How Do Civil Wars Start? Is America On the Verge of One? What Would It Look Like?

Anne Applebaum wrote the book, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. In the following interview she explains why some of her contemporaries have abandoned liberal democratic ideals in favor of strongman cults, nationalist movements, or one-party states. At the 10:43 mark onward she talks about former President Trump's lies and more. For an Authoritarian, lies are a test of party loyalty. Loyalty is everything. If you're willing to lie publicly, you're "on my team." Once you repeat the lie you can't go back to normalcy.



You should read her essay in The Atlantic, "A Warning From Europe: The Worst Is Yet to Come: Polarization. Conspiracy theories. Attacks on the free press. An obsession with loyalty. Recent events in the United States follow a pattern Europeans know all too well." LINK.

Now consider Barbara F. Walter. She is a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego. She has spent over three decades studying civil conflict. In her new book, How Civil Wars Start: and How to Stop Them, Walter examines the rise of violent extremism on a global scale and warns of the increasing likelihood of a second civil war breaking out in the United States. She answers my three questions in the title of this post in the following interview, which will be the best 33 minutes you spend on these questions.



Let's focus on my third question, which Walter answers as Q#6 elsewhere:

"The Supreme Court is laying the groundwork to pre-rig the 2024 election"

This is an opinion piece that argues how the Republican Right may steal the next Presidential election. It sounds about right, and it's scary. I hope to hell some key people help stop this train wreck upon our nation. Apparently we never settled the Civil War. This may be a prelude to it, which historians will label CWII. Keep in mind it took two wars to settle the problems sourrounding Germany. Southerners are angry. The good news is that doomsday scenarios don't always turn out as predicted. Sometimes they're worse though. LINK.

Christian Scandals Keep Coming, Oh My!

I don't usually point out major Christian scandals, since there are so many of them to report. Nonetheless, sadly, here are two more. People of faith lack the requisite skeptical thinking skills to spot and expose terrible people.

Ex-Students Reveal Abuse at ‘Christian Torture Compound’.

Former residents of Agapé Boarding School opened up...about claims of systematic abuse as they demand the state immediately shut down the Baptist facility. It's a climate more like Lord of the Flies, where staff were given free rein to restrain and beat students, and where some kids were emotionally and sexually abused. They claim Agapé has functioned like a “cult” and “Christian torture compound” for decades, allowing adults to manhandle teenagers and withhold food, water, and proper clothing—apparently without most parents ever knowing.

The World's Second Biggest Lie. "Trump’s big lie is that he won the 2020 presidential election, which he did not. The Vatican’s big lie, which it’s been spreading since World War II, is that Pope Pius XII did everything he could to stop the Holocaust, which he did not. He did nothing." Why are we not surprised, at all?

A Day God Overslept

There have been thousands of such days

One of the major chores of professional Christian apologists—and they’ve been at it for hundreds of years—is to explain why there is so much suffering and evil in our world when a good, caring god is supposedly in charge; indeed, these apologists maintain that their god pays very close attention to everything. Their menu of excuses includes variations on several themes: god punishes sinners—he has to get even, right? Or he allows bad things to happen as a way of testing us, or improving our characters. Also, we wouldn’t truly appreciate all the good that god does if we don’t sometimes experience hardships and suffering. We also hear, when really horrible things happen, that god moves in mysterious ways, and that, as humans, we can’t see the big picture: we can’t grasp his master plans for the world. These are all invitations for the laity to turn off their minds. The apologists are masters of gaslighting, as I mentioned in my article here last week on Dale O’Neal essay in the Loftus anthology, God and Horrendous Suffering.

 

But on occasion, the professional apologists are put to shame by ordinary church folks who respond to tragedy with practical wisdom: what they feel in their gut. An example of this happened in the wake of the school shooting in Dunblane, Scotland in March, 1996; a gunman killed 16 kids and their teacher. In the days following, many memorial flowers were placed outside the school. And there was a Teddy Bear, with a note attached that received national publicity: “13 March 1996: the day God overslept.”

On What Topic Should I Debate William Lane Craig?

I said I'm going to debate Craig in absentia. On which topic should I do so? See this for suggestions.

Here are three potential topics:
--Is There Evidence for the Christian God?
--Does Horrendous Suffering Disprove God?
--Is Faith in God Reasonable?

United States Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade, erasing constitutional right to abortion

This was expected but it's f*cked!

Christian Dependance on Gaslighting

Religious indoctrination in the scheme of evil

A popular song from the 1960s still resonates, What the World Needs Now Is Love Sweet Love.

How true, of course, given the history of human obsession with war and brutality. But also urgently needed is critical thinking. That is, there is so much ongoing damaged caused by belief in ancient superstitions—Christianity being the champion superstition, i.e., it has survived for two millennia. It created a perfect blend of superstitions, gleaned from the cults of the ancient world: (1) the idea that a god was going to send a savior/rescuer/messiah to save its chosen people; (2) after the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple, animal sacrifice to appease god for sins came to an end—and so Christianity resorted to the grim belief that a single human sacrifice would do the trick; (3) when this human sacrifice resurrected, this had major magical impact for those who believed in it, i.e., eternal life. What a formula—and people still believe it!

I'll be debating WLCraig in absentia!

Dr. William Lane Craig has decided not to debate me, not even if his proceeds went toward his favorite charity! So I will debate him in absentia. Stay tuned. I'm going to share my 30 minute debate opener soon.

Hitchens on Ridicule

I don’t ridicule people to their face, but ridicule is as Hitchens' says it is!

A Pop-Quiz for Christians, Number 3

Confusion and incoherence in Jesus theology

One of the handiest tools for showing that Christianity is wrong—that its theology is confused and incoherent—is the Bible itself. I have seen so much resistance among church-goers to reading the Bible, even casually (say, just one chapter a day), let alone studying it carefully, thoughtfully, critically. Is this hypocrisy, or just laziness? If the devout really, truly believed that the Bible is their god’s word—more than a thousand pages of his wisdom and guidance—why don’t they obsess about reading it? 

 

For many of us who have left Christianity, there is no mystery about this neglect. My constant appeal for years to my Christian acquaintances has been: please read the Bible. When my book was published last summer, Ten Things Christians Wish Hadn’t Taught, I gave copies to some of my devout—openly, aggressively devout—friends. What was the response? Silence. They didn’t want to think about it, and they certainly didn’t want to read the Jesus quotes that I discuss in detail in the book. They want to trust their priests and ministers, and draw comfort from the ceremonies and rituals, while Jesus in stained-glass gazes down on them. No thought required.

Introducing The Real God of The Bible: An Interview with Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou

Derek Lambert of the MythVision Podcast (who has a whopping 47.9K subscribers!) interviews Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou on the real god of the Bible. This is really good stuff. See what the world of the gods were like in the ancient world! They talk about her fantastic new book, God: An Anatomy, and the gods and goddesses of the world that came before!

The Comfort of Faith is Shattered by Suffering and Disaster

The prevalence of medieval thinking

It’s hard to unsee it once you’ve seen it: the severity of Christian theology. Here is the Jesus-script we find in Matthew 12:36-37:  ^“I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” That’s pretty brutal, and the theology behind it is terrifying: It’s totalitarian monotheism: a god is watching you at every moment of your life, and even keeps track of every careless word you utter. And no, John 3:16 (“God so loved the world”) does not modify this terrible threat. In fact, just two verses later, 3:18, we find this warning: “Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already…” The final verse of the chapter (36) drives home the point: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God’s wrath.” The apostle Paul was just as sure about this, as he explained in his Letter to the Romans, 2:5: “But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.” He too championed totalitarian monotheism: “…God through Christ Jesus judges the secret thoughts of all” (Romans 2:16).

Failed to Death: If God Refused to Intervene During the School Shooting, Then Why Should the Police? By Dr. Darren Slade

LINK.

This Week We Celebrate 300 Posts By Dr. David Madison!

Dr. Madison just reminded me of something important:

"My article posted today on the DCB represents a milestone. It is the 300th article I’ve written for the blog, and that’s not counting posts I’ve made about my book, or the 19 posts I did a while back in the series, 'Where was God when this happened?'-—which really weren’t articles."

Here is a photo of me taken today in Paris: I am toasting YOU for inviting me to write for the blog. Such a privilege it has been to write for this platform! Many, many thanks.

His first post was in September 2016. For my part, I'm the one privileged that he writes at DC. I cannot think of another better person to have writing here. We share the same passion. We try to get believers to "snap out of it" (as he would express it). We have studied our faith at the highest levels in different fields (me: philosophy/theology; him: biblical studies). We also share the same views on how to debunk Christianity, by going for the "knock-down punch" (as he would call it). We write to change minds. We write to convince. We are united in what we do and we complement each other nicely.

A TOAST: "May David live long and prosper in our shared goals to convince people of faith based on truth and grounded in solid evidence." Let him know below how he's helped you in your search for truth, and/or desire to convince others still in bondage to indoctrination and enculturation.

Gotta Love This Review of "God and Horrendous Suffering"!

Here is a highly complimentary review of God and Horrendous Suffering, by John Mark Hannon. See link to Instagram below. JMH adds:

Absolutely outstanding! You crushed it out of the park. Everyone that contributed is to be congratulated, I think that what y'all achieved in concert together should really make the god notion difficult to maintain for people of empathy.

About JMH:

My parents were evangelical missionaries in Austria. My dad was a reformed baptist, so a Calvinist to his core. That was the God I was taught to see in the bible and at the age of 20 I had a crisis of faith where I just couldn't get around the problem of evil as I called it at the time. I started by reading Craig and Plantinga, but I found their answers insufficient for me.

Through Craig's footnotes, I found out about a philosopher by the name of Nelson Pike. His argument kind of cinched it for me that we couldn't be responsible for sin if god was an omni god. From there I jumped to Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett, and then I found my way to you! The text of his review is below. Here is the LINK.

Isn’t the Good Book Supposed to Be the Best Book?

Too often we wonder, “Why do we need to know this?”

Mark Twain said that it wasn’t the things in the Bible he didn’t understand that bothered him: it was the things he did understand. He has not been alone. It’s hardly a surprise that careful reading of the Bible has driven so many people away from Christianity. “Oh, but the Bible is perfect in every way”—so say the extreme apologists, who claim that their scripture is inerrant. God’s reputation requires it be so. Of course there are devout folks who accept that the Bible has errors—and far too many examples of bad theology, although they might not say so out loud. God drowned all the people and animals on earth—except for Noah and his family—because he regretted making humans, and his fury exploded. God killed all the first-born of Egypt to try to change Pharaoh’s mind. In Jesus-script in the New Testament, upon the arrival of the Kingdom of God, with the Jesus as the new ruler, there will be as much suffering as at the time of Noah.

God Failed to Make the Case for Jesus

 There’s too much fake news and bad theology in the New Testament

There’s a fun song from the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operetta, The Pirates of Penzance, that always brings to mind the task of Christian apologists: “A Policeman’s Lot Is Not a Happy One.” How can apologists be happy about their lot, having to defend the faith—having to strain so hard—against increasingly heavy criticisms, against so much evidence that falsifies the faith? For centuries there has been the internal warfare, i.e., Catholic apologists have had to argue with Protestant apologists, explaining why their version of Christianity is the right one. Protestant apologists return the favor. Within Protestantism itself, there’s just as much struggle: Southern Baptist apologists must explain why their worship and piety are right—while the Episcopalians get so much wrong.

Additional Thoughts On Using Bayes' Theorem

No one should expect that a good argument is one that convinces reasonable people. What we should expect is that an argument is a good one, or a strong one, or very strong one, irrespective of whether it is a convincing one. Even though I know this, I still try to come up with arguments that are convincing to most reasonable people. I expect kickback from Christian believers. What can annoy me is kickback from other atheists and agnostics, especially if they don't let it go after a while, until they say nothing new I haven't considered before. BTW: A person can annoy me on one issue but be very informative, completely delightful and insightful on most everything else. That describes Ignorant Amos. In fact, the commenters here seem to be the best I've seen anywhere!

I have defended the use of Hitchens’ Razor over the use of Bayes’ Theorem (BT) when assessing miracles like a virgin birthed deity and the resurrection of Jesus. I have argued that BT cannot and should not be applied to claims which are nonsense, and that miraculous claims in the ancient Biblical past are all nonsense! They are all nonsense because there is absolutely no credible evidence for any of them. I have also argued that the goal of atheists should be to change minds, and that fewer minds are changed the more we respond with greater and greater sophistication. Doing so also legitimizes nonsense by giving believers undue credibility. I agree with philosopher Julian Baggini who said, "Converts are won at the more general level." [infidels.org/kiosk/article.] For responding to fundamentalist philosophy only encourages fundamentalist philosophers. On the general level even ridicule changes minds.

I don’t object to using BT when it’s applied appropriately to questions for which we have prior objective data to determine their initial likelihood, along with subsequent data to help us in our final probability calculations. It’s an excellent tool when these conditions obtain. So a new provocative question arises, one I didn't address: What is the best tool for assessing the possibility that a historical person existed behind the Jesus character in the Gospels?

A Former Theology Professor Who Turned Atheist Now Claims to be an Agnostic

I received an email from a retired theology professor friend of mine who had previously embraced atheism, but now claims to be an agnostic instead. I'll share his email below, along with my response. But I think this video by QualiaSoup does a good job on his concerns.



Here is his email and my response:

Which Type of Anthologies Are Best?

This Tweet is by The Non Alchemist:

Enjoying this so far. Covers a lot of ground, with essays for and against different positions. I prefer reading stuff like this where multiple perspectives are engaged and there is interaction.

This stands in contrast to all of my anthologies.

The Non Alchemist's point is an interesting one. Could that be why he hasn't yet recommended any of my anthologies? I don't know. But I think it's an interesting question nonetheless. Preference is subjective. Readers can have a preference for one type of book over another. I don't have a problem with that. Don't forget that a preference for something different is not a substantive criticism of my work.

I myself have a preference for truth in my anthologies, well-articulated, researched, and referenced truth. I don't think my opinion is subjective, but rather based on credible evidence, along with the abysmal lack of credible evidence from the Christian opposition. I have defended my opinion in 12 critically acclaimed anthologies.

But people do disagree, so let's set that all aside.

Review of "God and and Horrendous Suffering"

 

Congratulations go out to all the authors in my anthology "God and Horrendous Suffering"!! That book is going to be a classic thanks to us all. 

I share reviews like this one to the left, because atheist books don't usually get that much promotion from publishers (GCRR is an exception). Please consider promoting it if you think it's a good anthology, like I do. 

 

Read more about it here, then get it.

For an introduction to the book, see this (Offsite).

Maybe the Apostle Paul Could Talk You Out of Christianity

So much that he wrote is just plain wrong

How astounding is this: one of the founding heroes of the Christian faith wrote letters—he was obsessive about it—and we still have those letters today. Actually, the originals were lost, so we have copies of copies of copies, many generations of copies removed from the originals. Which means that quite a few errors crept into the text—some words also got left out by mistake—but it’s still quite something that we have what we do. For anyone who is genuinely curious about what Christian thought was like, right at the beginning, these letters are a treasure, preserved in the New Testament. It is a curiosity that Jesus himself didn’t think of writing letters, to codify his insights about God. After all, he was part of God himself, the divine trinity. If not letters, why not treatises? Just preaching words that evaporated into the air as he wandered Palestine seems so inadequate. Moreover, the Jesus-script that we have in the gospels probably was invented by their authors, writing decades later: there’s no way to verify any of the words attributed to Jesus. But, hey, the gospel writers had firmly held theological ideas about Jesus. So they’re worth reading, right?

Phil Bair On Atheism, Miracles, and Extraordinary Evidence

No intellectual should expect that a good argument is one that convinces reasonable people. What we should expect is that an argument is a good one, or a strong one, or very strong one, irrespective of whether it is a convincing one. Even though I know this, I still try to come up with arguments that are convincing to most reasonable people. I expect kickback from Christian believers. What can annoy me is kickback from other atheists and agnostics, especially if they don't let it go after a while, until they say nothing new I haven't considered before. More on that in another post.

This post will concern Phil Bair, a good guy who engages me on Facebook from time to time. He's spent 40 years by his count, studying these issues. He even wrote a book. His target is atheism.

Christianity in the Light of Science: Critically Examining the World's Largest Religion

This is one of my favorite anthologies! People who say I repeat the same old arguments have not read my works!

In this indispensable volume, John Loftus and his colleagues demonstrate all the different ways in which science undermines and threatens religious belief. The only way you can rescue God from this book is if you force him to retreat so far that you might as well stop believing in him. I defy you to read this volume and still believe that religion and science shall ever meet. John Loftus will never receive the Templeton Prize, but he should. This collection alone will further our understanding of science and religion more than all the previous winners combined.

—Dr. Maarten Boudry, philosopher, Ghent University. --LINK.

Just Released: "A Statistical Critique of the Minimal Facts Apologetics of Gary Habermas and Michael Licona." -- Written by Michael J. Alter and Darren M. Slade

SHERM Journal just released a publication whose full correct title is, "Dataset Analysis of English Texts Written on the Topic of Jesus’ Resurrection: A Statistical Critique of Minimal Facts Apologetics." It was co-authored by Michael J. Alter, and Darren M. Slade. In a nutshell, the article disproves (for the first time using actual data) the common apologetic assertion that 90% of "critical scholars" accept the historicity of certain minimal facts about Jesus. Abstract:

This article collects and examines data relating to the authors of English-language texts written and published during the past 500 years on the subject of Jesus’ resurrection and then compares this data to Gary R. Habermas’ 2005 and 2012 publication on the subject. To date, there has been no such inquiry. This present article identifies 735 texts spanning five centuries (from approximately 1500 to 2020). The data reveals 680 Pro-Resurrection books by 601 authors (204 by ministers, 146 by priests, 249 by people associated with seminaries, 70 by laypersons, and 22 by women). This article also reveals that a remarkably high proportion of the English-language books written about Jesus’ resurrection were by members of the clergy or people linked to seminaries, which means any so-called scholarly consensus on the subject of Jesus’ resurrection is wildly inflated due to a biased sample of authors who have a professional and personal interest in the subject matter. Pro-Resurrection authors outnumber Contra-Resurrection authors by a factor of about twelve-to-one. In contrast, the 55 Contra-Resurrection books, representing 7.48% of the total 735 books, were by 42 authors (28 having no relevant degrees at the time of publication). The 42 contra authors represent only 6.99% of all authors writing on the subject.

The leading defenders of the minimal facts approach are Gary Habermas and Michael Licona. One of the authors of this Sherm Journal Article is Dr. Darren M. Slade. He studied under Habermas at the doctoral level, and took many classes with him. He even debated him. You can find the article's webpage Right here. Below is an excerpt from the article's conclusion.