The Argument from Personal Experience

The argument from personal experience is used by most apologists from Ray Comfort to William Lane Craig. Craig says "Of course, ever since my conversion, I believed in the resurrection of Jesus on the basis of my personal experience, and I still think this experiential approach to the resurrection is a perfectly valid way to knowing that Christ has risen. It’s the way that most Christians today know that Jesus is risen and alive."

The problem for such apologeticists is show how the believer can critically determine when the personal experience she has with God is accurately reflecting the wishes of God, and not those of a hallucination brought on by drugs, delusion, psychosis or social alienation.

Is there any reliable way for believers to warn off people like Andrea Yates, Dena Schlosser or Seung Hi Cho? If there is, why don't apologists include this sort of caveat when talking about the argument from personal experience?

It seems to me that believers and nonbelievers alike have an immense interest in the cessation of religiously motivated killings. I have heard of many ecumenical councils that brought together disparate leaders of many faiths. The most recent one I recall was in Jerusalem, where leaders of Islam, Christianity and Judaism got together to denounce homosexuality. Yet as far as I know, believers have never even discussed the development of a reliable universal method to prevent deluded believers from killing someone.

Another Person Walks Away From Christianity!

Not long ago I received the following email from Ed Owens, who lives in Missouri and attends a Church of Christ there with his wife, who still believes. Here’s what he said:

I'm a 50 year old man from Missouri who preached for almost 30 years for the Church of Christ. Several months ago I read Joe Holman’s article at minister turns atheist and began my study of why he would do such a thing. I am now convinced by my own studies of the absurdity of the book called the Bible. My family on both sides are all members of the church and are now giving me pure hell about it. I'm seeing a psychologist at the request of all the family. They seem to think she will reconvert me, I guess. That's their knee-jerk response; I must be coo coo or something like that.

In another email he added:

I was raised in a Church of Christ family and was baptized at the age of 19 by my sibling brother who is an Evangelist for the Church of Christ. We are the one cup one loaf no Sunday School group. My wife also has the same roots in the Church and still does. My brother and I married sisters. He got the younger and I got the older. He is eight years older than me. My wife is seven years and a few months older than I am. She was married before to the same guy twice while away from the church. When she returned and confessed her unfaithfulness to the church and asked God's forgiveness she was reinstated as a member in good standing.

I began preaching in 1978 at the tender age of 20 and gave it all fervor and conviction that I could muster. My Dad was a preacher for the CofC and an Elder for many years so you could say I was following in his steps as was two of my siblings besides me.

I came across Joe Holman's article on the internet entitled “minister turns atheist” and I couldn't help but wonder what would posses someone who was once a minister to turn to atheism. To make a long story short I studied his arguments and many other atheist arguments and found the Scriptures severely lacking in credibility and accuracy. I've been in touch with Joe and have corresponded quite often in the past few months.

I left the church and had it announced last Wednesday evening of my intentions. It came as quite a shock to some but not to all. My poor wife came unhinged when she began to discover my intentions. She has settled down somewhat in the past week. I told her I would attend with her on Sundays if she wanted and of course she does. How long that will last I have no idea. It is very difficult to set through a service and listen to a message that is full of error and conjecture and not be tempted to jump up and declare, "It is a bunch of hooey!" You know what hooey is, don't you? I thought so. DUNG! MANURE! KA-KA!

When the de-conversion started I was devastated!!! I felt like I had been lied to all my life. I was raised to believe the scriptures were without error and had no contradictions whatsoever. When I took the blinders off and began to see the multitude of errors and contradictions I became angry and tried to point them out to my Evangelist brother, who by the way had been my mentor all my life, and how he might see the truth of all this. You can imagine the result. He began to tell me how deluded I was and not to read that junk, as he called it, it would just confuse me and warp my mind. I tried time after time to illustrate the errors to him but he would not hear of it. He and I no longer speak to each other. He's refused to answer my email because he can't control the situation by his overpowering personality and make me shut up!

I've tried subtly to show others the errors and to no avail. I've even been told to quit trying to proselyte members. Any advice you can give me I sure would appreciate it!!! My wife belittles me at every turn claiming that I'm headed for Hell if I don't change and repent. My brother likewise gives me fits. He is an Evangelist for the church and at one time my dearest and closest friend, past tense!

I told him that until he put his foot down they wouldn’t leave him alone, so he composed the following letter and read it after last Wednesday's services:

It has come to my attention that some folks believe I have lost my mind. I believe the term was mentally ill. Let me assure you each and everyone that is not the case.

I stand before you this evening to set the record straight. I AM NOT MENTALLY ILL.

I am quite sane, I assure you. If this does not persuade you then you may call my analyst, who I have been seeing at the request of family and friends, and will verify what I have just said. I have given written legal permission to divulge my mental state.

People sincerely disagree on a host of issues, from who should be the next President, to which diet is best for losing weight. No one ever thinks to say that people who disagree about such issues is mentally ill. So why should that be the case here? Many of us have decided to walk away from the Christian faith, including former Church of Christ preachers Farrell Till, Joe Holman and John W. Loftus. I no longer believe for the same reasons you don't accept Islam or Mormonism, and no one considers those who don't believe them to be mentally ill for doing so.

Now, that having been said, I wish to make some things crystal clear so that not a single person misunderstands why I am up here.

1. I am no longer a member of the church.

2. I do NOT need reconverting PLEASE RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO TRY!

3. I will not debate, verbally converse, or argue with ANYONE on the issues surrounding my decision to leave the church.

4. If you feel so disposed to chastise me, I reserve the right to respond in kind. When you do, realize that you are only reinforcing my decision by not showing that you care for me as a person.

5. I still love each and every one of you irregardless of your feelings toward me. I really do.

6. I may attend services from time to time out of respect, but I will be attending less and less, since it would be no different for you if you were asked to attend a Jewish service, which you don't believe. I admire your convictions even if I do not share in them.

7. I have been accused of trying to de-convert members with emails. I submit material for consideration by email and when I am told to stop, I DO!

In conclusion, I understand your concern for my spiritual well being. You have voiced it and I have heard. Now, please stop. I am assuming full responsibility for my own actions from this point forward.

You will not appreciate my decision I am sure, but you are going to have to learn to accept it because I am confident upon the ground I stand.

Then the shit hit the fan. Here’s what he wrote me last night afterwards:

I read the letter to the congregation after services had concluded and it was instant fireworks! My brother had to put in his two cents worth.

He claimed the analyst was my own decision, which was a lie, and then shouted that I was dis-fellowshipped. I thought that was really strange since I had just announced my own leaving of the faith. I asked if I was banned from the church assemblies and he said no, there was no need for me to attend ‘cause I would just be a hypocrite by doing so. I should have called him on the carpet right in front of everyone about not following scriptural process of dis-fellowship, but I didn't, I just walked out.

I know I did the right thing but now my wife has no intention of attending that congregation any longer. She says she will attend where my daughter goes.

Thanks again for your support.

Why in the hell do Christians have to make it so hard on us when we no longer believe? I’m proud of Ed. He did what was necessary and right. He's one of our unsung heroes. And I’m also proud of his wife for loving Ed enough to leave that church over it.

He's reading this. Any encouragement or helpful advice would be appreciated.

Does the Recent Pew Forum Data Undermine My Outsider Test for Faith?

Over at Atheism Sucks Mariano is crowing about the atheist "failed" argument that people adopt the religion of their parents, based on the recent Pew Forum Poll, which says: “28% of American adults have left the faith of their childhood for another one. And that does not even include those who switched from one Protestant denomination to another; if it did, the number would jump to 44%.” If correct, this would tend to undermine the basis for the Outsider Test for Faith that I’ve developed, where I ask people to test their faith as if they were an outsider to it, since that’s how they test these other faiths, as outsiders.

However, this poll data does not, I repeat, does not undermine the sociological data that what faith a person adopts is because of "when and where they were born." Our parents have an extremely significant role to play in what faith we originally adopt. This is indisputable regardless of this new poll data. People still adopt the religion of their parents. The fact that they leave it later on in life says nothing against this sociological data, which is proven over and over again in separate geographical areas around the globe.

What's the difference in America then? The difference is that we are now more than ever embracing syncretism, pluralism and pragmatism. These beliefs are the new "religion" in American culture, and so it should not surprise us in the least if American people abandon the religion of their parents. More and more people are treating religion like they do with diet and sex. Variety is the spice of life when it comes to these things. So also is religion. Our American culture doesn't think there is much of a difference between many of the religions. So it stands to reason people will switch church affiliations for a better, warmer pew, with a better building, and where their friends from work attend, that has a better sermon or better music. After all, the moral message still seems to be the same, and that’s what more and more Americans think the value of religion provides anyway.

So until someone can dispute that children adopt the religion of their parents, or until someone can dispute that the dominant beliefs among Americans are syncretism, pluralism and pragmatism, this poll data has no effect on my argument.

Noah, John, Luke, Paul, and Mary

When God speaks to you, He asks you to listen to Him, believe what He says, and follow His instructions. It is a sin to disobey God. Kierkegaard has described the ways that one can follow God when he gives a command that violates your morality in Fear and Trembling. Through its four tellings of the story of Abraham and Isaac, Kierkegaard explores the relationship between what he labels the ethical and what he labels the religious. In the book, Kierkegaard explicitly states that in his opinion one can do something that is ethically wrong, but religiously right.

Kierkegaard felt that one must have an existential stance to follow God in spite of one's ethics. That the voice of God trumped all other characteristics. He has been profoundly influential, and was a major inspiration to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who further refined Kierkegaard's ideas in The Cost of Discipleship.

It is interesting to note that in no description of the religious stance did Kierkegaard describe a method to distinguish between hallucinations and the voice of God. In fact, to my knowledge there has never been a clear instruction given to Christians that allows them reliably to distinguish between the voice of God and a hallucination.

Yet this is not a minor point.

In one cell in a mental institution in Texas, there are two women whom killed their children to please God. The first is Andrea Yates. She believed God had told her to have as many children as is possible, and soon she decided that she was unworthy to bring them up. Her five children, named after Bible characters: Noah, John, Luke, Paul, and Mary, were all at risk of hell because of her failures. In 2001, she became convinced that the only way she could save their eternal souls was to do away with them before they could sin.

A psychiatric examination was ordered for Andrea. One psychiatrist, featured on Mugshots, asked Andrea what she thought would happen to the children. She indicated that she believed God would "take them up." He reversed the question and asked what might have happened if she had not taken their lives.

"I guess they would have continued stumbling," which meant "they would have gone to hell."

He wanted to know specifically what they had done to give her the idea they weren't behaving properly. She responded that they didn't treat Rusty's mother well, adding that, "They didn't do things God likes."

Andrea believed the only way her children could have eternal life that wasn't torment was if she killed all five of them. She believed this after careful study, prayer and consultation with her church. Andrea presumed she knew the mind of God and that he was speaking to her through the testimony of her church and family.

In the cell with Andrea is Dena Schlosser. Dena cut the arms off her baby in 2004. She saw a news report on television about a boy being mauled to death by a lion and decided that it was a sign of the apocalypse. She then heard God's voice telling her to remove her own baby's arms and then her own. After putting on the song “He Touched Me”, she cut the baby's arms off, resulting in his death.

It is clear that both Andrea Yates and Dena Schlosser are ill individuals. Yet it is remarkable that there are two women who did this within 3 years of one another in the same state in America. It is also clear that the primary cause of both of these unbelievable acts of filicide is that both women believed God was very active in the world, that they knew what he wanted them to do, and that they would be punished severely if they failed to do it. My questions to those who believe that atheism is dangerous, that it allows you to “do whatever you want,” and that universal moral values are upheld by religion are these:

Why can God not make it plain that it is wrong to kill your children? Why can he not make that plain broadly, by putting it in bright letters somewhere on every 3rd or 4th page on the books he writes, dictates or inspires? And why can he not make it plain specifically by speaking that information into the diseased brains of psychotics who are already hearing voices and aren't likely to be believed by another living human regardless of what they say God told them?

What possible good comes to the world from the actions of these mothers?

The Answers or the Quest

Those of us who have moved beyond fundamentalism or even Christianity need to help others understand that our changes are spiritual growth, not spiritual abandonment. In fact, I would argue that they honor the moral heart of Christianity more than any adherence to traditional orthodoxies ever can. Let me explain:

One of the most central themes of Judaism and then Christianity is an ongoing hunger, a quest to understand God more deeply and completely. For over 3000 years, our spiritual ancestors have been working hard to figure out answers to life’s most important questions: What is good? What is real (often framed as what is God)? And how can we live in moral community with each other?

Each generation of our ancestors received a package of handed down answers to these questions. This package contained the very best answers their ancestors had to the questions. But those answers were always imperfect. They had bits of timeless wisdom and insights, but they also had bits of culture and superstition that had somehow gotten God’s name on them. In order to grow, our ancestors took these received traditions and asked: What here is mere human construction, what is superstition, and what are my very best judgments about the divine realities that lie beyond the human piece?

The first Hebrew scholars, the writers of the Torah or Pentateuch did this. They sifted through the earlier religions of the Akkadians and Sumerians. They kept parts (some of which are in the Bible to this day), and other parts they discarded as mere culture, superstition or even idolatry.

In the New Testament, the same thing happened. In the gospels, Jesus said that the Law had become an idol in itself. What is an idol? An idol is a something man-made, something that seeks to represent or articulate god-ness and thus to provide a glimpse of that Ultimate Reality. But then, the object itself gets given the attributes of divinity: perfection and completeness, and it becomes the object of absolute devotion.

Instead of simply accepting the old package of answers, the writers of the gospels offered a new understanding of God and goodness. They didn’t throw away everything; in fact they kept quite a bit from the earlier Hebrew religion and from the religions that surrounded them. But they took responsibility to sort through it. They gathered the pieces that that seemed truly wise and sacred to them, and they told a new story about our relationship to God and to each other.

During the Protestant Reformation this process happened again in a very big way. Even thought Martin Luther and John Calvin had some horrible bigoted and violent ideas, in their own context, they genuinely were trying to cleanse Christianity of what they saw as accumulated superstitions, things like worshiping saints and relics, paying indulgences, the absolute authority of the Pope, and the church putting God’s name on the political structure that kept kings and nobles at the top with other people serving them. They scraped away these superstitions, until they got back to a set of religious agreements that had been made a long time before, in the 4th Century when the church decided what writings would go in the Bible and what the creeds would be. Then they stopped there, thinking they had found the most true understanding of God.

But Christianity just kept on growing. During the 18th and 19th Centuries, scientific learning mushroomed with discoveries in fields as diverse as linguistics, anthropology, psychiatry, physics, and biology. By the beginning of the 20th century, with all this new information about ourselves and the world around us, many Christian theologians said, “We need to rethink our understanding of the Bible, Jesus, and the Christian faith.” A new phase of Reformation was born. This generation decided that they should examine every bit of Christianity for signs of human fingerprints. They went way back and opened up even the agreements that had been made by those Church councils of the 4th century. the ones who decided what would be in the Bible. They even began looking at other religions with new eyes and seeing bits of wisdom there.

When this happened, some people fought back in defense of the fundamental doctrines that had dominated Christianity for almost 1500 years, the doctrines that are laid out in the creeds: one god in three persons, original sin and universal sin, the virgin birth, the unique divinity of Jesus, cleansing of sin through blood sacrifice, salvation through right belief, a literal resurrection, a literal heaven and hell. A series of pamphlets entitled "The Fundamentals" said that these beliefs were absolute and off limits to questions. From the title of these pamphlets we get the word "fundamentalism." The fundamentalists said, “If you don’t believe these things, then you can’t call yourself a Christian and besides you are going to hell.” They said that their kind of Christianity was the most true because it was the closest to the religion of our ancestors.

I used to think that, too. But now I realize I was mistaken. By trying to keep the same beliefs as our ancestors, fundamentalism forced me to betray the very heart of Christianity: the quest to better know and serve a God who is Love and Truth. To keep the traditional beliefs of our ancestors we have to abandon their tradition of spiritual inquiry, of “wrestling with God.” We can accept their answers or we can accept their quest, but we cannot accept both

I now affirm that the best way to honor the Christian tradition, to honor the writers of the Pentateuch, and the writers of the gospels and the reformers—and ultimately to honor the Ground of Love and Truth-- is to do as they have done. We need to take the set of teachings they handed down to us, their very best effort to answer life’s most important questions. Then, just like them, we need to continue examining those answers in light of what we know about ourselves and the world around us. For each of us this is a sacred responsibility and a sacred gift, the gift and responsibility of spiritual growth.

It might seem to some like I have abandoned the path I was on, to love and serve God. But I haven’t. I am still on that very same path, only my understanding of God has grown deeper and wider. That is why the songs and preaching and churches that used to fit for me don’t fit any more. And, in fact, even the word “God” seems terribly humanoid and limiting as a term for the astounding Reality that spiritual and scientific inquiry allow us to glimpse.

Religious people, at least Christians, often draw boundaries between believers and non-believers. So do former Christians. But I think we need to talk publicly about a different sort of differentiation, one between those who honor the answers of our spiritual ancestors and those who honor their quest. Even within the boundaries of tribal religion, there are people who honor the former and people who honor the latter. I suspect there are also many who would move from the answers to the quest if only they understood the story at the heart of their own tradition.

Reason and Protestant Christianity in Their Own Words

I have long found William Lane Craig's proclamation of a "reasonable faith" to be deliciously ironic. Since The 95 Theses were first nailed on the door of Castle Church, Martin Luther made it abundantly clear what the role of reason was in the Protestant faith. Note that this was not some uneducated medieval wretch in the 12th century; this is the highly educated Augustinian monk, professor at a prestigious university, and probably the most important founder of the Protestant movement. Shall we take a look?

"Reason is the Devil’s greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil’s appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom… Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism… She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets."

― Martin Luther, Erlangen Edition v. 16, pp. 142‐148

"People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon…This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us [Joshua 10:13] that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth."

― Table Talks in 1539

"Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but—more frequently than not—struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God."

― Table Talks in 1569

"Reason should be destroyed in all Christians."

"Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his Reason."

"There is on earth among all dangers no more dangerous thing than a richly endowed and adroit reason…Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed."

― The Faith of a Heretic

"Heretics are not to be disputed with, but to be condemned unheard, and whilst they perish by fire, the faithful ought to pursue the evil to its source, and bathe their heads in the blood of the Catholic bishops, and of the Pope, who is the devil in disguise."

― Riffel, Kirchengeschichte

And the most delisciously ironic of all:

"Idiots, the lame, the blind, the dumb, are men in whom the devils have established themselves: and all the physicians who heal these infirmities, as though they proceeded from natural causes, are ignorant blockheads…"

In the interest of space, I have left out multitudes of quotes where Luther attributes many things known at the time to be naturalistic as being devils, demons, and witchery (not to mention his virulent anti-Semitism and misogyny).

Protestant Christianity was founded in direct opposition to reason. And now people claim to be able to reconcile the two? It would be funny were it not so sad.

Is This How We Should Do Exegesis?: A Biblical Case Study

Here's but one example of how the New Testament uses a mistranslated word from which a faulty interpretation of the Old Testament is made, adapted from a previous post and highlighted for discussion. Is this not stupid? Is this not a problem for inerrancy?

Let's take a good look at Psalm 8:3-8 (New American Standard Bible, NASB). What we'll find is a mistranslated word, a misinterpreted Psalm, and a pre-scientific cosmology:

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,

The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;

The Psalmist is not conceiving of the type of universe we do today, as we’ve seen…by far.

What is man that You take thought of him,

And the son of man that You care for him?

Notice this is a case of Hebrew parallelism for future reference below. The first phrase is paralleled by the second one, even though no parallel phrase is exactly similar in all respects. “Man" = "son of man”; “thought of” = “care for.” This is basic wisdom literature exegesis here.

So if by the word “man” the Biblical writer thought of the phrase “son of man,” then this same phrase, when applied to Jesus, must mean little more than what it means here. If, however, the phrase “son of man,” when applied to Jesus, means “son of God,” then all human beings should be considered "sons of God.”

According to Bruce Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, "the phrase such as 'son of X' means 'having the qualities of X.' Thus the 'son of man' would mean having the qualities of man, hence human." [Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, 2nd ed, p. 408).

In any case, Hebrews 2 is obviously a misinterpretation of this Psalm, since Hebrews claims Psalm 8 is speaking exclusively about Jesus as the “son of man” in comparison to angels (a comparison made throughout Hebrews), whereas Psalm 8 is really speaking about how human beings rule over creation, who are just a little lower than God himself in status. The Hebrews writer misunderstood Psalms 8 to be primarily messianic, about Jesus, but there is no reason to read it as such in the Psalm itself…none!

The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures (2:784), admits of the Hebrews writer: "No doubt the familiar messianic designation “Son of Man” (v. 6) contributed to this understanding." Or, shall I more correctly say, misunderstanding!

Yet You have made him a little lower than God,

And You crown him with glory and majesty!

Again, a Hebrew parallelism. God is crowned with unique glory and majesty that none other receives, so also God crowns man with glory and majesty no other creation receives.

Here’s how the Hebrew writer understood this verse, according to The Bible Knowledge Commentary: "while total dominion over the created order is not yet His, Jesus is at last seen as crowned with glory and honor because He suffered death. The One so crowned was made a little lower than the angels for the very purpose of dying, that is, that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone. This last statement is best understood as the purpose of the Lord’s being made lower than the angels in His Incarnation." Again, there is no reason to read the Psalm this way…none! If anyone else misinterpreted a text in this manner Christians themselves would laugh at him or her.

Psalm 8:5 uses the word Elohim translated "God" (NASB) whereas the Hebrews writer followed the Septuagint (LXX) in translating this word αγγελους “angels.” Thus in Psalms 8 we find that human beings were created as God’s ruler-representatives on earth, over all his creation, although lower than God. But in Hebrews we read that it's Jesus who was made lower than “the angels” in the incarnation, so that he could redeem mankind. Thus Hebrews interpretation is fundamentally flawed based on this mistranslated word.

Evangelicals want to affirm the fact that since the author of Hebrews (2:7) renders the word "Elohim" (God or gods) as αγγελους (angels) it establishes the intended meaning of Psalm 8:5. But this opinion is nothing different than saying: "The Bible said it; I believe it; that settles it." It’s just illegitimate to claim to have a correct understanding of an original Hebrew word by referring exclusively to a Greek translation of that word. It's also illegitimate to take a particular passage out of context and claim to properly understand that passage. Hebrews 2 is clearly based on a misinterpretation of the text of Psalm 8, as well as a mistranslation of a word in it. Is the LXX inspired when it translates "Elohim" (God or gods) as αγγελους (angels)? Tell me! And does inspiration guarantee that what the Bible says is accurate even when it can clearly be shown to be incorrect? How is this even possible?

Biblical scholar Hector Avalos informs me about the translation of Elohim and wrote this:

The translation of 'elohim’ as "god(s)" in Psalm 8:5 (English; verse numbers may differ in some translations) is not controversial anymore, and is accepted in the following translations:

NRSV: "lower than God."
REV: "less than a god"
NAB: "less than a god"
NJB: "less than a god."

To be more literally accurate, "less than the gods" would be better because Elohim is plural.

This is also the opinion of Mitchell Dahood, the Catholic biblical scholar, in his commentary on the Psalms I:-1-50 (Anchor Bible; New York: Doubleday, 1965), p. 51. He translates it, "Yet you have made him a little less than the gods" on p. 48.

Man was created a little lower than the gods, which reflects a polytheistic religious viewpoint. In order to soften the polytheistic implications of this the translators do some interesting things with this Hebrew word.

You make him to rule over the works of Your hands;

You have put all things under his feet,

Again Hebrew parallelism. Notice the phrase “works of Your hands” here. That phrase can only parallel the earlier phrase “the work of Your fingers” in verse 3 above, and this refers to “the heavens,” which include “the moon and the stars.”

Only one evangelical conclusion about the central role of man can come from for a correct reading of Psalm 8, human beings are the highest creation, above angels, and any other alien life form.

All sheep and oxen,

And also the beasts of the field,

The birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea,

Whatever passes through the paths of the seas.

This is what the Psalmist thought all creation involved. It’s crystal clear he said mankind rules over all the works of God’s hands earlier, and here he tells us what this means. There are no references to aliens or angels or galxies far far away. He just didn’t think of them, or they just didn’t compare to the status of mankind. But it is surely refective of a prescientific cosmology, and as such, considered as disconfirming evidence that there is a God behind the human words in the Bible.

Hear Ye...Hear Ye! Frank Walton is Gone!

He's no longer a contributor over at Atheism Sucks. I will now link to that Blog. It has some better, more respectable Christians on it.

Atheist Morality and the Logic of Jeffrey Dahmer

Jamie Steele wrote a comment about the morality of atheism, and in it quoted the following statement from serial killer and cannibalist, Jeffrey Dahmer: "If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what’s the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing…" [An interview with Stone Phillips, Dateline NBC, Nov. 29, 1994].

Such statements as these from a known killer are very troubling to me and a source for apologists to berate those of us who are atheists. Let me be perfectly frank here. The logic of Dahmer is sound if I grant him two assumptions that I vehemently reject (anyone wishing to quote this sentence of mine must quote it all, not just the first six words).

What are those two assumptions? First, for Dahmer’s argument to work an atheist must assume that the only reasons to refrain from doing evil are because of the supposed eternal horrible consequences he will suffer when he dies because God will hold him accountable for what he does. By this logic if there are no consequences when he dies then there is nothing to keep him from doing evil.

I vehemently deny this assumption. As I’ve argued elsewhere there are plenty of good solid reasons for doing good, being kind, helpful and generous with people, based solely on the consequences in this life, which is all any of us will ever have, Christians included.

Secondly, there are solid reasons based in the psychology of who we are with our survival instinct that leads us all to think being happy and living life in harmony with others demands that we like ourselves first and foremost. A Freudian death wish is simply unhealthy and counter-productive to what makes for human happiness. So for one reason or another Dahmer first hated himself. He didn’t care what would personally happen to him as he pursued his most base desires; desires that are sick indeed and counter-productive to living life in a crime free society, which is what people who desire happiness want.

Beyond these things, Dahmer was a sick man, a deviant, a sociopath. This just proves to me that anyone can use almost anything to justify his or her actions. If he was a Christian he would’ve said, “God told me to do this,” and we have plenty of examples of that kind of rationale, which is also quite logical, given certain assumptions that most reasonable Christians would likewise reject.

I No Longer Believe. What Do I Tell My Kids?

Here is an email I recently received. Any additional helpful advice would be appreciated. [Used with permission]

Hi John,

My de-conversion happened over a 10 year period in full-time ministry. I left ministry 12/31/06 with my integrity in tack. Now I just opened up my de-conversion to my family last summer. My wife, not surprisingly, was relieved. My kids, who we had sent to a fundy Christian school, were disturbed. I assured them I was not going to hell and that I still believed in “God” as much as I thought was possible to believe anymore. That comforted them for a while until we stopped going to church. My oldest child is very spiritual. She enjoys church and misses the Christian school. I too and a very spiritual man. I’ve found some solace in exploring Buddhist philosophy and I enjoy what I’m learning. I’m not fully come to an atheist I’m more agnostic but I’m not a believer in the God of the Bible.

I’ve been reading, devouring many books about the lies of Christianity. Sam Harris’ books have been huge eye openers. As was the DVD “The God Who Wasn’t There.” All of these just conformed my suspicions about my faith. I bought into a fairy tale in 1983 at the age of 15. I had a radical conversion and after high school I began the path toward full time ministry. After a stint in the Army to get some college money, I went to Bible college and seminary. I served in 2 churches as youth pastor. I ran a growing and successful AWANA program. I served on full-time missionary staff with Campus Crusade for Christ from 1996-2001. I launched and ran my own campus church/ministry from 2001-2006. From 1994-2006 I had growing doubts.

In the last ten years I began to see that no matter how much faith or belief I had God was and did not work. Oh I thought he did. I pretended he did. I duped myself in to believing on some level that he was really there for me. In that time a dear friend who de-converted in 1999 asked me this question: “Steve, what has Jesus really done for you this week, this month, this year?” I came up empty. All the trite answers I could give him were just fluff… stuff I had really stopped believe after many, many disappointments with God.

So I found a way out of ministry without going public with my agnosticism. Christians are so mean when someone falls away. I know I was mean myself a couple of times more than I want to remember. I became a financial advisor and I love it. But I played the game for a while because I deeply feared that I would be outcast. That fear is slowly drifting away.

Here’s my dilemma… I love my kids and I raised them in the Christian way. I really strove to live the life I was “called” to live. I didn’t leave because of “sin” in my life. I wasn’t really looking to leave. I just kept searching for reasons why God was not answering my prayers and helping us. So I left because I could not believe it any more. I could no longer tolerate the let downs. But my kids are feeling the pain of it because they still have “childlike faith.”

Do you have any advice? Are there resources for guys like me to help me free my kids from the God/Jesus myth? I do want to encourage my kids to be spiritual. But I just don’t know how.

Any words you would have for me would be appreciated.

Peace!

Steven A. McDowell

Here is my advice:

Steve, you're not alone.

From what I can tell this book will help you and your wife.

You should get a subscription to Michael Shermer's Skeptic Magazine, since it contains a nice sized section written just for kids.

Beyond that there are skeptical meet ups that may be in your area. Get your kids to meet and play with non-believing kids. Do a search for these groups here.

There are also skeptical groups associated with Center for Inquiry that would help introduce your children to skeptical children.

With your permission I'll post this at DC to see if anyone else has some helpful suggestions.

Best to you,
John W. Loftus

God is a Sadistic Egotistical Monster and I Can Show This With Just a Few Questions

The question was raised in a somewhat different context, “Did God need to create a physical universe at all?” Jason flippantly and callously responded by quipping, “Who cares? He did.” It still surprises me at the simplistic non-answers we get from some Christians. Here’s my response…

Just think for one moment, okay? Don't just spit out what you were taught to believe, which is what you do. What did God lack before creation that made him want to create in the first place? Take a moment to truly reflect on that question. I'll repeat it again so you do. What did God lack before creation that made him want to create in the first place?

I know your answer. The answer is that God lacked nothing, as in NOTHING. So what reason would cause God to want to create anything? There was no lack, no want, and no need. That which causes a reasonable person to act is a lack, either his own, or someone else's lack. And even given that God wanted to create something, anything, why did he create this particular world? These are significant questions if you'll take a moment to reflect on them, rather than spitting out proof texts and the blind faith results of your proof-texting.

Your God is supposedly a God of reason. Everything he does is reasonable. Well then, what's his reason for creating something, anything?

There can be no good reason for doing so, not even with an omniscient God, for an omniscient God must still act according to reason. Unless by his logic he can do what is illogical, or by his reason he can do that which is unreasonable, there is no reason for God to have done so.

Even if we grant that God wanted to create something, anything, why would he create this particular world? It is a huge mess. And it is likewise a non-answer to say it’s Adam and Eve’s fault.

If God foreknew this world would become a mess when he had no good reason to create anything in the first place, then why create this particular one?

What kind of world is this one? It's a world where most people wind up in hell. Why create a world like this when most people in it will be punished for an eternity? Consider what Ivan Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s character, said: “Tell me yourself—I challenge you: let’s assume that you were called upon to build the edifice of destiny so that men would finally be happy and would find peace and tranquility. If you knew that, in order to attain this, you would have to torture just one single creature, let’s say a little girl who beat her chest so desperately in the outhouse, and that on her unavenged tears you could build that edifice, would you agree to do it? Tell me and don’t lie!”

If there was no need to create anything, none, and if you foreknew people would suffer in this world and eventually do so for an eternity, would you create this particular world for your own glory, which is what Biblical theism asserts? Would you do so for YOUR OWN GLORY, especially when you already had all glory and there was no need to do so in the first place? Answer the question and do not lie!

Only a sadistic egotistic monster would even consider doing so.

-----------------------
Other types of similar arguments can be found in my book.

Was It Necessary For God to Create this Vast Universe, per Hugh Ross?

Some creationists, like Hugh Ross, claim God needed to create such a vast and old universe in order for the earth to exist with the right conditions to support human life as we know it. Here's my response from a recent post, singled out for discussion:

But this is an extremely lame argument. Why? Because Ross and other Christian theists believe God is omnipotent such that he created the laws of the universe in the first place! So if God is this omnipotent deity and if he created the laws of the universe in the first place, then he could’ve merely created a small planet containing human beings, and that's it. This is just obvious to me. But even if I grant them their point, it doesn’t even matter, for this same God is a miracle working God. Even if it was metaphysically impossible for God to create the earth as it is without a vast universe because he couldn't create nature's laws differently, then this says nothing at all against God performing perpetual miracles. If he is a miracle working God he could indeed have created a terrestrial biosphere that would sustain human life even if the laws of nature would not allow it. All it would take are a few perpetual miracles. As far as theists know, the laws of nature are themselves just perpetual miracles created by God anyway.

My Case Against Christianity

If you want to read my case against Christianity. It's here.

My Deconversion

Through childhood and adolescence I had absorbed the intense Seventh-day Adventist religion of my family. I went to church schools from the beginning, only had friends from my church, and was forced to attend services with the fervor and frequency that only someone with a devout mother can understand fully.

I studied the Bible with interest but always found it a little boring (especially the Pauline epistles). If I had to read it, I would always go back to the books of Judges, Joshua, and the writings of the kingly epoch. I loved the stories of Jael and Siserah, of Joshua stopping the sun, of Saul and David. I loved to read about David collecting foreskins from the Philistines (and show it to my friends, giggling about how it was in the Bible). I was a believer in biblical inerrancy and a young-earth creationist just like all those around me. I was the best in my age group at Bible trivia (we called them Bible sword drills) to the point that our Sabbath School teachers would keep me from playing because it wasn't fair to the other kids.

In high school some of my friends were growing disillusioned with our church and I listened to their arguments but didn't find them compelling until I got to college. I wanted to go to medical school eventually, but I initially declared a major in Religion while taking all the science prerequisites needed for my premed aspirations. The second quarter of my freshman year, I took a class in Jesus and the Gospels. This was the first exposure I had had to higher literary criticism of the Bible and my exposure to the textual theories about the Gospels astonished me, and made me realize the all-too-human nature of the text. This also led me to investigate other German theories regarding the Bible including Graf/Wellhausen, which confirmed my concerns.

My study of religion abolished my faith in biblical inerrancy and I changed my major to biology.

I began to see strong evidence for evolution, even though all my professors were young earth creationists. In my junior year I started doing research into theories of taxonomy and their relationship to the creation/evolution debate. It was at this same time I took a course in cell and molecular biology.

It was fascinating to study up close the nuts and bolts that made cells function the way that they do, and to notice that not only was there no evidence of design, there was positive evidence against design. The endosymbiotic theory of Margulis had not yet been fully accepted, but it seemed to me to be the most compelling evidence against young-earth creationism that anyone could imagine.

The facts are this. Briefly, life is divided into several domains, bacteria, archaeans and eukaryotes. All the eukaryotes have a nucleus that separates their genes from the cell substance (cytoplasm). Animal and plant cells are all eukaryotes. Any eukaryote that can live in oxygen uses energy by oxidizing carbohydrates, such as sugars and starches.

All animal and plant cells that use oxygen burn it in a controlled fashion with an organelle called a mitochondrion. The mitochondrion has its own membrane. The mitochondrion has its own genome. The mitochondrion splits into two and divides by fission like a bacterium does. All plant cells that do photosynthesis do this photosynthesis using chloroplasts. Chloroplasts also have their own membranes and genomes and also split into two and divide by fission like bacteria do. The most curious part for me was this: there are cells that are eukaryotes but they do not have mitochondria or chloroplasts and they use energy by fermenting sugars and starches.

Fermentation happens in the cytoplasm of all eukaryotic cells but the burning of oxygen happens only in the mitochondrion. It became obvious to me that all multicellular life arose from a lucky symbiosis. When it became necessary to burn oxygen, eukaryotic cells were simply cobbled together out of two other cell types, one that fermented and one that oxidized. It seemed absolutely clear to me when I discovered this fact that life itself, down to its cellular level, was the product of accidents and was in fact an elaborate contraption. It was marvelous indeed in its function, but any appearance of design seemed to completely evaporate. After the scales lifted from my eyes it became clear what a confidence game young-earth creationism was. Life's function was entirely explainable by natural (as opposed to supernatural or vitalist) processes.

So I had lost my young-earth creationism and my belief in biblical inerrancy, but I still had the same family: a father and brother who were pastors, and a devout mother. My sister had abandoned religion very early in her life and I was worried that if I did so as well, it would hurt the structure of my family.

For many years I tried to pretend I was a “liberal” Christian, who believed in morality inspired by a remote, semi-deist God, but the more I studied works of theology and philosophy the more I realized there was no fact universally agreed upon, no doctrine beyond dispute, and no practice that didn't bring opprobrium from someone within Christianity and approval from someone else within Christianity. In short, “liberal” Christianity was a pseudonym for “humanism that won't scare your parents”.

Shortly after finishing my residency I was assigned to live in Turkey while I served time in the military. This experience clinched my conviction that religion was wholly man made. There I encountered the same false certainty, the same fervor for dogma, the same disputation over the meaning of holy texts, and the same lack of agreement that I found in Christianity, even the same platitudinous and empty bumper sticker sloganeering and the only thing different was that the religion was now that of Islam. Every argument that Christians make to convince you of the truth of their religion has a mirror image in Islam.

While living there, I was frequently asked what I believed. Since I was unable to defend Christianity, the existence of God, or any evidence of design in the universe, I decided to answer affirmatively, “I am an atheist.”

Here is My Friend Again, a Deluded Man.

May I present to you Dr. William Lane Craig, again:


Vinny noticed this and said: "Let's not forget what Craig said in his argument with Peter Slezak in 2002":

So when then does the absence of evidence count as evidence that something does not exist? Well theorists of knowledge agree that the lack of evidence for some entity X counts as positive evidence against X’s existence only in the case that if X did exist then we should expect to see more evidence of X’s existence than what we do see....Now apply that to the case of God, the absence of evidence for God’s existence counts as evidence against God’s existence only in the case that if God did exist, then we should see more evidence of his existence than we do in fact see."

Okay then. What kind of God is Dr. Craig arguing for here? He's arguing specifically for a God who reveals himself, who wants us to know him personally, who wants us to believe he did something in history in order for us to be saved from the horrors of hell. That's the kind of God Craig is arguing for. Given this God we should expect a good deal of evidence that he exists. To say otherwise is to end up denying the very kind of God Craig is arguing for. Because Craig cannot have it both ways! Either this God wants us to know him or he doesn't. If he does, then he should give us enough evidence to believe, otherwise this God is not a revealing God who wants us to know him personally, and so forth. Q.E.D.

And given the passion Craig has in arguing for this God, Craig would literally jump for joy about a new piece of evidence or a new argument to show this God exists. In fact, I am certain Craig prays for God to help him come up with better arguments using better evidence too. But God does not help him, even though he could easily do so. It would seem that Craig's passion to help the rest of us see the truth about God is not shared by God himself! Bill, doesn't that trouble you in the least? I mean really, God tells you to evangelize and then hamstrings you by not offering you enough help for the task? Surely, if you could help an evangelist/apologist like yourself wouldn't you want to give him more evidence and better arguments if you were God? Then why doesn't your God? You say that you don't know why? Then what exactly can you expect from God if he doesn't at least help you argue effectively that he exists? Isn't that the minimum expectation you should have for a God like that which you argue for? If not, why not?

It's abundantly clear there is not enough evidence for the existence of Dr. Craig's God, the God of evangelical Christianity, which is the God he needs to conclude from his arguments. Just look at the demographics, for example. 2/3rds of the world rejects Christianity. That's 4 billion people just counting the world population today, and not down through the ages. Since an evangelical like Dr. Craig would not grant that everyone who calls herself a Christian is a true Christian, then these figures are way too low to begin with. And he still wants to maintain God has indeed given mankind enough evidence to believe? On the contraire, it is very strong evidence against Craig's assertions.

Besides, what Craig defends, in the final analysis, is a particular Occidental concept of God, and such a concept by definition must solve all problems if it's to be worthy as a concept of God in the first place. But just like the Ontological Argument is faulty, so also is it the case that just because we can come up with a particular concept of God does not mean that such a God actually exists.

Here is My Friend, a Deluded Man.

May I present to you, Dr. William Lane Craig:


Look at how confident he is. I'm sorry but he reminds me of the moonies.

It's not that we demand that God provides x, it's that we need for God to provide x. Without x we don't have evidence to believe. And if we cannot have any reasonable expectations about what God does, then how can we have a reasonable faith? How can a smart man just not get these two rudimentary points?

J.P Holding’s Logic: A Case Considered & Now With a Follow up Reply

The creator of the Tektonic Apologetic website, J.P Holding’s (here after I'll refer him as Bob or the name I’ve used for him in our debates) ability to logically and objectively debate an issue is directly proportional to his personal dislike for the other side regardless of the individual’s character and personal scholastic credentials. Examples can be seen in his reviews of Hector Avalos, Robert Price, Bart Ehrman and anyone else he chooses to character assassinate.


Since Bob’s Tekton website caters to the conservative Protestant Christian community, these believers view Bob as a Crusader out to defend the Holy Land / “Conservative Christian Truth” from anyone Bob considers an infidel to be roasted alive (not by object scholarship), but the flame of a subjective sarcastic mind as he did in his T-web review of Hector Avalos book.

Bob’s goal is, again, to subjectively prove that only “mental morons” who reject conservative Christianity; a point his fans and groupies love to hear in that Bob now does their thinking for them on any subject that might upset their Protestant dogmatics (notice at the Tekton website, Catholic and Mormons theologies are attacked as well).

Once someone has cross Bob’s imaginary mental line, he lunches into a literary tirade where he is both judge and jury in condemning the person as a remarkably stupid person often labeling the offender scholar with a list of sarcastic adjectives. Once Bob has condemned the individual, from then on, if that person says it up, Bob says it’s down. If they say it is right, Bob says it’s left. Bob’s goal (as seen in this case) is not to provide objective and logical objections, but to confuse the debate with highly clouded facts such as he does here throwing out a concept of a totally unrelated society (Roman / Latin /secular) and use it to explain Jewish society (Near Eastern / Semitic / religious).


An example here of a case in point is an issue we debated two years ago and also again posted here at D.C. based on a “wild card” theological claim from the late 1970’s where I heard radio evangelist Layman Straus claim a crucified Jesus (Luke 23:34) had to ask his father to forgive their sins since his feet were no long touching the ground (Luke edr).

Since this was totally a novel theological idea, Bob was also totally without any conservative guidance here since this theological claim is not discussed in any Biblical or Patristic commentary I know of. Thus, Bob had to be creative in order to counter this odd ball theological claim.

To do so, he posits an explanation from Roman society and law: the Classical concept of Client-patronage. But since Bob has limited resources, he references his explanation to the Oxford “Dictionary of Sociology” and not the Oxford “Classical Dictionary”. While the “Dictionary of Sociology” acknowledges that this is “traced by some” back to ancient times, his source deals mostly with the medieval concept feudal serfdom some 700 years removed from the world of Jesus. Bob goes on to call this reference a must read for Harry to “start with something very simple to educate himself as far as what these terms mean in the context of serious study of the social world of the New Testament.” Just how a dictionary on modern sociology with an article that never once mentions the “social world of the New Testament”, or a Semitic world that based its theology on the idea of a Covenant made to Abraham and the Jewish people in keeping Torah is simply quite hard to relate!

The Oxford Classical Dictionary defines a “client” as a Roman “free man who entrusted himself to another and received protection in return. Clientship was a hereditary social status consecrated by usage and recognized, though not defined or enforced, by law.” It continues by noting “The size of a man’s clientele, and the wealth and status of his individual clients, were a visible testimony to his prestige and social standing) and therefore to his political influence).” Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4 edition, p. 348.

In light of this definition as understood by Bob, Yahweh had to have been chosen by the Israelites in order for him to become deified as their God (Patron) so the Israelites (Clients) could receive protection; a total reversal from the Biblical account in the Hebrew Bible!

Bob continues attempts to explain this theological quirk for Luke 23: 34 by saying that God is the “Patron” and the Jews people are the “Clients” (However, Bob fails to understand that Jesus cry of forgiveness was as much to the Romans as to the Jews: Romans who were considered hated pagan and NOT under the Hebrew god Yahweh and his Covenant).

In his rush not to allow me any chance to advance this theological “wild card” of Rev. Straus, Bob has based his whole argument on a Roman secular concept and forces this on a Semitic religious world, but he totally neglected the third main character in Luke’s gospel: Jesus!

Now Bob’s creative mind comes into play again by injecting a foreign and strange new concept in that Jesus was a “broker” which the business dictionary defines “as an negotiator between prospective buyers and sells … in matters of trade, commerce, or navigation”; or a term straight from Wall Street and Capitalism. Thus, Bob has not only missed used an ancient secular Roman concept forced on to a Semitic religious Covenanted people (who generally hated Romans rule passion), he now had to make up for his deficiency by using an anachronistic modern secular Stock Market term in which Jesus is the go between for a people already called by God!

In updating his Tekton website to my post at D.C., Bob jumps on the fact that I claimed Jesus participated in the Temple sacrificial system with his usual sarcastic rejoinder:

“Participated in? Really? What version of the Bible is that found in, where Jesus sacrifices to the Temple? Must be the CHV (Crazy Harry Version).”

Had Bob not been on such an attack mode, he should have considered the Christian Doctrine of the Atonement; the very bases for my post on Luke 23: 34 in the first place.
But again, Bob goal is two fold, win a debate with someone he has placed on his list at all coast and character assassinate them at the same time. The sad part is that Bob has more in common with the second function than he does with honest objective scholarship which his biting remarks try to hide.

Finally, if one counts Bob’s words in his reply to my post at DC, one finds Bob spending 144 words in attack and none justifying his misuses of the “Client-patron” Roman term along with his modern Wall Street term “Broker”.

A Reply to Holding’s Follow up (2-08) at his Tektonic Website:

Problem A: Holding cited me for using “A business dictionary” and yet he must go to a website entitled: BNET or Business Network: The go-to place for management (just check out most of his references).

Problem B: He cites from the above Business Network a theologian from Notre Dame University, Jerome H. Neyrey, S.J., known for his modern sociological interpretations of the New Testament. His faculty profile reads as follows: “His current research project is God, In Other Words: Cultural Interpretation of the Christian Deity. His main scholarly effort has long been on the use of social science models and concepts for the interpretation of biblical documents.” Holding quotes from his “Worship in the fourth gospel: A cultural interpretation of John 14 – 17: Part 2. So yes, only as a “cultural interpretation” can Jesus be a modern “Broker”.

Problem C: Holding cites a dissertation by Johanna Stiebert entitled Construction of Shame in the Hebrew Bible: The Prophetic Contribution to prove his “patron-client” thesis when Ms. Stiebert clearly states she is only using a modern analogy: “This could be read in analogy with vassal – suzerain / patron-client.” Again, notice the sentence section: “This could be "read in analogy…”

Problem D: Holding totally confused my statement about the “wild card” theology of evangelist Layman Straus with his argument for the validation of Patron-Client. He stated: “So far from being a "novel theological idea or wild card" as poor Harry says, this is merely mainstream Biblical scholarship -- it can be found in sources like deSilva's Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity and Pilch and Malina's Handbook of Biblical Social Values.”

Robert / Bob, I did not know evangelist Layman Straus' “wild card” claim about Jesus being unable to forgive sins was “mainstream Biblical scholarship”. Really! Now I’m learning just how uneducated I am.

Problem E: Holding stated: “Really. I had no idea Jesus was crucified in the Temple. I suppose this really does come from the Crazy Harry Version”. Fact is the atoning death of Jesus was felt in the Temple as the curtains were torn and the death of Jesus the negated the Temple sacrificial system (Matthew 27: 50 – 51). Bob, go figure!

Next time Holding might start with an etymological world study in Hebrew and Greek to avoid the anachronistic error of injecting authors of modern social science theories on to an ancient Near Eastern world.

From faith to reason, my journey

The conversion of Bart Willruth

In the summer of 1979, I was a theology student at the top of my game. I was standing next to several of my professors, some recognized as the worldwide authorities in their fields. I had already completed a B.A. degree with a double major, history and theology, with a minor in Koine Greek. Now I was the fair-haired golden boy of the theological seminary at Andrews University. It was graduation. I was speaking with these professors I had looked up to for so many years, who were now starting to treat me as a bit of a colleague. I was basking in the glow of graduation from the Master of Divinity program at the theological seminary and had graduated first in a class of 300, Summa cum Laude. I had just been invited to enter the Doctor of Theology program at the University. What made that unusual was that no student had ever before been allowed to enter that program prior to serving several years as a pastor and receiving ordination. I was being fast-tracked to become a seminary professor myself. I had just been interviewed by the executive editor of the Southern Publishing Association and asked to write a commentaty on the Apocalypse for educated laymen and college students. Two of my professors had already given me multiple opportunities to guest lecture in their M.Div. classes on the subject of apocalyptic literature and New Testament eschatology. I was a committed Christian who was realizing a dream years in the making.

While I had been brought up in the Armenian Protestant tradition, I had steadily been embracing Calvinist theology, albeit without the hard predestinarianism associated with it. The death and resurrection of Jesus as my saviour, forensic justification, the Protestant credo; Grace alone, Faith alone, and scripture as sole authority, were my life blood. I stood firmly in the gospel and let the gospel stand in judgment of all things; creeds, church institutions, and worldview. I was as committed as one could be and certain of my salvation by the grace of God through his son Jesus Christ. I was a believer, an Evangelical Christian.

As I entered into my doctoral program, specializing in apocalyptic literature, I took on the position of associate editor of "Evangelica" magazine, published numerous articles, and begain accepting invitations to give seminars at churches in several states. I excelled in my studies, maintaining a straight 4.0 G.P.A. throughout.

But there was a serpent in the garden. I had studied deeply in Christian apologetics (defending the faith) using clear logic and argumentation to bolster the reasons for articles of faith. I was convinced that reason and faith could work hand in hand, that reason strengthened faith, and faith could take us where reason could not. One day I picked up a book on economics by Ayn Rand, "Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal." I found the arguments for free markets and capitalism to be enlightening and compelling from the practical standpoint. But the more challenging part of the book was the moral defence for capitalism. I had always believed, in keeping with the teachings of Jesus, that there was no positive morality involved in the pursuit of commercial interests, wealth, or any of the material benefits of the secular world other than to renounce them and give to the poor. Suddenly I was confronted with a tightly argued presentation of the morality and the necessity of using one's mind for survival and well being, for being properly concerned with life, this life on earth, and the irrationality of self sacrifice and altruism. Her interplay of the practical and the moral were a blatant challenge to my Christian worldview wherein this life was to be used to serve the purposes of God in sacrifice to Him and others, with the reward coming in the next life. Jesus, as he is presented in the gospels, deliberately drives a wedge between the moral and the practical. A three page section of Rand's book called "the Meaning of Money" presented a conversation of two protagonists debating the question of the truth of Jesus' position that money is the root of all evil. As the conversation grew sharper, the debate corrected to Jesus' position that the Love of money is the root of all evil. The capitalist protagonist began to show that there is no higher value to man than life. Without it, no other values exist. That that which supports this life is the moral and that which is destructive of life is the immoral. That this life is the only one we have (any other is just a hope). That we survive through the use of our mind and reason. That we use our minds to judge the best course of action, to reep the rewards of our thought and action, and to live as we see fit without coercion. That reason is our only guide and means of knowledge. That self sacrifice by any organism, from the lowliest worm to the most intelligent human, is the road to self destruction and death. That money is the visible means of identifying the value we offer to others in exchange for the value they offer to us. It is the tangible symbol of the best within us and is the support for life, our highest value. That the value we put on money is the value we put on our own life itself. That to disdain money is to disdain life. That to love life is to love money which supports it. I was stunned, not that I agreed with the position at that time, but that morality could be so logically argued and tightly reasoned from an ontological perspective (arising out of that which is, existence) rather than being a kind of knowledge only available from revelation. Reason from existence vs. acceptance by authority. She summed up Judeo-Christian morality in this way, To the degree that we are fitted properly for this life, we are unfit for the next. The result of the Christian morality is that to the degree we are fitted properly for the life to come, we are unfit for survival in this life. The vision before my mind was the ultimate symbol of Christian righteousness, Christ on the cross, death in this life in sacrifice for others, self immolation, with new life in glory. Death and humiliation as the paradigm for our proper behavior vs. a morality of making the best out of the life we have, to live for our own purposes, to love this life. The differences are obviously stark, and the sources for the two moralities just as opposite, reason vs. authority. The explosion of Christian morality through reason was shocking. I had never questioned it before. I had thought that Christian morality was the obvious, the given. That those who rejected it did so for sinful reasons, not for moral reasons. Could it be that the morality of Jesus' was irrational?

And then came the computer virus that began working its way through my mind, corrupting every connection, thought, and memory. Rand pointed out that all systems of thought begin with premises. But then she issued the challenge, "CHECK YOUR PREMISES." Nothing, no other concept, no other challenge, has so profoundly influenced my life. I had observed Rand systematically debunking the sermon on the mount, the moral teachings of Jesus, and the Christian life of piety, through reason and logic, the same methods I had used in Christian apologetics to support my faith and that of millions of others throughout the last 2,000 years. How could this be? How can two systems both use the same logical methods to arrive at such opposite conclusions? The answer was in their respective starting points. These questions didn't percolate quickly through my mind, but they did work as a background program over the next two years.

Finally, with a troubled mind and a fear of doubting, which is placed into every Christian early on, I took the challenge. I decided to check my premises. It is such a simple thing to do, and it is a continuing source of embarassment to me that I had managed to achieve the doctoral level in my theological studies without ever asking the basic questions and demanding satisfactory answers. I asked myself, "What are the premises upon which Christianity is based?" I started from the philosophy of religion perspective and found Karl Barth to be the most lucid expositor of the theistic premises. He posited two presuppositions (premises) on which the whole of theological speculation is based:

1. There is a God
2. He has revealed Himself.

Yes, I agreed that those are the starting points upon which all logical arguments for God and His will are based. Number one deals with metaphysics, the issue of existence. To acknowledge this premise is to accept as a fact that God exists. Number two deals with epistemology, the means of knowledge and verification. Together, these presuppositions state that God exists and He has made Himself known to man. The problem as I pondered was that these premises were presuppositions, not objective facts. That is, they were propositions that we suppose to be true in advance as a starting point. But are these propositions really facts? Are they proper starting points? Or are they themselves conclusions? On what basis? Theologians and philosophers have long pondered these issues, and other than the more ignorant fundamentalist country preachers, most have acknowledged that there is nothing within the natural world enabling us to indicate the existence of the supernatural. Or to put it another way, God's existence must be taken as a given, not the result of a line of reasoning or argumentation. We must first believe that He is. The act that existence exists, that there is a universe rather than nothing, does not require the existence of God. Without evidence, and indeed no evidence is possible, the brutal fact is that the first premise that God exists, is an arbitrary proposition; arbitrary meaning that it has no cause or evidence. That "God exists" must be accepted solely on the basis of sheer faith, unseen, and unknowable. When it is acknowledged that the first premise is arbitrary, it necessarily follows that the second premise, that God has revealed Himself, is also arbitrary since it is derivative upon acceptance if the first premise that God exists. Even so, the question becomes "Revealed how?" The Christian will always answer this with a two-fold response. God first revealed himself through "inspired" men throughout the ages and finally through his son who was the pre-existent God becoming a man, living about two thousand years ago ina poor backwater of the Roman Empire. This revelation to "inspired men" is problematic. Why was such vital information released piecemeal in a geographically limited area to one group and not available to every person equally? And how can we know that anything was actually revealed to any of these individuals? We cannot check out their stories and claims. In fact, in many cases the original writers are unknown. How do we know if they conveyed their revelations accurately? And how do we know that the copying of texts through millenia has been scrupulously accurate? If errors could have crept in, how do we know what they are, what was original, and what was altered? How do we know which claimants to revelation were truthful and which were fakers? Numerous individuals have claimed to have received communication from a god. We know more about Muhammad, Joseph Smith, Ellen White, and the Rev. Moon than we know about many of the authors of the writings which make up the Bible. Which prophet do we accept and which do we reject? By what criteria? If we choose Paul and use his thoughts as a standard, then we reject Muhammad. But if we choose Muhammad and use his thoughts as a standard, then we reject Paul. Why would the great Revealer make us arbitrarily choose which guy to trust in order to come to salvific knowledge? When we choose, and choose we must if we accept the premise that God has revealed Himself, we are ultimately directing faith not to a god, but to the man or woman claiming to be the recipient of the revelation. Why must we exercise faith in fallible men to understand God and his will? Do we know if any inspired man was actually mentally ill or delusional? Do we know if he had a good memory and faithfully wrote down every detail which was revealed to him accurately? We do know that problems occurred in the transmission of the texts, that corruptions entered the texts through omissions by copyists, additions to add authority to someone's pet beliefs, through changes intended to clarify based upon current understanding, through outright fraud and forgery, through simple copying errors, and by the church of the fourth century as it tried to clarify and define orthodoxy. The fundamentalist will answer that from start to finish, God's revelation was controlled and preserved at every level by his will, that is by a long series of miracles safeguarding his word. But this is an argument of faith, not fact; it is unknowable, circular reasoning.

"All of this is a problem" I thought to myself, "and a huge and fundamental problem at that." If all theological thought begins with two premises which must be accepted by faith alone, then is there no objectivity involved? This gets to the crucial questions,\

1. What do I know? and
2. How do I know it?

We are right back to the issues of metaphysics and epistemology.; I had long believed that reason and faith were fellow travelers. Reason could be used to get us part of the way and to bolster faith with evidence, and that faith could fill in the gaps of information unavailable to reason. But if the starting point must be accepted by faith, it is then like a child's game of "let's pretend." Let's pretend that there is a God and that he has revealed Himself, and then logically and with reason extrapolate those premises. We end up with systems called Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but the pyramid of belief which was so carefully built up with so much painstaking care and reasoning all stands on a completely arbitrary and very uncertain foundation. At this point, the marriage of reason and faith is on the rocks. If faith is the starting point and posits "facts" not in evidence, no reasonong beyond that point, no matter how erudite, can claim anything more than that it is a house of cards, smoke, and mirrors. No knowledge can be furthered by extrapolating arbitrary "facts."

As I grappled with these issues, I was devastated. Could my whole worldview, all my study, all my hopes be false? I couldn't accept it. I began to loook for another way to objectify my beliefs. I turned to the second claim of God's revelation, that of the incarnation of Jesus. The Judeo-Christian tradition (and its stepchild, Islam) is unique in world religions in that it claims that God has entered history. In the case of Christianity, He entered history in the person of Jesus of Nazareth who was born a Jew in the first century, was the promised Messiah of the Jews, taught with the authority of God, worked numerous miracles which certified his claims, was crucified, dead, and buried. That on the third day through a mighty miracle, God raised him from the dead. The risen Jesus was then seen by hundreds of witnesses over a period of weeks, and was then raised up to heaven before a group of witnesses. This claim is not a faith issue (using "faith" as an epistemological method). Rather, it is a historical claim, subject to the same methods of examination to which other events of history are subject. That he was dead and then alive again is the historical claim. That the event has implications for believers is a faith issue and is not subject to historical investigation. It is the claim of the actual events on the Judean dirt that must be examined as history.

I seized on this issue as the solution to my questions. It would objectify the basic claims of Christian belief even if the philosophical side was wanting. I threw myself into the question with high energy. While this is not the venue for explaining the details, I put together a research project to marshall all the evidence possible to bolster the arguments for the objective historical claims. I read every apologetic book I could find on the resurrection. I read some historical-critical scholarly texts. And I did intense research on my own. I came out at the far end of that study with the realization that the claim of the death and resurrection of Jesus as a historical event was indefensible. The only way to hold on to that belief would be to blindly accept the internally contradictory and irrational claims of the mostly anonymous writers of the New Testament.

I was faced with two options; retreat into faith, blind faith, to believe in the absence of evidence or in spite of evidence to the contrary. Or I could use the mind I have to apprehend the universe and existence as it is, not as I wish it were. FAITH or REASON. There is no middle ground. Either-or. I chose reason, but not without pain. It was an exceedingly difficult thing to shed the beliefs of a lifetime which had permeated every part of my being and my outlook. At every point I had to stop and ask myself if I were reacting automatically to my old perspectives or was I thinking and acting in accordance with reason.

I deliberately and proudly expunged faith from my being and took up the banner of reason. When asked what I believe in now, I invariably respond "I don't believe in anything." What I mean is that I know. I apply reason to every part of my life. That perspective is helpful in protection against all con men, religious or commercial. For the last 25 years I have been an Objectivist with reason and logic as my only means of knowing and acting. I have rejected Christianity and other forms of theism. I consider faith to be a short circuit of the mind and hugely detrimental to achieving the full potential of human possibility. Faith is the lazy man's attempt at gaining knowledge, free from the rigors and risks of thinking.

In the interim years, I have remained a careful student of philosophy, theology, and history. I have worked diligently to deconstruct the claims of Christianity, for my own benefit and that of others crippled by this scourge. I study the formative period of Christian origins to ascertain what actually took place and how Christianity evolved into that which we recognize today. I believe theism is the most destructive force in the world today. It cripples the human mind and its potential. It causes the sacrifice of the interests of this life for the delusion of a hoped for afterlife. It allows separation and vilification. Its fundamentalist side can has frequently led to coercion and voilence. It is intolerant. Its liberal side has led to the collectivist/altruist governance of communism, progressivism, and the social welfare state. In a post-enlightenment world, it has no place. Christianity belongs to the primitive, superstitious, and credulous past.

Bart Willruth

"I'm Praying for You."

"I'm praying for you." I get this response from Christians quite a bit. I don't suppose they would say this if they read the chapter in my book on prayer. But here is my response:

Go ahead. Thank you. But remember, don't just count the hits when a prayer request is answered, or discount the misses when a request is not granted. Make it a testable prayer. Pray specifically such that we will both know if your prayer request is answered. Don't offer a nebulous prayer which reveals you truly do not believe, like "help him," or "convict him," or "turn his life around before he dies." None of those prayers can be known to have been granted before we both die, since you might die before me. Be specific. If you want me to return to the faith then give a date when this is supposed to happen. This is not the same as demanding God to do something on your timetable at all, no more than it is when you ask for it not to rain on a given day.

Cheers,
John

The Argument From Ignorance

Surely people have heard of the "Argument From Reason," which attempts to show God exists, and the "Argument From Evil," which attempts to show God does not exist. I hereby advance for the first time the "Argument From Ignorance," which is short for the "Argument From Human Ignorance." Hitchiking and expanding on the arguments found in J.L. Schellenberg's book The Wisdom to Doubt: A Justification of Religious Skepticism, I will attempt to show that religious skepticism is justified based upon the fact that human beings are ignorant, and we are ignorant because we are profoundly limited and immature as human beings. [This might take a few posts to do so]. Let me begin with a summary of the argument found in Part One of Schellenberg's book.

In Part One Schellenberg argues for religious skepticism based on four distinct categories of thought called "modes," which he later combines into one. In the "Subject Mode" the author argues that human beings are limited in understanding. There is available evidence that is neglected and/or inaccessible to us. There is unrecognized evidence that is undiscovered and undiscoverable by all of us. In the "Object Mode" the author argues that it's probably beyond finite humans beings to understand Ultimate reality, since it must be "something infinitely profound." (p. 51) As such, we may have inadequate and incoherent conceptions of it.

In the "Retrospective Mode" the author considers the human past with regard to religious claims. The human past is too brief, ("only a few thousand years old") and we have been occupied by other things for us to conclude we have arrived at a final understanding. There have been moral, psychological and social factors which were actively against religious improvements to our understanding. There has been hubris (or self-importance) and greed, jealously and envy, which taken together led to dogmatism, hostility and rivalry among people of different understandings. "Because religious belief is wrapped up with this ultimate concern, it has tended to go hand in hand with a rather fierce loyalty. Nothing less than complete devotion is appropriate where such a reality is involved." "How, for example, can one remain loyal to God if one allows oneself to be seduced by objections to the belief that there is a God?...she is likely rather to become stubborn and intransigent, because of a well-intentional but misplaced loyalty." "When they notice that others disagree, they tend not to think of this as an opportunity for dialogue and growth toward deeper understanding, but rather feel impelled to insist on fundamental error in the opposing views." (p. 76-78). Furthermore, "the more attached one becomes to one's beliefs, the more difficult it is to remain open to their falsity and to engage in investigations that might show them to be false" (p. 84), which in turn has been "inimical to creative and critical thinking" about the Ultimate.

In the "Prospective Mode" the author "considers what may lie ahead rather than what lies behind us." (p. 91). If we survive on this planet we have 1 billion years to come up with better solutions to understanding the Ultimate, especially since we've just entered an era of unprecedented access to digital information that may all be categorized and placed into a hand held iPod someday. Science will progress into the future as well. People will increasingly be forced to get to know others who have a different religious perspective with a global economy and travel, and we will learn from each other and become more tolerant and assimilating of these views with a healthy exchange of information.

The author finally combines these four into one called "The Presumption Mode," which builds on everything he said before. He argues that "human beings are both profoundly limited and profoundly immature." (p. 117). Lacking any pragmatic reasons to counter his truth-oriented arguments, he concludes that "religious skepticism is positively justified." (p. 129).

Jeffrey Shallit Debates ID'er Kirk Durston at the University of Waterloo.

The God of the Gaps, One More Time

Victor Reppert repeatedly discusses the "God of the Gaps" in which many Christians have argued that if science cannot explain something then this is evidence or a pointer to God's handiwork in the world. But since modern science has explained numerous things without recourse to a supernatual explantion, like how babies are born, why people get ill, and why it rains, this whole reasoning is now problematic. Let me explain...

This whole discussion reminds me of what I wrote when summing up my case against Christianity here: In every case when it comes to the following reasons for adopting my control beliefs the Christian response is pretty much the same. Christians must continually retreat to the position that what they believe is “possible,” or that what they believe is “not impossible.” However, the more that Christians must constantly retreat to what is "possible" rather than to what is “probable” in order to defend their faith, the more their faith is on shaky ground. For this is a tacit admission that instead of the evidence supporting what they believe, they are actually trying to explain the evidence away.

Robert M. Price echos this statement of mine when he says that for Christian apologists “the controlling presupposition seems to be, ‘If the traditional view cannot be absolutely debunked beyond the shadow of a doubt, if it still might possibly be true, then we are within our rights to continue to believe it.’”

Now let me try to explain how this applies to the god of the gaps reasoning. Many Christians claim that methodological naturalism (MN) has not closed all of the gaps, and since that’s so, they can still believe. According to them so long as there are gaps it hasn’t been shown God doesn’t exist. But the point is that MN has indeed closed numerous gaps because such a method has proven fruitful. Christians must admit that while MN is indeed fruitful it cannot or should not be used to explain the Biblical miracles or the origin of the universe itself. But when they take this tact they are already admitting the fruitfulness of MN which has had overwhelming success. They have to deny what seems to scientifically literate people undeniable, or at the very minimum, most probable. They must apply a double standard here, for while they accept MN in all other areas of their lives they deny it when it comes to the Bible. Why the double standard?

Other Christian theists faced with the onslaught of science and its method have changed the historic Christian view in which it was believed the gaps are evidence for God's handiwork. Now they are forced into claiming instead that even if the gaps were all closed it wouldn’t undercut their beliefs, since God is behind the whole ordered universe as the divine orderer. And while this is true if God exists, at the same time, as the gaps are closed there is less and less evidence to believe he does exist! If all of the gaps are closed, which is theoretically possible but not likely, would the theist then admit there is no evidence for God at all, or will she again switch tactics?

So Christian theists either have a double standard, or they have the we can’t beat ‘em join ‘em attitude towards MN. I consider both views to be an admission of the power of MN, and indicative that their only resort is retreating to what’s possible rather than to what’s probable.

Cheers.

Twelve Arguments for Atheism by Richard Spencer

Link.

I'll Be Speaking At the University of Wisconsin-Madison Campus, Tuesday, February 12th.

Chris Hallquist and his secular student organization invited me to speak on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison about why I rejected Christianity. I'll be doing this February 12th at 7 PM in the Mosse Humanities Building. [On the University map link, click on "Show Me," then "Arts Venues." The building is on the corner of N. Park and University Ave. This will take place in room 2650 of that building. If you're near the area I would like to meet ya. Please tell anyone you know who lives near there about it as well.