Mystical Faith? Reviewing Mittelberg's "Confident Faith" Part 15

In his apologetics book, Confident Faith, Mark Mittelberg is writing sentences and chapters on examining his religious faith from the luck of the draw of childhood and cultural indoctrination. I think he acknowledges the problem fairly well. The question I wrestle with is how his brain can allow him to understand the problem, yet utterly fail to honestly deal with it, as is obvious here. So his book is little more than a 287 page example of confirmation bias in action.

At least Mittelberg can be credited with acknowledging the problem. But then, apologists can admit this problem, along with the twin problems of horrendous suffering for a good god, and of believing a virtually impossible miraculous biblical event took place, yet go on to write as if they didn't acknowledge these problems at all. It's because their brains will not allow them to truly acknowledge THE FORCE OF THESE PROBLEMS, no matter how accurately they are described. Cognitive biases are like viruses of the mind that won't let them consider the force of these and other problems for their faith.

William Lane Craig by contrast, doesn't think there's a childhood and cultural indoctrination problem at all, because he says

"The Bible says all men are without excuse. Even men who are given no good reason to believe and many persuasive reasons to disbelieve have no good excuse, because the ultimate reason they do not believe is that they have deliberately rejected God’s Holy Spirit. Therefore, the role of reason in knowing Christianity is true is to be a servant. A person knows Christianity is true because the Holy Spirit tells him it is true, and while reason can be used to support this conclusion, reason cannot overrule it." [Craig, Apologetics: An Introduction, p. 22.].

Craig says, "I am asserting that not only should I continue to have faith in God on the basis of the Spirit's witness even if all the arguments for His existence were refuted, but I should continue to have faith in God even in the face of objections which I cannot at that time answer." SOURCE.

The Knights Templar: "a monastic order that would have a license to kill."

I'm reading an interesting book I got at a Good Will store. Described below is how the barbaric Norsemen polytheistic gods gave rise to the Knights Templar monastic order.

I don't think anything shows the cultural influence on Catholicism more than the rise of "a monastic order that would have a license to kill." See for yourselves. This point is masterfully made by David Eller in my anthology, The Christian Delusion.

A One-Two Punch: Christianity Out Cold

Too many resurrected gods, and too much suffering

Chances are, there are no Catholic priests who, from the pulpit on Sunday morning, will urge their parishioners to study the Book of Mormon: “Maybe the Mormons have it right, and we don’t.” Chances are, there are no Southern Baptist preachers who will suggest that, for a month, everyone in the congregation should go to a Catholic Church: “Maybe the Catholics are following true Christianity.” Chances are, no Methodist ministers will stand in the pulpit and advise that everyone should study the Qur’an—read it cover to cover: “Maybe Islam is the one true religion, after all.”

The Intuitive Faith Path. Reviewing Mittelberg's Book "Confident Faith" Part 14

On January 2018 I started a series of posts on Mark Mittelberg's book, Confident Faith. The first post introduced Mark and his book right here. [See the Tag "Mark Mittelberg" for more]. I stopped reviewing his book when I got busy on my final three books [See Link.]

So I'm back to Mittelberg. To briefly rehearse, Mittelberg begins his book in Part 1, "Six Paths of Faith", by speaking about approaches, or methods readers adopt to embrace their respective faiths (remember, *cough* he says we all have faith):

1) The Relativistic Path: "Truth is Whatever Works for You"
2) The Traditional Faith Path: "Truth is What You've Always Been Taught"
3) The Authoritarian Faith Path: "Truth Is What You've Always Been Told You Must Believe"
4) The Intuitive Faith Path" "Truth Is What You Feel In Your Heart"
5) The Mystical Faith Path" "Truth Is What You Think God Told You"
6) The Evidential Faith Path: "Truth Is What Logic and Evidence Point To"

"This is crucial" he says, "because the method (or methods) you use in deciding what to believe has a huge bearing on what those beliefs will actually be, as well as how confident you'll be in holding on to them." (p. 9) "Most people never consider this" he goes on to say. "They just arbitrarily adopt an approach--or adopt one that's been handed to them--and uncritically employ it to choose a set of beliefs that may or may not really add up." (p. 10)

To his credit, Mittelberg does something intellectually respectful, that William Lane Craig does not do. Mittelberg discusses other ways of knowing the truth about faith and religion. Craig participates in debates about apologetics but he only defends his own particular view in them. It's like he's forever in debate mode!

So far I only got to method 3. Given my emphasis lately on William Lane Craig's Spirit Guided Epistemology, it's time to compare and contrast Craig's views with Mittelberg's.

In the Face of Brutal Reality, How Does Christianity Survive?

So many human calamities, so much suffering 

For most of us—Christians and nonbelievers alike—it was hard to get into anything resembling the Christian spirit in December 2012. On the 14th of that month, a gunman killed twenty students and six teachers at the Sandy Hook School in Newtown, CT. The nation was in shock, grieving. Ten days later, at a Christmas Eve dinner, at the home of a Catholic friend, she said—during grace, referencing the massacre—“God must have wanted more angels.” I had to resist the temptation to throw my drink in her face. If any Catholic theologians had been present, they would have swung into action, to perform an exorcism, to get rid of the demon that had invaded her brain. Theologians work overtime to explain why their caring, powerful god wasn’t able to stop the gunman. Here was a devout Catholic suggesting that her god had engineered the killing to get more angels. This is a symptom of catechism-induced brain death.

The Abject Failure of Christian Apologetics.

A great many Christian theologians don't think highly of apologetics, following in the footsteps of Karl Barth who thought natural theology was a failure. In their colleges there is no apologetics department, or apologetics classes! According to them, natural theology is a failure. God is his own witness. Only God can reveal God. Revelation from God can only come from God, or as Barth himself said, "the best apologetics is a good dogmatics". [Table Talk, ed. J. D. Godsey (Edinburgh and London, 1963), p. 62].

Immanuel Kant's statement speaks for a lot of them: "I have found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith" (Critique of Pure Reason, bxxx)

In my book, The Case against Miracles I wrote a chapter called "The Abject Failure of Christian Apologetics." In it I show how 80% of apologists reject the requirement for evidence (i.e., Evidentialism) in favor of four other methods. The best explanation for why they've come up with different methods of defending their faith is because they themselves don't think the evidence is good enough.

The Awful Controlling Damning Lying Calvinist God

As the editor of God and Horrendous Suffering, which is highly recommended from important philosophers of both sides of this debate, I also wrote the chapter titled, The Awful Controlling Damning Lying Calvinist God. If you want to see the mental contradictory contortions needed by Calvinists (and Muslims) to exonerate their god from the origin of evil, I recommend this video by Edouard Tahmizian, Vice President Of Internet Infidels Board.

William Lane Craig's Advice: "Quit reading and watching the infidel material you’ve been absorbing."

As I've mentioned before, William Lane Craig does not consider doubt to be a virtue. Given his utterly unjustified claims of a (holy) Spirit Guide he can't recommend it, not with regard to Christianity anyway. He advocates a double-standard, one for his sect-specific faith and a different one for all other faiths, even though faith is the basis for all of them. So he's offering nothing different than what Mormon missionaries do, or Muslims, or Psychics, ad nauseam.

But given the existence of world-wide religious diversity Peter Boghossian tells the naked truth: "We are forced to conclude that a tremendous number of people are delusional. There is no other conclusion one can draw." He says, "The most charitable thing we can say about faith is that it's likely to be false." [Source]. No wonder Boghossian goes on to make a difference between sitting at the adult table from sitting at the children's table. People like Craig, no matter how highly he's regarded, or how brilliantly he uses empty rhetoric without substance, are not allowed at the adult table for discussion until they disavow faith as a method for attaining truth about the world, it's workings, and origins. By contrast, as I repeatedly stress, Doubt Is The Adult Attitude. If there is a way to know the truth then doubt is the means to achieve it, and science repeatedly delivers the goods.

Rene Descartes speaks for us when he wrote:

"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things."

Now consider what Craig wrote on October 21, 2013, in answering a Christian who was in the throes of doubt, due to the writings of David G. McAfee. He or she wrote:

Enough Already with this Holy Spirit Crap

…unless there’s reliable, verifiable, objective data

Sometimes I dream weird, surreal, even alarming stuff. When I wake up, I wonder how in the world my brain mixed/garbled so many different elements from my memories. I have to be fully awake before I realize I’m back in reality. My bedtime routine always includes a glass of wine, so maybe that provides some of the fuel! My brain had been busy for the hours I was asleep. But what it if wasn’t just my brain? Is it possible that I was getting input from the spiritual realm? Belief in an afterlife probably arose because people saw deceased friends and relatives in their dreams—so, wow, they weren’t dead after all. 

 

There have been a lot of foolish, even dangerous ideas passed along by people who claim to have heard from the spiritual realm, via dreams, visions, hallucinations. These are the currencies of religions. Commonly, a religious seer just has to describe his vision to an audience of his/her choosing, and voilà, people follow in awe of this “person of god.” Christians claim that a third of their god is indeed a holy spirit. (Holy ghost has gone out of fashion!) They insist that their spirit is the truly holy one, and that it is at the top of the hierarchy.

The Fatal Flaw In William Lane Craig's Psychic Epistemology

William Lane Craig has said, "Communicating my understanding of the proper basicality of certain Christian beliefs grounded by the Spirit’s witness has proven to be extraordinarily difficult." Source. Craig also said, "What we know is that people make up their minds for all sorts of non-rational reasons unrelated to the evidence." Source.

Craig should listen to himself. Complexity is needed when obfuscation is the goal. Craig should pay heed to the author of Colossians who wrote: “See that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy" (2:8)!! Brilliance in the servitude of obfuscations, special pleadings, red herrings, and non-sequiturs has nothing to do with an honest search for truth.

Let's take a look at Craig's podcast on Religious Experience: Subjective or Objective?:

It is very important to understand that the witness of the Holy Spirit is not just a subjective religious experience. It is a witness which God himself bears with our spirit. It produces an awareness of the truths of the Gospel, assurance of salvation, conviction of sin, things of this sort.

-----------
It is the claim that you can know that God exists and that Christianity is true wholly apart from arguments simply through the inner testimony of God to your heart. So don’t think of this as an argument from religious experience. Rather, it is the claim that for the person to whom God bears witness by means of this spiritual testimony, such a person can know with confidence that Christianity is true because of the witness that God bears to him.

-----------
The fundamental, ground level way in which I know my faith is true is through this inner self-authenticating witness of God’s Spirit which assures me that I am a child of God. That entails, of course, then, that God exists and the great truths of the Gospel are correct.

On Plantinga and Craig's Psychic Epistemology

William Lane Craig's Favorite Hymn!

Plantinga and Craig are prime examples of what philosopher Stephen Law said, “Anything based on faith, no matter how ludicrous, can be made to be consistent with the available evidence, given a little patience and ingenuity.” (Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2011), p. 75. Or as anthropology professor James T. Houk said, “Virtually anything and everything, no matter how absurd, inane, or ridiculous, has been believed or claimed to be true at one time or another by somebody, somewhere in the name of faith." (The Illusion of Certainty. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2017), p. 31.


In what follows is an excerpt from my chapter 6, "The Abject Failure of Christian Apologetics" in The Case against Miracles (pp. 190ff).

A Pop-Quiz for Christians, Number 4

The questions are getting tougher   

Wouldn’t it be cool if Christians could settle their differences? What an embarrassment that they can’t agree on what their god is like and how he/she wants to be worshipped? Isn’t 30,000-plus different Christian brands a scandal? I’ve known strident evangelicals who are certain that Catholics are their worst enemy. 

 

Wouldn’t it be cool if Christians could suppress their urge to build more churches? Does the world really need more? There is so much hunger and poverty: why not put funds where they’re desperately needed? Yes, Jesus was a carpenter—supposedly—but was that an endorsement of construction-without-end?

 

Wouldn’t it be cool if Christians were in the habit of binge-reading their Bibles? Aren’t the gospels, especially, supposed to be the word of their god? If the devout really believed that, wouldn’t they be able to quote wide swaths of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John by heart?

William Lane Craig Utterly Fails In Searching For Truth Given the Human Propensity To Fool Ourselves

Craig falsely claims there is a distinction between knowing Christianity is true and showing Christianity is true. He might legitimately say he knows he didn't do a crime he's accused of, since he knows he didn't do it despite the available objective evidence. But it is irrational for him to claim he knows Moses led the Israelites across the bottom of the Red Sea, or that a virgin birthed god's son, or that a savior arose from the dead regardless of any historical evidence. But that's what he's claiming when defending his Christian faith. He said:

A believer who is too uninformed or ill-equipped to refute anti-Christian arguments is rational in believing on the grounds of the witness of the Spirit in his heart even in the face of such unrefuted objections. Even such a person confronted with what are for him unanswerable objections to Christian theism is, because of the work of the Holy Spirit, within his epistemic rights—nay, under epistemic obligation—to believe in God.” [Craig, “Classical Apologetics,” in Five Views on Apologetics, ed. Steven B. Cowan (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000), p. 35].

There are two major reasons to reject what Craig says. In the first place he's deceiving himself, and secondarily he's giving Christian believers permission to deceive themselves.

Cognitive biases are known for giving people permission to confirm our biases despite the fact they are false. So we must bring our reptilian brains to heel by demanding sufficient objective evidence that would convince an outsider. The mother of all cognitive biases is confirmation bias. It prohibits people from honestly seeking the truth.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. The effect is strongest for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues, and for deeply entrenched beliefs. LINK.

We must question everything. That's the adult attitude. Be adults in your thinking. Children believe whatever they're told. To blindly believe whatever you're told is likely to produce false confidence in false ideas. You must require and even demand evidence sufficient for the claims being made. Period!

In my book The Outsider Test for Faith I argue we should approach our own (usually) indoctrinated religious faith from the perspective of an informed skepticism. This is something Craig utterly failed to do, and he utterly fails to tell others to do so in their search for religious truth:

Field of Dreams MLB Game Will Remind Me Of Baseball Great Tom Loftus

On Thursday, August 11th, baseball fans will watch as the Chicago Cubs take on the Cincinnati Reds in the second installment of the Field of Dreams event at 7:15 p.m. ET on FOX. It will be played in Dyersville Iowa, located in Dubuque County. My great grandfather Tom Loftus was a lifelong resident of Dubuque, and was buried there.

John Pregler is a baseball historian who has written about my great grandfather Tom Loftus. Tom was a Major League Baseball player, manager, co-owner with Albert Spalding of the Chicago Cubs (Orphans), and one of three men who founded the American League (with life long friend Charles Comiskey, and Ban Johnson).

Pregler sent me a message recently, saying: "I'll be thinking of Tom Loftus this Thursday (8/11). One of seven men to manage both the Reds and the Cubs, and the only man to manage in 4 different major leagues. And he is buried 24 miles from the Field of Dreams. Both teams will drive by his cemetery and would be able to see his grave, if they knew he was there, rooting them both on. I've tried in vain to get MLB and FOX Sports to recognize this fact, but crickets."

I responded, "A movie script should be written about this."

How Should Atheist Critics and Counter-Apologists Be Ranked?

On Facebook Ryan Downie deservedly recommended Johnathan Pearce's book, The Nativity: A Critical Examination. Then this comment by Pallmann appeared. I found his profile picture (with Tim McGrew) on Facebook (see below). Let it be said clearly that Tim McGrew and his wife Lydia McGrew are philosophers who are fundamentalists. What they believe is based on an alleged inerrant Bible. Anyone who is biblically literate should know there is no reason to be a Christian fundamentalist.

Regardless, what Pallmann said is something McGrew would say, which isn't bad. It's kinda nice to be grouped with Sean McDowell, J. Wallace Warner and Pearce. I'll take that! I suppose so does Pearce!

I'm just not a fan of his last words, that my (our) work is "...far from the best." I might have been okay with him saying my work is "...not the best", since I could name better critics than me, people who write for my anthologies, and those who write blurbs for them. What I want to know is if Sean McDowell and J. Wallace Warner are okay with Pallmann saying they are also "...far from the best", since that's the comparison.

Later, when asked who the best critics are, Pallmann mentioned the names Evan Fales, Graham Oppy, John Schellenberg, William Rowe, and Paul Draper. That too sounds like the fundamentalist philosopher McGrew. Notice the recommendations are all philosophers, and they have all done some good philosophical work. Of them I have a few bones to pick though. Evan Fales sent me a different chapter than I had asked him to write for my anthology, The Case against Miracles, which I thought was unpersuasive. Graham Oppy gets David Hume badly wrong. John Schellenberg incorrectly thinks our agnosticism about ultimacies should be total. Plus, I disagree with Paul Draper about the philosophy of religion. I have no criticisms to speak of about the work of ex-Christian philosopher William Rowe, even though he boasted of being the first "friendly atheist", and that his work wasn't comprehensive (okay, maybe a small nit pick, or two). Beyond them I have offered criticisms of other atheist philosophers elsewhere.

"HUME ON PROOF AND MATHEMATICAL PROBABILITY" by John W. Loftus

What follows is the Appendix to my anthology The Case against Miracles (pp. 551-560). I consider several parts of that book to be a major defense of David Hume. I know there is some debate on Hume, but what Hume said on miracles withstands the criticisms leveled at him. They come from both Christian apologists and philosophers (as one would expect), but also from some atheist philosophers, like Michael Martin (Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, pp. 194-196), Michael Levine (The Cambridge Companion to Miracles, pp. 291-308), and Graham Oppy (Arguing About Gods, pp. 376-382), who strangely says "Hume's argument against belief in miracle reports fails no less surely than do the various arguments from miracle reports to the existence of an orthodoxy conceived monotheistic god" (p. 381). Agnostic/atheist John Earman thinks Hume's argument is an Abject Failure (as seen in his book by that title). And while J.L. Mackie defends Hume against some objections, even he thinks Hume's argument needs "improvement" (p. 25) by being "tidied up and restated" (p. 17) due to "inaccuracies" (p. 27), with one part he calls "very unsatisfactory" (p. 23).

Here's a brief introduction to the debate on miracles LINK. Now for my Appendix:

5 Things That Disqualify People As Trusted Experts In Religious Matters

1) Denying the need for sufficient objective evidence. Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig have argued that Christian believers do not need objective evidence for their faith. So they are disqualified from being experts in religious matters. They are clearly deluded no matter how brilliant their rhetoric is. Other Christian believers disagree with them on this, even highly noted apologists Norman Geisler and Paul Moser. If Geisler and Moser cannot be convinced then why should anyone else?

2) Rejecting the need to overcome the cognitive biases keeping us away from the truth. The only way to overcome these biases is to require sufficient objective evidence for truth, period. I wrote a post on Why Doubt Is The Adult Attitude And How Science Helps Us. In it I have complied a long list of books that prove this point. The evidence is overwhelming that our brain is uninterested in the truth, but rather primarily concerned in protecting its host. So we must require sufficient objective evidence for what we think is true. Plantinga and Craig brazenly eschew an objective standard that applies to everyone with Reformed Epistemology!

3) Rejecting the non-double standard requirement to approach all religious faiths with the same standard, as an outsider, a nonbeliever. Here is a primer on why we need it. Anyone who rejects this is not worthy of our trust as an expert.

4) Rejecting, denying, or denigrating science in general. The highest degree of trust we can have is when there is a consensus among scientists about an issue. See these posts for more.

5) Refusing to accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution disqualifies someone from being an expert in religious matters. That's because evolution has a significant bearing on religious matters. If anyone rejects evolution they are ignorant, willfully ignorant, and unworthy of trusting as an expert. Evolution is an issue that has achieved a consensus among scientists around the globe from those working is different fields. Start reading Charles Darwin's, On the Origin of Species. Then read the books by Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, and Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.Do not just read the works of Christian creationists, who themselves were indoctrinated to believe what they do. Go to the source. Compare the evidence yourself. Along this same line read Robert M. Price and Edwin Suominen's wonderful book, Evolving out of Eden. They will show you the inescapable implications of evolution: There is no original sin, no need for a savior, and no need for salvation.

Agreed? If not you're in too deep.

Jesus Doesn’t Want You to Fact-check

The Bible is a fact-checker’s nightmare

We are able to get along in the world to the extent we grasp the importance of fact-checking. Whether it’s buying a house, a new appliance, insurance, or checking out colleges for the kids, we usually aren’t satisfied with taking the word of the salesman. We’re willing to do some research to find out the quality of the product or service. Even if it’s deciding what movies to watch, why not read the reviews? 

 

But this same level of scrutiny is seldom applied in the realm of religion. Those brought up in religious environments—Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Mormon, Jewish, or whatever—are not usually encouraged to challenge or question the “truth” imparted by parents and religious authorities. Indeed, religious indoctrination from an early age is meant to guard against the invasion of doubt or skepticism: “Here’s our god’s honest truth, hold fast to it your whole life—if you know what’s good for you!”

Stripped of its Philosophical Support William Lane Craig Sounds Bizarre: Consider The Holy Spirit's Role In Him Believing The Virgin Birth Tale

Believers need to think for just one minute. Think about what should be the case, but isn't. Then you'll realize that if Christian belief is indeed reasonable, Christian intellectuals should tout the virtues of reason. But they betray themselves. See Case #'s 1 and 3 here. For the bottom line is that Craig's faith has become an intrinsic defeater to all defeaters against it. Reason is secondary at best(!) If reason and faith stand in conflict then according to Craig, "it is reason that must submit to faith, not vice versa.” [Craig, Apologetics: An Introduction (Chicago: Moody Press, 1984), p. 21.] Craig quotes the Bible as an authority on this, saying,

The Failure of Van Tillian Presuppositional Apologetics

Guest Essay Written by Cat_Lord:

1. Introduction

Throughout the course of Christian history, there have been many and various attempts to argue for the truth of Christianity. In this post, I will discuss one popular form of apologetic argumentation named presuppositionalism. The main points I want to write about are what this apologetic is as it relates to Cornelius Van Til, its relationship to what are called “transcendental  arguments” in the philosophical literature,  give examples of how presuppositionalists often proceed with their argumentation, and finally point out some problems with this apologetic.

Jaco Gericke: Fundamentalism on Stilts: A Devastating Response to Alvin Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology

[First published 12/12/09] Dr. Jaco Gericke is a philosopher of religion and a biblical scholar to boot. He has written what can be considered a refutation of Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology. Gericke tells me, "The trouble with Craig and and Plantinga is that their philosophy of religion conveniently ignores the problems posed for their views by the history of Israelite religion. They might as well try to prove Zeus exists. People sometimes forget 'God' used to be Yahweh and it is possible to prove from textual evidence that 'there ain't no such animal.'" Dr. Gericke writes:

Not so long ago I was so irritated by a book of Alvin Plantinga's that I wrote a rebuttal from the perspective of a biblical scholar who happens to know what goes on in the philosophy of religion. It concerns the foundations of Plantinga's views and can be applied to William Lane Craig as well. Their philosophy may sound complex and formidable but if you know both the philosophy of religion and also the history of religion their smarts ain't nothing but Fundamentalism on Stilts.

Anyone who is biblically literate should know there is no reason to be a Christian fundamentalist. So with that in mind, below is a summary of Gericke's important points and a link to his pdf article. Enjoy!

Is Belief In Plantinga's God Properly Basic? Dr. Matt McCormick Responds in Three Talks

In the Preface to his monumental book, God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God [Cornell University Press, 1967], Alvin Plantinga tells us what he aims to do in it. He begins with these words: "In this study I set out to investigate the rational justification of belief in the existence of God as He is conceived in the Hebrew-Christian tradition." Now there isn't anything particularly wrong with examining the rational justification of any given religious tradition. But I think it's very important to discuss what that tradition is. There is a great amount of diversity in it. Furthermore, I think it's also very important to place any discussion of the rationality of religious beliefs into a global perspective. There is a great amount of religious diversity around the globe.

So it's fairly obvious to the rest of us that Plantinga will be special pleading his case for his type of fundamentalist Christianity. I have argued in chapter 7 of my book, How to Defend the Christian Faith: Advice from an Atheist, that all apologetics is special pleading. If you watch the best magicians, they fool us. The better they are the better they fool us! That's also how apologists work. The better they are the better they fool us! Whether consciously or not, apologists bamboozle us with mind tricks. You have to pay attention to what they are doing, how they are doing it, notice what they're leaving out, consider how things could be different, and refuse to be distracted by other things.

Back to Plantinga's Preface:

Q #237 "Is Appeal to the Witness of the Holy Spirit Question-Begging?" A Primer On Plantinga's Religious Epistemology by William Lane Craig

Bill Craig answers questions on his website Reasonable Faith. This one was published on October 31, 2011: Q #237 "Is Appeal to the Witness of the Holy Spirit Question-Begging?"

Christian “truth” in Shreds: Epic Takedown 8

21 faulty ideas, doctrines, and faith practices

Pick a church, any church, and wait outside on a Sunday morning for people to come out of the service. You’re there to do a survey: ask random folks to describe their religion: “What are the basics of your faith?” Chances are, you’ll hear something like this: “Our lord and savior is Jesus Christ. He taught his followers how to lead righteous lives, and he died on the cross to save us from our sins. He resurrected from the dead on Easter morning, and now lives with God in heaven. His resurrection means that he overcame death, and we too will have eternal life if we believe in this amazing victory.” Of course, there will be many variations of this affirmation, since there are so many different—and differing—versions of Christianity.

More On William Lane Craig's Personal Testimony

Previously I had examined Bill Craig's personal conversion testimony right here. Well now, in a podcast released on July 18th 2022, he tells us something very important about it. A guy named Kyle is struggling with doubt and asked him this question:

Christianity is not just a set of propositions that one holds, but it's a faith-practice, a way of life. With that in mind, wouldn't the smart thing to do is require very high epistemic standards before one decides they will dedicate their life to Christ? If you're going to live for Christ then wouldn't it be smart to actually meet Jesus Christ in person or even talk to his mother Mary or an angel? I know you often mention the witness of the Holy Spirit as a way that one can have direct access to God but I have done meditative prayer and deep meditation for years upon years and nothing has come up in terms of God speaking to me directly where I know it wasn't just my own imagination. Many of my fellow Christians have had similar concerns on this also. This is perhaps my biggest struggle and I cannot seem to get it out of my head as it is causing me to abandon the Christian life because I cannot have high epistemic confidence that Christianity is true. Kyle, United States.

Craig responded by saying:

Robert M. Price Shows William Lane Craig's Apologetics Is a "Sham"

The following is the text of a portion of their 1999 Ohio State University debate on the question “Did Jesus of Nazareth Rise from the Dead?” the audio of which was published on October 17, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1vaqsnhgJY. This text was published as an Appendix in my book, Unapologetic: Why Philosophy of Religion Must End.

In 1981 William Lane Craig Admited "the Christian faith does not stand or fall on the evidence for the resurrection."

William Lane Craig has admitted from the very beginning of his writing career that the historical evidence for the resurrection is not the basis for the Christian faith. Historical investigation into the evidence itself is not the reason for knowing, or for showing, Jesus arose from the dead. By extention, evidence itself is not the reason for knowing, or for showing Christianity is true. This makes Craig's whole apologetic work a sham. For saving sinners is all up to his god to do. Craig's god does not need apologetics to get that job done. Evidence is not needed. Historical research is not needed. Craig is not needed. Only belief is needed (unto salvation) and it does not have to be reasonable faith(!) based on sufficient evidence.

If this is true one might say, "No wonder there isn't enough evidence to accept the Christian faith!" Or, conversely, "Apologetics is logically fallacious empty rhetoric without substance." Craig's apologetics may be used by his god to convert sinners, but his god doesn't need apologetics to do this. His god already has an alleged inspired book of writings and the alleged spirit of the trinity to convert people. Since conversion is god's task, Craig's entire work ends up being written for believers who are already converted to strengthen their faith. But then it always has been that way. Anselm said it best, so let me translate what he said: "Faith seeks evidence"; "Faith seeks reason"; "Faith seeks data."

One must consider what could be the case, but is acknowledged by Craig that it isn't the case. What if there were sufficient evidence for Christianity? What then? Well, then Craig would not have to make excuses in advance for the fact that the evidence is insufficient to rationally accept the Christian faith. That's what! He's admitting the evidence is lacking, in advance, even before he presents it with all the research he can muster.

The following text comes from Craig's book The Son Rises: The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus (Chicago: Moody Press, 1981; reprint, Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2000): pp. 7–8.

William Lane Craig: "Christian belief is not based on the historical evidence." In fact, it's not based on evidence at all.

Let's examine what Craig says:

A vast majority of the human race down through history don't have the training, the time, and the resources to conduct a historical investigation of the evidence for Jesus. If we insist on a historical, evidential foundation for faith, then we consign most of the world’s population to unbelief. To me this is unconscionable. Therefore, if one’s religious beliefs are to be rational, there must be some other basis for them than the evidence. We are therefore not dependent on historical proofs for knowledge of Christianity’s truth. Rather through the immediate, inner witness of God’s Holy Spirit every person can come to know the truth of the Gospel once he hears it. Through an existential encounter with God Himself every generation can be made contemporaneous with the first generation of believers.LINK.

The climate crisis: The time to act is now

Richard Carrier's Take Down of "The Argument from Reason" Is Comprehensive and Irrefutable!

In a clearly written post taking dead aim against the Argument from Reason, Richard Carrier exposes one of the most used apologetical "god-of-the-gap" ploys. "Where does logic come from?" asks the apologist seeking to conclude that logic can only be accounted for if God exists. Carrier's post is comprehensive and irrefutable!

One question atheists tend to be bad at answering, because they rarely give it much competent thought, is the ontology of logic: what, physically, does it mean to say that logically impossible things can’t ever happen or exist? Or as a theist might pose the question: if physicalism is true, and only physical things exist (and in our observed case, that means “nothing but” arrangements of matter-energy in space-time), how is it that anything obeys the “Laws of Logic”? Those aren’t, supposedly, laws of physics, right? And in any event, laws of physics are contingent—they could have been different. What keeps Laws of Logic from having been different? Why are they special? And how is it that anything in a purely physical universe obeys them?

Of course a lot of silly apologetics then spins off of the typical “you can’t answer that” God-of-the-Gaps approach here. We need God, you see, to make sure things obey logic, or for logic to even exist as a compelling force over reality. Because, you know, logic is “mental,” or something, yet it governs everywhere, so there has to be some supreme mind manifesting it, which would be God. Yadayada. You get Presuppositionalism out of this; as well as variants of its less loony cousin, the Argument from Reason. As usual, the approach is bogus. Because it simply isn’t true that “you can’t answer that.” One actually can show why logic will be an inalienable governing property of anything that could ever exist. No gods—or minds—needed.

For Religious Advocates, Honesty Is Rarely the Best Policy

The Book of Acts ends with bad theology and a cover-up

Promoters of religions, by which I mean missionaries, priests, preachers, evangelists, do not believe that honesty is the best policy. As they proclaim their cherished religious truths, they don’t bother to inform their audiences that hundreds of other religions have different ideas about god(s)—sometimes drastically different. What preacher, standing in his/her pulpit, is going to say, “Be aware, I am paid by my denomination to advocate our version of the truth, so, in your own best interest, be sure to comparison shop. Check out what other religions believe.”  Nor do the preachers encourage study of the negative aspects of their religions.

William Lane Craig's Answer To Lessing's Ugly Broad Ditch

German critic Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781) wrote about an “ugly broad ditch” he could not cross over, no matter how hard he tried. It was between the probabilities of historical knowledge and the truths we can know from reason. Lessing argued, “Miracles, which I see with my own eyes, and which I have opportunity to verify for myself, are one thing; miracles, of which I know only from history that others say they have seen them and verified them, are another.” “But I live in the 18th century, in which miracles no longer happen. The problem is that reports of miracles are not miracles....they have to work through a medium which takes away all their force.” LINK.

The problem is that if I see a miracle I have evidence that it happened. But if I hear of a miracle from someone else, I have to trust that person’s word on it. And if I read about a miracle in the ancient past, I have to trust the document that reports it. The historical probabilities diminish in terms of verification. One cannot verify a miracle claim in the ancient past comparable to the conclusions of reason.

Bill Craig acknowledges this problem. But look at his answer.

An Interview About My Last Book, "God and Horrendous Suffering"

Here is a written interview I did about my last book, "God and Horrendous Suffering." You'll have to scroll down through a few blurbs and an intro to get to it. Enjoy! LINK.

A Christian Flunks Pop-Quiz Number 3

It’s a big fat F

So far I have posted three Pop-Quizzes for Christians here on the DC Blog (One    Two   Three). My motive has been to coax, to prod Christians to read the Bible, to study the gospels especially. Surveys have shown that most can’t be bothered. I encourage readers to share these pop-quizzes with their church-going friends and relatives. 

 

A few weeks after Pop-Quiz Number 3 was posted, a Christian who identifies as Oreo Pagus offered his comments on the post. The first question on the quiz is about science: What was Carl Sagan referring to when he described The Pale Blue Dot. Oreo Pagus gave the correct answer: Planet Earth, about which Sagan had observed:

 

“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”

Examining William Lane Craig's Personal Testimony

In 2008 William Lane Craig shared his personal testimony of how he became a Christian [reproduced in its entirety below, with a link]. I have previously weighed in on the value of Christian conversion testimonies as compared to deconversion/defection testimonies of former believers right here. It's time to look at what Bill Craig says.

Bill tells us he wasn’t raised in a church-going family. But when he became a teenager in the sixties he asked typical teenage questions, like “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” and “Where am I going?” He searched for answers by attending a Christian church, not a Muslim Mosque, nor Jewish Synagogue, nor Hindu Temple, because he was raised in a Christian culture which set the limits of answers he could accept. Of this church, all he saw with his young prudish judgmental eyes were “a pack of hypocrites” who were “pretending to be something they’re not.” Apparently, *ahem* the young Craig could read people’s minds. Usually the person claiming to do this is only revealing his own mind. Regardless, Bill became very bitter and angry toward the people in that church, and arrived at the fallacious hasty generalization that “Nobody is really genuine.” People were “all just a bunch of phonies” he says. So he “grew to despise people” saying “I wanted nothing to do with them.”

Bill goes on to admit that he was just as much a phony as they were. “For here I was, pretending not to need people, when deep down I knew that I really did.” So he became angry at his own hypocrisy, which is a religious guilt trip he placed on himself, that led him to falsely say, “I couldn’t see any purpose to life; nothing really mattered.” This is such an unjustified either/or fallacious conclusion. There can be plenty of purposes and plenty of things that matter in one’s daily life (like family, friends, and meaningful work), without needing one single final absolute unchanging purpose in life.

Then Bill met a girl. Her name was Sandy. She “always seemed so happy it just makes you sick!” he tells us. Upon asking Sandy why she was so happy, she told him “the God of the universe loved him and wanted to live in his heart.” Sandy also introduced him to other Christians. Of them he said, “I had never met people like this! Whatever they said about Jesus, what was undeniable was that they were living life on a plane of reality that I didn’t even dream existed, and it imparted a deep meaning and joy to their lives, which I craved.”