A Christian Flunks Pop-Quiz Number 3

It’s a big fat F

So far I have posted three Pop-Quizzes for Christians here on the DC Blog (One    Two   Three). My motive has been to coax, to prod Christians to read the Bible, to study the gospels especially. Surveys have shown that most can’t be bothered. I encourage readers to share these pop-quizzes with their church-going friends and relatives. 

 

A few weeks after Pop-Quiz Number 3 was posted, a Christian who identifies as Oreo Pagus offered his comments on the post. The first question on the quiz is about science: What was Carl Sagan referring to when he described The Pale Blue Dot. Oreo Pagus gave the correct answer: Planet Earth, about which Sagan had observed:

 

“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”

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Examining William Lane Craig's Personal Testimony

In 2008 William Lane Craig shared his personal testimony of how he became a Christian [reproduced in its entirety below, with a link]. I have previously weighed in on the value of Christian conversion testimonies as compared to deconversion/defection testimonies of former believers right here. It's time to look at what Bill Craig says.

Bill tells us he wasn’t raised in a church-going family. But when he became a teenager in the sixties he asked typical teenage questions, like “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” and “Where am I going?” He searched for answers by attending a Christian church, not a Muslim Mosque, nor Jewish Synagogue, nor Hindu Temple, because he was raised in a Christian culture which set the limits of answers he could accept. Of this church, all he saw with his young prudish judgmental eyes were “a pack of hypocrites” who were “pretending to be something they’re not.” Apparently, *ahem* the young Craig could read people’s minds. Usually the person claiming to do this is only revealing his own mind. Regardless, Bill became very bitter and angry toward the people in that church, and arrived at the fallacious hasty generalization that “Nobody is really genuine.” People were “all just a bunch of phonies” he says. So he “grew to despise people” saying “I wanted nothing to do with them.”

Bill goes on to admit that he was just as much a phony as they were. “For here I was, pretending not to need people, when deep down I knew that I really did.” So he became angry at his own hypocrisy, which is a religious guilt trip he placed on himself, that led him to falsely say, “I couldn’t see any purpose to life; nothing really mattered.” This is such an unjustified either/or fallacious conclusion. There can be plenty of purposes and plenty of things that matter in one’s daily life (like family, friends, and meaningful work), without needing one single final absolute unchanging purpose in life.

Then Bill met a girl. Her name was Sandy. She “always seemed so happy it just makes you sick!” he tells us. Upon asking Sandy why she was so happy, she told him “the God of the universe loved him and wanted to live in his heart.” Sandy also introduced him to other Christians. Of them he said, “I had never met people like this! Whatever they said about Jesus, what was undeniable was that they were living life on a plane of reality that I didn’t even dream existed, and it imparted a deep meaning and joy to their lives, which I craved.”

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Two Confusions of My Book "Unapologetic: Why Philosophy of Religion Must End"

“I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” -- Richard Nixon

It's sad that too many people misunderstand my book "Unapologetic." Let me address two of the biggest confusions.

ONE) Some people might conclude I have nothing but distain for the discipline I majored in, the philosophy of religion, even though I have contributed several books based in that discipline.

I do nothing more than what the late biblical scholar Dr. Hector Avalos did in his book calling for The End of Biblical Studies. He called for the end of them AS THEY WERE BEING PRACTICED! The reason I say this is because Avalos and I both know that how our respective disciplines are being practiced won't change anytime soon. So we seek to undermine them, to expose them as the sham they really are, by doing our part to end them.

Avalos wrote:

From my perspective, there are really only 3 alternatives for what is now called biblical studies.

1. Eliminate biblical studies completely from the modern world.
2. Retain biblical studies as is, but admit that it is a religionist enterprise.
3. Retain biblical studies, but redefine its purpose so that it is tasked with eliminating completely the influence of the Bible in the modern world.

Dr. Avalos argued it's unreasonable to think biblical scholars could achieve alternative #1. Like the automobile it's here to stay, so long as there are Christians. Likewise, when it comes to the philosophy of religion. So long as there are Christian philosophers in defense Christian theism, they aren't going away either. Option #2 is already being done in seminaries. They actually consider biblical studies to be an extension of Anselm's dictum, "faith seeking understanding." When it comes to the philosophy of religion, merely acknowledging that it's a religionist faith-based enterprise made subservient to apologists is not good enough. For then we'd be found to enable foolish, delusional thinking, with the dubious goal of having a discussion for discussion's sake when we need to change minds.

Dr. Avalos preferred the option #3.

I prefer the third option. The sole purpose of biblical studies would be to help people move toward a postscriptural society...What I seek is liberation from the very idea that any sacred text should be an authority for modem human existence. Abolishing human reliance on sacred texts is imperative when those sacred texts imperil the existence of human civilization as it is currently configured. The letter can kill. That is why the only mission of biblical studies should be to end biblical studies as we know it. LINK to Excerpt.

When it comes to debunking Christianity I seek to use all the tools available, all of them, including the philosophy of religion. Just take a look at two books I had published AFTER I wrote the book Unapologetic: The Case against Miracles along with God and Horrendous Suffering. They have sections in them that fall squarely in the philosophy of religion area. My goal in them, my focus, is to change minds. I seek to help reason people out of their faith, even though I know it's extremely hard to reason people out of that which they were never reasoned into, who have a tribal motivation to stay within the confines of their cultural indoctrination. I also know such a goal gets tougher and tougher the more educated people become in their delusion.

My focus is on the irrationality of faith itself, and the lack of any relevant objective evidence for any of the miracles in the Bible. My focus is on five powerful reasons not to believe.

The best online excerpt explaining the goal of my book is probably the one Hemant Mehta posted just after its release, right here.

I argue toward what anthropology professor Dr. David Eller advocates in his next book to be published, Liberatheism. It's the third book in a trilogy that includes Natural Atheism (2004) and Atheism Advanced (2007) [See my review of this book!] Eller explains this third book in his Preface:

Natural Atheism was an explanation, examination, and defense of atheism on the premise that humans are born without any religious ideas or beliefs and hence “natural” atheists. Atheism Advanced Further Thoughts of a Freethinker, as the name suggests, pushed atheism in new directions, especially beyond argument about the Christian god, for instance, emphasizing that there are many other theisms and many other gods than Christianity and its god, and noting how arguing about god(s) in a Christian context still has us “speaking Christian.” This current book pushes further still, envisioning a future when we no longer fight about god(s) because we are free of god(s)....

The first step in this process, in theism-dominated societies, is atheism—saying no to god(s). The eighth chapter describes the profound damage that religion has done to philosophy, the oldest form of rational inquiry. It condemns the academic field of philosophy of religion as little more than an adjunct to Christian theology and apologetics. An ultimate betrayal of the commission to analyze and critique our pet ideas and concepts, as well as a colossal waste of brainpower and resources, philosophy of religion is encouraged to liberate itself from its role as a defender of Christianity to become a genuine philosophical approach to the question of religion. The tenth chapter provides some practical advice on how to change people’s minds from theism to atheism, taking advantage of the best knowledge and practices in psychology, education, marketing, and behavioral economics. The chapter invites us to think in terms of “attitude change” and away from conventional confrontational tactics like argument and debate.

The next step is liberatheism—getting free of god(s). The final step is not talking about god(s) at all. The goal is to accelerate toward the day when we no longer argue about god(s) but live free from god(s), when god(s) are simply not worth talking about anymore.

TWO) Some people might conclude I advocate ridicule to the exclusion of reasoned arguments, and that this would be counter-productive toward my goals of reaching believing Christians. I have documented the effectiveness of ridicule in several blog posts. But the evidence of my writing on this blog and in my books should dispel this confusion easily, since in them I exclusively reason with believers. I advocate telling our debate opponents the truth even though it may offend them, but only if it's based on good sound arguments, something philosopher Dr. Stephen Law has argued in an essay I agree with completely. He offers five morals that should guide debates between atheists and believers. I don't advocate ridiculing people to their faces, and I almost never do so. But as a general rule ridicule is good and effective. Comedians do it all the time. It can even be considered venting, and in that case why should we not do it in public? If people don't want to come to the show they don't have to do so.

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John W. Loftus is a philosopher and counter-apologist credited with 12 critically acclaimed books, including The Case against Miracles, God and Horrendous Suffering, and Varieties of Jesus Mythicism. Please support DC by sharing our posts, or by subscribing, donating, or buying our books at Amazon. Thank you so much!

Dr. Alex Rosenberg On The Principle of Sufficient Reason

Dr. Alex Rosenberg is the R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy at Duke University and head of the philosophy department. This comes from his debate with William Lane Craig, "Is Faith In God Reasonable":

--From his first statement:

Many of the arguments that Dr. Craig gave tonight and which he has given repeatedly in the past rest on the first cause argument. An argument that goes back certainly to St. Thomas Aquinas and probably to Aristotle and it rests on, of course, the principle of sufficient reason. The principle that everything that exists must have a cause. Now, the remarkable thing about this argument and the principle of sufficient reason as it is called on which it rests is that the principle is plainly false. OK? It is refuted trillions of times every second throughout the universe. It is refuted in this room and I will give you a pretty full explanation of why. Take two uranium-238 atoms that are absolutely indistinguishable. In a given moment these two indistinguishable atoms – atoms of exactly the same mass and energy state – have the following difference: one produces an alpha particle spontaneously and the other doesn’t and there is no cause whatsoever for that difference. That is what quantum mechanics tells us. Suddenly one emits an alpha particle and the other doesn’t and there is no cause whatever for that difference between them. Now, you might think that that is not a very important fact of nature but one mole – one Avogadro’s Number of uranium-238 molecules – emits three million alpha particles a second. And every helium atom on this planet is one of those alpha particles. And the smoke detectors that operate all through this auditorium to protect us from fires – those operate because of the indeterminate, unexplained, completely spontaneous appearance of an alpha particle out of a uranium atom in these systems. For Dr. Craig to insist on the arguments that rest on the claim that every event had a cause that had to have brought it into being is just bluff. It is not a principle accepted in physics. And you can’t argue from its intuitive attractiveness.

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Christian History Should Be as Big a Turnoff as the Bible

So many crimes done in Jesus’ name

“If you read the scriptures and are not shocked out of all your religious beliefs, you have not understood them.” Oh how I wish these words could be mounted in stained glass, in churches throughout the world. This is a quote from Dr. Jaco Gericke’s essay, “Can God Exist of Yahweh Doesn’t?” in the 2011 John Loftus anthology, The End of Christianity. But that kind of honesty is missing. Instead, via stained glass, sermons, ritual, and hymns, the folks in the pews are familiar with feel-good Bible verses—and even many of those reflect bad, incoherent theology; with just a little careful thought, most people could figure out that John 3:16 is deeply flawed. Many years ago, when I—as a pastor—led Bible study classes for my parishioners, I advised a generous helping of skepticism when reading the Bible. But no, the Bible is the word of God. Folks read the Bible to anchor their faith, so they welcome the pious filters that keep them fooled. Of course, many of them skip Bible reading altogether, and priests and preachers breathe sighs of relief.

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How Do Civil Wars Start? Is America On the Verge of One? What Would It Look Like?

Anne Applebaum wrote the book, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. In the following interview she explains why some of her contemporaries have abandoned liberal democratic ideals in favor of strongman cults, nationalist movements, or one-party states. At the 10:43 mark onward she talks about former President Trump's lies and more. For an Authoritarian, lies are a test of party loyalty. Loyalty is everything. If you're willing to lie publicly, you're "on my team." Once you repeat the lie you can't go back to normalcy.



You should read her essay in The Atlantic, "A Warning From Europe: The Worst Is Yet to Come: Polarization. Conspiracy theories. Attacks on the free press. An obsession with loyalty. Recent events in the United States follow a pattern Europeans know all too well." LINK.

Now consider Barbara F. Walter. She is a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego. She has spent over three decades studying civil conflict. In her new book, How Civil Wars Start: and How to Stop Them, Walter examines the rise of violent extremism on a global scale and warns of the increasing likelihood of a second civil war breaking out in the United States. She answers my three questions in the title of this post in the following interview, which will be the best 33 minutes you spend on these questions.



Let's focus on my third question, which Walter answers as Q#6 elsewhere:

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"The Supreme Court is laying the groundwork to pre-rig the 2024 election"

This is an opinion piece that argues how the Republican Right may steal the next Presidential election. It sounds about right, and it's scary. I hope to hell some key people help stop this train wreck upon our nation. Apparently we never settled the Civil War. This may be a prelude to it, which historians will label CWII. Keep in mind it took two wars to settle the problems sourrounding Germany. Southerners are angry. The good news is that doomsday scenarios don't always turn out as predicted. Sometimes they're worse though. LINK.

Christian Scandals Keep Coming, Oh My!

I don't usually point out major Christian scandals, since there are so many of them to report. Nonetheless, sadly, here are two more. People of faith lack the requisite skeptical thinking skills to spot and expose terrible people.

Ex-Students Reveal Abuse at ‘Christian Torture Compound’.

Former residents of Agapé Boarding School opened up...about claims of systematic abuse as they demand the state immediately shut down the Baptist facility. It's a climate more like Lord of the Flies, where staff were given free rein to restrain and beat students, and where some kids were emotionally and sexually abused. They claim Agapé has functioned like a “cult” and “Christian torture compound” for decades, allowing adults to manhandle teenagers and withhold food, water, and proper clothing—apparently without most parents ever knowing.

The World's Second Biggest Lie. "Trump’s big lie is that he won the 2020 presidential election, which he did not. The Vatican’s big lie, which it’s been spreading since World War II, is that Pope Pius XII did everything he could to stop the Holocaust, which he did not. He did nothing." Why are we not surprised, at all?

A Day God Overslept

There have been thousands of such days

One of the major chores of professional Christian apologists—and they’ve been at it for hundreds of years—is to explain why there is so much suffering and evil in our world when a good, caring god is supposedly in charge; indeed, these apologists maintain that their god pays very close attention to everything. Their menu of excuses includes variations on several themes: god punishes sinners—he has to get even, right? Or he allows bad things to happen as a way of testing us, or improving our characters. Also, we wouldn’t truly appreciate all the good that god does if we don’t sometimes experience hardships and suffering. We also hear, when really horrible things happen, that god moves in mysterious ways, and that, as humans, we can’t see the big picture: we can’t grasp his master plans for the world. These are all invitations for the laity to turn off their minds. The apologists are masters of gaslighting, as I mentioned in my article here last week on Dale O’Neal essay in the Loftus anthology, God and Horrendous Suffering.

 

But on occasion, the professional apologists are put to shame by ordinary church folks who respond to tragedy with practical wisdom: what they feel in their gut. An example of this happened in the wake of the school shooting in Dunblane, Scotland in March, 1996; a gunman killed 16 kids and their teacher. In the days following, many memorial flowers were placed outside the school. And there was a Teddy Bear, with a note attached that received national publicity: “13 March 1996: the day God overslept.”

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On What Topic Should I Debate William Lane Craig?

I said I'm going to debate Craig in absentia. On which topic should I do so? See this for suggestions.

Here are three potential topics:
--Is There Evidence for the Christian God?
--Does Horrendous Suffering Disprove God?
--Is Faith in God Reasonable?

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United States Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade, erasing constitutional right to abortion

This was expected but it's f*cked!

Christian Dependance on Gaslighting

Religious indoctrination in the scheme of evil

A popular song from the 1960s still resonates, What the World Needs Now Is Love Sweet Love.

How true, of course, given the history of human obsession with war and brutality. But also urgently needed is critical thinking. That is, there is so much ongoing damaged caused by belief in ancient superstitions—Christianity being the champion superstition, i.e., it has survived for two millennia. It created a perfect blend of superstitions, gleaned from the cults of the ancient world: (1) the idea that a god was going to send a savior/rescuer/messiah to save its chosen people; (2) after the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple, animal sacrifice to appease god for sins came to an end—and so Christianity resorted to the grim belief that a single human sacrifice would do the trick; (3) when this human sacrifice resurrected, this had major magical impact for those who believed in it, i.e., eternal life. What a formula—and people still believe it!

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I'll be debating WLCraig in absentia!

Dr. William Lane Craig has decided not to debate me, not even if his proceeds went toward his favorite charity! So I will debate him in absentia. Stay tuned. I'm going to share my 30 minute debate opener soon.

Hitchens on Ridicule

I don’t ridicule people to their face, but ridicule is as Hitchens' says it is!

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A Pop-Quiz for Christians, Number 3

Confusion and incoherence in Jesus theology

One of the handiest tools for showing that Christianity is wrong—that its theology is confused and incoherent—is the Bible itself. I have seen so much resistance among church-goers to reading the Bible, even casually (say, just one chapter a day), let alone studying it carefully, thoughtfully, critically. Is this hypocrisy, or just laziness? If the devout really, truly believed that the Bible is their god’s word—more than a thousand pages of his wisdom and guidance—why don’t they obsess about reading it? 

 

For many of us who have left Christianity, there is no mystery about this neglect. My constant appeal for years to my Christian acquaintances has been: please read the Bible. When my book was published last summer, Ten Things Christians Wish Hadn’t Taught, I gave copies to some of my devout—openly, aggressively devout—friends. What was the response? Silence. They didn’t want to think about it, and they certainly didn’t want to read the Jesus quotes that I discuss in detail in the book. They want to trust their priests and ministers, and draw comfort from the ceremonies and rituals, while Jesus in stained-glass gazes down on them. No thought required.

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Introducing The Real God of The Bible: An Interview with Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou

Derek Lambert of the MythVision Podcast (who has a whopping 47.9K subscribers!) interviews Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou on the real god of the Bible. This is really good stuff. See what the world of the gods were like in the ancient world! They talk about her fantastic new book, God: An Anatomy, and the gods and goddesses of the world that came before!

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The Comfort of Faith is Shattered by Suffering and Disaster

The prevalence of medieval thinking

It’s hard to unsee it once you’ve seen it: the severity of Christian theology. Here is the Jesus-script we find in Matthew 12:36-37:  ^“I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” That’s pretty brutal, and the theology behind it is terrifying: It’s totalitarian monotheism: a god is watching you at every moment of your life, and even keeps track of every careless word you utter. And no, John 3:16 (“God so loved the world”) does not modify this terrible threat. In fact, just two verses later, 3:18, we find this warning: “Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already…” The final verse of the chapter (36) drives home the point: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God’s wrath.” The apostle Paul was just as sure about this, as he explained in his Letter to the Romans, 2:5: “But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.” He too championed totalitarian monotheism: “…God through Christ Jesus judges the secret thoughts of all” (Romans 2:16).

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Failed to Death: If God Refused to Intervene During the School Shooting, Then Why Should the Police? By Dr. Darren Slade

LINK.

This Week We Celebrate 300 Posts By Dr. David Madison!

Dr. Madison just reminded me of something important:

"My article posted today on the DCB represents a milestone. It is the 300th article I’ve written for the blog, and that’s not counting posts I’ve made about my book, or the 19 posts I did a while back in the series, 'Where was God when this happened?'-—which really weren’t articles."

Here is a photo of me taken today in Paris: I am toasting YOU for inviting me to write for the blog. Such a privilege it has been to write for this platform! Many, many thanks.

His first post was in September 2016. For my part, I'm the one privileged that he writes at DC. I cannot think of another better person to have writing here. We share the same passion. We try to get believers to "snap out of it" (as he would express it). We have studied our faith at the highest levels in different fields (me: philosophy/theology; him: biblical studies). We also share the same views on how to debunk Christianity, by going for the "knock-down punch" (as he would call it). We write to change minds. We write to convince. We are united in what we do and we complement each other nicely.

A TOAST: "May David live long and prosper in our shared goals to convince people of faith based on truth and grounded in solid evidence." Let him know below how he's helped you in your search for truth, and/or desire to convince others still in bondage to indoctrination and enculturation.

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Gotta Love This Review of "God and Horrendous Suffering"!

Here is a highly complimentary review of God and Horrendous Suffering, by John Mark Hannon. See link to Instagram below. JMH adds:

Absolutely outstanding! You crushed it out of the park. Everyone that contributed is to be congratulated, I think that what y'all achieved in concert together should really make the god notion difficult to maintain for people of empathy.

About JMH:

My parents were evangelical missionaries in Austria. My dad was a reformed baptist, so a Calvinist to his core. That was the God I was taught to see in the bible and at the age of 20 I had a crisis of faith where I just couldn't get around the problem of evil as I called it at the time. I started by reading Craig and Plantinga, but I found their answers insufficient for me.

Through Craig's footnotes, I found out about a philosopher by the name of Nelson Pike. His argument kind of cinched it for me that we couldn't be responsible for sin if god was an omni god. From there I jumped to Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett, and then I found my way to you! The text of his review is below. Here is the LINK.

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Isn’t the Good Book Supposed to Be the Best Book?

Too often we wonder, “Why do we need to know this?”

Mark Twain said that it wasn’t the things in the Bible he didn’t understand that bothered him: it was the things he did understand. He has not been alone. It’s hardly a surprise that careful reading of the Bible has driven so many people away from Christianity. “Oh, but the Bible is perfect in every way”—so say the extreme apologists, who claim that their scripture is inerrant. God’s reputation requires it be so. Of course there are devout folks who accept that the Bible has errors—and far too many examples of bad theology, although they might not say so out loud. God drowned all the people and animals on earth—except for Noah and his family—because he regretted making humans, and his fury exploded. God killed all the first-born of Egypt to try to change Pharaoh’s mind. In Jesus-script in the New Testament, upon the arrival of the Kingdom of God, with the Jesus as the new ruler, there will be as much suffering as at the time of Noah.

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God Failed to Make the Case for Jesus

 There’s too much fake news and bad theology in the New Testament

There’s a fun song from the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operetta, The Pirates of Penzance, that always brings to mind the task of Christian apologists: “A Policeman’s Lot Is Not a Happy One.” How can apologists be happy about their lot, having to defend the faith—having to strain so hard—against increasingly heavy criticisms, against so much evidence that falsifies the faith? For centuries there has been the internal warfare, i.e., Catholic apologists have had to argue with Protestant apologists, explaining why their version of Christianity is the right one. Protestant apologists return the favor. Within Protestantism itself, there’s just as much struggle: Southern Baptist apologists must explain why their worship and piety are right—while the Episcopalians get so much wrong.

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Additional Thoughts On Using Bayes' Theorem

No one should expect that a good argument is one that convinces reasonable people. What we should expect is that an argument is a good one, or a strong one, or very strong one, irrespective of whether it is a convincing one. Even though I know this, I still try to come up with arguments that are convincing to most reasonable people. I expect kickback from Christian believers. What can annoy me is kickback from other atheists and agnostics, especially if they don't let it go after a while, until they say nothing new I haven't considered before. BTW: A person can annoy me on one issue but be very informative, completely delightful and insightful on most everything else. That describes Ignorant Amos. In fact, the commenters here seem to be the best I've seen anywhere!

I have defended the use of Hitchens’ Razor over the use of Bayes’ Theorem (BT) when assessing miracles like a virgin birthed deity and the resurrection of Jesus. I have argued that BT cannot and should not be applied to claims which are nonsense, and that miraculous claims in the ancient Biblical past are all nonsense! They are all nonsense because there is absolutely no credible evidence for any of them. I have also argued that the goal of atheists should be to change minds, and that fewer minds are changed the more we respond with greater and greater sophistication. Doing so also legitimizes nonsense by giving believers undue credibility. I agree with philosopher Julian Baggini who said, "Converts are won at the more general level." [infidels.org/kiosk/article.] For responding to fundamentalist philosophy only encourages fundamentalist philosophers. On the general level even ridicule changes minds.

I don’t object to using BT when it’s applied appropriately to questions for which we have prior objective data to determine their initial likelihood, along with subsequent data to help us in our final probability calculations. It’s an excellent tool when these conditions obtain. So a new provocative question arises, one I didn't address: What is the best tool for assessing the possibility that a historical person existed behind the Jesus character in the Gospels?

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A Former Theology Professor Who Turned Atheist Now Claims to be an Agnostic

I received an email from a retired theology professor friend of mine who had previously embraced atheism, but now claims to be an agnostic instead. I'll share his email below, along with my response. But I think this video by QualiaSoup does a good job on his concerns.



Here is his email and my response:

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Which Type of Anthologies Are Best?

This Tweet is by The Non Alchemist:

Enjoying this so far. Covers a lot of ground, with essays for and against different positions. I prefer reading stuff like this where multiple perspectives are engaged and there is interaction.

This stands in contrast to all of my anthologies.

The Non Alchemist's point is an interesting one. Could that be why he hasn't yet recommended any of my anthologies? I don't know. But I think it's an interesting question nonetheless. Preference is subjective. Readers can have a preference for one type of book over another. I don't have a problem with that. Don't forget that a preference for something different is not a substantive criticism of my work.

I myself have a preference for truth in my anthologies, well-articulated, researched, and referenced truth. I don't think my opinion is subjective, but rather based on credible evidence, along with the abysmal lack of credible evidence from the Christian opposition. I have defended my opinion in 12 critically acclaimed anthologies.

But people do disagree, so let's set that all aside.

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Review of "God and and Horrendous Suffering"

 

Congratulations go out to all the authors in my anthology "God and Horrendous Suffering"!! That book is going to be a classic thanks to us all. 

I share reviews like this one to the left, because atheist books don't usually get that much promotion from publishers (GCRR is an exception). Please consider promoting it if you think it's a good anthology, like I do. 

 

Read more about it here, then get it.

For an introduction to the book, see this (Offsite).

Maybe the Apostle Paul Could Talk You Out of Christianity

So much that he wrote is just plain wrong

How astounding is this: one of the founding heroes of the Christian faith wrote letters—he was obsessive about it—and we still have those letters today. Actually, the originals were lost, so we have copies of copies of copies, many generations of copies removed from the originals. Which means that quite a few errors crept into the text—some words also got left out by mistake—but it’s still quite something that we have what we do. For anyone who is genuinely curious about what Christian thought was like, right at the beginning, these letters are a treasure, preserved in the New Testament. It is a curiosity that Jesus himself didn’t think of writing letters, to codify his insights about God. After all, he was part of God himself, the divine trinity. If not letters, why not treatises? Just preaching words that evaporated into the air as he wandered Palestine seems so inadequate. Moreover, the Jesus-script that we have in the gospels probably was invented by their authors, writing decades later: there’s no way to verify any of the words attributed to Jesus. But, hey, the gospel writers had firmly held theological ideas about Jesus. So they’re worth reading, right?

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Phil Bair On Atheism, Miracles, and Extraordinary Evidence

No intellectual should expect that a good argument is one that convinces reasonable people. What we should expect is that an argument is a good one, or a strong one, or very strong one, irrespective of whether it is a convincing one. Even though I know this, I still try to come up with arguments that are convincing to most reasonable people. I expect kickback from Christian believers. What can annoy me is kickback from other atheists and agnostics, especially if they don't let it go after a while, until they say nothing new I haven't considered before. More on that in another post.

This post will concern Phil Bair, a good guy who engages me on Facebook from time to time. He's spent 40 years by his count, studying these issues. He even wrote a book. His target is atheism.

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Christianity in the Light of Science: Critically Examining the World's Largest Religion

This is one of my favorite anthologies! People who say I repeat the same old arguments have not read my works!

In this indispensable volume, John Loftus and his colleagues demonstrate all the different ways in which science undermines and threatens religious belief. The only way you can rescue God from this book is if you force him to retreat so far that you might as well stop believing in him. I defy you to read this volume and still believe that religion and science shall ever meet. John Loftus will never receive the Templeton Prize, but he should. This collection alone will further our understanding of science and religion more than all the previous winners combined.

—Dr. Maarten Boudry, philosopher, Ghent University. --LINK.

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Just Released: "A Statistical Critique of the Minimal Facts Apologetics of Gary Habermas and Michael Licona." -- Written by Michael J. Alter and Darren M. Slade

SHERM Journal just released a publication whose full correct title is, "Dataset Analysis of English Texts Written on the Topic of Jesus’ Resurrection: A Statistical Critique of Minimal Facts Apologetics." It was co-authored by Michael J. Alter, and Darren M. Slade. In a nutshell, the article disproves (for the first time using actual data) the common apologetic assertion that 90% of "critical scholars" accept the historicity of certain minimal facts about Jesus. Abstract:

This article collects and examines data relating to the authors of English-language texts written and published during the past 500 years on the subject of Jesus’ resurrection and then compares this data to Gary R. Habermas’ 2005 and 2012 publication on the subject. To date, there has been no such inquiry. This present article identifies 735 texts spanning five centuries (from approximately 1500 to 2020). The data reveals 680 Pro-Resurrection books by 601 authors (204 by ministers, 146 by priests, 249 by people associated with seminaries, 70 by laypersons, and 22 by women). This article also reveals that a remarkably high proportion of the English-language books written about Jesus’ resurrection were by members of the clergy or people linked to seminaries, which means any so-called scholarly consensus on the subject of Jesus’ resurrection is wildly inflated due to a biased sample of authors who have a professional and personal interest in the subject matter. Pro-Resurrection authors outnumber Contra-Resurrection authors by a factor of about twelve-to-one. In contrast, the 55 Contra-Resurrection books, representing 7.48% of the total 735 books, were by 42 authors (28 having no relevant degrees at the time of publication). The 42 contra authors represent only 6.99% of all authors writing on the subject.

The leading defenders of the minimal facts approach are Gary Habermas and Michael Licona. One of the authors of this Sherm Journal Article is Dr. Darren M. Slade. He studied under Habermas at the doctoral level, and took many classes with him. He even debated him. You can find the article's webpage Right here. Below is an excerpt from the article's conclusion.

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Christian “Truth” in Shreds: Epic Takedown Number 7

…god really isn’t all that great 

Oft-repeated items from childhood stick in the mind. Our mealtime grace was “God is good, God is great, thank you for this food. Amen.” Full-blown, industrial strength, Sunday School naivety about religion. Drivel. I’m tempted now to ask, “What were we thinking?” —but of course we weren’t thinking at all. How is it even remotely possible that the creative force that (supposedly) runs the Cosmos requires/desires/appreciates being told by countless humans that he/she/it is good and great? What a useless idea. Moreover, instead of the word “God,” we could just have well have said “our food supply chain” is good and great. If you didn’t eat everything on your plate, the cliché we heard was, “Think of all the starving people in China.” If God is good and great, how could that happen? We were fortunate to have a well-functioning food supply chain.

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I didn’t expect this!

Any author or editor wants their work to be acknowledged as being good and helpful. But I never expected this from the most recent Freedom From Religion Foundation's newspaper.

Have you gotten that book yet? It's one of a handful of my favorites: Christianity Is Not Great.

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Christianity Is Not Great: How Faith Fails

Anthologies are not easy to organize. Contributors have to be recruited, and they may not all be available at the time you need them. Scholars have to respect you enough as an editor to join your project if they are available. Over the past few years, John Loftus has demonstrated his ability to recruit the best scholars and scientists to his anthologies. The present anthology, Christianity Is Not Great, is no exception. Scholars representing fields as varied as physics and anthropology are here.

Consequently, these anthologies are some of the most substantive collections of rebuttals to theistic arguments, and specifically to Christian theistic arguments, in existence. They signal a new era insofar as atheists are organizing coherent and scholarly responses that are wide-ranging in scope, instead of just focusing on a few traditional issues (e.g., philosophical arguments against theism or creationism). These anthologies touch on, among many subjects, history, sociology, psychology, and biblical studies.

Christianity Is Not Great swiftly demolishes one of the greatest and subtlest myths promoted by believers. The demolished myth is that Christianity, even if it cannot be proved to be true, has at least been good for the world.

Aside from the wonderful contributions, this volume is an indirect tribute to Loftus himself. John Loftus is an indefatigable laborer for atheism. He represents one of those voices who still has not received the honor he deserves. Yet few modern atheists have provided as much useful service to educating the masses about atheism as he has done.

--From the Foreword by Dr. Hector Avalos.

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Bill Burr Speaks the Truth About Religion

Sound familiar? This video has been watched 2.6 million times. Burr is reaching millions more people than I could hope to do. Here is a snippet to tease you into watching this 9:48 minutes of pure genius.

Everybody else's religion sounds stupid. The first time I heard the story of Scientology I was like, that is the dumbest shit I have ever heard in my life...while simultaneously still kind of believing that a woman who never got f*cked had a baby that walked on the water, died and came back three days later. Yeah, that made total sense to me. So it just hit me one day. Why doesn't Scientology make sense and my shit does? I think it's because I heard their story when I was an adult. I heard my story when I was four years old. What was I going to do? I had to make a decision. Just let go of it. Let go of it like that creepy moment in curling... That's what I did with my religion. I just let go of it. It just floated away.

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Bible Study to Help You Get Over Christianity

So much of scripture undermines belief

There are zealous Bible apologists—of the evangelical/fundamentalist variety—who try to make the case that the Bible is inerrant: It’s the perfect word of their god. Their followers are confident that, opening the Bible to any page, any chapter, god’s wisdom and guidance are there without fail. They can gerrymander even the worst texts to come up with lessons that fuel their piety. But we know that there are many Christians outside these circles who aren’t so blind. They recoil with horror at so many Bible stories and teaching—as much as secular readers do. And they know that too much of the Bible should not have been included in the canon, although they wouldn’t quite agree with Hector Avalos’ suggestion that 99 percent of the Bible would not be missed.

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The Outsider Test for Faith

Formulating and extensively defending the OTF is Loftus’ greatest contribution to the philosophy of religion and atheism. The basic idea is that you can only have a rational faith if you test it by the same standards you apply to all other competing faiths; yet when you do that, your religion tests as false as the others, and the same reasons you use to reject those become equally valid reasons to reject yours.

This is the greatest book Loftus has ever produced. It's without question a must-read for believers, and atheists who wants to debate them. Superbly argued, air tight, and endlessly useful, this should be everyone's first stop in the god debate. Loftus meets every objection and proves the Outsider Test for Faith is really the core of every case against religious belief, and the one argument you can't honestly get around. It takes religion on at its most basic presuppositions, forcing the believer into a dilemma from which there is no escape: either abandon your faith or admit you don't believe in being logically consistent. After reading it, and sincerely applying its principles, anyone who really wants to be rational will be on the road to atheism in no time.

Though this idea has been voiced before, Loftus is the first to name it, rigorize it, and give it an extensive philosophical defense; moreover, by doing so, he is the first to cause a concerted apologetic to arise attempting to dodge it, to which he could then respond. The end result is one of the most effective and powerful arguments for atheism there is. It is, in effect, a covering argument that subsumes all other arguments for atheism into a common framework. LINK.

-- Dr. Richard Carrier, author of Why I Am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons to Reject the Faith.

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“The Rationalization Hypothesis: Is a Vision of Jesus Necessary for the Rise of the Resurrection Belief?” — by Kris Komarnitsky

I had previously highly recommended an essay by Kris Komarnitsky in my chapter on the resurrection for The Case against Miracles.

When it came to my chapter 18 on the resurrection of Jesus I mentioned the theories that help explain the origins of the belief in Jesus' resurrection. I stressed one theory above all the rest:

One theory has recently been defended by Kris Komarnitsky, author of "Doubting Jesus’ Resurrection: What Happened in the Black Box ?" He has done an excellent job of showing what could have happened in an online post on Mathew Ferguson’s blog titled, "The Rationalization Hypothesis: Is a Vision of Jesus Necessary for the Rise of the Resurrection Belief?" I find it to be the most detailed defense of this theory, making it worth considering, complete with four real-life examples of it in history. He takes issue with the bereavement visionary hypothesis of the disciples, widely regarded as a plausible naturalistic explanation for the data, and argues instead for what he calls the cognitive-dissonance-induced ration- alization hypothesis. The question he discusses is whether bereavement visions produced the belief that Jesus arose from the dead, or whether the resurrection belief came first due to cognitive dissonance reducing rationalizations, favoring the later. Go read it. Now! Forget the swoon theory that Jesus didn’t actually die, the conspiracy theory that the disciples purportedly concocted to perpetrate a hoax, the impersonation theory that someone impersonated Jesus, or the unknown tomb theory where the disciples went to the wrong tomb.

Then I linked to it. It has now been released again, for which I thank Matthew Ferguson! “The Rationalization Hypothesis: Is a Vision of Jesus Necessary for the Rise of the Resurrection Belief?” — by Kris Komarnitsky.

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Arguments Against God: 10, 20, 30, 50, and Counting!

Christianity’s unfortunate embrace of incoherence

Following the publication of my book, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Faith six years ago, one of the most common questions I got from atheists was, “What, only ten?” Of course, there are far more, and I explain that I sorted the many problems into the ten categories. There’s a certain appeal of top ten lists. But others have taken a different approach. In 2014, Armin Navabi published his book, Why There Is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God. Guy P. Harrison has a good brand going with these titles, 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God, 50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True, 50 Simple Questions for Every Christian. 

 

All of these books are included in the Cure-for-Christianity Library I have been building since the publication of my 2016 book. There are now more than 525 titles, most published since the year 2000. The devout may be wondering—if they even know about this surge in atheist/secular publishing— “Why do these heretics keep writing?” From behind their high stacks of frothy, sentimental devotional books, churned out year after year, they cast contemptuous glances at atheist books that might come to their attention. They may wonder how there is anything more to be said against god and believers.

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Follow the Money Trail: Faith-Based Education and Publishing in Apologetics, by Michael J. Alter

Michael J. Alter is an independent researcher and author of The Resurrection: A Critical Inquiry (2015), A Thematic Access-Oriented Bibliography of Jesus's Resurrection (2020), and the forthcoming text from GCRR Press, The Resurrection and Its Apologetics: A Critical Inquiry, Vol. 1.

Alter has written a two part essay at the Global Center for Religious Research titled, "Follow the Money Trail: Faith-Based Education and Publishing in Apologetics. Highly recommended! Nonbelievers seeking an education and a publisher are not out-gunned, they just have less opportunities when up against the massive amount of resources of Christian organizations, colleges and publishing houses. I know this all to well.

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