“Their only hope of being rescued from the hell Hitler has made of Europe”

The ongoing scandal of god’s negligence

It’s not a stretch to say that the Bible is one of Christian theology’s biggest burdens. It portrays a god that theologians have worked so hard to modify and refine; the very rough edges have to be knocked off. Among many other negatives, the Christian god is a terror-and-guilt specialist, because nothing you say or think escapes his notice. This is Jesus-script 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.” The apostle Paul also had an opinion on god getting even: “…on the day when, according to my gospel, God through Christ Jesus judges the secret thoughts of all” (Romans 2:16)—after all, how else would prayer work if god doesn’t know your secret thoughts? Hence devout Christians are confident that their god closely monitors every human being—all eight billion of us.

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Suspicious Interpolations, by Greg G.

Bible scholars often have suspicions of interpolations but do not go as far as taking them out of the Bible unless they have old, reliable manuscripts that omit the passage. Here are some passages that were in the King James Version but have been removed, or in the case of popular passages, they are noted as missing in the most reliable old Bibles.

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My Rambling Thoughts On Free Will, Determinism, and Making Choices

I had a nice discussion on metaphysical free will, determinism, and making choices that matter. What follows are my rambling thoughts because it was a discussion, and I was finding different ways to communicate. I just don't want to clear up the repetition. It begins with this quote which I dispute:

My message to you is this: pretend that you have free will. It’s essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don’t. The reality isn’t important: what’s important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.
― Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others

Since we’re alive we must make choices, even if they are determined ones. So why not make those choices good ones, even though those choices are determined ones? At the time we choose we don’t know which ones are determined to be. So the fact that they are determined doesn’t affect which choices we make. Live then, as if it’s all up to us, knowing it’s not up to us. It doesn’t change how we should live by knowing that our choices are determined.

In other words, an action is not yet determined until we choose to do it. We must choose to act throughout our days. Therefore, we are participants in which actions take place. I don’t know in advance which actions I will choose throughout my days. So I am learning as I choose which actions were determined beforehand for me to make. It’s a discovery we make by making our choices.

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God’s Bad Habit of Oversleeping

And the Christian bad habit of being OKAY with it

On Saturday, 10 June 1944—four days after the Allied landing at Normandy—the rural village of Oradour-sur-Glane, in Vichy occupied France, was surrounded by an SS Panzer division of German soldiers. They rounded up all of the residents, forced the men into barns and stables, the women and children into the church. Then, with machine guns and fire-bombs, they murdered all 643 of them: 462 women and children were killed in the church. The women had felt safe in the church, because, of course, that’s where God is paying the closest attention to those who worship him. So how could a caring, attentive, powerful, competent god have allowed this savagery to happen? “God is good, God is great, but since he works in mysterious ways, he allowed the German soldiers to do their job that day.” Such a response illustrates the all-too-common incoherence of Christian theology: it doesn’t make sense.

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David G. McAfee's Review of "The Case Against Miracles" on Amazon

I will be keenly interested in what people say about "The Case Against Miracles" now that a good deal of people downloaded the free book off Amazon yesterday. David G. McAfee reviewed this book a few years back saying;

The Case Against Miracles’ is the Best Anti-Apologetics Book Around!

If you are ever forced to deal with Christian apologists, who spend their lives defending the Christian religion with philosophy and (often incredibly bad) reasoning, then you need this new book by atheist author John W. Loftus.

Let’s start with the obvious: The Case Against Miracles has some of the biggest names in the atheism and skepticism communities. Not only is it edited by Loftus, who also edited The Christian Delusion, but it contains blurbs and essays by Michael Shermer, Dan Barker, Peter Boghossian, David Fitzgerald, and other legends.

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"I SEEK TO PROVE -- FREE WILL IS IMPOSSIBLE AND IMMORAL"

I have known the author of the piece below for many years. Both he and I are most interested in what you think of its strongest and weakest parts, so please comment. The content in this essay deserves the utmost serious consideration.

 --John W. Loftus.  

 SOMETHING NEW AND DECISIVE ABOUT FREE WILL

LETHAL TO THE NEED FOR SAVIOR JESUS

WHY ARE YOU WHO YOU ARE?

COMPARE THE EFFECTS -- ONLY YOU KNOW – OF THE FACTORS MAKING YOU

AND IMPOSED NOT CHOSEN – CAN ANYONE HAVE FREE WILL?

By Stanley W. Ayre -- March 2023

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What Comes After Atheism? Liberatheism, Freedom from God(s)

I am honored to write the Foreword to David Eller's soon to be published book, Liberatheism: On Freedom from God(s). Here is a draft I've submitted:

                                                ---------------------------

David Eller’s luminous works contain important perspectives you won’t find from anyone else in today’s world. We are all in his debt. You aren’t a fully informed person if you’re not reading them, and this new book is no exception.[1]

Let me highlight just a few of his perspectives, those I found to be brilliant, important, and persuasive. First, as a professor of cultural anthropology Eller has challenged me to think outside my cultural box. Rather than thinking exclusively in terms of westernized notions of faith, religion, and culture, he has forced me to adopt a global perspective. This global perspective has been a game changer for me. I used to think in exclusively in  terms of the westernized theistic gods of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. And while I don’t have a very deep knowledge of the other religious cultures and their gods, my consciousness has been raised to consider these other religious cultures more than ever. When that happens you will see the problem of religious diversity for what it really is.

From Eller I was forced to acknowledge it is not the case that westernized notions of religion have any superiority to them. That was a shocker to me, but then at that time I was still in my ignorance. Again, when we adopt a truly global perspective on religion none of them have anything more going for them than the others. This means for me as an atheist that when I choose to argue exclusively against one deity over the others, by that very choice I’m acting as if one particular deity has more going for it than the others. That assumption is false. The reason it’s false is because all religions are subjective, cultural, tribal, and relative. Our inherited religion is just a different cultural expression of the same kinds of hopes and fears over the problems we face with life and death, morals and society itself.

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Chapter 13: "Christianity Can be Hazardous to Your Health, by Harriet Hall

Dr. Skepdoc Harriet Hall died peacefully in her sleep last night. In her honor I present a sample of her work from my anthology Christianity is not Great. If there is any occasion to see the truth of her chapter look no further that how Covid-19 and it's variants have killed, and are still killing, ignorant Christian vaccine deniers. She was one of the greats in our lifetime! If you haven't read that anthology yet, there are a number of really good chapters in it! 

 

Christianity Can be Hazardous to Your Health,  

by Harriet Hall, MD

Religion will always be a controversial subject, but its impact on health is one area that lends itself to objective investigation.

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On Book Publishing and Royalties

On Book Publishing

Craig is on the left. Strauss is on the right.

 

I didn’t get an agent for any of my books. I contacted the publishers directly myself. If you do a search for agents, finding one may help get your book picked up by a mainstream publisher. Just write an outline, 1-2 chapters, and a query letter to get them interested in selling your work. My big problem is that I never sought a mainstream publisher. I didn't figure it would be worth the wait to get a rejection letter in the end of the process, due to the polemical adversarial tone in most of my books.

I self-published my first book with Trafford Books in 2004. It was titled, From Minister to Honest Doubter: Why I Changed My Mind. I had to do most all the work in formatting it. In it I had a photo of my two professors, James Strauss, who taught at Lincoln Christian Seminary, and Bill Craig, who taught at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS). Strauss attended my graduation from TEDS in 1985, where I earned my third master's degree, a ThM. Half of my hours were taken under them both at these two schools. They were my advisors and mentors.

Now as unbelievable as this is, I didn't know at the time, when I self-published this book in 2004, how influential Bill Craig had become since I left TEDS in 1985. I thought it was worth mentioning, but nothing more than that. But when Edward Babinski saw it in print he told everyone about it. People think I'm trying to hitch a ride on the coattails of Craig's acclaim, but I assure you I'm not. My work stands on its own. But people want to know. They want to know if Craig had a wayward former student, and if so, what does that student know that Craig doesn't know? So I mention it. It's mention-worthy, that's all.

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Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity

I'm done writing and editing books, so I'm highlighting each one of them in thirteen separate posts.

My first published book, Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, is my magnum opus! If you don't have it you're missing out on what I consider to be my most important work. Pictured is the 2nd edition published in 2012. The 1st edition was published in 2008. Very rare is an atheist book that gets a second edition!

I'm described as a "Former Preacher" in the title. I'm not just a preacher though. I'm a philosopher with several advanced degrees and plenty of classroom time as an instructor of philosophy, ethics, critical thinking, western literature, apologetics, hermeneutics, and a few Bible classes. I taught for the Trine University, Kellogg Community College, Lincoln Christian College, and Great Lakes Christian College. So the words "Former Preacher" don't fully describe me, even though I was in the ministry for about 15 years, mostly while I was also teaching. I had wanted my publisher to call me a "Former Apologist" but they thought few people understood what that means.

I started teaching philosophy and ethics classes in 1985, first for the College of Lake County, in Grayslake, Illinois. In my first class I lost about half my students. As I think back, it was probably due, in part, because I was a flaming evangelical. A larger factor was because the students could not understand me. Yep, that's right. Being in a Ph.D. program at Marquette University, after earning three masters degrees, I didn't know how to bring the information down to college students. So I thought my teaching career was over before it began. Luckily the chair of the philosophy department told me this happens more often than not for first time philosophy instructors. *Whew*

Over time I became an expert teacher, bringing highly complex ideas down to first year students. I eventually learned how to communicate to the average educated person in the pew. My goal was, and is now, to keep it as simple as possible without being simplistic. The problem with this goal is that there are some elitist readers who think I'm ignorant, for if I was smarter and better educated it would reflect in my vocabulary. Smart, highly educated people, it's assumed, use the nomenclature requisite with their educational achievements.

You can see this same "dumbing down", as the elitists call it, reflected in my writings. While I could use technical philosophical language, and quote from the original Hebrew and Greek languages in the Bible, I found that so long as I was accurate I didn’t need to impress people by writing for the scholars.

This is reflected in a few blurbs for my books.

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Unapologetic: Why Philosophy of Religion Must End

I'm done writing and editing books, so I'm highlighting each one of them in thirteen separate posts.

Today let's consider my 2016 book, Unapologetic: Why Philosophy of Religion Must End. Just like my books The Outsider Test for Faith, and How To Defend the Christian Faith, this one was also forged in the heat of debate here at DC. I don't expect Christian philosophers to agree with it until after they abandon their faith. Secular philosophers have disagreed with it. But noteworthy ones agree. Actually, I think most all scientifically minded atheist philosophers should agree.

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

I'm done writing and editing books, so I'm highlighting each one of them in thirteen separate posts.

Firstly, Christianity in the Light of Science was dedicated to Victor Stenger, the fifth horseman, who had written:

Throughout history, arguments for and against the existence of God have been largely confined to philosophy and theology. In the meantime, science has sat on the sidelines and quietly watched this game of words march up and down the field. . . . In my 2003 book, Has Science Found God? I critically examined the claims of scientific evidence for God and found them inadequate. In this present book, I will go much farther and argue that by this moment in time science has advanced sufficiently to be able to make a definitive statement on the existence or nonexistence of a God having the attributes that are traditionally associated with the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God. --From the Preface to God: The Failed Hypothesis.

After disagreeing with my chosen title for my earlier book, Christianity is not Great, Prometheus Books accepted my book proposal on the condition they would have the final say in naming it. They basically didn't want it named after Stenger's NY Times Bestselling book, such as Christianity: The Failed Hypothesis. After eliminating a few titles it came down to two:

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The Case Against Miracles

I'm done writing and editing books, so I'm highlighting each one of them in thirteen separate posts. This time we look at The Case against Miracles. [See Tag Below]

After a two year break from producing another anthology (2017-18), due mostly to dating and marrying my wife Sheila. I finally decided to do one again. My decision came from debates on Facebook with Richard Carrier and Matthew Ferguson over the use of Bayes' Theorem in assessing miracles, plus the prodding of Richard Miller (who now posts here at DC). Dr. Miller and I were going to co-edit the book together but it just didn't work out. I thank him for prodding me to do it, and I think the book might have been better if it had worked out.

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My Book, Debating Christianity

I'm done writing and editing books so I've been highlighting each of them.

My last book "Debating Christianity" was skillfully put together by my friend Jonathan Pearce. [See Tag Below]

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How to Change the Minds of Believers, by John W. Loftus

How to Change the Minds of Believers by John W. Loftus

 

After spending nearly two decades trying to change the minds of Christian believers (my focus in what follows) I still don’t fully know how to do it. Regardless, I’ll share ten helpful tips for readers who, like me, want to bang your heads against a wall. I think it’s worth doing despite the low odds of success. For any success helps rid the world of the harms of religion. Besides, one of the greatest challenges is to change minds, and I like challenges. Plus, I’ve learned a great deal by attempting this important underappreciated task.

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World War I: Why Didn't It Put an End to Belief in God?

A personal, loving, competent god is out of the question

When we study episodes of colossal suffering in human history, we have to wonder: “How did belief in a good, powerful god survive these experiences?” The masses of people affected would have been more than justified in telling their priests to get lost. “The theology you’ve been peddling is all wrong.” The Black Plague of the 14^th century, which brought horrible suffering and death to perhaps a third of the population from India to England, should have meant the end of personal theism, i.e., belief that a loving god manages the world, indeed, keeps close tabs on every person on earth. Unfortunately, critical thinking was not a common commodity at that time, so the church got away with preaching that human sin was the cause of the plague; god was getting even. This is stunningly bad theology, the embrace of supernatural evil, as Dan Barker has put it: the loving god had disappeared.

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Reflections On Plantinga's "Refutation" of the Logical Problem of Evil

We did not deal with the Logical Problem of Suffering (or Evil) in my recent anthology, God and Horrendous Suffering. It's said Alvin Plantinga answered atheist philosopher J.L. Mackie's Logical Problem of Evil argument. Mackie even acknowledged that he did. Here are some reflections on it.

First, Plantinga didn't do anything significant by arguing it’s logically possible God exists given suffering. Possibilities don’t count; only probabilities do. All we need to say is that it’s extremely improbable for God to exist given suffering. But that says it all!

Second, the real issue is whether or not a theistic God is probable given suffering. It's not significant to say such a God is still possible. All kinds of strange things are possible, which is an extremely low standard. Show that it's probable God exists given suffering, and that would be impressive.

Third, Plantinga did not argue with integrity when throwing up an illegitimate ad hoc hypothesis that all natural evil is caused by Satan, something Richard Swinburne pointed out. Ad hoc hypotheses are illegitimate since their sole purpose is to save a proposition from refutation. So Plantinga did not honestly answer Mackie.

If we throw out illegitimate ad hoc hypotheses then the logical problem remains. The kill or be killed law of predation still has no resolution, nor do other natural evils. For this problem must be solved with integrity for it to be solved at all.

Lastly, Dr. Kyle Johnson has argued it's impossible to have a justified belief in demons. So if it's impossible to have a justified belief in demons then Plantinga's Free Will Defense fails. But wait! See below for more...

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In the Face of Brutal Reality, How Does Christianity Survive?

So many human calamities, so much suffering 

For most of us—Christians and nonbelievers alike—it was hard to get into anything resembling the Christian spirit in December 2012. On the 14th of that month, a gunman killed twenty students and six teachers at the Sandy Hook School in Newtown, CT. The nation was in shock, grieving. Ten days later, at a Christmas Eve dinner, at the home of a Catholic friend, she said—during grace, referencing the massacre—“God must have wanted more angels.” I had to resist the temptation to throw my drink in her face. If any Catholic theologians had been present, they would have swung into action, to perform an exorcism, to get rid of the demon that had invaded her brain. Theologians work overtime to explain why their caring, powerful god wasn’t able to stop the gunman. Here was a devout Catholic suggesting that her god had engineered the killing to get more angels. This is a symptom of catechism-induced brain death.

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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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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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