I know a friend who lost a loved one and her pastor came over to offer her some comfort, the same one who preaches the unsaved will be condemned to hell. It seems pastors can't get it straight. They condemn to hell the unsaved but comfort people with false hopes when it's convenient. They preach only a few will be saved but turn around and comfort their parishioners by telling them they will see all their loved ones again. Which is it?
At a recent atheist meetup, I was talking with a former Muslim, and asked him what had led to his deconversion. He said that he had come to the United States from Pakistan and was working as a taxi driver while attending college. One night, after his shift ended, he asked a fellow driver to give him a ride home. As they were talking, the other driver, in a passing remark, said:
“You know, all religions are man-made.”
There was no discussion on the topic, just that simple statement, but it stuck with him, nagging at his thinking. Approximately two years later, he rejected religion and became an atheist.
A church member where I preached when I was a believer is trying to convince me to believe again, but will not read any of my books. So I said: "You really should crack open one of my books if you really are an honest person and really want to know the truth. It might not convince you but when shopping for cars don't you want another opinion? That you don't shop for gods like you do for cars is very telling. 95% of Christians will never do this." --Two choices: Am I right or am I right? ;-)
I have pointed out over the years here at DC (and elsewhere) that the religious system of reasoning called theology is one of the most flawed and defective so-called logic systems ever devised in human history; bar none! For me, people who are immersed in this pseudo-logic system are similar to an alcoholic or drug addict who, although he or she can’t hold a job, has lost both family and friends, still dogmatically maintains they don’t have any problem at all.
When it comes to dealing with the violent, angry, bi-polar god of the Old Testament, many Christians use Jesus as their get-out-of-jail-free card.
If we atheists bring up some of the many examples of the despicable actions and character of Yahweh, as described in the Bible, we hear: “But… Jesus… grace… New Covenant...”
It’s as if sometime during the inter-testamental period, their god attended anger management sessions or got in touch with his kinder, gentler side. Perhaps an image consultant advised him that all the smiting and killing was starting to give him a bad reputation? God 2.0 (aka Jesus) is supposed to magically override the trail of carnage that the Bible tells us that Yahweh left in his wake.
I used to think the position I now hold to was philosophically naive at best, and I have taught university level philosophy classes. Tell me this, do you know the sun will rise this morning, or do you believe it will rise? I know it will rise. Could I be wrong? Yes, but I don't need certainty in order to know something. If a truth proposition has that degree of probability to it then the fact I could conceivably be wrong means nothing. I know it. What does saying "I believe" the sun will rise do? It allows Christians to claim all knowledge is based on faith. Then they slip their Trinitarian incarnational god into that same crack. If the odds for a truth claim are calculated to be 70% then what does faith add to them? 50%? 15%? If we go exclusively by the probabilities there is no room for faith, no reason to believe anything at all. The problem is that we don't have separate words to describe the various probabilities. We only have one word, the word "belief." It covers the whole range of probabilities when we should be using different words to describe them. Other words better describe what we mean, like hope, trust, accept, think, know, conclude, and so on. The word "belief" is a Christian one supporting the Christian faith in the western world. We need a new nomenclature. We are nonbelievers. We don't believe. Let's use language commensurate with what we know.
Since the multiverse is mentioned
here is the evidence for it.
Yes, I've been silent lately. I'm working on a new book and dealing with other exciting things in my life. So give it to me. What's up? Anything new?
The Science Guy Bill Nye is going to debate Ken Ham at the Creation Museum in Kentucky on February 4th. Ham believes the universe is not more than 6,000 years old and that there was a world-wide flood that took place about 4,500 years ago. He believes the animals saved by a guy named Noah in his ark can explain biological diversity. Ham also believes dinosaurs co-existed with humans. Ham, in other words, is a crack pot. He represents the absolute worst kind of creationist there is, although they are all wrong. Scientists from Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, PZ Myers, and a whole host of atheist bloggers are saying Bill Nye shouldn't debate Ham. Here are some reasons why:
Andrew Lamprecht is a former Christian living in Adrian, Michigan, who is an aspiring author. Enjoy. See if his story resonates with you.
At this point I'm beginning to write a chapter on the Bible and slavery for my new anthology. Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) escaped from slavery and became a leader of the abolitionist movement. This is what he wrote in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave [Norton Anthology, Vol. 2, 6th ed.]:
At this point I'm beginning to write a chapter on the Bible and slavery for my new anthology. Here's something I ran across concerning Henry Bibb (1815-1854), an escaped slave, who became a leading abolitionist. In his autobiography Bibb describes his life as an American slave. He describes the cruelty, the beatings, lashings, and the riches gained by the slaveowners at the expense of slaves. Then at the end, in chapter twenty, he does something remarkable. He describes the best case scenario, the mildest kind of slavery he ever knew.
Technically speaking, we cannot conclusively prove that a Devil or his demons don’t exist, or that witches cannot work their magic. There just isn’t any evidence that they do. Furthermore, with the advancement of science, supernatural explanations for any given event in our lives become unnecessary and superfluous. A Devil empowered witch may have caused a particular illness by her spell. But what best explains why we can usually trace the illness to some undercooked food that was eaten, as an example? And what best explains why the right medicine always cures the illness? If an illness was caused by the spell of a witch there is no reason to think we could find a natural cause for it. Nor is there a reason to think the right medicine could always overcome the power of the spell by curing it either.
From my investigation I highly recommend it.
by John W. Loftus and Randal Rauser. From my perspective, the former is intellectually demolishing the latter. You may think I'm biased, but it's not that simple. I suspect that I would (to my dismay) have had the same response even in my Christian days. Loftus is very good in this debate, but even that is not the problem for Rauser. So much Christian apologetics may be internally consistent... but still looks bizarre and implausible the moment you try to look at it from the outside. There's not much Rauser can do about this.
