Yahweh and the Problem of Evil--Why Yahweh is an Egotistical, Evil, Sadistic, Masochistic God

Yahweh is said by Christians to have certain attributes such as being all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful, but the attributes of the god Yahweh, as depicted in the Bible, present a god that is not only supposedly loving--but also angry, jealous, vengeful, and just plain evil. According to Christians, Yahweh is an all-powerful, all good, all knowing god--which is inconsistent with a world of suffering--and this is known as the Problem of Evil. The dilemma for Christians is that if Yahweh is all powerful and all knowing, he could accomplish any of his tasks without the need for suffering--or he would not be all powerful and all knowing. If he was all good, he would want to create a world without any pain and suffering, since it would be within his power and knowledge to do so. But clearly we have pain and suffering. Therefore, Yahweh is not all knowing, all good, or all powerful.

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Apr-Jun 2012 Index

This is the index of posts from April to June 2012. It is a work in progress, as it takes an inordinate amount of time to do. Hopefully, after a while, the whole backlog of DC's catalogue, so to speak, will be much easier to peruse.

One suggestion would be to use 'ctrl+f' (the find shortcut) to search for a term. For example, if you wanted to find posts on the 'Kalam' or 'Reformed Epistemology', you could press ctrl+f and put 'kalam' or 'reformed' into the box and it will highlight the terms of the page so you can easily see the posts on this and other index pages with relevant terms that you might be researching. Alternatively, use the search bar in the sidebar.

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How To Self-Destruct As a Movement

I write this as an attempt to open up a real dialogue among atheists with no axe to grind (as best as possible). It's about self-destructing as a movement. Is there any danger the atheist movement in general can self-destruct? No, not a chance. Over-all there is no danger for atheism as a whole since atheists have gained and are gaining too many victories. I think however that some atheist communities can do so, yes.

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King David and Jesus: The Bible’s Mythic Super Heroes

A decade ago, I read Steven McKenzie’s King David: A Biography(Oxford University Press, 2002). What I soon realized was that the Bible creates propaganda to sell faith in its God, especially though famous characters created to promote belief in Israelite monotheism; be they Abraham, Moses, David or Jesus. These embellished Super Heroes function like our comic book (now in movies) Super Heroes such as Superman, Batman and Spiderman battling the forces of evil for a world of good. But these idealized figures simply function to serve our fantasies in a world where reality is fraught with suffering and injustice

Steven McKenzie continues his discussion of the quest for any Historical King David (a highly idealized king, but a man who was nothing short of a ruthless criminal) Here.

The Contradictory And Chaotic Gospel Lies Used to Prove the Resurrection

The Gospels can’t even get their post-resurrection stories straight! In fact, they have used lies to cover earlier lies in selling Christianity. (I view both telemarketers and the Gospel writers driven by the same ideology: Sell the product at any cost. Lies are totally OK if it creates a sell / belief!)
Here are a few of the many lies the post-resurrection Gospel stories use:

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William Lane Craig and the Kalam Cosmological Argument (#1)

Recently, William Lane Craig has produced a video, based on an essay in a book he and Paul Copan have edited this year (“Come Let Us Reason: New Essays in Christian Apologetics”) entitled “Terrible objections to the Kalam Cosmological Argument”. I am yet to read the essay, but I must assume it to broadly follow the line of his video of the lecture “Worst objections to the Kalam Cosmological Argument”.

I have a mild obsession with the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA) and am potentially one of the internet infidels to which he derogatorily refers in his introduction. What I found in his exposition of these “worst” arguments is that the talk was a fantastic array of straw men, ad hominem, mischaracterisation of cogent arguments, and poor reasoning. I will tell you for why.

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A Response to Justin Griffith a Freethought Blogger

You can read our respectful exchange right here. My response follows:

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What is the Mission Statement of Freethought Blogs (FtB)?

Before reading any further this present post was prompted by responses to my post In Defense of DJ Grothe. I'm not picking a fight with the FtB but I would really like to know what the mission statement of the mammoth skeptical Freethought Blog is. What unites them? What is it? Most organizations have a mission statement. I think the FtB's should come together to produce one. I would really be interested beyond the fact that they are non-believers. I'm not talking about what they agree about, since they are united about non-belief and the need for diversity, but rather what their agendas are, their goals for being there. However, my guess is that if they produced one it would be so broad of a statement that it would end up being equivalent to something like this:

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Elaine Pagels’ The Book of Revelation

The Book of Revelation, the final book of the New Testament, has some of the most dramatic and frightening language in the Bible. In her new book Revelations: Visions, Prophecy and Politics in the Book of Revelation, Elaine Pagels places the Book of Revelation in its historical context and explores where the book's apocalyptic vision of the end of the world comes from. Listen on NPR

Elaine Pagels is Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion at Princeton University and has been called one of the world's most important writers and thinkers on religion and history. She won the National Book Award for her book The Gnostic Gospels. She is also the author of Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas.
Harry McCall

Jesus the Homosexual: Evidence From the Gospels

Jesus is created / redacted in each of the Gospel author’s mind to give credence to their own story of Jesus which – for them – would have trouble standing on its own merits. Thus in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is the New Moses and his life is set in a Roman Palestine context that mimics Israel in Egypt complete with the killing of the toddlers to Jesus even being taken down to Egypt by his family so – like Moses and the Israelites – Jesus comes out of Egypt.

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How are we doing and what do you want?

So John is taking a rest and we wish him very well. He has left you, wisely or not, in our hands (by and large). As any good organisation knows, feedback is vital to providing a great service that people want and which is useful. I don't want to get all corporate on you, but this will hopefully be a useful exercise for us all.

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Why Christianity has Contributed to the Development of the Porn Industry

For the most part, Christians have always felt uncomfortable with their sexuality. In this post, I will explain why this is so, and why the attitude Christian society has towards the human body and human sexuality has led to sex being viewed as something "dirty," and that the human body itself is "filthy."
The Christian view that humans are "born sinners" and that the body is filthy, and sex is "dirty" then leads people to act on their so-called "sinful nature"--which has inevitably contributed to the development of the porn industry.

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Why was Jesus' tomb not venerated?

Thinking about the tomb, in the context of the last post, it is incredibly suspect that the place of the greatest spiritual and religious significance in the whole world seems not to have been venerated at least not until the 4th century CE onwards). This then prompts these questions:

1) Was Jesus actually buried in a tomb?
2) Was the position of the tomb unknown?

And these sorts of questions lead onto others, such as

3) Did the death of Jesus actually happen as reported?
4) Did the resurrection take place?

So let us look at the veneration of the tomb, or lack thereof.

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My New Secular Student Alliance Speakers Bureau Page

Link. My offer only applies to NEW speaking requests and it starts today. I only ask for expenses. There should be no good reason why secular groups around the country wouldn't take advantage of this. I'll do it as my schedule permits.

Are the Differences Between the Christianities Insignificant?

Here at John Loftus' blog Debunking Christianity it's been emphasized many times by blog post authors and commenters alike that there exists no such thing as a Christianity, there being instead many Christianities. In fact there are so many Christianities with so many differences between them that the word "Christian" is useless, even for the purposes of rough outline, as a guide to what someone self-identifying as Christian thinks or believes about their own religion. This includes what they believe about gods, heaven, hell, the Bible, prayer, and miracles. In response Christians have maintained that of course there is variation in belief among the various Christian groups, but the differences are insignificant, subtle alternative interpretations. In this post I'm going to share with you an essay from Harry T. Cook which demonstrates that the differences between those calling themselves Christian are anything but insignificant.

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Matthew and the guards at the tomb

In this post, I am going to look at the resurrection account given by Matthew, in particular his addition found in no other Gospel account, that there were guards stationed at the tomb.

According to Matthew, the chief priests were worried that the disciples might steal Jesus’ body to fake a resurrection, so they went to Pilate and got permission to post a guard on the tomb. When Jesus rose from the dead, the guards reported it to the priests, and the priests bribed them to claim that disciples stole the body while they were asleep. Matthew claims that “to this day” Jews report the body as stolen (as opposed to resurrected).

So what is really going on here? This post will investigate the historicity of this claim and conclude that the guards at the tomb, as according to Matthew, were ahistorical.

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In Defense of DJ Grothe

Greg Laden, a Freethought Blogger, is calling for the resignation of DJ Grothe who is the President of the James Randi Foundation (JREF) which hosts The Amazing Meeting (TAM) every year. A few other Freethought Bloggers have cooperatively written posts that criticize him. Do you ever wonder why several Freethought Bloggers write on the same topic from time to time? It's because they all share an email where they talk among themselves and ask other Bloggers to chime in. As far as I can tell, what provoked this debate was a post by Ashley Miller after the Women in Secularism Conference, where she wrote:

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This is wrong on so many levels

i had to post this. Hat tip to B__e for this one. It makes me feel sick. It is really quite wrong.

God loves abortion!

Or it is necessary for foetuses to die for a greater good. Well that's certainly one of the conclusions that must come from the statistics for natural, spontaneous abortions, or miscarriages; abortions that God has the power to stop, and seemingly designed in to the system in the first place in actualising this biological world.

The statistics for miscarriages are notoriously difficult to assess completely accurately. This is mainly due to the fact that many miscarriages go unreported due to simply not even being known by the mother. 

So why am I writing about this? Well because, statistically, it means that anywhere up to 75% of all pregnancies, of all fertilised eggs, die. This is a staggering number of pregnancy losses (for example, it is estimated that 3 out of 4 eggs that are fertilized do not fuse their DNA correctly, and therefore either do not attempt to implant or fail at implantation - see attached image taken from here). Of course, being exact on these numbers is rather academic. Whether it be 50 million a year in the US or 25 million is irrelevant since both numbers are ridiculously high!

The reason for talking about this is twofold. Firstly, for people who critique abortion on religious grounds, it makes somewhat of a mockery of their arguments. Secondly, again from a religious perspective, it does make God look a little callous. Nay, brutal and unloving.

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The Ledge - why aren't there more atheistic films?

So I just received the blu-ray for The Ledge whose description is below. It is probably one of the first films to openly tackle the philosophy of religion and I am looking forward to watching it. However, it got me thinking, what atheistic films are there out there, and why aren't there more films that deal directly with these sorts of issues.

I suppose, in essence, the answer to that could be quite simple - because they don't command decent enough incomes; because the negative press they would get from the Bible Belt might damage the film's chances of making good money, and so on. Indeed, the film (based on a Carl Sagan book) Contact, was unable to remain faithful to Sagan in exploring the science vs religion debate by softening the debate and changing the ending (apparently - I have not seen it). The superb The Invention of Lying by Ricky Gervais had some extraordinarily good scenes (the 10 Commandments scene is one of my favourite all-time scenes) and I would hail it as the first openly atheistic film (and the internet infidels list these as atheistic films). Many others probably have covert undercurrents of exploring such subject matter, but disguise the subtext so as to appeal to the largest audience possible.

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Providence Road Baptist Church, N.C. Pastor Charles Worley’s Sermon on Gays and Lesbians

Separation of Church and State . . . Yea, Right!

Yahweh is Proven to be a Pernicious, Lofty, and Fickle God

This is an excerpt from a book that we have written which is near completion, and was inspired by a heated online conversation we had with a well known Christian. In this excerpt, it will be proven that Yahweh, touted as the “ultimate and only true god,” is nothing short of a fickle, and pernicious god, with an added air of loftiness about him when it concerns the subjects of knowledge and wisdom. To prove this, I can show where in the Bible Yahweh views wisdom as being good, and also views it as being bad.

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Who Says Our Efforts Aren't Worth it?

Here's another email I received that says otherwise:

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Christianity and homosexuality - the inconsistencies of a Christian

I am writing a post in reaction to something about which I was talking with my Christian friend (let’s call him Colin). We were talking about homosexuality and his approach to it given his Christian background. Some points were interesting and some I fundamentally disagreed with. Here are his views:

• As according to the Bible, homosexuality is wrong.
• This morality is grounded in God.
• He is not homophobic and detests that label as it automatically halts any further informed discussion.
• People can have genetic or environmental variables which help to influence a persons likelihood to homosexuality.
• However, to commit to a homosexual act is an act of free will, and thus falls within the moral sphere.
• As a result, it is not necessarily the disposition of being homosexual which is wrong, but the decision to act upon it.
• He has no ‘problem’ with homosexuals and has / has had homosexual friends.

Hopefully I am not building up a straw man of his position, but it does demand some serious unpicking.
Obviously, as a determinist, this is all moot to me, but let me at least give this a good seeing to, so to speak.
To start, this clearly begs the question as to the authenticity of the truth claim of the bible. Can we trust biblical accounts? If not, which ones do we trust and which ones do we accept as being potentially errant? Let us look at the various mentions homosexuality gets:

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Bible Believing Fundamentalist Dr. Peter Ruckman, PhD Lectures on the Bible

If Dr. Ruckman makes more sense than his enemies (as noted at end of the video), it’s only because his enemies are Christians! (Even atheists can learn something about the Bible and Christianity with Dr. Ruckman!) .

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Hell (literally) makes no sense

In response to John's post, a bit tongue in cheek, I thought I'd post a video I did some time ago about the incoherency of hell. See what you think.

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I Have Been to Hell and Back, Literally!

This is true. I have been to hell, literally! Want to see?

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Welcome to the World of Christianity

As a Christian, you are now following THE supreme God who created the universe. Here are the absolute truths that make your God special:

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Evolution as part of a necessary mechanism (and putting Creationism to bed)

We have had a resurgence in discussing evolution recently, thanks in no small part to the Creationist mental contortions of Creationbabble over on this thread. what this seems to show, to me at any rate, is that Creationists, and any shade of person who disbelieves the theory of evolution, simply does not understand the philosophy behind it.

In short, they just don't get it. Let me explain.

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Jesus as a Jewish Religious Bigot

The most harsh and racially charged position Jesus takes is in his love and protection of the faith of his nation Israel built on the exclusive covenant to the Jews have by its god Yahweh.

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Why I HATE Christianity

I recently wrote a post on my blog explaining why I HATE Christianity which received over 3500 hits in one day, so I thought I would also submit it to DC to gauge the reaction here. I have put some of the Christian responses, and my counters at the bottom of the post. Enjoy!

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Richard Carrier exposes New Testament problems

Here is a video, a couple of years old now, which provides some excellent questions. I am not a Jesus mythicist, but really rate the thought-provoking nature of this video. It is Carrier at his best. Much of it needs savouring and following up with detailed research and analysis.

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From a God in a Box to the Universal Sky God: Eternal Blessing and Suffering for All

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God is a consequentialist part 2 - the Old Testament inconsistencies

So now having exposed in the last post how God values moral actions, let me look into internal evidence from the Bible which shows that God espouses a moral absolutist code, and yet proceeds to contradict that ruling somewhat hypocritically in his actions.

Let me recap. By seeing moral value in the greater good that supposedly (this is just an assertion from theists to explain away the Problem of Evil) comes about from a moral action, God is deriving the moral value of that action not from any intrinsic character, but from the context; from the consequences. For example, the suffering and death of Jesus is excused from the greater good this supposedly entails (the confusing notion of atonement) and the 2004 tsunami killing 230,000 people and millions of other organisms is explained as morally good in the consequences which this brings about. We do not know what these consequences are since God decides it is a good idea not to tell us, but suffice it to say that we must (as theists claim) understand that this is part of God’s greater plan, mysterious as it is. Since God is morally perfect, the plan must also be morally perfect. Thus any action or omission (inaction, or choice not to act) is defined as being morally perfect. Therefore, the tsunami was both designed tectonically by God in actualising the physics of this universe, and allowed to happen by God choosing not to intervene and stop it due to some greater good which we struggle to fathom. As a result, we are assured (by theistic experts with no small dollop of question begging) that here is a greater good, and subsequently, as I have surmised, the good of such an action or omission is derived by the consequences.

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Why John 3:16 is a Lie in Its Biblical Context

Compare this famous evangelical Gospel tract verse as cited in the late Gospel of John with both the older Bible traditions themselves as well as the New Testament itself.

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In Defense of the Non-Ethics of Christianity

In this post, I am going to build upon one of my previous posts, namely, The Non-Ethics of Christianity, in order to further illustrate how the Pauline version of Christianity that has been adopted by the majority of Christians in our society (and many non-Christians as well) leads to moral laxity. I will use two examples of Christians who purport to undermine my case, but who in fact, support my case, and illustrate why the Pauline version of Christianity leads to moral laxity.

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God is a consequentialist

In this post I will be starting to lay our what my idea of the morality of God is. Many theists, such as William Lane Craig, claim that God is the grounding of objective morality. Either that, or that God is the even less defensible basis of an absolute moral code. I will look at both of these issues.

Let me lay out some groundwork about morality. One popular secular value system for morality is called consequentialism. This broadly states that the moral value of an act is derived from the consequences which the act brings about rather than the intrinsic moral value of the act itself.

Immanuel Kant, on the other hand, was a deontologist. Deontologists believe that the morality of an action is intrinsic and is valued on how well it adheres to objective moral rules. One of the classic criticisms to this position is known as the Inquiring Murderer thought experiment and is as follows. If a murderer came to your house and asked you where his prey was, and you knew, you would be obliged to tell the murderer and thus facilitate the death since there is a moral worth in not lying. Deontologists often claim that you cannot use people for a means to an end, they are the end in themselves. Thus, in the trolley experiment, where changing the tracks will cause the death of one person and not five, it is morally bad to change the track to save five, thus allowing the one to die since you would be using the death of one person to obtain the life of five others.You would be using the one person as a means to an end.

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We are not the 'Center of all Things'

The Thinking Atheist has created a well-produced video here. It gives a brief synopsis of humanity and shows us to be, in homage to Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, rather insignificant on a cosmic scale. The sun no longer revolves around us. Lightning is longer the wrath of the gods. Flood myths are that. Myths.

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Bullshit! Case In Point, Joel Watts

Joel is a high ranked Biblioblogger, just under DC in hits. I didn't quit because I failed. I succeeded. I didn't quit because no one listened to me. They did, on both sides of the fence. And I'm not gone. I am just done wasting large chunks of my time here. I said I might post something from time to time too. Furthermore, Christianity has emphatically not survived the attacks of the skeptics. Joel is so ignorant he doesn't even realize his Christianity is different than the Christianities of the past because of the attacks of the skeptics. It's so different he would be burned at the stake for heresy a few centuries ago. And I am NOT coming back to the faith. I eschew faith. Here is a Master's level student majoring in the exegesis (or the interpretation) of Mark's gospel. Where the hell are his exegesis skills? The same ones required to exegete a Biblical text are required when interpreting a blog post from me. Sheesh. If anything I quit because I'm tired of butting my head against the wall of stupidity. If anything I'm not going to play nice anymore. This is just a mundane example of what I dealt with daily for years. It's idiocy. And he thinks he can be objective about his faith? Bullshit!

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Yahweh Condones Thievery--Well, Only in Certain Cases...;)

According to Christians it's ok to "steal" as long as it is from an oppressor, and as long as you are putting it to "better use." This, according to Bill Pratt over at "Tough Questions Answered." where he implies there are "conditions" to the commandment of "Thou Shall Not Steal." For the sake of argument, let's assume that Bill Pratt is correct.

It has been shown (by myself and many others) that the Bible has many contradictions in it, and Bill's example is just one more example to put in the file cabinet. Apparently, with their clever(?) use of Humpty Dumpty semantics (i.e., making words mean whatever they want them to mean) Christians now consider their thievery not to be thievery when it is put to a "better use," or, when it is thievery against a non-follower of Yahweh--which seems to be ok with him. Let me explain.

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The Non-Ethics of Christianity

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Why do normal people believe ridiculous things?

Why, indeed, do normal people believe ridiculous things? We have heard much from John Loftus about the OTF – the Outsider Test for Faith – which essentially illustrates that religion is a (geographical) accident of birth. It claims that if believers used the same critical powers they use to assess, and dismiss, other religions and their claims, then they are obliged to turn those critical faculties on their own. If they did, John would claim, then they would surely end up dismissing the claims of their own religion (this is a simplistic view of the OTF, no doubt).

What is interesting to me here is not so much the fact that people do special plead their own religion in this way (though that is incredibly interesting and important in itself), but how this comes about. I will put forward a theory which is fairly well accepted anecdotally, and see what you think. I will use an example which I experienced the other night which should show the theory with clarity.

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Okay, The Time Has Come, I'm Done

[Edited July 6, 2012: Below is my original post where I said I was done arguing with Christians and done wasting so much time here. It wasn't long before I was back, this time arguing mostly with the atheists at Freethought Blogs, which can be read here in reverse chronological order. Now I am done arguing with atheists too, that is, unless there is something egregious that needs to be addressed by me. Again, I'll stick around, comment on occasion, and update people from time to time. I have assembled a good team of bloggers here so enjoy them. Back to your regularly scheduled program.]

I have no more desire to engage Christians. They are deluded, all of them. I have never been more convinced of this than I am now. I have better things to do. I spent 39+ years of my adult life on a delusion. If I add the years of my childhood that's almost my entire life. Yet this is the only life I will ever have. It's time to move on, or at a minimum take a very long hiatus. I just finished what may be my last book, on The Outsider Test for Faith, to be published by Prometheus Books early next year. How many times do I need to kick the dead horse of Christianity? I don't think I need to say anything more. If what I have written isn't good enough then nothing is good enough for some Christians. What I intend to do is turn this blog over to a few qualified people. I'll still be a part of it and I suppose I'll post something from time to time. But I see no reason to waste large chunks of my time on this delusion anymore. [Edit: For further clarification I commented below.]

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Articulett Responds To The Question of the Origins of the Universe

Jeff Foley wrote: Let us keep it simple, then: prove or disprove the necessity of at lease one "being" which has the power of being "in and of" itself (aseity). All that exists is the result of this/these "being(s)." As a scientist and philosopher, you should be familiar with the proposition: Ex nihilo, nihil fit (from nothing, nothing comes.) I am using the proposition as a postulate; at least one "being" must "be" (has aseity.) Either something must have aseity, or things pop into existence from "thin air." Let us call this/these being(s) God. Should I assume that you do not believe in God, and instead you believe that all that exists came from "thin air"? Articulett responds:

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Why Do I Regularly Promote My Books?

I must apologize to regular readers of this blog since I promote my books often. It probably annoys a few of you. But I do so just like a mother wants to talk about her new baby. Why not? As you can see from the Blogger Pageviews we're getting 129,000 hits a month (no they're not all from me, either!). And many of these hits are new visitors to DC. So I want them to know about my book, Why I Became an Atheist, which is getting some superior reviews. Likewise for The Christian Delusion, and The End of Christianity.

The OTF is the Solution to Religious Diversity

I want people to see the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) as the solution to an incredible amount of religious diversity. This is a problem that needs a solution. No other methods have worked before. 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 goal is to offer a fair test to find out which religion is true if there is one. The OTF grants that a religious faith can be reasonable and asks believers to test their faith with it, just as it grants that non-belief is reasonable and asks non-believers to consider the religious options available. It grants the possibility that one particular religious faith could pass the test, just as it grants the possibility that none of them do. To be a fair and objective test it must allow that any conclusion could result from taking the test, and the OTF does just that. If someone disagrees he or she will not only need to find fault with it, but also propose a better test. What’s the alternative?

The skepticism required by the OTF is expressed as follows: 1) It assumes one's own religious faith has the burden of proof; 2) It adopts the methodological naturalist viewpoint where we assume there is a natural explanation for the origins of that religion, its holy books, and it’s extraordinary claims of miracles; 3) It demands sufficient evidence, scientific evidence, before concluding a religion is true; and most importantly, 4) It disallows any faith in the religion under investigation since it cannot leap over the lack of evidence by punting to faith.

Believers may object that if they assume the skepticism of the OTF it will automatically cause them to reject their religious faith, and as such, doing so unfairly presumes its own conclusion. But I think not, not if there is objective evidence, sufficient evidence, for one’s religious faith. For if it exists then even a skeptic should come to accept it. Many people are convinced every day about issues when the evidence suggests otherwise. If God created us as reasonable people then the correct religious faith should have sufficient evidence for it since that’s what reasonable people require. Otherwise, if this evidence doesn’t exist in sufficient quantities then God counter-productively created us as reasonable people who would reject the correct faith. It also means that people born as outsiders in different geographical locations will be condemned to hell (however conceived) by God merely because of when and where they were born. This doesn’t bode well for an omniscient omnibenelovent but wrathful kind of God. Even apart from such a God concept the only way to settle which religious faith is true is to rely on sufficient evidence.

On Death, Part 1 and 2

Check these two videos out.

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Evolution Occurs Faster Than You Think

Link

How Science Leads to Naturalism (At Least For Me)

We should be skeptics of extraordinary claims of miracles in the ancient past. Tell me why we shouldn't? There are too many of them in every culture, too many mythical stories.

Science must assume a natural explanation for every event. Historians must do likewise. When in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas we find that Jesus took clay, made it into birds and let them fly, how should a historian proceed? He cannot take that claim seriously.

My claim is that even if Jesus did miracles there is no way given the historical tools at our disposal to say that he did. Doing so against the tools available to us can only come by way of faith. But faith claims more than the evidence allows. So why should anyone embrace faith? If faith is a legitimate way of accessing what happened in the past then even though a historian must deny Jesus created birds out of clay anyone can simply say that he did based on faith. With faith anyone can say anything that was reported in the ancient past happened as reported. But we know better.

This is science.

So the question for a believer is that if a historian cannot conclude miracles occurred in the past then why do you believe the Bible? And if you cannot believe the Bible what would you really believe? That is, if there was no Bible, if there was no reason to believe it, what would you believe? If science produced the results I just described then you would trust science to help solve other mysteries of the universe.

Science is based on reason so it doesn't exclude philosophical analysis. Science and philosophy are bedfellows. You always see an experiment coupled with reasoning.

And if the Bible is no longer authoritative as God's word then you are free to conjecture other possible gods that might exist, like a scientific one who has been creating and then re-creating one universe after another to see how the creatures in his universes behave. I see no reason why a god could not have created this one last universe from a quantum wave fluctuation with all of the fine tuning needed to produce this universe before committing deicide. There are many possibilities like this, none of which would ever lead you to that a Triune God sent his son to die and rise from the grave. So at that point you jettison these other god hypotheses as irrelevant to properly understanding why we exist and you simply trust science to do its thing.

This is how it happened with me.

[First posted on 11/21/10].

Victor Stenger On Science and Religion

Link.