The Case For "The Case Against The Case For Christ"

Bob Price's new book The Case Against The Case For Christ: A New Testament Scholar Refutes the Reverend Lee Strobel, incinerates Lee Strobel's book The Case for Christ, along with the evangelical apologists he interviews, including Craig L. Blomberg, Gregory Boyd, Ben Witherington III, D.A. Carson, William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, J.P. Moreland, and others. However, I doubt many of the people who read Strobel's book will read Price's book, not the least of which because understanding Price might demand a better understanding of the issues than the cream puff book Strobel wrote for the average person in the pew, but also because Price seems so disgusted with evangelical apologists at this point in his career he can't hide it.

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"Religion and Women" by NY Times Columist Nicholas D. Krisof

Religions derive their power and popularity in part from the ethical compass they offer. So why do so many faiths help perpetuate something that most of us regard as profoundly unethical: the oppression of women?

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Dr. Hector Avalos's Book on Slavery is Now Available At An Affordable Price!

Previously Hector sent me a review copy of his book, Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship.I wrote a three part review of it, which can be read beginning with this first post. Now it's available at an affordable price. GET THAT BOOK NOW! Don't delay. It is without a doubt the best book on slavery and the Bible out there, and probably the best atheist book published in the last ten years or more, depending on your interests.

Slavery? NO WAY...NONE!

I've said this before, and I'll say it again, there is no justification for God to have allowed the slavery in the American South, or any slavery for that matter. None. If God was perfectly good, he would've said, "Thou shalt not trade, buy, own, or sell slaves" (KJV version), and said it as often as he needed to do so. But he didn't. The following is an excerpt from freed slave Frederick Douglass' Narrative of his life:

In one incident Frederick Douglass described how his Christian master whipped his aunt right before his young eyes. “He took her into the kitchen, and stripped her from neck to waist. He made her get upon the stool, and he tied her hands to a hook in the joist. After rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood came dripping to the floor.” “No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood clotted cowskin.”

On this issue I am adamant. There is no excuse for God not to have effectively communicated to his followers what he wanted them to do...none! There has been so much needless intense pain and misery caused by God's shortsightedness here that I see no reason why people are still not angry about God's ineptitude. My only comfort is that he does not exist! I cannot be too angry with the forces of nature, human ignorance, greed, fear and hate for this, even though as part of the forces of nature I can still argue against this inhumane behavior, but if such a lousy God does indeed exist, he should be fired! So let me do this:

You're Fired!

The Problem of Miscommunication

I'm writing a chapter for a new book to be published by Prometheus Books. In this chapter I'm describing what I consider to be a very serious problem for Christianity that needs to be highlighted and emphasized around the internet. I call it the Problem of Miscommunication.

Christians argue how that Christianity helped abolish slavery. Big deal, even if this is true. Who are you trying to kid here? If God had condemned slavery from the very beginning there would be nothing to reform, no beatings, no killings, no institutional slavery justified from the Bible. If God had repeatedly said, "Thou shalt not buy beat or own slaves," and never sent any vibes the other way, then Christians could never justify it as an institution.

There are so many other examples. Did you know that 8 million Christians killed each other during the French Wars of Religion and during the Thirty Years War over the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and who was the legitimate authority to administer it? Again, 8 million Christians. All Jesus had to do was to say he was speaking "metaphorically" about his body and blood, if that's what he meant. And all Jesus had to do was to clear up whether Peter was the rock or his confession was the rock in Matt 16.

To say these Christians (both Catholics and Protestants) should've known better is sheer ignorance, for they still disagree about this today. Whenever there is miscommunication both parties are to blame, especially if there is an omniscient God who could've known in advance how his followers would misinterpret what he said. Do you understand this? All attempts at answering this particular problem utterly fail to take it seriously.

For Christians to claim atheism was the cause of many deaths in modern wars misses the point for three reasons: 1) Atheism per se was not the cause of the killings; 2) It's a red herring, since whether or not this was the case with atheism does nothing to solve the Christian Problem of Miscommunication; 3) If the Christians in that era had modern weapons of war, including nuclear weapons, then we would've seen many more deaths, possibly genocide.

Why Evolutionists Should Debate Creationists, One More Time

In my college ethics class I would offer a challenge to students who were against the legalization of Marijuana. I said that as the illegal use of it increased and with it the overcrowding of prisons and the deaths due to gang wars over who controlled the market in America, along with the drug wars in countries like Mexico, at what point would the harms of keeping it illegal outweigh any harms of legalizing its use? Now granted, I didn't think it caused much harm, if any to adult users, but this was after all, an ethics class. I asked a pragmatic utilitarian question, not a principled one. It got them thinking.

I think the same type of question can be asked of those who have a principled objection against evolutionists debating creationists. It does harm to science they say, by giving creationists credibility. Let's take what PZ Myers said as an example, although Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne would agree with him against an upcoming evolutionist vs creationist debate that is to take place this Saturday. [It will be streamed live!] PZ said:

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Some Mistakes of Moses Concluded

Note from Julian Haydon who is providing these excerpts:

This was written 133 years ago; for a public beginning to receive "explanations" for absurdities; but still when many, as now, believed every word in the bible true. Robert Ingersoll relentlessly drives home the full implications of what they believe -- but some of the learned doctors he quotes are in no way embarrassed.

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ephemerol Comments On Religious Freedom In America

"Religious freedom will be protected for decades to come."
ephemerol comments:

Since the freedom to practice your religion, at least to the extent that it does not impinge upon the freedom of others, is not now, nor has it ever been under threat, I think what you meant was, "Religious privilege will be protected for decades to come." Religious privilege to expressly impinge upon the freedom of others. Religious privilege to be intolerant and bigoted.

That may be. We shall see. However...

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Paul Copan’s Moral Relativism: A Response from a Biblical Scholar of the New Atheism

Subtitled, "Dr. Paul Copan: Apologist for Genocide"

by Dr. Hector Avalos

*Unless noted otherewise, all biblical translations are those of the RSV.

In an blog essay titled, Is Yahweh a Moral Monster?: The New Atheists and Old Testament Ethics,” Dr. Paul Copan, a well-known Christian apologist, attempts to combat the New Atheists, and their dim view of biblical ethics. However, it soon becomes apparent that his critique repeats factual errors and biases found in earlier biblical apologists. Dr. Copan reveals himself as just another Christian apologist who supports biblical genocide and other injustices.

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The Slavery of ‘Revealed Truth.’

“God said it. I believe it. That settles it!”
Christian bumper sticker

“All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell... And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”
Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) member of the House Science Committee

“In this respect fundamentalism has demonic traits. It destroys the humble honesty of the search for truth, it splits the conscience of its thoughtful adherents, and it makes them fanatical because they are forced to suppress elements of truth of which they are dimly aware.”
Paul Tillich

I would like to present a few thoughts on the marked difference between the fundamentalist view of truth and the scientific pursuit of truth.

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Mothers Day

A few thoughts for Mother's Day...

This mother's day, please take time to remember the historical record, the prejudices and autrocities that continue to this day around the world against women:
"[The Israelites] warred against the Midianites [...] And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones [...] And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? [...] Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."
-Moses
(Numbers 31:7-18, KJV)

What an uncivilized people they were.

On Wed, 10 May 2006 alerts@takeaction.amnestyusa.org wrote:
As we prepare to celebrate Mother's Day, I would like to let you know that our campaign demanding the Guatemalan authorities investigate the brutal murders of over 1,900 women - mothers, daughters and sisters - is taking off.

In the 3 days since my last message, over 11,000 people like you have taken action demanding justice for those killed and protection for the women living in fear in Guatemala. Thank you.

And with your help, we're making sure the Guatemalan government doesn't forget the violence they've condoned. Here's what we plan to do:

1. In memory of the women brutally killed, we plan to deliver 300 roses and carnations to the Guatemalan embassy in Washington, DC. Carnations traditionally symbolize mourning in Guatemala.

2. Amnesty activists will take action against this violence by demanding improved investigative procedures and prosecutions, proper documentation of gender-related crimes and improved access to legal aid for victims' relatives.

3. Amnesty International USA will lobby the Guatemalan Congress to enact legislative measures that promote and protect women's rights.

This Mother's Day, with your help, we can commemorate the lives of the 1,900 daughters, sisters, mothers and friends who have been killed. And we can give hope to the remaining Guatemalan women - hope that the institutional discrimination and violence will end and that no more lives will be needlessly taken.

Sincerely,

Larry Cox
Executive Director
Amnesty International USA

Mohammed's commendation of the sword by word and deed found a ready response in the hearts of his followers. Under the double impulse of a fresh religious zeal and military ambition, they sallied forth to the work of conquest. And where these two motives failed, a third came in to urge on the halting, -- the love of plunder, so strongly rooted in the Arabs of that as of other ages. To use the graphic description of Sir William Muir: "The marauding spirit of the Bedouin was in unison with the militant spirit of Islam. The cry of plunder and of conquest reverberated throughout the land, and was answered eagerly. The movement began naturally with the tribes in the North, which had been first reclaimed from their apostasy, and whose restless spirit led them over the frontier. Later on, in the second year of the Caliphate, the exodus spread to the people of the South. At first the Caliph forbade that help should be taken from such as had backslidden. But step by step, as new spheres opened out, and the cry ran through the land for fresh levies to fill up the martyr gaps, the ban was put aside, and all were welcome. Warrior after warrior, column after column, whole tribes in endless succession, with their women and children, issued forth to battle, and ever, at the marvelous tales of cities conquered, of booty rich beyond compute, of fair captives distributed on the field, --'to every man a damsel or two,' -- and, above all, at the sight of the royal fifth of spoil and slaves sent to Medina, fresh tribes arose and went. Onward and still onward, like swarms from the hive, one after another they poured forth, pressed first to the north, and spread thence in great masses to the east and west." 1 Annals of the Early Caliphate.

The Koran embodied not only a religion, but a social system. In respect to the latter, it no doubt introduced much improvement upon the previous customs of the Arabians. At the same time it built enormous barriers against future progress. By giving the sanction of religion to the cardinal vices of Eastern civilization,- polygamy, unlimited license in concubinage, and slavery, -- it mortgaged unnumbered generations to degradation.
-Henry C. Sheldon, Boston University, 1895
"History of the Christian Church"
Limitation Of Christian Territories By Mohammedanism

Saint Jerome:
"I am aware that some have laid it down that virgins of Christ must not bathe with eunuchs or married women, because the former still have the minds of men and the latter may present the ugly spectacle of swollen [pregnant] bellies. For my part I say that mature girls must not bathe at all, because they ought to blush to see themselves naked."

Tertullian:
"God's sentence hangs over the female sex, and His punishment weighs down on you. You are the devil's gateway. You first violated the forbidden tree and violated God's Law. You shattered God's image in man. And because you merited death, God's Son had to die."

Augustine:
"How can woman be the image of God? ... Woman, compared to other creatures, is the image of God, for she bears dominion over them. But compared unto man, she may not be called the image of God, for she bears not rule and lordship over man, but ought to obey him."

Thomas Aquinas:
"Woman is defective and misbegotten. For the active power in the male seed produces a perfect male likeness. A female comes from a defect in the male seed, or some indisposition, such as the south wind being too moist."

John Knox:
"Women are weak, they are frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish. They are inconstant, they are cruel, and lacking of spirit, and counsel. Woman in her greatest perfection was made only to serve, and obey men."

Martin Luther:
"Men have broad shoulders and narrow hips, so they have intelligence. Women have narrow shoulders, and broad hips to sit upon, so they ought to stay home, keep the house, and raise children. The woman differs from the man. She is weaker in body, in honour, in intellect, and in dignity."

and...

"Take women away from their house-wifery, and they are good for nothing. If they get tired, and die from bearing children, that is no problem. They are made for that."
--

"Just throw your wife and children away"
... notice Ezra makes no mention of the Hebrew woman who took a strange husbands. Such women were surely "lost" from her people, not even considered part of the Hebrew. mere property of a foreigner. . . Ezra calls only to the men.
3 Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives, and such as are born of them, according to the counsel of my lord, and of those that tremble at the commandment of our God; and let it be done according to the law. 10 And Ezra the priest stood up, and said unto them, Ye have transgressed, and have taken strange wives, to increase the trespass of Israel.
11 Now therefore make confession unto the LORD God of your fathers, and do his pleasure: and separate yourselves from the people of the land, and from the strange wives.
17 And they made an end with all the men that had taken strange wives by the first day of the first month.
18 And among the sons of the priests there were found that had taken strange wives: namely, of the sons of Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and his brethren; Maaseiah, and Eliezer, and Jarib, and Gedaliah.
19 And they gave their hands that they would put away their wives; and being guilty, they offered a ram of the flock for their trespass.
--

Holy Superstitions
Helen Ellerbe, The Dark Side of Christianity: Sexual mutilation of accused witches was not uncommon. With the orthodox understanding that divinity had little or nothing to do with the physical world, sexual desire was perceived to be ungodly. When the men persecuting the accused witches found themselves sexually aroused, they assumed that such desires emanated, not from themselves, but from the woman. They attacked breasts and genitals with pincers, pliers and red-hot irons. Some rules condoned sexual abuse by allowing men deemed "zealous Catholics" to visit female prisoners in solitary confinement while never allowing female visitors. From earlier post.
--

"The Works of Philo" (Complete and unabridged edition), page 152, "On The Giants", I,
(4) "And no unjust man at any time implants a masculine generation in the soul, but such, being unmanly, and broken, and effeminate in their minds, do naturally become the parents of female children; having planted no tree of virtue, the fruit of which must of necessity have been beautiful and salutary, but only trees of wickedness and of the passions, the shoots of which are womanlike.

(5) On account of which fact these men are said to have become the fathers of daughters, and that no one of them is said to have a begotten a son; for since the just Noah had male children, as being a man who followed reason, perfect, and upright, and masculine, so by this very fact the injustice of the multitude is proved to be altogether the parent of female children. For it is impossible that the same things should be born of opposite parents; but they must necessarily have an opposite offspring."
--

Revelation 14:4 "These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb." (KJV)

MALE AGGRESSION
by Edward T. Babinski

I think the majority of human male primates on this planet are muscle bound testosterone driven brutes who commonly seek either psychological or physical domination over other males, females, and children. Males continue to fill our prisons more than women do. Just google up all the major horror stories reported by the news any day of the year and males continue to make bold verbal threats and murder and wage wars. Males continue to murder males galore even in their own coutries in gang warfare, organized crime, family disputes, robberies, and of course rape, torture and murder of females and children as well.

And holy books continue to contain verses about females being there to "serve and obey" males, which is also the message of the apes of the secular world as well. Even Hinduism preaches that being reincarnated as a female is not equal to being reincarnated as a male. Actually, I suspect the reverse is nearer the truth and that being reincarnated as a female is something more Hindu males ought to aspire to. I also suspect that more Muslim and Christian male ought to listen to females and make plans together with them rather than continue to inculcate in the female mind the necessity of "serving and obeying" them.

"In the name and by the authority of the ghosts, men enslaved their fellowmen; they trampled upon the rights of women and children. In the name and by the authority of ghosts, they bought and sold each other. They filled heaven with tyrants and the earth with slaves. They filled the present with intolerance and the future with horror. In the name and by the authority of the ghosts, they declared superstition to be the real religion. In the name and by the authority of the ghosts, they imprisoned the human mind; they polluted the conscience; they subverted justice, and they sainted hypocrisy. I have endeavored in some degree to show you what has been and always will be when men are governed by superstition."
-Robert G. Ingersoll, Ghosts

Does the Bible give woman her rights? Is this Bible humane? Does it treat woman as she ought to be treated, or is it barbarian? Let us see.

"Let women learn in silence with all subjection." (I Tim. II, 11)

"If a woman would know anything let her ask her husband. Imagine the ignorance of a lady who had only that source of information. (Laughter.)

"But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. (Why, magnificent reason.)

And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, was in the transgression. (Splendid.)

But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God." That is to say, there is as much difference between the woman and man as there is between Christ and man. There is liberty of woman.

"For the man is not of the woman, but the woman is of the man." It was the man's cutlet till that was taken, not the woman's. "Neither was the man created for the woman." Well, what was the man created for? "But the woman was created for the man. Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands, as unto the Lord." (There's liberty!)

"For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church; and he is the savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything."

Good again! Even the Savior didn't put man and woman upon any equality. The man could divorce the wife, but the wife could not divorce the husband, and according to the Old Testament, the mother had to ask forgiveness for being the mother of babes. Splendid!

Here is something from the Old Testament:
"When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and they Lord thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou has taken them captive, And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldst have her to wife, Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails." (Deut. XXI., 10,11,12.)

That is in self-defense, I suppose! (Cheers and laughter.)

This sacred book, this foundation of human liberty, or morality, does it teach concubinage and polygamy? Read the thirty-first chapter of Numbers, read the twenty-first chapter of Deuteronomy, read the blessed lives of Abraham, of David or of Solomon, and then tell me that the sacred Scripture does not teach polygamy and concubinage? All the language of the world is not sufficient to express the infamy of polygamy; it makes man a beast and woman a stone. It destroys the fireside and makes virtue an outcast. And yet it is the doctrine of the Bible. The doctrine defended by Luther and Melanthon! It takes from our language those sweetest words father, husband, wife, and mother, and takes us back to barbarism and fills our hearts with the crawling, slimy serpents of loathsome lust.
-Robert G. Ingersoll, Hell

AIDS AS MASS FEMICIDE: FOCUS ON SOUTH AFRICA
© by Diana E. H. Russell
Professor Emerita of Sociology
Mills College, Oakland, California, U.S.A.

"Male sexual privilege is what drives the [AIDS] epidemic."
-- Mark Schoofs, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, December 7, 1999, p. 68

"In this country [South Africa], rape is not just a devastating act of violence. It can be a death sentence."
-- Kelly St. John, 2000, p. A1

According to Jeannie Relly, the Ministry of Health in Trinidad and Tobago reported that seven out of eight people infected with HIV/AIDS between the ages of 10 and 19 are female (February 2000, p. A15). The Health Minister attributed the spread of AIDS to "the irresponsible sexual behavior of our men" (p. A15). Peggy McEvoy, AIDS policy team leader for a Caribbean program, explained that "married women face high risks because their partners are unfaithful and will not use condoms" (Relly, 2000, p. A15). If the women insisted that their husbands use condoms, "Their husbands would kick them out," McEvoy explained (Relly, 2000, p. A15). "Many women are also unaware that their husbands are having extramarital affairs," McEvoy added.

The dowry and the shallow graves of female infantcide
Chinese Cultural Studies: Women in China: Past and Present
... her baby girl in a shallow, unmarked grave next to a small stream. ... In other cases, the family cannot afford the dowry that would eventually be ... Female infanticide and sex-selective abortion are not unique to India

CNN.com - Grim motives behind infant killings - Jul. 7, 2003
In India each year, parents kill thousands of female babies because they believe ... Police, however, are still finding the shallow graves of babies and say more than a hundred female children here are killed by their parents every year.

Orwell's Grave: July 2005
In some countries there are culture-specific forms of violence against women like female genital mutilation, and, in India, for instance, dowry murder.

SOUTHERN BAPTIST HISTORY 101
by Edward T. Babinski

On June 10, 1998, the Southern Baptist Convention, for the first time, amended the 1963 Southern Baptist statement of faith known as the Baptist Faith And Message, adding a brand new section (XVIII) entitled the “Family Amendment” that states in part, “A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him [spiritually], has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation [in the societal realm].” [Comments in brackets by E.T.B.]

Of course, Southern Baptists believe their amendment concerning the necessity of wifely “submission” and the wife’s duty to “respect, serve and help” her husband, is what the Holy Scriptures demand. But Southern Baptist slaveowners once believed the same thing regarding the “submission” of slaves and the slave’s duty to “respect, serve and help” their masters. Here’s the story. In 1844, the national Baptist General Convention for Foreign Missions refused to license slaveowning missionaries. One year later, that refusal led to the split between the northern and southern Baptists. The southern Baptists were absolutely convinced that the Bible taught that God had divinely sanctioned slavery. As early as 1823, Richard Furman, a leader of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, a slaveholder, and for whom Furman University is named, stated in a famous address to the Governor of South Carolina, "The right of holding slaves is clearly established by the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example." [See Exposition of The Views of the Baptists, Relative To The Coloured Population In The United States]. The next year, in 1845, those firmly convicted defenders of slavery formed their own separate Baptist denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention.

Baptists at the 1998 Convention should go back and read the pro-slavery sermons, tracts and treatises of the founders of their denomination. Their Biblical expositions of Negro inferiority were based on Noah's curse of slavery upon Canaan, son of Ham, who was presumed to be the ancestor of the Black race; and also based on the patriarchal and Mosaic acceptance of slavery, and, also based on the New Testament commands of Peter and Paul regarding slave-master relationships. Rev. Furman stated, "For though they are slaves, they are also men; and are with ourselves accountable creatures; having immortal souls, and being destined to future eternal reward." The Southern Baptist view was that slaves were better off under the loving, tender, compassionate care of Christian slaveowners, and the institution of slavery was to be "a blessing both to master and slave." [Just like today’s Southern Baptists who preach that the “submission” of women to men is the only “blessed” norm.--E.T.B.] In fact it would little rewording of the 1998 “Family Amendment” to make it fit the 1845 Southern Baptist view toward slaves: “A slave/wife is to submit themselves graciously to the servant leadership of their master/husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. Slaves/females, being in the image of God as is their master/husband and thus equal to them [spiritually], has the God-given responsibility to respect their master/husband and to serve as their helper in picking cotton/managing the household and nurturing the next generation [in the societal realm].”

One hundred and fifty-five years later, after a Civil War that left six hundred thousand dead and one million wounded, we recognize that our Southern Baptist forefathers and foremothers were on the wrong side of history and Biblical interpretation… But if the slave subordination and submission passages are no longer binding upon the church, then why are the female subordination and submission passages?

Hitler’s American Christian Friends

Can Christianity clean up its act?

I marvel that I was sheltered from Christian extremism, even as I was brought up in the 1940s and 1950s in a conservative Christian home in rural Indiana. My devout mother couldn’t stand Billy Graham, which, it turns out, was a big clue why I wasn’t aware of the hateful Christianity that had been in vogue in the decades before my birth.

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DR. ROBERT MYLES AND THE BAD JESUS: AN ANDROCENTRIC DEFENSE OF FAMILY/HOUSEHOLD ABANDONMENT?

Dr. Robert Myles of the University of Auckland (New Zealand) has reviewed The Bad Jesus in two parts available here and here. 

Dr. Robert Myles

He is the first biblical scholar to perform such a review of The Bad Jesus on the blogosphere. I was especially interested in his comments because he specializes in New Testament and Christian origins, as well as in Marxism and critical theory. 

Myles is also the author of The Homeless Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014), which treats a few of the subjects I do.

That book offers many provocative observations, and I recommend it to anyone interested in issues of poverty and homelessness in the Bible. His book came to my attention too far into the editing process of my book, and I did not include it in my discussions. I did read it by the time I wrote this post.

Although Myles’ review raises some interesting questions, it ultimately does not represent my arguments very accurately or address them very effectively.  I will demonstrate that his review actually is, in part, an androcentric defense of the abandonment of families by Jesus’ disciples. I will address the objections he raises against my methodology and my discussion of Jesus’ view of abandoning families, especially in the case of the men he called to be his disciples in Mark 1:16-20 because that is one main example Myles chose from my book.

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Words From the Inquisition: "Convert or Die!"

I just watched the first episode of the PBS special, The Secret Files of the Inquisition. The second episode will be on next week (5/16/07), and I highly recommend you watch it. One inquisitor, who went on to become Pope Benedict, told a Jew under interrogation, “convert or die!” These three words echoed down into villages and homes for two centuries. That’s two whole centuries. There was no escape from the power of the church since it reigned exclusively, even over the very ideas people entertained.

At the beginning of the 14th century the church was losing power because it was unwilling to change. The people did not have access to the Bible (nor was there a printed Bible). They were simply to believe what the church taught. Furthermore, the Sunday masses were done in Latin, which people couldn’t understand. So it gave rise to many ideas about religious truth, including a heretical group called “The Good Men.” Instead of addressing these disputes civilly the Church set out to stamp out heresy, violently and forcefully.

The angelic doctor Thomas Aquinas had previously argued that heresy was a "leavening influence" upon the minds of the weak, and as such, heretics should be killed. Since heretical ideas could inflict the greatest possible harm upon other human beings, it was the greatest crime of all. Heretical ideas could send people to an eternally conscious torment in hell. So logic demands that the church must get rid of this heretical leavening influence. It was indeed the greatest crime of them all, given this logic. So, “convert or die!”

Christians today say the church of the Inquisition was wrong, just like they say the Christians who justified American slavery were wrong. And that’s correct. They were wrong. But not for the reasons today’s Christians think. Today's Christians think the Christians of the past were wrong because they misinterpreted the Bible. But the truth is that these former Christians were wrong to believe the Bible in the first place. They were wrong to believe the Bible at all. Today’s Christians cherry-pick from out of the Bible what they want to believe. Today’s Christians have developed a more civilized ethical consciousness, and they read that consciousness back into the Bible rather than adopting what the plain sense and logic of the Bible dictates.

Here are some Bible verses to support the logic of killing heretics:

From Exodus 22:
You shall not permit a female sorcerer to live.
Whoever sacrifices to any god, other than the LORD alone, shall be devoted to destruction.

From Numbers 25:
2 These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. 3 Thus Israel yoked itself to the Baal of Peor, and the LORD’s anger was kindled agai nst Israel. 4 The LORD said to Moses, “Take all the chiefs of the people, and impale them in the sun before the LORD, in order that the fierce anger of the LORD may turn away from Israel.” 5 And Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Each of you shall kill any of your people who have yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor.” 6 Just then one of the Israelites came and brought a Midianite woman into his family, in the sight of Moses and in the sight of the whole congregation of the Israelites, while they were weeping at the entrance of the tent of meeting. 7 When Phinehas son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he got up and left the congregation. Taking a spear in his hand, 8 he went after the Israelite man into the tent, and pierced the two of them, the Israelite and the woman, through the belly.

From Deuteronomy 13:
If prophets or those who divine by dreams appear among you and promise you omens or portents, 2 and the omens or the portents declared by them take place, and they say, “Let us follow other gods” (whom you have not known) “and let us serve them,” 3 you must not heed the words of those prophets or those who divine by dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you indeed love the LORD your God with all your heart and soul. 4 The LORD your God you shall follow, him alone you shall fear, his commandments you shall keep, his voice you shall obey, him you shall serve, and to him you shall hold fast. 5 But those prophets or those who divine by dreams shall be put to death for having spoken treason against the LORD your God—who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery—to turn you from the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. 6 If anyone secretly entices you—even if it is your brother, your father’s son orb your mother’s son, or your own son or daughter, or the wife you embrace, or your most intimate friend—saying, “Let us go worship other gods,” whom neither you nor your ancestors have known, 7 any of the gods of the peoples that are around you, whether near you or far away from you, from one end of the earth to the other, 8 you must not yield to or heed any such persons. Show them no pity or compassion and do not shield them. 9 But you shall surely kill them; your own hand shall be first against them to execute them, and afterwards the hand of all the people. 10 Stone them to death for trying to turn you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 11 Then all Israel shall hear and be afraid, and never again do any such wickedness. 12 If you hear it said about one of the towns that the LORD your God is giving you to live in, 13 that scoundrels from among you have gone out and led the inhabitants of the town astray, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods,” whom you have not known, 14 then you shall inquire and make a thorough investigation. If the charge is established that such an abhorrent thing has been done among you, 15 you shall put the inhabitants of that town to the sword, utterly destroying it and everything in it—even putting its livestock to the sword

From Deuteronomy 17:
2 If there is found among you, in one of your towns that the LORD your God is giving you, a man or woman who does what is evil in the sight of the LORD your God, and transgresses his covenant 3 by going to serve other gods and worshiping them—whether the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven, which I have forbidden— 4 and if it is reported to you or you hear of it, and you make a thorough inquiry, and the charge is proved true that such an abhorrent thing has occurred in Israel, 5 then you shall bring out to your gates that man or that woman who has committed this crime and you shall stone the man or woman to death. 20 But any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, or who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak—that prophet shall die.”

How much clearer can the Bible be?

I understand how today's Christians gerrymander around the logical conclusion of these texts. They say these Bible passages don't apply under the New Covenant. But if that's so, then why wasn't God clear about this such that Aquinas and two centuries of theologians got it wrong, causing such torment and misery? Can God effectively communicate to us, or not? Doesn't he know us well enough to do so? It seems that the logic of Aquinas is impeccable, based upon these texts, or an omniscient God needs some basic lessons in communication, or, God isn't a good God.

That being said, I see no moral reason whatsoever for these texts to demand the death of heretics in the first place, even under the Old Covenant. Such commands are reprehensible, coming from an all loving God. But even if they can be justified under the Old Covenant, which they cannot, why didn't God (Jesus or the Apostles) specifically say, "Thou shalt not kill people if they don't believe the gospel," and say it as often as needed? If that was the case, and if you were God, wouldn't YOU do the decent thing here? It just appears the Bible was written by superstitious and barbaric people that reflected their primitive notions about God, that's all. And it best explains what we see in the Bible.

“Convert or die!”

What horrible words to hear! How is this different from militant Muslims?

“Convert or die!”

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

The broken record I keep hearing from Christians is that I cannot presume to judge God, or that I have no objective moral standard to say that the church did wrong. But what I'm doing is simply taking the present day ethical notions that both Christians and skeptics have and asking why the Bible is so barbaric? I'm saying such notions show me that kind of God doesn't exist. I'm not judging God. I don't think he exists. I'm asking whether such a God exists. I'm asking whether the Bible reflects the will of a good God, and my conclusion is BASED UPON THE ETHICAL NOTIONS OF CHRISTIANS THEMSELVES. I can justify my ethical notions, but that's a separate issue. I'm asking how Christians can justify these texts in the Bible and the logic that follows, if they believe a good God exists.

Christians Do Not Have a Superior Foundation for Morality!

Christians claim that atheists have no foundation for morality, and that they do. Christians claim atheists have no motivation for being good people, and that they do. Christians claim they have moral superiority because of these two beliefs..

What can we make of this? It’s difficult to convince them otherwise, and I’ve tried here, and I’ve tried there. At the risk of beating my head against the wall, let me try one more time.

Statistics show that atheists make up the lowest number of people in prison per percentage of the population. Statistics also show that atheists have the lowest divorce rate per percentage of the population, especially when compared to conservative Christians. Moreover, it cannot be shown that Christians are more charitable than atheists when we look closely at the data.

Ddisregarding this data Christians think they live better lives because they alone have the Holy Spirit living in them. If this claim were true we should expect then to live better lives. But I believe Christians are deluded about this, since the evidence doesn’t show their claim to be true. It’s no different than the Christians who visit us here at DC who cannot bring themselves to believe we are former Christians. What gives? They reject ordinary evidence and personal testimonies to the contrary even though they turn around and accept extraordinary ancient personal testimonies of miracles in the Bible. They need to come to grips with the fact that these ancient Biblical testimonies are reported through the poor medium of history, which must cross over Lessing’s broad ugly ditch.

Christians always have an out. They claim that the above statistics do not represent true Christians. But when I ask them who the true Christians are, they are all divided into denominational groups which are intellectually supported by scholars who claim their particular group represents true Christianity. If you look at the above link on divorce rates it’s all broken down into denominations. Which one represents yours? None of them are significantly better than atheists with regard to divorce rates.

Conservative Christians will claim that it’s not denominational standing but whether or not someone believes the Bible. But I still find people who believe the Bible is inerrant who disagree with each other. Come on now!? Even Jehovah’s Witnesses claim the Bible is inerrant.

The truth is that it was Bible believing Christians who defended slavery in the South! This is a historical fact! The issue of slavery in the South was clearly the easiest moral question for the Christian God to condemn, if he exists and if he truly is the author of the Bible!

Furthermore, if Christians really believed the Bible they wouldn’t let women speak in their churches (I Cor, 14:34), for the man would be the domineering patriarchal head of the house in which a wife is to “obey” her husband just like Sarah obeyed Abraham (I Peter 3: 6), even to the point of lying to save his life by having sex with another man (Genesis 12: 10-16) and by letting him sleep with another woman so he could have a child (Genesis 16). [I am old enough to remember when women had to say the words “to love and to obey” at their weddings!]

Christians have just learned to interpret these kinds of things differently down through the ages, that’s all. According to Sam Harris they cherry-pick their morals from the Bible, and I think that’s true. They claim they wouldn’t do what previous generations of Christians did. Take for instance the great Angelic Doctor, Thomas Aquinas, who taught that heretics should be killed because they are a leavening influence in society. So Christians did that in the Spanish Inquisition and witch trials. Today's Christians think that past Christians got it wrong. Christians today claim they wouldn’t have done that. But this is what I call chronological snobbery. We are all children of our times, as Voltaire said…all of us. And our morals have all developed together over time with the advancement of a better understanding of who we are as human beings in a society.

Christians will retreat to the claim that the whole reason atheists and skeptics are not mass murderers is because they don't live consistently with their beliefs. Christians will claim that the morality of atheists is a borrowed one from the Christian society they were all raised in that taught them what is right and what is wrong. But this is the most ridiculous claim of all.

Michael Shermer asks the Christian one simple question: “What would you do if there were no God? Would you commit robbery, rape, and murder, or would you continue being a good and moral person? Either way the question is a debate stopper. If the answer is that you would soon turn to robbery, rape, or murder, then this is a moral indictment of your character, indicating you are not to be trusted because if, for any reason, you were to turn away from your belief in God, your true immoral nature would emerge…If the answer is that you would continue being good and moral, then apparently you can be good without God. QED.” [Michael Shermer, The Science of Good and Evil, pp. 154-155].

Let me say that anyone who tries to show that no society can be a good society without Christianity needs a history lesson. Such a person needs to study some of the great societies of the past, like Greece during the golden ages, or the Roman Empire, or several of the dynasties in ancient China, or the Islamic Empire under Muhammad, or the historic Japanese culture. None of these societies were Christian ones, but they were great societies by all standards of history. It won't prove anything to argue that there was corruption in every one of these societies to some degree, for this is true of any ancient or modern society, even Biblical Judaism and Christian America.

If Christians want to maintain that a Christian society is a better society, then just let them volunteer to go back in time to medieval Christianity and see if they like it. Probably all Christians today would be branded as heretics and persecuted or burned to death. And if today’s Christians will say that medieval Christianity doesn’t represent true Christianity, which Christian society does truly represent true Christianity? Even in the first few years of the early church there was corruption. There was sin in the camp (Acts 5); grumbling about food (Acts 6); and a major dispute that threatened to split the church (Acts 10-11, 15; Galatians 2). Then there were the constant disputes among these Christians over a very wide assortment of issues (I & II Corinthians). I could go on and talk of Calvin’s Geneva, the Crusades, or any period in the history of America too, including black slavery, the Salem witchcraft trials, Manifest Destiny, and our treatment of women and minorities, to mention just a few.

Christian inclusivist scholar, Charles Kimball, argues that certain tendencies within religions cause evil. “Religious structures and doctrines can be used almost like weapons.” (p. 32). Religion becomes evil, according to Kimball, whenever religion: 1) has absolute truth claims; 2) demands blind obedience; 3) tries to establish the ideal society; 4) utilizes the end justifies any means when defending their group identity; or 5) when they see themselves in a holy war. He says, “A strong case can be made that the history of Christianity contains considerably more violence and destruction than that of most other major religions.” (p. 27) [When Religion Becomes Evil (Harper, 2002)].

I just don’t see where a Christian society is a better one. And even if Christianity was the main motivator in starting most all early American universities, most all of our hospitals and many food kitchens, and the like, these things still would have been started anyway, if for no reason other than necessity. It just so happened to be that Christianity is the dominant religion in America for a couple of centuries, that’s all. Besides, these things were probably not started by Christian churches out of altruism, or any desire for a better society, but as a way for those churches to convert people. After all, who are most vulnerable to the Christian message? They are the sick (hospitals), the poor (food kitchens) and young people leaving home for the first time to enter universities, which were mostly started to train preachers.

Christians will retort that atheists have their Lenin's and Stalin's. Yes that's correct. But what point does that prove? It doesn't prove anything to me. Why? Because I don't believe it was their atheism which caused them to kill millions of people. Most dictators who fear for their lives will kill people in order to make their subjects fearful of them. Besides, there are power hungry people and killers out there no matter what a person believes. The history of the church proves this.

The real question is whether Christians have a superior foundation for morality and I've just briefly shown they don't. I mean, really now, what good does it do for Christians to claim they have a foundation for morality when they cannot tell us how we should behave and they cannot live better lives than the rest of us? What good does it mean to claim they have a superior foundation for morality when they don't actually follow the Bible as was originally intended by the writers of the Bible? It means nothing at all. Such a claim as theirs is completely empty.

Christians will finally retort that atheists cannot say anything is evil. They will claim that whatever happens is part of the evolutionary process of things where the fittest survive, and as such skeptics have no right to denounce any evil behavior. But this is a separate question from the one I've just dealt with. It's a red herring from this particular discussion. What does this have to do with whether Christians have a superior foundation for morality? If they don't have a superior morality, then they don't. And until they accept this fact we cannot go forward to discuss the next question about the nature of good and evil in our society and how we actually determine good and evil. I've already argued that today's Christians don't get their morality from the Bible. That's my major point here. Do they or don't they? That is the question. And the answer is that they do not. They gain their moral notions just like the rest of us do, except that they are hamstrung by having to fit that morality inside the pages of the Bible, and they have an ill-founded confidence in what they think is moral that can lead them to do great harm to others in the name of their God.

But if the answer is that Christians don't get their morality from the Bible and that their moral foundations are not superior ones, then the very next question is to understand where we actually get our moral notions from, and at that point I'd just recommend to them Michael Shermer's book. The short answer to this specific question is that since we are part of nature we have a right to say what kind of society we want live in, and it's a better society when people get along and treat one another with dignity and respect in a democratic form of government where eveyone has the right to speak their mind and to work toward goals that produce a better social environment for our familes and for our future children. It's better for us. It's better for our children. It's better for our nation. It's better financially. It's better socially. It's better for people as a whole. This is obvious! What other reasons are needed?

Talbott on Progressive Revelation Versus My Claim That Theology Evolves

I have been faulted for starting my critique of Thomas Talbott's essay at the end. The claim is that I have not dealt with the substance of his critique of the OTF, and that it is found in the earlier portions of his essay. If so, then Talbott himself was wrong to title his last section as "A Fundamental Inconsistency in the Loftus Approach." (p. 20) For what does it mean to use the word "Fundamental" if it is not Fundamental? In any case, I'm going through his essay with a fine toothed comb and will get to it all, so hold your pants on.

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My Reviewers Reviewed, by Robert Ingersoll

This lecture was delivered by Col. Robert Ingersoll in San Francisco Cal., June 27, 1877. It was a reply to various clergymen of that city, who had made violent attacks upon him after the delivery of his lectures, "The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child," and "The Ghosts." Thanks once again to Julian Haydon for sending me this.

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Exbeliever's Swan Song

Because of other obligations (e.g. finishing my thesis, moving across the country, starting a new PhD program, etc.), I've decided to resign my membership in this wonderful blog.

During my time here, I repeatedly asked Christians to give some kind of reason for their faith. I asked them to supply some kind of argument that ends in "therefore, god exists." This challenge was repeatedly ignored. Instead, the Christians' strategy was to point out philosophical problems that have been studied by philosophers for centuries and say that somehow a term "God" was the answer to all of them. When an atheist had an understandably difficult time resolving a difficult problem, the Christian would declare himself the winner because of his "answer"--which really is a non-answer.

A couple of months ago, Richard Carrier and Tom Wanchick engaged in an on-line debate published on The Secular Web.

Below, I respond to Wanchick's opening statement. I decided that I would only read his opening statement in the debate and respond to it without reading Carrier's rebuttals or Wanchick's answers. It is possible, then, that Wanchick later clarified his statements and a further response would be necessary. I'm satisfied, however, with my responses.

Leibnizian Cosmological Argument

It seems reasonable to believe that every substance has an explanation for its existence: it was either caused by something else, or exists necessarily (it cannot not exist). This premise is evidently more plausible than its denial, for if confronted with a new substance, everyone would assume it has an explanation before they assumed it didn't. Absurdly, if the latter presumption were equally plausible, we could justifiably pronounce everything to be a brute given, making science, philosophy, etc. frivolous. Indeed, the general assumption that objects have explanations has been successfully confirmed so often that those wishing to reject it must provide good reason for doing so.

Additionally, if we have an adequate explanation for an object, it would clearly be unreasonable to conclude instead that that object was unexplained. Again, explanation is prima facie more reasonable than nonexplanation. Thus, Quentin Smith, the foremost atheist expert on cosmological arguments, admits that if naturalism cannot explain the universe like theism can, that is evidence for theism over naturalism.

Now, interestingly, the universe itself is a substance having properties: density, temperature, etc. Therefore, like all substances, it has an explanation. Indeed, scientists have long assumed this in cosmological studies, as they've developed myriad theories as to how the universe exists.

Thus, we construct this argument:

1. Every substance has an explanation of its existence either in an external cause or in the necessity of its own nature.
2. The universe is a substance.
3. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence either in an external cause or in the necessity of its own nature.
4. The universe does not exist necessarily.
5. Therefore, the explanation of the universe is an external cause.


This conclusion follows from the premises. I've justified 1 and 2 above. Premise 4 requires little argument, since the universe appears obviously contingent. Scientists even tell us that it had a beginning and will end somewhere in the future. Being non-necessary, then, it finds its explanation in an outside cause.

This cause can exist timelessly and spacelessly, since it can cause the space-time universe. Moreover, it must be immaterial, since it is nonspatial. And it must also be a mind, since only minds and abstract objects can exist timelessly and immaterially, and only the former can cause anything. Furthermore, the only two types of explanation are natural/mechanistic and personal; and since there was no nature prior to the universe, its cause is personal.

Moreover, the ultimate cause cannot itself be a contingent reality. As Charles Taliaferro notes, "If contingent object A is explained by B which is explained by C and so on into infinity, we will never get a complete or fully satisfactory explanation of A." Thus, the explanation of the universe must be a metaphysically necessary, uncaused being.

My first argument therefore proves the reality of a transcendent, timeless, and spaceless mind that exists necessarily and has the ability and know-how to cause and sustain the universe.

Wanchick's first premise is "Every substance has an explanation of its existence either in an external cause or in the necessity of its own nature."

How does one know this to be true? Wanchick attempts to substantiate his claim when he writes, ". . . for if confronted with a new substance, everyone would assume it has an explanation before they assumed it didn't."

In other words, this claim is true because of induction. Everything that we have observed that exists has an explanation for its existence. I certainly agree with this claim, but I wonder how it can be extrapolated and used to describe the existence of the universe.

Let me explain. Every existing thing that we have observed has been observed in a physical universe acted upon by physical laws. These physical laws certainly affected the "substances" observed.

How is it, then, possible to confidently assert that, in the absence of our physical laws, the universe (even if we allow the dubious claim that the universe is a "substance" and not "the set of all substances") must have an explanation of its existence? In other words, Wanchick is applying an inductive argument that is true under one set of conditions to an entirely different set of conditions that he knows nothing about. Scientists agree that, in the earliest stages of the beginning of the universe, the laws of physics break down. There are no physical laws that we know of that can exist when the universe is at infinite mass and space time is bent infinitely.

Perhaps an analogy would help. Let's say that I make the claim, "In every case in which I weigh a person and then strap 20 lbs of Styrofoam to their waists, their weight increases by exactly 20 lbs." This is a very reasonable claim under what we consider "normal" conditions (e.g. they are in a doctor's office on a true scale). Now, imagine that I am weighing people in a pool of chest-high water. When I strap the 20 lbs of Styrofoam to their waists, their weight would actually decrease, because the Styrofoam is buoyant and would lift them off the scales. The exact opposite effect would occur.

In the same way, Wanchick is taking an inductive claim made under a specific set of conditions and applying them to a situation in which the conditions are completely unknown. In fact, we know that the conditions of the earlier universe in a singularity are very different from the conditions of our current universe. Why should we accept his claim, then, that we can apply the same inductive argument that we have observed under specific conditions to "a substance" that did not come about in those same conditions. How do we know that the universe does not exist in conditions that are exactly the opposite of all of the substances we observe within the universe? How can we say that this first premise holds in different conditions?

Wanchick's first premise cannot be substantiated and his argument fails before it begins.

Kalam Cosmological Argument

Like the universe's existence, its origin too needs explaining. Leading philosophers and scientists confirm that the universe came into existence from nothing. Currently, the big bang model leads the pack among cosmological theories and entails a definite beginning of space-time. Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking admits, "almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang." Carrier concurs.

An eternal universe is disconfirmed philosophically, too, for it implies that there are infinite past events. But it would be impossible to reach the last event in this series--i.e., the present. We could literally never reach the end of infinity; no matter how many events we traversed, there'd always be infinite to go. But since we have reached the end, the set of past events must be finite.

Moreover, an infinite set of things entails metaphysically impossibility. If we have infinite things numbered 1 through infinity and subtract all even ones, we would have an infinite number remaining. But if we subtract only those marked over #5, we would be left with 5. Since it is metaphysically impossible to subtract equal quantities and get contradictory answers, it must be impossible for an infinite to exist. Thus, the number of past events in the universe is finite. The universe had a beginning.

This is significant, since, as we all know, objects cannot just pop into being from nothing, uncaused. Imagine finding a whale or a stadium simply appearing willy-nilly on your doorstep! David Hume even announced, "But allow me to tell you that I never asserted so absurd a Proposition as that anything might arise without a cause."

Inductively, of course, no one in all of history has witnessed an object leap into reality this way. If this is possible, it's strikingly curious that it's never occurred.

Indeed, the inductive evidence simply accords with sound metaphysics, for if nothing existed without the universe, then not even the potentiality for it existed. But how can something come into existence if there was no potential for it? Carrier's own view is that "things exist potentially wherever the elements necessary to form them exist." But since nothing existed without the universe given naturalism, neither did its potential, thereby ruling out its actuality on that view.

Thus:

6. Every substance that begins to exist has a cause.
7. The universe began to exist.
8. Therefore, the universe has a cause.


Premise 6 and 7 are more reasonable than their negations, as argued above. And since the argument is valid, the conclusion follows unavoidably.

As noted in the prior argument, the cause of the universe will be an uncaused, timeless, spaceless, and nonphysical mind. However, other significant qualities come through here: its incomprehensible power and knowledge. This creator has the awe-inspiring power and knowledge to create whole universes from nothing. It's hard to see, then, what power or knowledge he lacks.

This cosmological argument fails in exactly the same place that the previous one did. The first premise states, "Every substance that begins to exist has a cause." Even if we grant that the universe is a "substance" and not "the set of all substances," this is still an inductive claim made within conditions in which the universe itself does not exist.

Wanchick explicitly states that his is an inductive argument. He writes, "Inductively, of course, no one in all of history has witnessed an object leap into reality this way. If this is possible, it's strikingly curious that it's never occurred."

Again, however, everyone "in all of history" has only witnessed objects coming into existence within the physical universe. The universe itself does not exist within the physical universe, so it is impossible to extract an argument that relies on the conditions within the universe and apply it to the universe itself which does not exist within the universe.

The statement, "Every substance that begins to exist has a cause." Is a statement that is true because of the physical laws of the universe. All of the physicists that I am aware of admit that physical laws break down if there is no physical universe. We simply can't know if those laws apply outside of the universe.

Wanchick cannot maintain his first premise, therefore, the argument fails to prove anything.

Design of/in the Universe

In the past 30 years, science has revealed the razor thin conditions that make life in our universe possible. The universe is "fine-tuned" for life. Indeed, there are dozens of factors that must be set precisely in order for life to exist here. With their slightest alteration, life would be impossible. Thus, while there are millions of ways the universe could physically be, very few of them are life-permitting. Robin Collins sums up the scientific consensus:

Scientists have increasingly come to realize how the initial conditions of the universe and the basic constants of physics must be balanced on a razor's edge for intelligent life to evolve.... Calculations show that if the constants of physics--such as the physical constant governing the strength of gravity--were slightly different, the evolution of complex, embodied life forms of comparable intelligence to ourselves would be seriously inhibited, if not rendered impossible.

But the unimaginably precise fine-tuning appears more epistemically probable given theism than it does given naturalism. For because conscious life is good, it's not surprising that God would make a world containing it. But why would we ever expect the world to have life-permitting conditions if naturalism were true? Indeed, this appears wholly improbable, since the possible universes that disallow life incomprehensibly outnumber those that allow it. It's like picking the prize-winning white marble out of a barrel of black ones. Thus:

9. Fine-tuning is not improbable given theism.
10. Fine-tuning is improbable given naturalism.
11. Thus, fine-tuning is more probable on theism than naturalism.


In other words, fine-tuning provides evidence that theism is more probable than naturalism.

This seems, to me, a particularly bad design argument, but I'll address it as is.

Wanchick writes, "But the unimaginably precise fine-tuning appears more epistemically probable given theism than it does given naturalism. For because conscious life is good, it's not surprising that God would make a world containing it. But why would we ever expect the world to have life-permitting conditions if naturalism were true?"

The addition of God to this "problem" does nothing to solve it. If a god existed, he would have available to him an infinite number of options in creating the universe. There were as many possible universes without conscious life available to a god as there are available to chance. Why should we believe that a god would be compelled to create one with life? Could he not have just as easily created a universe that did not sustain life?

Wanchick tells us it is more probable that a god would have created a universe supporting life because "conscious life is good." Well, that's interesting. I don't think of conscious life as "good" or "bad," I simply believe it "is." What reasons are there for me to believe that conscious life is "good"? Would it be "bad" if life didn't exist? If a god did eternally exist, was it "bad" until life was created?

I do not see how existence can be labeled "good" or "bad." Existence is a precondition of moral judgments. It simply makes no sense to make a moral judgment about a precondition of moral judgments.

It does not matter, then, that ". . . the possible universes that disallow life incomprehensibly outnumber those that allow it." This is true whether if chance is responsible for the universe or if a god freely chose to create. Both chance and a god would have the same number of possible universes. That this universe exists the way it does is no less statistically "miraculous" whether by chance or by a god with infinite possibilities.

Knowability and Discoverability

Additionally, many things within the universe indicate a God-like designer. Scholars have documented that our universe is not only fine-tuned for sentient life, but also for scientific discovery and knowability. The universe is structured in just the right way to allow the study of natural laws and phenomena, greatly adding to our scientific knowledge. Such features make sense if God wants us to discover and enjoy creation; but why would these features exist on naturalism?

Same problem. If a god existed, he would be able to create any number of universes in which laws and phenomena are not knowable or discoverable. Chance is no different. There are the same number of options available to both chance or a god.

Beauty

Collins notes that "beauty is widely recognized by physicists as being an important characteristic of the laws of nature, one which has served as a highly selective guide to discovering the fundamental laws of nature in the twentieth century." Moreover, the laws of nature (and many things in nature) exhibit simplicity, harmony, and elegance. It wouldn't be surprising for a creator to make such a universe, but, again, why would this be so if naturalism is true?

This, of course, assumes that "beauty" is universal. Aesthetic judgments, however, are notoriously subjective. Beauty has no universal properties. The very property that makes one thing beautiful makes another thing ugly (e.g. the curve of a "beautiful" vase could be the reason that vase is beautiful, but the same curve in another vase with different properties could be the reason that vase is ugly).

Additionally, this argument falls prey to the same problems listed above. Both chance and any supposed "god" would have the same number of possible universes. Why would a god be any less likely to choose one over another? Maybe an uglier universe would have better fulfilled a purpose this god had.

Evil

Typically, if an object is undesigned or serves a purpose only accidentally (e.g., a hillside serving as a stage), we conclude that it cannot be used correctly or incorrectly. Design or intention appears to be a necessary condition for proper function. A bike can be used properly; a fallen meteor cannot.

It's interesting to apply this insight to sentient beings. Can they be misused? The obvious answer is 'yes.' Humans shouldn't be used as slaves, for instance; doing so is evil. Indeed, the misuse of beings seems to be a necessary and sufficient condition for evil. Evil events involve a patient out of its proper state.

So evil is a departure from the way things ought to exist. But this contradicts naturalism, wherein every living thing is like the hillside: accidental byproducts having no design plan, no proper state.

Objectors might hold that if we used the hillside as a stage long enough, this would become its conventional function, and to stop doing so would seem a misuse. Thus, objects can acquire proper function accidentally over time. But this seems false for at least sentient beings, for no matter how long humans are enslaved, they should never be used as such. Their function is inherent rather than conventional.

Evil obviously exists; think of child pornography or rape. And since evil entails that the universe and its inhabitants have a specific function or purpose, it follows that they were designed by an intelligent being having the knowledge, ability, and intention to build a world with purposeful and moral dimensions.

Wanchick asserts that "Evil obviously exists. . ." Actions certainly exist, and people certainly call some actions "evil" sometimes, but does something called "evil" obviously exist? I can't taste, hear, touch, see, or smell it. How is this obvious?

Also, how is it that objects can be improperly used? It is true that a bicycle has a design function, but what if I don't want a bicycle for the function for which it was designed? Is that an "improper" use of it?

Say that I am a set designer for a movie production. My company is making a horror film set in an old cabin in the woods. I have to decorate that cabin, and I want to hang a rusty, non-functional bicycle from the wall. For me, a brand new mountain bike is a "bad" bike. A rusty, old, non-functional bicycle, however, is a "good" bike for my purposes. That this bike does not do what it is designed and intended to do is exactly what makes it "good."

Wanchick states, "Humans shouldn't be used as slaves, for instance. . ." I agree, but others don't. Some people believe that others should be enslaved. They believe it is "good" that people are enslaved.

I would certainly fight to keep people free from slavery, but that doesn't mean that I believe it is universally "wrong." It is, however, wrong according to my moral framework, and my moral framework forces me to fight against slavery with all of my power (and within my ethical guidelines). Whether I believe it to be "universally" immoral is irrelevant.

The "power" of this argument is its emotional appeal. Most people agree that slavery is evil, but they feel that it lessens the immorality of it if it is not "universally" so. I will deal with this more in the next argument.

[As an aside, it is interesting to me that Wanchick argues for the immorality of slavery when the Christian god is quoted as saying, "Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life. . ." (Leviticus 25:44-46) and "If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property." (Exodus 21:20-21). If slavery is "evil" and the Christian god calls it "good," then is the Christian god "evil" or is slavery "good"?]

Moral Argument

But what makes us obliged not to mistreat humans? After all, if naturalism is true, "a human being is a biological animal," as naturalist Julian Baggini admits. But unless humans have unique moral worth not had by beasts, it seems objective moral truth wouldn't exist. It wouldn't, for instance, be immoral to rape or kill, for animals do so to each other regularly with no moral significance.

Paul Draper pinpoints the problem such properties would cause for naturalism: "every human being has a special sort of inherent value that no animal has, and every human has an equal amount of this value. Such equality is possible despite the great differences among humans, because the value in question does not supervene on any natural properties. It is a nonnatural property that all (and only) humans possess." The great naturalist philosopher J.L. Mackie, and myriad others, agree.

Unfortunately, to defend naturalism, Draper and Mackie (like Carrier) have to absurdly deny that humans have such unique inherent worth. Carrier even says some animals are more morally valuable than certain humans in virtue of their superior intellect, rationality, etc. But such positions are obviously false. Humans have moral worth not found in animals, regardless of their comparative capabilities, and the failure to recognize this is simply a lack of moral insight.

But since these moral properties obviously do exist in human beings and aren't natural, they must have a supernatural source. And since moral properties exist only in persons, the source of moral properties must be a supernatural person.

The moral order, then, is evidence of a supernatural person who grounds moral truth. Additionally, at least some moral truths are necessary, and thus their foundation must be a necessary being grounding moral facts in all possible worlds.

I've dealt with the issue of morality at length before. I believe that moral judgments are relative to moral frameworks.

***
But are all relative judgments invalid?

Consider motion. Imagine sitting next to me in a bar when I suddenly begin screaming, "My Guinness is moving! Sweet Lola, save me, my Guinness is moving!" You look at my glass, however, and say, "Man, atheism is really rat poison to the intellect! Your Guinness isn't moving; it's perfectly still."

Is it both possible that my Guinness is moving and that my Guinness is not moving? Of course it is!

I could respond to your skepticism, "Isn't this continent drifting, the earth rotating and revolving, our solar system spinning in a pinwheel galaxy, and our galaxy speeding away from others in the universe? How can you say my Guinness isn't moving?!"

At the same time, you could have said, "Look EB, there is a spot on the bar next to your glass and we can tell by this ruler that your glass is neither moving towards that spot nor away from it. Your glass is stationary."

Both contradictory statements are correct, but are relative to specific spatio-temporal frameworks. From certain spatio-temporal frameworks, my Guinness is stationary; from others, it is moving. The "fact" of the motion of my Guinness is relative to the spatio-temporal framework that is adopted. There is no one, "true" spatio-temporal framework that truly determines whether something is "really" moving or not, there are only different frameworks from which to judge.

But though my Guinness' motion is relative, it is still "objective." You would certainly admit the validity of my statement that my Guinness is moving from any of the other spatio-temporal frameworks that I mentioned as justification. I would certainly admit the validity of your statement from the spatio-temporal framework that you mention. Both statements are correct, but are so relative to specific spatio-temporal frameworks.

Now, what if the same could be said of moral judgments? What if I could say objectively that it is morally wrong of P to D (I'm stealing all of this from Princeton's Gilbert Harman if you are wondering), but had to qualify my statement that it was morally wrong according to a specific moral framework? My judgment would be objective, but not universal.

If morality is not universal, though, must I accept everyone's moral judgments as equally valid? Of course not. For one thing, it is certainly possible that someone makes a moral judgment that does not fit the moral framework they use to justify it [Just like it would be possible for someone to say that something is stationary from a framework in which that judgment is inconsistent].

Secondly, acknowledging that a belief may be justified by reference to another moral framework does not mean that I have to abandon my own moral framework. For example, I believe that it is morally wrong to rape someone. If I were to happen upon a man trying to rape a woman, my moral framework demands that I do whatever action is permissible according to that framework to prevent that action from taking place. I may acknowledge that the action is permissible according to the rapist's moral framework, but that does not mean that I must ignore what is demanded by my own moral framework.

Moral relativism, then, does not necessarily lead to moral nihilism.

Anyone familiar with Foucault's work on power structures will know that, if he is correct, social ideas and morality are shaped by power. There is nothing called "madness" out in the world. One cannot catch "madness" in a bucket and paint it pink. It is an idea that must be defined. Originally, the church and the family were the primary power structures that made this definition. The church needed a way to distinguish between God's directions to his people through the Holy Spirit and the babblings of a madman. People that had certain heretical "visions" and "promptings" from God were considered "mad." Now, it is the physicians who define these kind of terms. Whatever the age, though, power is the driver behind these definitions.

In the case of morality, then, power will be the stabilizing (or destabilizing) force behind societal morality. Obviously, that does not mean that one must accept society's morality (both the Christians here and myself reject our current society's morality, but for drastically different reasons). For example, though most of current, American society opposes same-sex marriage, I adamantly support it. I do not have to accept the majority opinion even if I acknowledge that that opinion is justified by reference to a certain moral framework. I can exert my power (however limited it is) to try to change societal opinion. I can also point out that denying homosexual couples marriage is inconsistent with other, primary societal values like equal treatment under the law.

Just like one can make objective statements about motion even though the statements are relative to spatio-temporal frameworks, so I can make objective statements about morality that are relative to specific moral frameworks. So, contrary to Bahnsen's argument, I can be outraged by the Holocaust and not have a universal morality to do so. Does someone else have to agree with my outrage? Certainly not, but I will exert every power available to me via my moral framework (which excludes violence) to make others see things my way. Morality, like every idea (according to Foucault) is a power struggle.
***

Wanchick writes, "Unfortunately, to defend naturalism, Draper and Mackie (like Carrier) have to absurdly deny that humans have such unique inherent worth. . . But such positions are obviously false. Humans have moral worth not found in animals, regardless of their comparative capabilities, and the failure to recognize this is simply a lack of moral insight."

Well, this is certainly a passionate assertion! It is only that, though, an assertion. If it is "obviously false" that humans do not have a "unique inherent worth," why didn't Wanchick demonstrate its falsity? All he did was follow it up with rhetoric.

That humans are capable of feeling a stronger attachment to our fellow humans is not surprising given the nature of our brains and our evolutionary history, but other animals also experience loss and pain at the death or injury of another animal. That a human life is more significant to us, humans, is no surprise. That we feel a unique bond to other humans is no surprise. This is mirrored (to a lesser extent) in the animal kingdom as well (i.e. some animals "value" the lives of other of their kind more than they "value" the lives of other animals).

Ontological Argument

Philosophically, to say something can possibly exist is to say it could exist in at least one 'possible world' (PW). PWs (including our own) are simply possible total states of affairs. (These are not necessarily possible universes--e.g., God existing alone is a PW excluding any universe.)

By definition, a necessary being is one existing in all PWs. Obviously, if such a being were found in our (actual) world we would know that it exists in all PWs. The reverse also holds. Label our world X and another PW Y. Assume Y holds a necessary being. Inhabitants of Y would know that that being would exist in X too, since it would exist in all PWs. Thus, if any PW holds a necessary being (i.e., if that necessary being is possible), then that being must exist in the actual world, too.

Some theists have seen God as a necessary being who is omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good. He is maximally great (MG). But then if God is possible, He is actual. Theists have developed this ontological argument:

12. It is possible that an MG being exists.
13. If it is possible that an MG being exists, then an MG being exists in some PW.
14. If an MG being exists in some PW, then it exists in all PWs.
15. If an MG being exists in all PWs, then it exists in the actual world.

The argument is valid. The question is, why think an MG metaphysically possible?

First, nothing about this being seems impossible: He appears compatible with our modal intuitions. Much of mankind has indeed thought He exists. In the absence of a defeater, there seems no reason to reject our intuitions.

Moreover, my prior arguments establish 12. The Leibnizian argument proves a necessary mind who caused the universe. This being is seemingly omnipotent and omniscient given the kalam and design arguments. And He is the necessary source of moral goodness and truth, as shown in the moral argument. So my case reveals the reality and thus the possibility of an MG being. Indeed, even if the arguments aren't sound, their conclusions appear at least metaphysically possible. One doesn't simply look at the conclusion and see its obvious falsity; quite the opposite. The beings entailed appears possible, and thus the argument must be evaluated. But if the beings in those arguments are possible, then why is it impossible for one being with all those properties to exist? Since this surely does seem possible, then that person must actually exist. The MG God is a reality.

Ontological arguments suck. Fight fire with fire, though, I guess. Here is my ontological argument:

P1: It is possible that a possible world in which a god does not exist exists.

P2: If it is possible that a possible world in which a god does not exist exists, then a possible world in which a god does not exist exists.

P3: If a possible world in which a god does not exist exists, then a god would not exist in every possible world.

P4: If a god does not exist in every possible world, then it is possible that a god does not exist in the actual world.

P5: A god does not exist in a possible world in which a god does not exist.

C: Therefore, it is possible that a god does not exist in the actual world.

Theists assert that a god does exist in the actual world. It is their responsibility, then, to demonstrate this.

I'll give my argument the same support that Wanchick gave his above:

The argument is valid. The question is, why think a possible world in which a god does not exist possible?

First, nothing about this possible world seems impossible: It appears compatible with our modal intuitions. Much of humanity has indeed thought it exists. In the absence of a defeater, there seems no reason to reject our intuitions.

Moreover, my refutation of Wanchick's prior arguments establish that it is possible that a god does not exist. My refutation of his Leibnizian argument disproves a necessary mind who caused the universe. Given my refutation of the kalam and design arguments, there is no reason to believe an omnipotent and omniscient being exists. As shown in my refutation of the moral argument, it is not true that a god is the necessary source of moral goodness and truth. . .

Resurrection of Jesus

Despite media rumors, there is wide agreement among New Testament specialists regarding the events surrounding Jesus' death. Even a minimal list of almost universally affirmed facts among liberal and conservative scholars provides sufficient evidence that Jesus really was resurrected.

(a) Jesus died by crucifixion around 30 AD. Even radically liberal Crossan confesses, "That [Jesus] was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be."

(b) The tomb where Jesus was buried was empty days after His death. There are almost two dozen arguments for this: (i) If the tomb weren't empty, Christianity would've been defeated in Jerusalem by Jewish authorities revealing so. (ii) Women are the first witnesses to the empty tomb. However, women's testimony in Jesus' culture was considered generally unreliable and far inferior to that of men. If the empty tomb story were fabricated, why insert women as the primary witnesses? (iii) The empty tomb is noted by Paul in the 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 creed originating within three years of Jesus' death, far too early to be legend. (iv) The Jewish denial of the empty tomb implies its reality. Why concoct stories accounting for a tomb that's full? (v) The story is benignly straightforward, unlike legendary stories of Jesus' era.

(c) Jesus appeared visually to various people days after His death, as independently attested in early creeds, Paul, the Gospels, and nonbiblical sources. Paul tells of his and the other disciples' appearances in 1 Corinthians 15, explaining his personal verification of their accounts. Lüdemann concludes, "It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ."

(d) James and Paul both believed Jesus was resurrected after seeing Him postcrucifixion. These appearances must have vividly occurred for such dedicated opponents of Christ to convert. Paul went from the main persecutor of Christianity to its main apostle! And James turned from confirmed skeptic to an early church pillar.

If the Resurrection occurred, this series of facts can be explained plausibly and coherently. But what coherent natural explanation can be offered?

Moreover, without the Resurrection, how does one account for Christianity's origin? A lone resurrection of an executed Messiah was utterly foreign to pre-Christian Jews and blatantly contradicted their Messianic expectations. It seems impossible that any would've conceived of, let alone invented, the resurrection account.

There were various other Messianic movements before and after Jesus, but they uniformly died with their founders. Only Jesus was claimed to have risen. Only His followers, who saw Him afterwards, turned from a failed group to a vibrant movement proclaiming resurrection unto death. Something remarkable must've occurred to motivate the transformation. Only the Resurrection seems sufficient.

Again, these facts are affirmed among virtually all scholars, Christian or liberal. As Craig notes, in denying any of them or that resurrection is their best explanation, Carrier will have to "believe that the majority of the world's historians who have studied the life of Jesus are mistaken about the historicity of his empty tomb, postmortem appearances, and the origin of the Christian Way, or else embrace some naturalistic explanation of these facts which has been overwhelmingly rejected by historical scholars."

But since men cannot rise from death naturally, the Resurrection must've had a supernatural cause. And since Jesus claimed allegiance with the Old Testament God, the most plausible cause of Jesus' rising is precisely He.

In answer to a - d above:

(a) I agree that a man named Jesus was crucified around 30 CE.

(b) I do not know whether or not Jesus' tomb was empty days after his burial. All I have to go on are works written by biased followers years after the event. (i) There is no indication that the Jewish authorities felt threatened enough by the Christian sect as to desire to disprove their claims. Plus, if the first record we have of an empty tomb was written 3 years after the burial of a body, there would be nothing left of that body to disprove the Christian claim. The Jewish authorities would be helpless to defeat Christianity because the body would have been unrecognizably decomposed (maybe completely so). (ii) Who knows why the biblical writers wrote what they wrote. As a team member recently pointed out, there are many inconsistencies with the gospel stories. Maybe the gospel writers were idiots. (iii) Legends can appear much faster than 3 years. (iv) By the time the Jews "denied the empty tomb" the body would have decomposed. They would have been denying that it was empty because of the resurrection. (v) How a story about a person miraculously raising from the dead can be considered "benignly straightforward" is beyond me. If this is straightforward, what is a "legend" to this man?

(c) Why should anyone believe the writers of the Bible and church creeds are attempting to give an honest historical account?

(d) This assumes that the conversion stories of James and Paul are not also made up. How do I know they are not?

Wanchick writes, "If the Resurrection occurred, this series of facts can be explained plausibly and coherently. But what coherent natural explanation can be offered?"

Jesus was buried in a tomb and his body decomposed before people started claiming he was resurrected. The gospel writers were people of faith who believed what they wanted to believe much like the Heaven's Gate cult. They were so convinced that they were willing to die, just like Marshall Applewhite, the founder of the Heaven's Gate cult. The conversion stories of Paul and James were embellished to make it sound better.

As to the argument for the Christian god. The arguments above do not prove that Jesus rose from the dead, so there is no need for a supernatural cause of an event that cannot be proven to have occurred.

Collectively, then, I've demonstrated the reality of a transcendent, immaterial, uncaused, metaphysically necessary, and morally perfect mind of unsurpassable power and knowledge who has revealed Himself in Jesus. My arguments, in effect, demonstrate the reality of not only God, but, alas, the God of Christianity.

Every one of Wanchick's arguments have been refuted above. The case for a god is unproven and must be rejected until some valid evidence is given.

I've collected all of my other posts on this blog here. I consider the following to be my best entries:

An Evidentialist Challenge, Restated--A post in which I answer the two most popular presuppositionalist's questions, "Without the Christian God, how can you account for universal laws of logic and morality?" I also issue a challenge for Christians to demonstrate the validity of their faith.

Step into My Vortex--Discussing the vastness of the universe and our insignificance in it. Has a cool link that shows how big (and small) the universe is.

Life After the Vortex (An Existentialist Reading)--My philosophy for living a full life in light of our insignificance in the universe. Discusses Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus.

Presuppositionalism: Arguments 4, Supports 0--Argues that all presuppositionalists arguments are unsupported, that presuppositionalism is trickery, not a valid argument.

*I will respond to comments on this particular post until they die down in a few days. After that, I will fade away into the sunset.

It has been a true pleasure.