Dr. Randal Rauser's Ideologue Barometer Test

I like new tests for faith, and I have written about three of them before. Randal introduces a new one as far as I can tell, the Ideologue Barometer Test, and guess what? After taking the test I am one. No, not a barometer silly, an ideologue. So?

Randal has graciously invited me up to his Seminary in May of 2013 to Edmonton, Canada, in order to help promote the release of our co-written book God or Godless. I'm pretty excited about this too. So, being the creative person that he is (after all, he creatively defends the indefensible), he suggested we do something new and different rather than the normal "he said she said" type of debate. What he suggested is this:

each of us talk on the top three biggest problems that we face with our worldview. I’d explain the top three conceptual or evidential problems with being a Christian and John would talk about the top three problems with being an atheist.

He's mentioned this to several people and the response has been "overwhelmingly positive" he reports. But he's not happy that I objected to it. So now he's taking his case to the streets, er, the blog world. He said we'd try to work things out. I didn't know this is how he wants to do it. Okay, I guess.

Dr. Doug Geivett Strongly Recommends Against My Book Proposal.

Previously I made a book proposal:

Let's have a four -five -six views book with this as a question: "Why are there so many ways to interpret the Bible?" A proposed title might be this: "Five Views on Why Christians Disagree," or something like that. Then invite me as a contributor. I've written on this issue, calling it The Problem of Divine Miscommunication. See here.

Doug Geivett, a Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Ethics at Talbot School of Theology strongly recommends against it. Now isn't that interesting? Why would he do so? He doesn't explain. He refuses to explain. Here's the story:

The Talmagian Catechism, Ingersoll Winds Up His Great Satire

The Reverend De Witt Talmage, head of the Presbyterian Church in America, was so incensed by Ingersoll, that he devoted six sermons denouncing him as "The Great Blasphemer." Robert Ingersoll answered these seriously; and then followed up by satirizing the teachings of the Reverend in what he called The Talmagian Catechism. Here is the Final Part, sent by Julian Haydon.

John’s Top 25 Substantive Posts in 2012

Keep in mind these are chosen from what I wrote, not from what others wrote. In some of them are links to other things I've written on the same topic. For now I’ll just list them in order of appearance.

Bayes's Theorem and the Outsider Test for Faith

Dr. James A. Lindsay clarifies the OTF using Bayes's Theorem. This is his first post on it. His second post offers a a bit more clarity.

Richard Carrier on Miracles and the Historical Method

Carrier provides more evidence that Christians are liars and have lost all credibility. Wonderful talk!

The New Evangelical Orthodoxy, Relativism, and the Amnesia of It All

I'm happy to have lived long enough to see that evangelicals are now embracing Karl Barth. I've personally seen how theology evolves. Back in my seminary days one issue of interest was Neo-Orthodoxy, stemming from what most people think is the greatest theologian of the last century, Karl Barth. Wanting to be on the cutting edge I did my master's thesis on his doctrine of the word of God, since Barth sparked a debate among evangelicals over inerrancy. Harold Lindsell's book, The Battle for the Bible, was heavily discussed among us. Evangelicals did not like Barth and neither did I. Due to the onslaught of nineteenth century biblical criticism Barth was forced to deny natural theology and basically argued that although the Bible contained myths and legends, God still speaks through it. For Barth, the word of God was not to be located in the Bible itself. No. Rather, God speaks through it. God's word, his revelation, takes place when God speaks to his people, and he can do so through myths, legends, and even a Russian flute concerto. It was described as the New (or Neo) Orthodoxy. It was all he could do to maintain his faith. To read up on those good old days see Robert Price's Inerrant the Wind: The Evangelical Crisis in Biblical Authority,where he made some predictions at that time which have proved to be true.

Does Any Christian Ministry Want to Buy This Blog?

Let's say you believe that because of our "deceptive misinformation" and influence we're leading people to hell, and you either cannot argue us down or you want to silence us. Well, then, buy this blog and do with it what you want. Can you raise the funds? Are there any serious takers? Then look at the price calculated by Worth of the Web which "estimates the traffic of a given website or blog by calculating the cost of advertisement." Guess how much you'd have to pay to get DC?

Dr. James A. Lindsay's Bayesian Analysis of the Outsider Test for Faith

I find his analysis very helpful. He summarizes his post in the following words:

Hey, I Found a Picture of God, No Really!

Let's say you're making a YouTube video about God. Aren't you tired of all those other cheesy pictures to choose from? I haven't seen one yet that truly represents God. So let me introduce you to God. Here's a snapshot of him I took the other day. Want to know what God looks like? This.

The United Bible Society’s Greek New Testament; the Book of Mormon and BYU’s Prof. Stephen E. Robinson, PhD

[Note: In light of my post tomorrow night dealing with the Jehovah Witness’s New World Translation and one of the Witness’ leading apologist, Howard Mazzalerro, I am reposting my December 2008 topic of four years ago on the Book of Mormon. This section was a part of a longer paper I delivered to the South Carolina Academy of Religion at Clemson University around 1989 entitled Translating and Revelating The Word of God: Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.]

More Fun With Robert Ingersoll, The Talmagian Catechism

The Reverend De Witt Talmage, head of the Presbyterian Church in America, was so incensed by Ingersoll, that he devoted six sermons denouncing him as "The Great Blasphemer". Ingersoll answered these seriously; and then followed up by satirizing the teachings of the Reverend in what he called The Talmagian Catechism. Here is Part 2 of 3. Part 1 can be read here. Thanks to Julian Haydon for these excerpts!

I Don't Mind Criticism So Long As It's Unmitigated Praise ;-)

People have said my work is pretty damn good. But not even I would say some of the things said of it, and I like me best! Dr. James A. Lindsay, author of a book you should get, God Doesn't; We Do: Only Humans Can Solve Human Challenges,recently blew me away with some very high praise for which I'm extremely humbled:

John Loftus blogs for Debunking Christianity, one of the biggest blogs dedicated to the task of examining faith versus relinquishing it, and his posts are nearly always deep, insightful, and well worth reading. This blog, however, is a far cry from why I think John Loftus is perhaps the most underrated author in this entire field. In my opinion, Loftus holds the honor of having come up with the most sterling silver bullet in the discussion since David Hume, surpassing, if I might suggest it, even greats of the early twentieth century like Bertrand Russell and and those of the late nineteenth like Robert Ingersoll.

I came to know John Loftus's mind through his extremely clear and effective writing in Why I Became an Atheist... I literally cannot recommend this book highly enough for anyone that is interested in the discussion about faith and whether or not it should be left behind, particularly the Christian faith. The book is a true resource, spanning hundreds of densely packed, well-researched pages that truly demonstrate that Loftus is intimately familiar with the foundations of the Christian religion, its scripture, its philosophical defense, what it means to be a serious Christian, and why there is no reason whatsoever to accept or believe the Christian (or any) religion. It is truly incredible...Link.

Why Creation Science is Pseudoscience With No Ifs Ands or Buts About It

I had previously argued that science assumes there is a natural explanation for everything it investigates precisely because this is the only way it can work. If natural explanations for events were not possible because God regularly intervened in the world, then science would not be possible at all. To be more precise, I argued that to the degree God intervenes in the universe then to that same degree science is not possible. But given the massive amount of knowledge acquired by science it's crystal clear God doesn't intervene at all. The very basis of science is predicated on a non-miraculous world order. So we must choose between God or science. We cannot have both. Undeterred, Vincent Torley at Uncommon Descent has written a couple of rebuttals to my continued defense of this. Since I usually try to keep my posts to a minimum I won't be responding to everything he wrote. But I do want to respond with what I consider to be a tour de force argument that should end this whole debate. Think I'm kidding? I'm not.

Don't Judge An Argument By Its Conclusion: The Case Of Rebecca Watson

Rebecca Watson’s talk at Skepticon recently was called, “How girls evolved to shop and other ways to insult women with ‘science.’" Watson ridicules evolutionary psychology pertaining to sex differences, such as differing tastes between men and women in shopping, sexual preferences, and for purportedly favoring the color pink. Her aim was to show evolutionary psychology isn’t science and that its conclusions stereotype and oppress women. However, Ed Clint, who obviously knows something about evolutionary psychology, utterly destroys Watson's presentation which was applauded by the skeptics in attendance. Read his response titled, Science denialism at a skeptic conference. It's really a shame this was allowed at a skeptic conference. No one should accept any argument just because they agree with its conclusion, as I have warned Christians about. I am appalled that simply because she is an internet celebrity for other reasons she is accepted as an expert on anything else. Do we not have credentialed experts who can give talks like these? Right now I'm ashamed of my own community. I can only expect better in the future, and I do.

I Have A Book Proposal for Any Christian Editor Who Wants to Run With it

I think all educated Christians should read the series of four -five -six views books produced by some Christian publishers, like the 32 Zondervan Counterpoint books, and the 18 InterVarsity Press Spectrum Series Books. I myself have read through several of them. They are very instructive. There are others. In some of them liberals are involved in the discussion like the late John Hick, a pluralist, in Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World,and even an atheist like Robert Price, in The Historical Jesus: Five Views.So here's my proposal. Let's have a four -five -six views book with this as a question: "Why are there so many ways to interpret the Bible?" A proposed title might be this: "Five Views on Why Christians Disagree," or something like that. Then invite me as a contributor. I've written on this issue, calling it The Problem of Divine Miscommunication. If you want to read what I said about it you can read chapter 7 in my book, The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails.If you cannot find four Christian scholars who want to defend just one reason for this problem you could have me write an opening chapter and include several Christian responses, then let me write a final response. Afterward you can invite scholars on both sides to end the book by reviewing the debate. I'm game. How about you?

Sex, Death And The Meaning Of Life

Narrated by Richard Dawkins
These are excellent! They are about 46 minutes each, but this will be time well spent.

Thanks to the Piedmont Humanist of South Carolina

Enjoy!

Heads I Win Tails You Lose, Another Christian Apologist's Trick

Vincent Torley over at William Dembski's Uncommon Descent Blog, criticized me for arguing we must choose between science or God. The flattering news is the company I'm in, for Torley also criticizes the views of scientists like Eugenie Scott, Sean Carrol, Jerry Coyne, PZ Myers, and Michael Shermer, mostly by pitting them against each other. In a very long post titled Detecting the supernatural: Why science doesn’t presuppose methodological naturalism, after all, his conclusion is this:

A revolution, it seems, is afoot. Scientists are finally coming out and declaring that they can live with the supernatural, after all. What will we see next? Open discussion of the flaws in Darwinian evolution?

The "heads I win tails you lose" trick is obvious. If we say science is closed to the supernatural the apologist will say we are uninterested in the truth. If we say instead it is theoretically possible to detect the supernatural then he can say we should be open to a discussion of the flaws of Darwinian evolution. So when he finds apparent divergent views between us he can say both, pitting us against each other. So let me respond.

On the Scientific Evidence for Evolution

Charles Darwin spent more than twenty years of his life gathering evidence for the theory of evolution. He presented it in 1859 with the publication of On The Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection, which—drawing on observations of an incredible variety of animal and plant life from all over the world and integrating it with geology, geography, animal husbandry, and the available fossil record—proved the theory of evolution. This says nothing of the observations and experiments of later scientists, which bolstered and expanded the theory.

Faith in “God’s word” is not an intellectually defensible argument against a scientific theory. Isaac Newton, responding to criticisms of his theory of optics, indicated the kind of evidence required to properly dispute a scientific theory:

I could wish all objections were suspended . . . from any [grounds] other than these two: of showing the insufficiency of experiments to prove . . . any part of my theory, . . . or of producing other experiments which directly contradict me, if any such may seem to occur.

Isaac Newton, the greatest scientist in history and himself a religious man, would never have taken seriously faith-based arguments against a scientific theory—and neither should anyone else. Link.

Do You Only Have a Brain? On Thomas Nagel's Book "Mind and Cosmos"

This is a good review of his book in The Nation.

The Case for Atheism in One Very Powerful Song!

I don't know how I missed this performance. It brought tears to my eyes.

What Does it Take to Defend Christianity?

In order to make the Christian faith seem respectable Christians act like lawyers who must try to find any tiny loophole in a contract to get their clients out of it. They must drag down knowledge, reason, evidence and science to their own level of faith (which is always unjustified). They assert atheism is a religion, that atheists worship science, that we too have faith, all of which defy the facts as nothing more than pure semantic games. They poison the well against atheists as much as possible by character assassination. They miscaricaturize our arguments to the point of failing to even try to understand them, or feigning ignorance as to what they are, and/or being willingly ignorant of them. They have lied to defend their faith so much that it no longer has any credibility, if it ever did in the first place. When confronted about the human propensity for cognitive biases they fail to offer any reasonable way to avoid them. It's all a sham.

The Weird and Illogical World of Being a Bible Believing Christian

Hector Avalos and I have been dealing with a person who has totally put aside reality to keep the illogic metaphysical world of Christianity functioning: Meet Howard Mazzaferro

Yoram Hazony Says God is Imperfect

Yoram Hazony is an Orthodox Jew, the president of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, and the author of The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture.This is a book I have but have not read yet. Steven Pinker recommends it highly. Jerry Coyne just linked to an article in the NY Times where Hazony argues God is an imperfect being, which I quote from below. Until I read his book I can't comment much except to say that he is an Orthodox Jew which represents the ultra conservative branch of Judaism, so he's not an ally unless I misunderstand what he's doing. One thing he's got absolutely right though, is that Yahweh, as depicted in the Hebrew Bible, is most emphatically NOT a perfect being. Here's what he said about God:

Pat Robertson Admits He Was Wrong About the Election

God told him that Mitt Romney would win. So either God was wrong or he was. Guess what Robertson chooses to believe? No, really, guess. ;-)

Christians Are Not Credible Witnesses So Christianity is Not Credible Either

"'You are my witnesses,' says Yahweh" (Isaiah 43:10). Jesus even prayed that based on the Christian witness the world would know God sent him (John 17:20-23). I think it's demonstrably the case that his prayer has never been fulfilled. It's exceedingly probable it will never be fulfilled in the future either. Even if it will be answered in the future it doesn't change the fact that people all over the world have been sent to hell because it hasn't been answered yet. Christians are not credible witnesses. You'd think if the credibility of what they believe is on the line their God would do something about this. But he doesn't do anything discernible at all. So let's rehearse some of the facts.

Four Blurbs Recommending the Book "God or Godless?"

Here are the four blurbs for the book by Michael Licona, Hector Avalos, Richard Carrier and David Marshall:

Either Choose Science or God, You Cannot Have Both

I think for a blog post I pretty much nailed it, arguing that science would not be possible if there were a miraculous intervening God. But since science does work then there isn't a miraculous intervening God. So choose ye this day: Either science isn't possible because there is a miraculous intervening God, or science works precisely because there isn't a miraculous intervening God.

Christian philosopher Victor Reppert objects of course, on two grounds as far as I can tell:

Why Science Has No Need of God and What This Implies

Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749 – 1827) is remembered as one of the greatest scientists of all time. He's referred to as the French Newton or the Newton of France. When Napoleon had asked why he hadn't mentioned God in his discourse on the orbits of Saturn and Jupiter, he is quoted as saying: "I had no need of that hypothesis." That best describes science. It doesn't need that hypothesis. That's how science should work too, for if science is to work at all it shouldn't depend on the God-hypothesis. More importantly, if there is a God who intervenes in our world then science cannot work at all. We can see this quite easily by contrasting sectarian pseudoscience with science itself. The implications should be obvious.

How Many Religious People Are Really Mentally Ill?

God Told Her To Drive 100 Mph and Blow Horn, Spirit Guide

"God told one woman, Melissa Miller, the permission to drive 100 mph according to the police report. She told the Fort Pierce, Florida cops that the Lord was her spirit guide.

Miller was also banging on the car horn long and hard because of “the Lord telling me to do it.”