A Bad Taste!

I'm redating this from exbeliever, a former contributor [John].

The Psalmist writes, "Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him." (Psalm 34:8). For a long time, I was an ardent admirer of Dr. John Piper. In fact, his mentor, Dan Fuller, was my mentor in seminary as well. [Coincidentally, Dr. Fuller lives on Mentor Street in Pasadena, CA. Behind the gruff, crotchety exterior is a very nice man who will spend hours talking to you in his living room and whose wife will bring you cookies on a platter. :-) pleasant memories]

I remember a sermon or Advent poem of Dr. Piper's in which he described God as a flowing fountain of delight. He said that we would praise a fountain, not by standing passively by, but by sticking our faces deep inside it to take in its wonderful refreshment. We would stand up and shout, "This is the best water I've ever tasted; come and have some with me!"

In the context of that metaphor, he referred to the passage I quoted above. He invited others to taste and see God's goodness.

But what about those of us who have left the fountain with a horrible taste in our mouths? We came to the fountain and drank as deeply as we could and, for a while, could not get enough of it. We loved reading the Bible and being instructed by it. We believed that it made us wiser than our counselors. We made our bodies our slaves so that they would honor God. We prayed without ceasing. We sought first the kingdom of God. We confessed our sins and believed that God was faithful and just to forgive us our sins. We did not forsake meeting together (in church) as some were in the habit of doing. We encouraged one another. We preached "the Word" in season and out. We attempted to study to show ourselves approved. We fed God's sheep. We realized that "we" couldn't do anything at all, that only God could work through us.

But, then, something happened. The fountain became foul to us. We tried to ignore the taste. We went back to it again and again hoping something would change. We opened the Bible and, instead of finding wisdom, we found violence and justification of immoral acts. We found anti-intellectualism and backwards thinking. We found oppression. Our prayers returned to us void. They bounced off of the ceiling. We prayed harder and felt dumber for it. While we could still enjoy the fellowship of Christian people, we discovered that what we liked about them had nothing to do with their Christianity, but rather with their humanity. We found that we simply liked the people for who they were, not because they believed something about a religion.

We weren't trying to "leave the faith," the faith was leaving us. We tried to hold on to the fountain, but something had changed. It wasn't the fountain, it was our taste for it. We realized that the fountain wasn't a being, it was a religion. It was just dogma. It is like we had been drinking from it with our eyes closed and noses plugged. Somehow, though, we opened our eyes and unplugged our noses and discovered that we had been enjoying filth. The fountain was a fountain of blood and other foul things. We realized that we had spent most of our lives consuming a vile concoction.

We would have been happy to have simply left, but we couldn't help but want to pull others away from such a cesspool. We wanted to help them open their eyes and see what we saw. We wanted them to see the trouble the fountain was causing in the world. Quickly, however, we ran into opposition. We found that those still slurping away at the fountain with eyes closed and noses plugged resisted. They said that we were lying about the taste of the fountain or that we had never drunk from it in the first place. We told them to open their eyes, but they responded that the eyes cannot be trusted. We described the filth to them, but even when they accepted that the fountain contained blood and other "foul" things, they insisted that those things were really "good."

So, here we stand beside a fountain of filth hoping that we can convince others to open their eyes and see what they are drinking. We are watching with horror as more and more people are closing their eyes and drinking in all of the vileness in front of them.

What is it that we see that we want to alert you to?

. . . we see the teaching that a "benevolent" god cannot control his temper so something must die in order for that god's anger to be satisfied.

. . . we see a religion based on death and the spilling of blood.

. . . we see teaching that a god will say in anger, "I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air." Genesis 6:7

. . . we see teaching that a god considers the smell of burning, sacrificed animals to be a "pleasing aroma." Genesis 7

. . . we see teaching that a god uses people as pawns, hardening their hearts to do something he doesn't want them to do so that he can punish them for doing it (Exodus 4:21; 7:3; 9:12; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:8; 14:4).

. . . we see teaching that a god orders disobedient children to be killed (Exodus 21:15, 17).

. . . we see teaching that a god is so insecure that he orders the death of everyone who does not follow his religion (no, he doesn't try to convince them that he is better than the other gods, he commands that they be put to death) (Exodus 22:20).

. . . we see teaching that a god cares so much about what two men do with their genitals that those two men should bekilledd (Leviticus 20:13).

. . . we see teaching that a god cares so little for the sick that he commands that they be put outside of the camp and left to die (Numbers 5:1-4).

. . . we see teaching that a god orders the earth to swallow 250 people and then kills 14,700 more people who think that was too violent (Numbers 16).

. . . we see teaching that a god uses another king as his pawn ("For the LORD your God had made his spirit stubborn and his heart obstinate in order to give him into your hands, as he has now done.") to do something that god doesn't want him to do so that the god can then completely destroy all the "men, women and children" of several towns (Deuteronomy 2:32).

. . . we see teaching that a god orders people to kill all family members who hold to a different faith (Deuteronomy 13:6-10).

. . . we see teaching that a god tells his invading army that they can take women and children as "plunder" (Deuteronomy 20:14).

. . . we see teaching that a god tells his invading army to kill "anything that breathes" in other cities (Deuteronomy 20:16).

. . . we see teaching that this can be said of a god, "For it was of the Lord to harden their hearts, that they should come against Israel in battle, that he might destroy them utterly." A god who sets people up, just so that he can destroy them. (Joshua 11:20)

. . . we see teaching that a god can send an evil spirit to people so that they will dealtreacherouslyy with their leader (Judges 9).

. . . we see teaching that the "spirit of the Lord" is so violent that every time it enters Samson, he kills something (Judges 14-16).

. . . we see teaching that a god orders his invading army to attack a people and to "totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys." (1 Samuel 15:3)

. . . we see teaching that a god kills a man who tries to keep one of his relics from hitting the ground (2 Samuel 6).

. . . we see teaching that a god kills a woman's son for an evil deed her husband did (2 Samuel 12).

. . . we see teaching that a god will kill people and then let dogs desecrate their bodies (1 Kings 14).

. . . we see teaching that a god kills a man who is brave enough to say, "No," to god's command to kill another person (1 Kings 20).

. . . we see teaching that a god kills 42 children for making fun of a guy's bald head (2 Kings 2).

. . . we see teaching that a god orders an invading army to raise the land they destroy by cutting down all of the trees and spoiling all of the wells (2 Kings 3).

. . . we see teaching that a god will send a whole land into years of famine and death when he is angry (2 Kings 8).

. . . we see teaching that a god will kill 70,000 people because another person (who god does not kill) disobeyed him and took a census of the people (1 Chronicles 21).

. . . we see teaching that a god allows a man to be tortured just to prove a point (Job).

. . . we see teaching that it is praise-worthy of a god that it is "he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks."

. . . we see teaching that a god will stir up an army who "will strike down the young men . . . [and] will have no mercy on infants nor will they look with compassion on children . . . Whoever is captured will be thrust through; all who are caught will fall by the sword. Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be looted and their wives ravished." (Isaiah 13:18,15,16)

. . . we see teaching that a god does not reason with people who leave his religion to follow others, but rather kills them and puts their bones in front of their other gods (Ezekiel 6:5).

. . . we see teaching that a god says, "Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears." (Joel 3:10)

. . . we see teaching that a god comes in human flesh so that he can be killed to appease his own anger.

. . . we see teaching that a god comes in human flesh and introduces the concept of hell to his followers so that they can not only fear being killed at one time, but can be tortured eternally.

. . . we see teaching that a god comes in human flesh and instead of casting out demons into the abyss, instead puts them into innocent animals who subsequently jump off of a cliff (Matthew 8).

. . . we see teaching that a god comes in human flesh and promises to send angels to throw people into a burning fire for eternal torment (Matthew 13).

We could go on and on.

This is what we are watching you drink and enjoy. This is what we see you offering to others.

We point these things out and you become angry at us. Instead of addressing these immoral acts, you ask, "By what standard is all of this stuff evil?" You have so blinded yourself that you are unwilling to call rape, torture, infanticide, etc. evil. You question us for calling it evil!

Open your eyes! Really taste and see if what you are drinking is "good." Don't be so quick to swallow what you cannot see.

Mechanism Behind Mind-body Connection Discovered

"The study reveals how stress makes people more susceptible to illness." Science Daily Article.
This is a datum to support my assertion that the hypothesis that the "Problem of Evil/Suffering is a Test" is demonstrably false.

Every cell contains a tiny clock called a telomere, which shortens each time the cell divides. Short telomeres are linked to a range of human diseases, including HIV, osteoporosis, heart disease and aging. Previous studies show that an enzyme within the cell, called telomerase, keeps immune cells young by preserving their telomere length and ability to continue dividing.
...
UCLA scientists found that the stress hormone cortisol suppresses immune cells' ability to activate their telomerase.
...
The study reveals how stress makes people more susceptible to illness.

If the problem of Evil/Suffering is a test then it is a test that degrades the performance of the participant resulting in a negative feedback loop where the participants ability to cope is degraded as the test proceeds. If we are to be judged on our ability to cope with hardships, and our ability to cope with hardships is demonstrably decreased over time under the influence, and no two people have the same hardships, then there can be no consistent standard to judge by. This is not consistent with sound testing methods.

If the participant can only think and make decisions with the biological material they have at hand, namely their brain, and their brain is susceptible to degradation as is the rest of the body, then the problem of Evil/Suffering as a test is not as much a test of spirit as it is a test of biological integrity.

If however the spirit is a separate entity and is not susceptible to degradation, then while this may be a hypothesis, it is not consistent with any known observations and is only supported by anecdote and writings, some of which are of unknown origin. However, the degradation of spirit during hardship over time has been observed so much that it has become an expected outcome of hardship. Notable exceptions to this outcome are not limited to Christians and should not be used as a datum to support the Christian view of "The problem of Evil/Suffering as a test". Therefore it is a dubious hypothesis, if it can be considered a hypothesis at all.

Pascal's Wager Revisited

To people who are familiar with Pascal's Wager I won't repeat it. Those who are unfamiliar with it can read up about it here. I want to share three of the main criticisms of it in what follows.

There is the evidential objection, the many gods objection, and the gambler’s objection.

The evidential objection concerns how much evidence Christianity should have before I must take seriously the claims of Christianity. Keep in mind that the only brands of Christianity that make the wager a strong argument are the ones that promise an everlasting conscious torment in a fiery hell. Other brands of Christianity don't even apply, those affirming annihilation, or universal salvation, since there is not much to fear if one is wrong. In any case, I judge that conservative Christianity has about a .00001% probability of being correct, or 1 in 100,000. This is something I think one can conclude from the arguments in my book. Given that I might be wrong in this judgment, since I've been wrong before, I'll up it to a .0001% probability, or 1 in 10,000. This probability has nothing to do with how many other religions and gods there are. It's a probability based solely on the merits of the evidence and arguments themselves.

Keep in mind what this means. It means unless there is a religion with a greater amount of probability then there is a .0001% chance this life is all there is. It means that there is a 99.999% probability that Christianity is delusional and that Pascal’s Wager is an argument akin to someone crying "wolf," or someone else yelling "the sky is falling." Why should I place that bet even if the payout is an infinite amount? If the bet was some money, wouldn't I be throwing money away? Sure, people are not being unreasonable by placing a bet on these odds, but what reason would we say that a non-gambler should bet based on these odds?

And what are we to bet? According to the Christian faith I must bet it all, my whole life. I must die daily. I must take up my cross and follow Jesus. I must be totally committed and have total faith. That’s what I’m called upon to do, daily, even to the point of guarding my very thoughts. I must sacrifice that which I think about and I should not lust, hate, covet, nor entertain any doubts.

I can understand betting a few dollars to win the lottery even though there is a 1 in 80 million chance to win. But I would never consider betting everything I own based on those odds, even if the payout was 800 trillion dollars, nor would I want to bet my whole life on a 1 to 10,000 chance of eternal bliss.

Still, I'll admit Pascal's wager has a good deal of force, the evidential objection alone notwithstanding, since the payout is an infinite amount with an eternal bliss if correct.

The many gods objection almost eliminates the force of Pascal's wager, I think, since now we have many religions and many gods all clamoring for our obedience; Muslims, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and so on, and so forth. One religion claims that if you don't follow its god you will fry in hell, while another one makes the same claim. Since many gods are threatening us with hell if we don't believe, then Pascal's Wager cannot help us to decide between them. All of them offer an infinite payout, too. All of them demand belief and obedience. Whom should we believe? Whom should we obey? Pascal’s Wager does not answer this objection on its own terms. We still must judge which religious viewpoint has the most probability and such judgments are based on the accidents of birth, as I’ve argued.

The third objection is what I call the the gambler’s objection. Anyone who plays the very popular poker game called Texas Hold'em , for instance, knows what I’m talking about when I say there is a distinction to be made between the actual odds and the pot odds. Actual odds are the mathematical odds of our hand winning the pot. Pot odds concern the relationship of the money in the pot to the actual odds of our having the winning hand. If, say, in order to bet on our hand we only need to bet $5 more to win a pot of $200 (or a ratio of 1:40, which is known as the pot odds), then that’s a good bet even if the actual mathematical odds of winning the hand are not that great. If, on the other hand, we must place a bet of $50 to win the same pot of $200 (or a ratio of 1:4 pot odds) the bet is a bad one unless the actual odds of winning the hand are much greater.

Let’s say you need a particular winning card to be drawn, which could be a spade (for a flush), or an Ace, or a King, and you calculate the odds of one of those cards being drawn are about 1 in 3. Let’s say there are five players and you must decide whether or not to bet $4 on a pot that has $36 in it. That’s 36 divided by 4 equals 9; or 9 to 1 pot odds. At that point you must ask yourself whether you should place that $4 bet. The actual odds are against you 1 to 3, but the pot odds are in your favor 9 to 1. Because of the pot odds you should bet the $4, and here’s why: If you faced this same situation seventy-five times and bet $4 each time for a total of $300, and you won one time out of three bets (the actual odds), your gain would be about $900 because of the pot odds.

Now let’s consider the actual odds and the pot odds when it comes to Pascal’s Wager. The actual odds for the Christian faith, as I calculate them, are 1 in 10,000, being generous. The payout is an infinite amount; an eternal bliss (the pot odds). With the pot odds so extremely high I should always make the bet, it’s argued. But here’s the problem. Pot odds only come into play if the gambler plays a certain number of hands. If the actual odds for a winning hand in Texas Hold’em are 1 in 3, it does not matter what the pot odds are if he must bet everything he has, and if this is his last hand! Pot odds only matter when the gambler can play a number of hands and when he’s not betting it all. It’s the number of hands along with the size of the bet that make the pot odds what they are.

How many times can a gambling religious seeker go “all in” on a bet that has a chance of winning the eternal bliss pot, when the odds are 1 in 10,000? He can only do this one time! There are no second chances. The poker game will be over for him no matter what the result is. The actual odds are extremely low for his bet. With those odds he will undoubtedly lose everything he has on this one bet! It’s only if this religious gambler can make 10,000 lifetime wagers and that he has something leftover to bet each time that would make the pot odds worth the bet!

Given the actual odds as I calculate them, I would have to sacrifice 10,000 lifetimes for the pot odds of an infinite bliss in heaven to be worth the bet. Not just one life. 10,000 lifetimes. But I will not have 10,000 lifetimes to make that bet worth it! So I must bet on the actual odds, and I do.

For this reason gamblers who play Texas Hold’em do not bet everything they’ve got unless they are pretty sure they have a winning hand, with the actual odds being over 50% or more, preferably 60% to 90%, depending on several other factors. Since I calculate the odds at much less than this and because I must bet on the actual odds, going "all in" on a bet like this is simply a bad bet.

Hence Pascal’s wager fails…badly.

Dinesh D'Souza and Modesty

Dinesh D'Souza reports that Michael Shermer recommended his book What's So Great About Christianity, using these words: "Whatever your beliefs, you should read Dinesh's book...It is the best defense of Christianity that has ever been published."

Hmmm. Isn't that interesting? I wonder what the criteria was for Shermer to say that, since there have been some historically great defenses of Christianity down through the ages?

Anyway, D'Souza is trying to maintain some modesty, and he wrote about this struggle here.

In reporting on how most people thought he won his debate with Christopher Hitchens, D'Souza wrote:

Atheists like to think of themselves as akin to champions of the round earth, confronted by religious ignoramuses who keep insisting that the earth is flat. But is it even conceivable that a round-earth advocate should lose a debate to a flat-earth advocate? To put the question differently, if atheists are truly the party of reason, and believers like me are truly the party of "blind faith," how come reason keeps getting its butt kicked?

So, in order to help D'Souza maintain some modesty let me make a few comments about this.

For one thing, D'Souza hasn't debated people like Hector Avalos, John Beversluis, Keith Parsons, or me yet ;-)! D'Souza is planning on debating some of the top skeptics and saving them in an archive for future prosperity, so maybe he will! Besides, as far as I know people didn't conclude D'Souza decisively won his debates with Michael Shermer.

Debates do not decide the truth anyway. Few people are convinced because of watching a debate one way or another. They are entertaining and educational. They are a sparring match between two people, and that's it. Someone on one side can legitimately say the debater on the other side won the debate and still think his position is wrong for other reasons not stated by the person representing his side.

Anyway, I've read D'Souza's book and I must say it's premised to a very large extent on one big non-sequitur, and it's very interesting if he doesn't see it. He argues that Christianity has been good for western society; that it is growing in numbers in today's world; that it produced modern science; ended things like slavery; and was the foundation of limited government. He argues that atheism has been bad for society and that the Christian past isn't as bad as the atheist past.

Little of D'Souza's argument defends the claims of the Christian faith over against the claims of atheism, although he does argue that the supposed design in the world points to a creator.

The fact is that even if I grant him that Christianity has been good for western society in contrast to atheism (and I don't, not by a long shot), it does not follow from what he says that Christianity is true. Maybe true ideas produce bad results? Maybe delusionary beliefs produce good results? His is largely a pragmatic argument which first demands a defense of the Pragmatic theory of truth, and with it a denial of the Correspondence and Coherence theories of truth, something I think that as a Christian he wouldn't want to do, but of this I don't know.

I have challenged him to debate me. Maybe he won't do it. If not, I'd understand, after all, why would he risk losing a debate now? ;-)

Hi Dinesh!

Dr. Avalos v. Triablogue: Moses is a Basket Case of Bad History

Dr. Hector Avalos responds:

In their supposed "debunking” of my critique of their position on the legend of Sargon, the Triablogue authors simply show how woefully unprepared they are to discuss this issue.

Read more »

"At Least We're Not As Bad As the Muslims!"

Christians in Prakasam, Srikakulam, Vijayawada, Nizamabad and other towns in India stormed and ransacked multiple offices of a local daily newspaper, Sakshi, destroying furniture, tossing computers to the ground and smashing them, and in the meantime smashing windows in a nearby public bus. What terrible offense triggered this attack by the Christian community? The newspaper had printed a picture of Jesus with a beer and a cigarette. .

Sound eerily familiar? Does anyone here remember Christians claiming that such things were unique to Islam and other "barbaric" religions, and that Christianity was much more tolerant? I do. Does anyone here remember people demanding that every Muslim everywhere immediately and unconditionally denounce these actions, or stand accused themselves? I do. Yet here we have a picture that was only mildly sacreligious, was apparently published by mistake (they were looking for a generic picture of Jesus from the Internet, and didn't check it closely enough), and an apology quickly followed. Yet the apology wasn't fast enough to stave off the violence from the followers of Christ. Christian extremists have joined Muslim extremists in threatening free speech. Do those Christians who bleated loudest at the Muslim outrages over the Danish cartoons now retreat in quiet humility and introspection to determine what went wrong in their religious community, or do they bleat louder that this is somehow different? Or, do they ignore it and hope it goes away? My money is on option (C).

Here is a copy of the offending picture.

Self-help for religious damage, with check-list

In this excerpt from my book, “Leaving the Fold,” I've listed some phases of recovery and major issues. See how much you can relate to.

Religion is supposed to be good for you. Yet people get hurt in religious systems, sometimes seriously. I used to think that although damage was done by so-called cults, most religion is essentially benign. It could give you some comfort as a child and teach you some values, but then you grew up and away from it. It wasn’t until I looked back on my struggle to grow free of my own indoctrination, and heard the stories of others, that I realized that this kind of emotional and mental damage can be profound.

In conservative, fundamentaist Christianity you are told you are unacceptable. You are judged with regard to your relationship to God. Thus you can only be loved positionally, not essentially. And, contrary to any assumed ideal of Christian love, you cannot love others for their essence either. This is the horrible cost of the doctrine of original sin. Recovering from this unloving assumption is perhaps the core task when you leave the fold. It is also a discovery of great joy – to permit unconditional love for yourself and others.

The problem of religious damage has not received much attention in our society, perhaps because Christianity is so much a part of our culture and real criticism is taboo. Just consider what we have done to so-called heretics throughout history. Religious damage may also seem less serious than other recovery issues such a alcoholism or child abuse. And since faith is thought of as a good thing in a world brimming with materialism, selfishness, and violence, many feel strange when complaining of church attendance or growing up in a religious home.

But leaving your faith is not like no longer believing in Santa Claus. It can be shattering to realize that your religion is creating problems in your life. Whether you leave abruptly or drift away over a long period of time, you may experience profound sadness and confusion about what to do, think, and believe. You may also feel the rage of betrayal or struggle with persistent depression.

Many people are reluctant to talk about this subject for fear of hurting loved ones, of alienating others, of appearing foolish and self-centered. They sometimes fear divine retribution. I have known therapists who were afraid to work openly with people on these issues because they were concerned they might be labeled anti-religious or anti-God. However, more often, therapists who have not been through the experience themselves do not understand the difficulty of recovering from an authoritarian religion.

But breaking away from a restrictive, controlling religion can be a wrenching, profound experience. You may be feeling confused, guilty, empty, or bitter. You may be depressed about life or scared of the future. Perhaps you have trouble connecting with other people and life "in the world."

You are not alone in your experience. Many, many others have been through this and gone on to reconstruct their lives in meaningful and satisfying ways. While the experience of losing your religion is often painful and confusing at first, there is much to be learned and ultimately a profound maturity to be gained. This book can provide some assistance in your recovery by clarifying the issues involved, offering ideas for healing, and suggesting directions for further growth.

In general, leaving a cherished faith is much like the end of a marriage. The symptoms of separation are quite similar-grief, anger, guilt, depression, lowered self-esteem, and social isolation. But whereas help for divorced people is readily available, little if any assistance is available to help you to leave your religion. The familiar sources of church support are no longer there, and family members still in the fold may actually shun you. Secular friends and even therapists may not understand what you have been through. Part of the difficulty is the anxiety, the terror you may feel about having to go it alone. After having been born again, leaving your faith can feel like being lost again.

There are many issues to work through-thoughts and feelings to process, new friends to make, new beliefs to nurture, and new ways to live. Because your religion took care of so much, defining and dictating reality in so many ways, you are now faced with largely reconstructing your life. Recovery begins with deciding to take that responsibility. This may seem overwhelming, but the benefits are indisputable. You get your life back on your terms. Indeed, the journey out can be thrilling as old fears and doubts give way to new and healthy possibilities.

Phases of Recovery

People seem to go through phases in their recovery from rigid religion, just as other life changes have typical sequences. This particular change goes deeper than many others and touches on all aspects of a person’s life. The following sections offer a very general outline of the recovery pattern that I have observed and facilitated in clients:

1. Separation
2. Confusion
3. Avoidance
4. Feeling
5. Rebuilding

These are not discrete stages in the formal sense. There is considerable overlap between them and a person may be in more than one phase at a time. However, the overall pattern may help you understand where you have been, where you are now, and what you can expect in the future.
(Details are in my book).

Issues in Recovery

"I feel like a scared, lonely, abandoned little kid that just can't get it right and who must be a real "bad boy." I have a large sense of not deserving anything that finally I am not important. This is connected to my "nothingness in the eyes of God," which was taught very early. My mother dedicated me to God when I was an infant. God is what is important, not me. Am I worth taking care of?"
—Daryl

From what I have learned in my work with formerly religious people and from my own experience, certain issues of healing and growth appear to be common to the process of breaking away. Some areas of personal development continue to be important for many years. The areas of impact described here are typical consequences of leaving a conservative, fundamentalist church. They also apply in various ways to leaving other groups. The intensity of impact can range from simple life limiting to extreme harm.

1. Recovering a sense of self
2. Working through emotions of anger, guilt, anxiety, & loneliness
3. Learning how to be in “the world”
4. Accepting self-responsibility
5. Creating meaning and personal spirituality

(These will be explored in my next post and can be found in my book, as well as online for free at www.marlenewinell.net. They will also be covered at retreat weekends).

Here is an inventory you can use to assess how you are doing on these issues:

Issues Checklist
Directions: For each item, mark the number that best reflects the impact that issue or feeling has on your daily life. For example, mark 1 if the issue is mildly bothersome to you, 3 if it is moderately troubling, and 5 if it is severely disturbing. Mark 2 or 4 if the issue falls somewhere between.

Issue/Feeling Severity

Confusion 1 2 3 4 5

Anxiety or fear 1 2 3 4 5

Lack of clear identity and personal values 1 2 3 4 5

Negative sense of self 1 2 3 4 5

Emptiness, as if you have no core 1 2 3 4 5

Negative image of your body 1 2 3 4 5
and discomfort with sexuality

Lack of meaning or purpose in life 1 2 3 4 5

Anger and bitterness 1 2 3 4 5

Loneliness 1 2 3 4 5

Loss and grief 1 2 3 4 5

Depression 1 2 3 4 5

Persistent guilt 1 2 3 4 5

Difficulty enjoying daily pleasures 1 2 3 4 5

Unreasonably high expectations, perfectionism 1 2 3 4 5

Trouble appreciating people 1 2 3 4 5

Difficulty with self-responsibility 1 2 3 4 5

Lack of deep self-love and skills for self-care 1 2 3 4 5

Trouble thinking for yourself 1 2 3 4 5

Difficulty feeling and expressing emotion 1 2 3 4 5

External focus for satisfaction 1 2 3 4 5

The Deadliest Monster, by J.F. Baldwin

My wife is attending a new Sunday School class on worldviews. I was curious when she brought home a book entitled The Deadliest Monster by J.F. Baldwin. The premise of the book is that we all, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide, are depraved by nature and are powerless to save ourselves. As G.K. Chesterton famously maintained, human depravity is the only truly empirically attested doctrine of Christianity.

Baldwin asserts that Christianity is validated by the fact that it is the only worldview that teaches the reality of inherent human sinfulness. He runs through the list of ten "major" worldviews (interestingly, even Jehovah's Witnesses make it on the list) and shows how they downplay human depravity and make ourselves the focus of our salvation. Atheists, too, are all painted with the same broad brush: we believe humans are inherently good and that we can achieve utiopia ("salvation") by reforming society, by improving our environment in such away that the goodness of all can flower.

But this is not all. Since it is an empirical fact that our nature is depraved, we need a Savior, the Son of God, to die on the cross to save us from ourselves and our sin. As it happens, Christianity provides just such a solution! If this is not a non sequitur, what qualifies? Here is the logic: 1) we have a problem; 2) a particular worldview has a suggested solution; 3) that worldview must correspond to reality!

Baldwin then goes on to extend similar logic to the problem of suffering: 1) we all suffer; 2) no worldview both takes suffering seriously and makes sense out of it (i.e., redeems it, turns it into good, as God did for Joseph when his brothers sent him into slavery); 3) therefore, Christianity must be true. What if a child whose parents never gave her ice cream reasoned like this: 1) I like and want ice cream, but my parents don't give me any; 2) my friend Susie's parents give her ice cream; 3) therefore, Susie's parents are my parents (or at least, they must be better parents than mine).

Beyond these obvious non sequiturs, the premise of his main argument is flawed. It would be news to MIT cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker that all atheists deny the anti-social tendencies of human nature or believe in the inherent goodness and perfectivitily of humanity. Perhaps Marxism fits the bill, but certainly far from all atheists are Marxists. In his book The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker recounts how as a youth living in Montreal he came to lose faith in the inherent goodness of humanity. As a result of the widespread mayhem, rioting and looting that ensued in the wake of the Montreal police department strike on October 17,1969, he abandoned his idealistic anarchist political views (Pinker 2002, 331). We witnessed a similar surfacing of human selfishness in the looting that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2004.

The solution to the problem? Find the first worldview that recognizes human depravity and proposes a solution, i.e., Christianity? No! How about this: insofar as possible, ensure that adequate societal guardrails are erected to prevent this sort of behavior from happening.

Let me do a one-up on Baldwin. Let me say that his brand of Christianity actually fails to take human depravity seriously enough. What I mean is that the doctrine of total depravity is too often applied to the unregenerate, to those outside the household of faith, without recognizing the extent to which human nature remains in effect for the redeemed (to his credit, Baldwin does offer a nod to the fact that Christians continue to sin, but he clearly believes the Holy Spirit confers some objective moral advantage to believers). The moral fall of a pastor is almost always greeted initially with disbelief, as are allegations of child abuse on the part of missionaries or church leaders. Such abuse is by no means limited to the Catholic Church, as this article from Christianity Today attests concerning the evangelical Mamou Alliance Academy in Guinea, operated by The Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA):

Darr and at least 30 other children at the West African boarding school suffered a more harrowing form of alienation. From 1950 to 1971, children were beaten with belts, forced to eat their own vomit, punched and slapped in the face, coerced into performing oral sex, required to sit in their own feces, fondled, and beaten with a strap to the point of bleeding. Not until 1995, after persistent complaints by a group of adults who had been Mamou students, did the C&MA impanel a commission to investigate.The panel’s 95-page report, filed after 18 months of research and interviews, identifies nine offenders; four are retired, three are dead, and two are no longer affiliated with the C&MA. Two individuals who refused to cooperate with the panel have been convicted at denominational disciplinary hearings. The commission faulted the denomination for improper training, poor oversight, and negligence. The Mamou staff, rather than being loving surrogate parents, punished too frequently and affirmed too little, the report indicates. Richard W. Bailey, chair of the C&MA’s board of managers, sent a letter expressing regret to Mamou alumni in January. “Please accept our heartfelt apology for our inadequate supervision and understanding of the happenings at Mamou Academy, while you were a student.” (“Missions: From Trauma to Truth.” Christianity Today: April 27, 1998. http://ctlibrary.com/1384.)

The above incident is only the best reported of many such heartbreaking stories of abuse in missionary boarding schools around the world. Is it possible that an incomplete acceptance of human depravity led to the lack of supervision that permitted the Mamou tragedy? Did the abusers take advantage of the trust of their fellow missionaries in the goodness of redeemed human nature, failing to implement safeguards to restrain the base impulses of their co-laborers in Christ?

If I acknowledge human depravity, does that mean my inspiration has to come from Christianity, the supposed origin of that doctrine? Hardly! Should we not expect as a consequence of our cutthroat evolutionary heritage a bent toward aggression, violence and selfishness?

I realize I don't represent the views of all atheists on this matter (perhaps many on this blog will disagree with my assessment of human nature), but I do wish to admonish Balwin against the use of any phrase beginning with "Atheists believe..." (with the exception of the tautology "Atheists believe in no gods").

So is my worldview inherently pessimisitic, recognizing human depravity without offering solutions? Perhaps, but only if you believe that anything short of a perfect solution is no solution at all. Can human society be improved over time? Yes--for example, in Western societies, homicide rates have declined tenfold to a hundredfold in the past millennium, from a time when religious belief was virtually unchallenged (Pinker 2002, 330). Slavery is outlawed in the West. We have relative freedom in the West to adhere to whatever worldview we choose. Women have a voice. Can we eliminate all vestiges of human depravity and eliminate murder altogether? No. Unlike Baldwin, who sees the matter in all-or-nothing terms, I am prepared to recognize both the good and the bad in human nature, the noble and the selfish. We are not totally depraved, even if we are flawed. We can improve society, even if we cannot perfect it.

Rabbis and Christians on the Exodus

Rabbi David Wolpe shocked the Jewish world when he gave a Passover sermon that suggested that the Exodus as described in the Torah never took place. He has surveyed the available evidence from the Torah, the archeological record from the Sinai, and the archeological record from the Levant and concluded that the story of the Exodus is impossible. Rabbi Wolpe is not an atheist. In fact he has debated Sam Harris, a prominent atheist, yet he is convinced the Exodus is a fable.

Rabbi Wolpe is still a believing Jew who thinks that the story of Exodus has great power to inspire people today. However, he believes that power is in the metaphor of the story and does not require it to be literally true.

Yet some of Rabbi Wolpe's colleagues excoriated him in public, saying that he was simply wrong. Yet in private one of them told him, "Of course what you say is true, but we should not say it publicly."

Rabbi Wolpe believes that Jews should examine the Exodus account for three main reasons. The first, that historical claims must be evaluated historically, the second, that the truth should never be frightening to believers, and the third, that believers should still have the same relationship to God, even if the account is not true.

Rabbi Wolpe believes God inspired the Bible, but does not believe the Bible is literally true. Personally, I believe this is a muddled way of thinking. I believe it is much more realistic to imagine that the Bible was written by men and is no more and no less inspired than any other work of literature. I think however, that if Rabbi Wolpe said that, he'd be even more likely to lose his job than he is already. So one can easily understand his reticence.

Why is this important? Christians continue to believe things that literally can't be true. A majority of US Christians believe the Torah was written by Moses, a mythical figure. A majority of US Christians refuse to accept the scientific account of the origins of the universe and of life.

Certainly liberal Christians also doubt the literal truth of the Exodus. Christianity Today says:

The fact is that not one shred of direct archaeological evidence has been found for Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob or the 400-plus years the children of Israel sojourned in Egypt. The same is true for their miraculous exodus from slavery.

Even some biblical "maximalist" scholars, such as William Dever (a graduate of Christian Theological Seminary), do not believe the Exodus occurred. In his book, "Who Were the Israelites and Where Did They Come From?" he only gives credence to the idea that they arose within Palestine.

Dever says on page 1:

"Finally, many of the biblical stories are legend-like and abound with miraculous and fantastic elements that strain the credulity of almost any modern reader of almost any religious persuasion. All these factors have contributed to the rise of doubts about the Bible's trustworthiness."

Ultimately, the only thing you need to know to debunk the Bible is what the adherents of the religions based on it think of it. That more than does the job.

Dr. Avalos Responds to Triablogue on the Sargon Legend!

Hector Avalos wrote: Unfortunately, I don’t see any evidence that the authors of Triablogue are familiar with cuneiform literature, or can verify any information for themselves outside of secondary sources such as those found in Hoffmeier, Hess, and other conservative scholars. I know the work of these conservative scholars well.

Read more »

Ten Atheistic Arguments by Dr. Ted Drange

Definitions of "God"

Before getting to the arguments, it is important to present the various definitions of "God" that they employ:

D1: God is the eternal, all-powerful, personal being who created and rules the universe. (Being eternal, God cannot come into or go out of existence. Being all-powerful, he can perform any action that is logically possible to perform. Being personal, he has some characteristics in common with humans, such as thinking, feeling emotions, and performing actions. The universe is understood to consist of all the space, time, matter, and energy that has ever existed.)

D2: God is the eternal, very powerful, personal being who rules the universe, loves humanity, and gave humanity its moral conscience.

D3: God is the eternal, very powerful, personal being who rules the universe, loves humanity, and strongly desires that that love be reciprocated.

D4: God is that being which is self-existent, that is, which contains the explanation for its own existence within itself.

D5: God is that being which is (objectively) perfect in every way. (The term "perfect" is here understood in an objective sense, as opposed to a subjective sense relative to individual values, so the term may be used in public reasoning.)

D6: God is the deity described in the Bible as interpreted by evangelical Christianity.

It will be indicated for each argument which of the above definitions of "God" it employs.


Arguments Against God's Existence

1. The Anti-creation Argument (D1, D6):


(a) If X creates Y, then X must exist temporally prior to Y.

(b) But nothing could possibly exist temporally prior to time itself (for that would involve existing at a time when there was no time, which is a contradiction).

(c) Thus, it is impossible for time to have been created.

(d) Time is an essential component of the universe.


(e) Therefore, it is impossible for the universe to have been created.


(f) It follows that God, as defined by D1 and D6, cannot exist.

Discussion: A similar argument might possibly be constructed with regard to the other components of the universe as well: space, matter, and energy. It is very hard to comprehend how a being could have created the universe without existing within space and without any involvement with matter or energy.

- The God of evangelical Christianity (defined by D6) is included here (and for argument #2, below) because of the first sentence in the Bible, which evangelicals take to refer to the entire universe.


2. The Transcendent-Personal Argument (D1, D6):


(a) In order for God to have created the universe, he must have been transcendent, that is, he must have existed outside space and time.

(b) But to be personal implies (among other things) being within space and time.


(c) Therefore, it is logically impossible for God, as defined by D1 or D6, to exist.

Discussion:


It might be suggested that God has a part that is outside space and time and another part that is inside space and time and that it is the latter part, not the former part, which is personal in nature. But the idea of a being which is partly personal and partly transcendent is incomprehensible. Furthermore, definition D1 implies that God, as a personal being, existed prior to the universe, and it is incomprehensible how a personal being could do so.

- Aside from conceptual considerations that have to do with the very concept of "being personal," there are empirical considerations relevant to premise (b). It might be argued that to be personal requires having thoughts and that science has very strongly confirmed that having thoughts is dependent on having a physical brain. For example, since brain damage has always been found to delete, or at least disrupt, thoughts, it can be extrapolated that there can be no thoughts at all in the total absence of a brain. Although the empirical support for premise (b) is very strong, that may not be a factor that would impress people who are not "scientifically oriented" to begin with.


3. The Incoherence-of-Omnipotence Argument (D1, D6):

(a) If God as defined by D1 or D6 were to exist, then he would be omnipotent (i.e., able to do anything that is logically possible).

(b) But the idea of such a being is incoherent.


(c) Hence, such a being cannot possibly exist.

Discussion: Definition D6 is included here because evangelical Christians maintain that the biblical description of God as "Almighty" is accurate. The issue of whether or not premise (b) is true is complicated. Some writers claim that the idea of omnipotence in itself is inconsistent. Also, some writers claim that being omnipotent is incompatible with possessing certain other properties. (For example, an omnipotent being could commit suicide, since to do so is logically possible, but an eternal being, by definition, could not. Hence, the idea of the deity defined by D1 or D6 is incoherent.) Whether or not the given claim is true is here left open. See comments on the concept of "incoherence" made in connection with argument #7, below. (For further material on arguments similar to #3, see Everitt, 2004, Martin, 1990, and Martin and Monnier, 2003, in the bibliography below.)

- The divine attribute of omniscience gives rise to similar considerations, and there is an Incoherence-of-Omniscience Argument that could be raised. (For material on it, see the references above.) That argument, which is omitted here to save space, also has a premise (b) (worded as in argument #3), which introduces issues that are exceedingly complicated and controversial.

4. The Lack-of-evidence Argument (D1, D2, D3, D6):

(a) If God as defined by any of the four definitions in question were to exist, then he would have to be deeply involved in the affairs of humanity and there would be good objective evidence of his existence.

(b) But there is no good objective evidence for the existence of a deity thus defined.
(c) Therefore, God, as defined by D1, D2, D3, or D6, does not exist.

Discussion: The rationale behind premise (a) is that the sort of deity in question, a personal being who rules the universe or who loves humanity (and perhaps wants that love reciprocated), would need to become involved in the affairs of humans and thereby reveal his existence overtly. It might be claimed that God has achieved such involvement just by means of subjective religious experiences, without providing humanity with any good objective evidence of his existence. This assertion could be attacked on the ground that people who claim to have had such experiences are mistaken about the nature and cause of them. It might also be reasonably argued that religious experiences would be insufficient for the given divine purposes, and only good objective (publicly testable) evidence of some sort would do. Argument #4 is a versatile argument that can be widely used by atheists to attack God's existence, given many different definitions of "God."

Another argument similar to #4, sometimes put forward by scientifically oriented atheists, is the Argument from Metaphysical Naturalism, according to which all phenomena ever observed are best explained by appeal to natural causes (Carrier, 2005). Since that premise is a reason to accept naturalism, it provides an evidential argument against God's existence. However, the given premise is an extremely sweeping one and for that reason alone argument #4 would be preferable.

5. The Argument from Evil (D2, D3, D6):

(a) If there were to exist a very powerful, personal being who rules the universe and loves humanity, then there would not occur as much evil (i.e., suffering and premature death) as there does.

(b) But there does occur that much evil.

(c) Therefore, there does not exist such a being.

(d) Hence, God, as defined by D2, D3 or D6, does not exist.

Discussion: This formulation of the argument is a version of what is called "The Logical Argument from Evil." If the word "probably" were to be inserted into steps (a), (c), and (d), then it would be a version of what is called "The Evidential Argument from Evil." Similar considerations arise in connection with the different versions. According to the Free-will Defense, premise (a) is false because God wants people to have free will and that requires that they be able to create evil. The evil that actually occurs in our world is mankind's fault, not God's. Thus, God can still love humanity and be perfectly good despite all the evil that occurs. There are many objections to this defense. One of them is that much of the suffering and premature death that occurs in our world is due to natural causes rather than human choices, and the Free-will Defense would be totally irrelevant to that form of evil. (Drange, 1998.)

6. The Argument from Nonbelief (D3, D6):

(a) If there were to exist a very powerful, personal being who rules the universe, loves humanity, and who strongly desires that his love for humanity be reciprocated, then there would not exist as much nonbelief in the existence of such a being as there does.

(b) But there does exist that much nonbelief.

(c) Therefore, there does not exist such a being.

(d) Hence, God, as defined by D3 or D6, does not exist.

Discussion: As with the Argument from Evil, an "evidential" version of this argument could be constructed by inserting the word "probably" into steps (a), (c), and (d). Similar considerations arise for all the various versions. The argument is directed against the deity defined by D6, as well as the one defined by D3, because evangelical Christians take God to have all the properties mentioned in D3. (For a discussion of the Argument from Nonbelief framed on the basis of definition D6, see Drange, 1993.) Possibly the argument might also be directed against the deity defined by D2, and something like that is attempted in Schellenberg, 1993, though there it would not be quite so forceful.

The rationale behind premise (a) is that nonbelief in God is an impediment to loving him, so a deity as described by definition D3 or D6 would remove that impediment if he were to exist. Defenses similar to those in the case of the Argument from Evil could be raised, and similar objections to them could be presented. (Drange, 1998.)

7. Arguments from Incoherence (D4, D5, D6):

(a) In order for X to explain Y, not only must Y be derivable from X, but the derivation needs to be in some way illuminating.

(b) If X is derived from itself, then the derivation is in no way illuminating.

(c) Thus, it is impossible for anything to explain itself.

(d) God as defined by D4 is supposed to explain itself.

(e) It follows that the idea of "God" as defined by D4 is incoherent.

(f) Furthermore, perfection is relative, and so, the concept of "objectively perfect," as a concept employed in public reasoning, makes no sense.

(g) Hence, the idea of "God" as defined by D5 is also incoherent.

(h) In addition, the Bible contains descriptions of God that are incoherent (e.g., implying both that Jesus is God and that Jesus is God's son, that God is spirit or a spirit and that God is love).

(i) Evangelical Christians interpret those descriptions literally.

(j) Therefore, it might be argued that the idea of "God" as defined by D6 is also incoherent.

Discussion: Unlike the other arguments in this section, these arguments do not aim to prove God's nonexistence, but rather, the incoherence of God-talk when "God" is defined in certain ways. The point is not that theists who employ such God-talk are mistaken about the world, but that they are confused in their language.

The idea of "incoherence" is also sometimes applied to contradictions or other sorts of conceptual incompatibility. For example, arguments #2 & #3, above, could each be regarded as a kind of "argument from incoherence," for they appeal to conceptual incompatibilities between pairs of divine attributes. [This point might also be applicable to definition D5 if theists were to try to combine it with other definitions. For example, if a theist were to claim that God is both perfect (as given in D5) and the creator of the universe (as given in D1), then it might be argued that such a notion is incoherent, since a perfect being can have no wants, whereas a creator must have some wants. Or if a theist were to claim that God is perfect and also loves humanity (as given in D2 & D3), then it might be argued that such a notion is incoherent, since a perfect being can feel no disappointment, whereas a being who loves humanity must feel some disappointment.] However, this notion of "incoherence" is different from that appealed to in the Arguments from Incoherence, for if incompatible properties are ascribed, at least there is a conjunction of propositions there, even if it is a contradictory pair. In that case, it would still make sense to say that the sentence "God exists" expresses a (necessarily) false proposition. But with the sort of "incoherence" appealed to in the Arguments from Incoherence there is no proposition expressed at all, whether true or false. (For more on incompatible-properties arguments against God's existence, see Martin and Monnier, 2003.)

8. The Argument from Confusion (D6):

(a) If the deity described in the Bible as interpreted by evangelical Christianity were to exist, then there would not exist as much confusion and conflictedness among Christians as there does, particularly with regard to important doctrinal issues such as God's laws and the requirements for salvation.

(b) But there does exist that much. (Christians disagree widely among themselves on such issues, as shown, among other things, by the great number of different Christian denominations and sects that exist.)

(c) Therefore, that deity does not exist.

(d) Hence God as defined by D6 does not exist.

Discussion: The rationale behind premise (a) is that the God of evangelical Christianity is a deity who places great emphasis upon awareness of the truth, especially with regard to important doctrinal issues. It is expected, then, that if such a deity were to exist, he would place a high priority upon the elimination of confusion and conflictedness among his own followers with regard to important doctrinal issues. Because of the great abundance of Christian confusion of the relevant sort, this argument is a very forceful one.

9. The Argument from Biblical Defects (D6):

(a) If the deity described in the Bible as interpreted by evangelical Christianity were to exist, then the Bible itself would not have the defects that it has. That is, it would not contain textual errors, interpolations, contradictions, factual errors (including false prophecies), and ethical defects. Also, the canon would have been assembled with less political involvement and would not have original manuscripts or parts missing.

(b) But the Bible does contain those defects.

(c) Therefore, that deity, which is God as defined by D6, does not exist.

Discussion: Premise (a) is based on the point that evangelical Christians regard the Bible to be God's main form of revelation to humanity. So, given that their God exists, it would be expected that the Bible would possess features implied by the motivations which they ascribe to him. Premise (a) follows quite naturally. (For examples of the Bible's defects, see appendix D of Drange, 1998, and Mattill, 1995. For more on arguments #8 & #9, see Drange, "The Arguments from Confusion and Biblical Defects" in the forthcoming Martin and Monnier, 2006.)

10. The Argument from Human Insignificance (D6):

(a) If the deity described in the Bible as interpreted by evangelical Christianity were to exist, then it would be expected that humans occupy some significant place in the universe.

(b) But, both from the standpoint of space (the size of the universe in relation to the size of the earth) and from the standpoint of time (the length of time in which the universe has existed in relation to the length of time in which humans have existed), humans do not occupy any significant place in the universe.

(c) Hence, God, as defined by D6, probably does not exist.

Discussion: The idea behind the first premise here is that the Bible describes God as having a very special interest in humans. Since humans are so important, they should naturally occupy some significant place in space and time. To reject that idea is to reject the evangelical Christian outlook on the nature of reality. (A slightly different version of this argument is referred to as "The Argument from Scale" in Everitt, 2004.)

- There are many other arguments against God's existence. Some are inductive in form (Martin, 1990). Some make appeal to cosmological assumptions (Craig and Smith, 1993). I have here picked just those that I regard to be the main ones.

Summary

The various arguments can be matched up with the six definitions of "God" as follows:

DEFINITION
ARGUMENTS AGAINST GOD

D1
#1-4

D2
#4, #5 (+ possibly #6)

D3
#4-6

D4
#7

D5
#7

D6
#1-10

All theistic arguments for God's existence can be refuted by at least one objection, and all of the definitions of "God" considered here permit God's nonexistence to be established (or else God-talk to be shown incoherent) by at least one argument. Other definitions of "God" are used in ordinary language, but all of them permit God's nonexistence to be established by appeal to similar or analogous considerations. There is much more to be said about the various arguments. The bibliography below supplies some of that and also supplies further references.

Bibliography

Carrier, Richard. Sense & Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2005.

Craig, William Lane and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. God? A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Craig, William Lane and Quentin Smith. Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Drange, Theodore. "The Argument from Non-belief." Religious Studies 29, 1993.

Drange, Theodore. Nonbelief & Evil: Two Arguments for the Nonexistence of God. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998.

Drange, Theodore. "The Fine-tuning Argument Revisited." Philo vol. 3, no. 2, 2000.

Everitt, Nicholas. The Non-existence of God. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.

Le Poidevin, Robin. Arguing for Atheism: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.

Martin, Michael. Atheism: A Philosophical Justification. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.

Martin, Michael and Ricki Monnier, eds. The Impossibility of God. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003.

Martin, Michael and Ricki Monnier, eds. The Improbability of God. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2005.

Mattill, A. J., Jr. The Seven Mighty Blows to Traditional Beliefs. Gordo, AL: The Flatwoods Free Press, 1995.

Schellenberg, J.L. Divine Hiddeness and Human Reason. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993.

Sobel, Jordan Howard. Logic and Theism: Arguments For and Against Beliefs in God. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Stenger, Victor J. Has Science Found God? Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003.

-- Ted Drange

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

Used by permission of Reggie at The Infidel Guy Show, who also has this posted.

Evan on the Legend of Sargon

You should read how one of the boys at DC is singlehandedly handling the boys over at Triablogue on the Legend of Sargon. Evan is awesome!

Christ on a Cracker!

A University of Central Florida student was manhandled and is now receiving death threats and being accused of hate crimes by his local Catholic diocese after a recent incident at the local church. His crime?

He took the communion wafer he was given back to his seat.

Webster Cook attended Mass at his local Catholic church. He claimed he wanted to show his non-Catholic friend what the wafer looked like, so when the priest gave him the wafer, he started to take it back to his seat. He was grabbed by parishioners and his way was blocked. In order to get back to his seat, he popped the wafer in his mouth. When he returned to his seat, he removed it. A church leader saw him, grabbed his wrist and tried to pry the wafer from his hands. She refused to release him despite repeated demands that she do so, so Cook left the church with the wafer.

Father Migeul Gonzales made a striking comparison of the cracker abduction--"Imagine if they kidnapped somebody and you make a plea for that individual to please return that loved one to the family."

Mr. Cook returned the cracker to the Catholic Church, but that's not enough according to Susan Fani, a spokesperson for the local Cathlic diocese--"[I]f anything were to qualify as a hate crime, to us this seems like this might be it." Mr. Cook claims that he has received death threats over the "incident".

Now please note, this isn't some odd cult in the backwoods of Appalachia. This is the Roman Catholic Church. If ANYTHING can be considered mainstream Christianity, the numbers are on their side. And this isn't some rogue sect off in some uncivilized corner of the world. This is Florida (okay, okay, but it's NEXT TO civilized parts of the world, so I expect better). These aren't some whacked-out parishoners who equate taking a cracker that was freely given to him with kidnapping, or calling the cracker caper a "hate crime". This is an ordained priest and an official spokesperson of the diocese making these claims. Any why? Transubstantiation. They think that this guy literally kidnapped a piece of Jesus (instead of eating him like a good cannibal, I guess).

If anyone dares to tell you that mainstream Christianity doesn't take the mythology literally, just point them to this story. Religious myth isn't just morality stories to many, many mainstream Christians; it's real (yet always unverifiable) fact. Fortunately, no one has died over it yet, although a complaint has been filed with the Student Union at UCF against Mr. Cook and his friend. Also, armed UCF police officers (that Florida residents paid for) are standing guard over the crakers at Mass to ensure that the Catholic Church retains its ability to serve Jesus "dine-in only".

William Lane Craig Doesn't Deal With Morriston's Critiques of the Kalam

Jeffrey Jay Lowder first alerted me to Dr. Wes Morriston's critiques of the Kalam Argument for God's existence, saying they were the best critiques of the Kalam to be found. I agree. They are as far as I know. So imagine my utter surprise when I received Craig's 3rd edition of his "signature" book, Reasonable Faith, by finding him taking on atheist scholars like J.L. Mackie, Richard M. Gale, Graham Oppy, Howard Sobel, along with New Atheists like Daniel C. Dennett and Richard Dawkins, only to find that Craig doesn't even mention Morriston's critiques, must less try to respond to them! Morriston's critiques are not to be found in any bibliography in Craig's book, nor is Morriston's name in the index...at all!

Why? What reason can he give for this? I'm sure he'll come up with some reason. But one thing he cannot do is to say he doesn't know about them, because he responded to the first one, but not to the second one!

Maybe, just maybe, Craig is hoping that the popular audience he's writing for in his apologetics book will not see or hear of Morriston's critiques, because after all, they can only be found in the scholarly literature. Most of the readers of his book will never see it. Maybe he thinks he already answered Morriston in his one and only reply? But I do not think he did so at all.

That's where I come in *ahem.* I'm not writing for professional scholars. I've written a counter-apologetics book for the average college student. I'm taking the arguments of the professional scholars and articulating them for the average college student, educated person in the pew, and pastor.

In my book I tell the average college student about Morriston's critiques of the Kalam. That's right. I deal with the Kalam in my book by using Morriston's critiques. The average person will now be able to understand the best critiques of the Kalam when he or she reads my book. Then Dr. Craig will have to respond to Morriston sometime in a debate or in the next edition of this book.

You can read the exchange between Craig and Morriston for yourself. All of the following articles can be found online: Wes Morriston,“Must the Beginning of the Universe Have a Personal Cause?: A Critical Examination of the Kalam Cosmological Argument,” Faith and Philosophy 17, no. 2 (2000): 149–69; William Lane Craig, “Must the Beginning of the Universe Have a Personal Cause?: A Rejoinder”; and Morriston’s counter-reply, “Causes and Beginnings in the Kalam Argument: Reply to Craig,” Faith and Philosophy 19, no. 2 (April 2002): 233–44.

From Wycliffe Bible Translator to Freethinker

I'd like to thank Ed Babinski and John Loftus for encouraging me to join this blog. You can read my blow-by-blow story on the Secular Web, but I'll provide a condensed version here.

My parents met and married as evangelical/fundamentalist missionaries in Ethiopia, my birthplace. My parents' missionary career also took us to Liberia and Nigeria, where we remained until I was 16. It was during my ninth grade year at boarding school in Nigeria that I entered into what I considered a personal relationship with Jesus, pouring out my heart to God with earnestness and reading his word (the Bible) daily.

After returning to the U.S., I went on to earn a B.S. in computer science at LeTourneau University, a non-denominational Christian college in east Texas. From there I went on to gain a one-year graduate certificate of biblical studies at Columbia Biblical Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina. Shortly after that I met a young lady who shared my goal of becoming a missionary Bible translator for a language group that did not yet have a translation of the Bible. We married in 1992 and joined Wycliffe Bible Translators in 1993. After the required linguistic training and support-raising, we set off to Europe for French learning before heading to a predominantly Muslim West African country to learn a minority language and translate the Bible into it.

We were still in the language learning process in 2000 when doubts that I had entertained during my college years began to re-surface. I had difficulties with many of the passages in the Old Testament, so I went online in search of apologetic materials to answer my questions. As it turns out, instead of finding anything to help me, I found the opposite: Robert M. Price's online book Beyond Born Again. This sent my faith into a tailspin from which I recovered twice before I finally threw in the towel about nine months after my March 2000 crisis. We left the mission field in the summer of 2000 so I could work through my doubts, but due to my waffling, the mission board requested our resignation in October 2000 (a painful but appropriate decision, in retrospect).

I remained a firm believer in God for about a year after my deconversion from Christianity, considering myself a deist, but gradually moved toward an atheist-leaning agnosticism. For all practical purposes, I am today an atheist, though I suppose I haven't yet grown fully comfortable with the term, preferring labels like freethinker or humanist.

Though my wife of 16 years remains a committed evangelical Christian, we have a relatively strong marriage with no intention of parting ways. We have three children, 13, 11 and 9 who attend church with my wife. At least the older two show some signs of independent thinking. Only time will tell where they end up.

So that's my journey in a nutshell. I do encourage you to read my full story on the Secular Web if you'd like to know more about what brought me down this path. I look forward to engaging with believers and former believers alike. I'm especially interested in knowing what leads some of us to desert the faith and others to remain in it. What is it that makes the difference?

The Father's Foreskin Feast

Sarah Cooper (35) of Augusta, Maine, was just another ordinary member of St. Luke’s Catholic Church, along with her husband and their three children. That all changed at a church fish fry on a certain Friday afternoon. Little did Mrs. Cooper know, but she was about to make headlines!

“I was just sitting there, nibbling on my hushpuppies and fries. When I took a bite of my fish sandwich, I started to taste a funny taste. Then I noticed something chewy and gross in my mouth. I got sickened by the grossness and quickly spit it out. That’s when I noticed what it looked like. It looked like a human foreskin!”

And she wasn’t wrong. A human foreskin was indeed found in her fish sandwich, smothered under ketchup, tartar sauce, and a nice helping of mayo. “Well,” said Father Perry Showalter (56), devoted priest of St. Luke’s parish for the last twenty-one years, “at least it didn’t cause the commotion until after everyone finished eating.”

Nicely, Mrs. Cooper agreed to be discreet about the matter until it was brought to the attention of the monsignor, but her husband was none too thrilled about the fact that for a brief moment, his wife was led into involuntary sin by having a part of another man’s penis in her mouth. “It’s a sad day for all religions when a faithful Catholic Christian woman can’t go to church without chewing on another dude’s cock! I’m furious and I want to find out how this happened!” said a red-faced and visibly distraught Matthew Cooper (39), an air force captain and husband of thirteen years to Sarah. “I’ve been a good Catholic all my life, and never have I seen anything like this!”

We understand Mr. Cooper’s rage, and we also want to find out what happened. So we decided to sit down with Father Perry, who was gracious enough to take the time out of his busy schedule to discuss the issue with us at length. Father Perry was not hesitant to put the blame where he said it was due—on his own church for the institution’s timelessly bad habit of going hog-wild for holy relics. In this case, the holy relic was believed to be the foreskin of Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity.

“Well, it’s pretty simple,” Father Perry explained. “The only way the foreskin could have wound up in Mrs. Cooper’s sandwich is because of the recent truckload of foreskins, which was delivered to our church only a week earlier. One of them must have somehow gotten mixed in with the food during meal preparation, that’s all.” Father Perry, seeing our dissatisfaction with his words, elaborated further…

“You see, we are Catholics, and over the years, many Catholic churches have claimed to possess the one true foreskin of our Lord and Savior, along with tons of other “holy” relics that were found to be out-and-out frauds. Our church absolutely loves bombastic claims of the healing power of shrines and holy relics, and despite having some learned sages and scholars among us, our members are still stupider than Jupiter—stupid enough, in fact, to believe that visiting a holy site or touching a holy relic will bring healing and blessings from above.

Now you would think that with all the ‘seeing’ that the Holy See does, that they’d be able to detect what is true and what is false in the department of holy relics. But, as it turns out, God is more interested in having the Virgin Mary appear on tree stumps, making statues bleed, and having our Italian grannies make good garlic and tomato sauces to go with freshly-cooked pasta than he is in certifying accuracy in matters of the divine.

Over the centuries, the Catholic church has been as wrong as a still-working lottery winner on a great number of things, so it shouldn’t surprise us when pious, boy-touching bachelors with deadpan grins, tall hats, and fears of falling victim to chronic masturbation tell us lies. And not only is the Catholic Church filled with liars, but with shameless hypocrites too.

We once burned people alive for denying that un-baptized babies go to Hell, but now we believe precisely the same thing we once condemned others for believing. That’s just how we work. We’re a church of fallible human beings, and we’re no different than any other glorified, gregarious, gaggle of old geezers out there who claim a monopoly on faith and forgiveness.

So, getting back to the matter of the foreskin, the problem is that we can’t say for sure which of the possibly holy foreskins belonged to Jesus, even after many centuries of feuding and quarrelling with rival churches over the issue. To keep from throwing away the true foreskin of God Almighty (and to raise money for the church by having everyone of them put on display so that people will pay to come and see them), we decided to keep them around. Maine’s Roman Catholic Diocese thought it was a good idea to keep the foreskins here, and that is what led to the unfortunate accidental ingesting of the foreskin by Mrs. Cooper.”

When asked what he intends to do about the situation as a means of restitution for Mrs. Cooper, Father Perry replied, “We’ll do the same thing we’ve always done when we mess up—give a formal and somber apology, and then pretend the whole thing never happened. Every time we screw up (and we do often), we just say “I’m sorry,” and it has worked like a charm! No matter how many men we burned alive or stretched on the rack, no matter how many innocent women were tortured and falsely accused of being witches, all we had to do was offer up an apology and it was like spilled milk!

That’s what we did with Galileo, you’ll recall; the church wronged him, and not until many years after his death did the church get around to offering an arid, half-assed apology for it. Well, we intend to be much better to Mrs. Cooper than we were to Galileo by apologizing to her while she is still alive. And here it is for the record (and we’re only going to say it once): We’re sorry, Mrs. Cooper!”

When asked if she felt that the resolution of this matter was sufficient, Mrs. Cooper commented, “Oh yes. Of course, I accept the apology, although I’m having mixed feelings about this; the thought of having another man’s private part in my mouth was very disturbing. But then, I must admit that our church says that the foreskin I had in my mouth might have belonged to Jesus Christ, and if that is the case, I am deeply honored to have had a part of my Savior’s blessed hoo-haa in my unworthy mouth!”

(JH)

Isis Heals The Sick Boy

Ancient Egypt had a lot of firsts. Resurrection and healing were two of them. In a story that you can read here Isis the Mother of Horus and the Wife of the resurrected Osiris, sets the standard for Jesus to follow by healing a sick boy.

Stories of Isis and Osiris precede the development of writing. That means before 3100 BC. I highly recommend that Christians take a college course in Egyptology. Keep in mind the principle that the greater civilization influences the lesser. Some of the things Christians should focus on are Egyptian Mythololgy, the pounding the egyptians gave the Syrians every year for about twenty years (around 1479 - 1425 BC) and the "foreign kings" (1648–1540 BC) that ruled the egyptian Delta.

Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection

Link. Thanks to Ed Owens who alerted me to this story.

Weekend retreats for recovering from religion

Leaving your Religion?

or still feeling the effects?

It's not the end of the world!

Join us at a recovery retreat in August, 2008, in Berkeley, CA.

"Release and Reclaim I", Aug. 8-10, will be a supportive retreat for those who are beginning to let go of toxic beliefs and recover from an authoritarian religion such as Christian fundamentalism.

"Release and Reclaim II", Aug. 15-17, will be an advanced weekend for moving beyond religion and reclaiming a life of joy, creativity, and connection. It will be open to those who have already attended a retreat or have done healing work already.

Both retreats are led by Dr. Marlene Winell, author of Leaving the Fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving the Fold. Interested participants are asked to discuss their situation with Marlene first. Both weekends are also open to professionals by special arrangement. Call Dr. Winell at 510-292-0509

More about Marlene Winell is at www.marlenewinell.net.


RELEASE and RECLAIM I: Sorting it out and Healing

Do you feel alone in your struggle for healing? Join us for a powerful weekend with others who can understand and support you. We'll rant and rave, tell our stories, discuss the issues, visualize, role-play, dance and draw – whatever it takes to let go of toxic teachings and reclaim our lives. A joyful, empowered life is your birthright and we will use individual and group processes for learning new directions. Bring your sense of humor and plan to have fun too.

WHEN: FRIDAY, August 8, 7PM until SUNDAY, August 10, 3PM

RELEASE and RECLAIM II: Growing and Thriving

Have you left your religion behind but you're not sure what's next? Join others who are feeling liberated and wanting to rebuild a life that allows full, creative expression of who you are. We'll help each other with courage and confidence dealing with "the world," sharing our experiences and doing exercises for tapping into inner resources of wisdom, love, and strength – perhaps more than you ever expected if you were taught to be dependant!

We'll look at issues of enjoying life now instead of later, sexuality, "spirituality," and relationships. In a supportive group, we'll use art, movement, and visualization as well as discussion. Bring your wild and worldly self and plan to have a great time.

WHEN: FRIDAY, August 15, 7PM until SUNDAY, August 17, 3PM.
BOTH RETREATS:

WHERE: A beautiful house in Berkeley, California, with hot tub and other amenities. The closest airport is Oakland, and we can help you with connections from there.

COST: $320 for the workshop, $125 for room and board. $445 total. $25 discount given for full payment by July 20. Financial need considered and options available.

TO REGISTER: Contact Marlene Winell for a telephone discussion about your interest. Send an email to mwinell@gmail.com or call 510-292-0509. $100 deposit will then secure a space. Register soon as group size is limited to 8.

Note: These retreats are designed to help develop networks of support that extend beyond a single weekend. With time for sharing meals and relaxing in a house together, participants often make lasting friends - face to face, not virtual! We also have an online group and conference calls as a follow-up support system.

Read comments about a previous retreat at: http://marlenewinell.net/

Judgment Day For Skeptics!

This made me laugh! No it's not an argument. It's just for fun!

One Mechanism for Biological Bases for Behavior

This is a datum to support my assertion that Biological Bases for Behaviors are incorrectly interpreted as "Sin" and that we don't have as much free will as we think we do. The new field of Epigenetics is documenting that regulating gene expression in the brain affects how susceptible we are to maladies such as depression, anxiety and drug addiction.

One viewpoint that I keep pushing around here is that we don't have as much free will as we think we do. I argue that the brain is an electrochemical device where millions of tiny biological switches accept combinations of thousands of analog signals that interact together to turn processes on and off to produce what we call "our self". Now I know there is lot a packed into that statement (presumptions and all) but I want to focus on one molecular mechanism that is a part of all of that.

First, a layman's description of Genes and Gene expression.

What is a Gene?
Genes are a smaller component of DNA. It is made up of combinations of chemicals units called A (Adenine), T (Thymine), G (Guanine) and C (Cytosine). Chromatin proteins called histones compact and organize DNA to form chromosomes. Chromosomes are made up of DNA and reside in the nucleus of a Cell. Chromosomes guide the interactions between DNA and other proteins.

Genes carry chemical information that is used by the cells to collectively determine their characteristics. Each cell contains from 20,000 to 25,000 genes attached to a strand of DNA coiled up into a chromosome, sitting in the nucleus of a cell.

One estimate I found states that there are between 75 to 100 trillion cells that make up the human body. Only in the brain there are estimated to be 100 billion cells interconnected by trillions of synapses (http://www.livescience.com/mysteries/070405_brain_use.html).

Gene Expression
Our genes form the blue prints for proteins. Our bodies are built on proteins, just like a nicely marbled rib eye steak. Accordingly our brains are built on proteins. Every cell has every gene, but each cell only uses a subset of those genes. For a gene to be "expressed" it must be accessed by a chemical catalyst to cause the formation of an RNA molecule. The RNA is then used to make a protein, and the cell uses the protein to carry out its purpose in life, whatever that may be. In the brain, the purpose is to run your body in the background without any conscious effort or knowledge of it on your part and to produce the various stages of consciousness you experience between sleep to stressing out in traffic. Don't forget that while you are stressing out in traffic and worrying about that slow person in your way, you are still listening to the radio, working the pedals, breathing, remembering to call someone when you get in, etc. There's a lot going on that you are not conscious of so it is not accurate to say that YOU are in control, but it is accurate to say that your sense of self is one of those processes going on in the brain that you are not of aware of or even know how to manipulate. But those process are manipulated automatically biologically by a wide range of bodily process which include hormones produced by your organs (the endocrine system). Your brain gets feedback from your organs and it is regulated by them whether you like it or want it or not. Your brain reacts to stimulus and is regulated by the various chemicals that are set into motion as a result. Your experience in traffic changes your mind, your mood, your attitude, your thoughts, your wishes, your desires whether you like it or not. Those molecules that are the catalyst for creating RNA molecules are released, and they go about feeding the cells that your brain is using to handle your traffic experience. Your performance, your emotion, your mood, you thoughts, your access to your memories and your sense of self depends on how well those molecular processes work.

For an RNA molecule to be produced, a chromosome "unravels" (remember that a chromosome is coiled up DNA) to permit the catalyst molecules access to the sequence of ATGC that it is made up of. To "silence" a gene, is to prevent the interaction of the catalyst by preventing it from getting to the uncoiled part of the chromosome or from preventing the chromosome from uncoiling. The body does this on its own, your 'self' doesn't have any choice in the matter, whether it works properly or not. In fact, you or your personality can be modified and you won't even realize it. Just like gene expression causes your pancreas to work properly to do what it is supposed to do, gene expression causes your brain to work properly to do what is supposed to do which is run the processes in your body (such as your sense of self), and create your physical and emotional characteristics that everyone else knows as "YOU".

Now the Hard questions. Were does the soul fit into this? What is "the Soul"? Is the Soul "the personality"? Is the Soul the "I" in "I am alive"? If the personality/soul likes chocolate or to harm animals, can it stop liking those things? Why do people like anything? Am I responsible for things that I like? How do we turn "liking" on or off?

I'll buy a beer for anyone that can tell me why chocolate is so appealing to people. I know why, I'm just looking for audience participation.

One way to turn "liking" off is by manipulating the brain. Its bound to be more reliable than praying and there's no worrying about whether you've got the right god or not.

Nature versus Nurture.
We have been living with this concept since as long as I can remember. What makes one tomato more tasty than another or one person more amicable than another? Finally we know, it is a feedback loop between nature and nurture and we have identified one mechanism by which it happens. Now that this mechanism is revealed, scientists hope to develop treatments for maladies such as drug addiction, schizophrenia, depression and anxiety. Maybe one day they can discover where a specific desire originates from. Maybe one day it can be used to rehabilitate criminals. Maybe one day they can fix the Limbic Systems in psychopaths or make sociopaths more compassionate. Maybe one day they can give me something that will allow me to like mushrooms.

If I were to take a liking to harming animals, and I acted on that, then I am responsible and should be stopped, not necessarily for punishment because punishment may not mean anything to me, but I should be stopped simply to prevent more harm. However, if I have the desire, but do not act on it, since it is "in my heart" the bible says that I am still responsible for it. The desire is born in the brain, electrochemically, and subject to the "nature vs nurture" feedback loop. Since this feedback loop is verifiable, and predictable to a degree, and at least one mechanism for how it works has been identified, to say that human kind is accountable to the creator for "its sin" is as ridiculous as to say that I am responsible for how ugly I am or I am responsible for my dislike of mushrooms or that I even have a choice in the matter.

For further reading
Scientific American Mind, June 2008
* The New Genetics of Mental Illness (subscription or print only)
* Unmasking Memory Genes (subscription or print only)
* Addicted to Starvation: The Neurological Roots of Anorexia

From me on DC
* Reasonable Doubt About Sin: Biological Bases for Behavior
* Sin, Genes, Sugars and Alcohol
* Brains "Trust Machinery" Identified
* "When Our Vices Get the Better of Us"
* Negativity Is Contagious, Study Finds
* Schizophrenia Candidate Genes Affect Even Healthy Individuals
* Brain atrophy in elderly leads to unintended Racism, Depression and Gambling

Kenneth Copeland, Faith, Fear and Ignorance

Early this morning I happened to see Kenneth Copeland talking with another preacher about faith. It disturbed me and discouraged me. It became clear to me while listening in for about ten minutes of wasted time that Christianity is here to stay. Just as Christianity survived the attacks of Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Nietzsche, Robert Ingersoll, and Bertrand Russell, it will survive the attacks of skeptics in our day. That’s both disturbing and discouraging to me. Christians have told the oft repeated story of how an anvil has broken many a hammer, and just like the anvil, the Bible as God’s anvil will break any hammer attack by skeptics. Christians tout the claim that skeptics have come and gone but the Bible has withstood every attack. Yes it has. And it will survive, perhaps easily. It’s an impossibly tough nut to crack, but not for the reasons Christians tout. Not because the Bible is true. Not because the evidence is on the believer’s side. But because of faith, fear and ignorance.

Copeland said faith was an action word. It's not. It's a noun. Verbs are action words. He said if someone yells "fire" in a theatre, the man who sniffs and says he doesn't smell any smoke and who looks and doesn't see any fire, will die if he doesn't get out. He said "I'm not gonna die because of my nose. I'm gonna believe God's word." This scenario is a non-analogous one, because it presumes that the person yelling "fire" is telling the truth even when the initial evidence seems to be against it. People have been known to yell "fire" in a crowded theatre when there is no fire.

During the brief time I was watching him it became crystal clear to me he is ignorant. He is ignorant about the Bible, philosophy, and history, to name just a few things. I don’t write about televangelists, because my aim is much higher that that. I usually aim at the premier apologists and Christian philosophers of our day. But these televangelists have a great many watchers and donors enough for some of them to be rich. This may be a better indicator of the level of understanding of the person in the pew than others. Ministries like his flourish because there are a great many ignorant believers with money. Even as a minister I tried to argue with my congregations that their offerings would be better used in the local church and on the mission field than on televangelists, and I said that prior to the Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker debacles.

Maybe the main motivator that keeps believers from being informed is that they have a fear of doubt which can lead to hell, I don’t know for sure. Maybe it’s anti-intellectualism, since the Bible disparages reason in favor of faith. Maybe it’s the desire to be "fully persuaded" in order to please their God, which doesn’t allow them to entertain any doubts or question their faith. Again, of that it might depend on the individual believer. But they are ignorant. Millions of them.

I think there are several areas of study which could provide the antidote to this ignorance. Maybe many believers just do not read the Bible. Chris Hallquist is right. When asked after a debate which books he would recommend, he said, “read the Bible.” Why? Because it debunks itself. It contains the reflections of ancient superstitious and barbaric people. Christian, have you read the Old Testament? Have you read Judges 19-21, seen here (scroll down)? One of my goals here at DC is to help believers become biblically literate for this very reason.

Copeland talks about the Bible being the word of God, but has he done any study at all in the five stages of Gospel transmission (scroll down), or has he really wrestled with the Biblical inconsistencies? I didn’t think so.

I think Copeland should also look into the history of the church which demolishes evangelicalism. He should look into the history of theology too, and he can even read evangelical Roger E. Olson’s treatment of it, to see how theology has been fought over and changed through the years. He should look into how theologians down through the years have interpreted the Bible, by reading evangelical Donald K. McKim’s edited book, Historical Handbook of Major Biblical Interpreters. It’s simply ignorant of Copeland to be that cocksure of his particular theology and his particular interpretation of the Bible, even by the standard of better informed evangelical writers (who, by the way, do not draw the proper conclusions necessitated by their own studies, presuming as they do that they've finally got it right when they admit it's an ongoing and ever-changing venture).

Copeland should also try to understand the history of Christian ethics, by reading J. Philip Wogman’s book, Christian Ethics: A Historical Introduction (Westminister Press, 1993). Christian believers who claim they alone have a standard of ethics should go to the library and read that book. They don’t have one. There isn’t any evidence they do.

That’s enough for now. But I think Christianity will survive our attacks because of ignorance. It’s not because our arguments have been defeated. So I commit myself and hope other skeptics (and believers) will join me in stamping out ignorance. I'm not afraid of this. Are you?

Body Count Totals: Religion vs Atheism

Link. The author uses the term "theists" to refer to religious believers. This is interesting,

New Fossils Of Extremely Primitive 4-Legged Creatures Close The Gap Between Fish And Land Animals

ScienceDaily (June 27, 2008) — New exquisitely preserved fossils from Latvia cast light on a key event in our own evolutionary history, when our ancestors left the water and ventured onto land. Swedish researcher Per Ahlberg from Uppsala University and colleagues have reconstructed parts of the animal and explain the transformation in the new issue of Nature.

It has long been known that the first backboned land animals or "tetrapods" - the ancestors of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, including ourselves - evolved from a group of fishes about 370 million years ago during the Devonian period. However, even though scientists had discovered fossils of tetrapod-like fishes and fish-like tetrapods from this period, these were still rather different from each other and did not give a complete picture of the intermediate steps in the transition.

In 2006 the situation changed dramatically with the discovery of an almost perfectly intermediate fish-tetrapod, Tiktaalik, but even so a gap remained between this animal and the earliest true tetrapods (animals with limbs rather than paired fins). Now, new fossils of the extremely primitive tetrapod Ventastega from the Devonian of Latvia cast light on this key phase of the transition.

"Ventastega was first described from fragmentary material in 1994; since then, excavations have produced lots of new superbly preserved fossils, allowing us to reconstruct the whole head, shoulder girdle and part of the pelvis", says Professor Per Ahlberg at the Department of Physiology and Developmental Biology, Uppsala University.

The recontructions made by Professor Ahlberg and Assistant Professor Henning Blom together with British and Latvian colleagues show that Ventastega was more fish-like than any of its contemporaries, such as Acanthostega. The shape of its skull, and the pattern of teeth in its jaws, are neatly intermediate between those of Tiktaalik and Acanthostega.

"However, the shoulder girdle and pelvis are almost identical to those of Acanthostega, and the shoulder girdle is quite different from that of Tiktaalik (the pelvis of Tiktaalik is unknown), suggesting that the transformation from paired fins to limbs had already occurred. It appears that different parts of the body evolved at different speeds during the transition from water to land", says Per Ahlberg.



Above: This lower jaw with teeth is one of the new fossils of Ventastega found in Latvia. Photo: Ivars Zupins, Latvian Museum of Natural History. Below: Reconstruction of Ventastega in side view. With the help of new, superbly preserved fossils, Per Ahlberg and his colleagues have been able to reconstruct the whole head, shoulder girdle and part of the pelvis. The silhouette is based on fossils of one of its contemporaries, Acanthostega, Scale bar 10 cm. Picture: Per Ahlberg. (Credit: Image courtesy of Uppsala University)