It's Preposterous That Victor Reppert and David Marshall Believe in Allah

I'd like to note a reoccurring theme among Christian apologists. David Marshall has said with regard to Judaism that it is a true religion. He also claims:

Either God is one, many, or not at all. But one doesn't need to choose between Yahweh, Elohim, theos, Allah, and Shang Di: the one only-existing Creator God is recognizable under many aliases. Link

So also claims Dr. Reppert about Allah:

I believe that Allah exists. Allah is the Arabic word for God, just as Dios is Spanish for God, and Dieu is French for God, and Gott is German for God. I am a theist, therefore, I believe that Allah exists. No problem.

But all of this is simply empty rhetoric with no substance at all. Neither one of them are Orthodox Jews or Muslims so why would they say this?

Some Links For Your Enjoyment

Jerry A. Coyne on You Don't Have Free Will in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Victor Stenger on The God Hypothesis for the New Scientist.

An older interview I did for Think Atheist. A more recent interview about my massively revised book, Why I Became an Atheist, will be available April 8th.

Coming: A Book On "The Outsider Test for Faith"

Having just heard from my publisher that they want me to submit a proposal for a full length book treatment on The Outsider Test for Faith, I have commenced working on it. So this blog may be silent for days at a time as I write it. Stay tuned though. I'll be around. Subscribe by email, Feed, or become a follower so you don't miss a thing. I know people get tired of me requesting financial assistance, but as I work on this book I'm not focused on earning a living, so please consider supporting my efforts. Christian professors get paid to do what I must do as an independent scholar.

On Taking the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF)

On the one hand we have Christians who reject the OTF as unfair or faulty in some way, while on the other hand we have Christians claiming to embrace it who go on to say their faith passes the test. Why can't they agree? I suspect philosophically minded believers instinctively realize their faith won't pass the test so they try to find fault with it. And I suspect more ignorant believers will think their particular Christian sect passes the test. I've argued against the former group that they fail to understand what it is. And I've argued against the latter group that they don't really understand what it demands of them. See my counter-arguments by following this link to two additional ones.

In either case, whether you think the OTF is unfair, or whether you think your faith stands up to the OTF, you should get and read through my extensively revised book, Why I Became an Atheist. Read it to see if your faith is correct. It's available for purchase on Amazon as of today. See for yourself why so many people on both sides of our debates recommend it so highly. I tell people that if they've read the first edition and liked it they will love this massive revision. Prometheus Books is treating it as a new book, coming in at about 110 more pages with a new outline, better written arguments, and many chapters extensively re-written. It's head over heels better than the first edition. It's clearly my best book, my magnum opus. If you've read The Christian Delusion and The End of Christianity and haven't read this one then you haven't seen anything by comparison from me yet. ;-)

Plato's Cave Allegory and Faith

Plato's cave allegory is a good one applied to the issues that separate believers and non-believers. I know I'm in a culturally derived cave. So I can reflect on that which I have been led to accept since I realize I'm in it, and this makes all the difference in the world. My conclusion is that I can only trust science to tell me what I should accept. Doing so allows me to think outside the cave, to question the reality I was raised to believe. Believers raised in their respective religious cultures are in the cave and in denial. They have accepted and now defend what they were raised to believe using a double standard, one for their own faith and a different one for the faiths they reject. But the problem is faith. Believers all defend the merits of faith even though faith has no method.

Faith And Evidence According to Dr. Matt McCormick

Believers rail against the so-called New Atheists and atheistic scientists because they don't have a "correct" understanding of faith. What say they then about a philosopher of religion who says the same things about the "F" word in a recent lecture? Link

Jerry Coyne On Justifying Science

We justify science rather than faith as a way of finding out stuff not on the basis of first principles, but on the basis of which method actually gives us reliable information about the universe. And by “reliable,” I mean, methods that help us make verified predictions that advance our understanding of the world and produce practical consequences that aren’t possible with other methods. Take a disease like smallpox. It was once regarded as manifestations of God’s will or displeasure; indeed, inoculation was opposed on religious grounds—that to immunize people was to thwart God’s will. You can’t cure smallpox with such an attitude, or by praying for its disappearance. It was cured by scientific methods: the invention of inoculations, followed by the use of epidemiological methods to eradicate it completely. Scientific understanding advances with time; religious “ways of knowing,” even by the admission of theologians, don’t bring us any closer to the “truth” about God. We know not one iota more about the nature or character of God than we did in 1300, nor are we any closer to proving that a god exists! Link.

Quote of the Day, By Victor Stenger on Science vs Religion

Religion is a belief system based on bullshit. Link.

I received my copy of Stenger's newest book yesterday, God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion.On the back cover I have a blurb that reads:

A tour de force. Among the published atheists trying to bridge the gap between scientifically minded people and people of faith Stenger is the best. I consider this book to be his best yet. I think it'll probably be a classic.

His book should be available shortly. Get it! Don't miss it. You can read all I said about it right here.

The Major Reason Why I Am a Skeptic

David Marshall continually says I must read up on world religions and the history of religions. But why? It's because he thinks it will help me to believe. So David, I'll grant that you have read more world literature than I have and that you have the benefit of world travel. But I think the brain is such that if I had your experiences and read only the works you have, I would agree with you and think like you. Our brains are like that. So in order to think like you I must be more like you (which also includes IQ, gender, race, sexuality, place and time of birth, and so forth--do you know that sociologists can identify different ideas held by people born in America during the 20's vs the 30's vs the 40's vs the 50's and so on?). BUT I AM NOT YOU! Nor can I ever be. The same thing goes in reverse for you. If you had my experiences and read only the works I have, you would agree with me and think like me. That is probably the major reason why I am a skeptic, because of this propensity of ours to believe and defend a host of ideas just because we were exposed to them, which is as obvious of an empirical fact as we can get. It's overwhelming that our respective cultures influence us, since that's what we're talking about. Just take four babies and raise one in China the other in Saudi Arabia the third in Kentucky and the fourth in Russia and you will see clearly how cultures influence us all. And it’s never more pronounced than when it comes to religion. Knowing this I must reject faith based reasoning of any kind. Knowing this I am skeptical of ideas that do not have sufficient evidence for them. Knowing this I try as best as I possibly can to only accept science based reasoning. Science is the only hope out of this epistemological morass. How can you possibly counter this? How can any believer counter this? Believers can only do so out of ignorance, pure ignorance, willful ignorance, a head-in-the-sand type of fear based ignorance.

David Marshall On the OTF Again

A new Christian ebook has hit the #2 spot of atheism categorized books on Amazon, True Reason: Christian Responses to the Challenge of Atheism eds., Carson Weitnauer and Tom Gilson. The reason I was interested in looking at it was because David Marshall has a chapter in it on my Outsider Test for Faith (OTF). I wanted to see if Marshall did any better in his chapter for this book than what I saw on his blog which I subsequently reviewed in 4 parts. [Warning: Spoiler Alert. He didn't.] ;-)

Debate: PZ Myers and Greg M. Epstein on Religion

The topic was How Should Atheists Talk about Religion? Beginning around -42:11 PZ Myers has a string of invectives against faith. I'd like it if someone would type them out for us, as well as any other pithy comments of his (or Epstein's) in this lively debate. Myers is spot on about faith.

Reasonable Faith?!

Christian Professor Dan Lambert's Definition of Faith

Why can't Christians agree? The following is from an older email exchange Dan and I had.

On Feeding One's Faith in the "Conceivably False"

I recently saw a church sign that said, "Feed your faith and it will starve your doubts."

More Definitions of Faith

Take a look. Care to add your own?

Quote of the Day by Kayt Sukel

Technology and science have now advanced to the point that disciplines like biology, genetics, epidemiology, evolutionary science, psychology, philosophy, computer science, and medicine have converged into the catchall field of neuroscience. More and more, neuroscientists are demonstrating that the brain is behavior—the two simply cannot be teased apart.

Sukel is author of Dirty Minds: How Our Brains Influence Love, Sex, and Relationships. This reminds me of Helen Fisher's TED talk on Why We Love and Cheat, as well as Jesse Bering on the Klüver-Bucy Syndrome and Nymphomania. I think the days of faith, sin, atonement, and divine judgment talk are all over.

What's Wrong With Randal Rauser?

Rauser is among the best Christian theologian/philosophers. He has a Ph.D. whereas I don't. He's written a few scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals. He's also written books for Oxford University Press, Edinburgh University Press, and Paternoster Press. But when it comes to faith and probability he stumbles badly. Perhaps he can edumacate us, but something is clearly amiss when he argues for faith against the probabilities and I think I can show this in a short reply.

15 Bible Texts Showing God is At War with Women

This article was written by Dr. Valerie Tarico. Check it out. I hate what religion has done and continues to do to women.

*Sigh* On Faith Again

Why should anyone who rejects Christianity adopt the Christian definition of faith? We think it's not what Christian believers do in practice, and it does nothing to actually define the word faith because other religious faiths should be included when defining faith, otherwise Christians have a private language game unrelated to how anyone else uses the word. Words are about concepts. If the Christian wants to maintain such a concept and call it faith that is their privilege. But it's delusional.

An Open Challenge to Christians About Faith

Christian theists make two claims about faith: 1) That atheists define the concept of faith wrong, and 2) That atheists have faith just like Christian theists do. So here's my challenge: Define faith in such a way that it fulfills both requirements!

Michael Shermer and Ken Miller debate the compatibility of science and faith

Michael Shermer wrote:

If no empirical claim is made that science can address, then there is little more to be said on the matter. If specific claims are made in the name of God and religion then let's hear them and put them to the test.

Until then, I believe that it is time to step out of our religious traditions and embrace science as the best tool ever devised for explaining how the world works, and to work together to create a social and political world that embraces moral principles and yet allows for natural human diversity to flourish. Religion cannot get us there because it has no systematic methods of explanation of the natural world, and no means of conflict resolution on moral issues when members of competing sects hold absolute beliefs that are mutually exclusive. Flawed as they may be, science and the secular Enlightenment values expressed in Western democracies are our best hope for survival. Link

What's Faith Got to Do With It?

George H. Smith tells us in Atheism: The Case Against God, that “The conflict between Christian theism and atheism is fundamentally a conflict between faith and reason. This, in epistemological terms, is the essence of the controversy. Reason and faith are opposites, two mutually exclusive terms: there is no reconciliation or common ground. Faith is belief without, or in spite of, reason.” (pp. 96-98) As such, “For the atheist, to embrace faith is to abandon reason.” (p. 100) I have come to agree with Smith. Let me explain.

Faith is Irrational

I've been writing about faith lately, claiming it is an irrational leap over the probabilities. I'm not saying people who take the leap of faith are irrational, only that it's irrational to take that leap. But once they take the irrational leap of faith they can be very rational based on it. It's rational to conclude, as Pat Robertson does, that national disasters are God's judgment for our sins. The problem isn't that his utterly ignorant conclusion isn't rational. The problem is his faith. Faith is irrational. It's also rational for Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church to say "God hates fags." The problem isn't that their utterly ignorant conclusion isn't rational. The problem is their faith. Faith is irrational. The Inquisition was a rational conclusion too. The Church believed heresy was a leavening influence in society and as such was the worst crime of all. It could send others to hell. So they concluded the heretic must die. The problem isn't that their utterly ignorant conclusion isn't rational. It was their faith. Faith is irrational.

What Would a Secular Translation of the Bible Look Like?

What if one were to translate the Bible according to the same principles as we translate Homer, Aristotle, and Freud? What if we were to translate the Bible regardless of the faith of its potential readership, regardless of any investment in the question of whether the texts are right or wrong, and regardless of how the texts might be used to address contemporary faith? Link

Even Christians Agree That Faith is Opposed to Reason

Yep, that's right. What's all the hullabaloo about? Christians themselves agree with skeptics:

Faith and Reason are Mutually Exclusive Opposites

This is the conclusion I have come to. In my years of Blogging there is nothing I have written that elicits more of an adverse response from Christian believers than when I have denounced faith in favor of scientifically based reasoning. I can write against the resurrection, miracles, or the inspiration of the Bible, but when I write against faith the blog world lights up (well, those who read my blog anyway). Why? George H. Smith tells us in Atheism: The Case Against God: “In order to understand the nature of a philosophical conflict one must grasp the fundamental differences that give rise to the conflict.” True enough. Applied to debates between atheism and Christianity he identifies what it is: “The conflict between Christian theism and atheism is fundamentally a conflict between faith and reason. This, in epistemological terms, is the essence of the controversy. Reason and faith are opposites, two mutually exclusive terms: there is no reconciliation or common ground. Faith is belief without, or in spite of, reason.” (pp. 96-98) As such, “For the atheist, to embrace faith is to abandon reason.” (p. 100)

Does Morality Come From God?

Written by J. M. Green for DC:

Since becoming an atheist, one of things that I hear over and over from Christians is that I now have no basis for morality because morality only comes from their god and their Bible. They claim ownership of true, unchanging morality and yet the Bible they revere sends conflicting messages. Consider these examples:

Debating With Christians is Like Abbott & Costello's "Who's On First"

This is funny!

Is the Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Better Than Mohammed's Miracles?

No. All Christians have is ancient testimony which is the same evidence as those who claim Mohammed flew through the night, or that Balaam's ass talked, or that Jonah was swallowed by a great mythical fish, or that an axehead floated, or that a pillar of fire directed the Israelites by night, or that the Red Sea parted, or that the pool of Siloam healed people, and so on. But ancient testimony ain't worth *shit* when it comes to any of these things. It doesn't matter how believers dress them up either. ;-)

Am I Over-Shooting My Target Audience?

After polling my readers it looks like I'm over-shooting my target audience, or something. My target audience is the college student, the educated person in the pew, the Pastor, and even the Bible College instructor. I try to bring the arguments of the scholars down to their level.

But it looks like I have the attention of the scholars too. ;-)

William Lane Craig: Master Debater?

Hey, listen in at about 2:45. ;-)

Even a Child Can Do It!

Let’s say a recognized expert on cats claims one of them talked. People do not have to be experts in cats to say they need to see the evidence. Nor do any of us need a theory of knowledge to doubt it. But if you believed the cat talked you would. You'd have to come up with a whole lot of intellectual gymnastics in order to make such a claim seem respectable to others. Lesson: It does not require understanding a whole lot of epistemology or sophisticated theology to doubt the existence of God either. In fact, even a child can do it.

Dr. Matt McCormick On "Bias and Heuristics in Religious Thinking"

Quote of the Day, by articulett

The bible is history? So a snake really talked? And god turned a woman into a pillar of salt? And appeared as a burning bush? And carved commandments on breakable stones? And sent "she-bears" to maul 42 kids for calling a guy bald? (defying the laws of the physical universe) And this god magically impregnated a virgin to become his own son? And temporarily died? And then became a sort of zombie? And then whisked off to heaven? And now sits in judgement of everyone in trinity fashion (whatever that means)? Really? Who knew? Or is just some of that historical? How do you know which magic is the "true woo"? If you don't believe that the bible is history does the god of the bible punish you for all eternity?

Christians Are Slowly Deconverting

Hi John, I've been an atheist for over one year now, and both your books were a major influence to deconvert me from Christianity, WIBA and The Christian Delusion. I am also a regular reader of your blog, so thanks a million for helping to open my eyes, the truth has set me free! Keep up the good work. -- David Sapo via email, with permission.

Recommendations of This Blog From Opposite Sides of the Fence

EricRC is Ph.D. student majoring in philosophy, and I take it a Roman Catholic (hence RC). He's one of the most intelligent and respectful commenters to hang out in these halls, that is, unless he perceives utter ignorance or is personally attacked, which sounds just like me. As a Christian intellectual he recommends my work on this blog:

Quote of the Day, by gooddogbaddog01

Christians think they are being rational and logical. But when they try to rationalize their faith based on evidence, they tend to resort to what is "possible", and then claim that they have won the argument because something is merely "posslble". Short of providing real evidence for the existence of the Christian God, they dive into philosophy, in order to somehow logically prove the necessity of the existence of god. To me, however this is no different than mental gymnastics, resulting in endless rabbit trails around epistemology, metaphysics and ontology. It is, simply, making stuff up.

Quote of the Day, by extian

Almost everything in the Bible reads like a product of its time and culture. The ancient Israelites just borrowed their gods from the Canaanites (El, Asheroth, and Baal all used to be on the same team), then made El the primary (and later, only) god, merged him with another god, Yahweh, and developed an entire religious and ritualistic system around these plagiarizations. Centuries later, the gospel writers drew on these same OT fabrications while borrowing extensively from their time and culture, incorporating god-man resurrection stories (i.e. Romulus) to create the Jesus narrative. If you start your epistemology with the Bible, you've built your foundation on falsehoods. Ignorance is bliss. Willful ignorance is faith.

The Jews Didn't Believe So Why Should We?

The Jews of Jesus’ day believed in Yahweh and that he performed miracles, and they knew their Old Testament prophecies, and yet the overwhelming majority of them did not believe Jesus was raised from the dead by Yahweh. The most plausible estimate of the first-century Jewish population comes from a census of the Roman Empire during the reign of Claudius (48 CE) that counted nearly 7 million Jews. If we add in the Jews outside the Roman Empire in places like Babylon, the total first century Jewish population could have been 8 million. It’s estimated that there may have been as many as 2.5 million Jews in Palestine. By contrast, as Catholic New Testament scholar David C. Sim argues, “Throughout the first century the total number of Jews in the Christian movement probably never exceeded 1,000 and by the end of the century the Christian church was largely Gentile.” (Link) Since the Jews didn't believe why should we? No really. Why should we?

Quote of the Day, by AdamHazzard

Had Constantine established some religion other than Christianity -- say, Mithraism -- we would no doubt be celebrating the Tauroctony every spring and the birth of Mithras at the winter solstice. And if Mithraic scholars were to unearth copies of Mark or Luke from the Judean desert, the scrolls would be treated as cultic mystery stories of purely historical interest. Religion is as contingent and mutable as any other human cultural invention.

Christians SHOULD be Ashamed of the Gospel

There are a lot of Christians who know me when I was a believer, a college/seminary student, a teacher, and a minister in several churches. So when they find this site they have different reactions. Some of them send me spam Jesus emails. One guy has sent them several times a week for months, even though I have told him to stop and even though I have not even acknowledged them for months. Many of these believers think they can reach me because we have a special connection in the past. Others just like engaging me. My best friend from Seminary has started to comment here. His name is Gary and he's a great guy. He goes by "unashamedofthegospel," and like me, he was also trained as an apologist under James D. Strauss. Strauss is an amazing man, the one I credit with my anti-apologetical approach, but in reverse. To see what I mean read the first few paragraphs of my essay for the Secular Web, Why I Am Not a Christian, where I said:

Articulett on the OTF

Do you think someone of another faith-- say a Mormon-- could look at their faith the way you (an outsider) would and still maintain that faith? Or would they not really be seeing it as the outsider does? What would it take for you to accept their faith? Do you have that kind of evidence for your own supernatural beliefs? Do you think the reincarnationist has the kind of evidence you'd require to believe in reincarnation? Do you think you should have the same kind of evidence to believe whatever you believe happens after death that you'd require to believe in reincarnation?

Professor Matt McCormick's Definition of Faith

I've been discussing the reasonableness of faith lately ending here. Having read through the uncorrected advance reading copy of Dr. Matt McCormick's book, Atheism and the Case Against Christ, he has a chapter on faith that agrees with me (or should I say I agree with him).

On Definitions of Faith and Arguments Against It

Skeptics define "faith" differently than believers. It's hard to find a middle ground between us because we see faith differently. Here are a few skeptical definitions of faith:

WIBA Will Be Available in Four Weeks

I just received word that my extensively revised book, Why I Became an Atheist, was sent off to be printed today. It'll be available in four weeks. You can pre-order it off Amazon.com. This is my magnum opus. If you get only one of my books then get this one. Yes, there will be a Kindle or ebook version of it coming out, but when I don't know.

A Reasonable Faith is an Oxymoron

This is what I think. I’ve previously argued for this in a different way when I quipped, Faith is an Irrational Leap Over the Probabilities.

Jerry Coyne on the "Sophisticated Theology" of Plantinga

While Coyne is attempting to deal with so-called "Sophisticated Theology," something the New Atheists don't do, even he doesn't get it. Plantinga is not trying to prove God, and the essay he's criticizing is from Plantinga's old school version. For a better critique read Jaco Gericke's Fundamentalism on Stilts. Yet Coyne is right when he says:

To paraphrase Orwell, one has to be a theologian to believe things like this: no ordinary man could be such a fool...It is apologetics: the practice of making stuff up post facto to buttress what you already know must be true. And, at bottom—and despite all the intellectual gymnastics of Dr. Plantinga—it all comes down to revelation, to what a particular group of people happens to find amenable as a "basic belief."

Quote of the Day, by articulett

It's not that science has ever been wrong... it's that religion has never been right. Science has an error correcting mechanism; faith does not. That's why there is one science-- and it's the same for everybody no matter what they believe.

Biola University is “fundamentally at odds with the entire direction of modern biology.”

This spring semester the Center for Christian Thought opens at California’s Biola University. The center is the result of a $3 million John Templeton Foundation Award. But based on the doctrinal statement of Biola, this sectarian institution is "fundamentally at odds with the entire direction of modern biology,” so notes Thomas Albert Howard and Karl W. Giberson. Why? Because "Common ancestry today is, quite simply, as well-established in biology as the motion of the earth about the sun is in astronomy. To attempt to exclude faculty who might hold this view is tantamount to closing one's eyes in the face of an encyclopedia of genetic information." Link. Their Apologetics Faculty includes:

Faith is an Irrational Leap Over the Probabilities

You can quote me on this. Probability is all that matters. Faith is irrational. I want to drive this point into the ground once and for all.

The problem is that practically nothing is certain. So the word "faith" is used to describe any conclusion of ours that leaves room for doubt. Is it possible I'm dreaming right now? I suppose that's an extremely remote possibility. Is it possible a material world does not exist? I suppose that's an extremely remote possibility too. Is it possible a good omnipotent God exists given the world-wide massive and ubiquitous suffering in it? Again, I suppose that's an extremely remote possibility.

So what? Probability is all that matters. Accepting some conclusion because it's merely possible is irrational. We should never ever do that.