The Era of The Angry Atheist is Over!

This post in July of 2010 by Steve Zara closes with:

I propose a new strident atheism. No playing the games of theists. No concessions. No talk of evidence that can change minds, when their beliefs are deliberately placed beyond logic, beyond evidence. Let's not get taken in by the fraud of religion. Let's not play their shell-game. Link

He carries on a tradition started by Richard Dawkins himself. In February 2002, four years before his book The God Delusion was released in 2006, Dawkins called atheists to arms in a TED talk. His talk wasn’t aired until April of 2007. He makes it clear he wants a campaign much like the gays used to gain acceptability in American society. His final sentence was, "let's all stop being so damned respectful."

Grief Best Explains The Resurrection Hypothesis

Gerd Lüdemann is a scholar many of us are familiar with, having written important books like: Resurrection of Jesus; The Resurrection Of Christ; and What Really Happened to Jesus? He argues in a recent piece:

By a bold if unconscious leap, Peter entered the world of his wishes. As a result he “saw” Jesus, concluded that his Lord had risen from the dead, and by witnessing to his vision made it possible for the other disciples to “see” Jesus in the same way. It would therefore seem all but certain that the Christian church is to some extent the historical result of the disciples’ grief. Link

My Counterpart, Ibn Warraq on Islam

I've met Ibn. He's doing to Islam what I'm attempting to do with Christianity. Check out his books: Why I Am Not a Muslim; Virgins? What Virgins?; Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out; What the Koran Really Says;The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. He has a much more dangerous task than I do since Christians have been tamed by the Enlightenment. He gets the same tired responses I do too, most notably, "You just hate Allah," or "You aren't dealing with my kind of Muslim faith." Hint Folks: That's because there are too many ways to be Muslim just as there are too many ways to be Christian. What I find funny is that Christians and Orthodox Jews can like Ibn's books, just like Muslims and Orthodox Jews can like mine. So, tell us once again how Natural Theology grants a Christian anything? It's all empty rhetoric from the emperor who has no clothes on.

Professor Victor Reppert on Natural Theology

Reppert is a good guy, but as a defender of Natural Theology he just doesn't get it.

Where Was God When the Titanic Sank 100 Years Ago?

Just think, God could have foreseen this tragedy and miraculously averted the iceberg hours before the Titanic came into its path. If he had done this no one would be the wiser! He could have remained hidden if that's his goal. For believers to say God does this from time to time then his so-called "interventions" look indistinguishable from chance. In other words, there is no evidence that he intervenes at all. So having faith that God intervenes even once is exceedingly improbable.

Dr. Hector Avalos vs Keith Darrel: "Is The Bible the Source of Absolute Moral Rules for Today?"

The debate was held on April 12, 2012, at Iowa State University. Q & A below:

How To Destroy Natural Theology in One Fell Swoop

A wide diversity of theists such as found in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all argue to the existence of God using the cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments. But these arguments are mistakenly thought by them all to show their own particular God exists. For instance, I once skimmed through a massive intelligent design book that argued for Allah’s existence.

One Difference Between Science and Faith

The difference: Scientists eventually come to a consensus whereas religionists can only agree about what they've always agreed to, that supernatural beings and/or forces exist. Look at what science has accumulated by contrast:

The "Christian" God Hypothesis Vs Others

Christian, let's recap what you need to do and see if you can do it based on faith:

Is This Faith, Really?

Christians are saying I have faith because "faith is assenting to a proposition that could conceivably be false." So let's compare ordinary scientific claims to extraordinary religious claims. [Click on the chart] If I have faith then there is a gigantic difference between scientific "faith" and religious faith. At best, miracle claims are extremely improbable rare non-repeatable non-testable ones. At worst, scientific claims are extremely probable regular repeatable testable ones. Q.E.D.

Christian Apologists Are Just Plain Dumb

Dr. Michael Licona argues against the claim that accepting the resurrection of Jesus is a matter of faith in this short video. What is dumb, absolutely dumb about his explanation? It's that he automatically contrasts what he thinks with metaphysical naturalism, that's what. He doesn't contrast what he thinks with the liberal Jesus who arose spiritually, or the Jewish or Muslim denials. Scientologists deny the resurrection as do spiritualists, deists, and process theologians. But no, he thinks accepting the resurrection doesn't involve faith because he thinks science is based on faith. Such utter nonsense this is. If it's not a matter of faith then why do scientists agree so much and religionists disagree about a wide number of issues? A fact is a fact you see. If it's not a fact, then it has to be accepted by an irrational leap over the probabilities, that is, by faith. Sheesh.

Why Do Christians Love Atheist Philosopher Thomas Nagel?

The answer to this question lies in the fact that for some unexplained reason they both share an illicit grounding for knowledge. Thomas Nagel is one of the reasons I have very little respect for scientifically uninformed philosophers even if they are atheists. His forthcoming book is titled, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False.About this book we read on Amazon:

Explaining Faith So That Even David Marshall Can Understand ;-)

Written by Johnathan Pearse

David
Part of the problem is that you are extracting these issues from their real world application and in a sense making them irrelevant. Let's apply the faith vs reason to real life instances:

"Think Atheist" Interview About My Revised WIBA Book

The Think Atheist podcast was a finalist in the About.com "Reader's Choice Awards for 2011," and it's well deserved. I was recently interviewed for the program about the revised and expanded edition of my book, Why I Became an Atheist.It's Episode 53 APR 8, 2012. Enjoy.

Quote of the Day, By Yours Truly ;-)

I think the Christian delusion is harmful if for no other reason than that it weaken one's critical thinking skills. If faith is the basis for what one thinks then anything can be believed. It also adversely impacts us in polls that bolster the delusion in others, in donations to faith-based causes that are harmful, in TV, radio, and book buying habits that grant spokespersons for the delusion a bigger voice than warranted, and in voting patterns that place deluded people in power who in turn cause harm to individual people, one's particular nation, and the world at large.

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?