Self-help for religious damage, with check-list

In this excerpt from my book, “Leaving the Fold,” I've listed some phases of recovery and major issues. See how much you can relate to.

Religion is supposed to be good for you. Yet people get hurt in religious systems, sometimes seriously. I used to think that although damage was done by so-called cults, most religion is essentially benign. It could give you some comfort as a child and teach you some values, but then you grew up and away from it. It wasn’t until I looked back on my struggle to grow free of my own indoctrination, and heard the stories of others, that I realized that this kind of emotional and mental damage can be profound.

In conservative, fundamentaist Christianity you are told you are unacceptable. You are judged with regard to your relationship to God. Thus you can only be loved positionally, not essentially. And, contrary to any assumed ideal of Christian love, you cannot love others for their essence either. This is the horrible cost of the doctrine of original sin. Recovering from this unloving assumption is perhaps the core task when you leave the fold. It is also a discovery of great joy – to permit unconditional love for yourself and others.

The problem of religious damage has not received much attention in our society, perhaps because Christianity is so much a part of our culture and real criticism is taboo. Just consider what we have done to so-called heretics throughout history. Religious damage may also seem less serious than other recovery issues such a alcoholism or child abuse. And since faith is thought of as a good thing in a world brimming with materialism, selfishness, and violence, many feel strange when complaining of church attendance or growing up in a religious home.

But leaving your faith is not like no longer believing in Santa Claus. It can be shattering to realize that your religion is creating problems in your life. Whether you leave abruptly or drift away over a long period of time, you may experience profound sadness and confusion about what to do, think, and believe. You may also feel the rage of betrayal or struggle with persistent depression.

Many people are reluctant to talk about this subject for fear of hurting loved ones, of alienating others, of appearing foolish and self-centered. They sometimes fear divine retribution. I have known therapists who were afraid to work openly with people on these issues because they were concerned they might be labeled anti-religious or anti-God. However, more often, therapists who have not been through the experience themselves do not understand the difficulty of recovering from an authoritarian religion.

But breaking away from a restrictive, controlling religion can be a wrenching, profound experience. You may be feeling confused, guilty, empty, or bitter. You may be depressed about life or scared of the future. Perhaps you have trouble connecting with other people and life "in the world."

You are not alone in your experience. Many, many others have been through this and gone on to reconstruct their lives in meaningful and satisfying ways. While the experience of losing your religion is often painful and confusing at first, there is much to be learned and ultimately a profound maturity to be gained. This book can provide some assistance in your recovery by clarifying the issues involved, offering ideas for healing, and suggesting directions for further growth.

In general, leaving a cherished faith is much like the end of a marriage. The symptoms of separation are quite similar-grief, anger, guilt, depression, lowered self-esteem, and social isolation. But whereas help for divorced people is readily available, little if any assistance is available to help you to leave your religion. The familiar sources of church support are no longer there, and family members still in the fold may actually shun you. Secular friends and even therapists may not understand what you have been through. Part of the difficulty is the anxiety, the terror you may feel about having to go it alone. After having been born again, leaving your faith can feel like being lost again.

There are many issues to work through-thoughts and feelings to process, new friends to make, new beliefs to nurture, and new ways to live. Because your religion took care of so much, defining and dictating reality in so many ways, you are now faced with largely reconstructing your life. Recovery begins with deciding to take that responsibility. This may seem overwhelming, but the benefits are indisputable. You get your life back on your terms. Indeed, the journey out can be thrilling as old fears and doubts give way to new and healthy possibilities.

Phases of Recovery

People seem to go through phases in their recovery from rigid religion, just as other life changes have typical sequences. This particular change goes deeper than many others and touches on all aspects of a person’s life. The following sections offer a very general outline of the recovery pattern that I have observed and facilitated in clients:

1. Separation
2. Confusion
3. Avoidance
4. Feeling
5. Rebuilding

These are not discrete stages in the formal sense. There is considerable overlap between them and a person may be in more than one phase at a time. However, the overall pattern may help you understand where you have been, where you are now, and what you can expect in the future.
(Details are in my book).

Issues in Recovery

"I feel like a scared, lonely, abandoned little kid that just can't get it right and who must be a real "bad boy." I have a large sense of not deserving anything that finally I am not important. This is connected to my "nothingness in the eyes of God," which was taught very early. My mother dedicated me to God when I was an infant. God is what is important, not me. Am I worth taking care of?"
—Daryl

From what I have learned in my work with formerly religious people and from my own experience, certain issues of healing and growth appear to be common to the process of breaking away. Some areas of personal development continue to be important for many years. The areas of impact described here are typical consequences of leaving a conservative, fundamentalist church. They also apply in various ways to leaving other groups. The intensity of impact can range from simple life limiting to extreme harm.

1. Recovering a sense of self
2. Working through emotions of anger, guilt, anxiety, & loneliness
3. Learning how to be in “the world”
4. Accepting self-responsibility
5. Creating meaning and personal spirituality

(These will be explored in my next post and can be found in my book, as well as online for free at www.marlenewinell.net. They will also be covered at retreat weekends).

Here is an inventory you can use to assess how you are doing on these issues:

Issues Checklist
Directions: For each item, mark the number that best reflects the impact that issue or feeling has on your daily life. For example, mark 1 if the issue is mildly bothersome to you, 3 if it is moderately troubling, and 5 if it is severely disturbing. Mark 2 or 4 if the issue falls somewhere between.

Issue/Feeling Severity

Confusion 1 2 3 4 5

Anxiety or fear 1 2 3 4 5

Lack of clear identity and personal values 1 2 3 4 5

Negative sense of self 1 2 3 4 5

Emptiness, as if you have no core 1 2 3 4 5

Negative image of your body 1 2 3 4 5
and discomfort with sexuality

Lack of meaning or purpose in life 1 2 3 4 5

Anger and bitterness 1 2 3 4 5

Loneliness 1 2 3 4 5

Loss and grief 1 2 3 4 5

Depression 1 2 3 4 5

Persistent guilt 1 2 3 4 5

Difficulty enjoying daily pleasures 1 2 3 4 5

Unreasonably high expectations, perfectionism 1 2 3 4 5

Trouble appreciating people 1 2 3 4 5

Difficulty with self-responsibility 1 2 3 4 5

Lack of deep self-love and skills for self-care 1 2 3 4 5

Trouble thinking for yourself 1 2 3 4 5

Difficulty feeling and expressing emotion 1 2 3 4 5

External focus for satisfaction 1 2 3 4 5

The Deadliest Monster, by J.F. Baldwin

My wife is attending a new Sunday School class on worldviews. I was curious when she brought home a book entitled The Deadliest Monster by J.F. Baldwin. The premise of the book is that we all, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide, are depraved by nature and are powerless to save ourselves. As G.K. Chesterton famously maintained, human depravity is the only truly empirically attested doctrine of Christianity.

Baldwin asserts that Christianity is validated by the fact that it is the only worldview that teaches the reality of inherent human sinfulness. He runs through the list of ten "major" worldviews (interestingly, even Jehovah's Witnesses make it on the list) and shows how they downplay human depravity and make ourselves the focus of our salvation. Atheists, too, are all painted with the same broad brush: we believe humans are inherently good and that we can achieve utiopia ("salvation") by reforming society, by improving our environment in such away that the goodness of all can flower.

But this is not all. Since it is an empirical fact that our nature is depraved, we need a Savior, the Son of God, to die on the cross to save us from ourselves and our sin. As it happens, Christianity provides just such a solution! If this is not a non sequitur, what qualifies? Here is the logic: 1) we have a problem; 2) a particular worldview has a suggested solution; 3) that worldview must correspond to reality!

Baldwin then goes on to extend similar logic to the problem of suffering: 1) we all suffer; 2) no worldview both takes suffering seriously and makes sense out of it (i.e., redeems it, turns it into good, as God did for Joseph when his brothers sent him into slavery); 3) therefore, Christianity must be true. What if a child whose parents never gave her ice cream reasoned like this: 1) I like and want ice cream, but my parents don't give me any; 2) my friend Susie's parents give her ice cream; 3) therefore, Susie's parents are my parents (or at least, they must be better parents than mine).

Beyond these obvious non sequiturs, the premise of his main argument is flawed. It would be news to MIT cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker that all atheists deny the anti-social tendencies of human nature or believe in the inherent goodness and perfectivitily of humanity. Perhaps Marxism fits the bill, but certainly far from all atheists are Marxists. In his book The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker recounts how as a youth living in Montreal he came to lose faith in the inherent goodness of humanity. As a result of the widespread mayhem, rioting and looting that ensued in the wake of the Montreal police department strike on October 17,1969, he abandoned his idealistic anarchist political views (Pinker 2002, 331). We witnessed a similar surfacing of human selfishness in the looting that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2004.

The solution to the problem? Find the first worldview that recognizes human depravity and proposes a solution, i.e., Christianity? No! How about this: insofar as possible, ensure that adequate societal guardrails are erected to prevent this sort of behavior from happening.

Let me do a one-up on Baldwin. Let me say that his brand of Christianity actually fails to take human depravity seriously enough. What I mean is that the doctrine of total depravity is too often applied to the unregenerate, to those outside the household of faith, without recognizing the extent to which human nature remains in effect for the redeemed (to his credit, Baldwin does offer a nod to the fact that Christians continue to sin, but he clearly believes the Holy Spirit confers some objective moral advantage to believers). The moral fall of a pastor is almost always greeted initially with disbelief, as are allegations of child abuse on the part of missionaries or church leaders. Such abuse is by no means limited to the Catholic Church, as this article from Christianity Today attests concerning the evangelical Mamou Alliance Academy in Guinea, operated by The Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA):

Darr and at least 30 other children at the West African boarding school suffered a more harrowing form of alienation. From 1950 to 1971, children were beaten with belts, forced to eat their own vomit, punched and slapped in the face, coerced into performing oral sex, required to sit in their own feces, fondled, and beaten with a strap to the point of bleeding. Not until 1995, after persistent complaints by a group of adults who had been Mamou students, did the C&MA impanel a commission to investigate.The panel’s 95-page report, filed after 18 months of research and interviews, identifies nine offenders; four are retired, three are dead, and two are no longer affiliated with the C&MA. Two individuals who refused to cooperate with the panel have been convicted at denominational disciplinary hearings. The commission faulted the denomination for improper training, poor oversight, and negligence. The Mamou staff, rather than being loving surrogate parents, punished too frequently and affirmed too little, the report indicates. Richard W. Bailey, chair of the C&MA’s board of managers, sent a letter expressing regret to Mamou alumni in January. “Please accept our heartfelt apology for our inadequate supervision and understanding of the happenings at Mamou Academy, while you were a student.” (“Missions: From Trauma to Truth.” Christianity Today: April 27, 1998. http://ctlibrary.com/1384.)

The above incident is only the best reported of many such heartbreaking stories of abuse in missionary boarding schools around the world. Is it possible that an incomplete acceptance of human depravity led to the lack of supervision that permitted the Mamou tragedy? Did the abusers take advantage of the trust of their fellow missionaries in the goodness of redeemed human nature, failing to implement safeguards to restrain the base impulses of their co-laborers in Christ?

If I acknowledge human depravity, does that mean my inspiration has to come from Christianity, the supposed origin of that doctrine? Hardly! Should we not expect as a consequence of our cutthroat evolutionary heritage a bent toward aggression, violence and selfishness?

I realize I don't represent the views of all atheists on this matter (perhaps many on this blog will disagree with my assessment of human nature), but I do wish to admonish Balwin against the use of any phrase beginning with "Atheists believe..." (with the exception of the tautology "Atheists believe in no gods").

So is my worldview inherently pessimisitic, recognizing human depravity without offering solutions? Perhaps, but only if you believe that anything short of a perfect solution is no solution at all. Can human society be improved over time? Yes--for example, in Western societies, homicide rates have declined tenfold to a hundredfold in the past millennium, from a time when religious belief was virtually unchallenged (Pinker 2002, 330). Slavery is outlawed in the West. We have relative freedom in the West to adhere to whatever worldview we choose. Women have a voice. Can we eliminate all vestiges of human depravity and eliminate murder altogether? No. Unlike Baldwin, who sees the matter in all-or-nothing terms, I am prepared to recognize both the good and the bad in human nature, the noble and the selfish. We are not totally depraved, even if we are flawed. We can improve society, even if we cannot perfect it.

Rabbis and Christians on the Exodus

Rabbi David Wolpe shocked the Jewish world when he gave a Passover sermon that suggested that the Exodus as described in the Torah never took place. He has surveyed the available evidence from the Torah, the archeological record from the Sinai, and the archeological record from the Levant and concluded that the story of the Exodus is impossible. Rabbi Wolpe is not an atheist. In fact he has debated Sam Harris, a prominent atheist, yet he is convinced the Exodus is a fable.

Rabbi Wolpe is still a believing Jew who thinks that the story of Exodus has great power to inspire people today. However, he believes that power is in the metaphor of the story and does not require it to be literally true.

Yet some of Rabbi Wolpe's colleagues excoriated him in public, saying that he was simply wrong. Yet in private one of them told him, "Of course what you say is true, but we should not say it publicly."

Rabbi Wolpe believes that Jews should examine the Exodus account for three main reasons. The first, that historical claims must be evaluated historically, the second, that the truth should never be frightening to believers, and the third, that believers should still have the same relationship to God, even if the account is not true.

Rabbi Wolpe believes God inspired the Bible, but does not believe the Bible is literally true. Personally, I believe this is a muddled way of thinking. I believe it is much more realistic to imagine that the Bible was written by men and is no more and no less inspired than any other work of literature. I think however, that if Rabbi Wolpe said that, he'd be even more likely to lose his job than he is already. So one can easily understand his reticence.

Why is this important? Christians continue to believe things that literally can't be true. A majority of US Christians believe the Torah was written by Moses, a mythical figure. A majority of US Christians refuse to accept the scientific account of the origins of the universe and of life.

Certainly liberal Christians also doubt the literal truth of the Exodus. Christianity Today says:

The fact is that not one shred of direct archaeological evidence has been found for Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob or the 400-plus years the children of Israel sojourned in Egypt. The same is true for their miraculous exodus from slavery.

Even some biblical "maximalist" scholars, such as William Dever (a graduate of Christian Theological Seminary), do not believe the Exodus occurred. In his book, "Who Were the Israelites and Where Did They Come From?" he only gives credence to the idea that they arose within Palestine.

Dever says on page 1:

"Finally, many of the biblical stories are legend-like and abound with miraculous and fantastic elements that strain the credulity of almost any modern reader of almost any religious persuasion. All these factors have contributed to the rise of doubts about the Bible's trustworthiness."

Ultimately, the only thing you need to know to debunk the Bible is what the adherents of the religions based on it think of it. That more than does the job.

Dr. Avalos Responds to Triablogue on the Sargon Legend!

Hector Avalos wrote: Unfortunately, I don’t see any evidence that the authors of Triablogue are familiar with cuneiform literature, or can verify any information for themselves outside of secondary sources such as those found in Hoffmeier, Hess, and other conservative scholars. I know the work of these conservative scholars well.

Read more »

Ten Atheistic Arguments by Dr. Ted Drange

Definitions of "God"

Before getting to the arguments, it is important to present the various definitions of "God" that they employ:

D1: God is the eternal, all-powerful, personal being who created and rules the universe. (Being eternal, God cannot come into or go out of existence. Being all-powerful, he can perform any action that is logically possible to perform. Being personal, he has some characteristics in common with humans, such as thinking, feeling emotions, and performing actions. The universe is understood to consist of all the space, time, matter, and energy that has ever existed.)

D2: God is the eternal, very powerful, personal being who rules the universe, loves humanity, and gave humanity its moral conscience.

D3: God is the eternal, very powerful, personal being who rules the universe, loves humanity, and strongly desires that that love be reciprocated.

D4: God is that being which is self-existent, that is, which contains the explanation for its own existence within itself.

D5: God is that being which is (objectively) perfect in every way. (The term "perfect" is here understood in an objective sense, as opposed to a subjective sense relative to individual values, so the term may be used in public reasoning.)

D6: God is the deity described in the Bible as interpreted by evangelical Christianity.

It will be indicated for each argument which of the above definitions of "God" it employs.


Arguments Against God's Existence

1. The Anti-creation Argument (D1, D6):


(a) If X creates Y, then X must exist temporally prior to Y.

(b) But nothing could possibly exist temporally prior to time itself (for that would involve existing at a time when there was no time, which is a contradiction).

(c) Thus, it is impossible for time to have been created.

(d) Time is an essential component of the universe.


(e) Therefore, it is impossible for the universe to have been created.


(f) It follows that God, as defined by D1 and D6, cannot exist.

Discussion: A similar argument might possibly be constructed with regard to the other components of the universe as well: space, matter, and energy. It is very hard to comprehend how a being could have created the universe without existing within space and without any involvement with matter or energy.

- The God of evangelical Christianity (defined by D6) is included here (and for argument #2, below) because of the first sentence in the Bible, which evangelicals take to refer to the entire universe.


2. The Transcendent-Personal Argument (D1, D6):


(a) In order for God to have created the universe, he must have been transcendent, that is, he must have existed outside space and time.

(b) But to be personal implies (among other things) being within space and time.


(c) Therefore, it is logically impossible for God, as defined by D1 or D6, to exist.

Discussion:


It might be suggested that God has a part that is outside space and time and another part that is inside space and time and that it is the latter part, not the former part, which is personal in nature. But the idea of a being which is partly personal and partly transcendent is incomprehensible. Furthermore, definition D1 implies that God, as a personal being, existed prior to the universe, and it is incomprehensible how a personal being could do so.

- Aside from conceptual considerations that have to do with the very concept of "being personal," there are empirical considerations relevant to premise (b). It might be argued that to be personal requires having thoughts and that science has very strongly confirmed that having thoughts is dependent on having a physical brain. For example, since brain damage has always been found to delete, or at least disrupt, thoughts, it can be extrapolated that there can be no thoughts at all in the total absence of a brain. Although the empirical support for premise (b) is very strong, that may not be a factor that would impress people who are not "scientifically oriented" to begin with.


3. The Incoherence-of-Omnipotence Argument (D1, D6):

(a) If God as defined by D1 or D6 were to exist, then he would be omnipotent (i.e., able to do anything that is logically possible).

(b) But the idea of such a being is incoherent.


(c) Hence, such a being cannot possibly exist.

Discussion: Definition D6 is included here because evangelical Christians maintain that the biblical description of God as "Almighty" is accurate. The issue of whether or not premise (b) is true is complicated. Some writers claim that the idea of omnipotence in itself is inconsistent. Also, some writers claim that being omnipotent is incompatible with possessing certain other properties. (For example, an omnipotent being could commit suicide, since to do so is logically possible, but an eternal being, by definition, could not. Hence, the idea of the deity defined by D1 or D6 is incoherent.) Whether or not the given claim is true is here left open. See comments on the concept of "incoherence" made in connection with argument #7, below. (For further material on arguments similar to #3, see Everitt, 2004, Martin, 1990, and Martin and Monnier, 2003, in the bibliography below.)

- The divine attribute of omniscience gives rise to similar considerations, and there is an Incoherence-of-Omniscience Argument that could be raised. (For material on it, see the references above.) That argument, which is omitted here to save space, also has a premise (b) (worded as in argument #3), which introduces issues that are exceedingly complicated and controversial.

4. The Lack-of-evidence Argument (D1, D2, D3, D6):

(a) If God as defined by any of the four definitions in question were to exist, then he would have to be deeply involved in the affairs of humanity and there would be good objective evidence of his existence.

(b) But there is no good objective evidence for the existence of a deity thus defined.
(c) Therefore, God, as defined by D1, D2, D3, or D6, does not exist.

Discussion: The rationale behind premise (a) is that the sort of deity in question, a personal being who rules the universe or who loves humanity (and perhaps wants that love reciprocated), would need to become involved in the affairs of humans and thereby reveal his existence overtly. It might be claimed that God has achieved such involvement just by means of subjective religious experiences, without providing humanity with any good objective evidence of his existence. This assertion could be attacked on the ground that people who claim to have had such experiences are mistaken about the nature and cause of them. It might also be reasonably argued that religious experiences would be insufficient for the given divine purposes, and only good objective (publicly testable) evidence of some sort would do. Argument #4 is a versatile argument that can be widely used by atheists to attack God's existence, given many different definitions of "God."

Another argument similar to #4, sometimes put forward by scientifically oriented atheists, is the Argument from Metaphysical Naturalism, according to which all phenomena ever observed are best explained by appeal to natural causes (Carrier, 2005). Since that premise is a reason to accept naturalism, it provides an evidential argument against God's existence. However, the given premise is an extremely sweeping one and for that reason alone argument #4 would be preferable.

5. The Argument from Evil (D2, D3, D6):

(a) If there were to exist a very powerful, personal being who rules the universe and loves humanity, then there would not occur as much evil (i.e., suffering and premature death) as there does.

(b) But there does occur that much evil.

(c) Therefore, there does not exist such a being.

(d) Hence, God, as defined by D2, D3 or D6, does not exist.

Discussion: This formulation of the argument is a version of what is called "The Logical Argument from Evil." If the word "probably" were to be inserted into steps (a), (c), and (d), then it would be a version of what is called "The Evidential Argument from Evil." Similar considerations arise in connection with the different versions. According to the Free-will Defense, premise (a) is false because God wants people to have free will and that requires that they be able to create evil. The evil that actually occurs in our world is mankind's fault, not God's. Thus, God can still love humanity and be perfectly good despite all the evil that occurs. There are many objections to this defense. One of them is that much of the suffering and premature death that occurs in our world is due to natural causes rather than human choices, and the Free-will Defense would be totally irrelevant to that form of evil. (Drange, 1998.)

6. The Argument from Nonbelief (D3, D6):

(a) If there were to exist a very powerful, personal being who rules the universe, loves humanity, and who strongly desires that his love for humanity be reciprocated, then there would not exist as much nonbelief in the existence of such a being as there does.

(b) But there does exist that much nonbelief.

(c) Therefore, there does not exist such a being.

(d) Hence, God, as defined by D3 or D6, does not exist.

Discussion: As with the Argument from Evil, an "evidential" version of this argument could be constructed by inserting the word "probably" into steps (a), (c), and (d). Similar considerations arise for all the various versions. The argument is directed against the deity defined by D6, as well as the one defined by D3, because evangelical Christians take God to have all the properties mentioned in D3. (For a discussion of the Argument from Nonbelief framed on the basis of definition D6, see Drange, 1993.) Possibly the argument might also be directed against the deity defined by D2, and something like that is attempted in Schellenberg, 1993, though there it would not be quite so forceful.

The rationale behind premise (a) is that nonbelief in God is an impediment to loving him, so a deity as described by definition D3 or D6 would remove that impediment if he were to exist. Defenses similar to those in the case of the Argument from Evil could be raised, and similar objections to them could be presented. (Drange, 1998.)

7. Arguments from Incoherence (D4, D5, D6):

(a) In order for X to explain Y, not only must Y be derivable from X, but the derivation needs to be in some way illuminating.

(b) If X is derived from itself, then the derivation is in no way illuminating.

(c) Thus, it is impossible for anything to explain itself.

(d) God as defined by D4 is supposed to explain itself.

(e) It follows that the idea of "God" as defined by D4 is incoherent.

(f) Furthermore, perfection is relative, and so, the concept of "objectively perfect," as a concept employed in public reasoning, makes no sense.

(g) Hence, the idea of "God" as defined by D5 is also incoherent.

(h) In addition, the Bible contains descriptions of God that are incoherent (e.g., implying both that Jesus is God and that Jesus is God's son, that God is spirit or a spirit and that God is love).

(i) Evangelical Christians interpret those descriptions literally.

(j) Therefore, it might be argued that the idea of "God" as defined by D6 is also incoherent.

Discussion: Unlike the other arguments in this section, these arguments do not aim to prove God's nonexistence, but rather, the incoherence of God-talk when "God" is defined in certain ways. The point is not that theists who employ such God-talk are mistaken about the world, but that they are confused in their language.

The idea of "incoherence" is also sometimes applied to contradictions or other sorts of conceptual incompatibility. For example, arguments #2 & #3, above, could each be regarded as a kind of "argument from incoherence," for they appeal to conceptual incompatibilities between pairs of divine attributes. [This point might also be applicable to definition D5 if theists were to try to combine it with other definitions. For example, if a theist were to claim that God is both perfect (as given in D5) and the creator of the universe (as given in D1), then it might be argued that such a notion is incoherent, since a perfect being can have no wants, whereas a creator must have some wants. Or if a theist were to claim that God is perfect and also loves humanity (as given in D2 & D3), then it might be argued that such a notion is incoherent, since a perfect being can feel no disappointment, whereas a being who loves humanity must feel some disappointment.] However, this notion of "incoherence" is different from that appealed to in the Arguments from Incoherence, for if incompatible properties are ascribed, at least there is a conjunction of propositions there, even if it is a contradictory pair. In that case, it would still make sense to say that the sentence "God exists" expresses a (necessarily) false proposition. But with the sort of "incoherence" appealed to in the Arguments from Incoherence there is no proposition expressed at all, whether true or false. (For more on incompatible-properties arguments against God's existence, see Martin and Monnier, 2003.)

8. The Argument from Confusion (D6):

(a) If the deity described in the Bible as interpreted by evangelical Christianity were to exist, then there would not exist as much confusion and conflictedness among Christians as there does, particularly with regard to important doctrinal issues such as God's laws and the requirements for salvation.

(b) But there does exist that much. (Christians disagree widely among themselves on such issues, as shown, among other things, by the great number of different Christian denominations and sects that exist.)

(c) Therefore, that deity does not exist.

(d) Hence God as defined by D6 does not exist.

Discussion: The rationale behind premise (a) is that the God of evangelical Christianity is a deity who places great emphasis upon awareness of the truth, especially with regard to important doctrinal issues. It is expected, then, that if such a deity were to exist, he would place a high priority upon the elimination of confusion and conflictedness among his own followers with regard to important doctrinal issues. Because of the great abundance of Christian confusion of the relevant sort, this argument is a very forceful one.

9. The Argument from Biblical Defects (D6):

(a) If the deity described in the Bible as interpreted by evangelical Christianity were to exist, then the Bible itself would not have the defects that it has. That is, it would not contain textual errors, interpolations, contradictions, factual errors (including false prophecies), and ethical defects. Also, the canon would have been assembled with less political involvement and would not have original manuscripts or parts missing.

(b) But the Bible does contain those defects.

(c) Therefore, that deity, which is God as defined by D6, does not exist.

Discussion: Premise (a) is based on the point that evangelical Christians regard the Bible to be God's main form of revelation to humanity. So, given that their God exists, it would be expected that the Bible would possess features implied by the motivations which they ascribe to him. Premise (a) follows quite naturally. (For examples of the Bible's defects, see appendix D of Drange, 1998, and Mattill, 1995. For more on arguments #8 & #9, see Drange, "The Arguments from Confusion and Biblical Defects" in the forthcoming Martin and Monnier, 2006.)

10. The Argument from Human Insignificance (D6):

(a) If the deity described in the Bible as interpreted by evangelical Christianity were to exist, then it would be expected that humans occupy some significant place in the universe.

(b) But, both from the standpoint of space (the size of the universe in relation to the size of the earth) and from the standpoint of time (the length of time in which the universe has existed in relation to the length of time in which humans have existed), humans do not occupy any significant place in the universe.

(c) Hence, God, as defined by D6, probably does not exist.

Discussion: The idea behind the first premise here is that the Bible describes God as having a very special interest in humans. Since humans are so important, they should naturally occupy some significant place in space and time. To reject that idea is to reject the evangelical Christian outlook on the nature of reality. (A slightly different version of this argument is referred to as "The Argument from Scale" in Everitt, 2004.)

- There are many other arguments against God's existence. Some are inductive in form (Martin, 1990). Some make appeal to cosmological assumptions (Craig and Smith, 1993). I have here picked just those that I regard to be the main ones.

Summary

The various arguments can be matched up with the six definitions of "God" as follows:

DEFINITION
ARGUMENTS AGAINST GOD

D1
#1-4

D2
#4, #5 (+ possibly #6)

D3
#4-6

D4
#7

D5
#7

D6
#1-10

All theistic arguments for God's existence can be refuted by at least one objection, and all of the definitions of "God" considered here permit God's nonexistence to be established (or else God-talk to be shown incoherent) by at least one argument. Other definitions of "God" are used in ordinary language, but all of them permit God's nonexistence to be established by appeal to similar or analogous considerations. There is much more to be said about the various arguments. The bibliography below supplies some of that and also supplies further references.

Bibliography

Carrier, Richard. Sense & Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2005.

Craig, William Lane and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. God? A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Craig, William Lane and Quentin Smith. Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Drange, Theodore. "The Argument from Non-belief." Religious Studies 29, 1993.

Drange, Theodore. Nonbelief & Evil: Two Arguments for the Nonexistence of God. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998.

Drange, Theodore. "The Fine-tuning Argument Revisited." Philo vol. 3, no. 2, 2000.

Everitt, Nicholas. The Non-existence of God. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.

Le Poidevin, Robin. Arguing for Atheism: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.

Martin, Michael. Atheism: A Philosophical Justification. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.

Martin, Michael and Ricki Monnier, eds. The Impossibility of God. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003.

Martin, Michael and Ricki Monnier, eds. The Improbability of God. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2005.

Mattill, A. J., Jr. The Seven Mighty Blows to Traditional Beliefs. Gordo, AL: The Flatwoods Free Press, 1995.

Schellenberg, J.L. Divine Hiddeness and Human Reason. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993.

Sobel, Jordan Howard. Logic and Theism: Arguments For and Against Beliefs in God. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Stenger, Victor J. Has Science Found God? Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003.

-- Ted Drange

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Used by permission of Reggie at The Infidel Guy Show, who also has this posted.

Evan on the Legend of Sargon

You should read how one of the boys at DC is singlehandedly handling the boys over at Triablogue on the Legend of Sargon. Evan is awesome!

Christ on a Cracker!

A University of Central Florida student was manhandled and is now receiving death threats and being accused of hate crimes by his local Catholic diocese after a recent incident at the local church. His crime?

He took the communion wafer he was given back to his seat.

Webster Cook attended Mass at his local Catholic church. He claimed he wanted to show his non-Catholic friend what the wafer looked like, so when the priest gave him the wafer, he started to take it back to his seat. He was grabbed by parishioners and his way was blocked. In order to get back to his seat, he popped the wafer in his mouth. When he returned to his seat, he removed it. A church leader saw him, grabbed his wrist and tried to pry the wafer from his hands. She refused to release him despite repeated demands that she do so, so Cook left the church with the wafer.

Father Migeul Gonzales made a striking comparison of the cracker abduction--"Imagine if they kidnapped somebody and you make a plea for that individual to please return that loved one to the family."

Mr. Cook returned the cracker to the Catholic Church, but that's not enough according to Susan Fani, a spokesperson for the local Cathlic diocese--"[I]f anything were to qualify as a hate crime, to us this seems like this might be it." Mr. Cook claims that he has received death threats over the "incident".

Now please note, this isn't some odd cult in the backwoods of Appalachia. This is the Roman Catholic Church. If ANYTHING can be considered mainstream Christianity, the numbers are on their side. And this isn't some rogue sect off in some uncivilized corner of the world. This is Florida (okay, okay, but it's NEXT TO civilized parts of the world, so I expect better). These aren't some whacked-out parishoners who equate taking a cracker that was freely given to him with kidnapping, or calling the cracker caper a "hate crime". This is an ordained priest and an official spokesperson of the diocese making these claims. Any why? Transubstantiation. They think that this guy literally kidnapped a piece of Jesus (instead of eating him like a good cannibal, I guess).

If anyone dares to tell you that mainstream Christianity doesn't take the mythology literally, just point them to this story. Religious myth isn't just morality stories to many, many mainstream Christians; it's real (yet always unverifiable) fact. Fortunately, no one has died over it yet, although a complaint has been filed with the Student Union at UCF against Mr. Cook and his friend. Also, armed UCF police officers (that Florida residents paid for) are standing guard over the crakers at Mass to ensure that the Catholic Church retains its ability to serve Jesus "dine-in only".

William Lane Craig Doesn't Deal With Morriston's Critiques of the Kalam

Jeffrey Jay Lowder first alerted me to Dr. Wes Morriston's critiques of the Kalam Argument for God's existence, saying they were the best critiques of the Kalam to be found. I agree. They are as far as I know. So imagine my utter surprise when I received Craig's 3rd edition of his "signature" book, Reasonable Faith, by finding him taking on atheist scholars like J.L. Mackie, Richard M. Gale, Graham Oppy, Howard Sobel, along with New Atheists like Daniel C. Dennett and Richard Dawkins, only to find that Craig doesn't even mention Morriston's critiques, must less try to respond to them! Morriston's critiques are not to be found in any bibliography in Craig's book, nor is Morriston's name in the index...at all!

Why? What reason can he give for this? I'm sure he'll come up with some reason. But one thing he cannot do is to say he doesn't know about them, because he responded to the first one, but not to the second one!

Maybe, just maybe, Craig is hoping that the popular audience he's writing for in his apologetics book will not see or hear of Morriston's critiques, because after all, they can only be found in the scholarly literature. Most of the readers of his book will never see it. Maybe he thinks he already answered Morriston in his one and only reply? But I do not think he did so at all.

That's where I come in *ahem.* I'm not writing for professional scholars. I've written a counter-apologetics book for the average college student. I'm taking the arguments of the professional scholars and articulating them for the average college student, educated person in the pew, and pastor.

In my book I tell the average college student about Morriston's critiques of the Kalam. That's right. I deal with the Kalam in my book by using Morriston's critiques. The average person will now be able to understand the best critiques of the Kalam when he or she reads my book. Then Dr. Craig will have to respond to Morriston sometime in a debate or in the next edition of this book.

You can read the exchange between Craig and Morriston for yourself. All of the following articles can be found online: Wes Morriston,“Must the Beginning of the Universe Have a Personal Cause?: A Critical Examination of the Kalam Cosmological Argument,” Faith and Philosophy 17, no. 2 (2000): 149–69; William Lane Craig, “Must the Beginning of the Universe Have a Personal Cause?: A Rejoinder”; and Morriston’s counter-reply, “Causes and Beginnings in the Kalam Argument: Reply to Craig,” Faith and Philosophy 19, no. 2 (April 2002): 233–44.

From Wycliffe Bible Translator to Freethinker

I'd like to thank Ed Babinski and John Loftus for encouraging me to join this blog. You can read my blow-by-blow story on the Secular Web, but I'll provide a condensed version here.

My parents met and married as evangelical/fundamentalist missionaries in Ethiopia, my birthplace. My parents' missionary career also took us to Liberia and Nigeria, where we remained until I was 16. It was during my ninth grade year at boarding school in Nigeria that I entered into what I considered a personal relationship with Jesus, pouring out my heart to God with earnestness and reading his word (the Bible) daily.

After returning to the U.S., I went on to earn a B.S. in computer science at LeTourneau University, a non-denominational Christian college in east Texas. From there I went on to gain a one-year graduate certificate of biblical studies at Columbia Biblical Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina. Shortly after that I met a young lady who shared my goal of becoming a missionary Bible translator for a language group that did not yet have a translation of the Bible. We married in 1992 and joined Wycliffe Bible Translators in 1993. After the required linguistic training and support-raising, we set off to Europe for French learning before heading to a predominantly Muslim West African country to learn a minority language and translate the Bible into it.

We were still in the language learning process in 2000 when doubts that I had entertained during my college years began to re-surface. I had difficulties with many of the passages in the Old Testament, so I went online in search of apologetic materials to answer my questions. As it turns out, instead of finding anything to help me, I found the opposite: Robert M. Price's online book Beyond Born Again. This sent my faith into a tailspin from which I recovered twice before I finally threw in the towel about nine months after my March 2000 crisis. We left the mission field in the summer of 2000 so I could work through my doubts, but due to my waffling, the mission board requested our resignation in October 2000 (a painful but appropriate decision, in retrospect).

I remained a firm believer in God for about a year after my deconversion from Christianity, considering myself a deist, but gradually moved toward an atheist-leaning agnosticism. For all practical purposes, I am today an atheist, though I suppose I haven't yet grown fully comfortable with the term, preferring labels like freethinker or humanist.

Though my wife of 16 years remains a committed evangelical Christian, we have a relatively strong marriage with no intention of parting ways. We have three children, 13, 11 and 9 who attend church with my wife. At least the older two show some signs of independent thinking. Only time will tell where they end up.

So that's my journey in a nutshell. I do encourage you to read my full story on the Secular Web if you'd like to know more about what brought me down this path. I look forward to engaging with believers and former believers alike. I'm especially interested in knowing what leads some of us to desert the faith and others to remain in it. What is it that makes the difference?

The Father's Foreskin Feast

Sarah Cooper (35) of Augusta, Maine, was just another ordinary member of St. Luke’s Catholic Church, along with her husband and their three children. That all changed at a church fish fry on a certain Friday afternoon. Little did Mrs. Cooper know, but she was about to make headlines!

“I was just sitting there, nibbling on my hushpuppies and fries. When I took a bite of my fish sandwich, I started to taste a funny taste. Then I noticed something chewy and gross in my mouth. I got sickened by the grossness and quickly spit it out. That’s when I noticed what it looked like. It looked like a human foreskin!”

And she wasn’t wrong. A human foreskin was indeed found in her fish sandwich, smothered under ketchup, tartar sauce, and a nice helping of mayo. “Well,” said Father Perry Showalter (56), devoted priest of St. Luke’s parish for the last twenty-one years, “at least it didn’t cause the commotion until after everyone finished eating.”

Nicely, Mrs. Cooper agreed to be discreet about the matter until it was brought to the attention of the monsignor, but her husband was none too thrilled about the fact that for a brief moment, his wife was led into involuntary sin by having a part of another man’s penis in her mouth. “It’s a sad day for all religions when a faithful Catholic Christian woman can’t go to church without chewing on another dude’s cock! I’m furious and I want to find out how this happened!” said a red-faced and visibly distraught Matthew Cooper (39), an air force captain and husband of thirteen years to Sarah. “I’ve been a good Catholic all my life, and never have I seen anything like this!”

We understand Mr. Cooper’s rage, and we also want to find out what happened. So we decided to sit down with Father Perry, who was gracious enough to take the time out of his busy schedule to discuss the issue with us at length. Father Perry was not hesitant to put the blame where he said it was due—on his own church for the institution’s timelessly bad habit of going hog-wild for holy relics. In this case, the holy relic was believed to be the foreskin of Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity.

“Well, it’s pretty simple,” Father Perry explained. “The only way the foreskin could have wound up in Mrs. Cooper’s sandwich is because of the recent truckload of foreskins, which was delivered to our church only a week earlier. One of them must have somehow gotten mixed in with the food during meal preparation, that’s all.” Father Perry, seeing our dissatisfaction with his words, elaborated further…

“You see, we are Catholics, and over the years, many Catholic churches have claimed to possess the one true foreskin of our Lord and Savior, along with tons of other “holy” relics that were found to be out-and-out frauds. Our church absolutely loves bombastic claims of the healing power of shrines and holy relics, and despite having some learned sages and scholars among us, our members are still stupider than Jupiter—stupid enough, in fact, to believe that visiting a holy site or touching a holy relic will bring healing and blessings from above.

Now you would think that with all the ‘seeing’ that the Holy See does, that they’d be able to detect what is true and what is false in the department of holy relics. But, as it turns out, God is more interested in having the Virgin Mary appear on tree stumps, making statues bleed, and having our Italian grannies make good garlic and tomato sauces to go with freshly-cooked pasta than he is in certifying accuracy in matters of the divine.

Over the centuries, the Catholic church has been as wrong as a still-working lottery winner on a great number of things, so it shouldn’t surprise us when pious, boy-touching bachelors with deadpan grins, tall hats, and fears of falling victim to chronic masturbation tell us lies. And not only is the Catholic Church filled with liars, but with shameless hypocrites too.

We once burned people alive for denying that un-baptized babies go to Hell, but now we believe precisely the same thing we once condemned others for believing. That’s just how we work. We’re a church of fallible human beings, and we’re no different than any other glorified, gregarious, gaggle of old geezers out there who claim a monopoly on faith and forgiveness.

So, getting back to the matter of the foreskin, the problem is that we can’t say for sure which of the possibly holy foreskins belonged to Jesus, even after many centuries of feuding and quarrelling with rival churches over the issue. To keep from throwing away the true foreskin of God Almighty (and to raise money for the church by having everyone of them put on display so that people will pay to come and see them), we decided to keep them around. Maine’s Roman Catholic Diocese thought it was a good idea to keep the foreskins here, and that is what led to the unfortunate accidental ingesting of the foreskin by Mrs. Cooper.”

When asked what he intends to do about the situation as a means of restitution for Mrs. Cooper, Father Perry replied, “We’ll do the same thing we’ve always done when we mess up—give a formal and somber apology, and then pretend the whole thing never happened. Every time we screw up (and we do often), we just say “I’m sorry,” and it has worked like a charm! No matter how many men we burned alive or stretched on the rack, no matter how many innocent women were tortured and falsely accused of being witches, all we had to do was offer up an apology and it was like spilled milk!

That’s what we did with Galileo, you’ll recall; the church wronged him, and not until many years after his death did the church get around to offering an arid, half-assed apology for it. Well, we intend to be much better to Mrs. Cooper than we were to Galileo by apologizing to her while she is still alive. And here it is for the record (and we’re only going to say it once): We’re sorry, Mrs. Cooper!”

When asked if she felt that the resolution of this matter was sufficient, Mrs. Cooper commented, “Oh yes. Of course, I accept the apology, although I’m having mixed feelings about this; the thought of having another man’s private part in my mouth was very disturbing. But then, I must admit that our church says that the foreskin I had in my mouth might have belonged to Jesus Christ, and if that is the case, I am deeply honored to have had a part of my Savior’s blessed hoo-haa in my unworthy mouth!”

(JH)

Isis Heals The Sick Boy

Ancient Egypt had a lot of firsts. Resurrection and healing were two of them. In a story that you can read here Isis the Mother of Horus and the Wife of the resurrected Osiris, sets the standard for Jesus to follow by healing a sick boy.

Stories of Isis and Osiris precede the development of writing. That means before 3100 BC. I highly recommend that Christians take a college course in Egyptology. Keep in mind the principle that the greater civilization influences the lesser. Some of the things Christians should focus on are Egyptian Mythololgy, the pounding the egyptians gave the Syrians every year for about twenty years (around 1479 - 1425 BC) and the "foreign kings" (1648–1540 BC) that ruled the egyptian Delta.

Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection

Link. Thanks to Ed Owens who alerted me to this story.

Weekend retreats for recovering from religion

Leaving your Religion?

or still feeling the effects?

It's not the end of the world!

Join us at a recovery retreat in August, 2008, in Berkeley, CA.

"Release and Reclaim I", Aug. 8-10, will be a supportive retreat for those who are beginning to let go of toxic beliefs and recover from an authoritarian religion such as Christian fundamentalism.

"Release and Reclaim II", Aug. 15-17, will be an advanced weekend for moving beyond religion and reclaiming a life of joy, creativity, and connection. It will be open to those who have already attended a retreat or have done healing work already.

Both retreats are led by Dr. Marlene Winell, author of Leaving the Fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving the Fold. Interested participants are asked to discuss their situation with Marlene first. Both weekends are also open to professionals by special arrangement. Call Dr. Winell at 510-292-0509

More about Marlene Winell is at www.marlenewinell.net.


RELEASE and RECLAIM I: Sorting it out and Healing

Do you feel alone in your struggle for healing? Join us for a powerful weekend with others who can understand and support you. We'll rant and rave, tell our stories, discuss the issues, visualize, role-play, dance and draw – whatever it takes to let go of toxic teachings and reclaim our lives. A joyful, empowered life is your birthright and we will use individual and group processes for learning new directions. Bring your sense of humor and plan to have fun too.

WHEN: FRIDAY, August 8, 7PM until SUNDAY, August 10, 3PM

RELEASE and RECLAIM II: Growing and Thriving

Have you left your religion behind but you're not sure what's next? Join others who are feeling liberated and wanting to rebuild a life that allows full, creative expression of who you are. We'll help each other with courage and confidence dealing with "the world," sharing our experiences and doing exercises for tapping into inner resources of wisdom, love, and strength – perhaps more than you ever expected if you were taught to be dependant!

We'll look at issues of enjoying life now instead of later, sexuality, "spirituality," and relationships. In a supportive group, we'll use art, movement, and visualization as well as discussion. Bring your wild and worldly self and plan to have a great time.

WHEN: FRIDAY, August 15, 7PM until SUNDAY, August 17, 3PM.
BOTH RETREATS:

WHERE: A beautiful house in Berkeley, California, with hot tub and other amenities. The closest airport is Oakland, and we can help you with connections from there.

COST: $320 for the workshop, $125 for room and board. $445 total. $25 discount given for full payment by July 20. Financial need considered and options available.

TO REGISTER: Contact Marlene Winell for a telephone discussion about your interest. Send an email to mwinell@gmail.com or call 510-292-0509. $100 deposit will then secure a space. Register soon as group size is limited to 8.

Note: These retreats are designed to help develop networks of support that extend beyond a single weekend. With time for sharing meals and relaxing in a house together, participants often make lasting friends - face to face, not virtual! We also have an online group and conference calls as a follow-up support system.

Read comments about a previous retreat at: http://marlenewinell.net/

Judgment Day For Skeptics!

This made me laugh! No it's not an argument. It's just for fun!

One Mechanism for Biological Bases for Behavior

This is a datum to support my assertion that Biological Bases for Behaviors are incorrectly interpreted as "Sin" and that we don't have as much free will as we think we do. The new field of Epigenetics is documenting that regulating gene expression in the brain affects how susceptible we are to maladies such as depression, anxiety and drug addiction.

One viewpoint that I keep pushing around here is that we don't have as much free will as we think we do. I argue that the brain is an electrochemical device where millions of tiny biological switches accept combinations of thousands of analog signals that interact together to turn processes on and off to produce what we call "our self". Now I know there is lot a packed into that statement (presumptions and all) but I want to focus on one molecular mechanism that is a part of all of that.

First, a layman's description of Genes and Gene expression.

What is a Gene?
Genes are a smaller component of DNA. It is made up of combinations of chemicals units called A (Adenine), T (Thymine), G (Guanine) and C (Cytosine). Chromatin proteins called histones compact and organize DNA to form chromosomes. Chromosomes are made up of DNA and reside in the nucleus of a Cell. Chromosomes guide the interactions between DNA and other proteins.

Genes carry chemical information that is used by the cells to collectively determine their characteristics. Each cell contains from 20,000 to 25,000 genes attached to a strand of DNA coiled up into a chromosome, sitting in the nucleus of a cell.

One estimate I found states that there are between 75 to 100 trillion cells that make up the human body. Only in the brain there are estimated to be 100 billion cells interconnected by trillions of synapses (http://www.livescience.com/mysteries/070405_brain_use.html).

Gene Expression
Our genes form the blue prints for proteins. Our bodies are built on proteins, just like a nicely marbled rib eye steak. Accordingly our brains are built on proteins. Every cell has every gene, but each cell only uses a subset of those genes. For a gene to be "expressed" it must be accessed by a chemical catalyst to cause the formation of an RNA molecule. The RNA is then used to make a protein, and the cell uses the protein to carry out its purpose in life, whatever that may be. In the brain, the purpose is to run your body in the background without any conscious effort or knowledge of it on your part and to produce the various stages of consciousness you experience between sleep to stressing out in traffic. Don't forget that while you are stressing out in traffic and worrying about that slow person in your way, you are still listening to the radio, working the pedals, breathing, remembering to call someone when you get in, etc. There's a lot going on that you are not conscious of so it is not accurate to say that YOU are in control, but it is accurate to say that your sense of self is one of those processes going on in the brain that you are not of aware of or even know how to manipulate. But those process are manipulated automatically biologically by a wide range of bodily process which include hormones produced by your organs (the endocrine system). Your brain gets feedback from your organs and it is regulated by them whether you like it or want it or not. Your brain reacts to stimulus and is regulated by the various chemicals that are set into motion as a result. Your experience in traffic changes your mind, your mood, your attitude, your thoughts, your wishes, your desires whether you like it or not. Those molecules that are the catalyst for creating RNA molecules are released, and they go about feeding the cells that your brain is using to handle your traffic experience. Your performance, your emotion, your mood, you thoughts, your access to your memories and your sense of self depends on how well those molecular processes work.

For an RNA molecule to be produced, a chromosome "unravels" (remember that a chromosome is coiled up DNA) to permit the catalyst molecules access to the sequence of ATGC that it is made up of. To "silence" a gene, is to prevent the interaction of the catalyst by preventing it from getting to the uncoiled part of the chromosome or from preventing the chromosome from uncoiling. The body does this on its own, your 'self' doesn't have any choice in the matter, whether it works properly or not. In fact, you or your personality can be modified and you won't even realize it. Just like gene expression causes your pancreas to work properly to do what it is supposed to do, gene expression causes your brain to work properly to do what is supposed to do which is run the processes in your body (such as your sense of self), and create your physical and emotional characteristics that everyone else knows as "YOU".

Now the Hard questions. Were does the soul fit into this? What is "the Soul"? Is the Soul "the personality"? Is the Soul the "I" in "I am alive"? If the personality/soul likes chocolate or to harm animals, can it stop liking those things? Why do people like anything? Am I responsible for things that I like? How do we turn "liking" on or off?

I'll buy a beer for anyone that can tell me why chocolate is so appealing to people. I know why, I'm just looking for audience participation.

One way to turn "liking" off is by manipulating the brain. Its bound to be more reliable than praying and there's no worrying about whether you've got the right god or not.

Nature versus Nurture.
We have been living with this concept since as long as I can remember. What makes one tomato more tasty than another or one person more amicable than another? Finally we know, it is a feedback loop between nature and nurture and we have identified one mechanism by which it happens. Now that this mechanism is revealed, scientists hope to develop treatments for maladies such as drug addiction, schizophrenia, depression and anxiety. Maybe one day they can discover where a specific desire originates from. Maybe one day it can be used to rehabilitate criminals. Maybe one day they can fix the Limbic Systems in psychopaths or make sociopaths more compassionate. Maybe one day they can give me something that will allow me to like mushrooms.

If I were to take a liking to harming animals, and I acted on that, then I am responsible and should be stopped, not necessarily for punishment because punishment may not mean anything to me, but I should be stopped simply to prevent more harm. However, if I have the desire, but do not act on it, since it is "in my heart" the bible says that I am still responsible for it. The desire is born in the brain, electrochemically, and subject to the "nature vs nurture" feedback loop. Since this feedback loop is verifiable, and predictable to a degree, and at least one mechanism for how it works has been identified, to say that human kind is accountable to the creator for "its sin" is as ridiculous as to say that I am responsible for how ugly I am or I am responsible for my dislike of mushrooms or that I even have a choice in the matter.

For further reading
Scientific American Mind, June 2008
* The New Genetics of Mental Illness (subscription or print only)
* Unmasking Memory Genes (subscription or print only)
* Addicted to Starvation: The Neurological Roots of Anorexia

From me on DC
* Reasonable Doubt About Sin: Biological Bases for Behavior
* Sin, Genes, Sugars and Alcohol
* Brains "Trust Machinery" Identified
* "When Our Vices Get the Better of Us"
* Negativity Is Contagious, Study Finds
* Schizophrenia Candidate Genes Affect Even Healthy Individuals
* Brain atrophy in elderly leads to unintended Racism, Depression and Gambling

Kenneth Copeland, Faith, Fear and Ignorance

Early this morning I happened to see Kenneth Copeland talking with another preacher about faith. It disturbed me and discouraged me. It became clear to me while listening in for about ten minutes of wasted time that Christianity is here to stay. Just as Christianity survived the attacks of Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Nietzsche, Robert Ingersoll, and Bertrand Russell, it will survive the attacks of skeptics in our day. That’s both disturbing and discouraging to me. Christians have told the oft repeated story of how an anvil has broken many a hammer, and just like the anvil, the Bible as God’s anvil will break any hammer attack by skeptics. Christians tout the claim that skeptics have come and gone but the Bible has withstood every attack. Yes it has. And it will survive, perhaps easily. It’s an impossibly tough nut to crack, but not for the reasons Christians tout. Not because the Bible is true. Not because the evidence is on the believer’s side. But because of faith, fear and ignorance.

Copeland said faith was an action word. It's not. It's a noun. Verbs are action words. He said if someone yells "fire" in a theatre, the man who sniffs and says he doesn't smell any smoke and who looks and doesn't see any fire, will die if he doesn't get out. He said "I'm not gonna die because of my nose. I'm gonna believe God's word." This scenario is a non-analogous one, because it presumes that the person yelling "fire" is telling the truth even when the initial evidence seems to be against it. People have been known to yell "fire" in a crowded theatre when there is no fire.

During the brief time I was watching him it became crystal clear to me he is ignorant. He is ignorant about the Bible, philosophy, and history, to name just a few things. I don’t write about televangelists, because my aim is much higher that that. I usually aim at the premier apologists and Christian philosophers of our day. But these televangelists have a great many watchers and donors enough for some of them to be rich. This may be a better indicator of the level of understanding of the person in the pew than others. Ministries like his flourish because there are a great many ignorant believers with money. Even as a minister I tried to argue with my congregations that their offerings would be better used in the local church and on the mission field than on televangelists, and I said that prior to the Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker debacles.

Maybe the main motivator that keeps believers from being informed is that they have a fear of doubt which can lead to hell, I don’t know for sure. Maybe it’s anti-intellectualism, since the Bible disparages reason in favor of faith. Maybe it’s the desire to be "fully persuaded" in order to please their God, which doesn’t allow them to entertain any doubts or question their faith. Again, of that it might depend on the individual believer. But they are ignorant. Millions of them.

I think there are several areas of study which could provide the antidote to this ignorance. Maybe many believers just do not read the Bible. Chris Hallquist is right. When asked after a debate which books he would recommend, he said, “read the Bible.” Why? Because it debunks itself. It contains the reflections of ancient superstitious and barbaric people. Christian, have you read the Old Testament? Have you read Judges 19-21, seen here (scroll down)? One of my goals here at DC is to help believers become biblically literate for this very reason.

Copeland talks about the Bible being the word of God, but has he done any study at all in the five stages of Gospel transmission (scroll down), or has he really wrestled with the Biblical inconsistencies? I didn’t think so.

I think Copeland should also look into the history of the church which demolishes evangelicalism. He should look into the history of theology too, and he can even read evangelical Roger E. Olson’s treatment of it, to see how theology has been fought over and changed through the years. He should look into how theologians down through the years have interpreted the Bible, by reading evangelical Donald K. McKim’s edited book, Historical Handbook of Major Biblical Interpreters. It’s simply ignorant of Copeland to be that cocksure of his particular theology and his particular interpretation of the Bible, even by the standard of better informed evangelical writers (who, by the way, do not draw the proper conclusions necessitated by their own studies, presuming as they do that they've finally got it right when they admit it's an ongoing and ever-changing venture).

Copeland should also try to understand the history of Christian ethics, by reading J. Philip Wogman’s book, Christian Ethics: A Historical Introduction (Westminister Press, 1993). Christian believers who claim they alone have a standard of ethics should go to the library and read that book. They don’t have one. There isn’t any evidence they do.

That’s enough for now. But I think Christianity will survive our attacks because of ignorance. It’s not because our arguments have been defeated. So I commit myself and hope other skeptics (and believers) will join me in stamping out ignorance. I'm not afraid of this. Are you?

Body Count Totals: Religion vs Atheism

Link. The author uses the term "theists" to refer to religious believers. This is interesting,

New Fossils Of Extremely Primitive 4-Legged Creatures Close The Gap Between Fish And Land Animals

ScienceDaily (June 27, 2008) — New exquisitely preserved fossils from Latvia cast light on a key event in our own evolutionary history, when our ancestors left the water and ventured onto land. Swedish researcher Per Ahlberg from Uppsala University and colleagues have reconstructed parts of the animal and explain the transformation in the new issue of Nature.

It has long been known that the first backboned land animals or "tetrapods" - the ancestors of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, including ourselves - evolved from a group of fishes about 370 million years ago during the Devonian period. However, even though scientists had discovered fossils of tetrapod-like fishes and fish-like tetrapods from this period, these were still rather different from each other and did not give a complete picture of the intermediate steps in the transition.

In 2006 the situation changed dramatically with the discovery of an almost perfectly intermediate fish-tetrapod, Tiktaalik, but even so a gap remained between this animal and the earliest true tetrapods (animals with limbs rather than paired fins). Now, new fossils of the extremely primitive tetrapod Ventastega from the Devonian of Latvia cast light on this key phase of the transition.

"Ventastega was first described from fragmentary material in 1994; since then, excavations have produced lots of new superbly preserved fossils, allowing us to reconstruct the whole head, shoulder girdle and part of the pelvis", says Professor Per Ahlberg at the Department of Physiology and Developmental Biology, Uppsala University.

The recontructions made by Professor Ahlberg and Assistant Professor Henning Blom together with British and Latvian colleagues show that Ventastega was more fish-like than any of its contemporaries, such as Acanthostega. The shape of its skull, and the pattern of teeth in its jaws, are neatly intermediate between those of Tiktaalik and Acanthostega.

"However, the shoulder girdle and pelvis are almost identical to those of Acanthostega, and the shoulder girdle is quite different from that of Tiktaalik (the pelvis of Tiktaalik is unknown), suggesting that the transformation from paired fins to limbs had already occurred. It appears that different parts of the body evolved at different speeds during the transition from water to land", says Per Ahlberg.



Above: This lower jaw with teeth is one of the new fossils of Ventastega found in Latvia. Photo: Ivars Zupins, Latvian Museum of Natural History. Below: Reconstruction of Ventastega in side view. With the help of new, superbly preserved fossils, Per Ahlberg and his colleagues have been able to reconstruct the whole head, shoulder girdle and part of the pelvis. The silhouette is based on fossils of one of its contemporaries, Acanthostega, Scale bar 10 cm. Picture: Per Ahlberg. (Credit: Image courtesy of Uppsala University)

Christian, How Do You Explain The Vast Number of Interpretations of the Bible?

It's a great question!

Why I Left The Ministry And Became An Atheist, by G. Vincent Runyon

Is now online, Link.

A Curious Fact About the Relics of the Machabees

Relics of Machabees Venerated at Church of St Peter’s Chains For 1500 Years Were Dog Bones


While reading about the Machabees, I ran across the following in the Answers.com encyclopedia entry.

"The history of the supposed relics of the Machabees is obscure: it is not known either when or by whom they were brought to Rome, where they were housed in the church of St. Peter's Chains. Modin and Antioch, according to Jerome, also claimed their relics. In the 1930s it was discovered that the 7 bones at Rome believed to be theirs were in reality canine remains; so they were immediately withdrawn from the veneration of the faithful."

Link to cite on Answers.com

It seems to be the case that knowledge amongst devout Catholics includes assertions about Jerome's report of the transfer of the bones from Antioch to Rome.

"Before the reform of the General Roman Missal today was the feast of St. Peter's Chains. It celebrated the dedication of the basilica of St. Peter ad Vincula in Rome which was built in about 432 on the Esquiline Hill in Rome and consecrated on August 1. It was also the commemoration of the Holy Maccabees. The seven Machabees were brothers martyred with their mother under Antiochus Epiphanes in about the year 150 before Christ. There is an account of their wonderful death in the Old Testament. Their relics venerated at Antioch in the time of St. Jerome, were translated to Rome in the sixth century, to the church of St. Peter's Chains."

Link to Cite on catholicculture.org

If Jerome (347-420) can be trusted, then the dog bones were venerated by the faithful for approximately 1500 years before someone noticed they were dog bones. :)

If the Christian God does exist, then why did not the so called Holy Spirit see fit to inform some high ranking cleric that his flock was venerating dog bones instead of pre-Christian martyr bones? If there is an actual spiritual reality to Christianity, wouldn't the Christian God be keen on preventing snafus such as the Machabeeian-dog-bone mix up? Although this incident was corrected in the 1930's, still for 1500 years, many millions of deeply faith believing religious people were venerating dog bones. If a Holy Spirit exists and if it infuses and indwells the central emotional-intellectual core of the Christian Believer, then it would assuredly have acted in accordance with its alleged guiding purpose to have all humans come to Christian belief. To that end, it would, if it were to be a rational and reasoning being, act accordingly in harmony to that end by ensuring Christians hold a proper, correct, and uniform set of doctrines. By proper and correct, I mean doctrines that do not include absurdities like worshiping or venerating dog bones.

According to adherents.com reporting that the “World Christian Encyclopedia”, by David B. Barrett published by Oxford University Press informs the reader that: The 2001 edition, successor to his 1983 first edition, which took a decade to compile, identifies 10,000 distinct religions, of which 150 have 1 million or more followers. Within Christianity, he counts 33,830 denominations.

With so many Christian denominations and sects it seems unlikely that an actual set of doctrines can be identified as being the norm. Despite this and even if we were to presume that 99% of all these groups were self-deluded, there would remain in excess of 330 sects. Of those, the divergence of opinion is very likely profound. It seems intuitively obvious that it would be difficult to find a majority that share common kerygma, soteriology, Christology, and eschatology. This is not at all what is expected if there were to be an actual existing lattice structuring Christian Theology. The evident schizophrenic diversity of doctrinaire opinion within “Christianity”, nevertheless, constitutes just what is expected under naturalism and atheism. This is strong evidence that Christianity is false.

Jeremiah's New Covenant vs. Christianity

Chris Sandoval wrote a fine essay that is featured on the front page of infidels.org. Included here is the opening paragraph and a link to the page. One of the main proofs proffered by Christianity is its allegations that Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled Old Testament prophecies such that he is the Messiah. Sandoval points out that the writer of Hebrews took Jeremiah 31 out of context and twisted the text to make it imply a prophecy of a new covenant. Sandoval then explains how and why the Hebraic author got it wrong.

"The New Testament authors frequently manufactured prophecies about Jesus by twisting Old Testament passages out of context to make them say things the original authors never intended. The Old Testament prophets had nothing to say about Jesus, who lived many centuries after their time; they only spoke about the concerns of their own times, as we read in treatises by Jim Lippard on the Secular Web[1], and American patriot and deist Thomas Paine[2]. Here we examine one spectacular but commonly overlooked example of misquoted prophecy--Jeremiah's prophecy of the New Covenant.[3]"

Jeremiah's New Covenant vs. Christianity

A Brief Essay on the God of the Gaps Fallacy

Why do so many Christians use God of the Gaps arguments even though they intuitively understand that sort of argument is fallacious? In this short essay, I take a shot at answering my question.

God of the gaps arguments are often used by religious believers to assert their god exists. Such arguments, in my experience, have often had the following form.

1. Human knowledge does not include X.
2. It is impossible for X to be caused or explained under naturalism.
3. Therefore, God did it.

The believer's burden of proof for premise 1 is to show that the relevant scientific literature does not include X. The believer must show an exhaustive survey of the relevant scientific literature to support their first premise. Any failure to show a dearth of knowledge dooms the argument.

In order to validly make premise 2, the believer must have omniscient knowledge of all natural phenomena to rule out any possibility of natural causation. This neither the believer nor any other person can do, for human beings are not omniscient. Conceptually, the Uniformity of Nature is secure. No instance of a supernatural explanation supplanting a natural cause has ever been observed. The converse, however, has been witnessed many times. The history of science is the history of sweeping away superstitions, of showing alleged supernatural explanations to be not even wrong. The context of supernaturalism is not the context of reality. Fantasies of gods, demons, angels, spirits, magic, fairies, incorporeal beings and such can neither be right nor wrong, for they are not part of or even related to reality. (Additionally, it is amusing to note that by making premise 2, believers blaspheme their idea of God by predicating they are omniscient. Comparing their minds to God or asserting they are God constitutes blasphemy.)

Even if the first two premises were sound, the conclusion would not follow. Under a supernatural worldview, there are an infinite number of invisible magic beings or other causes that could be responsible for a given phenomenon. Most religionists actively seek to gloss over this uncomfortable fact of their worldview. Their feeble protestations notwithstanding, the preeminent standing granted to the primacy of consciousness and mere alleged possibility renders any "god of the gaps" conclusion Non Sequitur.

Despite the obvious irrationality of this type of argument, religious believers continue to predicate their assertions at least in part thereupon. Why? If what they believe is so believable, then why do they believe by faith what is propped up by obvious and ostensively fallacious arguments? Blank out. Could it be that what the religious believer claims is not actually believable?

What does it mean for something to be believable? The primary definition of believable is "to have confidence in the truth, the existence, or the reliability of something, although without absolute proof that one is right in doing so".

What does it mean to say that something is the truth? The first three definitions of truth are:

1. the true or actual state of a matter:
2. conformity with fact or reality; verity: .
3. a verified or indisputable fact, proposition, principle, or the like:

For something to be believable human beings must be able to have confidence or reliability that the given proposition is the actual state of the matter that is in conformity with the fact of reality in the sense of a verified and indisputable objective event. What must the religious believer do in order to be confident that what she believes is actually believable – actually in conformity with the fact of reality? The believer, if she is to be honest with herself, must accurately compare her faith propositions with actual reality and accept only those propositions comparing favorably. But if the believer does not need absolute proof of being right in so doing, then she need not be concerned that any proposition she believes "true" be only probably in conformity with the fact of reality. By accepting as absolutely true propositions that only probably compare favorably with the fact of reality, is the believer not disrobing the primacy of existence of meaning? In so doing the believer is finding a back door to a primacy of consciousness fantasy and thereby reversing the proper epistemological subject-object order of her own consciousness.

With a subject of thought-object of thought reversal in hand, it then becomes child's play to hold god of the gaps arguments as valid and sound reasons to believe. By ascribing a probability of truth to god of the gaps arguments, the believer inculcates a sense of correctness for her propositions and justifies ignoring any lack in comparing correctly with reality. This vivifies her subject of thought-object of thought epistemic reversal. Self-purposed feedback loops tend to reinforce themselves on each run. A hysteresis effect ameliorates such feedback, yet as the loop progresses, the facts of reality dim. For that reason, it is vitally important for human beings to ground their cognition to the metaphysically actual and accept only that which is demonstratively in conformity with fact or reality. Thus lack of knowledge should lead us to be skeptical of the claims of god believers.

The Friendly Atheist Interviewed Me

Link. Enjoy.

Dinesh D'Souza On Genesis Chapter One

Dinesh D'Souza in his bestselling book, What's So Great About Christianity? offers a simplistic answer to the problem of Genesis chapter one. This is what he wrote:

The Big Bang resolves one of the apparent contradictions in the book of Genesis. For more than two centuries, critics of the Bible have pointed out that in the beginning--on the first day--God created light. Then on the fourth day God separated the night from the day. The problem is pointed out by philosopher Leo Strauss: "Light is presented as preceding the sun." Christians have long struggled to explain this anomaly but without much success. The writer of Genesis seemed to have made an obvious mistake.

Dinesh offers the solution Christians everywhere have been waiting for:

But it turns out there is no mistake. The universe was created in a burst of light fifteen years ago. Our sun and our planet came into existence billions of years later. So light did indeed precede the sun. The first reference to light in Genesis 1:3 can be seen to refer to the Big Bang itself. The separation of the day and the night described in Genesis 1:4 clearly refers to the formation of the sun and the earth...The Genesis enigma is solved..." (p. 123)

But Dinesh is badly mistaken for many reasons. Let me merely mention just one of them. On Day One God created light, which, Dinesh says represents the Big Bang. Then on Day Two God is doing something on earth, he creates the firmament and separates the waters on earth from those in the heavens. On Day Three God again is doing something on earth. He makes dry land appear. When we finally get to Day Four God already has an earth, a firmament, and dry land. But on Day Four we see God creating the universe of sun, moon and stars. This "solution" of his is no solution at all, for if Dinesh wants to harmonize the Big Bang with Genesis then he must try to harmonize all of it. And according to modern astronomy there were already stars and galaxies before there was an earth, or at least, they were all formed at the same time. If the earth existed before the universe of stars and galaxies, which were supposedly created on the fourth day, this contradicts what we know from the evidence of the Big Bang itself.

Wheeling and Dealing J-E-S-U-S! The 21 Century Religion Business

There are millions to be made in the Family Owned and Family Operated Religion Business. Pictured above is evangelist Joyce Myers' private family owned compound while billionaire preacher Kenneth Copeland owns his own private ministry jet port complete with three jets (the latest of which he paid over twenty million for).

With their tax free status along with protected speech (preaching) by the first amendment, these Family Religion Businesses with their CEO evangelists are alive and well especially in the United States where giving to the Lord is the evangelist himself since, once a evangelist becomes larger than life, he becomes a savior to the faithful who support the ministry. These religious cult figures are blessed by God with his or her own financial empire).

The foundation for the above had its start when Yahweh (now called “God“) chose to open and run his own family run religion business with a designated successor: His son, Jesus. However, due to conflicts beyond Jesus' control, his ministry (within 1 to 3 years) literally went belly up and ended. But the family business was "saved" by being re-invented by Paul and given a systematic theology which used the successful title of Christ as a franchised trade mark. With a little luck (and some help from the latter Roman Empire) Paul’s franchisees called Christians were able to drive out of business older religious traditions by stealing their concepts and then re-labeling them as "exclusive truths from God".

The following are just a few of today's top evangelist CEO's who have made it into the millionaire status with a few even now making it to the billionaire club:

Oral Roberts (Oral Roberts University) His family religion business successor: Son, Richard Roberts

Pat Robertson (700 Club) His family religion business successor: Son, Gordon Robertson

Billy Graham (The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association) His family religion business successor: Son, Franklin Graham and his family religion business successor: Son, William Franklin Graham IV

Jim Bakker (former PTL leader and now with his own evangelistic ministry) His family religion business successor: Son, Jamie Bakker

Jimmy Swaggart His family religion business successor: Son, Donnie Swaggart

Paul Crouch (Trinity Broadcasting Network founder and chairman) His family religion business successor: Son, Paul Crouch, Jr.

Kenneth Copeland (Kenneth Copeland Ministries) His family religion business successors: Wife, Gloria and Daughters

Bob Jones Sr., (Bob Jones University) His family religion business successor: Son, Bob Jones Jr., followed by his family religion business successor: Son, Bob Jones III, followed his by family religion business successor: Son, Stephen Jones.

Bob Schuller (Crystal Cathedral) His family religion business successor: Son, Robert Schuller, Jr.

The late Jerry Farwell (Thomas Roads Baptist Church / The Old Time Gospel Hour) His family religion business successor: Son, Jonathan Farwell

Charles Stanley (In Touch Ministries) His family religion business successor: Son, Andy Stanley

John Hagee (John Hagee Ministries) His family religion business successor: Son, Christopher Hagee

Benny Hinn (Faith healing Televangelist) His family religion business successor: Brother, Henry Hinn

If Christians want to argue that Christianity is true, they would do well to start their defense here based on the promise of "Storehouse Tithing" given to these rich evangelist as they are blessed by God (Malachi 3: 10).

Stop Me If You've Heard This One

A joke from commenter drow ranger:

A guy's sitting on his roof, waiting for rescue from an overflowing river. A boat comes by, and the guy refuses to get in the boat, saying "God will save me". Another boat comes along and he says the same thing, choosing to stay on the roof. Finally a helicopter comes, and guy still says, "God will save me." Copter goes away, guy drowns. Guy's in heaven, saying to God "Why didn't you save me?" God says, "What are you talking about? I sent you two boats and a helicopter!"

I've heard this joke many times when theists want to make a point about how God moves through the mundane. But let's poke at this joke a little bit from the perspective of someone who is not omnipotent and who does not get to hear God give the punchline at the end--you know, regular people. What role does faith in God play in this anecdote? The only thing faith in God does is keep that man on the house to drown--an atheist would have been saved. This is the point we have been making all along; all faith is going to do is keep you on that house to drown. Until God is willing to have a clear dialogue to let you know EXACTLY what He means (not a monologue like all theists experience now), then you shouldn't trust what you THINK His promises are going to be; trust your fellow man who's trying to get you off of that house before you drown.

Barack Obama slams the Bible

"Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools?" Obama said. "Would we go with James Dobson's or Al Sharpton's?" referring to the civil rights leader.

Dobson took aim at examples Obama cited in asking which Biblical passages should guide public policy — chapters like Leviticus, which Obama said suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is an abomination, or Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, "a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application."

"Folks haven't been reading their Bibles," Obama said.

I have always had my suspicions that he is an atheist. His mother, father, and stepfather were all indifferent or hostile toward religion.

READ THE ARTICLE

Three More Leave the Fold!

1. Oystein Elgaroy, a professor of astrophysics who formerly defended the Christian faith has become an Atheist. 2. William Lobdell was an Evangelical Christian journalist covering the religion beat for years before he left the fold. 3) Daniel Florien, of the new blog UnreasonableFaith.com (reminicent of William Lane Craig's book title) attended Bible college to be a pastor. Here is one of his posts denying the virgin birth of Jesus.