Neil Godfrey on "The Faith Trick"
Neil Godfrey asks why we need a middle man (or god) to do what we can do for ourselves. The answer? We don't. LINK.
My anthology is coming out in the Fall! To see the contents click here.
-Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine:
I thought I knew a lot on these topics—inasmuch as I was once a born-again Christian myself and made these arguments, then became a born-again Skeptic debating believers—but I learned more from reading this one book than all other works combined. The Case against Miracles belongs in every library and personal bookcase of both believers and skeptics.--Peter Boghossian, author of A Manual for Creating Atheists:
The Case Against Miracles is the most important anthology to ever be written about miracles.--Christian apologist Dr. Gary Habermas:
Christians need be aware of what non-Christian scholars are saying. In this thoughtful and stimulating volume, editor John Loftus brings together a number of the most accomplished atheists and other skeptics to deal with the crucial topic of miracles, an issue that is important on all sides.
The assorted contributors who provided essays for The Case Against Miracles offer a range of arguments—from the philosophical and intellectual to specific historic deconstructions—suggesting that miracles fly in the face of reason and should be met with credulity. They provide a wide survey of issues inherent in miraculous claims that will give any reader much to consider.
While some entries are stronger than others, The Case against Miracles represents a powerful critique of the miraculous. Its central arguments demand the attention of any serious defender of the Christian faith.--David Fitzgerald, author of Nailed, Jesus: Mything in Action, and The Complete Heretic's Guide to Western Religion series:
Every John W. Loftus book is a must-read; he continues to assemble some of the finest and most insightful minds in contemporary counter-apologetics. Putting biblical miracle claims under the magnifying lens, it weighs the evidence and finds them wanting. The Case against Miracles is a superb resource and a handy field guide for anyone forced to traipse through the treacherous jungles of the miraculous.Dr. David Madison:
The previous four Loftus anthologies have left little of Christianity intact. Of course, apologists continue to flail, but the case against miracles—so massively documented in this new 562-page book—wipes out all vestiges of this primitive, magical thinking.--Dan Barker Co-President of Freedom From Religion Foundation and author of Godless, Mere Morality, Free Will Explained, GOD: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction, and Life Driven Purpose:
This book is a secular miracle! An extremely rare event. There are hundreds of pro-miracle books, but when was the last time you saw a comprehensive anthology by such eloquent critics of miracles? For gathering this well-reasoned material into such an accessible volume, John Loftus should be canonized.--Karen L. Garst, PhD, Editor of Women Beyond Belief:
In this book much shorter than the Bible itself, Loftus has marshaled all the key arguments to prove that people should seriously doubt all religious miracle claims. It should be required reading in all seminaries.--Mark W. Gura, president of Atheist Alliance of America, author, and atheist activist:
The Case against Miracles is a must read go-to book for showing the key flaws in the arguments Christian apologists use to convince people that miracles are real. It covers the Old Testament and New Testament miracles, and everything from the alleged virgin birth, to Jesus’ mythic resurrection and the failures of Christian apologetics. It’s the best book ever written on miracles.
John Loftus’ The Case Against Miracles is a must read for anyone who truly and honestly wonders whether a miracle has ever occurred. Especially useful is its treatment of Craig Keener and his reports of the miraculous. Not only is the speciousness of Keener’s stories exposed, and the myriad faults of his investigate approach laid bare, but the details of how investigation into the miraculous must be approached is clearly articulated.
Labels: RG Price
Labels: RG Price
Labels: RG Price
In a book much shorter than the Bible itself, Loftus has marshalled all the key arguments to prove that people should seriously doubt all religious miracle claims. This book should be required reading in all seminaries.
Labels: Case against Miracles
In a shift that stands to impact both religion and politics, survey data suggests that the percentage of Americans who don’t affiliate with any specific religious tradition is now roughly the same as those who identify as evangelical or Catholic.
According to newly released General Social Survey data analyzed by Ryan P. Burge of Eastern Illinois University, Americans claiming “no religion” — sometimes referred to as “nones” because of how they answer the question “what is your religious tradition?” — now represent about 23.1 percent of the population, up from 21.6 percent in 2016. People claiming evangelicalism, by contrast, now represent 22.5 percent of Americans, a slight dip from 23.9 percent in 2016.
That makes the two groups statistically tied with Catholics (23 percent) as the largest religious — or nonreligious — groupings in the country.
“Nones have been on the march for a long time now,” Burge said. “It’s been a constant, steady increase for 20 years now. If the trend line kept up, we knew this was going to happen.” LINK.
The story that Evangelicals find so convincing and delicious is this: Strobel, a tough-as-nails atheist journalist and his atheist family are out to dinner when his daughter is saved from choking to death by an evangelical nurse who felt called by God to go to the restaurant that night. Strobel’s wife converts, and Strobel sets out to prove her wrong, using the same strategy that made him a fearsome investigative journalist. He lines up scholars and theologians and confronts them with the hardest possible questions about their faith—and comes away convinced that the Evangelical view of the Bible and Jesus is true. He accepts Jesus as his savior and proceeds to lay out those persuasive interviews in his book, which goes on, as I said, to become a religion best-seller.
The problem, according to author and religion critic David Fitzgerald (and others), is that key parts of this story are distorted at best and fabricated at worst.