EVANGELICAL BAD FAITH II:

BEGINNING TO DOUBT

Robert Conner

(magicinchristianity@gmail.com)

To the dismay of the true believer it may be pointed out that disbelief in the resurrection begins in the New Testament itself and it begins even before the composition of the gospels. The earliest statement of Christian resurrection belief includes this flat denial of Jesus’ bodily resurrection by Christians: “But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?”[i] Or to quote Michael Goulder’s literal translation of anastasij nekrwn ouk estin, “there is no upstanding of corpses.”[ii] “Surely the very fact that Paul placed a lengthy list of eyewitnesses of the appearances of the risen Jesus at the very beginning of the whole discussion is most easily explained by the suggestion that the apostle feared some of his addressees entertained doubts on this matter.”[iii] “[Paul] wants to insist as vigorously as possible, no doubt for theological and apologetic reasons [emphasis added], that Jesus actually was raised from the dead and that he was seen by a particular group of people who were divinely appointed as witnesses to the resurrection.”[iv]

Can You Be Good Without God?, an Essay by Dr. Brandon Winthrow

This fantastic essay was written by my friend Brandon Winthrow. It reveals that most people think atheists like myself are more likely to be serial killers than others, even though that's far far from the truth. I want people who know an atheist to realize this is nothing but propaganda, meant to marginalize and dehumanize us merely because our existence threatens the certitude of religious faith. Denounce it for us whenever you can. Thank you! LINK.

EVANGELICAL BAD FAITH: PART ONE

EVANGELICAL BAD FAITH:

PART ONE

Robert Conner

(magicinchristianity@gmail.com)

“Bad faith,” defined as the refusal to confront or acknowledge facts or choices, is the bedrock of Anglo-American apologetic Christian scholarship, the walking, talking incarnation of the phoniness, dissembling, evasion and casuistry of bad faith argumentation. Members of the Jesus Studies guild increasingly recognize that evangelicals in particular appear genetically incapable of sustaining any rational argument based on probability or coherent textual interrogation and nowhere are these disabilities more apparent than in the fundamentalist defense of the historicity of the resurrection. In point of fact, the Evangelical Resurrection Industrial Complex (ERIC) has churned out scores of scholarly tomes, hundreds of erudite disquisitions in professional journals, dissertations and commentaries, as well as debates and conferences beyond numbering, and the tsunami of dishonest verbiage shows no sign of receding. Fear not, however. I have no intention of dragging the reader through the miasma left in the wake of this fetid inundation. I wish only to suggest that evangelicals have permanently disqualified themselves from rational discourse and can henceforth be left to natter among themselves.

Why Conservative Christians Should Love Abortion

A couple of years ago, I published a blog post showing that if one accepts the explanations offered by apologists like William Lane Craig for some of the terrible things Yahweh commands, then one should want there to be as many abortions as possible. Since these explanations — or excuses — recently came up in the comments section here, I decided to re-publish that post. The conclusion is of course not meant to be taken seriously, but it does follow (with a few minor assumptions that would be unreasonable to deny) from the screwed-up views of these apologists.

Richard Carrier and Bayes' Theorem, One More Time

Richard Carrier and I may have found a partial agreement when it comes to the use of Bayes' Theorem (but maybe not).

Take this scenario:

It is impossible that as of this very moment all green highway signs will verbally discuss current events with us, if we stop to talk with them.

There are three ways to deal with this in Bayesian terms.

“God Can Do Anything”

As a sort-of follow up to my previous post, one more comment related to the problem of evil:

According to some believers, God can do anything – and that means literally anything. He can make square circles, married bachelors, and even non-Catholic Popes! In these people's opinion, to say that God is omnipotent is to say that logical impossibility is no obstacle to his power.

The Christian Knack for Insulting Our Intelligence

Why in the world do they believe such things?

Sometimes even Sunday school kids have the presence of mind to ask, “But where did God come from?” To which the assurance is always given, “Well, God has always been there.” But rarely do the kids—or even the adults—ever ask, “But how do you know that?” How do you KNOW that about God? Without the evidence it’s just another assumption—one of so many that derail religious thinking. Bertrand Russell punctured this lazy conjecture when he pointed out that it’s just as easy to believe in a universe that has always existed—as it is to believe in a god that has been around, uncreated, forever.

God Didn't Give a Damn When He Unleashed Hurricane Harvey on Houston

I've said this before when it came to Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 Indonesian tsunami. If there is an omnipotent God then he could have snapped his fingers to stop hurricane Harvey from materializing at all. If this requires a perpetual miracle to keep the earth in its proper place around the sun, or whatever, then so what? Aren't lives more important? Plus, if Harvey didn't happen then God could remain hidden, for some mysterious reason. We would never know he intervened. It's not asking God to alleviate all suffering, only the most horrendus kinds. It's obvious that if he's omnipotent he just doesn't give a damn. Christians are now boasting how they're helping victims, but the one who cares the very least is the God who could"ve stopped it but didn't.

Next time you say "God is good" think Harvey, Houston and Osteen!

Next time you say "God is good" think Harvey, Houston and Osteen!

Does the Matrix Possibility Mean Anything Can Happen?

Kingasaurus asked the million dollar question about assigning 0% Bayesian prior probabilities to claims:

John, isn't there a non-zero chance that we're all living in the Matrix and the programming could always be changed so that pigs do fly and amputated arms are "magically" re-attached?

Wouldn't this make the possibility of absolutely anything and everything non-zero?

Great question!

Kingasaurus, those type of scenarios are literally a dime a dozen. Did you see the "Men in Black" movie where a a cat wears a charm which is another whole universe? I could be nothing but brains in a vat. A demon might be deceiving me. The whole universe might be growing larger every second, or smaller, along with us in it. I've written about a few of them before. Technically they are all mathematical possibilities, but they not only cancel each other out, they're to be regarded by those of us living in this reality as impossibilities.

The Parameters of Bayes' Theorem, Part 2

I've been debating the uses and abuses of Bayesian quantitative analysis on Facebook with my atheist friends. What started it all was a recent comment I made about Bart Ehrman's debate against William Lane Craig, where Craig used Bayes to argue against Ehrman. This is what I wrote:

I've mostly been persuaded by Louise Antony and Dan Lambert that Bayesian analysis doesn't help when it comes to historical one-of-a-kind events, especially of the miraculous kind! If correct, Christians are using this math illegitimately. We must not follow suit. If correct, this kind of analysis of "miraculous" historical events is faddish and will pass.

Second, while it's technically true that every claim, no matter how bizarre, has a nonzero probability to it, some claims can be said to be so far out of bounds the most accurate thing we can say is that such an event is impossible. This is something mathematician James Lindsay has persuaded me about. To continue to act and speak as if a certain miracle has a degree of probability to it, out of the numerous multitudes believed to have taken place, is a misuse of normal language. So when Ehrman says the miracle of the resurrection is impossible, he's correct. What other word are we to use? When does a 99.9999% improbability (or some other higher than high percent) become a possibility?

Possibilities count if an omniscient omnipotent god exists, you see. We encourage the mind of the believer to continue believing if we grant it's possible, when everything we know says it's impossible. We should avoid Bayesian analysis in historical events and stick to normal language and say it truthfully as Ehrman does, that it's impossible. Yep, impossible. The reason Christians use Bayesian math is because they can force us into admitting miraculous events are possible, and that's all they need to keep on believing. Get it?

Third, to go on to compare other bizarre alternative explanations of the resurrection hypothesis (aliens, seriously?) is an exercise in futility, since bizarre stories are by definition bizarre. Even owning an interstellar spacecraft is far more reasonable in this day than an impossible event, by far!. Are we really going to stoop so low that we have to argue the resurrection hypothesis has less explanatory power than alien interference, before we've made our point? Nonbelieving scholars have adopted this Christian language game in response to the dominance of Christianity in academia. This must stop. The best explanation of the data, BTW, is Richard C. Miller's.

Fourth, there are no posteriors that can make an impossible event (see above) a probable one. Ehrman was correct even if he fails to understand Bayesian math. In other words, Ehrman doesn't have to know Bayes Theorem to know it's impossible that Jesus raised up from the dead. He's a historian. A good one. And he's absolutely correct. So why are some nonbelieveing scholars nitpicking him to death on this issue when he's right? Or, are we saying only philosophers of religion who have been trained in this Christian language game can properly reject the resurrection hypothesis? Surely we don't want to say that. Otherwise, let these philosophers reign too. ;-)

Since that initial comment I've been in a debate about Bayes for most of this month on Facebook. To set the record straight, I was initially wrong to say "it's technically true that every claim, no matter how bizarre, has a nonzero probability to it." More on that in a moment.

Dr. William Zingrone's New Book Is Awesome!

I met Professor Zingrone at Gateway to Reason a few weeks ago. He has a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology and teaches at Murray State University, KY. He's agreed to let me quote from pages 87-88 and 92-94 of his book, The Arrogance of Religious Thought: Information Kills Religion. It's from his 7th chapter on child indoctrination. Keep in mind this comes from a professor of Developmental Psychology!! I want my readers to see what an informed firebrand atheist sounds like. He is on fire. He's informed. He's passionate. And he takes no prisoners. He blogs at the site "we are done" Dispatches from the New Enlightenment.

Save the Children

Somebody has to tell them. We can’t keep quiet. Stridency is in order here. Tell the believers they have been hosed. They were sold a bill of goods as defenseless kids, and that's the only reason they uphold religious myths and negative judgments of out-groups. Why for example, is condemning others to eternal gruesome pain in some Omnipotent Prick’s never-ending medieval torture chamber politically correct? Why is it considered a normal facet of religion? Why is it allowed, unchecked, unchallenged? Why do we fill kid’s heads with these medieval fantasies? No more. All this from the religion of love: “God loves you, But, if you don’t believe what I believe, what we believe, or believe it in just the same way we do at our church… you will burn forever and deservedly so!” Religions convince kids this is real, normal, accepted. You wouldn’t buy it for a minute as an adult. That's why religions go for kids. It is reprehensible. What a crock. Nobody in a believer's immediate circle, even if they might think for a moment that condemning others is reprehensible as hell, (pun intended) dares to tell them, or even dares to think it for more than a moment.

But we non-believers can tell them, should tell them. Daily. Refute it. Constantly. Stridently. It is up to us. And we are telling everyone, and at unprecedented levels in the past decade since the beginning of the New Enlightenment. Never before has the skeptical freethinking non-believer community come out so strong, so vocal, so visible as in the past decade. But a generation ago, folks like Madalyn Murray O’Hair were doing it all on their own, ostracized, hated, and on the fringe. The vast majority of atheists were in the closet. You wouldn’t dare bring up atheism in mixed company, and if you did you were immediately associated with those dastardly commies: Chairman Mao, Khrushchev, Stalin and Lenin. Atheists were monsters that persecuted Xians and took away prayer and Bible reading in our schools. Now, non-belief and the critique of religion is mainstream and everywhere. We can now do more to reverse the damaging effects of child indoctrination on eternal damnation and all the other arrogant thoughts they have been conned into.

Once, while in downtown Chicago I got close to a kid in a street corner demonstration who was holding up a sign typical of Xian evangelists street preacher groups that said "Fornicators and Faggots Burn in Hell", or words to that effect, and patted him on the shoulder and nicely said “It’s all bullshit, pal.” I said it kindly. I was as nice to this late adolescent as I would be with any other human as they deserve respect, but I was not in the least bit respectful of the often cruel, religious ideas he was displaying, which deserve none. Somebody has to tell them. Every seed you plant can be another nagging twinge of cognitive dissonance. The religious aren’t stupid, merely hosed. And the hosing started when they were young: captive, vulnerable, trusting and unsuspecting.Religion just gets in the way. At best, it is a harmless diversion if kept to one’s self, but most often it is the prime if not only source of misogyny, homophobia, science denial, and division left in the modern world, at worst the world’s main source of xenophobia, dehumanization, and horrific violence toward women and non-believers. We don’t need this shit. Tell believers, at the risk of not being PC, tell them. They were coerced into it as unquestioning children or vulnerable adolescents. It is not their fault. You wouldn’t let your friends drive drunk, tell them not to try to run the world deluded by blind adherence to whatever brand of bullshit they were taught as children. Don't let your friends drive Xian or Muslim either.

Don't miss the rest below:

Making Deals with God…

So how’s that working out for you?

On the Facebook page that I maintain for my book—and for the promotion of atheism in general—Christians sometimes drop by, commonly to make angry comments. My own policy on Facebook, by the way, is that I never go onto Christian pages or sites to advocate atheism—ever. To me that smacks of bad manners…akin to me walking into a church on Sunday morning to argue with the preacher.

One comment that falls into the God’ll-getcha-for-that category was offered by a Stuart C. “So, let's see what the author does when he needs YHWH's intervention when he gets an aggressive cancer.” I suspect that even the most dim-witted believers can sense that Stuart is on thin ice here. We’ve all known devout Christians who have succumbed to cancers, despite prayer marathons to get YHWH to pay attention.

A New Argument from Evil

The problem of evil is well known: How can there be an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good god if there is evil? The kind of reply most theists give is also familiar to most: Evil is not incompatible with God provided there is some reason for allowing that evil – for instance, in order to prevent something even worse happening. It is only gratuitous evil – evil for which there is no moral justification – that would pose a problem. And most theists appear to be confident that one cannot show that gratuitous evil exists. No matter what example one brings up – whether it’s that of a disease, a war, some natural disaster, or what have you – they think there is some possible explanation as to why God might allow it.

I think it’s actually pretty easy to show that there is gratuitous evil, however.

Science Brought Us the 2017 Solar Eclipse Experience, and so much more!

About Those Gods Who Built the Canals on Mars…

…and their die-hard apologists—who look SO familiar 

 

On the evening of 30 October 1938, CBS Radio’s The Mercury Theatre, broadcast a dramatization H.G. Wells’s novel War of the Worlds. The program was presented in the form of news bulletins, and many listeners became terrified: It sounded, for all the world, like a Martian invasion was under way.

The Parameters of Bayes' Theorem, Part 1

First off, Thomas Bayes (1701–1761) had a stroke of brilliance in creating his theorem! This is how we wish everyone should think when evaluating claims, events and promises. In a way, one cannot help but be in awe of it. Nothing I say is to indicate otherwise. My only beef is how it's been misused in cases where it shouldn't be used. The formula is below. Notice that the prior probability of event "B" cannot be zero. That sets the major limitation for how Bayes is used. Anything that is given a zero prior probability is not the subject for Bayes' Theorem. Got it? To use it in cases where there is a zero probability is to use it incorrectly. That's the point, not that every claim has a nonzero prior probability to it.

In the following simplified video explaining Bayes' Theorem, take a close look at the 45 second mark.



The narrator says something like this:

"Let's say you know one student in a class of twenty has the flu. Then the prior probability that a student in that class named Sally has the flu, is 1/20. That is your prior probability." Notice you have some factual information, that is, one student in a class of twenty has the flu. This is significant. First comes data, then comes prior probabilities. Bayes is dealing with factual data from the beginning. Without it there is nothing to compute. Compute?

Quote of the Day On Using Bayes' Theorem, By Richard Miller

On Facebook Dr. Miller wrote this:

Unlike what has been foisted by Carrier, Ferguson et al in these threads, prior probability in evidentialist statistics is far more subjective and typically may require/include field expert determination and any number of other inputs beyond assessment of rationality and logical validity, quite the opposite of the "anything goes" mentally we've seen exhibited here in such tiresome fashion. This is particularly true where there exists a relative paucity of informative statistics to aide in establishing prior probability, e.g., with the resurrection tale.

Interesting here, John Loftus and I are the only ones here to have studied in seminary with William L. Craig and his camp. We recognize the apologistic tactic a mile away. They rhetorically have already won. They selected Bayes then gave their mythological proposition an non-zero prior probability. Everything after that is meaningless smoke and mirrors meant to distract the masses. They've already quietly succeeded. All they needed to do, according to their camp, is show that their fairytale world is possible. Done! They've tricked you into allowing this step to frame the debate entirely to their own essential success. A more careful look at Bayes, however, shows this step to be utterly false.

Are Christians Evil?

Orthodox Christianity holds that those who don’t “make the cut” end up suffering for all of eternity, and this has of course been the cause of much criticism of the religion. Something that is rarely considered, however, is what this doctrine says about Christians themselves. For the Christian must of course view the eternal suffering of sinners as justified. And yet, by the moral standards most of us accept, eternal punishment is never justified – much less for individuals who aren’t really evil. Perhaps some would consider that kind of suffering as appropriate punishment for Hitler or Ted Bundy. But what about all the average non-Christians who end up in hell – people like your neighborhood atheist or Hindu? An orthodox Christian must be in favor of eternal suffering for such individuals as well. If he were to witness their being thrown into hell fire on Judgement Day, he would have to find that perfectly proper and right. Does this mean orthodox Christians are evil?

Atheist Alliance of America's 25th Anniversary Convention Is At DragonCon

Come out if you can! It's September 1-4 in downtown Atlanta, GA! Here's the schedule.

Minoritized Biblical Scholarship as Christian Missiology and Imperialism

The Bible and Interpretation has published my essay on "Minoritized Biblical Scholarship as Christian Missiology and Imperialism"

ABSTRACT

Ethnic perspectives on the Bible and minoritized biblical scholarship are predominantly missiological and pastoral endeavors. The aim of these minoritized approaches is to retain or recruit ethnic “minorities” by persuading them that the Bible offers them some comfort or analogy to their experience that can be beneficial. Rather than being postcolonialist or anti-imperialist, these perspectives can be viewed as another version of Christian colonialism, bibliolatry, and imperialism.

Christianity: The One-True-Faith…One of Many

When skepticism languishes, apologetics flourishes

Imagine, if you will, a gigantic Religious Apologists Quilt, large enough to cover a football field, including the end zones. There are more than 6,000 squares—each a square yard—representing each of the religions of the world, past and present. For Christianity alone, because it has splintered endlessly, there aren’t enough squares on the entire field. Certainly, for example, the Baptist, Catholic, and Quaker brands cannot be the same religion. But let’s allot 500 squares to the quarrelsome Christians.

Quotes of the Day On Miracles Vs K. Winsmann

Kenneth Winsmann: “People who are determined to not believe in miracles will always find a way of convincing themselves of their illegitimacy.”

Wayne Thompson:

Take the identical wording of your comment above, and instead of “miracles” insert words like unicorns, leprechauns, elves, ghosts, angels, vampires, werewolves, witches, mermaids, etc. – anything really for which no credible evidence actually exists or ever has.
...
Personally, I think it is somewhat miraculous that the Catholic Church was able to cover up, and get away with, the sexual abuse of SO MANY altar boys over so many decades. I’m sure this wouldn’t meet the Church’s standards for defining something as a miracle, but it demonstrates to what extreme lengths they will go to protect the Church. Might they not be similarly disingenuous and extreme in their methods when trying to establish something as a true “miracle”?

Mattapult:

"He takes these poorly documented and often misdiagnosed stories as miracles, yet he demands indisputable scientific proof to debunk it."

Herald Newman:

If there is no methodology to asses these claims then you are doomed to remain agnostic on the topic forever. We can assess the claims and falsify them, but we cannot establish that the claim is actually true. Miracle claims can be investigated by science, and science can potentially show a natural cause to the event in question. What science cannot do is show a supernatural cause is behind the event. You have to rely on ignorance for that.

The last quote deserves some discussion on its own, by Rosa Rubicondior: "How can science address a claim that, by definition, violates the laws of nature, and so for which there can be no evidence."

An Investigation Into the Alleged Miracles at Lourdes, France

Professor Kenesi, who investigates alleged miracles of healing at Lourdes wrote about them. Here's one of the money quotes [Full Text below]:

Lourdes is famous for its miracles though despite the millions that go there, and the countless miracle claims, only 69 (up to the year 2015) have been declared officially to be sound examples of possible miracles. The miracle reports were more common in decades gone by. The reason for that is that improvements in medical science are refuting miraculous explanations. The miraculous is heading towards redundancy.

Quote of the Day by GearHeded

The real issue at hand is whether the Gospel narratives are mainly history or mythology. Krischins are fond of pointing out that "Teh Bible isn't a science text and should not be read as such!" The response should ALWAYS be: "Teh Bible isn't a HISTORY text and should not be read as such!"