Richard Swinburne On the Need For Corroborated Testimony

I went to a philosophical conference two weeks ago which highlighted the work of Paul Draper at Purdue. It was really informative. I got to meet up with some important philosophers, like Paul himself, Michael Bergmann (who accepted a free copy of "The Outsider Test for Faith"), James Sterba, (pictured with me), and Graham Oppy (via Zoom), plus a bunch of cool informed younger philosophers. The highly esteemed Richard Swinburne (back of head pictured !!) was there. I got into a discussion with him which I found interesting. When I described what evidence reasonable people need to believe, he said "you can't have that!"

Afterward I initiated that same discussion via email:

Honest Sermons on the Gospel of Mark: Chapter 11

It’s a bankrupt chapter: no verifiable history, but cult promotion

 
For centuries Christian clergy have pushed the claim that the gospels are authentic accounts of Jesus—indeed, that these accounts were divinely inspired. At the same time, they have commonly not pressured their devout congregants to read, reread, and carefully, critically study these documents. Because they know very well that the gospels abound in flaws and contradictions—which means that they also abound in theological problems.

Fact-Checking Trump On "The Apprentice"

Hitler Was a Christian! End of Story!

Did you notice the Christian religious focus at Charlie Kirk's memorial service? Way too much of it sounded like a worship service, or a revival! 

It also sounded like Hitler:

Sure, Hitler's Christianity and that of his executioners was different. It was closer to the KKK organization when it came to white supremacy. But it accepted its essential doctrines! They read about genocide in the Bible and didn't think differently when it came to killing the Jews, and others.

I fact-checked this below:

Hey, Devout Folks: Facing Reality Would Be a Smart Move!

No god has “the whole world” in its hands

It was reported that on the Sunday following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, church attendance in the New York area was higher than usual. Perhaps people were searching for comfort, but my own fantasy was that these folks who showed up at church were there searching for a crucial answer—or to hold god accountable: why hadn’t their all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful deity done something to prevent the attacks? Was his attention captured by crises in other galaxies—or was diverting airplanes beyond his skill-set?

A Comment On Charlie Kirk

With regard to the killing of Charlie Kirk, bad ideas that are communicated respectfully still cause harm and must be opposed even though the person who espouses them is a respectful person, and even though he was unjustly murdered.

The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 5

The Book of Acts, chapters 1 – 5: Our Jesus Cult is the RIGHT Cult
 

Among Bible-reading church-goers, I suspect that the gospels get more traffic than most of the books of the Old Testament. They also probably avoid the letters of the apostle Paul, which are not easy reading: sometimes his theology, his claims, can be confusing, even alarming, leaving devout folks puzzled. I wonder, however, if they venture into the book that follows the gospels, The Book of Acts—that is, the Acts of the Apostles.

How Strong is 2nd/3rd Handed Testimony?

From Jack Johnson on Facebook. He studied Biblical academics and counseling at Baptist Bible College, Baptist Bible School of Theology, Trinity Seminary. He says: "All three of these apologists think 2nd and 3rd hand accounts of the life and times of Jesus are "eyewitness" accounts and evidentiary in a court of law. So say their books: The Case For Christ (Strobel), Evidence that Demands a Verdict (McDowell), and Cold Case Christianity (Wallace)." [Click for more.]

Honest Sermons on the Gospel of Mark: Chapter 10

Another mix of flimsy theology and cult propaganda

There are several different topics in this chapter, but the author’s agenda of cult promotion is transparent.
 
Condemning divorce 
 
At the outset (verses 2-12), Mark’s holy hero Jesus makes pronouncements about divorce, positioning his decree as superior to that of Moses. Pay careful attention to two Jesus-scripts in this section:
 
1.     “…from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh.Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” (vv. 6-9)
 
2.     “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” (vv. 11-12)

The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 4

Matthew 7: A good start, then cult severity and bragging

It might be a good idea to compile a list of the Top Ten Bible Texts that Christians Ignore—and, no surprise, these can be found in the gospels, especially in the Jesus-script. The final section of the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 7, includes a classic example of ignored text:
 
“Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” (Matthew 7:3-5)

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.