William Lane Craig: "No Amount of Evidence or Reasoning Could Convince Me I'm Wrong"
Michael Licona Refuses to Debate Me
Michael Licona is a Christian friend of mine. I have met Mike and had pleasant conversations with him. He moderated the debate I had with David Wood on whether God exists, seen here. The first time I met him was at the 2009 Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting where I was on a panel discussing Bill Maher's movie Religulous. My talk can be read here.
Michael Licona's scholarly expertise is on the resurrection of Jesus where he wrote a massive book on the topic.
But he refuses to debate me on the resurrection.
Here is our recent email exchange:
How to Win Friends and Influence People to Atheism
Labels: Persuasion
The Outsider Test for Faith is For People Who Really Want to Know the Truth
It's Possible God Exists Even Though All Life Has Evolved
John Green is Now Writing for "the Other Team"
Romulus and Jesus Compared
"Here it Comes" I'm Done With My Revised Book Files
That Which Disconfirms UFOs From Mars Also Disconfirms God’s Existence
In 1971 a NASA space orbiter named Mariner 9 discovered that the canals on Mars were illusory. This discovery strongly disconfirmed the claim that there was intelligent life on that planet. Before this discovery many people claimed they encountered Martians. Afterward, Martians stopped visiting us and aliens started visiting us from Venus. Then after the surface of Venus was found to be hot enough to melt lead Venusians stopped visiting us too. Now they come from far more distant places in our universe. What best explains this? It’s because there were never any Martians or Venusians who visited earth.
The 2012 Debunking Christianity Challenge
My challenge is for Christians to read our books and test their faith to see if it can withstand our arguments. As I argued recently most believers do not seriously question their faith. Do you want to be different than other believers? Do you want to do what most of them don't do? Then take the DC Challenge. I challenge you! Hey, what do you have to lose? If the books cause you to become stronger in your faith that's good, right? But if your faith cannot survive our assault then we've done you a favor. No more soundbites. No more reading one blog post at a time. Sit down for yourselves and read through whole books written by the skeptics. Here then are the twelve books for this year's DC challenge:
Oprah Winfrey's Half-Sister and The Odds of The Resurrection of Jesus
Why Do Christians Disagree?
Stenger's New Book: God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion
Bruce Gerencser on Atheism, The Bible, and Jesus
Atheists have a wide and divergent view on most everything. There is no atheist position, atheist viewpoint, or atheist worldview. Atheists can’t even agree on what the words atheist or atheism mean.
Religionists are used to narrow, defined, sectarian beliefs. Methodists believe__________. Catholics believe______________. Mormons believe ___________. That’s not how it works with atheists. Every atheist must determine how to proceed from the basic premise of atheism…..the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. From this departure point atheists believe a variety of things and it is unlikely that any two of them will agree with one another on everything.
Link.
Ten Reasons Why Most Believers Don't Seriously Question Their Faith
You Should Get Guy Harrison's "50 Popular Beliefs That People Think are True"
There is No Atheist Community, No Atheist Movement
Labels: Freethought Blogs
If Republicans nominate Newt Gingrich for President it will signal the further erosion, and maybe even death, of Christian conservatism as we once knew it.
James Rachels' Book, "Created From Animals" Is Wonderful!
Tommy G. Baker Has Spoken His Last Word From the Grave
I hate death. It's the final enemy. Paul was right about that. The older I get the more I think this way. I hope in the future people really can live to be 160+ years old with their minds who can be productive in their final years. I hope someday that if we have an incurable disease we can be frozen and later revived and then healed so we can see the future. I hate the fact that I'll never see what human beings have done on this planet in 100 or 200 or 1,000 years or more. I hate the fact that I'll never see my Dad again, or my grandparents, or my stepfather that my Mom married after Dad died. I hate it.
We are mere mortals. This life is all we have. It's mere delusion to think otherwise. But knowing the truth hurts. What would hurt more is to think there is a God who punished them with death because of what some curious mythical bastards did in some Garden, and that they're now being tortured in hell. Do believers even care to actually think about this? So I raise my middle finger to people like that and to their concept of God. I raise it to believers down through the ages who have used hell as a cradle to grave threat. I raise it to death itself.
Labels: "TGBaker"
A Jealous God and Divine Domestic Violence
If a human husband said that to his wife, we would classify it as domestic violence. And rightly so. It reflects a view of the wife as property, and the husband as her lord and owner with sovereign rights to inflict punishment on one who has “stolen” from him his exclusive right to “sow his seed” in a “field” that is his property....Presumably an image of God who would himself commit assault and battery against his wife is one that it is crucial to examine critically and rethink. Link.
A Neglected Atheism: A View from Sam Harris
Labels: "TGBaker"
I Ate Some Crap the Other Day
That’s how it is sometimes. We must eat crap once in a while. I’m sure if I had argued with her I would’ve lost her business and she would not recommend our services anymore.
Idealism Is Hardly Ideal
Labels: "TGBaker"
Omni-Faults: The Conflicts of the Attributes of God
Labels: "TGBaker"
Darrin Rasberry, A Former Team Member at DC Now Claims to Be A Christian
Yep, so long as this is not a ruse. Darrin was never an atheist in the first place though. ;-) I wish him well. That's the power of the delusion. It has a pull on some of us to return to the fold. He writes about it here. When I first invited him to DC Darrin wrote this Greetings. Darrin and I traveled together to the 2008 EPS Apologetics Conference which I wrote about here. Hey, people believe and disbelieve for a wide variety of reasons, and that's it. There is no need to discredit his conversion. Why do Christians try to discredit our deconversions?
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Edit: If you see the smiley face after the second sentence above I'm being sarcastic. I'm saying about Darrin what Christians ignorantly say about people like me who leave the faith. Unlike them I don't mean this seriously.
Labels: Darrin Rasberry
Christian, Are You Praying for the Return of Jesus?
Duh. Where is the compassion when it comes to faith? Wouldn't the reasonable thing to do is pray that Jesus does NOT return soon so her daughter might come to repentance and be saved? Are believers brain dead or something?
Baha'i Practice as a View to Early Christianity
Labels: "TGBaker"
NOVA The Fabric of the Cosmos: Universe or Multiverse?
Watch The Fabric of the Cosmos: Universe or Multiverse? on PBS. See more from NOVA.
Suffering as Evidence of God's Failure
This is a weak argument concerning theodicy that is meant to address the premises of an ontological argument for god. It requires one to look at the attributes of god before they are assumed for the ontological argument itself. It focuses on "capability" rather than omnipotence:
Labels: "TGBaker"
"God or Godless" Nears Completion
Tommy G. Baker Died But Speaks From the Grave
Labels: "TGBaker"
A Smorgasbord of Links for Your Enjoyment
Stephen Uhl, a former Catholic priest, is interviewed (with his wife Diane) by Tucson TV about their "Out of the Closet" billboards.
Harry McCall sent me this link on Biblical Illiteracy at Bob Jones University
Jerry Wilson sent me a link of his debate with a Christian apologist.
Articulett shared a link where a former believer named Anthony mentioned me as a major factor in his deconversion.
Brian sent me a link to a Nova documentary made a few years back on the creationism vs evolution trial in Dover. It's really good.
I'm Too Busy to Blog Much Right Now
Mike Licona Responds to Norman Geisler
Slavery, Abolitionism and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship: Reflections about Ethical Deflections
The Famous Thomas More / William Tyndale Polemic.
Andy Rooney on Atheism
Robert Gundry Was the First Scholar Norman Geisler Outted
In 1982 he published Matthew: A Commentary on His Literary and Theological Art analyzing the Gospel of Matthew. Gundry used redaction criticism in his work. He thus argued that Matthew adapted the story of Jesus to appeal to the intended audience. Especially problematic was Gundry's assertion that Matthew made ahistorical additions to the infancy story in Matthew 1 and 2.
This sparked a major controversy in the Evangelical Theological Society. Gundry contended his work did not question the inerrancy of Matthew. Rather he argued that inerrancy must be considered in light of authorial intent. Matthew, Gundry claims, "treats us to history mixed with elements that cannot be called historical in a modern sense." Thus, the book of Matthew should not be measured against the standards of the genre of modern historical writing in order to be called inerrant. On the other hand, "Luke states a historical purpose along lines that run closer to modern history writing…" Gundry's view was supported by a significant portion of the ETS. The Society's executive looked into the matter and at first cleared Gundry. However a campaign against Gundry was launched, spearheaded by Norman Geisler. This campaign succeeded and in December 1983 Gundry resigned from the ETS. Link
Michael Licona Loses His Teaching Position Over Matthew 27
The incident casts doubt on the ability of Evangelical scholars, qua Evangelicals, to follow the evidence wherever it may lead. To his credit, Licona apparently questioned the literal historicity of Matthew 27, without letting the perceived implications of his commitment to Biblical inerrancy get in the way. At the same time, however, I can't help but be struck by the fact that apparently many Christian scholars were unwilling to publicly defend Licona, presumably because they were afraid they might lose their jobs, too. It is precisely because of this sort of mentality that I have previously questioned whether evangelical Christians can consistently affirm the ethics of belief required by freethought. Link
Quotes of the Day
The more often Christians have to resort to background beliefs—the more often they have to resort to their overall religious worldview to defend a particular tenet of faith—then the less likely their faith is true. Link
Christians must be convinced that their faith is nearly impossible before they will ever consider it to be improbable, which is an utterly unreasonable standard. Link.
When Christians criticize each other I think they're all right. Link.
Labels: "Quote of the Day"