“He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” Is Fantasy Theobabble

It’s the religious version of “Always look on the bright side of life”

Once god-is-good, god-is-great has been locked into religious human brains, it can be difficult to grasp the world as it actually is: that is, so much suffering and pain are overlooked or minimized. When the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed 225,000 people, a Muslim cleric knew that his god was upholding moral standards: he claimed that European tourists wearing bikinis had prompted his deity to exact revenge. How does this square with the boast that “He’s got the whole world in his hands”? –which is meant to be an affirmation of god’s love. Well, it doesn’t, of course. In recent days we have seen horrendous devastation caused by the powerful earthquake that hit Thailand and Burma. The level of human suffering is staggering. The death toll will be in the thousands, and reconstruction will take years. Was god getting even for something here? No doubt clerics will try to put the best possible spin on this tragedy, to get their god off the hook.

An Interesting Documentary on Northern-Irish Monarchism

R. C. Sproul (1939–2017) is a Presbyterian Philosopher whom I like to listen to.

He mentions the German word for: Enlightenment, which is: ‘Aufklärung’. I love this German word! It means, etymologically: ‘on-clearing’!

It is as though Christianity were a great confusion and befuddlement—which it is!—and then the Enlightenment came along, and some clarity returned to Western thinking.

I also like the word: ‘deconversion’. Eymologically, a ‘conversion’ is an ‘intense twisting’ or an ‘intense turning’. A deconversion is a reversal of this process. Christianity twisted your wits. Now, thanks to your deconversion, your wits have been untwisted.

Sproul talks about Montesquieu’s (1689–1755) ideas about monarchy. Monarchy requires honour. Queen Elizabeth II had honour. Does King Charles III have the same level of honour, though, as that possessed by Elizabeth II?

The Queen and Us is a BBC Not documentary from 1997concerning monarchism in Northern Ireland.

The Reverend Ian Paisley (1926–2014) has misgivings about Charles’s divorce and upcoming remarriage to a divorcée, Camilla Parker Bowles.

The Orange Order—a Protestant fraternity— doesn’t like the idea that Bowles is married to a Catholic. They don't like the idea of a divorced-and-remarried monarch on the throne of England. Robert Saulters, who was the Grand Master of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, from (1996–2010), wanted the crown to pass to William.

But, here is the thing: William is rumored to be a crypto-atheist!

And so, from a Protestant point of view, the British monarchs are only getting worse. Elizabeth was a true believer in Christianity. Charles seems to believe in some sort of generic deistic god, and William, it seems, doesn’t believe in God, at all!

At present, England and Scotland are Protestant theocracies. Both have established Protestant Churches. The most senior English Anglican Bishops sit in the House of Lords, and are termed ‘The Lords Spiritual’. As a secularist, I favour disestablishment.

Disestablishment is a Presbyterian idea. In Presbyterianism, there is the idea of the Church giving a ‘prophetic critique’ of the government. The Church can only prophetically critique the State if Church and State remain separate.

Whereas the King is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, he is merely a member of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The King becomes a Presbyterian, when north of the border. Down south he finds himself an Anglican, again.

John Knox (c. 1514–1572) could not have thundered against Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587) if he was ultimately employed by Queen Mary. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

Secularism is not State Atheism. I would be equally opposed to State Atheism as I currently am opposed to theocracy and established churches.

I recommend Bruce Gore’s, an American Presbyterian’s, lecture series on the Presbyterian Roots of the American Revolution.

In the below documentary, The Queen and Us (1997), there is a Presbyterian minister, Reverend David Mongomery, who also calls for the disestablishment of the Churches of Scotland and England. I like Presbyterians. They are natural freethinkers. Indeed, the problem seems to be in Ireland that too many Presbyterians are freely thinking their way out of Christianity altogether. A couple of weeks ago, I attended an Ulster-Scots—what Americans would term: ‘Scots Irish’—heritage night in an old derelict Presbyterian Meeting House that was slowly being renovated. Both of the Presbyterian ministers, present, spoke of decline in the Irish Presbyterian Church. There are some counties in Ireland without a Presbyterian Congregation at all. Cork, a massive county, both in terms of area and population, only has two Presbyterian congregations left. However, becoming a non-theist does not actually necessitate giving up Presbyterianism altogether, as there is a Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church in Ireland that is affiliated with the Unitarian Universalists. In Ireland, it is possible to be both a Non Theist and a Presbyterian, and, in my estimation, if Presbyterianism has a future in Ireland, then surely this is it.

Figure 1: The pulpit from Cahan’s Presbyterian Meeting house that I attended for an Ulster Scots’ heritage night.

Video 1: An interesting series of talks concerning Presbyterian and the American Revolution.

Prince William’s Doubt: It’s Normal—It’s Impossible to Be Certain Whether There Is a God

Video 2: An interesting talk by R.C. Sproul concerning the Enlightenment.

Video 3: An interesting documentary produced by BBC Northern Ireland on Northern-Irish monarchism.

Ciarán Aodh Mac Ardghail (Ciarán Mc Ardle) is a digital creator from Ireland. Here is his linktree. Here is his YouTube Channel. Here is his LinkedIn. Here is his Instagram.

Precise Reasons Why Prayer Is a Fantasy Exercise

No matter how much the devout want it to be real 

It is not commonly grasped that Christianity is soundly falsified by a few verses in Acts 1 that describe Jesus’ ascension to heaven:
 
“…as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’”  (vv. 9-11)
 

Based on our knowledge of the Cosmos—in stark contrast to what the Bible authors believed—we know that this cannot possibly have happened. Above the earth’s atmosphere, there is the cold, radiation-
filled void that we know as outer space. The Bible authors had no clue that earth was one planet among many that orbit our sun. The blunt truth is that Jesus disappearing this way from the earth is a cover-up: the New Testament lies about what happened to Jesus at the end. His resurrected body cannot have escaped the planet, so either he’s still

walking around—or he died again. We are entitled to ask what happened to Lazarus: how long was it before he died again? (See John 11) And what happened to all the dead people in their tombs who came alive at moment Jesus died on the cross—then toured Jerusalem on Eastern morning? (see Matthew 27:51-52) Did they just head back to their tombs, to resume being dead?

Here's An Earlier Paper On the Evil God Challenge

It was published by Steven M. Cahn, “Cacodaemony,” in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, ed. Steven M. Cahn and David Shatz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 20–24. This paper was previously published in 1977. Cahn shares the parallels between an omnibenevolent God and an omnimalevolent Demon. Then he compares John Hick's "Soul Making" theodicy with a "Soul Breaking" theodicy. I couldn't find the text but here is a reading of it. I found it better to turn off the sound and read it myself, but see for yourselves.

An Enlightening Conversation between Richard Carrier PhD and Godless Granny

This is an extremely enlightening conversation that occurred on a livestream between Richard Carrier and Godless Granny.  “The Historical Jesus” has been ‘quest[ed]’ for—to borrow an expression from Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965)—since the days of Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768). This quest hasn’t turned up much… if indeed anything! I think that it is high time that we call this failed quest off, as it is beginning to appear as futile as a wild goose chase.

Richard Carrier explains that the documentary evidence that we would expect—were Reimarus’s historical Jesus a reality—really isn’t there. Carrier goes on to hint that perhaps certain documents from the ancient past were either doctored or destroyed, because the lack of Jesus’s being mentioned in these same documents could not easily have been explained. Documents that most likely would have mentioned a historical Jesus—if such a personage actually existed—have, quite conveniently, not come down to us. Documents that would have mentioned a historical Jesus, if such a person actually existed, are, extremely conveniently, no longer extant.

To reiterate: I personally am not a Mythicist. However, paradoxically, I do not believe that much—if indeed anything—can be known historically about the Jesus character presented to us in the New Testament. My position is a tad paradoxical: a historical Jesus, in all likelihood, existed, however we are unable to know much, if anything, about him historically. To me there is enough that we can distill from the fictional writings of the New Testament such that a historical Jesus becomes more likely than not… however, from these same fictional writings we are not able to distill any history concerning the doings of this same Jesus character.

Ciarán Aodh Mac Ardghail (Ciarán Mc Ardle) is a digital creator from Ireland. Here is his linktree. Here is his YouTube Channel. Here is his LinkedIn. Here is his Instagram.

An Atheist Grief Observed by Tim Callahan

Tim Callahan looks at C.S. Lewis's grief and his own. Skeptic religion editor Tim Callahan reflects on the loss of his home in the Altadena fires and the subsequent suicidal death of his daughter. LINK.

A Mixture of Magic Folklore, Superstition, and Cult Expectations

An honest sermon about the gospel of Mark: Chapter 3

Helping parishioners understand this chapter must be a real challenge for the clergy—especially those parishioners who have a grasp of how the world functions, and thus have little patience with ancient superstitions. The clergy are—more or less—obligated to promote the belief that the gospels were divinely inspired, despite the obvious evidence that this cannot possibly be true. There are just too many flaws and contradictions in the gospels. 
 
Thus a basic rule for reading the gospels, with any intent of truly understanding what’s going on with these documents, is this: admit that their authors were promoting the cult of their holy hero, Jesus. Championing Jesus theology was their goal, and there is little evidence that they knew what it meant to write history. Over and over again, contemporary readers must ask: how did the gospel author know this or that event actually happened? How did he know this or that Jesus-script was authentic? They fail as historians because they never cite their sources. This is alarmingly obvious because Matthew and Luke copied most of Mark’s gospel without admitting they’d done so. It was plagiarism off the charts.

The Evil God Challenge, Part One: Introduction

John W. Loftus asked me to write about Steven Law’s Evil God challenge (Wikipedia link). The topic turns out to be rather large, and it ramifies into several related topics that should be familiar to readers of this blog.

The Evil God challenge spawned a sizable literature, with articles that expand on it, and articles from theists that attempt to rebut it or nullify it. To keep the subject manageable, I’ll split my coverage across several articles. This article introduces the subject and provides references and a video.

• Wikipedia articles:
  • Steven Law
  • Evil God challenge (Wikipedia link)
• Steven Law’s blog pages:
  • The Evil God Challenge, February 12, 2010, announcing his original paper:
    • Law, Stephen. “The evil-god challenge.” Religious Studies 46, no. 3 (2010): 353-373.
    • PDF link to the paper
  • God, Evil, and Theodicies - Evil God and Mirror Theodicies, January 10, 2016
• Scholarly links:
  • The Evil God Challenge, Google Scholar entries
  • The Evil God Challenge, Google Scholar search result (original paper plus responses)
• And on Debuking Christianity:
  • What is the Likelihood That a Trickster or Evil God Exists?, 1/22/2010

Now that AI is here, check out my brief chat with Google Gemini on the Evil God challenge. Here is Gemini’s initial response:

Steven Law’s “Evil God challenge” is a philosophical thought experiment that questions the traditional concept of an all-good, all-powerful God. Here’s a summary of its core ideas:

• The Challenge:
  • Law presents the challenge of explaining why believing in an all-good God is more reasonable than believing in an all-evil God.
  • He argues that many arguments for God’s existence don’t inherently prove God’s goodness, and could equally support the existence of an evil deity.
• The Symmetry Thesis:
  • A key component is the “symmetry thesis,” which suggests that if the existence of good in the world is used to argue against an all-evil God, then the existence of evil should similarly argue against an all-good God.
  • Essentially, he questions why the “problem of evil” is considered a strong argument against a good God, but the “problem of good” isn’t considered an equally strong argument against an evil God.
• The Goal:
  • The challenge aims to provoke deeper consideration of the attributes ascribed to God, and to examine the logical consistency of theistic arguments.
  • It also forces examination of why we define good and evil in the way that we do.
• Responses:
  • There have been many responses to Laws challenge, including arguments that good is a positive reality, and evil is a privation of good, therefore not symmetrical. Also there are arguments that an all evil god, would not allow any good to exist.

In essence, Law’s challenge forces us to consider why we prioritize belief in a good God over an evil one, and to scrutinize the reasoning behind our theological assumptions.

Gemini’s summary is pretty good, but could do better at framing the Evil God challenge as a tool for showing how weak the standard theodicies are. (A theodicy is an attempt by a Christian apologist to solve the Problem of Evil, i.e. to explain how there can be so much evil in a world supposedly created by an omni-God.) Steven Law says that for many of the standard Christian responses to the Problem of Evil, there is a “mirror theodicy” that equally well (or poorly) tries to explain how there can be so much good in a world created by an omni-malevolent God. If the theist views the theodicy as a valid justification for the omni-God, why then isn’t the mirror theodicy an equally valid justification for the Evil God?

Alert readers will recognize similarities to parody religions and Street Epistemology, topics I’ll address in following articles. To very briefly summarize, both of those things aim to stimulate critical reflection by showing a person how the arguments they give to support their own religious claims work equally well, mutatis mutandis, to support a wide variety of other claims, such as the claims of other religions, or of parody religions.

This notion of analyzing the form of an argument, and plugging different terms into it, to see if the argument form still seems to work, is central to critical thinking. Around 2400 years ago, Ancient Greek thinkers began to analyze arguments this way. Presumably people had been making arguments for as long as they had language (which might have been for as long as people had anatomically modern vocal organs). Critical thinking began when people realized that arguments aren’t just things you assert when you want to make some specific point, but things that have forms you can analyze. The Evil God challenge is a clever case study in this kind of critical thinking.

Here’s a video to finish off this short introduction to the Evil God Challenge. Enjoy!

Critical Thinking: the Weakest Skill in the Christian Toolkit

Hardly a surprise, since the clergy urge, “Just take it on faith”

Quite a few years ago I knew a devout Catholic woman who bragged that she never read books—not even in college. She managed to get passing grades by taking careful notes in class. Nor did she have any interest in discussing religion, because she didn’t want to risk damaging here faith. Her primary goal in being deeply Catholic was to be able to see her mother again in heaven. She represents a case of extreme piety, but I have met other devout Christians who decline to engage with me on religious issues; they are determined to hold tight to their beliefs, reluctant to weaken them in any way. I suspect they’ve experienced too many moments of scary doubt.

Everything You Need to Know About Prayer

But May Not Want to Admit

I am pleased to announce that my new book on prayer is now available on Amazon, both paperback and Kindle. My collaborator on this work was my publisher at Insighting Growth Publications, Tim Sledge, whose many books are listed on his Amazon page. 

 

My first book, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief, was published in 2016, but I transferred the manuscript to Tim when my original publisher gave up the business. Tim suggested dividing the book into several easily accessible volumes, which we are now in the process of doing. This book on prayer is the third volume in the new series. 

 

Volume 1: Guessing About God

Volume 2: Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught

 

I hope readers will find my careful analysis of prayer helpful. 

 

 

 

David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University.

Visit My Page at The Secular Web!

You should already know of my 13 critically acclaimed books as I described them here. Avid readers will pardon me for reminding others of my page at The Secular Web. I've published on some key issues there. They cover the major faith responses to those of us who value reason and science. My next paper will probably be something to do with an atheist morality without a God, gods, or goddesses. In no particular order:

Is Atheism a Religious Faith? A Definitive Answer:

What is faith, atheism, and agnosticism? How should these words be understood? Why is this debate important? Who is right, and why does it matter? In this essay John Loftus tackles these issues, offering insights that are sure to enlighten us all.

Hail Mary: Was Virgin Mary Truly the Mother of God’s Son?:

In this essay John Loftus explores the most important questions regarding the belief that the 'Virgin Mary' truly was the mother of God's son. In short, he argues that no virgin ever gave birth to a son of God, citing sources for those who want an even longer argument. The argument begins by exploring a noteworthy Christian sect that questions whether, in fact, Mary was indeed a virgin, and whether God had a body through which conception could be achieved. The questions and issues that he goes on to explore should challenge what Christians believe about God, Mary, the Gospels, and their entire faith.

With So Many Flat Tires, How Does Christianity Keep On Going?

Apologists specialize in claiming the tires aren’t flat at all

I can think of at least six Christian tires that have been totally, permanently destroyed. They will be flat forever.  
 
(1)  God is good, loving, and all powerful. Horrendous human and animal suffering—ongoing for millennia—provide abundant evidence that this claim is feeble, indeed ridiculous.
 
(2)  The resurrection of Jesus, that is, god raised Jesus from the dead, thereby rescuing humans—those who believe in it—from eternal punishment. Yet the accounts of Easter morning in the gospels are contradictory and confusing. There are no reports of anyone actually seeing the resurrection happen.
 
(3)  We can be guided and inspired by the god portrayed in the Bible. Anyone who has read the Bible cover-to-cover can see that his claim is baseless. The god described in both the Old and New Testaments is cruel, bad-tempered, vindictive. Apologists deflect attention from this painful truth by quoting feel-good texts…and most churchgoers are none the wiser.

Bernie Sanders Offered An Exceptional Response to Trump's Congressional Address!

Actual Pain vs. Remembered Pain - A Crucial Difference for the Problem of Evil

You might wonder what this article has to do with zebras. Spoiler: they teach us how pain is not necessary for soul building, even if we allow for the baseless metaphysical projection of souls from the merely physical psychology of learning. Unlike Bruce Springsteen, Zebras are literally born to run.

In his blog post entitled My Paper on Morality without God is finished of March 1, 2025, John W. Loftus mentions his visit to Notre Dame University to meet James Sterba. A photo accompanying his post shows a reprint of Sterba’s article An Ethics without God That Is Compatible with Darwinian Evolution (Religions 2024, 15(7), 781; doi.org/10.3390/rel15070781). Religions is an Open Access journal, so Sterba’s paper is free to read online. (Read it now! I’ll wait.) The paper overlaps considerably with Sterba’s recent book:

Could a Good God Permit So Much Suffering?: A Debate by James Sterba, Richard Swinburne, OUP Oxford | 2024 | ISBN: 9780192664693, 0192664697 | Page count: 160.

Publisher’s blurb:

My Paper on Morality without God is finished.

It's finished, and I'm ready to send my response to Dr. James Sterba's essay on an ethics without God. He had invited me to write a response. It's ready to go. I also visited him at Notre Dame University and enjoyed the tour and our conversations. He's a great guy! pics below:

Christianity and Morality Don’t Work Very Well Together

David Eller, PhD explains why

In earlier articles I’ve mentioned this confession by a devout elderly Catholic—she told it to me herself—but it’s always worth repeating: “Our priests told us never to think about what we had learned in catechism.”  It came to mind when I saw a meme on Facebook this week: 
 
“Want to join me in church next Sunday?”
“Sorry, I’m an atheist. I can’t pretend to have faith in such a misogynistic, homophobic, fear-inducing system.” 
“I don’t want to think about that.”
“That’s why it works.”
 
There is a major disinclination on the part of devout churchgoers to think about the current state of Christianity, the immoral behavior of the church over so many centuries, and the logical fallacies preached from the pulpit.

Another Chapter by Dr. David Eller: "Christianity Does Not Provide the Basis for Morality"

This is his Chapter 13 from my anthology "The Christian Delusion." Enjoy.

Christianity Does Not Provide the Basis for Morality by Dr. David Eller.

            Imagine someone said to you that English provided the only basis for grammar.  After you overcame your shock, you would respond that English is certainly not the only language with a grammar. You would add that grammar is not limited to language: understood broadly as rules for combination and transformation, many phenomena have a grammar, from sports to baking. Nor is grammar the sole or essential component of language: language also includes sound systems, vocabularies, genres, and styles of speech. And you would remind the speaker that grammar does not depend on human language at all: some nonhuman species, including chimps and parrots, can produce grammatical—that is, orderly and rule-conforming—short sentences. Ultimately, you would want to explain that English does not “provide a basis” for grammar at all but rather represents one particular instance of grammar. English grammar is definitely not the only grammar in the world and even more definitely not the “real” grammar.

            The person who utters a statement like “English provides the only basis for grammar” either understands very little about English (and language in general) or grammar, or the person is expressing his or her partisanship about language (i.e., pro-English)—or, more likely, the speaker is doing both. Thus, the person who utters a statement like “Christianity provides the only basis for morality” either understands very little about Christianity (or religion in general) or morality, or the person is expressing his or her partisanship about religion (i.e., pro-Christianity)—or, more likely, the speaker is doing both. But, as a savvy responder, you would answer that Christianity is certainly not the only religion with morality. You would add that morality is not limited to religion: understood broadly as standards for behavior, many phenomena have a morality, from philosophy to business. Nor is morality the sole or essential component of religion: religion also includes myths, rituals, roles, and institutions of behavior. And you would remind the speaker that morality does not depend on human religion at all: some nonhuman species demonstrate moral—that is, orderly and standard-conforming—behavior. Ultimately, you would want to explain that Christianity does not “provide a basis” for morality at all but rather represents one particular instance of morality.  Christian morality is definitely not the only morality in the world and even more definitely not the “real” morality.

A Tiresome Blend of Cult Bragging and Bad Theology

An honest sermon about the gospel of Mark: Chapter 2

Mark 2:1-12 provides a good case study of several things that are wrong with the Bible, despite the fact that the event depicted here ranks as a favorite tale about Jesus. In fact, I fondly remember this story when I heard it as a kid in Sunday school. Jesus is teaching in a house packed with people—so crowded at the door that four fellows carrying a paralyzed man on a stretcher couldn’t get in. They had to make a hole in the roof, so that they could lower the guy in front to Jesus.

“Faith in God or Gods Is Unjustified, Harmful, and Dangerous”

And calling atheism a faith is lame

This meme popped up on my Facebook feed recently: “When a man creates a god, he can tell you all about him, what he likes and dislikes. That’s how imagination-gods work.” This describes a practice that has gone on for millennia: Humans have indulged in creating, imagining, and describing gods in detail—many thousands of them. The writers of the Bible were committed to this practice, but they disagreed far too much about Bible-god. Hence clergy, theologians and apologists have devoted so much time and energy to diverting attention from the contradictions, making excuses for them, and minimizing the bad consequences. All in the interest of keeping their particular versions of Christianity intact.

David Eller On Morality and Religion

Once again cultural anthropologist Dr. David Eller has granted us access to a large amount of text, from his excellent book, Atheism Advanced: Further Thoughts of a Freethinker, pp. 365-390. If you want to learn about morality this is very good, as is the whole chapter 10, "Of Myths and Morals: Religion, Stories, and the Practice of Living."

 On Morality and Religion by David Eller.

            There is no doubt much more stress in Western/Christian cultures on morality than on myth.  Again, Christians would insist that they do not have “myth” but that they definitely have morality, or even that their religion is morality above all else.  Atheists, often taking their lead from Christianity and literally “speaking Christian,” tend to allow themselves to be swept along with Christian thinking on this subject.  Atheists do not much trouble ourselves with myths (for us, all myths are false by definition, since myths refer to supernatural/religious beings and we reject the very notion of such being).  But we trouble ourselves very much with morality, down to trying to prove that we “have morality too” or that we can “be good without god(s).”

            Given the amount of time and energy that Christians and atheists alike—and not just them but philosophers, politicians, lawyers, and social scientists—have devoted to the problem of morality, it is remarkable that so little progress has been made.  As the famous early 20^th-century moral philosopher G. E. Moore wrote almost one hundred years ago, morality or ethics “is a subject about which there has been and still is an immense amount of difference of opinion….  Actions which some philosophers hold to be generally wrong, others hold to be generally right, and occurrences which some hold to be evils, others hold to be goods” (1963: 7).  Surely any topic that has resisted progress and agreement for so long must be being approached in the wrong way.

What Is Evidence?

What counts as evidence?

In my previous blog post, Rapoport’s Rules Meet the Outsider Test, I mentioned the dispute over what counts as evidence:

When discussing religion with persons of faith, try to be aware of their tactic of framing the argument in terms of positive arguments for their particular faith, rather than in terms of negative arguments against all competing faiths. This was on display in the four-way debate video that John W. Loftus posted about the Virgin Birth. John’s Orthodox Christian interlocutors demanded that John clearly define what he would consider to be sufficient evidence for their religious claims. But they did not mention that they must think that no competing religion has met the same standard of evidence for them. So they must know what “evidence” is, well enough to conclude that no other religion has it. Perhaps they have just never thought this through before.

In this blog post I’ll dig deeper into this dispute about evidence. I include my own manual transcriptions of the dialogue from the video with time markers, but transcribing is hard so refer back to the video for each’s speakers statements in his own words.

Solid teaching, solid truth

I’ll start with a sort of mission statement from the senior opponent to John in the video:

12:26 Fr. Jonathan Ivanoff:

“And right now I’m just very very interested in bringing the knowledge of that [Orthodox] faith to a public that is hungry and thirsty for solid teaching, solid truth.”

This statement about audience demand sounds plausible enough. It stands to reason that if Fr. Ivanoff has a job, he must have found an audience that likes what he has to say. Good for him. A man’s gotta eat. But I have some questions about what he means by “solid teaching, solid truth.” Those are rather bold claims. Presumably Fr. Ivanoff is aware that there are other audiences who are equally hungry for other “solid” teachings, other “truths.” For example, Fr. Ivanoff seems to hail from the Orthodox side of the Great Schism of 1054. The folks on the other side, for the past 950+ years, are Roman Catholics (and by extension, the Protestants who later schismed off from them like so many proliferating species). I’m pretty sure the current Pope would say he has “solid teaching, solid truth” as well. Yet these two equally solid teachings have been in conflict for fully half of the Christian era. Thus I think it’s fair to ask (a) whether Fr. Ivanoff views his own teaching as more “solid” and “truthful” than the Pope’s teachings (I’m guessing he does!), and (b) how he knows this.

I’d also like to know how comfortable Fr. Ivanoff feels about worshipping in a Roman Catholic Church.

Is Atheism a Religious Faith? A Definitive Answer!

A new essay of mine just dropped at the Secular Web. See what you think! Is Atheism a Religious Faith? A Definitive Answer!

Honest Sermons about the Gospel of Mark: Chapter 1

The clergy know that honesty about the Bible is risky

I was a preacher for nine years, so I do know a thing or two about sermons. And from my perspective now, I will offer my opinion on how honest sermons differ from those intended to keep the folks in the pews believing that Jesus was everything the church has claimed he was. An honest sermon requires that listeners be genuinely curious, and allow themselves to think critically. Preachers, who earn their livings promoting the faith, would prefer that their parishioners trust and accept their interpretations. Please don’t ask questions!

David Eller On Freeing Ourselves (and Others) From Misunderstandings of Atheism

David Eller, as many of you know, is pretty much my favorite scholar/author at this point, next to just a very limited number of others. As a friend he's allowing me to publish the very best, next to none chapter, on what the words atheist and agnosticism mean. It comes from his most recent book, Liberatheism: On Freedom from God(s) [GCRR, 2024], one that I was honored to write the Forword. Enjoy!

Freeing Ourselves (and Others)

From Misunderstandings of Atheism

“I

do not believe in God and I am not an atheist,” Albert Camus wrote in his Notebooks 1951–1959.[1] What are we to make of that statement? Perhaps Camus was being wry and cryptic, as French philosophers are often wont to be. Maybe “atheist” meant something different to him or to 1950s-era France. Alternatively, it might have been too dangerous to avow atheism in that time and place. Or maybe he was just confused about the word.

If the latter is the case, then Camus would not be the first or the last to labor under misconceptions about atheism. Of course, theists are highly likely—and highly motivated—to get atheism wrong. Since they are not atheists and possibly have never spoken to one (at least not intentionally and civilly), they really do not know what we think; they can only see us through their own theistic eyes and assume that we are the reverse image, or, more perversely, some odd variation, of their own theism. Then, as sworn and mortal enemies of atheism, they are driven to portray us in the most unflattering light, to construct a ridiculous straw man that they can summarily caricature and assassinate. We need not take their (mis)characterizations of us seriously, except as a public relations problem.

What about atheists themselves? Surely they are accurately portraying their position. Surprisingly and distressingly, too many professional atheist writers and speakers commit a regular set of errors in describing the nature of atheism. This is a tremendously damaging tendency, for two reasons. First, we mislead current and future atheists, who are misinformed by the incautious pronouncements of prominent atheists. Second, we empower theists and other critics of atheism who use our words against us: “See, even atheists say that atheism is X, so we are justified in our criticism and condemnation of the idea.”

In this chapter, we will expose and free ourselves from recurring and systematic mistakes in the atheist literature. We will not repeat or critique “arguments for atheism,” which have been sufficiently covered, including by me[2] and are largely cogent and decisive; all but the most hard-headed theists and religious apologists (who still exist) concede that “the case for god(s)” is weak at best and lost at worst. Nor will we linger on the New Atheists, who have been thoroughly examined many times before, including in the previous chapter where we noted their unexpected and unfortunate turn toward reactionary social and political attitudes—ironically simultaneously debunking one of the pillars of Western civilization (i.e. Christianity) and defending Western civilizational traditions of sexism, racial thinking, and Islamophobia, among others. The New Atheists are broadly guilty of the common charge of scientism, not just of crediting science with the solution to all problems but of equating, as Richard Dawkins does, religion to science (albeit bad science). For instance, Dawkins wrote in his lauded The God Delusion that “‘the God Hypothesis’ is a scientific hypothesis about the universe,” and Victor Stenger actually put this “god hypothesis” business in the title of one of his books.[3] Finally, all of the New Atheists, who are quality scholars on their own turf, operate with limited (by which I mean Christianity-centric) notions of religion and god, in which “god” means the Christian or Abrahamic god and “religion” means Abrahamic monotheism. Any college freshman student of religion knows better.

Rapoport's Rules Meet the Outsider Test

Rapoport’s Rules for Debate

According to the English Wikipedia, Daniel Dennett (March 28, 1942 – April 19, 2024) “was an American philosopher and cognitive scientist. His research centered on the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science.” Dennett was and remains well-known in atheist/freethinking/skeptical circles as one of the so-called “Four Horsemen” of New Atheism, alongside Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris.

In this post I draw from Chapter 3 of Dennett’s book Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking (2013). The particular intuition pump, or tool in that chapter is what Dennett called “Rapoport’s Rules for Debate”. The Rules are Dennett’s suggestion for how to disagree with someone productively. In this article I’ll explore the practicality of the rules, and how one might apply them to John W. Loftus’ Outsider Test for Faith.

Dennett’s version of Rapoport’s Rules attracted considerable commentary, as this DDG Web search shows. Quoting from Dennett’s original version: