Christians have developed so many ways to escape the force of the evidence that it’s frustrating to those of us who are trying to reason with them. I’ve written about several of them before. There is the big one I call The Omniscience Escape Clause. Another one I haven’t quite developed yet I call The Faith Trump Card, which is leaping beyond the actual probabilities of the evidence itself. No reasonable person can leap beyond what the evidence calls for. If Christians conclude it’s 51% probable Jesus arose from the dead then they simply cannot conclude they know he did. That’s an unjustified leap. If I thought it’s 51% probable the Colts will play in the Super Bowl and win it this year (fat chance) I would be ignorant to say I know this will happen, especially enough to bet all my meager life savings on it (which is zilch).
I want to thank the people who donated for me to get a new suit and a passport. The suit is a Calvin Klein one from Macy’s. The passport is for when I speak in Toronto, Canada, at
CFI's Extraordinary Claims Panel Discussion. This means a great deal to me in the midst of the worst financial crisis I’ve ever experienced this past Fall. We’re climbing our way out of it with your help. Now if I could only get enough to pay for a new computer (see the ChipIn widget). Every little bit helps and will be equally appreciated. If not, I still appreciate the wonderful encouragement I’ve received over the years here at DC to continue Blogging.
Welcome to DC. Put your dick away for just a minute. You can get back to it later. Since porn is such a multi-billion dollar industry most of the searches for the words in the title above are done by Christian men. You feel a bit guilty for this but you do it anyway. You may even publicly condemn pornography, homosexuality, lust, and even masturbation, but here you are doing what you're doing. You rationalize your behavior away by thinking to yourself God will forgive. In my opinion Christianity is sexually repressive. God supposedly created you with this strong desire and then forbids you to express it. He wants you to be celibate except in a monogamous heterosexual marriage, even though most people are not in that kind of relationship at the moment. For some Christians there is to be no oral sex, no adult toys, and no contraception.
Sex will be the undoing of Christianity.
Here are a few links for you to look at before getting back to business: ;-)
This is an interesting and provocative video you must watch:
Atheist vloggers MannixThePirate & xCrowMagnuSx sat down with Shirley Phelps-Roper (daughter of Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps). As you watch this 14 minute video you'll see quite plainly that a person can be intelligent and at the same time delusional (part 1, I'll not bother you with any more). Watch as she answers every query with a quote from the Bible. The Bible says it, that settles it for her. She doesn't trust the sciences, nor anyone else but what she thinks the Bible says. She is absolutely confident in the Bible as she knows it. This sounds exactly like most Christians. Yet she is regarded by most all other Christians today as delusional. If we set aside what the sciences have forced Christians to accept over the last few centuries I'm confident most medieval Christians would agree with her about most things. And I don't see much difference between her and other Christians who quote mine the Bible for answers without thinking, reasoning and learning from the sciences. At that point the only difference is how Christians interpret it. The question is why Christians think she is delusional when they are not.
[Written by John W. Loftus] Keep in mind there are others I could mention and trying to rank them's a bitch:
Apparently I'm a lightening rod. I get slammed almost daily by people on all sides. So why do I bother? It's who I am.
I previously wrote on
10 Reasons Why Atheism Can't Win where I highlighted what seems to be the enormous challenges facing atheism in America. I’m not oblivious to the fact that Europe is mostly a secular continent having faced these challenges and won. Nor am I oblivious to the fact that more young Americans are becoming non-believers than ever before. You can see stories about this phenomenon in
The Economist, and in other places with titles like
Young Americans Leaving Churches in Droves, and
Young Christians Desert Churches.
Our conceptions of what makes for an extraordinary event have changed in each subsequent century/generation with the advancement of science. It has repeatedly forced believers to change their views on the matter. In the ancient world they knew axe heads don't float, that women were not turned into pillars or salt, or that donkey's can't talk. But to the pre-scientific ancients most every event was in some sense an extraordinary one, from the birth of a child, to the rising of the sun, the rainfall, to a bountiful crop. Extraordinary events occurred for them almost daily. They couldn't understand how these events could take place within nature's laws. Since they could not explain them they concluded some deity did them. Then one by one these events were explained naturally by science and consequently one by one they were taken out of the realm of the extraordinary and placed into the category of the ordinary course of events.
Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer, and Matt Ridley recently debated William Lane Craig, Douglas Geivett, and Rabbi David Wolpe on the topic: Does the Universe Have a Purpose? in Mexico.
How to Fight Cyber-Bullies and Win
I you have my book, The Christian Delusion, in chapter one Dr. David Eller shows why language and culture matter to Christianity. In a Christian culture with Christian language people will be inclined to accept Christianity as true. But as our culture changes so will our language, and that is a good thing even if like a chameleon Christianity will learn to adapt. In fact I'm in favor of being proactive about this. There are just too many secularists, too many Jews, too many spiritualists, too many people of different faiths in our country that the language of this holiday needs to be changed. And one place we can insist that it be changed is how retailers market their products. Call it "The Holidays," or just "December 25th," but let's have done with the word "Christmas," especially when we describe it.
Believers wonder who an atheist has to thank at this time. I thank my lucky stars that I was born and enjoy the good life that I do. So many others don't, based on factors like when and where they were born.
We should be skeptics of extraordinary claims of miracles in the ancient past. Tell me why we shouldn't? There are too many of them in every culture, too many mythical stories.
Spirited debates in scholarly fields usually involve a mixture of substantive argumentation and rhetorical weaponry. Rhetorical weaponry is intended to detract from the real substance of arguments, as well as to appeal to the emotional side of the audience. Rhetorical weaponry and substantive arguments are not always easily distinguished, and participants may sometimes be unaware of the difference.
Here, I concentrate on the rhetorical weapons that are being deployed by religionist biblical scholars against efforts to reform the field of biblical studies so that it might function like all other fields in modern academia---a completely secular enterprise with methodological naturalism at its core.
These rhetorical weapons may be seen as literary tropes or themes, insofar as they depict fictional, rather than actual, villainy on the part of secularists. The purpose of these tropes and themes is to marginalize secularists rather than to address real arguments. They represent creative versions of the ad hominem fallacy.
I get new readers everyday so let me welcome them and briefly tell them what to expect here at DC. I am not a news source. There are lots of religion related news stories but I mostly comment on the high profile or interesting ones. Nor do I post many stories about the crimes or infidelities of pastors. They happen everyday and even though some of their abuses make our heads spin I mostly comment on high profile or interesting cases. Nor do I share many testimonies of deconversion, although I do so from time to time. And I don't post a great deal of obtuse philosophical arguments, or a great many things about science or cosmology. They are all useful, no doubt, and I do so from time to time.
has been reviewed by the Library Journal:
has been out for awhile. Based upon the Christian responses I've seen on Amazon and other blogs, here are the top ten ways to deal with it:
The following is what he emailed to me about it:
by Nick Harding, and 
edited by Christopher Hitchens. He'll probably also require students to listen weekly to Dan Barker's and Annie Laurie Gaylor's