I'm posthumously posting six chapters from an unfinished book sent to me for comment in 2008 by the late John Beversluis (see Tag below). The first chapter is the largest one by far at 10,809 words! It was sent to me in two parts so I mistakenly thought I had seven chapters.
There are five parts to it: 1. New Testament Criticism; 2. The Inspiration and Inerrancy of the Bible; 3. Verbal and Plenary Inspiration: A Semantic Nightmare; 4. What Inspiration Guarantees and Does Not Guarantee; and 5. Back to Thomas Paine. In this installment I'm posting parts 4-5. The "contemporary defenders" he criticizes are Norman Geisler and Josh McDowell.
I'm posthumously posting six chapters from an unfinished book sent to me for comment in 2008 by the late John Beversluis (see Tag below). The first chapter is the largest one by far at 10,809 words! It was sent to me in two parts so I mistakenly thought I had seven chapters.
There are five parts to it: 1. New Testament Criticism; 2. The Inspiration and Inerrancy of the Bible; 3. Verbal and Plenary Inspiration: A Semantic Nightmare; 4. What Inspiration Guarantees and Does Not Guarantee; and 5. Back to Thomas Paine. In this installment I'm posting parts 1-3. The "contemporary defenders" he criticizes are Norman Geisler and Josh McDowell.
[See the Tag below for my introduction to these series of posts]. When I looked again at the book files that the late John Beversluis sent me in 2008, he included a Preface, an Introduction, and not six but seven chapters. Here for the first time are his Preface and Introduction. What he wrote is as good as I remembered! It's also more timely today than it was thirteen years ago.
I was asked for books I might recommend that would fall into the category of "best arguments for God/Christianity" and "best arguments against Christianity." I was asked because "I know you read and analyze these books fairly often, so I want to see the best both sides have to offer." My response follows. You may be surprised by it!
Here is the biggest Christian obfuscation of them all about--you guessed it--faith. It's stated and destroyed in a few short back-and-forth Tweets!
Given some high profile atheists who have conservative right leaning moral and political positions I have to agree with this quote--seen below--even though I am still of the strong opinion that an atheist cannot justify these conservative right leaning positions from the adoption of science and reason, the very things leading reasonable atheists to non-belief in the first place.
Another way to think of it is to ask what atheists in the distant past might have concluded about these same moral and political positions, as well as what todays atheists in places like Iran, China, Africa, and South America might conclude.
Surely atheists have a wide diversity of opinions on everything except our agreement that there are probably no Supreme Being(s), gods, goddesses, demons, angels, or supernatural religions with their miracle claims.
That seems like a factual statement as far as I know.
Furthermore, even though I'm a Bernie Sanders progressive democrat and support everything he says, I'm not going to disassociate myself from any conservative right leaning atheist who has different views than me on moral and political positions, so long as they help me reach believers, my target audience. Discuss.