Things I Like About No Longer Being a Christian

When I saw Matthew's post this morning it made me think of the post I just wrote on my blog Frasch Ideas a couple of days ago. I got to thinking about all the reasons I like about not being a Christian and wrote them down. I agree with Matthew that Christian's seem to think they have a monopoly on Love and Joy and Peace. But I feel ever so much better (relieved, even) since I left first the church, then Christianity and then God. As much as they might hate to admit it, even the Christian side of my family would have to say I am a much happier person now. So, here for your pleasure is: Things I like about no longer being a Christian (or as Matthew says: The Joy of Being a Heathen).

This is all there is; make the most of it.

I like this thought better than thinking about spending eternity in heaven. This makes life more exciting and enjoyable. I know I can't just laze around because I've got something better coming. I appreciate my world more now and want to take care of it because this is all there is, and all those who come after me are going to have.

There is no fear of punishment.

No more do I have to worry if god is going to punish me or my kids or my friends because we did something wrong, or chose an alternative lifestyle, or because of the sin of the world. I no longer have to view tsunamis and AIDS as punishent sent by God.

My relatives are no longer in hell.

This is a feeling not like any other. Imagine being told by the scriptures and your pastors that anyone not believing on the Lord Jesus Christ would go to hell when they died. I was sure my grandfathers were in hell. It is amazing to me how much this is preached except at a funeral. Then the unbelievers (or rather their families) are given a hope that maybe there was a deathbed conversion. I've never heard a pastor say, "Sorry Mrs Jones, we know your husband was an unbeliever and he is hell right now." If they really believed that unrepentant sinners go to hell, then they should say so right in the face of the mourning. It is easy to say when speaking in generalities, but hard to say to Mrs Jones if she asks you where her husband is.

There are no taboo questions.

As a matter of fact, questions are encouraged. Searching is encouraged. Coming up with different ways of looking at things are encouraged.

There is no more guesing God's will.

What a farce that always was, trying to figure out god's will. How do you figure it out when he won't say anything? If you are lucky the Bible says something about it, but if not you are left with trying to discern the will of god on your own, through your feelings.

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."
- Susan B. Anthony

No more thinking I must be sinning because of adversity.

Here is what I know now - bad things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people, good things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people. That's life; shit happens. Most people are good most of the time and most of the time life is good. That's what I look for now.

I can take credit for what I do.

If something good happens in my life and I worked hard for it, I can say it is because I worked hard for it. I don't have to give god the credit. By the same token,if I mess up I have to take responsibility and not say the devil made me do it.

I don't have to mess with the problem of unanswered prayer.

This is such a relief. One, I don't have to pray anymore and two, I don't have try to figure out the right way, the way to make things work, the way to make things happen. I don't have to have the convoluted mess of scripures in my head that contradict each other or that show the way alongside another one that shows the way. I don't have to have answers as to why my prayer isn't working, why god didn't heal so and so even though we followed all of the rules.

I don't have to witness or feel guilty for not witnessing.

I used to hate witnessing. I never was very good at it. I didn't like butting into people's personal lives, especially uninvited. Instead, I indoctrinated little children in Sunday School and Good News Bears for which I repent.

I don't have to fear for my unsaved friends and family members souls.

And even when I did witness, it didn't mean that they accepted Jesus. And then I felt guilt for not convincing them and fear that they would end up in hell because I didn't do enough. I spent hours and hours praying for my dad to be saved so he could be in heaven with us. God never answered, or maybe he said no.

I have every Sunday completely free.

I can sleep in every Sunday now and have my whole day free, no Sunday night services, no practice sessions, no Wednesday nights, no council meetings, no special meetings, no offerings, no tithing. Sundays are my own (along with the rest of my week)

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The Martyrdom Argument

The Martyrdom Argument

A popular argument for the resurrection these days is one that has been popularized by Christian apologist and author, Josh McDowell. The argument goes something like this:

People will die for a lie if they think it's a lie but no one will die for something they knew to be false. If the resurrection happened, the disciples knew it! They wouldn't die for something that they knew to be a lie so we can only conclude that they died for something that they knew to be true!

There is a fatal flaw in this argument. It is based on a false dichotomy. It presumes, without proving, that the disciples were in an inescapable position to know whether the resurrection happened and that they couldn't have been mistaken. This results in a false dichotomy, with the only choices being a deliberate lie and honest truth. I ask about the possibility of delusion? This is the problem with this argument: it is sophistry. It creates a simplistic argument by ruling out the possibility of delusion on epistemic grounds rather than trying to refute the possibility of delusion on historical grounds. If we are to grant that the earliest Christians believed in an 1.) empty tomb, that 2.) Jesus had a risen body of flesh, and that 3.) God had indeed raised him from the dead, we are at best left with three possibilities: the truth, a deliberate lie, and sincere but powerful delusion.

I don't believe that the resurrection happened for two reasons. First of all, I believe that supernatural/miraculous claims (i.e. God raised Jesus from the dead) require supernatural/miraculous forms of evidence. I have no supernatural/miraculous evidence today or from history. I have never had an audio/visual experience from God, in which God appeared to me, face-to-face, telling me that his Son has risen from the dead. I have never had God reveal to me something in the form such a theophany and giving me some powerful, undeniable, irrefutable proof that I was not hallucinating (such as being under the influence of some environmental or chemical agent), or the victim of some kind of cruel yet convincing extraterrestrial prank or delusion or some sort. This might not be enough in itself to convince me but at least it would be a right step in the direction of meeting this standard of evidence. Neither do I have any supernatural/miraculous evidence from history itself. I have no first-century evidence from secular historians who were on the scene in ancient Palestine, following Jesus around, witnessing his miracles, interviewing people who supposedly saw these miracles, interviewing skeptics and critics who had either been won over as converts or tried explaining embarrassing details away. I know of no historical report or documentation in which a highly-educated, world-class, first-rank, widely-respected historian of the 1st-century Mediterranean who witnessed the crucifixion, dishonorable burial of Jesus, and the risen Jesus. I know of no such historian or group of them who saw Jesus themselves, confirmed that Jesus was dead, confirmed that he did not survive the burial, was not reburied elsewhere, or that the body was misplaced or stolen, who witnessed an empty tomb, witnessed angels and the women's interaction with angels, interviewed the women and angels, saw the risen Jesus and interviewed him, and trying to have Jesus help them to verify for themselves that they were not mistaken or deluded somehow, interviewing the disciples, asking them hard, critical questions to make sure that they were not mistaken or deluded, somehow, and being there to witness the ascending Jesus, the Holy Spirit alleging coming upon the disciples at Pentecost. This would be a step in the right direction towards providing supernatural/miraculous evidence from history.

But, this is not the evidence that we have. Instead of providing multiple attesting secular and Jewish sources from reputable historians on the scenes to witness these alleged miraculous events, Christians will offer the New Testament itself. They might appeal to its inerrancy as supernatural/miraculous evidence of its truth claims. This is the second reason I don't believe that the resurrection happened: I consider the resurrection narratives to be errant. I believe that the canonical synoptic gospels contradict the gospel of John when the synoptics have Mary Magdalene and her companions go the empty tomb, encounter angels, and return to the disciples, successfully delivering the message of the angels: that Jesus had risen from the dead. Yet in John, Mary Magdalene first encounters the tomb and without so much as entering it, runs and tells the disciple that the body has been taken and the women don't know where it is. Luke records that on the eve of the resurrection that Jesus appeared to eleven disciples but John says that only ten were present; unlike in Luke, doubting Thomas wasn't present in John. Matthew records the women arriving at the tomb, an earthquake happening, and angel descending and opening the stone for them, all after they arrive at the tomb. Other gospels (Mark and Luke) say that when the women arrive the stone had been removed already, and whatever women were present didn't encounter angels until after they had entered the tomb. I believe that Matthew and Mark tend to only present one angel as being at the tomb while Luke and John have more than one angel. Matthew and Mark, I believe, place the first appearance of Jesus to his disciples in Galilee while Luke and John have it in Jerusalem.

After rejecting the resurrection hypothesis for these two reasons, I will now discuss the next option: a deliberate lie. I don't think that this is necessarily impossible but I do grant that this is probably unlikely. I believe that this is not impossible, though. My reason for thinking so is that the New Testament was written in an honor-shame society. They didn't general have that big of a concern for precision writing nor were they absolutely obsessed with always being honest no matter what. In such a society, there was such thing as an honorable lie. I believe that it's certainly possible (yet very unlikely, historically speaking) that the resurrection might have been the result of an honorable lie. If the in-group’s collective honor was at stake or if they believed that it was more honorable to die for something they considered a lie, I can see the possibility that they might have died for a deliberate lie as long as they conceived the lie to be an honorable one. I regard this as unlikely because I don't see any reason why being martyred for a deliberate lie would be more honorable than confessing that their mission was based on deceit.

After rejecting the possibility of deliberately deception as being historically unlikely, I come to the possibility I regard as being the most likely: sincere delusion. Here is where I see Christian apologists having a major inconsistency in their apologetics. Apologists of yesteryear like McDowell, C.S. Lewis, and the apologists of today, like William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, and Mike Licona, set about arguing against the historical probability of any kind of delusion or hallucination theory. But if they had confidence in this argument of McDowell's, one would wonder why they would be trying to raise up the possibility of delusion, only to knock it down again? The very fact that they waste ink on theories of delusion and hallucination only betrays whatever confidence they might have or had in this martyrdom argument of McDowell whether they realize it or not. Even McDowell doesn't seem to realize this as he assembles a rebuttal of the hallucination theory in his tome Evidence That Demands a Verdict and then argues for this martyrdom argument in his book He Walked Among Us. The problem with their rebuttals of the hallucination theory is that they are destroying the wrong target. Their rebuttals, which persist even to this day, have been invalidated not only by examples from history but also from the findings of cultural and psychological anthropology. These findings and insights have been applied to the New Testament and as a result, a field of New Testament studies has arisen in the past decades, New Testament sociological criticism, which the Context Group has been at the forefront of.

What this criticism has revealed is that there is a world of difference between the culture that produced the New Testament text and our culture. The ancient culture of the 1st century Mediterranean is what anthropologists call an honor-shame society while cultures such as American, Britain, and Australia are what anthropologists might call a pride-guilt society. In honor-shame societies there occur visions. These visions involve altered-states-of-consciousness and come in two types: group visions and individual visions. Two Context Group scholars, Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh have written two excellent books applying these anthropological insights to the gospels, their Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels and their Social-Science Commentary on the Gospel of John. They note that visions involving these altered-states-of-consciousness happen frequently, can definitely involve groups of people at the same time, and are considered normal in both antiquity and modern honor-shame societies. Although a rigorous, historical theory of Christian origins, based on such visions, to my knowledge has yet to be fully worked out, such visions do, in my opinion, form the basis of a sincere and honest delusion among the earliest Christians.

I do believe, however, that Christian apologists like Craig, Habermas, Licona have successfully refuted hallucination theories in their works but I am convinced that these works have been outdated and I believe that they are to be shamed for not applying and carefully studying New Testament sociological criticism and incorporating it into their writings. Even if many apologists have written their works before sociological criticism had arisen as a discipline of New Testament studies, wouldn't they be endowed with the responsibility of carefully studying antiquity and modern day societies to ensure that any such visionary experiences do not occur at all? If I was a Christian apologist, I would be consulting with cultural anthropologists and try to be as careful as I could, trying to figure out if such visionary experiences, such as those involving altered-states-of-consciousness could and do occur. Even if such data was unknown back then, I don't think it would excuse apologists from conducting such anthropological studies decades ago to see if they could rule out such a possibility which has become since, well studied and well known in these past few decades among anthropologists.

In fact, I would submit that hallucinations are rare, highly individualistic occurrences here pride-guilt societies such as America, Britain, Australia, and elsewhere. Visions (and the resulting visionary experiences) are frequent, highly collectivistic occurrences in honor-shame societies and can involve both single people and groups of people at the same time. The difference between a hallucination and a vision, seen from a sociological perspective, becomes evident, in my perspective. Christian apologists would have a greater and more effective case against the possibility of delusion if Christianity had its origins here in America or another pride-guilt culture, where hallucinations are, indeed, rare, individualistic occurrences. But Christianity originated in the Mediterranean, in a 1st century honor-shame, collectivistic society where such visionary experiences are frequent and common. This, I submit, best explains the origins of Christianity.

I should have to add though, that I believe that all visionary experiences are naturally-caused and are not in need of any supernatural or miraculous explanation. I should also hasten to point out that I don't believe a full-fledged general theory of Christian origins has been fully worked out from the basics of sociological criticism of the New Testament, which I hope to work out in graduate school. But I do believe that delusion is the best explanation and the likeliest explanation of the facts that we have so far. My purpose in writing here, however, is not to propose such a detailed theory, but to answer the argument. To expose the illogical nature of the argument as well as conduct a brief analysis of the possible options is what I believe is necessary to answer this argument of Christian apologists.

The Joy of being a Heathen!

The Joy of the Heathen

Not all of my myth-debunking is necessarily academic or scholarly in nature. While I plan to spend considerable time debunking Christian apologetics, inerrancy, the resurrection, and other concepts for years to come, there are also some myths that Christians have that are cultural in origin. One of the myths that I hear quite a lot is that heathens have no sense of joy. Many Christians believe that they- and only them- have a monopoly on hope, joy, and laughter. When some of these folks hear that someone like John Loftus, Richard Carrier, Farrell Till, or myself are atheists, the response can sometimes be condescending pity. How many times have many of us heard a Christian say "You must have a really sad life!" or "It must be awful to have no sense of joy or purpose"? My dad is a minister, whom to this day, believes that us "heathens" (an umbrella term for all non-Christians) cannot have any joy without Jesus Christ. I sometimes have to wonder at my dad's intellectual honesty. My dad has acknowledged that I am a more joyful person today as an atheist and "heathen" than I ever was as a Christian. I overheard my dad say recently to some Christian friends of his while conducting a Bible study that you cannot be joyful without Jesus Christ in your life. But my dad knows for a fact that I am a joyful person. I am at a loss as to why he would make such a statement when he knows that I am very joyful and happy in life?

The fact of the matter is that many "heathens" that I know of today are very joyful and basically happy people, especially atheists. Carrier, Loftus, Till, Holman, Barker, and countless others are very joyful and happy people. The simple fact of the matter is that from an early age I never thought that Christians had a monopoly on joy. But many Christians do believe otherwise. My dad believes that only Christians can have true joy and hope in life. As I was growing up, my dad believed that a glowing testimonial was the only reason why anyone should ever be a Christian. This was the reason he was a Christian and he thought that just because it worked for him it should work for about anyone, particularly his own kids. My dad believed that without Jesus Christ, it was impossible to have any joy or hope in your life. My dad just couldn't understand how any heathen, after meeting him, could ever possibly not want to become a Christian. They were just so purposeless, miserable, and sad that he honestly didn't know how they could resist not wanting to become a Christian. If his testimonial was not convincing enough to them, then there must be something seriously wrong, psychologically, with these people for them to love being miserable.

I never thought that glowing testimonials were evidence that Christianity was true or not. I thought as a teenager that Christianity lived or died on historical evidence. I also knew that glowing testimonials were worthless because many different religions, spiritualities, and philosophies had converts all with their glowing testimonials of how their conversion brought them joy and peace of mind. One might think that some atheist or agnostic convinced me of this when I was teenager. Right? Wrong! It was the apologetics book Many Infallible Proofs which was written by recent-creationist Henry M Morris. He was the one who argued for apologetics precisely because many different religions had glowing testimonials. I was very much into apologetics as a teenager. In fact, when I was a teenager, say about 15 or 16, I was interested in a career in theology and apologetics. I had just encountered the word "apologetics" in the dictionary and it was defined as a branch of theology that was concerned with the proof of Christianity. To a teenager, this was beautiful music to my ears. When I expressed this to my dad, he was not supportive of the idea at all. Theology and apologetics were a waste of time! My dad decided to talk me out of it. My dad tried to talk me into becoming an inventor. Why? Because inventors make a lot of money and my dad wanted his sons to be wealthy.

This wasn't enough to steer me from apologetics and my dad was contemptuous of my interest, it seemed. How could I be interested in apologetics? But I was interested in apologetics because I was struggling with some difficult questions. What evidence was there to justify faith? If I was wrong enough to buy into the claims about Santa Claus, was I also wrong to buy into the claims of my parents about God and the Bible? One of the biggest issues I wrestled with for many years was the age of the earth and reconciling it with Christianity. I read some books on the subject, all from a recent-creationist viewpoint. My dad came up with what he considered to be his own solution to the problem. Adam, my dad reasoned, was not created as a baby but as a fully-grown adult. Therefore, my dad asked, why couldn't God created the universe "fully-grown"? My dad thought that this was a simple, elegant, beautiful, and perfect solution to the problem. My dad thought that it was so simple and elegant that he was absolutely surprised that any Christian upon hearing it would not immediately believe it. In fact, my dad was scornful of people, it seemed to me, who did not buy into it! Why wasn't this amazingly simple solution to the problem enough to end the entire debate with no questions asked? My dad believed that if anyone didn't find it compelling it could only be because they were just trying to make a problem harder than it necessarily had to be. After all, Christians had their glowing testimonials to share with heathens and so why would they waste so much time and ink on what my dad considered to be a non-problem?

I realized that there were serious problems that my dad was very ignorant about. My dad hadn't studied geology, astronomy, biology, or theology in sufficient enough detail to know what the problems with his "mature-creation" hypothesis. My dad thought he didn't need to. How could something so elegant, so simple, so obvious-sounding and so perfect be possibly wrong? I knew of the problems that my dad's hypothesis (which was thought of long before my dad was even born) but I figured that it was a waste of time to reason with him about it. As a minister in these years, he was so stubborn and set in his ways, that nothing short of a genuine Christophany could ever change his mind. Nor could I tell him about what I learned from reading Morris' book. My dad wouldn't hear of it. If my dad heard of glowing testimonials from any other religion, spirituality, or philosophy, my dad would assume that the person giving the testimonial was somehow dishonest or deluded. After all, if my dad's testimonial was true, theirs just had to be wrong. And that was the end of the discussion for my dad. But it was precisely because I didn't really have much of a testimonial myself that I dug deeper and deeper into apologetics. It was because I no longer felt God's presence that I delved deeper into apologetics.

My dad is wrong. But for more than one reason though. Not only do many religions, spiritualities, and philosophies (both spiritual and secular) have glowing testimonials but being a Christian (or trying to be one) doesn't bring one joy and hope. For many years I sincerely considered myself a Christian yet I had no sense of hope or joy in my life. Since leaving the faith and gradually evolving from an Evangelical to a Deist, then to an agnostic, and finally to an atheist, I have changed in my life. I have become much more joyful over the years. Deconverting cured me of my deep clinical depression that I suffered for over five years. For most of the years that I considered myself a Christian, I was not at all joyful or happy but deeply depressed. In fact, for anyone who prays that I will return to the fold and go back to being a Christian, I ask those folks, do you seriously want the old Matt back?

I believe that I was not a very likeable kind of guy back in the years I considered myself to be a Christian. Sure I was a kind and smart but I wasn't really a likeable kind of fellow, at least not for fellow Christians. The problem was my character and temperament. I am a serious kind of guy. My temperament is such that I am naturally inclined to take myself quite seriously. There is an old saying that could apply to me from the New Testament, that I don't "suffer fools gladly". This is said of people who have very little patience or tolerance for foolishness or goofiness. I am a pretty serious guy. But this doesn't mean that I never laugh. I take myself quite seriously but I try not to take myself too seriously. I enjoy a good hearty laugh these days but it usually comes when I watch something hysterically funny like my favorite comedy show My Name is Earl or reruns of Frasier. Back in my Evangelical days, I took myself as seriously as I could. People would say that I took myself too seriously back then. In fact, I even got the nickname "Old Soberface" from my grandmother. I remember in my freshman year of college, I met a good buddy named Derek. Derek was a Buddhist and he was one of the most confident and joyful people I have ever met. Yet Derek told me that he thought I was "too damned serious".

My worst critic was my dad. My dad would constantly complain about my incessant seriousness. In fact, my dad would accuse me of being selfish because I hated teasing. It didn't matter if it was cruel teasing or good-natured ribbing. It was all the same to me. All teasing was spiteful and offensive to me. So, for some time, I grew resentful of my dad always criticizing me for this. My mother was pretty critical as well but not to the extent that my dad was. My mother would tell me that I reminded her of my grandmother Verna Lee (who, ironically, gave me the nickname!) In fact, my parents would complain that my grandmother had absolutely no sense of humor whatsoever and that I was getting to be just like her! Not only that but this was also the case in Church. I found the social atmosphere of Church to be contemptible. I wanted it to be serious. I was deathly serious and I wanted worship to be sober. If worship was to be joyful, fine then, no problem- but why couldn't we have a worship service that was as serious as could be and, at the same time, as joyful as could be?

It was also in these years that I was clinically depressed. The biggest reason I was depressed was because of my singleness. I would've sold my soul to meet the girl of my dreams in high school and throughout college, all I could ever think about was meeting the woman of my dreams. I got so depressed over this very issue that I not only flunked chemistry class in college but I withdrew from all of my classes because I was struggling with the will to live. I have to say that in all my years of attending Church, I never found most Christian women to my liking. I considered most of them to be romantically-repressed prudes who felt that having romantic feelings for a man other than Jesus himself was blasphemy! But worse than this, there was something I couldn't stand about most Christian women if not all of them: laughter. It seemed to me that most Christian woman couldn’t bear to associate with a man unless that man was hysterically funny and charismatic. In fact, it was my dad's desire to see me fall in love with making women laugh. I recall one time when I was about 16 or older when my dad had a talk with me. My dad said that the best way to attract a woman to me was to make her laugh and that this was pretty much the only way I was ever going to get a woman to fall in love and marry me. But attraction is a two-way street. If a woman loves to laugh, she is best-suited to a man who loves to make her laugh. But that was just it: I wasn't attracted to women who loved to laugh.

I am not proud of this but in my early twenties I became somewhat of a misogynist. I started to loathe women. I started to outright hate women and a big reason for this was because they loved to laugh. It got to the point where I had absolutely no use for women. The only use I could ever possibly have for a woman was sex. Other than that, I honestly wondered, what could I have in a female friend that I couldn't have in a fellow male? If I needed a friend to talk with, or cry with, I could do that with a fellow guy. Almost anything I could do with a woman I could do with a fellow guy. All the qualities of friendship that I needed could be adequately met in other men. The only thing I couldn't do with a fellow man was have sex with that man (well, procreative intercourse is what I mean here). That was the only purpose I thought a woman could possibly fulfill that a man couldn't. Therefore, all I needed was a spouse to have sex with and that was all the use I could ever have for any woman. This was a disgusting attitude but it was one that I had. I considered it only logical. What was Eve to Adam? A fellow buddy by which to shoot the breeze with? No. Eve was his wife. So, what possible purpose could any woman ever serve in my life if not a spouse? The answer was obvious to me: nothing at all. I had no use for them and I sure as hell wasn't going to make them laugh.

I consider myself a different person these days and for the better. I have a much more civilized view of women. I have many fellow female acquaintances because I have learned to see them as human beings. I have noticed a positive change in the better for me. I have learned not to take myself too seriously though I understand that my basic temperament is inclined towards seriousness. I don't hate women anymore but I find it hard to be attracted romantically to most women. In fact, I tend to think that I would rather have them as friends than anything else. My attitude has mostly reversed. I see them mostly as friends because I honestly don't imagine having any woman these days as a girlfriend or wife. Most women love a man with a sense of humor. I just do not find that attractive in a woman. If I am to have a romantic relationship with a woman, she has to take me seriously even if she doesn't take herself that seriously at all. The easiest way for a woman to attract me to her is to take me seriously. When a woman says that she likes me because I am sweet, then I can fall in love with her. The easiest way for a woman to insult or offend me is to tease me by making fun of me when I am trying to be serious. That is not only offensive but that is the hardest thing I can imagine being able to forgive.

The most surprising thing I have learned about some of my fellow atheists is their sense of humor and joy in life! My friend John has remarried. He and his wife Gwenn are a very happy couple. I cringe at the thought of John with someone who is not Gwenn. I cannot imagine John being happy with someone he couldn't laugh with! Ed Babinski, another good friend, recently told of a married atheist couple who were instrumental in getting an aspect of religion out of the public schools. This couple revealed the same secret to their happy marriage that John and Gwenn have: the key is laughter! These folks are so-called "heathens!" They're not supposed to love laughter and be joyful like that! In fact, it seems to me that many atheist couples are some of the happiest people that I know of! Loftus is, to me, proof that Christians have fallen prey to a nasty cultural myth: that you cannot have a life full of love and laughter if you're not committed to Jesus Christ! We don't need religion, faith, of Christ to be joyful and happy, full of love and laughter!

My own evolution from religion and reason has revealed this to be the case. I am more joyful today than I have ever been in my life! I have a new direction and I am on a path to a life that I love! I plan to be studying religion and the Bible in graduate school which has become my new life dream! My old dream was crushed and I consider it irredeemably damaged but I have found a new dream to live and this is one that brings me tremendous joy and happiness! My life seems a lot more joyful and relaxed. I no longer feel neurotic, having to constantly edit my thoughts so that the Christian god doesn't find them offensive or "sinful". I am free to indulge in any kind of sexual fantasy that I want to and I can freely enjoy the natural beauty of a woman's fully uncovered body all I want to. Many people, my fellow "heathens" have, too, found new hopes, new dreams, a new sense of joy and purpose. This to me was only confirmed when I read Ed Babinski's book Leaving the Fold. Many of the contributors sounded like they lived happier, more fulfilling lives, regardless of where they found themselves.

There is joy on the other side of the fence!

Some Christian Books.

The following books were written by professing Christians.

Some More Books Not Listed in the Sidebar

Gary Rendsberg - Genesis 1

At Ed Babinski's recommendation, I got on to some of The Teaching Company's excellent Religion courses. They have a host of courses on some wonderful topics. I figured I would start at the start and so downloaded Dr Gary Rendsberg's (Rutgers) Book of Genesis 24 lecture course.

In this course, Rendsberg recommends and uses the New JPS Translation of Genesis. The text of this newer translation is not available online (although the older 1917 version is) so forgive me if I refer to it but do not quote from it, as I am in China and it isn't easy to come by here.

Rendsberg notes that,

The first thing we notice about Genesis 1 is that, contrary to what most people might assume or believe, the world is not created ex nihilo, that is, “out of nothing.”

By using the JPS translation, he makes the assertion that according to the syntax of the Hebrew text, Genesis 1:1 is actually a dependant clause, dependant on Gen 1:2-3. That is the earth is in a state of preexistent matter and then God creates the world. He asserts that creation ex nihilo is a later theological development that was then read back into the Hebrew text, but which is not supported by the Hebrew text.

Of course he said a lot more, but I thought this is of note to those of us previously of the Christian tradition.

Test Your Beliefs As If You Were An Outsider!

Here's a video expressing my thoughts on The Outsider Test for Faith, although I don't make some of the exaggerated claims that are made in the video itself.

Mr. Deity Reigns!

You should take a look at Mr. Deity and laugh. It's both smart and funny.

David Wood's New Blog on the Problem of Evil

I want to welcome David Wood of Answering Infidels, to the world of Blogging (now everyone's doing it). He just started a new Blog titled The Problem of Evil. Since he and I have debated this topic and he's doing his Ph.D. work at Fordham University on it, it should prove interesting. You may want to see his arguments develop and check out my separate blog on this same topic here. I sent him the chapter from my book on this problem, so he knows all of my arguments! And he still disagrees? How could he? However, when he's done examining this issue in the depth he plans to do, then I expect him to join us at DC someday! Join the dark side, David! ;-)

Christian-Detectors: $9.99 for a limited Time!

“O.K.! We have all had this problem, haven’t we? One neighbor claims to be a Christian, and goes to the church down the street. Another claims to be a Christian, too, but goes to a different church. People at work, at school, and in the media claiming to be a Christian.

“But Wait! A group will tell us that the other group is not a Christian. Even some within the same group will accuse others of not being a Christian. As we all know, Christians wear the same clothes, drive the same cars and have the same retirement plans as everyone else. Sadly, there was no way to tell the difference.

“Until Today!

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“Image how much more confident you will be walking down the street, easily determining who is a Christian and who is not. You can chuckle when a person attempts to sell you something Christian, when clearly it is not. Expose the lies! Stun your friends and relatives with your pin-point accuracy!

“The first step in this amazing detector is to determine who loves God. As we all know, we can recognize a person that loves God is the one that loves one another and does what is right. (1 Jn. 4:21; 3:10)

“’But wait!’ you say, ‘We all know people that are loving others and do what is right. How can that be enough? Even people who do not claim to be Christians, such as Jews and Buddhists do that.’ And right you are! Up until now that is all we had to rely upon. And, as you very astutely notice, this left us with still the perpetual problem of lack of perception as to who the preserved protected are.

“Up ‘till today, we could only use rough tools by which to determine who the Christians were. Oh, sure, if they were convicted of murder, or drank too much, or beat their wives. Those were easily rejected. If they don’t give enough, or say the wrong words or go to the wrong movies—we could speak with confidence that they were not Christians.

“It is our unique combination of the traditional method and new technology that creates this patented way of determining Christians or not. See, we don’t stop at just the first step. No sirree! We then implement the second to determine with accuracy to the 100th decimal place as to Christianity factor!

“We have recently discovered that if a person loves God, all things work together for good. (Rom. 8:28) By joining this essential second step to the first, we are able to not only eliminate non-Christians by what a person does; but equally by how well their life is going!

“Think about how useful this becomes! Sure, your nephew seems to be living right, and displays some love for others. But is he unemployed? Uh-oh. By applying our Christian Detector, we can see that he is clearly not a Christian. Instantly you can ostracize him with reliance that it is warranted. He is not a Christian!

“Or, if a person is sick and dies—that didn’t work out so well, did it? Or a rocky marriage ending in divorce. A teenage child that becomes addicted to drugs. Don’t you see how easy this becomes? If their life is not going well, clearly it is because they do not love God.

“In fact, using this system, many people make it even easier for you! If they ask for prayer, it is obvious all things are not working together for good. You can stand up, look them straight in the eye and proclaim, ‘You need Jesus, you sinner!’ How can you turn away from that type of assured accusation, especially when we are only asking $9.99?

“Many politicians, and media personalities would pay more than twice this price for this type of self-confidence in making statements.

“’But wait,’ you say ‘Doesn’t that verse mean it may not be good, but it will work out for good in the end.’ How silly is that? Don’t all unemployed people who look for jobs eventually find them? Don’t all people who are divorced have good moments after? Don’t other sick people get well?

“Why, if it was only a situation where things ‘work out’ that hardly gives us any new information, now does it? Amazingly, things ‘work out’ for everybody! No, no, the only way in which our Christian Detector works, is if the promises in the Bible mean more than just fluff that applies to everybody.

“Do you realize what that means? It means the term ‘Christian’ could be applied to a whole variety of people! Because we ALL do right sometimes and do wrong at others. We ALL love sometimes, and sometimes not. We ALL have situations that turn out good, and some that do not. Why—our Christian Detector would come up with results that either everybody is a Christian or no one is.

“And how much confidence is there in THAT? Wouldn’t you much prefer to label others as they should be labeled? And that is the beauty of this two-part system. Rather than worry about how the promises are unique in any way, you can apply this method and come out with results that are backed by scientific research.

“For $9.99 you can not only determine who is a Christian and who is not, but you can do it with such assurance and research that the claim is indefensible by the other person.

“Act now and we will throw in, FREE, this rubber stamp with the letter “I” and a never-ending Red Ink Pad. With this, after determining who is not a Christian, you can stamp an “I” on their forehead for “Infidel” so that not only you, but any other person confronting this heathen will equally be confident.

“Remember, this is a limited time offer.

The previous announcement was a totally unpaid, unwarranted and unasked for advertisement. The owner of this blog neither endorses the use of, nor the implications of the product. The “Christian-detector” is for entertainment purposes only, and its use is limited for that purpose. The manufacturer limits the warranty to those who are verified as Christian post-mortem and positive proof of the same must be made prior to the claim, signed in triplicate by God, Satan and St. Peter.

[Final Note. Before I am accused of rotten interpretation, you should know that the inspiration from this blog entry came from a sermon on Familytalk (satellite radio) in which the person made this exact claim. That only those who “love God” are entitled to having all things work out together for good.]

Why I've Adopted My Control Set of Beliefs.

If I have a focus when it comes to debunking Christianity it is with control beliefs. Control beliefs are those beliefs that control how we view the evidence, and so my critique is generally philosophical and epistemological in nature. I'm interested in how we know what we know. How we view that which we know is the difference that makes all of the difference.

How we each look at the evidence is controlled by certain beliefs of ours. Since this is so, I want to know how to justify those control beliefs themselves. For me it's all about seeing things differently. It's not about more and more knowledge. It's about viewing what we know in a different light. I must share how I see things on a host of topics before I hit pay dirt where theists will consider how I see everything differently. And when that critical juncture happens, if it happens at all, they'll see how I see things, and maybe it'll make some sense. For them it will take place all at once, or not at all. It's basically an all or nothing happening.

How do we decide which approach, which bias, and which set of control beliefs are preferrable when looking at Christianity? That’s the biggest question of them all! Why? Because the set of control beliefs we start with when looking at the Bible is usually the same set we will come away with.

I think I have better reasons for starting with my control beliefs, presuppositions and biases. Let me briefly explain, once again. These are the reasons why I start with my skeptical control beliefs.

One) Sociological. I believe that the control beliefs a person adopts are the ones he or she picks up based on when and where he or she was born. Since that is overwhelmingly the case, I am right to be skeptical whenever I examine any religious set of beliefs, including Christianity.

Two) Philosophical. Miracles are by definition very improbable based upon natural law. In fact, the less probable a miracle is,then the more of a miracle it is. I have never seen a miracle, even when I was a Christian. Because of this I don’t think one happened in the past. Besides, a believer in the Christian miracles has a double burden of proof. For he must show that miracles are very unlikely, and at the very same time show that they are likely. What confirms that they are unlikely, discomfirms that they are likely, and vice versa. As a result there isn't any reasonable way to show that a miracle occurred at all, even if one did. That's right. Even if one actually did occur! So an additional problem becomes why God didn't know this, or why he doesn't do miracles for us to see today, especially if he desires that we believe in him?

Three) Biblical. When I look at the Bible itself, I see things in it that are barbaric and superstitious to me living in today's world. These things are obvious to me. So it's more likely to me that Biblical people were superstitious than that the stupendous miracles took place as recorded in the Bible. Furthermore, the God of the Bible seems barbaric to me, and such a God is not worthy of any worship even if he did exist. That's right, even if he did exist. The fact that Christians refuse to see this doesn't change anything, for it's also obvious, according to Sam Harris, that they "choose what is good in the Good Book." They "cherry-pick" the good out of the Bible, rather than dealing with what it actually says about their God.

Four) Historical. Christianity is an historical religion which says there are certain things that actually happened in history. I should believe that these things happened in history in order to be acceptable to God (like the incarnation and the resurrection). But if God chose to reveal himself in history, he chose a poor medium to do so. This is especially true when that history is a history or miracles. There are many historians who don't think we can be sure about much in the historical past. History is always subject to revision upon further evidence and findings. Historians must also be skeptical, because they have found many forgeries and frauds in the past.

Five) Scientific. Science has taught us to assume a natural explanation for every event based upon methodological naturalism. We who live in the modern world operate on this assumption ourselves everyday. This assumption is the foundation of modernity. We now know how babies are made and how to prevent them; we know why it rains; why nations win and lose wars; why trees fall; why most people get sick and how to cure most of them, etc. In previous centuries people either praised God for the good things that happened to them, or they wondered why he was angry when bad things happened. If they lost a war, there was sin in the camp. If someone got sick, it was because of sin in his or her life, and so on. Now we have scientific explanations for these things, and we all benefit from those who assumed there was a natural cause to everything we experience. The problem is that Christians believe in the claims of some ancient superstitious text as a fact, when they don’t do that with any other claim in today’s world. Christians themselves assume a natural explanation when they hear a noise in the night. They assume a natural explanation for a stillborn baby, or a train wreck, or an illness. If Christians were placed back in time with the same modern mindset they have today, they themselves would ask for evidence if someone claimed that an axe head floated, or a donkey talked. But because it’s in the Bible they adopt it unquestionably, and I find that to be holding to a double standard. Why do they operate on a double standard like this? Ancient people didn't even have a firm conception of natural law. For all they knew anything could happen in nature when acted upon by God, gods or goddesses. Ancient people just didn't have the required scientific understanding of natural laws we do today for them to question a miraculous story when they heard one. Scientifically literate people today are simply not that gullible to believe any such story. All of us ask whether an unusual event can be explained naturalistically, unlike them.

Six) Philosophical (again). The problem of evil. When we compare the world we see with all of its intense suffering, and we ask ourselves what kind of world we should expect to find if there is a good, omnipotent God, there is a huge disconnect. This is not the world we would expect if this God exists. Even though Christians attempt to explain intense suffering in this world, it is still not the world anyone should expect, if this God created it.

I call our modern ways of thinking the Achilles' heel of Christianity.

So, I have several really good reasons for starting out being skeptical when I examine the Christian evidences for belief. They are Sociological, Philosophical, Biblical, Historical and Scientific. I just don't see how Christians can refute any of these reasons for starting with a skeptical attitude, since they are all practically undeniable (and even obvious) to modern educated scientifically literate people. How much more is this so when these reasons are all taken together as a whole. So it is no surprise that I look at Christianity with the presumption of skepticism. And it is no surprise that I reject it.

One Year Anniversary!

On January 19th, 2006, I posted my first Blog entry here at DC. It’s been one year since the Blog has been in existence. With nearly 146,000 visits and many links to this Blog from other sites, it has gained a respectable audience. I originally didn’t plan on having anyone else here with me, but I saw some pretty sharp thinkers out there and started inviting them one by one to Blog with me, beginning with ex-believer. Then I continued inviting others who had a story that needed to be told. I just want to thank everyone who has ever been a team member here and for contributing his or her thoughts and stories, as well as to those who are presently on it. To those of you who visit and read what we say, love us or hate us, you’re still reading what we write. What did you do without us? ;-)

There is more to come this next year, so stay tuned.

A New Blog in Town.

Here's an interesting new Blog I was alerted to by the owner, Troy Waller, from the Peoples Republic of China. I don't have the time to fully check it out, but I'd be interested in any comments from those of you who do. It looks very good, but I just skimmed it.

Paul Kurtz on "What is Secular Humanism."

In this 56-minute-long video, Paul Kurtz, founder of the Council for Secular Humanism answers the question "What is Secular Humanism?" Explaining this robust system of ethics for those who are seeking alternatives to religion, Paul Kurtz shows how many people in the world agree with Secular Humanist values and ethics, but do not realize it. This is very good!

On Defining the Love of Christ.

For our Bible lesson of the day, Steve Hays over at Triablogue has defined the love of Christ. Here's what he wrote:

"Have you ever tried defining the love of Christ by Scripture? Mt 23? Mt 25? 2 Thes 1:5ff.? Rev 6:10? Rev 14:11? Rev 18? Rev 19? Rev 20?"

Matthew 23

13"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.
15"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.
16"Woe to you, blind guides! You say, 'If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.' 17You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred? 18You also say, 'If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gift on it, he is bound by his oath.' 19You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20Therefore, he who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. 21And he who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it. 22And he who swears by heaven swears by God's throne and by the one who sits on it.
23"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. 24You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.
25"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.
27"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. 28In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
29"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. 30And you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' 31So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. 32Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers! 33"You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?

Matthew 25:

41"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'
44"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'
45"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'
46"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

II Thess. 1:5ff:

6 God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you 7 and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. 8 He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power 10 on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.

Revelation 6:

9When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. 10They called out in a loud voice, "How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?"

Rev 14:

9A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: "If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, 10he, too, will drink of the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. 11And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name."

Rev 18:

1After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. 2With a mighty voice he shouted:
"Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!
She has become a home for demons
and a haunt for every evil[a] spirit,
a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird.
3For all the nations have drunk
the maddening wine of her adulteries.
The kings of the earth committed adultery with her,
and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries."

4Then I heard another voice from heaven say:
"Come out of her, my people,
so that you will not share in her sins,
so that you will not receive any of her plagues;
5for her sins are piled up to heaven,
and God has remembered her crimes.
6Give back to her as she has given;
pay her back double for what she has done.
Mix her a double portion from her own cup.
7Give her as much torture and grief
as the glory and luxury she gave herself.
In her heart she boasts,
'I sit as queen; I am not a widow,
and I will never mourn.'
8Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake her:
death, mourning and famine.
She will be consumed by fire,
for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.

Rev 19:

1After this I heard what sounded like the roar of a great multitude in heaven shouting:
"Hallelujah!
Salvation and glory and power belong to our God,
2for true and just are his judgments.
He has condemned the great prostitute
who corrupted the earth by her adulteries.
He has avenged on her the blood of his servants." 3And again they shouted:
"Hallelujah!
The smoke from her goes up for ever and ever."

Rev 20:

11Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. 12And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. 13The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. 14Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. 15If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire."

This is absolutely amazing on two, no three counts: 1) Steve points out the hateful passages to the neglect of the loving passages (like the parable of the Good Samaritan, loving our enemies, turning the other cheek, and so forth, see Matthew 5:38-48), and therefore does not offer a balanced picture of what the Bible says, leading me to question whether he himself is balanced. 2) Steve believes that by definition whatever his Christ does is loving. But there is no way anyone would think his Christ is speaking in a loving way in the above verses. These verses reveal a spiteful, hateful, vengeful, and egocentric Christ. Steve is blinded by an ancient set of barbaric and superstitious writings leading him to deny every moral intuition people hold to in the world today. 3) If this is what Steve stresses when he wants to speak of love, then it's no wonder that non-believers would be scared to have people in political power who think like him. We've already been there, with the witch hunts, Inquisitions, heresy trials, crusades, and even slavery in the South.

A Final Response to David Wood (Part 3)

Since I have now posted my opening statement from the debate I had on October 7th with David Wood on the problem of evil here, readers can pretty much compare what I said with David's review of our debate seen here for themselves. I was initially going to go through his review in several more in-depth parts, but I've decided instead to respond to the objections he offered in his review in just one final Blog entry--this one--and be done with it. People seem to be tiring of this ongoing debate, and so am I. This means my response here will be much briefer and less in-depth than I had initially planned to write.

I'm looking at this world and asking whether or not God exists, while David already believes God exists and is trying to explain why there is intense suffering in this world given that prior belief. The God-hypothesis may be able to explain why this world is the way it is (with a lot or argumentation), but that's a far cry from this world being the one we would expect if there was a good God, and these two different perspectives make all the difference in the world.

The first thing to say about David's review is that he presented several arguments in his review that he never presented that night in our debate. That's why I'd like to deal with them here, along with the others he did mention that night.

Concerning the the armlessness of the Venus de Milo statue. David, tell me what sculpturer would create a woman and then chop off her arms? What realist sculpturer would create a statue without arms? Answer the question, my friend. What reasons can you offer me for this? It’s precisely because there are no arms that I do not see a sculpturer at all. To me it would be an unusual rock formation. That best explains what I see. [As far as the design argument itself goes, I'll pass on this for now, and as far as the supposed mythical fall of Adam and Eve goes, I'll pass on that too].

David Wood:
"To put the matter differently, a theist could say, “I have no clue why God allows evil, but I’m going to believe that he has his reasons anyway,” and he would be no worse off than the atheist when the latter says, “I have no clue how life could have formed on its own, but I’m going to believe it anyway.” Nevertheless, since theists can offer at least some plausible reasons for God to allow suffering, they are on much better ground than atheists."

John Loftus:
As I recently said, arguments for the existence of God, are not strictly relevant to our specific debate issue, since I already hypothetically granted you for the purpose of the debate that your God exists. Think about this. The question I was addressing can be accurately phrased like this: Given that your omni-God exists, then why is there intense suffering in this world? And my conclusion is that intense suffering in this world makes the existence of your omni-God implausible (or improbable), regardless of the arguments for the existence of God, which provides for you the Bayesian background factors leading you personally to believe despite the extent of intense suffering in this world. I was arguing from evil, not from the non-existence of your omni-God hypothesis. Just read Howard-Snyder's book called The Evidential Argument From Evil, to see this. The book does not contain one single argument for the existence of God, either pro or con, except as it relates to the problem of evil itself. I see no chapters in it on the design or cosmological or ontological arguments, for instance. The arguments were strictly dealing with how the omni-God hypothesis relates to the issue of suffering. If that hypothesis is true, then is this the kind of world we should expect? The debate was (and is) over whether the evidential argument from evil makes the omni-God hypothesis implausible (or improbable) on its own terms.

David Wood:
"I talked about an incident in which my oldest son, then a year old, needed four shots. I had to hold him down while the doctor stabbed him repeatedly with a needle. Could my son comprehend why I was apparently helping a person stab him? No. My reasons were beyond his comprehension."

John Loftus:
But where were you when your oldest son got sick? If you could keep him from being sick then wouldn't a good father would do it? Sure he would. God is like the father who allows a child to get sick in the first place. A more comparable case would be if a surgeon operates on a person in order to transplant a kidney to another person against the wishes of that involuntary donor. Or a dentist who extracts the teeth of someone without any anesthetic, or legislators who seek to raise the standard of living in an underdeveloped country by killing off half the population when their standard of living could‘ve been improved by using better agricultural methods.

David Wood:
(1) If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.
(2) Objective moral values do exist.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

John Loftus:
1) There are both deontological and teleological views of objective morals that do not depend upon God. Besides, the divine command theory is in such disrepute today that no one defends it that I know of.
2) Michael Shermer makes an interesting argument in his book, The Science of Good and Evil (Henry Holt, 2004), that “morality exists outside the human mind in the sense of being not just a trait of individual humans, but a human trait; that is, a human universal.” According to him we “inherit” from our Paleolithic ancestors our morality and ethics, then we “fine-tune and tweak them according to our own cultural preferences, and apply them within our own unique historical circumstances.” As such, “moral principles, derived from the moral sense, are not absolute, where they apply to all people in all cultures under all circumstances all of the time. Neither are moral principles relative, entirely determined by circumstance, culture and history. Moral principles are provisionally true—that is, they apply to most people in most cultures in most circumstances most of the time.” [pp. 18-23].

David Wood:
"As it turns out, atheists who use the argument from evil do indeed appeal to objective moral values, and they do so on two different levels. One, by arguing that suffering is bad or evil, they’re appealing to some objective standard of good and evil. If the atheist replies here that suffering isn’t really evil, then how does what is not evil conflict with God’s goodness? Two, by saying what God must and must not do, atheists are claiming that there are moral laws that even God would have to follow. Hence, in both cases the atheist must appeal, directly or indirectly, to moral values that transcend humanity."

John Loftus:
This whole issue is a “pseudo-problem” when it comes to why your God allows intense suffering in our world. The word “evil” here is used both as a term describing suffering and at the same time it’s used to describe whether or not such suffering is bad, and that’s an equivocation in the word’s usage. The fact that there is suffering is undeniable. Whether it’s bad is the subject for debate. I'm talking about pain...the kind that turns our stomachs. Why is there so much of it when there is a good omnipotent God based on YOUR OWN BELIEFS ABOUT THE MORAL QUALITIES OF YOUR GOD? [Sometimes capitalizing things helps to emphasize them. ;-)]I’m arguing that it’s bad to have this amount of suffering from a theistic perspective, and I may be a relativist, a pantheist, or a witchdoctor and still ask about the internal consistency of what a theist believes. The dilemma for the theist is to reconcile senseless suffering in the world with his own beliefs (not mine) that all suffering is for a greater good and that this world reflects a perfectly good God. It’s an internal problem for the theist.

Just tell me this David...what moral attribute did your God exhibit when he did nothing to avert the 2004 Indonesian tsunami? You tell me! You do realize that the more power a person has to stop evil the more responsibility he has to stop evil. No one imprisoned in any gulag had the power to stop the gulag system itself, so they cannot be blamed for its existence, and I may not have the power to stop a gang of thugs from beating a person to death. But your God is omnipotent. With just a snap of his fingers he could have saved over a quarter of a million people, and not one of us would ever have known he stopped it, precisely because it didn't happen.

David Wood:
"(1) John argued that giving us free will is like giving a razor blade to a child. No it’s not. Nothing good is going to come from giving a razor blade to a child."

John Loftus:
Yes it is. Razor blades can be used for good purposes by people who know how to use them, like scraping off a sticker from a window, or in shaving. That’s because adults know how to use them properly. We could give an adult a razor blade. We cannot give a 2 year old one, for if we did we would be blamed if that child hurts himself. Just like a younger child should not be given a license to drive, or just like a younger child should not be left unattended at the mall, so also if God gives us responsibilities before we can handle them then he is to be blamed for giving them to us, as in the case of free will.

David Wood:
"(2) John argued that God should have given us stronger inclinations to do what’s right. I’m not sure how this would differ from taking away our free will."

John Loftus:
This is not an all or nothing proposition here. I argued that if God made us with an aversion against wrongdoing just like we have an aversion against drinking motor oil, then it would cut down on us drinking motor oil. We could still do it, of course. Still this is just an analogy. I offered many examples of what God could've done.

David Wood:
"(3) What John has in mind is that God should limit our ability to, say, harm one another. But what would this look like? God takes away our ability to build knives, so we can no longer cut each other. But now we can’t cut anything at all. Or perhaps God takes away my fists so that I can’t hit my neighbor. It seems, however, that he would need to remove my hands. How could I type a letter?"

John Loftus:
God has many other means at his disposal here, if we concede for the moment the existence of this present world: One childhood fatal disease or a heart attack could have killed Hitler and prevented WWII. Timothy McVeigh could have had a flat tire or engine failure while driving to Oklahoma City with that truck bomb. Several of the militants who were going to fly planes into the Twin Towers on 9/11 could’ve been robbed and beaten by New York thugs (there’s utilitarianism at its best). A poisonous snakebite could’ve sent Saddam Hussein to an early grave averting the Iraq war before it happened. The poison that Saddam Hussein threw on the Kurds, and the Zyklon-B pellets dropped down into the Auschwitz gas chambers could have simply “malfunctioned” by being miraculously neutralized (just like Jesus supposedly turned water into wine). Sure, it would puzzle them, but there are a great many things that take place in our world that are not explainable. Even if they concluded God performed a miracle here, what’s the harm? Doesn’t God want us to believe in him?

It does absolutely no good at all to have free will and not also have the ability to exercise it. Our free will is limited by our age, race, gender, mental capacity, financial ability, geographical placement, and historical location to do whatever we want. I could not be a world-class athlete even if I wanted to, for instance. Therefore, we do not have as much free will as people think. My point was that if free will explains some of the intense suffering in this world when we already have limited choices anyway, then there should be no objection to God further limiting our choices when we seek to cause intense suffering in this world, and doing so in the reasonable ways I’ve suggested. My point is that the theist believes God can do this just as he purportedly did when he hardened Pharaoh’s heart against Moses.

David Wood:
"Another inconsistency related to John’s position is that he seemed to be arguing (1) that humans are so bad that God shouldn’t have created us, and (2) that we’re so good that God shouldn’t let us suffer. I think he needs to pick one or the other and stick with it. Part of John’s argument needs to be jettisoned."

John Loftus:
No. I’m arguing that humans should not have to suffer so much if there is a good God, precisely because God is supposed to be good. If God created us to suffer so much, then he shouldn’t have created us. It’s a problem for God and how he should treat his creatures, and he should show more love than he does if he is perfectly good. It doesn’t have anything to do with human goodness. It has all to do with God’s goodness.

David Wood:
"Yet another inconsistency that emerged in the debate and in John’s review is that John demands that theists account for all the intense suffering in the world, and all of the various kinds of evil in the world. But would an atheist ever accept such a high burden of proof for his own position? Of course not."

John Loftus:
I was merely asking David to account for one category of suffering, intensive suffering. Parasites kill one person every ten seconds, for instance. A theodicy is supposed to do what I ask, if it is to be considered a theodicy in the first place. It must explain why there is so much evil, and account for every category of evil. Since neither the theist nor the atheist can totally and rationally account for their respective brute facts (the theist cannot account for something that has always existed, and the atheist cannot fully account for why something popped into existence out of nothing) this is a wash. But the theist cannot believe in truly gratuitous evil—pointless evil. Therefore the theist must offer reasons that suggest there is no gratuitous evil, for if he admits there is one such evil, he no longer can believe in a perfectly good God. Therefore he must account for the most horrendus categories of evils in our world. Several major theists no longer even try to offer a theodicy. They admit it cannot be done.

David Wood;
"Loftus quotes Andrea Weisberger, who says that if free will is so important, we should possess it perfectly. But what can she mean here?"

John Loftus:
She means that if we did have the ability to do anything there would be much more evil, so even a theist doesn’t want us to have this kind of freedom. If free will is such a good thing, then why would the theist be the first one to say it isn’t?

David Wood:
"Thus, John blames God for racism. If God had only created one race, John says, then there would be no racism. But let’s keep going…..What does John’s view entail? A world without diversity, filled with men made by a single cookie-cutter. True, it would be a world without racism. But I’m not sure it would be a better world."

John Loftus:
Racism is a huge area of conflict among humans, and easily could’ve been eliminated if God made us all one color of skin, so he should have, even if we may have still had conflict because of other differences. There would have been no race based slavery in the South. No one suggested God should do away with all diversity. Just obvious cases of it. This is not an all or nothing proposition.

David Wood:
"(4) Now I do understand when someone asks, “Well, why didn’t God stop Hitler?” Even if free will is important, we’d be inclined to draw a line somewhere. So why doesn’t God intervene more than he does? Well, if we follow this mode of thinking through to its logical conclusion, we find that this sort of interference by God would destroy morality."

John Loftus:
No this would not! You’re making an inference that it’s an all or nothing. Either God stops all pain caused by free will or he does practically nothing. That’s a false dilemma. I think it’s obvious that he should’ve stopped the tsunami and the 9/11 attacks.

David Wood:
"If God brings things about through our free choices, without interfering, then God may allow horrible atrocities because they play an important role in future events. Think about the Holocaust. It was awful. But when it was over, the nation of Israel was reinstated in the Middle East."

John Loftus:
As Dr. Hatab asked, what about the Palestinians? “A perfectly good God would not wholly sacrifice the welfare of one of his intelligent creatures simply in order to achieve a good for others, or for himself. This would be incompatible with his concern for the welfare of each of his creatures.” [William P. Alston in The Evidential Argument From Evil, p. 111]. Therefore, the theist has the difficult task of showing how the very people who suffered and died in the Nazi concentration camps were better off for having suffered, since the hindsight lessons we’ve learned from the Holocaust cannot be used to justify the sufferings of the people involved.

David Wood:
"Second, I don’t see how an atheist can sincerely say that God should go around killing people. Why not kill anyone who’s going to do something wrong? Now John might say, “Well, God should draw the line exactly where I would draw it.” But if he says that, then he’s just saying that if God exists, he should be just like John Loftus, with John’s opinions and views."

John Loftus:
I’m not talking about an all or nothing proposition here. The fact that the giver of life does not protect innocent life by killing more evil people is what I question.

David Wood:
"Third, we shouldn’t forget that God has given us the ability to deal with people like Hitler. People like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and others arise, and we can either fight them and fix the situation, or we can sit back and do nothing. But God hasn’t left us helpless. When evil prevails, it’s our fault for letting it prevail."

John Loftus:
We cannot do it alone. How is a 10 year old going to keep Pol Pot’s men from raping and dismembering her?

David Wood:
"(5) John argued that suffering leads people away from God. He was responding to my Wizard of Oz theodicy. Christianity is spreading most rapidly in places where there has been tremendous suffering."

John Loftus:
This whole argument reminds me of Jeff Lowder’s comment: “It’s like saying in order to get my wife to love me I have to beat the crap out of her.” [Lowder/Fernandez debate on Theism vs Naturalism]. In an online article titled Human Suffering and the Acceptance of God by Michael Martin, Martin argues against such an idea. He questions their statistical facts, of course, but then continues to argue that: “1) If God's aim was to have the maximal number of people believe in God, as Craig has argued, He has not been successful. Billions of people have not come to believe in the theistic God. 2) There are many better ways God could have done to increase belief in Him. For example: God could have spoken from the Heavens in all known languages so no human could doubt His existence and His message. God could have implanted belief of God and His message in everyone's mind. In recent time God could have communicated with millions of people by interrupting prime time TV programs and giving His message. 3) Why is there not more suffering, especially in America, since unbelief is on the rise? 4) There is also the ethical issue. Why would an all good, all powerful God choose to bring about acceptance in this way since God could bring about belief in Him in many ways that do not cause suffering? Not only does suffering as a means to achieve acceptance conflict with God's moral character, it seem to conflict with His rationality. Whether or not suffering is a cause of acceptance is one thing. The crucial question is whether it is a good reason for acceptance.”

David Wood:
"(6) John says that soul-building is pointless, since virtue won’t play a role in heaven. I’m not sure that virtue won’t play a role in heaven, but even if it doesn’t, developing virtue certainly affects the soul, and this effect is positive. But besides all of this, it never occurs to John that some things are good in themselves. It is good to be patient, or courageous, or temperate, regardless of whether these things play a role in eternity."

John Loftus:
I do not accept a deontological ethic. I am a consequentialist standing firmly in the teleological traditon of ethics, not the duty centered traditon. David needs to show how these particular virtues affect the soul, and if he can do that then he can show that these virtues are intrinsically good. Until then, he cannot. He needs to offer some suggestions here, and I don’t see any, especially when he now claims there will be no morality in heaven. If there is no morality in heaven and no free will in heaven, then there is absolutely no reason why God couldn't have just created us all as amoral non-free creatures there in the first place.

And there is the additional problem of free will in hell. Theists typically claim that people in hell continue in their rebellion against God and so the "doors of hell are locked from the inside." Why this difference? Those who are saved are rewarded for their tortures here on earth by the removal of their free will to make moral choices, but if those who are damned have their free will taken away, then they too could be brought up to heaven. And if free will is such a good thing, as our debate clearly revealed the difference here with us, then why isn't it such a good thing in the end with believers in heaven?

David Wood:
"Suppose you’re walking down the street, and you find a purse full of money, but there’s a police officer standing there. Now all of us would do the right thing. We’d all return the purse. But we’d be returning it because there was a police officer standing there, not because it’s the moral thing to do."

John Loftus:
Even if this were always the case, which is not what I propose, if God was interested in our morality and he judges our hearts, then even if there is a police officer stopping us every time we want to do wrong, then God knows we wanted to do wrong, which is all that an omniscient being needs to see in order to judge us.

David Wood:
"(7) John said in his review that I never responded to the problem of animal suffering. I’ll admit that, given the extent of human suffering in the world, I’m far less concerned about animal suffering. However, I did give a brief response during the debate. Pain serves an important biological role. If the atheist thinks that God should take away an animal’s ability to feel pain, I hope he’s ready for the consequences. If cats didn’t feel pain, they would be extinct by now. When Fluffy jumps on a hot stove, pain tells her to get off the stove because the stove is harmful. As such, Fluffy should thank God for pain."

John Loftus:
I was talking specifically about the law of predation. The spider will wrap its victim up in a claustrophobic rope-like web and inject a fluid that will liquefy its insides so he can suck it out. The Mud wasp will grab spiders and stuff them into a mud tunnel while still alive, and then places its young larva inside so they can have something to eat when they hatch. The cat will play with its victims until they have no strength left, and then will eat them while still alive. The boa constrictor will squeeze the breath out of its victims crushing some of its bones before swallowing it. Killer whales run in packs and will isolate a calf and jump on it until it drowns in salt water, whereupon the bloody feeding frenzy begins. The crocodile will grab a deer by the antlers and go into a death spiral breaking its neck and/or drowning it before the feeding frenzy begins. Nature is indeed “red in tooth and claw.”

All creatures should be vegetarians. And in order to be sure there is enough vegetation for us all, God could’ve reduced our mating cycles and/or made edible vegetation like apples trees, corn stalks, blueberry bushes, wheat and tomato plants to grow as plenteous as wild weeds do today. Even if Christians believe we were originally created as vegetarians, why should animals suffer because of the sins in Noah’s day (Genesis 9:3)? What did animals do wrong?

God didn’t even have to create us such that we needed to eat anything at all! If God created the laws of nature then he could’ve done this. Even if not, since theists believe God can do miracles he could providentially sustain us all with miraculously created nutrients inside our biological systems throughout our lives, and we wouldn’t know anything could’ve been different.

David Wood:
"If I know John by now, I think he would respond that if animals must experience pain, then God shouldn’t have created them. This is one of the greatest differences between John and me. I think it’s better to exist, even if something is going to suffer."

John Loftus:
There is no good reason for God to have created animals at all, especially since theists do not consider them part of any eternal scheme, nor are there any moral lessons that animals need to learn from their sufferings. Does David really think it's better to exist with terrible suffering than never to exist at all? Childhood leukemia? Childhood rape? Spina bifida? The children who lost their lives during the Spanish Influenza of 1918? Better for whom? Some babies die shortly after they are born, while Jesus said that "many" will end up in hell. Is that better? More importantly, does this reflect well on the whole notion of a perfectly good God?

David thanks for the exchange. You have a very bright mind, and I wish you all of the very best in life.