Round Two Edits On My Paper Concerning Atheist Morality

I received a huge endorsement from Philosopher Jersey Flight on X. What a nice thing to hear! It happened on the same day I finished the first round of edits from my peer reviewed paper on atheist morality. This paper is a 24 page bad boy. James Sterba said that, given what one reviewer said it was clear he was "threatened" by it. 😉 Good!

Two Christian philosophers with Ph.D.'s are reviewing it, neither of whom seem to know how to respond with anything I have not considered before. Next is round two.

Oh the Irony: Religion Is Shooting Itself in the Foot

Disbelief and atheism are on the rise

 
A few years ago I had the misfortune of attending a First Communion service at a suburban Rhode Island Catholic Church. The place was packed, parents and relatives eager to see the children going through this important ritual of the faith. I was not at all surprised to see that the clergy had mastered show business—performing the meticulous ceremonies in their impressive costumes. And the interior of the church was of unexpected grandeur for its suburban setting. Yet I found myself wondering two things: 
 
(1)  What percentage of the hundreds of adults who showed up actually believed the idea that the priests were pushing? Namely, that through the miracle of the Mass, the kids were getting to eat Jesus for the first time. These adults live, work, and survive in the modern world. Do they really accept the superstitions/magical thinking that the Catholic hierarchy still pushes? 
 
(2)  Why was anybody bothering to attend? Why isn’t membership in the Catholic Church down to zero by now? Why do people still show up, in the wake of the world-wide scandal of priests raping children; the most recent figure I have seen is that the church has paid more than three billion dollars in damages.

Richard Carrier, David Kyle Johnson, and I, Oh My!

We three have been invited by Dr. James Sterba to write papers on ethics without God. So far Johnson's and Carrier's papers have both been published. Mine is to come shortwithly. There is a lot of similarity between Johnson's paper and mine! Carrier introduced his yesterday:

I have a new peer-reviewed publication in philosophy: “Objective Moral Facts Exist in All Possible Universes,” Religions 16.8 (2025).

This consolidates my previous peer-reviewed work on metaethics (“Moral Facts Naturally Exist (and Science Could Find Them,” in The End of Christianity, ed. John Loftus, Prometheus 2011) and subsequent blogging and debates into a new peer-reviewed demonstration that moral facts are, in fact, logically necessary properties of rational agents and therefore always exist in all possible worlds (even in worlds without rational agents they exist as the inalienable properties of potential rational agents). God is therefore unnecessary to ground moral facts, and moral facts derive fundamentally from the conjunction of rationality and the situational facts of any potentially moral decision, and therefore are empirically discoverable as such.

You can also read Dr. Johnson's previously published paper, "Whether God Exists Is Irrelevant to Ethics". Mine is being finished up with final edits in the que.

Honest Sermons on the Gospel of Mark: Chapter 9

A sorry mix of superstition, cult bragging, and bad theology

Baptist preacher William Miller predicted that Jesus would return on October 22, 1844. Thousands of people were psyched for this dramatic event, which turned into what became known as The Great Disappointment, since Jesus didn’t show up. Miller had calculated the date based on data—what he assumed was data—that he found in the Bible. He should have grasped that some Bible data is just plain wrong. Such as the opening verse of Mark 9: “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.” 

 
We are entitled to wonder what was going on in the head of the author of Mark’s gospel—whoever that was. There is consensus among mainstream New Testament scholars that this gospel was written in the wake of the destructive First Jewish-Roman War (67-70 CE), during which Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed. This horror is reflected in Mark 13. The Jesus-script in Mark 9:1 might reflect this gap of four decades between supposed Jesus events and the writing of the gospel: “some standing here who will not taste death” until they see the arrival of the kingdom. Some maybe, likely very few.

What Could Convince Reasonable People to Accept the Miracle Stories in the Bible?

This is a segment of my talk at last weekend's BAHA conference in Sarnia, Canada. The conference was fantastic, by the way, with excellent speakers who were experts in several different areas that contained some great content! What you'll see below is the written content of a few of my PowerPoint slides. As usual, I aim at succinctly arguing the case as best as I can. Using the same number of words, could I have done better?

The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 3

Matthew 6: Yet more deeply flawed Jesus-script 
 

In my article here last week, I mentioned that the Sermon on the Mount is treasured by Christians as the pinnacle of wisdom—Jesus at his best. Yet, if we asked churchgoers where we can find this famous sermon, or how recently they’d read it—read it carefully, critically—what would their answers be? Surveys have shown that Bible reading is not a favorite hobby among those who profess to be Christian. And no wonder: there are texts, especially in the Sermon on the Mount, that would prompt many of the devout to say, at least to themselves: “This doesn’t make sense.” My article last week was about Matthew 5, so now we move on to Matthew 6 (this famous sermon is found in chapters 5-7).

The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 2

Matthew 5: Highly prized, but deeply flawed, Jesus-script 

 
Christian clergy and theologians—drawn to their profession by devotion to Jesus—are committed to the idea that the gospel accounts of their lord must be true. Hence they have no trouble claiming that the words of Jesus in the gospels were based on eye-witness accounts and/or reliable oral tradition. Yet there is no evidence—reliable, verifiable, objective evidence—to back up this claim.

Religion Survives Because Humans Live in Vast Bubbles of Ignorance

Reducing your own bubble requires determination, effort, and courage

It’s inevitable actually: when we are born, we know nothing about the cosmos, and as we grow up, we get so many signals from adults around us about what to believe: about what is true. Religion especially relies on massive ignorance to maintain its position and status in the world. Christianity probably deserves a Gold Medal for its Bubble of Ignorance. 
 
Major features of the Christian Bubble
 
Number 1: Devout Christians don’t know the origins of their faith.

Video: Calvinism and the Problem of Evil:

Video 1: My livestream on Calvinism and the problem of evil.

I did a livestream reaction-video today on the problem of evil. There are some sound issues with this video, but my sound seems to have been mostly recorded, it is just quiet. The reason for its quietness is that there was a lot of background noise: cars passing, heavy rain, renovations—or, in the American dialect: remodelling—and so I had to have the gain on my cardioid Blue Yeti mic down really low, so as to exclude most of this background noise. The heat and the humidity, here in Ireland—as I am sure that my friend from North of the Border, Ignorant Amos, might confirm—is quite severe today, and so I had to have my windows open despite all of the background noise going on. However, I did not stand close enough to the microphone, and so the sound of my voice is really low. It was my first stream using OBS, and I think that it was ok for a first attempt.

Sound issues aside, one of the points that I keep returning to is that I consider Systematic Theology to be a System of Lies. In my view, “Systematic Theology” is merely an attempt by theologians to force the Biblical Text into its being univocal … when it is anything but.

I refer to Captain Cassidy McGillicudy, quite a lot, as I particularly like her style of counterapologetic. I don’t think that Captain Cassidy has much of a presence on YouTube which is why I particularly like to discuss her ideas on YouTube. I have binge-read most of what she has written over a period of more than a decade. Captain Cassidy, as I read her, is much more interested in persuading her readers that Christianity is harmful, rather than persuading her readers that Christianity is false. That Christianity is false, really should be a given, in this day and age. A religion invented to swindle mostly illiterate Mediterranean peasants, 2,000 years ago, really should not be swindling and fooling people today, in the age of the internet and Artificial Intelligence. As John Loftus puts it:

‘2,000 years is enough!’

. Pondering, though, the ways in which Christianity may be harmful, to my lights, is a much more interesting discussion, than pondering the myriad ways in which Christianity is false. Cassidy excels at this. To this end, allow me to recommend 24 Reasons to Abandon Christianity (2022) by Charles Bufe. From what I remember from this book, and I read it but recently, Bufe mostly argues from Christianity’s being harmful rather than arguing from Christianity’s being false.

As John Loftus writes in a chapter in one of his anthologies—I just looked up my Kindle edition of God and Horrendous Suffering (2021), and it does not appear to be this one—the harm caused by Christianity is itself an argument from evil against the existence of an all-powerful, all-seeing and omnibenevolent god. Another humorous quip of Loftus’s is:

‘God’s hiring practices are abysmal!’

Leaving Home

[Dr. Valerie Tarico posted this on 05/25/2007. Enjoy!]

Greetings! John has graciously asked me to join this community of thinkers and scholars, and I am honored to say yes. In a world torn by religous tribalism, what could be more important than re-examining the traditions that have inextricably blended wisdom and community with bigotry and violence.

I will begin, as others have, by posting my deconversion story. Out of a sheer overwhelming lack of time, I am cheating: copying out of my book,The Dark Side: How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth, rather than beginning the narrative again from scratch.

Leaving Home.

When I first started having misgivings about my faith, I did what any good Evangelical would: I prayed. I was fifteen at the time, earnest and devout. An eldest daughter with a caretaker’s heart and responsibilities. A good student surrounded by a good family, good friends, and a good church community. Even so, the cognitive changes that beset teenagers—increased ability to introspect, to think critically, and to envision the possible—were giving me trouble.

Honest Sermons on the Gospel of Mark: Chapter 8

This is a mediocre blend of magic folklore and cult promotion

It would seem that the author of Mark’s gospel was obsessed with Jesus’ magical powers to make food appear out of nowhere. In chapter 6 we saw that Mark’s holy hero fed five thousand people, somehow making five loaves of bread and two fish turn into enough food to satisfy them all. And now, at the opening of chapter 8, he produces enough food to feed four thousand. It would also seem that Mark had no trouble disclosing just how stupid the disciples were. Jesus proposes feeding this second huge crowd, “…they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way…” (vv. 2-3)

The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1

Are the devout in love with Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians?  

 

When enthusiastic Christians decide they’d better read the Bible cover-to-cover—although it seems not to be a popular hobby—they must surely find themselves stumped: “Why am I doing this?”  Maybe this first occurs when they come across the story of Lot in Genesis 19. Lot is a stranger in Sodom, and an angry mob is banging on his door—curious about other strangers he has welcomed to his dwelling—and he tries to calm them down by offering his two daughters for them to molest. At the end of the story, these daughters get Lot drunk on two successive nights and seduce him—and become pregnant. There is no hint here whatever that god was displeased or angry. Why is such a story included in the supposedly Holy Bible?

Why Do Christians Keep on Being Christian?

There is so much wrong with their version of reality

 
Of course, there’s something seductive, irresistible, about believing you’re on splendid terms with the creator of the Cosmos. How great it is to be able to communicate—through meditation and prayer—with the force that guides the affairs of the world. But it’s an uphill battle to maintain that this is not delusional. It’s the gimmick that clergy of so many different religions have convinced their followers to embrace. Christianity is especially guilty.

AI Review of "Is Atheism a Religious Faith? A Definitive Answer"

Out of the blue AI reviewed this paper of mine at The Secular Web.

Here is the review:

Overview

John W. Loftus's work, "Is Atheism a Religious Faith? A Definitive Answer," seeks to delineate the distinction between atheism and religious faith. Loftus articulates that atheism, fundamentally, is a non-belief system, devoid of the doctrines and supernatural tenets that characterize religious faiths. By arguing that atheism does not constitute a "faith position," the author challenges religious apologists who claim that atheists employ faith analogous to believers. This examination unfolds across several philosophical arguments, referencing prominent thinkers and previous works to underscore that thorough, empirical evidence is requisite for belief, contradicting faith-based assertions devoid of evidence.

Wall Street Journal on AI

There is hope!?

Me? A Religious Nutjob?

When I first saw this it seemed to be  embarrassing. Me? A religious nutjob? Then I looked again. It's nice to hear.

Volume 2 of Chris Rodda's "Liars for Jesus" Is Now Available

[First published in August 2016. It's needed now more than ever!] I regard Chris Rodda's work in exposing the lies of David Barton and other Christians of his ilk as indispensable in our over-all fight for a sane America. There are many areas of concern we need to be vigilant about. This is one of them. In 2006 Chris Rodda's Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History, Vol. 1 was published. Now the long awaited 2nd volume is out. My readers should be aware of her work. I utilized it in chapter 11 of my book, How to Defend the Christian Faith: Advice from an Atheist.

Liars for Jesus debunks many of the historical lies invented and used by the Christian nationalist history revisionists in their efforts to further their far right political agenda and destroy the wall of separation between church and state in America. Liars for Jesus is not a book about religion. It is a history book, setting the record straight by presenting and fully documenting the true stories and historical facts that are distorted in the "Christian nation" pseudo-history of our country.

Honest Sermons on the Gospel of Mark: Chapter 7

The devout must hope Mark was wrong about Jesus here

 
If the Judeo-Christian god truly had the welfare of humanity at the center of attention, it’s hard to understand why he/she/it didn’t include a major book in the Bible about health and hygiene. This missing book could have included detailed information about germs, exactly why we get sick, and ways to stay healthy and fit. Was this god satisfied that it would take thousands of years for humans to discover the realities of disease? In the meantime, we suffer, so what? So much of the Bible is useless nonsense: what harm would it have done to include a major book explaining the realities of human biology and contagion?

Is There Such a Thing as “Theological Humility”?

Theological humility would be admitting profound ignorance about god(s)

 
When I was in seminary, Boston University School of Theology, during the 1960s, the Swiss theologian Karl Barth had gained world recognition—he was even featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1962. Over a thirty-five-year period (1932-1967) he wrote a 13-volume work titled, Church Dogmatics. Thus Barth had to be one of the major Christian thinkers for us to study as aspiring theologians. But one of my professors had a sense of humor, and one day quipped, “No one knows eight thousand pages about God—not even in German.” 
 
This got a good laugh from the class, but for me it was a major stop-and-think moment.

Setting the Bible Straight on Its Flawed Condemnations of Same-Sex Love

Gay pride in defiance of Bible nonsense

 
It baffles me that devout Christians consider the apostle Paul a source of wisdom and moral guidance. A careful reading of his authentic letters in the New Testament (that is, deemed authentic by scholars) reveal a tortured soul. His Letter to the Romans is considered a foundational document of the Christian faith, yet in Romans 7 he revealed that he was a troubled theologian:
 
“For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. For I know that the good does not dwell within me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do the good lies close at hand, but not the ability. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me.” (Romans 7:14-20)