Christians Pretend to Know Things They Don't Know. Do Atheists?

What exactly are atheists pretending? We know the brains of humans are infected with a host of cognitive biases that force us to believe what we want to believe, so we take them seriously by demanding hard cold evidence before asserting anything about the nature of nature, its workings and origins, or which religion is true, if there is one. We consequently think exclusively in terms of the probabilities about the available evidence. When the evidence is inconclusive we suspend judgment. We are open-minded rather than closed-minded to the consensus of scientists working in their respective fields, especially when it comes to evolution and its implications for religions. We're informed enough to know that adopting the faith of our parents and their cultures is a notoriously unreliable way to know which religion is true, if there is one. We treat religions as reasonable adults should, as outsiders. We know that at best faith-based reasoning, as opposed to scientific-based reasoning, is a notoriously bad way to reason. We're not pretending anything when it comes to judging the supposed evidence for the so-called "divinely revealed" theistic religions inadequate either, no more than a criminal court is pretending when it judges the accused is not guilty.

How is this preaching anything? We reason based on sufficient evidence. One way to know believers don't reason based on sufficient evidence is that they don't demand hard cold evidence, nor do they think exclusively in terms of the probabilities, nor do they suspend judgment when they should, nor are they open-minded, nor are they informed about how utterly unreliable their upbringing is when it comes to religious faiths, nor do they treat their own faith as outsiders, nor do they use scientific-based reasoning when searching for the truth.

Atheists may judge the probabilities differently but that's doing something quite different than singing hymns to the universe and praying to our religious sect-specific conclusions, feeling 100% certain we're right.

“Reality,” a therapist friend once remarked…

…is what goes on OUTSIDE the patient’s head

The Bible is revelation, so we’re told. The word of God, the mind of God, can be discovered in its pages. Holy men of old—tuned in to God—put pen to paper (well, whatever they used at the time) and created a monumental record of the Almighty’s outreach to humankind.

Really? A long time ago serious thinkers began to suspect that it’s not that simple. Don’t we have to wonder: as the ancient author was scrawling the words onto the scroll, were those words sparked from his own brain, rather than through his brain from a divine source? That is, were those words the product of imagination or hallucination, rather than inspiration? And how in the world can we tell the difference, so many centuries later? I actually posed this question in seminary, of all places. I suggested that we ran the risk of giving mundane stuff divine status—and thus taking it too seriously (and misleading people). I was basically saying, Aren’t we taking a big risk, preaching the Bible as “the Word of God”? One of my seminary pals ridiculed me for not being bold enough to take the “risk of faith.”

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Jesus Eclipsed: Part 3

As I noted in my second post, the real thrust of my book, Jesus Eclipsed: How Searching the Scriptures Got in the Way of Recounting the Facts, can be summed up in this sentence: Many stories about Jesus likely owe their existence not to genuine recollections of actual events handed down (distorted?) by oral tradition (as historical Jesus scholars have typically claimed) but to invented memories of fictitious events worked up from Old Testament texts.

Here I want to show why that happened by examining the belief that prompted this approach to telling the story of Jesus—the belief that Scripture provides a script for the gospel.

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Quote of the Day by Dr. Hector Avalos, Chiding Pop Christian Apologists For Pretending To Know Things They Don't Know

Don Camp has roosted here at DC, viewing himself as an apologist whose primary goal is not to learn from us but rather to dismantle our arguments against his faith. He's posted so often I limited his comments to ten per day. What Camp should tell us is why his god was so incompetent he enlisted apologists like him to set us all straight. Enter Dr. Hector Avalos. Camp had strewn together a lame response to a video Dr. Avalos made, so Hector responded here. Undeterred, Camp thought he could respond further. So Hector chided him in a letter below, which also serves as a warning to other pop Christian apologists and professional apologists as well.

Dr. Peter Boghossian has defined faith as "pretending to know things you don't know." It's a stipulative definition, one that's polemical in nature yet accurate from the perspective of atheists and skeptics. No, we emphatically do not have to use a word such as "faith" in the same way Christians use it, when the concept behind it is the debate itself. Although, if faith is trust, as they say, there is no reason to trust faith. Anyway, just like the sophists in the days of Socrates, who pretended to know things they didn't know, most all apologists for Christianity do likewise (otherwise they wouldn't be apologists). By contrast Boghossian wants us to practice the intellectual virtue of authenticity, whereby we admit we don't know something if we legitimately don't know it. No one can know everything. So apologists who are pretending are not authentic people. The question is why anyone would take seriously the pontifications of an inauthentic person? The lack of authenticity, all by itself, should tell us such a person is indoctrinated, brainwashed and delusional.

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Jesus Eclipsed: Part 2

In my initial post, I shared a bit about who I am and what led me to write Jesus Eclipsed: How Searching the Scriptures Got in the Way of Recounting the Facts. Here, I want to discuss what the book tries to accomplish.

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Jesus Eclipsed: Part 1

For several years, I have posted comments here on Debunking Christianity, most often when the discussion has involved the mythicist/historicist debate. A few weeks ago, I published a book, Jesus Eclipsed: How Searching the Scriptures Got in the Way of Recounting the Facts, which is now available on Amazon. John has kindly invited me to write a series of guest posts discussing some of what I have written. In this initial post, I want to share a bit about who I am and what led me to write the book.

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Clan or Thousand? A Response to Dr. Vincent Torley

Dr. Vincent Torley responded to my post on “The Use and Abuse of the Amarna Letters by Christian Apologists” in the comments section.

Torley’s response is fundamentally flawed and exhibits a lack of training in Hebrew and Semitic philology. He cites sources that he himself is either not evaluating critically or is unable to evaluate because of a lack of knowledge of Semitic and Hebrew linguistics. 

I will focus on this statement to illustrate my point: "In summary: some 600 families, or clans, left Egypt, consistent with the 70 that entered, the length of stay, and the births there."

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Gosh, Why Is THAT in the Bible?

One big chunk of the New Testament can go in the trash

The authority of the papacy took a major hit in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. Those who broke away from Rome, however, failed to free themselves from a tiresome superstition that plagues us to this day. No, there is no such thing as a Holy Man who is privy to God’s thoughts, but Protestants made the mistake of substituting one superstition for another: they transferred their loyalty and devotion to a book. Spurned Catholics derisively referred to the Bible as The Paper Pope.

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Dr. Vincent Torley: "The Bible Says So. I Believe it. That Settles it."

Unbelievably this is his exact attitude toward the Bible! Here is his quote:

Jesus' resurrection is attested in St. Paul and all of the Gospels. The episode which John Loftus wrote about in his OP [regarding the devastating problems with the Zombies story told in Matthew 27:51-54] is related in just one Gospel, in a passage which may not be original, anyway. Hence my skepticism. However, if it were recorded in Luke as well as Matthew, then I would have no trouble in believing it. LINK.

Given the problems I highlighted in my OP, what else can Torley mean but that "the Bible Says So. I Believe it. That Settles it"? So Torley, let's say for the sake of argument this Zombie text was recorded in Luke as well as Matthew. Then answer the problems I mentioned in my OP.

The Use and Abuse of the Amarna Letters by Christian Apologists: A Response to Don Camp

Pharaoh Akhenaten, founder of Amarna

Don Camp, a blogger who often comments on DC, has written a critique of a video lecture, “How Archaeology Killed Biblical History,” that I presented in Minnetonka, Minnesota for the Minnesota Atheists on October 21, 2007. 

Camp objects principally to some of my statements about the lack of historical and archaeological evidence for the Exodus. Camp appeals to the famous Amarna letters, which date from the middle to late 1300s BCE, to refute some of the claims I make in the video lecture.

Camp purports to present a researched post with footnotes. In particular, Camp appeals to this website to document his claims about the Amarna letters.

For the sake of clarity and brevity, I will address the main points of Camp’s blog post with two principal questions:

I. Does archaeology support the large numbers of people mentioned in Exodus 12:37, which claims that 600,000 men on foot were part of the Exodus? (Approximately at 17:06 in my video lecture).

II. Does the Amarna correspondence, dated to the mid-late 1300s BCE, support the historical claims of the Bible concerning the conquest of Hazor and Shechem by the Israelites?       

I will explain why Camp not only misunderstands the Amarna correspondence, but also why he lacks a proper understanding of both the Bible and archaeology when he makes his case. On a broader level, this essay explains why we cannot use the Amarna correspondence to confirm the Exodus or Conquest narratives.

[Click Here for PDF version of complete article]

"Can Bacteria Help Us Understand Religion?" by Psychologist Valerie Tarico

"Some ideas, like some microbes, are more contagious and parasitic than others. Can a better understanding of how ideas proliferate help humanity reduce the harms of religion while keeping the benefits?" Tarico writes:

As viral self-replicators, ideas have a life of their own. Human beings have a cognitive immune system that seeks to identify and eradicate false ideas because misinformation tends to cause us trouble. Some false ideas evade our bullshit detectors and so get passed socially from person to person. In this context, when religious notions take root in human minds and get passed on despite containing maladaptive falsehoods that do us harm, they may be considered socially transmitted pathologies or, to use my earlier term, socio-pathologies.

The term pathology implies illness and disability—but not all forms of religion seem to cause harm.

This appears to be the case irrespective of their truth value. All of the world’s great religions fail the “outsider test of faith,” meaning they fail to meet any normal bar for credibility when scrutinized by an outsider applying the same rigorous standard of evidence to each. In their traditional forms, all contain rational and moral contradictions or factual inaccuracies that insiders can justify only with Olympic feats of mental and moral gymnastics. Many rely on sacred texts that reflect the precise combination of knowledge and ignorance that characterized the culture in which they were written. All make claims for which there is no proof and none possible. LINK.

Matthew 27:51-54 and the Credibility of the Resurrection of Jesus

Couched in a chapter in Matthew where Jesus is tried before Pilate, Judas hangs himself, Barabbas is spared death, and Jesus is crucified between two thieves, died and buried, we find these sobering words:

Sobering? You bet. Christians don't read their own Bibles. They play lip service to it. One thing for sure is that preachers don't preach from sobering texts like these. They prefer instead to be drunk with delusion. It's better you see. The emotional high is worth it!

None of these claims are corroborated by any texts of that period, or by the astronomers. Nor are they corroborated by any other NT writer. In fact, since the writer of Luke's gospel left this out of his account, and since he investigated it all carefully (1:1-4), even he didn't think they happened!

This is the stuff of non-historical myths. But imagine for a second if the saints were raised up from the dead at the death of Jesus, who subsequently walked around Jerusalem three days later. How would they be identified? How could Moses or Elijah or Isaiah be recognized by the townsfolk? Did they do miracles? Did they predict some events to take place? Did they call down fire from the sky? We just don't know. But let's say there were neon signs or halos above their heads, okay? Then surely the crowds would flock around them asking for advice on everything from ethical duties to politics or what to expect in the future. Now are we to believe this really happened and no one wrote any of their sayings down? Are we to expect no one in the canonical NT would quote from them when writing their gospels or epistles, that as far as the rest of the NT goes, they never said anything quote-worthy? Doesn't that stretch the bounds of credibility too far, even for believers!?

What about the rest of their lives? Wouldn't some of them have become missionaries for Jesus and/or establish churches? Wouldn't others become leaders in the existing churches? Wouldn't the letters they wrote be put into the NT? Some would surely have children. But none of their children did anything noteworthy. There are no tombs with their remains in them either, as far as we know. Epitaphs like, "Here lies the prophet who wrote 2nd Isaiah, who was raised to life at the resurrection of Jesus, who died again in the year of our Lord 60 AD."

No way to identify them. No miracles at their hands. No quote-worthy sayings from them. No writings. No missionaries from the lot of them. No church leaders among them. No noteworthy children. No existing tombs. No telling epitaphs.

Why, it's almost as if they never existed at all! Yet, in Matthew's gospel it's written matter-of-factly, next to other matter-of-factly described stories. "It's inspired you know, because well, it's in the Bible, which is inspired. You godless heathens just refuse to believe! Repent and do things my way from now on, er, my god's way!" :-)

To believers of a more liberal bent, who cannot believe Matthew's gospel on this either, what say ye about the credibility hit Matthew's gospel as a whole takes? How is it possible to believe Matthew 27 as a whole, when it contains such obvious fiction? Why wouldn't you want everything corroborated outside the texts of the Bible at that point?

The Evidence That Jesus Existed is Weaker Than You Might Think

LINK. Read a summary co-written by Valerie Tarico along with David Fitzgerald, author of Jesus: Mything in Action.

Seeing Through the Christian Faith Is Hardly New

Many Voices of Reason Are on Record

Christianity has two thousand years of momentum. It has prestige, the weight of tradition, people well placed in power, a far-flung empire of churches and cathedrals—and millions of paid propagandists, e.g., ministers, priests, nuns, evangelists, missionaries and doorbell ringers. A colossal—though fractured—bureaucracy supports all this.

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Quote of the Day by Dale Allison On the the Resurrection of Jesus

I quoted this before in my book, Why I Became an Atheist. Matthew Ferguson just reminded me of it.

Dr. Dale Allison in his book (Resurrecting Jesus, pp. 337-339) wrote:

Most of the past – surely far more than 99 percent, if we could quantify it – is irretrievably lost; it cannot be recovered. This should instill some modesty in us. Consider the weeks following the crucifixion. We have only minuscule fragments of what actually transpired. What, for instance, do we really know about the resurrection experience of James? First Corinthians 15:7 says that he saw the risen Jesus. And that is it. What Jesus looked like, what he said, if anything, where the encounter took place, when precisely it happened, how James responded, what state of mind he was in, how the experience began, how it ended [Edit by JWL: whether he ever recanted] – all of this had failed to enter the record. Almost every question that we might ask goes unanswered … Yet they are the sorts of questions historians often ask of old texts. The fact that we cannot begin to answer them shows how emaciated historically – as opposed to theologically – the Gospel narratives really are. Even if we naively think them to be historically accurate down to the minutest detail, we are still left with precious little. The accounts of the resurrection, like the past in general, come to us as phantoms. Most of the reality is gone … Even if history served us much better than it does, it would still not take us to promised land of theological certainty.

The New Testament Peddles an Ancient Gimmick

An old tradition of selling a product you don’t have

I grew up on the northern Indiana prairie in the 1950s, in a small town where there might as well have been a wall between the Catholics and Protestants; people got along, of course, but we were so aware of the deep divisions in belief. One woman refused to attend her nephew’s wedding in the Catholic Church because she had no intention of “setting foot in that heathen temple.” I thrived in the Methodist subdivision on the Protestant side.

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"Blame the Victim" A Review of "The Most Hated Woman in America"

BLAME THE VICTIM

 A Review of The Most Hated Woman in America, a Netflix film directed by Tommy O’Haver and written by Tommy O’Haver and Irene Turner (24 March, 2017). By Frank R. Zindler, former president of American Atheists and managing editor of American Atheist Press.

I looked in vain for the label “based on a true story.” After an excruciatingly painful hour and 46 minutes of watching the film, I checked the Web-site for the film and discovered the claim that it was “A true story of the much debated rise and demise of a woman, named Madalyn Murray O'Hair, who was known as the head atheist activist of America. She founded the organization, American Atheist,…” A true story? Not THE true story? One of many possible true stories? Just when did she found an organization named “American Atheist” [singular]? Her first organization was named “Other Americans,” then “Society of Separationists,” and much later, when I was already on the board of directors, did her organization’s name legally become “American Atheists, Inc.” [plural]. As William J. Murray, Jr., has noted in the media, no significant research went into the writing of this film.

As one who lived through the anxiety, worry, fear, attempts to discover what had happened to Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Jon Garth Murray, and Robin Murray-O’Hair—and then the grief and sorrow when the case was solved five years later—I am hard pressed to determine how to deal with the cloud of misrepresentation, fiction, conflation of actual events and persons, distortions, anachronisms and subtext animus that will surely be defended as “artistic license.” In fact, that would be a hopeless task.  Let me try to set the record straight as to the most crucial parts of the story.

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Dr. Vincent Torley Argues there’s about a 60-65% chance that Jesus rose from the dead

Vince has dogged my steps for a few years in the best possible way. Unlike David Marshall, who comes to taunt us with brief unsubstantiated comments from time to time, Torley tries to be as fair as possible with what I write and responds with some serious thought and writing. This time he's criticizing my arguments regarding the resurrection of Jesus. There are a few things Torley expresses and argues for that are creative and new. His case for the resurrection does not depend on a burial by Joseph of Arimathea or the empty tomb on Sunday (although he believes these myths). He distinguishes between a Type A an B skepticism and deals with them separately, saying,

I propose to distinguish between two kinds of skepticism: Type A and Type B. Type A skepticism casts doubt on people’s claims to have had an extraordinary experience, while Type B skepticism questions whether a miraculous explanation of this extraordinary experience is the best one. In the case of the Resurrection, Type A skepticism seeks to undermine one or more of the key facts...whereas Type B skepticism doesn’t question the key facts, but looks for a non-miraculous explanation of those key facts.

He's also laudably trying to think in terms of the probabilities.

Readers can read his essay. I'm just going to quote from his conclusion and begin responding there.

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"Why I Am Not a Christian" Essays Found On The Secular Web

Why I Am Not a Christian" essays following in the footsteps of Bertrand Russell, written by Richard Carrier, John W. Loftus, Graham Oppy, Keith Parsons, and Kenneth W, Daniels. LINK.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair on Civility

[First Published on 2/16/2013]

I'll tell you what you did with Atheists for about 1500 years. You outlawed them from the universities, or any teaching careers, besmirched their reputations, banned or burned their books or their writings of any kind, drove them into exile, humiliated them, seized their properties, arrested them for blasphemy. You dehumanized them with beatings and exquisite torture, gouged out their eyes, slit their tongues, stretched, crushed, or broke their limbs, tore off their breasts if they were a woman, crushed their scrotums if they were men, imprisoned them, stabbed them, disemboweled them, hung them, burnt them alive. And you have the nerve enough to complain to me that I laugh at you?

What Would Convince Atheists To Become Christians?; Five Definitive Links!

I've kept track of some atheist answers as to what would convince us to believe. Christians say we refuse to believe due to our unwillingness to repent from immoral behaviors. I suppose ISIS could say the same damned thing while chopping off a head. Now don't get me wrong, I think we can legitimately reject religions based on how they treat living things, especially disenfranchised minorities under their control, like slaves, women, children, gays/lesbians, the poor, the aged and animals to mention a few. That's the main point of my anthology that everyone should read, which also explains why atheists spend so much time and effort debunking religion.

Here is the Christian challenge: "I don't believe that if God appeared to us, atheists would believe. For atheists can always make the case that the appearance of God was a hallucination, or a trick by super-advanced extraterrestrials."

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The Video From My Co-Hosting the Atheist Experience TV Show

If you watch just a portion this video then consider staying through to the end of the first caller from Iran, who's very courageous in what he's doing.

Dr. John Dickson To Me: "You are the 'Donald Trump' of pop-atheism"

Dr. John Dickson (@johnpauldickson) is the Director, Centre for Public Christianity; Minister, St Andrew's Roseville; Honorary Fellow, Ancient History, Macquarie University. Yesterday he said that I'm the Donald Trump of pop-atheism. *Ouch* I mean *ouch*!! Now I'm not one to highlight such an utterly ignorant slam on me, but I think it's instructive of the lengths some Christian apologists will go to try to discredit me. The question for my readers is what I said or did deserving of his slam, except that I'm truly a gadfly in the Socratic sense of someone who laid to waste his claims to certainty. Doing what I did to shock deluded people into reality will not be regarded kindly by them. So they will lash out. You'll notice I was polite but forceful. The question is why he lashed out at me. Barring any reasonable explanation, he did so because he could not answer me.

Now there are many atheists who consider having a friendly discussion with scholars like Dickson as a badge of honor. It makes them feel important when someone like Dickson speaks to them. That places all of the power in the apologist's lap. So these atheists can be like lap dogs, trying to gain their approval. The apologists therefore are in the position of determining for the rest of us who are the important atheists. So an additional question is why we should bow to them and their delusions in order to feel worthy? Consider apologists for Scientology or Mormonism. Why is it considered a badge of honor when they take notice of us and then say it was pleasant having a conversation, when they're bat shit crazy like Christians? They are all deluded. They are all massively wrong. In fact, the evangelicals I deal with like Dickson, are to be likened to the Trumps because they support Trump in America.

These completed discussions took place on Twitter separated by dotted lines.

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One Miracle—Among Many—that God Didn’t Do

There’s a long list of ‘coulda-shoulda’ divine interventions

Based on prayer activity alone, we can assume that Christians believe God meddles regularly in human affairs—otherwise, why would they pray so much? Even on Facebook, devout folks muster prayer marathons to bring God’s attention to those who might have fallen off the divine radar.

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I'll Be the Co-Host of The Atheist Experience TV Show This Sunday!

I've been invited to co-host The Atheist Experience TV Show, live from Austin, Texas. It's the most watched atheist TV show as far as I know, with tens of thousands of views per episode. So I'm excited and grateful to be on it. You might find it announced on their blog, or their main site. You may see where Don Baker is to co-host it. But it's to be me instead. We're going to discuss my book How to Defend the Christian Faith: Advice from an Atheist at my request. Then we'll take calls.

If there's just one book of mine I want everyone interested in the believer/non-believer debates to read, it's that one. It isn't a huge book, it's written in fairly easy prose, and it exposes Christian apologetics for the sham that it is. I think it's the best introduction to my body of work. I also think readers who like it will become interested in reading the rest of my books. Please spread the word. If you care, share.

Madalyn Murray O’Hair took on the Supreme Court to get prayer out of schools, started a culture war, and was violently murdered for it. A new Netflix film finally tells her story.

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Robert Conner: "Was the Savior Just Nuts?"

Here's a teaser quote from his recent essay:

In Book Six of his Wars of the Jews, Josephus briefly relates the story of a certain Jesus son of Ananias, a rustic from the hinterlands, who began incessantly proclaiming a series of woes upon Jerusalem several years before the Romans attacked. Regarded by the Jewish leaders as demon possessed, this Jesus was hauled before the Roman governor Albinus and flogged to the bone with whips. Albinus eventually pronounced the wretched man insane and released him. During the siege of Jerusalem, while still preaching judgment on the city, a stone from a Roman catapult struck the unlucky Jesus, killing him instantly but confirming his predictions.

Jesus son of Ananias bears a striking similarity to Jesus of Nazareth, another rustic from the hinterlands—“No prophet comes from Galilee!” (John 7:52)—who likewise pronounced a series of woes on Jerusalem: “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” (Mark 13:2) Jesus was considered insane by his family and also regarded by the Jewish leaders as demon-possessed.

What say ye? It's possible, that I know. Why not?

Robert studied Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic at Western Kentucky University in 70’s, then decided to do something worthwhile with his life and changed majors. He has authored four books on ancient Christianity, one novel, and too many essays.

Does God Exist? Michael Nugent Debates William Lane Craig

Michael Nugent sent me this link, thanking me for helping him prepare for the debate. I couldn't really detect how my advice helped him, but then that's the way it's supposed to work, lest someone merely use my words. Nugent did well. In watching debates we not only learn about the issues being debated but also how to better debate someone. This particular debate is very instructive in learning how to better debate (the thing I'm most interested in at this point). I have heard Craig's opener stay the same in most of his debates, and this one was no exception. It's polished, well-spoken, and adequately covers the important territory as Craig sees it. Nugent went second. To anyone who thinks the person who goes second in a debate is at a disadvantage I don't think that's true, not in Craig's case anyway. In Craig's case we already know what he'll focus on. Nugent should probably have briefly debunked the five points in Craig's opener because of that.

People claim Craig Gish Gallops through a ton of arguments so his opponents cannot possibly respond to them all. But I strongly disagree. Craig offered five arguments. His opponents have enough time to offer rebuttals to them. The real Gish Galloper in this particular debate is Nugent, which isn't anything bad in my opinion if the goal is to win a debate. I don't think any other opponent has done this in a debate with Craig (well, maybe Eddie Tabash, or Frank Zindler). So I was a bit excited to see how Craig would respond to Nugent's opener. To my dismay Craig responded to each one of Nugent's arguments, even if I think he may have lost his listeners from time to time in doing so. But because Craig did this, later in the debate he could say Nugent failed to make any of his arguments stick. When Nugent didn't defend one of these arguments, then in a subsequent rebuttal Craig would say Nugent's defense of it dropped off. This, folks, is how we deal with a Gish Galloper. I stand continually amazed at Craig's debating and rhetorical skills. The only way someone can be this good is by starting off young and constantly debating throughout life. Craig started debating on a High School debate team and has been debating all of his life. He's the best defender of that which cannot be reasonably defended I've seen.

One final note. Being the top ranked Christian debater Craig can decide who he debates, just like a champion boxer can choose who to fight. He won't debate me. There are others who won't debate me, like Michael Licona, who did debate Matt Dillahunty. Since I beat up on Randal Rauser in our co-written book God or Godless, Rauser decided to stop dealing with me and stick to philosophical argumentation with Justin Schieber in debates and their co-written book, An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar: Talking about God, the Universe, and Everything. [Justin, as it stands, is a community college student]. So it occurs to me that in some, and maybe many cases, Christians decide who they'll deal with. That is to say, they are in charge. There's nothing new about this. But I don't see any of them chomping at the bit to debate David Eller, for instance, who would tear them a new one (if you know what I mean). As Sargent Schultz in Hogan's Heroes would say, "very interesting."

Theology Written Under the Influence of OCD

When you don’t bother to have your work checked…

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"Can Appeals to Free Will Solve the Problem of Evil?" by Marilyn McCord Adams (1943-2017)

Marilyn McCord Adams has recently died. She had taught at Rutgers University, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Yale University, and UCLA. She was an important Episcopalian philosopher of religion. Some of her work focused on the problem of suffering (as I prefer to call it).

In the video below Adams dismantles the attempt to shift responsibility for the suffering we experience off from God's shoulders unto human shoulders by appealing to human free will. From the outset I find her focus on the Christian Adam and Eve myth to be both ignorant and parochial. It's ignorant, because there never was an Adam and Eve. Shouldn't that bring an end to this myth, leaving philosophers of religion nothing to discuss based on it? [Source: Christianity in the Light of Science, Chapter 7]. It's parochial, because there are many different global beliefs that deal with suffering, and she doesn't give a thought to them, leading us to think this Christian myth is the only one worth discussing. [Her example justifies my call to end the philosophy of religion discipline in the secular universities. Source: Unapologetic: Why Philosophy of Religion Must End.] For Christians who accept this mythical story though, Adams does a good job. She finds two major reasons why free will solutions do not work.

1) The size gap. God is very very big. We are very very small. God's personal capacities far outstrip ours. Take for example good parents. They are ultimately in charge of their children, and therefore responsible for what they do under their charge. Likewise, God is ultimately in charge of us, and therefore responsible for what we do under his/her charge.

2) Human beings lack the relevant knowledge of pain and suffering to make fully responsible choices. Ignorance diminishes responsibility. In the garden of Eden therefore, Adam and Eve didn't have the relevant knowledge or experience to enable them to be fully responsible for what they chose.

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Quote of the Day, by Sir_Russ

The DC Debunking Christianity Team Is the Best!

If you aren't reading the comments here at DC you're missing out on some superior thoughts and arguments by people who comment. I've said this before. See for yourselves then join them! Take a look at the three most recent comments (as of this writing):

Here's Zeta kraut on the Hebrews being asked by their god to slaughter the Canaanites so they could take their land away from them:

Since coveting the land of others is supposedly a no-no for the ancient Israelites, what better excuse is there to claim that their god gave the land to them? Why is it that an omnipotent god who could simply speak into existence trillions and trillions of celestial bodies in less than a day could not create a piece of new land for his "Chosen People" instead of exterminating the Canaanites? It is very obvious that this is simply fabricated history arising from wishful thinking.

I also find the racist concept of "Chosen People" obnoxious. Maybe Yahweh had no choice because he was assigned by a higher god (Deuteronomy 32:8-9) to take charge of the ancient Israelites?

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Quote of the Day by Stephen Hawking On God and the Big Bang

GearHedEd introduced this quote by saying: Hawking doesn't see God in imaginary time. He says so explicitly:

...if one knows the state of the universe in imaginary time, one can calculate the state of the universe in real time. One would still expect some sort of Big Bang singularity in real time. So real time would still have a beginning. But one wouldn't have to appeal to something outside the universe, to determine how the universe began. Instead, the way the universe started out at the Big Bang would be determined by the state of the universe in imaginary time. Thus, the universe would be a completely self-contained system. It would not be determined by anything outside the physical universe, that we observe. [Source requested in the comments].

How the Brain Tricks Us into Knowing about God

The payoff, of course, is that we don’t

When believers set out to defend the faith, they commonly find themselves entangled in Christianity’s multiple, messy contradictions. When backed into a corner, we may hear—with sighs of exasperation— “Well, how did all this get here? It didn’t just happen!” God-the-creator is the default, retreat defense. “Whew, that should settle it! Don’t be daft, you silly atheists, you’re talking nonsense to claim there isn’t a Great Engineer behind it all.”

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Question of the Day, by Gary M

What evidence do you have that Yahweh is the Creator God? -- Gary M

For important, even essential background reading on this question, see Dr. Jaco Gericke's chapter 5, "Can God Exist if Yahweh Doesn't", in The End of Christianity. The paperback is $4.29. There's no excuse for not getting it now! There is no objective evidence for a creator, much less for identifying Yahweh as the creator.

Believers ought to honestly re-examine what they falsely believe is evidence for creation by their sect-specific god. For instance, the god of the gaps reasoning is not evidence of anything, except that there is a gap in our understanding. Just because scientists discover a mystery in the natural world doesn't mean believers get to substitute a bigger mystery, a non-natural spiritual one without objective evidence for it--their own sect-specific god. Never forget it was science that discovered these mysteries, not religion, and that science is the only path to travel if we hope to solve them. Science, not religion, has had an overwhelming track record, one that allows me to say it's the only way to know the nature of nature, its workings and its origins.

Also important, even essential background reading on Gary M's question--the best of the best on the topic of prayer--is Dr. Valerie Tarico's chapter 14, "If Prayer Fails, Why Do People Keep At It?" in Christianity in the Light of Science: Critically Examining the World's Largest Religion. There is no objective evidence for answered petitionary prayers, much less for identifying Yahweh as the deity who answers the prayers of all the believers in the world.

Since there's no objective evidence for answered prayers, as Tarico shows, why would anyone claim there's evidence that Yahweh created the universe (or any deity for that matter)? Wouldn't objective evidence for answered prayers be available if there's a god who expects us to believe s/he created the universe? If there's a god who doesn't provide objective evidence for answered prayers, which can be scientifically tested in real time a multiple number of times, how can s/he expect us to believe s/he created the universe without this present-day objective evidence? Why are we expected to believe in creation as a unique event in the far far distant past, one that science doesn't have much access to and might not be able verify due to it's very nature, without any objective evidence for answered prayers?

Makes sense of an omniscient god right? This makes the guy who shot himself in the foot out to be a smart person! The centuries old news is that an omniscient prayer-answering creator god does not exist. Neither does Yahweh. Never did.

Trust No One When Wanting To Know The Truth, Not Even God!

In the comments Jason wrote:

Trusting what Mr. Loftus has to say about God and Christianity is like trusting that a harlot will remain faithful and true to you, only your odds are slightly better with the harlot.

Hi Jason, you need not trust anything I say, really. Just honestly think through and investigate what I say for yourself. If you disagree, then okay. But trust has noting to do with honestly thinking through and investigating the truth of your faith. Trust isn't something YOU should do either! You shouldn't trust your parents who raised you to believe, nor your preacher who was raised by his parents to believe, nor anyone else who was raised to believe by their parents. Parents are notoriously wrong about religion! In fact, no one should be trusted to know the truth about the nature and workings of the universe, along with which religion is true, if there is one. No guru, prophet, witch-doctor, shaman, faith-healer, Sunday school teacher, religious professor or secular professor. We shouldn't even trust what Richard Dawkins or Jerry Coyne tells us about the evidence for evolution. That's because it's the evidence that convinces, not the personalities behind it. [We can say we trust the consensus of scientists working in an area of study, since that's the highest level of confidence we can attain, or peer-reviewed papers, insofar as they show awareness of the current literature and evidence available].

Instead, you must honestly think through the important questions on you own. Investigate the truth as if you were never raised to believe. The very fact you think it's about trust rather than an honest investigation of the truth tells us you're not doing what's needed to know the truth.

Now I'm continually reminded that faith is trust, trust in some god or another. This is wrong-headed. The reason is because the god trusted is already the god believed to exist. Faith or trust in one's own god results in the same god as initially believed. So honest believers who are genuinely interested in knowing the truth shouldn't even trust their own god! You should literally and categorically trust NO ONE when honestly thinking through and investigating the nature and workings of the universe, along with which religion is true, if there is one. To read a rigorous defense of this kind of thinking check out this book. - Cheers

The Delicate, Dicey Task of Revising Revelation

Theologians boldly rise to the occasion

What to do when God has favored you with new revelation? I don’t mean just a casual vision or two—but with a Cosmos-shattering revelation update: You have been given the word that God has revised a whole salvation scheme. How do you mesh this new scheme with the old system in place for centuries? We see the apostle Paul wrestling with this very task in chapter 4 of his Letter to the Romans.

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All sophisticated theology is obfuscationist theology

All sophisticated theology is obfuscationist theology, the goal of which is to obscure the unreasonableness of theology itself. Now imagine some atheist philosopher of religion thinking there is more merit to sophisticated theology over a hillbilly from Kentucky, and you see the problem with almost all atheist philosophy of religion.

Quote of the Day by Shay Chandler (On Facebook)

Shay Chandler:

Why do some religious people take it personally when I say I'm an atheist? It's not like their God is the only God I don't believe in. I don't believe in any of them.

I've long ago concluded the word "God" (capital "G") is a name for a specific god, the god of Christianity. That is to say, when someone in the western world writes or says the word "God" without qualification (as opposed to "my god," or "a god" or "the Jewish god", etc,) that person is referring to Christianity's god. This is due to the Christianized cultural dominance of the word "God" as a divine conceptual being. So no, "God" is not Allah, nor is "god" "God" at all. They're all "gods"; culturally conceptual deities. In fact, the word "God" in these here parts is a loosely sect-specific parochial Christian deity encompassing the incompatible characteristics believed by different Christianities. Period.

Matthew W. Ferguson to Join Us

Matthew W. Ferguson is a Ph.D. graduate student in Classics at the University of California, Irvine. He'll write for us here at DC for at least one planned post having to do with David Marshall's recent book Jesus is No Myth. Given the blurbs written for it by Craig Blomberg and Timothy McGrew, it looks like David Marshall is here to stay. I look forward to what Ferguson has to say.

Recently Ferguson opened up his life to us right here. At the end he wrote some encouraging and instructive words about living life in the shadow of death:

Life flies by quickly, and we never know when our last day will be. As someone who believes that our conscious experience is finite, it reminds me to make the most out of every moment. My life in this physical world is the only one that I will ever have, and I plan to cherish it to the fullest. I wish the same for all others who live with kindness and empathy.

What to do…with the brains evolution gave us

Religion wins if we can’t teach our brains Good Thinking

In the musical My Fair Lady, lyricist Alan Jay Lerner punctured misogyny by showing it in full foolishness. Professor Henry Higgins is the ultimate “confirmed old bachelor” who is distressed by his attraction to Eliza Doolittle. He bluntly warns his friend Colonel Pickering, “I will never let a woman in my life.” Female heads, he declares, are “filled with cotton, hay and rags.” “Straightening up their hair is all they ever do. Why don’t they straighten up the mess that’s inside?”

But Professor Higgins was only half wrong. That is, all human brains, male and female, are prone to the cotton-hay-and-rags syndrome. Throughout the millennia, humans have been wrong about so much, and—sorry, Professor Higgins—men have been the major culprits. We can blame the men especially for the monotheism represented in the Bible—a major mess of contradictions, if ever there was one. But the fault lies not with gender, but with the brains that we owe to the clumsy evolutionary process. We have to work hard to outsmart our brains.

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Faith-Based Puzzle Solving Vs Examining Evidence Objectively

I have to admit it, of all the Christian visitors here at DC, Don Camp has been one of the best. He's polite and has more knowledge than most others who have commented here. And he's indefatigable. I had to limit him to ten comments a day lest he hijack my blog, for no other reason than that I cannot engage him as often as he requires. Did I say he's indefatigable? I challenged him to read my magnum opus, and he's doing just that, skipping some chapters and reading others thoroughly. He's also patiently taking the time to write responses to what I wrote on his blog.

I cannot shake him folks. Yet he's just as delusional as others who are not as knowledgeable or indefatigable or polite. One might ask why I'm highlighting him here, since it grants him more credibility that he deserves. So let me tell you why. I don't know. ;-) Maybe it's because he's likeable. Maybe it's because he can help make my case stronger, especially by articulating it better. Maybe it's because he might be reachable. Maybe it's because atheists who comment here might help him see the truth. Maybe he can be used as a test case in how apologists special plead their case when defending the indefensible. How about ALL OF THE ABOVE!

Camp recently wrote two posts on Moses and the Exodus that are instructive. Here is my best response. It probably won't work, but here goes anyway.

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Quote of the Day by GearHedEd On Apologetics

Apologetics is damage control applied to an incoherent myth, designed to try and explain difficulties away. It's like trying to compress a balloon between your hands. Every time you think you've squeezed it down, it pops out in another direction, and you can't cover all the bases simultaneously.

News Flash: All 240 Family Christian Stores Are Closing!

There is quite a bit of controversy about this decision too.

See for yourselves.

"No, the Crazies Aren’t Coming Out from Under Rocks" by Robert Conner

This is an interesting read, written by Robert Conner. His final words:

No, the crazies aren’t coming out from under the rocks—they’re coming out of the churches and mosques, synagogues and temples, just like they have for the past couple of thousand years, and they’re bringing their crazy with them, a heaping platter of crazy with a steaming side order of crazy.

If I had to make a wager, I’d bet the inaptly named Homo sapiens is a dead man walking. LINK.

Paul the Apostle and the Hogwarts Factor

For Paul, sin was a disease of the soul...he was sure he knew the cure

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Why Do Atheists Bother?

Joelyn:

Part of the problem with Evangelical religious beliefs is that some want to make parts of it public policy (e.g., eliminate marriage equality, reproductive rights, etc.)

Frankly, I couldn't care less about any one's religious delusion as long as they are law abiding, do no harm to minors (deny health care based on faith healing) and don't want to impose via public policies their religious strictures on my personal life. So as long Christian apologists enter the public square chewing on their religious delusions, I'll be right there chewing back. Why not? If they can compete in the marketplace of ideas, that's their problem not mine. Cheers!

Wayne Thompson:

Well said! It’s not simply because they knock on our doors with an invitation to church. They vote (which is their right as much as ours, of course). But, they also have PACs which pressure elected officials to get their religious-based agendas through Congress, even though the churches are not taxed like the rest of us.

When millions of delusional people think that an imaginary superman in the sky is in charge of everything, how can they be expected to take issues like Climate Change seriously or even try to understand it? After all, Climate Change wasn’t mentioned in their Bronze Age instructional manual, so why should they believe it? The Evangelical vote was largely responsible for why the world is now having to deal with a President Trump. These are the kinds of outcomes you get when people don’t base their beliefs upon evidence and use reason in making their decisions.

Don Camp (a Christian):

So, what has that to do with you?

I honestly don't get the new atheists' anger. So you don't believe. Okay. So you don't like people knocking on your door with an invitation to church. Say no thank you politely. What's the big deal?

Herald Newman:

It has everything to do with [us]. Delusioned people, who believe nonsense, are making the world a worse place because of that nonsense! I have every right to fight nonsense when it spills over into my life!

Found here. Enjoy.

Should We Trust NT Testimony That Jesus Arose from the Dead?

Here's a Christian named Angie on Facebook about testimonial evidence of the resurrection of Jesus:

Angie: "One method of determining good evidence is the testimony of others. Courts use testimony all the time and consider it in making decisions. We have the testimony of several hundred people who saw Jesus after his death and burial. This must be considered in believing or denying this event. One day there might be an explanation of this, but not yet."

My response:" Would you and others keep your facts straight? We don't have evidence 500 people saw the resurrected Jesus. What we have is someone SAYING 500 people saw the resurrected Jesus."

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Angie: "What's so preposterous about one's testimony? Used all the time in court as respectable evidence."

My answer: "We have no way to cross-examine this testimony. How do we know the results would not be exactly as we found out with Joseph Smith and Mormonism? You're asking us to accept non-cross examined testimony from a couple of different writers in the ancient distant past, and that's not reasonable for extraordinary miraculous claims."

Was Hitchens right: Does religion poison everything?

No. But it does far more harm than good

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Dr. Richard Carrier On Why You Can’t Cite Opinions On Whether Josephus Mentioned Jesus Before 2014

Carrier presents the latest interesting scholarly findings right here.