Casper Rigsby wrote a post on this topic that's very interesting. He asks the following questions and provides some good hard-hitting commentary.
1. Can you make a moral judgment against rape or slavery using only scripture?
2. Would you sacrifice your child if god asked you to?
3. Is it acceptable to cherry pick the bible and only follow the parts you agree with?
4. How did animal X get from point Y to point Z after the great flood?
5. How did carnivorous dinosaurs supposedly eat plants before the biblical fall of man, when their teeth and digestive systems were not equipped to process a vegetarian diet?
6. Can god tell a lie?
7. Is observable physical evidence more important and valid than what the bible claims to be true?
8. Is there any amount of evidence that would change your views?
9. What physical proof is there that your particular god even exists?
10. Do you believe hell is a justifiable punishment for a simple lack of belief? LINK.
By going to the link and subscribing to Atheist Republic you can download the book "Your God is Too Small" for free.
Damian Thompson has studied the statistics and has bad news to readers of the Spectator: British Christianity will die by the year 2067.
It’s often said that Britain’s church congregations are shrinking, but that doesn’t come close to expressing the scale of the disaster now facing Christianity in this country. Every ten years the census spells out the situation in detail: between 2001 and 2011 the number of Christians born in Britain fell by 5.3 million — about 10,000 a week. If that rate of decline continues, the mission of St Augustine to the English, together with that of the Irish saints to the Scots, will come to an end in 2067.
That is the year in which the Christians who have inherited the faith of their British ancestors will become statistically invisible. Parish churches everywhere will have been adapted for secular use, demolished or abandoned.
Our cathedral buildings will survive, but they won’t be true cathedrals because they will have no bishops. The Church of England is declining faster than other denominations; if it carries on shrinking at the rate suggested by the latest British Social Attitudes survey, Anglicanism will disappear from Britain in 2033. One day the last native-born Christian will die and that will be that.
"The deadliest enemy of western Christianity," he writes, "is not Islam or atheism but the infinitely complex process of secularisation."
Etched on the tombstone of Karl Marx are his words: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." This is my motto. My goal isn't to publish in peer-reviewed journals, although I have in Philosophy Now (which exists behind a pay-wall), and may do so again when I have nothing left to do. My goal isn't to finish my Ph.D. either, since I'm already doing what most atheist Ph.D's would be happy doing, and because earning three master's degrees should be enough time spent in a delusion. The main reason is because of my motto. It's been my motto from the beginning. My goal is to change the religious landscape one person at a time. So it's no surprise to learn my goal has been confirmed in an article for The Sunday Times, which begins by saying, "An average academic journal article is read in its entirety by about 10 people. To shape policy, professors should start penning commentaries in popular media."
Up to 1.5 million peer-reviewed articles are published annually. However, many are ignored even within scientific communities - 82 per cent of articles published in humanities are not even cited once. No one ever refers to 32 per cent of the peer-reviewed articles in the social and 27 per cent in the natural sciences.
If a paper is cited, this does not imply it has actually been read. According to one estimate, only 20 per cent of papers cited have actually been read. We estimate that an average paper in a peer-reviewed journal is read completely by no more than 10 people. Hence, impacts of most peer-reviewed publications even within the scientific community are minuscule.
Many scholars aspire to contribute to their discipline's knowledge and to influence practitioners' decision-making.
However, practitioners very rarely read articles published in peer-reviewed journals. We know of no senior policymaker or senior business leader who ever read regularly any peer-reviewed papers in well-recognised journals like Nature, Science or Lancet. LINK.
Dr. Hector Avalos speaks to the masses by writing a monthly column in the Ames Iowa Tribune. For my part I'm writing for the university student and the educated person in the Pew, bringing scholarly arguments down to them.
The bottom line is that most scholars are only talking to themselves, at best. We need them, no doubt. What they do is extremely valuable, especially the scientists and atheists among us since we cannot let believers win the intellectual wars in the scholarly world. But in most cases scholars write on mundane issues that other scholars don't seem to care that much about, even in the same field. They write to gain respect from their peers, or tenure. While those are worthy goals no doubt, in most cases that's all they seek to do. -- Okay, blast away.
Since so many people have been taught incorrectly, I have to repeat myself. There is no such thing as theism except in the abstract. Beliefs are always held by people, for one thing. Furthermore, the word "theism" must be defined before we can know what any particular person means by the word. For all we know, a particular theist could be a polytheist. And although there are a large group of philosophers of religion who have agreed to define the word in extremely minimal terms for discussion, they are discussing "theism" in the abstract too. Hardly anyone defines their beliefs using this minimalist definition of theism, which was adopted in the Occident by Christian dominated philosophy of religion departments, rather than in the Orient by eastern philosophers, or in Comparative Religion departments. No one I ever heard even says "the ONLY things I believe are that God exists, is personal, is omnipresent, omnibenelovent, omniscient, omnipotent, and created the universe. I believe nothing beyond those things." No siree, bob. That person adheres to a much larger religion, guaranteed. Since I think the best way to evaluate a religion is to do so as a whole, when Christians want to talk about theism in the abstract I'll just insist on discussing the evidence for concrete examples, like the reliability and inspiration of the Bible, a Jesus who levitated with Moses and Elijah, a virgin birth, the resurrection of Jesus and his ascension into the sky.
Dr. Randal Rauser and I co-wrote the debate book, God or Godless?, according to which, on most accounts he lost. So he's reviewing his own book on his blog. That's not bad in itself, so long as its educational. One should learn from failed attempts, yes. But he's whining, mischaracterizing and special pleading his case. Typical Christian apologist.
Take for instance his review of chapter five. In that chapter he wanted to debate whether science is a substitute for religion. *Cough* Commenting after the fact on his blog he adds:
Here is the Christian challenge: "I don't believe that if God appeared to us, atheists would believe. For atheists can always make the case that the appearance of God was a hallucination, or a trick by super-advanced extraterrestrials."
This bald assertion is akin to a second Christian claim that the reason atheists don't believe is because we are in conscious (or unconscious) rebellion against God, their particular God. Completely oblivious are they of the fact that they aren't in conscious (or unconscious) rebellion against Allah, or the Jewish God Adonai, or any other different God, or god, or goddess, or demon with their different (and bizarre) moral demands. Christians are narrow-atheists with regard to these other gods, so they judge them to be lacking in sufficient evidence just like wide-atheists do who reject them all. Christians themselves would scoff at the notion they are in rebellion against Allah, you see. So Christians who make this second ignorant assertion cannot be taken seriously if they also make the former ignorant one. The ignorance is one and the same.
Skepticism is a virtue anyway. I think intelligent adults should double-check their experiences to see if they comport with reality. Mature adults should question whether an experience that feels like God might be better explained as a hallucination or produced by aliens. What's wrong with doing this? Nothing I can see at all. I wish believers would do that with their own private subjective experiences, just as former believers like myself have done.
When it comes to believing despite the evidence, readers to consider that the reverse is actually the case, from what I've seen. I've seen Christians revise their faith so much in my lifetime, as the evidence shows one doctrine then another incorrect, that they would probably refuse to believe if scientists discovered the elusive Theory of Everything. They would just say God did it. So I think Christians are projecting upon atheists what they themselves would do in light of a massive amount of counter-evidence. They would still believe despite it. In fact, they already do.
This is not a joke folks. People of faith can be this stupid. That's why I say faith (concerning the nature of nature and its workings) is irrational. LINK.
Religion is a highly psychological affair. In fact, I would argue that the entirety of that which religion really is, to humanity, is psychological. Everything that religion is and does for its adherents is psychological in nature. One of the strongest dimensions of religion is its dealings with death. I have talked about this before with regard to Terror Management Theory.
I have written a newspaper column about the Duggar sex scandal and the decline of American Christianity, especially among the so-called Millennials. The defenses of the Duggars by Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, a current presidential hopeful, are briefly addressed.
The utter resiliency of believers to continue to believe despite the beating their faith has taken over and over again, like we see in the 1967 movie Cool Hand Luke, is an amazing thing to behold.
I have become convinced that the only origins issue that really matters to most Christians is Adam and Eve. Leave Adam and Eve—and their Fall—in place, and most opposition to the Big Bang, evolution, and the great age of the earth will recede. The historicity of Adam and Eve is the single most important issue driving evangelical Christianity’s widespread, deep, and disturbing opposition to science.
Evangelical opposition to science is no small matter. It spills over into Catholicism, and moderate and liberal Christianity to a degree. It has taken up residence in the GOP where it is worn as a badge of pride by leaders who reject much of mainstream science and deflect concerns with the populist refrain “I am not a scientist.” This opposition plays a significant role in America’s declining global leadership in science. It plays into a general distrust of science in America that nurtures the rejection of modern cosmology, climate science and vaccinations.
Adam and Eve stand on the bulls-eye of this controversy, which has risen steadily over the past few decades as the human genome has been mapped. This progress has established with near certainty that humans are closely related to chimps and bonobos, with whom they share a common ancestor; that the human race originated in Africa millennia before the events in Genesis took place; and that the human race never consisted of only two people. Link.
Zeke Piestrup did a documentary on Harold Camping, the preacher who predicted Jesus would return on May 21, 2011, and later died on December 15, 2013. This is an excellent case study in understanding the mind of a believer who knows with certainty Jesus is coming, but who ends up admitting nobody knows that day. It portrays Mr. Camping as a likeable guy, but at the same time delusional. Included are spot on comments from biblical scholars like John Collins and Bart Ehrman. It's entertaining, informative and very well-done! You can watch it at the Hulu link. But it's available on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon, Xbox, Playstation, Google Play, Vudu, others. Again it's really well-done! Watch it if you haven't already done so. LINK to Hulu
[Alter's book next to my favorite brew for size comparison.]
I've written before against the attempt to defend Christianity via Natural Theology. Michael Alter destroys it, and along the way refutes the claims of the resurrection of Jesus in his book, The Resurrection: A Critical Inquiry.Natural theologians claim they can argue to the existence of God and then argue there is sufficient evidence for the resurrection of Jesus afterward. I've argued they cannot legitimately do that right here. Alter's book is premised on all of the things that the arguments to God's existence grant. And yet, even as a Jewish theist who believes in God, the inspiration of Old Testament, miracles, and certain other things about Jesus, he rejects the resurrection. His book is a massive one at 746 pages of text with 81 additional pages of bibliography! [Below are a couple of pages as samples]
One of the highest compliments I've received from my work was written by biblical scholar Robert M. Price. Of my contributions in the co-edited book God or Godless?he said I write "with unpretentious clarity, common sense, and broad but inconspicuous erudition." If anyone wants to see how high a compliment that is then look up each word he used. Let me highlight just two of his words, unpretentious and inconspicuous. Unpretentious: I don't seek to impress my readers with Bayesian math, or the technical philosophical, theological, or scientific terminology, nor do I use the original languages of the Biblical texts much at all. I remember teaching my first philosophy class in 1985 at the College of Lake County, in Grayslake, Illinois. I lost about half my class because the students could not understand me. Yep, that's right. Having just come from a Ph.D. program at Marquette University I didn't know how to bring the information down to college students. Over the years I learned how to communicate to the average person. My goal is to keep it as simple as possible, and no simpler. The problem with this goal is that there are some readers who think I'm ignorant, for if I was smarter and better educated it would reflect in my vocabulary. Smart, educated people, it's assumed, use the nomenclature requisite with their educational achievements. Inconspicuous: Even though Price says I have a broad erudition, it's inconspicuous or unnoticeable. It wasn't inconspicuous to him. But it's inconspicuous to others. The people for whom it might be inconspicuous would be the uniformed and ignorant, Price intimates. [Another equally high compliment of my work, which mirrors what Price said, was written by biblical scholar Hector Avalos.] It's extremely gratifying to know some important people say such things.
Joshua Willms gave an excellent TEDx talk on searching for religious truth, and he attributed the use of an "Outsider Test" to me at about 5:50. Willms is an M.D./Ph.D. student at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, and aspires to a career in medicine and neuroscience. He received a B.S. in biology and a B.A. in classics from Texas Tech University in 2014 and completed an Honors Thesis in philosophy on the fine-tuning of physics for abiogenesis.
"For more than half a century, theOxford
Classical Dictionaryhas
been the unrivaled one-volume reference work on the Greco-Roman world. Whether
one is interested in literature or art, philosophy or law, mythology or
science, intimate details of daily life or broad cultural and historical
trends, the OCD is the first place to turn for clear, authoritative information
on all aspects of ancient culture.
Now comes the Fourth Edition of this redoubtable resource, thoroughly revised
and updated, with numerous new entries and two new focus areas (on reception
and anthropology). Here, in over six thousand entries ranging from long
articles to brief identifications, readers can find information on virtually
any topic of interest--athletics, bee-keeping, botany, magic, religious rites,
postal service, slavery, navigation, and the reckoning of time. TheOxford Classical Dictionaryprofiles every major figure of Greece and
Rome, from Homer and Virgil to Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great. Readers will
find entries on mythological and legendary figures, on major cities, famous
buildings, and important geographical landmarks, and on legal, rhetorical,
literary, and political terms and concepts." See: Oxford University Press
My next book, to be published by Pitchstone Publishing in the Fall, is provocatively titled: "How To Defend The Christian Faith: Advice From an Atheist." Dr. Avalos kindly read it for a blurb and graciously wrote one:
I don't know anyone who can match the High Definition clarity of John Loftus when it comes to navigating the labyrinthine world of Christian evangelical apologetics for the general public. This is a relentless and incisive critique of the pseudo-scholarship that passes for genuine intellectual inquiry under the name of Christian apologetics.
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace
to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man
against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law
against her mother-in-law.And a person’s enemies will
be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or
mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more
than me is not worthy of me.” (Matt. 10: 34 – 37) News Video:Pastor Shot By Police
I must keep this short, so I want to say from the outset that Jeff Lowder is a valued atheist intellectual, even if I'm right about everything I write below. I am most grateful that he used his B.S. degree in computer science to co-create Internet Infidels, a huge repository of scholarly essays debating the merits of religious propositions. But Jeff Lowder and I have had a series of fights, which I wrote about previously in An Open Letter to Jeffery Jay Lowder. Anyone interested should read that post. We made a bit of a truce for a time then it started bursting out in the last few months. It came to a head with something he posted on his popular blog. [Click on the above image]. He wrote a post titled "Loftus Says I'm not Making an Impact." After a day he deleted it when I called him out on it. Then he apologized. Them's the facts. Lowder says it was an honest mistake. I don't believe that for a minute. I'm sure his fan boys do. Cognitive bias theory predicts they would too. So let me explain.
Since his book is such a bestseller I also appreciate his high endorsement of the Outsider Test for Faith.
He described it and wrote, "This rational and quasi-scientific approach is promoted by the ex-preacher John Loftus...Given that beliefs matter, the wisdom of this approach is unquestionable. But if it's used honestly, its outcome is inevitable." (pp. 85-86)
I'm opposed to Jeffery Jay Lowder claiming he's a philosopher, which he does. This is a screenshot of his Twitter profile claiming he's a Philosopher of Religion. He only has a B.A. in Computer Science earned in 1995 from Seattle Pacific University. I have a great deal more qualifications to claim I'm a philosopher, but I don't do so. It's for others to say, and they say that of me once-in-a-while. I rarely even see a real philosopher claim he/she's a philosopher. It's an accolade others bestow on you, and/or given to you by the university you teach at. So Lowder is arrogant to say so. It does not matter what others say or how many of them say it.
One of the responses from his echo-chamber of a blog is to compare Lowder to Socrates. If Socrates was a philosopher without credentials then Lowder can be one too. Lowder even "liked" such comments! *cough* Lowder is someone who, as far as I can tell, never read a paper at a philosophical conference, much less published in a philosophical journal. And he never taught a philosophy class either. He doesn't even have a Wikipedia page! ;-) At best he's self-taught, which isn't bad, but there is a big difference between a directed philosophical program taught by experts and being self-taught. It's much worse than this when it comes to Socrates. He not only didn't have any academic credentials, or write anything, he was rejected by the scholars of his day. More than this, if Socrates came to life he wouldn't be able to write a philosophical paper that would pass peer review. If you look at his reasoning--brilliant and original that it was for his day and the reason we hail him as a philosopher--his arguments in Plato's Dialogues are at an introductory college/university level, not the highly technical philosophical level demanded by today's philosophers. In fact, Socrates probably wouldn't even be able to understand most philosophy today. He wouldn't know anything about Oriental philosophy, that's for sure. Nor would he understand a great deal about either the Continental or Analytic traditions in philosophy. He wouldn't be able to understand much of the Philosophy of Religion, since a great deal of it is based on the new religion (to him anyway) of Christianity. And modern discussions of ethics and justice have by-passed his brilliant and original contributions significantly, as they have to his arguments on behalf of immortality and the afterlife. Socrates would have to catch up on the history of philosophy before he could even make a contribution. For surely one cannot understand Immanuel Kant without first understanding David Hume who awoke him from his dogmatic slumbers, as but just one of many examples. And Socrates didn't know anything about modern science either.
My point is that the era of Socrates is long past. This is a new era with better levels of argumentation by those recognized to be scholars. It's been said that Aristotle was the last person who knew everything that could be known. That day is gone too. We now live in an era of specialization and in this era there are recognized standards requiring credentials along with a certain quality of work. My claim is that Lowder doesn't meet these rigorous standards, and even if he did he should keep silent about it. Otherwise, doing so makes him look bad.
The reason why this matters and that our disagreements are important to be forthcoming.
I find it very interesting that when disagreeing with each other we fail to mention any good in that other person. That's not what we would do in person and it does not fairly represent the total contributions we each make. It's also why I get upset when being nitpicked to death by people who have not done what I have accomplished so far. Sometimes it's just a pissing contest though. For people who think the Secular Outpost and I aren't on the same team as atheists, you would be wrong. Here, see for yourselves:
I've read the comboxes of a lot of atheist and Christian blogs, and I can say without fear of contradiction that the people who comment here at DC are, over-all, some of the most educated, intelligent and respectful ones you'll see out there. Kudos to them. This is the case even though I have vigorously defended the value of ridicule. Yes, my commenters will ridicule from time to time, as I do. But it still is as I say. Think otherwise? Then let's have a head to head faceoff. ;-) Join us. Comment. Both Christians and non-Christians. See for yourselves. Come away from those other blogs you regularly visit. [Bible thumpers need not apply. If all you do is mindlessly quote-mine the Bible you deserve any ridicule we throw at you. Someone on your side of our debates needs to properly inform you how to deal with us.]
The word is getting out! Here's a message I just received on Facebook:
"Your Outsider Test For Faith was the final straw that showed me the error in my thinking. Thank you! I had to submit my Christianity card and join the irreligious." LINK.
I have allowed Christian scholars to post here at DC without my initial comments. [See tag below]. The following is one single comment left by Dr. Reppert in my combox. I thought it was worthy of further consideration. Dig in. I expect he'll defend what he wrote. I've taken the liberty to number his paragraphs for ease, should you wish to discuss them. Please, no ridicule.
The "ad" got the producer convicted in an English court for harassment. See below. I'm sure the publicity from this ad forced some believers to re-examine why they believe. The question for them would be "How can anyone be so cocksure they aren't going to hell that they would do such a thing?" Am I right or am I right?
The saying at left is an example of ridicule, in case it isn't obvious. The same goes for this post of mine. The saying was submitted by a person named Chris to a committee of three seeking permission to use it on his Facebook page. The members of the committee include Victor Reppert, Jeff Lowder and John Loftus. Reppert demanded this committee should exist and wanted to be on it. He argued that a person who uses ridicule must be able to defend the basis of the ridicule before using it. Lowder cannot recognize some kinds of ridicule and argued it isn't as effective at changing minds as a reasoned debate. Loftus didn't want on this committee but in order to break any deadlock, he begrudgingly agreed under protest.
Let's listen in as they discuss this submitted piece of ridicule.
Vic complains about the commenters here at DC, saying they attack him. They most certainly attack his ideas. By contrast his commenters personally attack atheists and have little substance beyond that. So compare them to what sir_russ wrote below. There is some snark going on in it, but his reasoning and writing are very good.
This anthology of counter-Apologetic essays merits a place on the bookshelf of every atheist, lay-student of comparative religion or Christian coming to question his belief. (Or just seeking to understand the worldviews of non-Christians.) In cataloguing the harms done by this religion, and the scope for addressing them, it is close to encyclopaedic. Crucially, it is an anthology of specialist and often scholarly contributions from writers addressing a particular field, and thus avoids a trap into which much humanist literature falls: The cult of the individual ego. Finally, the book indicates how atheism and humanism provide a model better suited for ameliorating the harms done by Christian belief. Click here to read the rest.
Natural theologians claim they can argue to the existence of God and then argue there is sufficient evidence for the resurrection of Jesus afterward. I've argued they cannot legitimately do that 
he said I write "with unpretentious clarity, common sense, and broad but inconspicuous erudition." If anyone wants to see how high a compliment that is then look up each word he used. Let me highlight just two of his words, unpretentious and inconspicuous.
(2007), 
(2011), and 
(2015).
