The conflation of Yahweh with the Egyptian demon-god Set, influenced early Christian interpretations of the Old Testament god as an evil deity. LINK.As I read this, it just reinforces how people argued against other myths with their own. Plus, it shows just how superstitious and mythically-minded the prescientific people were. Other thoughts?
Seth Andrews did such a great job narrating Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught, so we’re super pleased that he has done this book as well.
Why the title Guessing About God? Because that’s what theologians and clergy have been doing for centuries, because reliable, verifiable, objective evidence for god(s) has never been found. Which is exactly why religions cannot agree—even Christians have fought each other, often to the point of bloodshed, because they can’t agree about god. There are now more than 30,000 Christian denominations, divisions, factions, sects, and cults.
All their guessing about god has been disastrous.
The link to the Audible is here.
The link to the paperback is here.
The link to the Kindle is here.
Miracles are far more trouble than they’re worth
When my first book was published in 2016 (Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief) I used its Facebook page for promotion. Many Christians who found the page made blistering comments, pumped with rage and hate— they assured me I’d never been a real believer, and that I was destined for hell. Almost none were interested in engaging with the ideas advanced in the book, but one fellow did; he had intense emotional investment in the Jesus’ resurrection—it was his guarantee for escaping death. I responded that there were other ancient religions that worshipped dying-rising gods, and that promised the same thing. He responded confidently, proudly that his Jesus was the only one who had really done it. It was clear that this belief had been instilled in his brain from a very early age. And how could the Bible be wrong?
The gospels stand in the way
This book by my friend Gary Habermas just came out. It's volume 1 of an expected 4 volumes. They represent the culmination of decades of research that he spent on a lifelong quest to defend the resurrection of Jesus. Other notables who have done a great deal of research on the resurrection include William Lane Craig, Michael Licona, and NT Wright.
The reason why so much research has been devoted to the resurrection claim is because it is the linchpin upon which everything else hangs when it comes to a Bible believing faith. If Jesus was raised from the dead their faith is not in vain, Paul tells them. But it also provides the justification for believing in a miracle working god of the Bible, including the story of the garden of Eden, Abraham's attempted sacrifice of Isaac, the Exodus, and all other miracles, including the virgin birthed son of a god. It also guarantees the return of Jesus, and his promise of everlasting reward in a heavenly existence.
Gary and I have met and have emailed each other for more than a dozen years. He invited me to Skype into a class of PhD students [in June 2020] who were majoring in Apologetics to discuss my book, The Case Against Miracles.
Having known about his upcoming set of books I suggested a blurb he could use based on his previous writings:
My friend Gary Habermas has produced the most exhaustive defense of the indefensible claim of faith in the resurrection of Jesus that has ever been attempted. No non-Christian who cares to argue otherwise can avoid it. [Sent on February 18, 2020]
A mighty stream of pompous theobabble
Insight into Christian origins is provided by three texts, written by a man who never met Jesus. (1) The apostle Paul states in Galatians 1:11-12: “For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin, for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” A revelation as he imagined it, unless you’re willing to credit visions claimed by hundreds of other religions. (2) He also imagined that Jesus was a dying-rising savior god; that is, those who believe in this hero are entitled to eternal life, as he states in Romans 10:9: “…if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (3) In I Thessalonians 4:17, Paul assured his followers that their dead Christian relatives and friends would be the first to rise to meet Jesus when he arrives on the clouds: “Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever.”
Dr. Vincent Torley reviewed it and said:
It seemed to me that Loftus was questioning premise P5 of Akin’s argument (that the New Testament is inspired by God), but unfortunately, he did not explicitly say so, preferring to focus on his own argument against the Virgin Birth, which I have to say was very well-presented. Loftus made a powerfully convincing case that miracle claims should rest on solid evidence, and that belief in the Virgin Birth does not. Loftus highlighted the numerous historical problems Matthew’s and Luke’s historical narratives succinctly and cogently. The Skeptical Zone.
Here's an excellent debunking of what Jimmy Akins said. Thanks go out to Dr. Aaron Adair and the Godless Engineer for this! Adair and GE claim that I did very well!
The gospels could have been so much better
Here’s a story I’ve told before, but deeper research has revealed more details. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John had submitted their gospels to the New Testament Approval Committee. They had been instructed to go to a nearby bar to await the decision on whose gospel would be chosen. So they sat there at the same table, sipping cheap booze, and there was a lot of tension: these guys didn’t like each other at all. Mark was furious that both Matthew and Luke had copied most of his gospel, without mentioning they’d done so, without giving him any credit. Mark was wondering how long it would take for plagiarism to be considered a sin. He was also annoyed they’d changed his wording whenever they saw fit.
It’s not hard to find the goofs and gaffs
[First Published in December 2022] Churches all over the world will once again get away with the traditional Christmas story, for one simple reason: the folks in the pews can’t be bothered to carefully read the Jesus birth stories in Matthew and Luke. It’s just a fact these stories don’t make sense and cannot be reconciled: Fake News! A few of the more charming verses from these stories have been set to music and are recited during Christmas pageants; these deflect attention from the utter failure of these stories to quality as history.
In The Improbability Principle, the renowned statistician David J. Hand argues that extraordinarily rare events are anything but. In fact, they’re commonplace. Not only that, we should all expect to experience a miracle roughly once every month. But Hand is no believer in superstitions, prophecies, or the paranormal. His definition of “miracle” is thoroughly rational. No mystical or supernatural explanation is necessary to understand why someone is lucky enough to win the lottery twice, or is destined to be hit by lightning three times and still survive. All we need, Hand argues, is a firm grounding in a powerful set of laws: the laws of inevitability, of truly large numbers, of selection, of the probability lever, and of near enough.Other important books by people who know say the same thing, such as: Knock on Wood: Luck, Chance, and the Meaning of Everything, by Jeffrey S. Rosenthal, who also wrote the book, Struck by Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities. Rosenthal is a professor of statistics at the University of Toronto, having received his PhD in mathematics from Harvard. Fluke: The Math and Myth of Coincidence, by Joseph Mazur, who is an emeritus professor of mathematics at Marlboro College in Vermont. The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Leonard Mlodinow, who co-wrote with Stephen Hawking "The Grand Design", and had previously earned his PhD in theoretical physics from the University of California at Berkeley. What the Luck?: The Surprising Role of Chance in Our Everyday Lives, by Gary Smith, who is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics at Pomona College in Claremont, California. Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and It's Consequences, by John Allen Paulos who is a professor of mathematics at Temple University.
About two centuries ago, there was a major transition in the way scholars were approaching the stories of the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments. There was a greater attempt to look at the historical context and formation of the holy book and its stories, and the tales of Jesus were a major issue for critical scholars and theologians. It was also at around this time that the acceptability of wondrous stories was not palatable, at least for the educated where a deistic god was more ideal, one that did not perform miracles and was consistent with the universe of Newtonian mechanics. A naturalistic understanding of the world, inspired by the success of the physical sciences, along with inspiration from Enlightenment thinkers, changed the way people looked at the world, and that caused for a significant reassessment of the spectacular stories of the ancient world. What was one to do with the miracle stories of Jesus if miracles don’t happen? The solution was a series of rationalizations, none seen as terribly plausible but preferable to claiming a miracle or a myth. For example, Jesus walking on water was a mistake on the part of the Disciples, seeing their master walk along the beach shore on a foggy morning and not actually atop the water. Even the resurrection of Jesus was so retrofitted into scenarios that are unlikely, to say the least, but at least they weren’t impossible.
