I just wanted to throw this out there in a post all its own. I aim to show there is nothing divinely inspired inside the pages of the canonized set of texts that were written by some ancient agency detecting barbaric superstitious people. If I succeed then what could the believer still believe? In any case, this is my niche. I'm arguing a negative case against Christianity because I know it best. Along with it I'm offering a good rational tool in the Outsider Test for Faith to examine all religions by the same standard.
So sorry for the screw up before. This poll has been revised. What think ye?
In my next post I'll examine in detail David Marshall's criticisms of the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF). I have seen him in action a few times on Amazon and here at DC and he’s like Paul Newman in the movie Cool Hand Luke who gets beat down time after time by George Kennedy only to keep getting back up to get beat down again. George just got tired of beating on him and walked away. I suspect David will not be satisfied with my response and won’t admit defeat just like Paul Newman and I’ll just tire of beating on him and walk away too. Here's the clip below:
I want to thank everyone who donated to help me get a new computer. I bought a tower that cost me $425. It’s a Dell Inspiron 560 with a dual core processor and a dvd/cd writer. It has a whopping 320 gig hard drive! I’m getting it to where I need it, but this is a joy. Thanks so much!
And yes, that's my pool table. $10-$50 a game anyone? I need some more money. ;-)
Anthropological studies show us that religion and culture are almost synonymous. Sociological studies confirm it when we look at the geographical distribution of religion. Psychological studies show we are self-centered gullible people who believe what we were initially taught and that we believe what we prefer to be true. They show us we are ignorant of our own ignorance. The conclusion is that given these scientific disciplines we should all be skeptics. We should trust the sciences even if they are sometimes fallible because there is no other way out of such a morass. The ONLY reason this is controversial is because believers know it undermines the rationality of what they believe. They kick against the goads not to join us and be skeptics.
1) We don’t provide a united front. We are a diversified bunch of people. Some of us support different atheist organizations, subscribe to different atheist magazines, while others don’t support or subscribe to any at all.
2) We have no leaders. While there are certainly some standouts in the atheist community there are always disagreements on who we regard as our intellectual heroes.
3) We cannot agree on anything else but religion. We can’t even agree on what to call ourselves. We disagree on such things as the basis for morality (or lack thereof), on politics, and on whether or not Jesus existed (and if so, what we are to think of him).
4) We have no agreed upon causes. Some focus on the separation of church and state, others on politics, others on science, and still others on specific kinds of religion and/or paranormal claims.
5) We cannot agree about tactics. There are the friendly atheists, spiritual atheists, evangelical atheists, and others who merely want to educate, not necessarily persuade, believers.
We are human beings of every age, shape, gender, skin color, health, wealth, education and social social status. We simply do not believe. We think for ourselves based on solid evidence and good reasons. We cannot be herded like believing sheep. Nor can we be fleeced.
But this is our strength. We are everywhere. We are the wave of the future. There is no turning back the hands of time. We cannot be ignored any more.
Let's see if I can make a few numbered statements that might help him understand.
[Written by John W. Loftus] Let's take a look at a few details in the Gospels with regard to the birth of Jesus.
He's a great song writer, but come on now...such ignorance knows no bounds:
: 
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concerning the 10th one, where he writes: 
), I do not think that we have enough information to establish ANY account about what really happened during "Easter Week." If I had to conjecture, I would imagine a scenario (and a scenario is all we can have) something like this: 
has been reviewed by the