Robert Ingersoll On Thomas Paine On Reason & Science

The following is an excerpt from a lecture Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899) gave all over the country commending Thomas Paine. It can be found in full right here. To see more of Ingersoll's speeches and writings check out fellowfeather's site, The Ingersoll Times, from whom I first heard of this lecture. In the excerpt Ingersoll hails reason, knowledge, and science while excoriating belief. It's fantastic!

There are Christian apologists who argue that a god exists because reason can only be accounted for, and justified by a god. Even non-believers must acknowledge god's existence, they argue, for by using reason we acknowledge god as its foundation. This is the Argument from Reason, of which Victor Reppert is the leading defender, hitchhiking on what CS Lewis had previously written. What Ingersoll shows us, by contrast, is that Christians denigrate reason, knowledge, and science in favor of belief. Imagine that, there are people who reject reason who ironically argue that reason leads to god! What an astounding amount ignorance and hypocrisy! If reason leads to god they should be the champions of reason and science rather than belief. But they denigrate it every chance they get. They only use it when it suits them in this fallacious argument, but fail to apply reason across the board to the nature of nature, it's behavior, and whether there's a religion that has sufficient objective evidence for its miracles. In other words, to paraphrase accurately from Christian apologist Frank Turek, they steal reason from non-believers since nonbelievers are the people of reason.

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"Send a copy of 'The Case Against Miracles' to your favorite Christian apologist!!!"

"Send a copy of 'The Case Against Miracles' to your favorite Christian apologist!!!" So challenges Gary M, a former conservative Lutheran, who is now a counter-apologist. He writes for his blog Escaping Christian Fundamentalism, which I highly recommend everyone visit.

On Amazon Gary wrote a 5-Star review of my anthology The Case Against Miracles (CaM), saying:

I am a counter-apologist and have read a long list of books by Christian scholars, apologists, and fellow skeptic counter-apologists. This book, The Case Against Miracles, is absolutely devastating to the theistic belief in miracles, and more specifically, absolutely devastating for the greatest alleged miracle of all, the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The convoluted arguments made by Christian apologists for their belief in the supernatural are disassembled. Order this book for yourself and send a second copy to a Christian friend or family member! Help to facilitate the demise of fear-based, superstitious thinking.

To see the books he's read, just check out his current top post! It's pretty impressive. He likes CaM so much he sent copies to several top Christian apologists whom he names:

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An Introduction to Mark Mittelberg's Book "Confident Faith" Part 1

Mark Mittelberg

Mark Mittelberg is a bestselling author, sought-after speaker, and the Executive Director of the Center for Strategic Evangelism, in partnership with Houston Baptist University. He wrote the book Confident Faith: Building a Firm Foundation for Your Belief (2013)—which won the Outreach Magazine's 2014 apologetics book of the year award. Yet, it appears his book has been flying under the atheist radar—so far. I aim to rectify that with a few posts offering my thoughts and criticisms of it.

I found Mark’s book recently in a Goodwill store for $1. That was a lucky find. I didn’t know of his book until then. Thank Good...will. I have met him before, at a debate I had with David Wood. What I didn’t know was how similar our backgrounds are. We both studied at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and we both earned a masters degrees in the philosophy of religion there (him a M.A.; me a Th.M.). We also studied under the late Stuart Hackett while there, as did Paul Copan, as did William Lane Craig before us, who has admitted his debt to Hackett. LINK. Upon Stu’s death I wrote a post remembering him titled, Remembering and Honoring Professor Stuart C. Hackett. Hackett was Mark's "primary philosophical mentor" (Confident Faith, p. 271, note #2). William Lane Craig was mine. Perhaps Craig was gone by the time Mark attended, I don't know.

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David Hume's Argument against Miracles Cannot Be Disputed. I Prove It Beyond Any Reasonable Doubt!

The title to this post echoes the certainty of David Hume, known as the greatest English speaking philosopher. He said:

I flatter myself, that I have discovered an argument which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently, will be useful as long as the world endures. [Enquiry "Of Miracles" X (#86)]

I argue this is still true. Now I'm not sure why many Christian intellectuals ignore my books and my arguments. Many or most evangelical apologists know of them. So I'll say it. I think many of them have decided not to deal with them, or to give them any oxygen, because they cannot dispute them. It's so much easier to go after popular but low hanging fruit. Apologist Frank Turek, for instance, knows of my work but never addresses it in his daily posts at X (or Twitter). I find that very odd. So I must conclude he cannot dispute them.

Okay this sounds like I'm challenging apologists to a Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, so it makes me arrogant. But I have the goods. Others do as well. Is it really arrogant to say Christianity of the evangelical kind is bunk, when it is in fact bunk? No it's not, not anymore than it is to say Leprechauns don't exist. Many atheists, agnostics, deists, and even liberals agree with me on that score. But because I state the obvious many evangelical apologists will conclude I'm uniformed of the underpinnings of their faith, since they are so sure of it. They might also think this of the title to this blog. I can't change that now. But if they read just one of my papers they will see my scholarship. Check out just one peer reviewed paper, in defense of David Hume on miracles at The Secular Web. THIS ONE. Can you dispute it? I say you can't do it. Timothy McGrew, I’m looking at you.

Another One Bites the Dust

Chad Dunnam sent me a Facebook message describing his deconversion. This is encouraging news! Believers everywhere are losing their faith one at time.

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Is Faith To Be Defined As Trust?

Some Christians claim faith is something like 'trusting, holding to and acting on what one has good reason to believe is true in the face of difficulties', or 'trust or confidence in something or someone.'

This is not correct. From the New Testament down through centuries of church theology and even today, Christians have produced a multiple number of mutually discordant definitions of faith. David Eller says: “the concept of belief in Western civilization and Christianity has evolved, from a kind of “trust” in god(s) to specific propositions about God and Christ to the notion of “grace” based on the personal experience of and commitment to God…The evolutionary trajectory of belief in Christianity is, then…culturally and religiously relative.” (Quoted in Loftus, The Outsider Test for Faith, p. 33)]

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A Challenge to Christian Apologists, by J.M. Green

Look, debates are all well and good, but being such fervent supporters of the Bible as the Inspired Word of God, why not settle things the good, old-fashioned biblical way?

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"The less evidence you have...the more faith you need"

I have argued that faith is a leap over the probabilities. And I have been told this is nonsense by Christian apologists from David Marshall to Randal Rauser and others. They have said this is a gross mischaracterization of their Christian faith. Really? Then maybe they can explain why Norman L. Geisler (arguably the biggest name in Christian apologetics) and co-writer Frank Turek say in their book, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist,"The less evidence you have for your position, the more faith you need to believe it (and vice versa). Faith covers a gap in knowledge." (p. 26) My question is was and always be, what does faith add to the probabilities? As far as I can tell leaping that gap is irrational. [Click on the tag "Faith" below to see other posts on faith].