Our "Varieties of Jesus" anthology is in the house!
Labels: Jesus Mythicism
"God and Horrendous Suffering" is Now Available on Amazon!
"The most pressing challenge to belief in God today is undoubtedly the problem of pain. One only needs to read the provocative array of essays in this volume of leading atheists and other non-theists to see why this is such an ongoing problem for those of us who believe that God is real. Whatever one’s beliefs or worldview, and whether one agrees or disagrees, I commend all seekers of truth to read and reflect on this significant work that John Loftus has so skillfully edited. -- Dr. Chad Meister, Professor of Philosophy at Bethel University and co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil.
Labels: God and Horrendous Suffering
“On the Improbability of God”
Dangerous thoughts of a young seminarian
Only a few items survive in the dusty archives! That is, the paper trail from my eleven years of graduate work is meagre. Boston University School of Theology was my academic home, 1964-1975. There is, of course, my 250-page doctoral dissertation (typed on my manual typewriter), but I saved few of my other papers. One that I cherish the most is a 17-page essay titled, The Secrecy Motif in Mark’s Gospel, which received an “A”—and a glowing comment from the professor: “This represents a lot of careful work and thought, and I have learned much from it. An excellent paper.” What a nice boost for 24-year old me!
What is Bad Theology?
Is there such a thing as good theology?
“You shine with radiant light, in this circle of earthly existence. You shine so finely, it surpasses understanding. God hugs you. You are encircled by the arms of the mystery of God.” St. Hildegard of Birgen, 1098-1179
“If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better you to enter life maimed or lame than to have two hands or feet and be thrown into the eternal fire.”
Jesus, Matthew 18:8
“Religion is all bunk.” Thomas Edison
The New York Times, 17 September 1994, in its Religious Notes column by David Gonzales, reported on the preparations for a college debate that would soon take place between a Hunter College team, and one from England touring the U.S. at the time. The topic: Is the world better off with religion?
I couldn’t resist saving the clipping, because I’m always on the lookout for examples of bad theology innocently stated. Mr. Gonzales introduced his readers to one of the debaters, 28-year old Daniel Mallon Durante, who was preparing to make the case that the world is better with religion. But the young Durante had been a “self-styled rebel, who went from school to pool hall and on to jobs as locksmith, plumber and printer before enrolling in college.” He had returned to his Brooklyn parish to find God, under the tutelage of Father James Zona. The rebel had been tamed: “Talking and praying with him, Father Zona helped him develop a deep and personal faith…”
"Varieties of Jesus Mythicism" Now Available in Paperback!
You Can Order My Anthology "God and Horrendous Suffering" Now!
Labels: God and Horrendous Suffering
The Bad Theology of Favorite Bible Verses
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see…” These words were written by Anglican clergyman John Newton in 1772. About the same time these words were also written: “There is balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole; there's power enough in heaven, to cure a sin-sick soul.” To be saved and cured: one of the most common claims about religion is that it brings comfort. Atheists are sometimes accused of insensitivity: why are we trying to destroy this source of comfort? People count on their religion to get them through the day, but they’ve been prompted in this hope by bad theology: The church has pushed the idea that, in our natural state, we are wretched and sin-sick.
"Varieties of Jesus Mythicism: Did He Even Exist?" Now Available for Pre-Order!
My Diplomas, MA Thesis & Ordination
The Fallibility of First Principles
The Fallibility of First Principles, by Gunther Laird (gunther.laird@gmail.com)
The late Norman Geisler was one of the most popular proponents of Evangelical Christianity, wedding Calvinistic argumentation with technical concepts drawn from the Catholic philosopher Thomas Aquinas.[1] His son David Geisler continues his work, and recently contacted John W. Loftus with a syllogism for God’s existence Norman had made in the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. David asked my editor if he had “any atheistic friends that would be willing to critique this more comprehensive argument for God’s existence and explain what’s wrong with it,” and I was one such friend, so John contacted me.
What follows is a brief critique of the entry “First Principles” in the Encyclopedia, which David copied verbatim in his email to John. The entry is quite substantive, as Norman Geisler provided very detailed descriptions of a variety of first principles, such as the Principle of Noncontradiction, the Principle of Causality, and the Principle of Contingency, and explains why they cannot be coherently denied under any circumstances.
What to Do When You Disagree with Jesus?
Priests and preachers sweep so much under the rug
We are so used to easy access to the Bible it’s easy to forget that for most of Christian history the laity did not have the Bible. That became possible in the wake of the invention of the printing press in 1450, and the move in the following century to translate the Bible into the languages spoken by the laity. So for well over a thousand years the church got people to believe what it wanted them to believe about Jesus. It sold an idealized Jesus based primarily on Paul’s hallucinations of a resurrected Jesus who ruled in heavenly realms. During this long dark age of Bible ignorance, the laity learned the story of their lord through great works of art, stunning stained-glass renderings, and the word spoken from pulpits.
Win Corduan & Bart Ehrman Agree, Objective Evidence is Problematic
This isn't the real issue though, even if he's right. For the real issue concerns concrete claims like a virgin birthed son of a god. Those kinds of claims require objective evidence for them, since they're extraordinary claims of the highest order concerning events that are impossible to occur on their own within the natural world, based on everything we know about how the world works. So it doesn't matter if there's a point at which objective and subjective claims converge, even though I doubt that they do. Sure, I would see no reason to doubt Win's claim of pain since it's not an extraordinary one. But I cannot objectively feel his pain either. So I would have no way to conclusively test whether he's lying, without some objective evidence coming from a heart monitor or brain scan.
The real reason Win is addressing such a question is because there's no objective evidence for any of the miracle assertions in the Bible. Sorry if that's the case Win, but that's the case. Sorry if it ends your philosophical discussion Win, but it ends it. It could have turned out differently if there was a god who had the foresight to provide objective evidence for biblical miracles, Win. But your god didn't do that.
How Do You Get to Live Forever with Jesus in the Sky?
I occasionally see this meme on Facebook, with attribution to Mark Twain: “Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool.” But this is probably wrong on three counts: (1) I have never been able to verify it as a Twain quote; (2) the first priests—those who stood out from the rest of their clans as possessing connections to the gods—probably were not con artists; (3) and the people who believed them sensed that the connection was genuine. Of course the time would come when con men took over—these days televangelists come to mind especially.
"God and Horrendous Suffering" Available November 15th!
The Atlantic: "The Evangelical Church is Breaking Up!"
Does God Care as Much About the Bible as Christians Do?
Or was it incompetent divine oversight?
When did God stop caring about the Bible? No, it’s not a silly question. Many Christians are so sure that God guided the thoughts—and the pens—of the Bible authors, especially those who wrote the gospels and epistles: they got God’s truth right. But what an embarrassment: we don’t have what they wrote. All of the original manuscripts of the New Testament books were lost. The earliest scrap of a gospel—a few verses of John 18—dates early-to-mid second century. There are scholars who devote their careers to comparing ancient manuscripts, trying to figure out the wording of the original texts. The sloppy, haphazard coping process—by hand—went on for centuries. The scribes made thousands of errors. God couldn’t be bothered to protect and preserve the original documents? That wasn’t within his power? Fundamentalist theologians insist that the original manuscripts were without error: God’s perfect word. Even for them there’s just no denying that so many mistakes were made in the copying process. But their claim that the originals were perfect cannot be sustained.
My Very Last Book is About to Drop! It's Over. It's Done. It is Finished!
GCRR is set to release "God and Horrendous Suffering" early in November.
Hypatia Press says they're releasing "Varieties of Jesus Mythicism" early in December.
They can both lay claim to the title of last book, if this plays itself out. That's because "God and Horrendous Suffering" was the very last book I submitted for publication, no matter which one is released last!
I actually like that the mythicist book is to come out near Xmas, since people looking for books at that time might be drawn to its cover of an empty manger!
I also like it since the question of Jesus mythicism was one I avoided in order not to offend Christian believers in my early years. So it's good if it comes out last.
In my books I've said all I need to say on every important topic related to Christianity. That's all I can do. It should be enough for one person, even though the debate will continue. I must now live life to its fullest, love, laugh, sing, and dance.
Why Did A Good God Create Gunpowder & Allow Us to Discover It?
Accidental Scripture, Inferior Preaching
The dubious choice of a crazy person as apostle
Come on now, be honest, if your neighbor announced that he is heading off on a business trip “because I had a revelation from God that I have to go”: would you be impressed by his direct line to God—or would you be tempted to ask if he’d skipped his meds? Maybe the pope receives these kinds of messages—so the faithful hope—but your neighbor? Sometimes noisy televangelists boast that they’re passing on orders from God, but aside from their gullible followers, who believes them? Recently Lauren Boebert shouted to an enthusiastic crowd that God had told her to run for congress. We are alarmed by delusions in high places.
My New Book Cover!
Labels: God and Horrendous Suffering
Christian “Truth” in Shreds: Epic Takedown 5
The weak, vulnerable Christian foundations
In 1935, a professor of Christian history at the
Sorbonne, Charles Guignebert, published a book titled simply, Jesus. I still have the worn copy that I read in college. In it he summed up the problem that has plagued New Testament scholarship for generations: “It was not the essence of Jesus that interested the authors of our gospels, it was the essence of Christ, as their faith pictured him. They are exclusively interested, not in reporting what they know, but in proving what they believe.” He also observed: "The Gospels are propaganda writings, intended to organize and authenticate. . .the legend represented in the sacred drama of the sect and to match it to the customs of the mythology of the time." Wikipedia describes Guignebert as “...one of the first French historians who approached this subject in a scientific way and not confessional.”
Early Christianity According to Lucian
Mission Impossible: Defending the Resurrection
“...Christian preaching is empty...”
Careful, thorough study of Christianity’s ancient context provides an “Ah ha!” or “Uh oh” moment, depending on your perspective. For those who don’t accept Christian claims about its holy origins, it’s the former; for the devout, it’s the latter. The problem, of course, is that reality-based thinking about Christian origins doesn’t commonly trickle down to the folks in the pews, so they haven’t caught up with the news: the idea that Easter morning proves Christianity has been fatally wounded. Richard Carrier’s comprehensive essay, Dying-and-Rising Gods: It’s Pagan Guys. Get Over It provides the “Ah ha!’ moment for skeptics: dying-and-rising gods were celebrated by other cults in the ancient world. As Carrier has said, “Jesus was late to the party.”
Real Atheology Wonders if Philosophy, Not Science, Is the Very Paradigm of Rationality
First off, it seems more than a bit arrogant to claim to be the real deal in atheist philosophy (Real Atheology, RA), but then there's nothing that can be done about that adopted name now. Nonetheless, on Twitter RA Tweeted this excerpt and asked, "Don't know where this is from, but thoughts on this?" If it were me I'd like to know where it came from, and I certainly wouldn't put something like this out there unless I thought it had some merit. Turns out it was written by Catholic apologist Edward Feser denouncing the boogyman "scientism" which we've written about before. About scientism I merely say that when it comes to the nature of nature, its regularities, and its origins, science is the only way to gain the truth. What other alternative is there?
It's disheartening that some thoughtful atheists think what Feser said is worthy of consideration. But this isn't the only time RA puts science and objective evidence in the back. They also highly recommended an essay where they agree with Christian apologist Matthew Flannagan that atheist Graham Oppy "repudiates evidentialism." They're reading and listening to the WRONG PEOPLE! I doubt very much that Graham Oppy "repudiates evidentialism" even if he may repudiate the verfification principle(s) whereby only propositions that have evidence for them are meaningful. Ask him. He should weigh in on this issue. Evidence, objective evidence, is paramount. Otherwise we are building ivory castles in the sky where the ONLY thing that matters in consistency.
When it come to philosophy almost everyone gets it wrong. Let me explain...
Dead Giveaways that Christianity Is False
The damage is right there in the Bible
Christian apologists—theologians, preachers, priests, Sunday School teachers—work so hard to explain away the big goofs in the Bible, which are not hard to spot. Why not just trim the Bible? Thomas Jefferson did that with the gospels, but traditions about the holiness of the Bible are firmly entrenched. Even so, can’t a committee of distinguished theologians and church officials get together to pray hard for divine inspiration about what actually should be in the holy text? Then they could announce the results and issue God’s Updated Bible.
A few obvious deletions come to mind, e.g., Luke’s Jesus script (14:26) that hatred of family and life are requirements for following him; Matthew’s claim that lots of dead people walked around Jerusalem on Easter morning (Matthew 27:52-53); the list of new Christian skills the resurrected Jesus announced in Mark 16:17-18 (e.g., drinking poison, handling snakes, casting out demons)—after all, we know this last one is in the fake ending of the gospel. So there’s a lot of cleaning up for the God’s Updated Bible committee to do.
Summary of my anthology "God and Horrendous Suffering"
The chapters in this book combine to show that it’s exceedingly improbable to the point of refutation for the god of Orthodox Theism to exist. The main problem is an evidential one regarding horrendous suffering. A perfectly good god would be opposed to it, an all-powerful god would be capable of eliminating it, and an all-knowing god would know what to do about it. So the existence of horrendous suffering in our world leads us to think god is either not powerful enough to eliminate it, or does not care enough to eliminate it, or is just not smart enough to know what to do about it.
It also addresses other issues such as the lack of objective evidence for miracles, the absurdity of theistic myths, the relationship of horrendous suffering to differing theologies and religious faiths, the horrendous nature of the biblical god, the horrendous actions done because of religious faith, and how these considerations can personally lead reasonable people away from religion. The authors discuss this issue philosophically, theologically, apologetically, biblically, religiously, historically, and personally. It’s an excellent model for how philosophers, apologists, and theologians should’ve been discussing this problem decades ago.
Labels: God and Horrendous Suffering
Seth Andrews Interviews David Madison About the New Book
Posted by David Madison, PhD Biblical Studies
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What Would Debates About Christianity Look Like If We Cut to the Chase?
Thank you for reading and for your support! We think you'll find a perspective here that you don't usually find elsewhere. Never miss out on future posts by becoming a follower. To make a donation of any size please click here. If you buy anything on Amazon [US] through this link it provides a kickback at no cost to you. Thanks again!
Phil Zuckerman's Book, "What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life"
Rule Number One for Bible Reading: Question Everything
Curiosity is the cure for faith
“Where did this story come from?” “Where did the author find his information?” “Why did the translator add a footnote?” “Does this story deserve to be in sacred scripture?” Question everything. But maybe this kind of curiosity is too much work, and it undermines the intent of those who promote the Bible as the indispensible foundation for faith. They want you to inhale, to soak in the spiritual meaning that every Bible chapter provides. But when we question everything, it turns out that spiritual meaning is often absent. Or contrived. Religious bureaucrats have tried too hard. A lot of folks have turned away from the faith because there is so much in the Bible that is worthless—or at least trends toward that end of the spectrum.
Evidence Abounds against the Importance of the Philosophy of Religion
Labels: Real Atheology
Dr. Kip Davis Concerning Josh McDowell's Dishonest Conversion Story
Christian “Truth” in Shreds: Epic Takedown 4
“…helping humanity wean itself off of the Bible…”
“Bibliolatry is the worship of a book, idolatrous homage to a book, or the deifying of a book. It is a form of idolatry. The sacred texts of some religions disallow icon worship, but over time the texts themselves are treated as sacred the way idols are, and believers may end up effectively worshipping the book.” So says Wikipedia, and adds that, “Historically, Christianity has never endorsed worship of the Bible, reserving worship for God.” I suspect this is just flat-out wrong.
Phil Bair On Extraordinary Evidence For Miracles
Phil Bair was suggested by James K. Walker to debate me. Walker is a Christian apologist and former Mormon who is President at Watchman Fellowship. I hadn't heard of Phil before. But he seems smart enough. Anyone who has read my anthology on miracles and still disagrees gets my attention.
Phil offered two objections to my defense of the aphorism, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
ONE) Phil Bair: “You have no criteria for identifying what qualifies as extraordinary evidence for an extraordinary claim.” My response:
Labels: Case against Miracles, Phil Bair
Peter Boghossian Got Fed Up So He Quit!
He has been a great encourager of what I do. He has invited me into his atheism class via Skype and Zoom to talk with his students. He wrote a fantastic chapter in my anthology Christianity is Not Great and some blurbs for a few of my books, most notably the one on miracles, and my last one on horrendous suffering. He is truly a gadfly just like Socrates. I wish him all the best. If he does nothing else he has changed the world. But I suspect he's not done yet.
Labels: Peter Boghossian
Where Was God When This Happened? Part 18
The scandal of divine incompetence
In the face of massive human and animal suffering, Christian apologists offer tired clichés:
· God works in mysterious ways
· God has a larger plan that we cannot see or know about
· To preserve our free will, God chooses not to interfere
Yet no hard evidence is offered to back up these speculations to exonerate God. They are mediocre theological responses to crises in the real world.
In fact, Christian theology itself undermines any credible concept of a good, competent God. God is watching carefully, i.e., Christianity is totalitarian monotheism.
Nothing we do escapes his notice: “I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” Matthew 12:36-37
Moreover, prayer works because God can even read our minds. Christians believe in, love, worship, and sing songs to this God who pays such close attention to every human being.
Bad, Mediocre, Alarming Jesus Quotes
Here is my interview with Clint Heacock of the MindShift Podcast, about my new book, Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words. I hope to reach a wide audience of Christians, urging them to honestly face the many sayings of Jesus they simply ignore. In the book’s Introduction, I state my agenda:
“I’m calling out a silent rebellion by followers of Jesus—including many of his most devout disciples—against some of his key teachings. One characteristic of these teachings is that if they were uttered by anyone other than Jesus, these same believers would reject them immediately and openly, instead of pretending they must mean something else or are too mysterious to grasp.”
The book’s website includes the Table of Contents and a chart of 292 Jesus quotes that fall into four categories. (1) Preaching about the end times; (2) scary extremism; (3) bad advice and bad theology; (4) the unreal Jesus of John’s gospel.
Posted by David Madison, PhD Biblical Studies
John Beversluis, "The Gospel According to Whom? A Nonbeliever Looks at The New Testament and its Contemporary Defenders" 6
Labels: John Beversluis
God in Hiding
Supreme Creepiness
Unteachable Christians Come Out of the Woodwork
Glimpses of Arrogant, Aggressive Ignorance
"Send Proof" To Hit Theatres in September!
Texas's Abortion Law and the Original Meaning of the Constitution
My brother and Me |
With the Deviousness of the Texas's Abortion Law the
Texas GOP theocrats have effectively found a way to gut Roe v. Wade, and it's
disgustingly appalling to me.
I was talking with my
older brother this past weekend who said Trump's nominees to the Supreme Court
were the best actions of this twice impeached one term past President. He
said the nine Justices ought to make their decisions based on the
original intent of the Constitution. This should be the main qualification for
Supreme Court Justices, since they are not part of the legislative branch of
the government.
We disagreed. Let me explain why originalism is a misleading misinformed bogeyman of conservatives.