An Evangelical Evangelist Titan Faces Death

Billy Graham at 95

“Franklin Graham asks for prayers for his father”

I can’t think of one national televangelist who didn't end up running their ministry as a family business including Billy Graham.

Thirty years ago I remember Billy Graham announced his pending retirement and the question was quickly asked if his son Franklin would takeover.  Rev. Graham responded "This is God’s ministry and it's God's choice to make, not mine".  Well, let’s see who God chose:  Billy's Son, Franklin Graham to be followed by Franklin’s own son: William Franklin Graham IV.  (Yes, it looks like God sure is not a respecter of persons. (Acts 10: 34)) LOL

Sour Tidings and Wretched Festivities: How Christmas is Destroying the Heart of our Christian Commonwealth

 DC readers may be interested in my latest essays published this month. 

The first, titled The Puritan War on Christmas, explains why Puritans, who are often considered the model of America’s Christian foundations, hated Christmas so much.

The second essay, titled In Praise of the Evil Kings: Latino Ethnic Identity and Biblical Scholarship, outlines why claims that the representative teachings of the Bible are social justice, love, and anti-imperialism, reflect the bibliolatrous and religionist bias of modern biblical scholarship and liberation theology.

Quote of the Day, By An Executioner To a Man Accused of Witchcraft

Sir, I beg you, for God’s sake confess something, whether it be true or not. Invent something, for you cannot endure the torture which you will be put to; and even if you bear it all, yet you will not escape, not even if you were an Earl, but one torture will follow after another until you say you are a witch.

These are the words of an executioner to Johannes Junius, the mayor of Bamberg, Germany, in 1628, after enduring some torture without confessing, who was subsequently burned at the stake after deciding to confess. [Source: The Witchcraft Sourcebook, p. 201.]

Learn What it Was Like When Accused of Being a Witch in Germany in 1638

Care to see what it would be like being accused of a witch in Germany of 1638? Follow this link to a simulation where you are accused of being a witch. Click on "Let the Hunt Begin..." Answer your interrogators questions and see what happens depending on how you answer them. It's interactive. It's based on actual hunts that took place in Germany during the early 1600's.

Some of The Earliest Witnesess Didn't Believe So Why Should We?

In Matthew 28:16-17 we read: "Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted." How is it possible for some of the eleven disciples to doubt after seeing the resurrected Jesus? Then too the Apostle Paul claimed in I Corinthians 15:6 that, "After that, he [Jesus] appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time..." Of them, only 120 believed according to Acts 1:15: "In those days Peter stood up among the believers (a group numbering about a hundred and twenty)." Even by the testimony of the New Testament itself many of the earliest witnesses didn't believe. Why should we?

Bible Prophecy Fulfilled: Christmas Trees.

Since it’s the time of year when my Christian friends are preparing to celebrate Christmas, I feel that I must point out something very important, to them.

Christmas trees are mentioned in the Bible. 

Not only mentioned, but prophesied thousands of years before they would become a part of Christmas celebrations.  Not only were they predicted, but they were condemned by the prophet Jeremiah:

Thus says the Lord: “Learn not the way of the nations, nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens because the nations are dismayed at them, for the customs of the peoples are vanity. A tree from the forest is cut down and worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman. They decorate it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move.

Jeremiah 10:2-4 (ESV)

Clearly, the Bible condemns the practice of cutting and decorating Christmas trees.   All believers who practice such things are in rebellion against their god - right?  Maybe I will have to tear up my American Atheists membership card.  We have a bona fide example of fulfilled prophesy in the Bible!

Which Subtitle For My Anthology "Christianity is Not Great" Sounds the Best?

1. Christianity is Not Great: Why Faith Causes Good People to Do Atrocities
2. Christianity is Not Great: Why Faith Causes Good People to Do Great Harm
3. Christianity is Not Great: Why Faith Threatens Human Flourishing
4. Christianity is Not Great: Testing Faith With The Practical Empirical Results
5. Christianity is Not Great: Faith Tested Against The Practical Empirical Results
6. Christianity is Not Great: Faith Fails The Practical Empirical Results
7. Christianity is Not Great: Why Faith Is Bad For Us and Our Planet
8. Christianity is Not Great: Why Faith Is an Utterly Unreliable Moral Compass
9. Christianity is Not Great: Why Faith Is an Utterly Unreliable Moral Guide
10. Christianity is Not Great: How Faith Kills
11. Christianity is Not Great: How Faith Destroys Us
12. Christianity is Not Great: The Destructiveness of Faith

Or, suggest others.

The Barbaric Christian Witch Hunts

I'm doing some research for a chapter on the witch hunts for my new anthology, "Christianity is Not Great." A description of it and a link to the chapters can be seen here. The title to this post will probably be the one I'll use for the chapter. Any other suggestions? I've selected a few quotes to begin the chapter. See what you think.

Russell Blackford Interviewed About His Book, "50 Great Myths about Atheism"

You can read the essay below, published in the book pages of the Newcastle Herald.

Dan Lambert Objects When I Said Christianity Made No Discoveries in 2013

Dan and I are friends. We live in the same city. He is a former professor at John Brown University who used my book, "Why I Became an Atheist" in one of his classes. He is also on record as saying "Christians should be reading John Loftus's Books." Still he thinks his faith is strengthened by reading them. Okay, I guess. Recently on Facebook he objected to a link I provided where I made fun of the fact that Christianity made no discoveries in 2013. Here is our exchange about it on Facebook. I think it is instructive. Enjoy.

"Telekinesis" is Now a Reality: The Top Ten Scientific and Religious Discoveries of 2013

Let's do a comparison between science and religion by looking at their top ten discoveries in 2013, okay? Here are the results of last year. First take a look at the top ten scientific advances in 2013, from ListVerse. Pretty impressive, right? "Telekinesis" is now a reality. Now let's consider the top ten religious discoveries in 2013:

A List of Scientists Who Became Creationists After Studying the Evidence

If you can spot anyone who's been missed, please add their name in the comments. LINK.

Hat/Tip Matthew Cobb

Dr. Matt McCormick Offers a Serious Blow to William Lane Craig's Credibility

McCormick is a professor of Philosophy for the California State University in Sacramento, CA. He is the author of the best book arguing against the resurrection of Jesus, Atheism And The Case Against Christ.McCormick is developing an online Philosophy of Religion course. In one 33 minute video is a hard-hitting critique of Craig's view of the "Witness of the Holy Spirit." This is top notch stuff.



If you have a Google+ account you can see other videos he has made, right here. They include Swinburne's Argument From Design; Leibniz: This is the Best of All Possible Worlds; Hick: Suffering Builds Moral Character; Introduction to the Problem of Evil; Religion and Morality; Clifford and James on the Ethics of Belief; Confirmation Bias; and What is Atheism?

How Does Science Work? Believers Need to Become Scientifically Literate

Isn't it interesting that the more someone becomes scientifically literate the less is believed? It's not just the conclusions reached, although that is clearly important, it's understanding the process of how science itself works. Believers love to focus on the demarcation line between science and non-science, on cutting edge science which is still as yet unsettled, and ask endless questions about the precise description of the scientific method. But only by truly understanding how science works can they see why faith is an utterly unreliable method for understanding the nature and workings of the universe. To understand this process I heartily recommend the following books. According to one of them, written by Dennis Trumble, "For many people of faith the issue isn't about determining which beliefs are true and which ones are false but, rather, deciding which beliefs are good and which are bad." (p. 30).

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence, No Ifs Ands or Buts About It

I like provocative post titles. They're fun to create. Carl Sagan popularized this principle, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. What I argue more precisely, is that extraordinary claims require a sufficient amount of objective evidence for them, especially when we have good reasons to expect the evidence should exist. The first thing you'll notice is that what I argue for works regardless of whether we're dealing with an ordinary or an extraordinary claim. The difference is how much evidence is required. When it comes to extraordinary claims a lot of evidence is required, whereas with ordinary claims we only need a little of it. All someone has to do is consider how much evidence would be required to believe me, if I said I levitated this morning for 5 minutes. Then compare this with my claim that I just ate breakfast. I'm sure you would not believe my claim that I levitated, whereas you probably would when I say I just ate breakfast. These two claims would clearly require a different amount of evidence to accept them.

John W. Loftus vs Randal Rauser Debate the Existence of God

This debate took place in Dr. Rauser's home church in Edmonton, Canada, on June 5, 2013. Enjoy.

I Have Never Read a More Anti-Woman Text Than "The Witch Hammer"

I'm doing some research for a chapter on the witch-hunts for my new anthology, "Christianity is Not Great." A description of it and a link to the chapters can be seen here. The Malleus Maleficarum (literally "The hammer of malefactresses, i.e. wrongdoing women, or witches) is a treatise on the prosecution of witches that was written by Heinrich Kramer (and James Sprenger) in 1486.

The main purpose of it was to argue that witchcraft exists, that witches were more often women than men, and to provide magistrates with guidelines that could help them find and convict them. In the Introduction to this work, published in 1948 by Dover Publications, translator Montague Summers wrote:

It is hardly disputed that in the whole vast literature of witchcraft, the most prominent, the most important, the most authoritative volume is the Malleus Maleficarum (The Witch Hammer) of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger...The Malleus lay on the bench of every magistrate. It was the ultimate, irrefutable, unarguable authority. It was implicitly accepted not only by Catholic but by Protestant legislatures. In fine, it is not too much to say that the Malleus Maleficarum is among the most important, wisest, and weightiest books of the world.

Note the word "wisest"? He was clearly a witch-hunt sympathizer. Nonetheless, given the influence of this witch-hunt manual I find it incredibly dense for Christians to say their faith was the motivator for the emancipation of women. It can't be. Just see for yourselves with selected quotes:

Sam Harris - Morality and the Christian God

A few weeks ago Sam Harris asked for volunteers to remix a clip from his William Lane Craig debate into a video.  Here is one very powerful result.

An Atheist's Perspective on Thanksgiving

For religious people, the standard setting for the giving of thanks is entirely incidental to the meaning of the occasion. The family around the table, the turkey or ham, the football game — all of these are just props and ritual. None is essential to thanking God.

What for a religious person, though, is just the setting of Thanksgiving is for the atheist the entire celebration itself. Family and fun, and marking the change of the seasons, is its only meaning and significance.

I suppose that to a religious person an atheist Thanksgiving must appear a thin thing, lacking reverence and grandeur. But then, again, a person who reveres a grand God must feel diminished in her own eyes. Giving thanks to God must engender in the religious the sense that they are powerless supplicants to a higher reality. Another thing we atheists are happy about, then, is that nothing at all depends on the will of a spirit in the sky.

The quote above is from Mark Mercer, chairman of the Philosophy department at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Submitted by J. M. Green

Today I'm a Very Grateful Person

Today I am thankful for my life, liberty and the ability to pursue happiness. I'm thankful for my health, my family and my friends. I'm thankful for the people who appreciate my work who recommend it and defend it against objections to the contrary. Today I am a very grateful person. I am usually this way though, so there isn't any change because it's Thanksgiving Day. It's the best way to live life if possible. Here's wishing the less fortunate among my friends can at least appreciate the simple things in life. When life seems frustrating or debilitating then just focus on breathing if nothing else.

Dr. Vincent Torley is Clearly and Obviously Delusional, Sorry to Say

In a comment on this blog Torley claimed "either God exists or scientific knowledge is impossible." Then over at Uncommon Descent Torley was arguing against Sean Carroll's excellent video talk, "Is God a Good Theory" (seen below), and in response he says:

The existence of God is as certain as the fact that our scientific inferences are well-grounded, since it is God Himself Who grounds them. My certainty about God’s existence is roughly on a par with my certainty that an apple thrown up in the air will fall back to Earth in a lawlike fashion, and not fly off into space or zoom around the room.

The god he's certain about is,

Someone (beyond space and time) Whose nature it is to know and love in a perfect and unlimited way, Whose mode of acting is simply to know, love and choose (without anything more basic underlying these acts), Who is the Creator and Conserver of the natural world, and Who is therefore capable of making anything He wishes to, provided that it’s consistent with His nature as a perfectly intelligent and loving being, and with His other choices.

[Actually, Torley is being disingenuous here and won't honestly admit it, since by extension he's also certain his evangelical trinitarian, incarnational, redeeming god exists, who is supposedly based in the pages of an inspired Bible, but I'll let that slide. If he's not certain of this, then what degree of probability would he say these additional beliefs of his warrant?] Now if Torley is a rational person unaffected by the irrationalities of faith, then he can be brought to his senses with just two facts. If not, then he cannot be helped, just like a heavily indoctrinated Moonie, or Mormon, or Muslim cannot be helped.

Dr. Vincent Torley vs Dr. Randal Rauser

Torley spends a great deal of time defending the indefensible. This time he calls out Rauser, which I find interesting and funny. To read what he wrote you can do so right here, under the heading, "Does the reliability of associative knowledge in animals legitimize scientific inference?"

In an article on his Website, Debunking Christianity, the well-known skeptic and former preacher John Loftus, M.A., M.Div., author of Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, defends the possibility of scientific knowledge along the following lines:

“If there is no God then we don’t know anything.” False. If so, chimps don’t know anything either. They don’t know how to get food, or mate or even where to live. Without knowing anything they should’ve died off a long time ago. And yet here they are. They don’t need a god to know these things. Why do we need a god for knowledge? We learn through a process of trial and error. Since we’ve survived as a human species, we have acquired reliable knowledge about our world. Period.

"There are several things wrong with this argument," Torley writes.

A Snapshot of the Back Cover of "The Christian Delusion"

I tire of elitist Christian apologists who want more atheist philosophers of the stature of Graham Oppy and the late Jordan Howard Sobel. There is just something about this that annoys me, not because these two towering atheists don't destroy the God-hypothesis. They do. It's because Christians are trying to skirt the real basis for their faith, the historical lack of evidence for the reliability of the Bible. I really think Christians love good atheist philosophy because it doesn't actually challenge their faith. This is something I wrote about here. Okay then, Graham Oppy recommends at least two of my books. Click on the back cover of my book, The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails, to see what he wrote about it.Now what? Say he didn't mean what he said? Say it wasn't really a good endorsement after all? If it isn't that good of a book why would he write a blurb for it at all? Get it. See for yourself.

John's Top 30 Substantive Posts in 2013

This year I've tried to categorize them rather than list them in order of importance. Enjoy. Again, this listing might be changed slightly as the end of the year approaches.

An Interview With Guy P. Harrison

The following interview was conducted by "The Promethean" which is the email newsletter of Prometheus Books. Enjoy.

Family Secrets: Is Your Heavenly Father A Psychopath?

In the powerful movie Music Box, Jessica Lange plays Anne, a lawyer defending her Hungarian-American father against charges of being a war criminal who tortured Jews in the Holocaust.  Anne finds these charges to be unthinkable, given that she knows her father to be a loving man. Tensions rise as the prosecuting lawyer claims that the caring father she knows is a carefully-constructed persona which hides the true nature of his past.  Anne manages to secure evidence which results in the dismissal of the charges against her father, but the prosecutor urges her to stop living in a fantasy world, and to dig deeper into her father’s past, to find the truth.   Anne finds herself facing a difficult choice:  pursue the truth at great personal cost, or settle for the easy answers and safe world of what she has always thought to be true

The movie serves as a powerful illustration of the mental trauma which Christians face when they are first confronted with rumors of unsavory secrets in their family history.  Could the loving Heavenly Father which they have known actually be a brutal and heartless psychopath?   Do they dare stir the dust of doubt by digging around in the ancient archives of Yahweh, reading what was written about him in old diaries and tattered documents?

Photo of John W. Loftus

John W. Loftus

I just thought I'd put this picture of myself out there. It isn't a high quality one, but it should be good enough for the web. People who want to review my books or work in general (or trash them) will be able to find it online with a search. I'm wearing a new hat I just got. Yes, I like hats, black ones mostly.

You are looking into the eyes of a guy who is single-mindedly focused on destroying the Christian faith.

The Inputs of Science Are Better Ones

The inputs of cold hard scientific evidence are better ones. Let's say some scientific experiment proved we don't have free will. Then can you hear a Christian say we have no reason to trust the results, since if so, then we don't have free will, which is considered a pre-requisite to knowing the truth? Why shouldn't we trust the results even if we don't have free will? Again, the inputs of science are better ones. Period. If believers still disagree we just need to show them the results. And if the results are as I suggested, then they must accept them if they want to be intellectually honest, despite the fact that coming to that conclusion was determined by those results.

But look what has happened in the comments right here when it came to the problem of suffering and a good God. A typical (yet respectful) Christian showed up. He sidetracked the issue to talk about free will. It's not enough to say the video is powerful. He needs to explain why God does nothing discernible to alleviate the massive amount of suffering in the world. I tire of this. I really really do. When presenting what appears to be a slam dunk case against faith they will always, always, always divert the discussion. This is absolutely pathetic. This is what Christians must ALWAYS do rather than be honest with the empirical evidence. Skirt it. Typical. Delusional. Sick in the head. There is a virus inside them, a mind virus. It will not let them entertain the simple facts of experience. But this is illustrative of what I see so often, that if I had a dollar for every time it happened I could possibly be rich. Christian do you now see why I say you are deluded? Why you have a mind virus. It has attached itself to you and controls your thoughts so you don't even know it's there. You need our help.

Sam Harris on Morality and the Christian God

Peter Boghossian is Taking the World By Storm

...and creating one as well. Here are some links to the conversation and/or debate from Religion News Source, from Jerry Coyne who uses his definition of faith in his article for Slate titled, "No Faith in Science," from The Thinking Christian, and from his interview for the Secular World Outpost. Finally he shared the stage with Richard Dawkins:

With religion people were usually never argued into it in the first place, so they usually cannot be argued out of it.

Once religious people can admit this fact, then and only then do they have the potential for questioning what seems so obvious to them. But studies show they won't even admit this against the overwhelming evidence of psychological studies. Here then is an excerpt from The Outsider Test for Faith(OTF):

The Massively Incompetent Christian Revelation

A good friend sent me an ad he's placing in magazines and newspapers with this as a title. It's really good. See what you think:

Ever Wonder Why Religious Ignorance Breeds Dogmatic Belief?

Join Us!

My sixty plus years dealing with Christianity will let me provide a real Christian Truth:

Belief and missionary commitment are inversely proportional to one’s Biblical and Christian objective educational level, but directly proportional to one’s subjective indoctrination level.

Belief in God: What’s the Harm? (Rush Limbaugh Edition)

Right Wing radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh likes to refer to himself a “talent on loan from God”.  He will be today’s exhibit of how beliefs have consequences, and how religious beliefs can cause harm
.

On the subject of human-caused global warming, Rush (who has millions of listeners) has said:  

"If you believe in God, then intellectually you cannot believe in man-made global warming. You must be agnostic or atheistic to believe that man controls something he can't create.  It’s always been one of the reasons for my anti man-made global warming stance." 

The purpose of this blog post is not to generate arguments over global warming. I merely offer  the Limbaugh quote as an example of how a religious belief can drive irresponsible and dangerous attitudes which could have far-reaching implications for the planet.

Dan Barker is Writing a New Book On Life, Meaning, Purpose and Morality

It's tentatively titled: Life Driven Purpose: How An Atheist Finds Meaning (Foreword by Daniel Dennett). He's not offering reasons to reject faith but he does recommend some works that do, in these words: "A wealth of positive and negative criticism of faith can be found in the writings of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, the late Christopher Hitchens, Vic Stenger, Sam Harris, John Loftus, and many other capable writers." Wow, that's a nice list of people to be mentioned in the same sentence with. I'm humbled and very grateful. Thanks so very much Dan!

I was also honored that he asked for a blurb based on a draft of his book. Keep your eyes pealed for this one. I don't have an idea when it will be published. Here's my blurb:

"Dan says he's certainly not pretending to be a Deacon of Atheism or Bishop of Freethought, but he is. In this book Deacon Dan (aka Bishop Barker) uses good scholarship in offering convincing answers to some of the most important reasons why believers keep on believing despite the lack of sufficient evidence. Writing with the wit and story-telling of a preacher, this series of "sermons" will definitely reach the masses. I heartily endorse it. May it produce a revival, one of reason, logic and science." -- John W. Loftus, author of Why I Became An Atheist, The Outsider Test for Faith, and co-author of God or Godless?