Dr. Pulliam only blogged for about a year before his untimely death in October 2010. But he did have something to say about neurology and the mind of the believer. He reviewed a few important books and studies that I'll link to below:
D'Souza reviewed a book for
Christianity Today titled,
Rare Earth, written by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee, which he recommends. The answer proffered is that without earthquakes, "the planet couldn't support creatures like us." Here's my response:
When it comes to foreknowing our future, Craig argues that God has Middle Knowledge such that he knows “what every possible creature would do under any possible circumstances,” “prior to any determination of the divine will.”[1] So despite his protestations to the contrary isn’t it obvious that if Craig’s God has this kind of foreknowledge he could simply foreknow who would not accept his offered salvation before they were even created, and then never create them in the first place? If he did that “hotel hell” would never have even one occupant. Why not?
In question #202 at Reasonable Faith Dr. Craig tries to answer this type of problem:
Of course, there were lots of books for me to choose from. In a few cases I had to choose just one book even though the author wrote several. And in a few other cases Christianity merely adapted and changed in response to a book. But in their day each of these authors threatened Christianity to its core. You can still get them and read them for yourselves. Do so.
Christian theists love to point out the limits of science, and it does have some. But to focus on them to the exclusion of the massive amount of information we have acquired from science is being extremely ungrateful for what it has achieved. To me that is one aspect of the denigration of science. The limits of science are based in 1) the limits of human imagination, and 2) the limits of that which we can detect. That which is undetectable does not fall within the realm of science, although, with further advances in our scientific instruments we can detect things that were previously thought undetectable. If science does reach its limits in the future, there won't be any cause for theistic celebration because scientists may not know they have reached its limits, and because there are probably some things they might never know. Why should that conclusion, if they reach it, be preferred to an evolving God concept in a sea of god-concepts without any means to settle which one is to be preferred as the best explanation of the same data? What is the theistic alternative method for squeezing the truth out of the universe? What is it? Until theists can propose a better method than science to learn about the universe, they should just shut up!
I have been arguing daily for about six years online. I tire of arguing with people who continually move the goal posts, who seek out the tiniest loophole to drive a truckload of Christian assumptions through, who refuse to see the implications of current psychological studies on the state of the human mind, and who refuse to see the obvious and clear impact of my Outsider Test for Faith.
I've heard it all. And it disgusts me. Christians demand that I must show their faith is impossible before they will see that it is improbable. This is an utterly unreasonable demand. I cannot show their faith is impossible. I can only show it to be improbable, very improbable. Not only that, but they refuse to see what they're doing. Let's rehearse these things with a few examples, okay?
I consider the evidential case against a good God from naturally caused suffering to be the most significant problem for believers.
Can anyone tell me why God did not do a perpetual miracle by averting that earthquake? If God was concerned about remaining hidden then no one would suspect he did anything if he averted it, because it would not have taken place. Anyone? Anyone?
Want to see an utterly ignorant analogy by a Christian intellectual named Ed Feser? He's not alone. Victor Reppert linked to what he said. Feser's gripe is against the "New Atheist Types." He says that "Richard Dawkins, P. Z. Myers, and their clones in the blogosphere routinely display exactly the sort of ignorance and bigotry of which they haughtily accuse their opponents."
But Feser ends up being the ignorant bigot on this one.
Let me correct some of the most egregious misconceptions believers have about us, in reverse order:
On the sidebar you can see two parts to the DC challenge. Now here's Part 3 based on what someone named Mike said in the comments section:
Believers ask me if I am skeptical of what I believe about religion because the brain distorts the information we receive. Let me be clear here. Atheism is born of skepticism and is a full blown skepticism. Precisely because I know how our brains distort information I am skeptical of that which I want to be true, and more importantly, I demand evidence for what I believe. Have you ever seen TV programs like CSI and/or Law & Order? Something like that. They need evidence to arrest someone just like I need evidence to believe. So how can I be skeptical of my conclusion that some belief doesn't have any evidence for it, if there isn't any evidence for it, or if the evidence is weak? Atheists are known as non-believers for that very reason.
Every once-in-a-while believers show up to remind me that I'm not succeeding in debunking Christianity, at least not with them. Rob Lundberg recently said this: "I haven't seen an argument from you John that would have me think that you're right either. Cheers." Well, let me make a few comments and then I have a song for people like him.
Three noteworthy items have been made available by Keith Parsons and Wes Morriston.
I think this is a powerful song below:
Does it just not cross any believer's mind that you're all ridiculous when you claim to know with certainty you're right and all others are wrong? What is it with you people? Are you just that dense? "No," you'll say, "the Mormons are wrong and we are the only ones right." Then still others will chime in: "I'm right!" "No, I am." "Am not." "Am too." Are not." "Are too." What idiocy! Do you just not realize what this looks like? Get a grip delusional people. Skepticism is the adult attitude. Grow up!
, was criticized widely by the public at large as "baseless." So in the Preface to the Second Edition two years later, he explains why so many people thought his work was bad, just like many Christians think my work is bad. While I'm not comparing myself to him, what he said in response was brilliant:
published seven years ago, there are testimonies from former fundamentalists who became moderates, liberals, and even "ultra liberals," like Dewey Beegle, Harvey Cox, Conrad Hyers, Robert Price (who now describes himself as a "Christian atheist"), and seven others. We could add other names like Howard Van Till, Valerie Tarico, John Hick, Marcus Borg, John A. T. Robertson, James Wall, Andrew Furlong, and James Sennett. In another section there are testimonies of former fundamentalists who became agnostics, like Ed himself, Charles Templeton, Farrell Till, and five others. We could add other names like Robert Ingersoll, William Dever, Bart Ehrman, and William Lobdell. In still another section of his book there are former fundamentalists who became atheists, like Dan Barker, Jim Lippard, Harry McCall, Frank Zindler, and four others. We could add other names like Hector Avalos, Michael Shermer, Ken Daniels, Ken Pulliam, Jason Long, Joe Holman, Paul Tobin, myself and many many others. I can't remember all the names of the important people who left fundamentalist Christianity because there are simply too many of them to remember! If you read Ex.Christian.net, deconversion stories are posted there almost every day.
argues we can step over the "is-ought" problem and I agree. Here's the money quote: 
. I read a large part of the first edition when it came out in 1998, but it's now been revised. From people like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to Karl Marx, to Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemmingway, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre and George Orwell, Johnson specializes in the dirt. From theft to divorce to womanizing to hypocrisy to opportunism to lies, he digs it all up. It's not flattering to any of them if true, and I cannot dispute his facts. 
, is a body blow to religious belief. It performs a double service to us by showing how the evolution of our brain accounts for why we think so poorly, and in so doing goes a long way toward showing that religious belief is a product of this poor thinking. Very highly recommended.p. 132.
