn't you? Anyway, once again Victor Reppert is at it, with a bit of a different twist.

Isn't fear of religion at least a possible biasing factor? And if so, shouldn't any real test concerning religious belief have the capability of counteracting it. If the test only counteracts pro-religious biases but not anti-religious biases, then the test is faulty.

I find this to be a very self-serving. The mother of all biases is confirmation bias (or confirmatory bias), which is the strong tendency to search for and/or interpret information in ways that confirm one's biases. People of faith have this problem evaluating their own religion because faith itself is a cognitive bias that misjudges the probabilities in favor of faith. Faith gets in the way of dispassionately evaluating one's inherited faith. Surely Reppert cannot disagree with this. If nothing else, just think of the millions of people who have inherited a different faith, and ask what keeps them from leaving their faith. The OTF is meant to help people with faith overcome their faith bias precisely because they need it. Non-believers don't have it precisely because we are non-believers. Take for example a Hindu raised in a Hindu culture who accepts the Hindu religion but is evaluating Islam to see if it's true. What real concern (as opposed to a feigned concern in the service of an apologeticial Jedi mind trick) would Reppert actually have that such a Hindu might have a confirmation bias problem when it comes to Islam, since s/he is not a Muslim? None, none that I can see. Any confirmation bias s/he has would be for Hinduism.

When it comes to the fear of religion what is he talking about? From my experience, and the experience of countless ex-Christians, the fear of hell kept us in the fold much longer than we would have been if we didn't fear hell. Hell is the cradle to grave threat that keeps Christians in the fold. It's THAT fear, more than any possible fear of religion, that needs to be overcome by far, hands down, no iffs ands or buts about it.

But Reppert isn't done. He just used this as an example to introduce his main point.

My New Book Acquisitions

Pictured are a few recent books I acquired, which I'm presently reading. [Yes, when researching for a new book I read a bunch of books at a time, cross-referencing them as I go.]

Dr. Graham Oppy personally mailed his book to me from down under!

Do you like the ones you see?

Of the items pictured what one would you choose to have?

Robert Price's Latest Book Is Out, "Blaming Jesus for Jehovah"

The full title is provocative, Blaming Jesus for Jehovah: Rethinking the Righteousness of Christianity.I was honored to be asked to write a blurb for it. Here is what I wrote:

This book is written by the man most comparable in our day to the great 19th century communicator Robert G. Ingersoll. In it Price bypasses the usual cadre of apologists and clergy gatekeepers by taking his case directly to the fleeced flock of sheep still caged in their pew stalls. This book will liberate many of them, guaranteed! --John W. Loftus, author of Why I Became An Atheist and How to Defend the Christian Faith.

The End was near, and now it's here!

I wanted to let readers know that my book, The End: What Science and Religion Tell Us About the Apocalypse, comes out today! In it, I argue that the "new atheist" movement’s central claim that faith-based religious belief is both wrong and dangerous, and in fact it's dangerous because it’s wrong, is far more compelling than the new atheists themselves have realized. The reason concerns the novel threat environment of the twenty-first century, which will likely see the rise of advanced biotechnology, synthetic biology, molecular manufacturing, and artificial intelligence. These "dual-use" technologies are not only become exponentially more powerful — thereby enabling humans to manipulate and rearrange the physical world like never before — but some are becoming increasingly accessible to terrorist groups and even single individuals.

The Audible Book Of "How To Defend the Christian Faith" Is Now Available

Link. Matthew O'Neil narrates it. The segment sample is a good one for listeners to consider getting it. Here is the Amazon link to the book itself.

The Folly of Faith vs the Results of Reason

joekeysor again, who teaches at a university in Saudi Arabia:

I don’t believe I am disparaging reason when I say that there are things beyond reason, that its reach is limited and it cannot encompass all of reality. I believe this is a simple fact, not disparagement. I believe you overestimate reason, and seem to believe – correct me if I am wrong – that there is nothing of any importance beyond the reach of human reason. But even in the ordinary course of life there are many things we don’t understand. Reason is in fact often a very puny and unreliable instrument. I only claim that there are higher truths that cannot be found by reason alone.

John Loftus: It's the assumption of faith where you're wrong. Faith causes people with it to be anti-intellectual who reason like you. It causes people to fly planes into buildings because that's the logic of faith. When one has faith anything can be believed, anything can be justified and any horrible act can be done. People with faith can and do say what you have said to deny reason.

There are flaws in our reasoning because we didn't evolve to think in a completely coherent and logically manner. That's why there are people of faith like you in the first place. But we've discovered science. Science is the corrective to bad thinking. Science produces objective results that help us understand the world of nature. Utilizing science leads us to objective knowledge. So to reject the conclusions of reasoning is to reject the results of science and therefore to reject the only way to know about the world of nature. It's not that there is no better alternative. It's rather that there is no other objective reliable method. I don't know if there are things beyond the reach of science, since it's still in its infancy stage. We'll know better in a thousand years. In the meantime I'm willing to watch and learn.

On this issue I insist everyone reads the full text of a chapter in my anthology Christianity Is Not Great, titled The Failure of the Church and the Triumph of Reason.

Prolegomena to the Outsider Test for Faith

I'm Now An Indiana State Democratic Delegate!

I was appointed as a Democratic Delegate for the State of Indiana! My political career just started. I'm super excited, and grateful they noticed my superior intellect and political skills, having observed me online for about month or so. That makes me some sort of official in the Democratic party and I'm pumped. There will be changes now that Loftus is in charge, all the way up to the top. Watch out now!

Part of the real reason for my appointment was that they needed one more person to be a delegate. The other part was that they needed one more person to be a delegate. I guess that sums it up. ;-)

Seriously, I have a lot to learn. I think I rubber stamp whoever the party votes for, but it's still a higher level of political involvement than I've had before. It should be interesting. I hope to cast a historic vote for Bernie Sanders!

Responding to the Anti-intellectualism of Faith

joekeysor: I have read off and on some of the leading Christian apologists, but have not found them very helpful. They do have some good arguments I suppose, but it seems they rely too much on reason and logic, trying to meet the unbelievers on their own ground, when in fact Christians should inhabit very different ground. Paul says that the things of God are foolishness to the natural man (I Cor. 2:14).

John W. Loftus: Why do you disparage reason in your pursuit of truth? I'm reasoning with you now. Others do. We reason about politics, ethics, and about which house or car to buy, and where to go on vacation. Why does it stop when it comes to religion? ISIS fits that bill. The reason they believe along with the Hindu and the Mormon is primarily because of feelings that they're right in doing so. Private subjective feelings cannot be the basis our your faith either, since they produce so many false hits. In fact, if cultist came at your door and said what the apostle Paul said, that their faith is foolishness to the world, you would not accept that of them. So why do you put your brain at the door when it comes to church? You shouldn't.

I'll Be Debating Christianity In North Carolina On March 16th

Come out if you can. I don't know if they'll be streaming it or even filming it. Facebook Link.

Bernie Sanders is the Future of the Democratic Party!

LINK. There's no denying it and no turning back. So we might as well nominate him over Hillary Clinton now! In my opinion he is a once-in-a-lifetime candidate! I'm an old, not dead yet, white man, and I approve this message.

At Victor Reppert's Blog My OTF is Called A "Dangerously Stupid Idea"

Since I take the accusation of plagiarism seriously, I dealt decisively with him. I wrote:

Mattapult's Checklist For Criticizing Religions

Scientology:
What L Ron Hubbard wrote is wrong because _______.

Mormonism:
What Joseph Smith wrote is wrong because ________.

Christianity:
What Jesus wrote...
What the disciples wrote...
What some anonymous author wrote 60 years later is wrong because _______.

Why Have I Never Seen Christian Apologists Post Something Like This?

Quote of the Day, By Luiz Fernando Zadra

The brain can be cheated. We do it all the time for several reasons. When I buy a lottery ticket, I do it pretending that the odds are reasonable. It's a pretend game, deep down I know I'm just fooling myself. But when I'm buying the ticket, I don't care because it feels good to think you are buying a reasonable chance of being rich. It's the same thing with some religious people. I know it because I did myself before becoming an atheist.

A Short Twitter Discussion On the OTF

MonRoe X: @loftusjohnw hey dude, just got done reading your book. Curious... Where can I take the outsiders test for faith? Can't find it online.
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John W. Loftus: Do you examine your own faith with a different standard than the ones you reject?
Y or N?
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MonRoe X: @loftusjohnw is that it? No. Did I pass?
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John W. Loftus: No. Are you being honest? That will depend on subsequent debates. At least you've agreed you cannot punt to faith.