Peter Boghossian, "Faith Based Belief Processes Are Unreliable"

Jesus, the Easter Bunny, and Other Delusions: Just Say No! from Philosophy News on Vimeo

This is a must see video! You can skip to 9:00 to hear Dr. Boghossian's talk if you wish. I love his passion! I love what he said about delusions at the 26:00 mark: "We are forced to conclude that a tremendous number of people are delusional. There is no other conclusion one can draw..." At 33:00 he utilizes the Outsider Test for Faith! And at 38:30 he says, "The most charitable thing we can say about faith is that it's likely to be false." I honestly think that sometime in the future there won't be such a thing as an informed Christian, especially an informed Evangelical. An informed Christian will become an oxymoron. In fact, it's already here.

The Final Outline of My Book On the Outsider Test for Faith

See what you think:

"The less evidence you have...the more faith you need"

I have argued that faith is a leap over the probabilities. And I have been told this is nonsense by Christian apologists from David Marshall to Randal Rauser and others. They have said this is a gross mischaracterization of their Christian faith. Really? Then maybe they can explain why Norman L. Geisler (arguably the biggest name in Christian apologetics) and co-writer Frank Turek say in their book, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist,"The less evidence you have for your position, the more faith you need to believe it (and vice versa). Faith covers a gap in knowledge." (p. 26) My question is was and always be, what does faith add to the probabilities? As far as I can tell leaping that gap is irrational. [Click on the tag "Faith" below to see other posts on faith].

Johnathan Pearce's Book "The Little Book of Unholy Questions"

Johnathan comments here as Johnnyp76. While I haven't yet read the book it's getting some good reviews. Check out The Little Book of Unholy Questions.While you're at it check out his previous book, Free Will?: An Investigation Into Whether We Have Free Will.One reviewer of the "Free Will" book says it's "Better than Sam Harris' book on Free Will."

On Easter 1973 I Became a Christian

That was thirty-nine years ago. 39 YEARS AGO! I have decided that unless something drastically happens to change my mind, this time next year I will quit what I'm doing. I only have one life. I think forty years spent on a delusion will have been enough. First I'll have to find something else to do that will annoy people, but what it is I haven't figured out yet. ;-)

Quote of the Day, by Sir_Russ

God isn't the 300 people who died in the plane crash. No, no, no. God is the one person who survived it. God is that unlikely event.

God isn't the death, mayhem, destruction and chaos of the tornado. No, no, no. God is the miracle puppy which lived through it.

God isn't the hundreds of US children who die every year due to medical neglect by their Christian Science parents. No, no, no. God is the one who may have suffered needlessly, but didn't die.

Christian faith is blindness to manifest horror in favor of comfort. Christian faith is picking over a cataclysm looking for anything to indulge their insatiable lust for feeling good. Link

Statistics On the Decline of Religion in England

This paper from the Equality and Human Rights Commission has some interesting statistics on the decline of religion in England. Table 7, for example, shows that 55.3% of respondents age 18-25 claim "no religion", while only 22.1% of respondents age 65+ claim "no religion" (a change of roughly 6% per decade of age). And, while someone might argue that people simply become more religious as they get older, the declining rates of religiousness and church attendance over the past few decades says that it's a real decline -- 34.4% of all respondents in 1985 claimed no religion, while 43.4% of all respondents in 2008 claimed no religion (a change of roughly 4% per decade). Table 11 also has some interesting numbers on the percentage of people in 1990 and 2008 who "believe and always have" (declining), "believe and didn't before" (a small percent), "don't believe and did before" (increasing), "don't believe and never have" (increasing). The numbers show that people are three times as likely to say that they "don't believe and did before" than they are to say that they "believe, but didn't before". --Hat Tip to Andrew Fakemam for this.

What Evidence Shows Us Atheism is Winning?

Is it? Pastor Timothy Keller argues in his book The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism that what we've seen since the rise of the so-called New Atheists are growing numbers of people among both Christians and atheists. He argues that people in the middle are being forced to choose between us so there are fewer nominal non-committal milquetoast people in the middle. So what evidence shows you that atheism is winning, really winning, in America today? Let's include anecdotal and personal evidence just for shits and giggles. ;-)

Answering Objections to the OTF

I'm working on answering objections to the Outsider Test for Faith and was wondering if anyone can do better than I have done. Here are Christian apologist Norman Geisler's objections:

1) “If ‘most of us most of the time come to our beliefs for a variety of reasons having little to do with empirical evidence and logical reasoning,’ then can we not assume that Loftus came to his atheistic views the same way?”

2) “Further, if one should have the presumption of skepticism toward any belief system, especially his own, then why should Loftus not have the presumption of skepticism toward his own atheistic beliefs? The truth is that the outsider test is self-defeating since by it every agnostic should be agnostic about his own agnosticism and every skeptic would be skeptical of his own skepticism.”

3) "One form of the outsider argument leads Loftus to claim ‘believers are truly atheists with regard to all other religions but their own. Atheists just reject one more religion.” But can’t theists use the same basic argument and reject atheism. In brief, atheists are unbelievers with regard to all beliefs other than their own. Why don’t they just become unbelievers with regard to one more belief (namely, their atheism)?”

4) “Further, Loftus’ ‘outsider test' is contrary to common sense. By it we could eliminate the credibility of any holocaust survivor’s testimony because he was an 'insider.' But who better would know what happened than someone who went through it. Likewise, by this odd test one could deny his own self-existence since from an outsiders view (which he should take according to the test) his existence could be doubted or denied as an illusion. But what is more obvious and self-evident than one’s own existence?"

I've numbered them so when you respond you can refer to these separate objections. I'm interested in listening to the debate.

A List of Things Christians Have Been Against

This is interesting from the hand of Ed Babinski.

Science Education is No Guarantee of Skepticism

That's Right.

Playing God: The Loving Psychopath

The Quest to Keep Jesus Relevant

[Written by Joe Holman]

The next time you drive around the historic part of your neighborhood, slow down just enough to get a look at the old-time churches. They’re big and old, especially old. Hell, some of them are so old that if you had the right forensic testing kit, you might genetically match the dried tears of a hand-and-foot slave as he waited on his master, listening to the “nonsense” from the pulpit about some new movement called Abolition. How time flies!

"Do people with no faith have to take the test?"

Victor Reppert asked this, yet another spin on whether atheists should have to take the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF). But I want people to see the OTF as a solution to an incredible amount of religious diversity. This is a problem that needs a solution, you see. No other methods have worked before. The goal is to offer a fair test to find out which religion is true if there is one, and that means such a test should leave room for the possibility that no religion is true. If nothing else then, the OTF is a test for religion precisely because of religious diversity. If people cannot find solutions to problems within a business they hire solution specialists who offer ways to solve it. Mediators find ways to bring people together by offering ways they can see their differences in a better light. That's what the OTF does.

The Introduction to "The Outsider Test for Faith"

I'm progressing on my new book well enough to write my introduction to it. Here it is below:

What About Atheist Diversity?

As I'm writing my book on the Outsider Test for Faith let me put a question to my readers. It concerns the geographical distribution of atheism around the world.

Antony Flew's Presumption of Atheism and the OTF

Anthony Flew argued that believers in God have the burden of proof similar to the presumption of innocence found in our court systems. Given the extraordinary claims of religion and the fact of religious diversity the burden of proof is on the believer, just as it’s on the prosecutor in court room proceedings. [In God, Freedom, and Immortality: A Critical Analysis (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1984), which is an updated version found previously in The Presumption of Atheism (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1976)]

More Criticisms From Dr. Reppert on the OTF

I do appreciate his relentless criticisms of my Outsider Test for Faith (OTF), even if he's trying to save his faith from refutation. See here. My comments are there as well. ;-)

More On Being Passionately Self-Promoting in an Oddly Humble Way

Dinesh D'Souza's new book is out, Godforsaken: Bad Things Happen. Is there a God who cares? Yes. Here's proof.In it he does not mention my arguments against a good omnipotent God, even though he has read my book Why I Became an Atheist, and said to me that it contained some things he "hadn't considered before." David Wood's chapter on the problem of evil in Evidence for God: 50 Arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Science,likewise ignores my work. I debated them both so they know of it. It's hard for me not to conclude that they are ignoring it because they cannot answer my arguments. ;-)

On Being Passionately Self-Promoting in an Oddly Humble Way

Since David Marshall describes me as "being passionately self-promoting in an oddly humble way," I thought I wouldn't disappoint him by doing it again. ;-) One thing I've noticed is that people are reading my anthologies The Christian Delusion (TCD) and The End of Christianity (TEC) more than my magnum opus Why I Became an Atheist (WIBA), probably because of the wonderful blurbs and contributors. So to help remedy this let me offer just three blurbs about WIBA:

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. ;-)