In a private letter to his nephew Peter Carr, Jefferson offers some advice on how to study religion, which represents the OTF that I defend:
The first question is What do you mean by that? The second one is How do you know? Now let's apply this to the statement: Jesus died for our sins. What sense can we make of it? How can anyone know it's true?
Here's something that calls out for an explanation and no amount of Bible verses will help. What is the content of salvific faith (i.e. the kind of belief that saves a person)? What must someone believe to be saved? Simple? Not so fast. A child who confesses Jesus is lord is saved, right? I dare anyone to ask a ten year old what she thinks of Jesus, what it means to say he is lord, whether she thinks he is God, God-in-the-flesh, the 2nd person of the trinity, or a really really big guy, and so on and so forth. Ask her to define each of her words. Anyone can say "Jesus is lord" then. Does doing so save a person unless said person has the correct detailed theology that goes with it? There is no doubt in my mind that a child holds to heretical ideas when asked about them. OR, she's expressing words she has no clue as to their meaning. But if so, then there are surely professing Christians of all ages, probably most of them, who think they are saved but are not, and this could be........YOU! Since this must be the case if one is saved by faith, this is a barbaric way to base a person's salvation upon--that not only must believers express the right words but also have the proper understanding of them.
This is a distinction that makes a difference. It also makes a great deal of sense. Believers think that if their concept of God can explain the cosmos then automatically ipso facto they have arrived at the God they believe in, who acted in the world. Nope. Not by a long shot. For a god might explain the cosmos and yet not be Yahweh. And even if Yahweh is that god, he might not have raised Jesus from the dead. And even if Yahweh raised Jesus from the dead, he might not be the classical theistic God of Anselm.
Yahweh did not exist. He is much too tribal of a god, created the world in conflict with the sea God Rahab, married to Asherah, accepted child sacrifice, commanded genocide, forbid worship of all other gods (didn't deny their existence), and chose Israel like the others gods did to other nations.
[Written by John W. Loftus] A lot is made by Christian philosophers about their background "priors" when assessing the truth of Christian theism. Their claim is that with their particular "priors" they are warranted in concluding from those "priors" the evidence leads them to their faith. My claim is that they have the cart before the horse, big time, bad time.
Some things are hard to explain in a video, but Rhetorical Bullshit gives it a try:
This is both an entertaining and informative video:
See what you think below:
When did God create the Candiru parasite? And why didn't he tell us how to avoid it? Seems to me a good God who cared for us would at least tell us, don't you?
Ask some non-believing outsiders what they think of the so-called evidence for Christianity. Ask, oh, let's see where should I start, Muslims, Hindu's, Buddhists, Christian Scientists, witch doctors...
Calculate the conversion rates and get back to me. But there's more to it:
I am as certain that Christianity is false as Christians are that people are wasting time and money on cold fusion. [I know someone is trying to make headway in that field so don't get me wrong]. I am as certain that Christianity is false as I am that Scientology or Mormonism is false. If I'm risking hell you would think I must be sure of it, right?
We are all justifiably certain that some ideas and theories are wrong. It's easy to do. We merely conclude the case has not been made.
But these are not beliefs of mine. I am not affirming anything. I'm denying something. I deny the cases have been made. Some cases I have never even considered before, but tell me of them and I'll deny them without further thought. We all do this. So I am not doing anything out of the ordinary when I do so.
We abhor someone who is supposed to decide between two parties who also has a conflict of interest. That person could be a trustee of an estate, a judge, or a principal. We want a fair and impartial judgment. We want a fair ruling. So arguing against the Outsider Test for Faith is like arguing against a fair and impartial ruling. It is to argue against what is intuitively obvious to everyone else and consequently makes believers look very bad, because we abhor what they try to argue against. That is, even arguing against the OTF tells an outsider there is something badly wrong with the Christian faith. Good luck with that *cough*
To read some glowing blurbs see below. I heartily recommend it as well, having seen a digital pre-pub copy. A must read book!
offers a fascinating explanation of self-deception—how it works, the harm it can cause, and how we can overcome it.
, re-reading my favourite parts : and then it struck me - there really has been nothing worthy to refute any significant part of TCD since its publication! Within a few days after its release there were some blogs and general eye-rolling about how wrong you have it all and so on, and then - 
, I specialize in the Big Picture. This is true and it's no joke. I gather as much of the relevant material as a mortal can possibly muster and try to make sense of it. Confound it though, all of the Big Picture specialists seem to be gone. I'm a scholar about the Big Picture (i.e., the forest) just as many other specialists are scholars about one of the trees in the forest, or a species of trees. When it comes to the Christian faith, I'm a Big Picture specialist about all things Christian. My specialty is in Countering Christian Apologetics.