my defense against Christians who criticize the "new atheism"

I posted the following over at a patheos blog, see here:

Hold on, this is waiting to be approved by Cranach.Not seeing the purpose of this piece. The evidence for Jesus resurrection is horrifically weak, and I say this after critically examining the works of Licona, Habermas and W.C. Craig. Paul said if Jesus did not rise from the dead, he is still in his sins, and is a false witness. 

The fact that you can find a certain crazy subgroup among your opponents, does precisely nothing to hurt the argument of your opponents, otherwise, an atheist could conclude Christianity is false, because the idiots who play with snakes in their churches are clearly stupid. 

I'm an atheist. I agree with most Christians that the "new atheists" are more concerned about flaming and rhetoric than argument. But I'm not seeing how the errors of "new atheism" somehow beat down normative atheism, anymore than the errors of KJV Onlyism somehow beat down normative Christianity. 

You are not surviving skeptical attacks on the resurrection of Jesus (Christianity's essential doctrine) by pointing to the errors of "new" atheists. You need to worry about the atheists who trounce your faith, and can do it without resorting to brouhaha and political rhetoric.
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my challenge to the flat earthers

The average person, not having a college education in astronomy or geology, would likely find some flat-earth arguments "interesting". 

Exactly how much could you say about the coriolis-effect before researching it more than you already have? 

Exactly how much could you say, right now, without doing any further research that you ever did previously, about the inverse-square law?

See what I mean?

You would figure that the multitude of NASA space photos that show

a) earth where Brazil is seen in the center, and
b) earth where the north or south pole is seen in the center

.would convince flat earthers to change their mind, since the only way both such photos can be surrounded by a circular shaped earth is is for the earth to be circular all over (i.e., it is a sphere).  But no, they insist NASA photoshops all such images before daring to release them to the public.

You might wonder how some flat-earthers explain why it is that we can continuously fly from north to south and from east to west without ever encountering an ice-wall or going into outer space. 

What's east of New York?  Iraq.  What's east of Iraq?  China.  What's east of China?  Japan.  What's east of Japan?  Pacific Ocean, then Hawaii, California, and eventually New York again.  That is, you can travel in an easterly direction continuously and never once hit an "ice-wall" or perimeter you simply keep going until you arrive at the next place on the map, exactly as you would if the earth were a globe.

Nesbit says it's because when you travel too far into the ice-perimeter of the flat-earth, there is a time-warp that causes you to suddenly reappear at the opposite end of the earth.  See here.

Gee, you prop up your theory with a time-warp...then you chide everybody else for explaining the earth in ways that involve less mystery?  What's more absurd, space warps, or global shaped earth?

I haven't had the time to google every possible phrase that might provide a search hit showing somebody already thought of this, so here's my challenge to the flat earthers:

First, civilians are capable of launching a rocket high enough to see the shape of earth.  See here.
See lesser attempt of less financially funded persons such as a flat earther rocket launch here.

I see no reason why the Flat Earth Societies cannot pool their resources in the effort to conduct such a launch that would therefore be the "acid test". The rocket need not be very expensive, it is designed to do absolutely nothing but go up only as high as necessary for the entire circumference of earth to be seen..

Second, everybody except flat earthers agree that Brazil is at the "equator" of a spherical earth.

Third, get two such rockets.  Mount downward facing cameras on them, have them live-stream capable.

Fourth, set up the first rocket at the place us conspiracy theorists call the North Pole.  Set up the second rocket in some coastal city in Brazil, like Rio de Janeiro, so that when the rocket falls back to earth it will land safely in the sea instead of on land.

Fifth, stream the video to youtube, to make sure the raw unedited video is recorded by millions of people at the same time it is being streamed, as opposed to simply uploading the videos after they have been recorded and possibly subject to editing, which you know goddamn well will be what everybody says if you don't supply the video until later.  Think of how distrusting YOU are of NASA's space photos.

Sixth, launch the rockets at the same time, on a reasonably clear day.  The constant overcast skies of the north pole are irrelevant, if the rocket gets high enough, it's camera will show the entire earth, whether the portion directly below it is cloudy or not. 

Such a camera recording could also be obtained via high-altitude weather balloon, which .  See here and here.  Such weather ballooning has been the craze for some time and can be done for less than $1000.  See here.

If flat earth theory is true, only the Brazil-camera (i.e., the one furthest away from the ice-perimeter which flat earthers say the edge of the earth is composed of) will show earth to be a full circle.  The camera facing down on the North Pole rocket would, if flat-earth theory be true, not show a full circle.

Otherwise, if both videos show a  fully circular shape of earth, it would be perfectly reasonable to deduce that earth is shaped like a globe.  How would flat earthers explain a fully circular earth shape on the video recorded from the North Pole or what they believe is the "edge" of earth?  Is the edge of the earth fully circular when seen from above?  LOL.

With all the effort various flat earth societies put into debunking the spherical earth, this challenge would probably cost less than $25,000 in total costs to run, and is not asking too much.

My virgin-birth rebuttal at Patheos

A Catholic blogger wrote a piece on the questionable historicity of the nativity stories.  See here.

I posted the following reply:

barry • a few seconds from nowHold on, this is waiting to be approved by messyinspirations.First, Since the apostles would have been babies at best when the events of Jesus' virgin birth and childhood took place, and because nobody ever dared allege that Mary or Joseph wrote any of the 4 canonical gospels, an assumption of apostolic authorship of the gospels necessarily reduces the nativity stories to hearsay. It doesn't matter if we grant the assumption that Matthew and Luke conducted interviews with Mary and Joseph. The person giving us the facts is not somebody with personal first-hand knowledge, therefore, the nativity stories cannot be anything other than "hearsay".
 Second, skeptics cannot be considered unreasonable for adopting a position also adopted by most Christian scholars; that Mark is the earliest gospel. If the other three gospels came later, then it is reasonable to infer that the reason only two of the later gospels mention the virgin birth is because they are embellishing the earlier story. We naturally expect that between the earliest and later forms of the same story, the latter is more likely the one to contain the embellishments. That simple common sense is not going to disappear merely because the necessary ambiguity and non-absolute nature of the historical evidence enables a fundamentalist apologist to conjure up trifling excuses all day long about why Mark and everybody believed in the virgin birth and simply "didn't wish to repeat it".
 Third, nobody seriously claims that Jesus was referring to actual historical events when giving his parables. So it is also reasonable to deduce that the gospel authors found Jesus' use of fiction-to-support-theology useful and good when applied elsewhere, so that getting people to believe in high Christology was more important than whether the stories intended to facilitate such belief were actually true. It is not true that a stranger will necessarily kidnap your kids...but then again, you create far more good and family safety/cohesion if you just teach your small child 'stranger-danger'. The higher good of family safety trumps the idiot who trifles that "stranger-danger" isn't necessarily true. For that reason, it is reasonable to assume that the gospel authors would have found getting a person to believe the way the authors did, far more important than whether the "facts" that such faith was predicted upon were actually true. That's rather stupid under modern western notions of truth, but we are talking 1st century Palestine, where people 14 years after the fact will swear they saw heaven despite continuing to be unable to tell whether their flying into the sky was physical or spiritual (2nd Cor. 12:1-4). Fundamentalists probably think the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy was written by Moses in 1400 b.c.
 Fourth, fundamentalists have a nasty habit of automatically concluding that if they can think of any non-contradictory "how-it-could-have-been" bare possibility scenario in favor the historicity of the nativity stories, then presto, that bare possibility necessarily and conclusively trumps any possibility set forth by a skeptic. That is inaccurate and irrational: In 20 years of attacking the gospels, I've seen plenty of fundamentalist defenses of the nativity stories. I think TWO of them attempted to show that historicity was more likely than embellishment. once again, nobody wins a historiography debate by merely showing the way they believe does not involve logical contradiction or is founded upon mere possibilities. The person who wins the historical debate is the person who shows that their theory is more likely to be true than the theory they disagree with. Sure, its possible Mark knew of and approved of the virgin birth stories but chose for his own reasons to avoid mentioning them, but that's only a possibility. You will have to show that this is more likely than the skeptical theory that says Mark, with his goal to prove Jesus was the divine son of God, would never "choose to excude" nativity stories that support his intended theme often more powerfully than the pericopes he DID choose to record.
 Fifth, I have formed particularized rebuttals to the particular arguments of Licona, Habermas and W.C.Craig in favor of the resurrection, and if it be reasonable to conclude Jesus did not rise from the dead, then under apostle Paul's logic, we are also reasonable to conclude Christians are false witnesses who are still in their sins (1st Cor. 15:15-17), which, makes it reasonable to deduce that Christians are then under YHWH's death penalty even if we granted that they did genuinely supernatural miracles (Deuteronomy 13:1-5). Since YHWH doesn't think the doing of a miracle automatically infuses the theology taught therein with divine approval, then it doesn't matter if we grant the miracle of Jesus' virgin birth for the sake of argument, we'd still have to ask whether Jesus taught in harmony with the Law. 2,000 years of Jewish opposition to Christianity might have a tendency to render skeptics "reasonable" even if not "infallible" in attacking Christianity.
 Sixth, fundamentalists don't merely claim skeptics are "wrong", they also say we are "fools" or "unreasonable" to deny the historicity of the virgin birth narratives. That being the case, if we wish to disprove their contention, we don't have to prove that the skeptical position is "correct", we only have to prove that the skeptical position is "reasonable". If the fundies can become 'reasonable' by merely positing possibilities, they must extend that luxury to skeptics and concede that skeptical possibilities render the skeptic reasonable.
 Seventh, the biggest problem here is the stupid fundamentalist who is always casting bible inerrancy in terms of accuracy. That is, since Jesus was either virgin born or he wasn't, we should expect the historical evidence to show that he was, or show that he wasn't. This is stupid: Jesus was born 2,000 years ago, and the records of such birth are similarly 1,950 years old. Any historian will tell you that you don't answer questions of ancient history in terms of accuracy, you only answer them in terms of probability. How LIKELY is it that the nativity stories are true? How LIKELY is it that the nativity stories are embellishment?
 Eighth, if any fundamentalist thinks Matthew was written to both Christian and non-Christian Jews, that gives you a pretty good idea of how anti-intellectual Matthew was: he expected non-Christian Jews to be persuaded Jesus was virgin born...because of a story...a story that, given Matthew's likely 60 a.d. date of publication, is thus a story that comes to those non-Christian Jews 30 years after the fact. Think legends take at least a full generation to materialize? Think again, read Acts 21:18-24. And most Christian scholars including Licona and Craig Evans admit that Matthew and John engaged in "artistry" and either invented history or placed historical events in a time that they didn't actually occur, so that there is plenty of scholarly justification to say that the gospel authors' concerns for accuracy were not quite as fanatical as those of modern fundamentalists.

Synoptic Problem # 1: Matthew's dishonest fabrication of Christ-sayings

One of the synoptic parallels seems to naturally resist attempts by inerrantists to explain it away as a case of an author's right to exclude something:

Mark 8

Matthew 16

27 Jesus went out, along with His disciples, to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way He questioned His disciples, saying to them,   "Who do people say that I am?"  28 They told Him, saying, "John the Baptist; and others say Elijah; but others, one of the prophets."  29 And He continued by questioning them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered and said to Him, "You are the Christ."     30 And He warned them to tell no one about Him.

13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He was asking His disciples,  "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"  14 And they said, "Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets."  15 He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"  16 Simon Peter answered,  "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."  17 And Jesus said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.  18 "I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.  19 "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven."  20 Then He warned the disciples that they should tell no one that He was the Christ.

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The context for each is identical, so this is certainly not Jesus talking similarly on two separate occasions, this is one singular event being reported by two different authors.

What's more likely?  That Mark knew Peter uttered the longer form of the confession, but knowingly "chose to abbreviate it?  Or that Mark's version of the confession is shorter because the author didn't know about any longer version?  

What is more likely?  Mark knew that Jesus said all that extra stuff about Peter, but "chose to exclude" such profoundly important authority-establishing Christ-sayings, for his own "authorial purpose"?  or

Mark doesn't relate as much as Matthew because Mark had no reason to think Jesus said the things now confined to Matthew's version?

Such a debate involves probability judgments on how close Mark was to Peter, and whether Peter, as a leader, would likely or not likely have considered such a glowing personal endorsement from God-incarnate important enough to preserve and articulate in his preaching tours.

Dr. William Barrick wrote an article in which he tried to explain this as a case of Matthew accurately reporting, and Mark choosing for his own reasons to create a more "abbreviated" account.  See here.

I sent Dr. Barrick the following through his website contact form, which included my email address:

I read your explanation of the synoptic differences on Peter's confession at https://drbarrick.org/the-synoptic-gospels-inerrancy-what-did-peter-say/ 

Since the more expanded version in Matthew supports Peter's authority, and since the apostolic church was divided on Peter's authority (1st Cor. 1:12) can you really say it is "unreasonable" to insist that Mark would never have knowingly excluded such words from his account...and therefore...Mark is not excluding anything, Matthew is guilty of putting in Jesus' mouth words he never spoke?
 I accept Markan priority, and isn't it true that embellishments are more likely to show up in the later retellings, than in the original?
 While my theory might attack inerrancy or gospel reliability, I can't sympathize with that concern since I deny both doctrines.  I deny them because
 a) I feel certain biblical errors are real and not merely apparent; 

b) the bible doesn't teach the "only in the originals" inerrancy-caveat of the CSBI statement, so the specter of the bible extending inspiration or inerrancy to "copies" (i.e., the bible contradicting the CSBI) looms large;  and 

c) the vast majority of conservative Christian scholars accuse Matthew of "toning down" some expressions he copied from Mark...something he would hardly do if he felt Mark's gospel was "inerrant".

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

I will wait to see if Dr. Barrick replies.  For now, I'm not seeing any academic or objective justification for the inerrantist to automatically assume that Mark knowingly excluded otherwise important theology merely because such is "possible".

I don't claim the inerrantist theories are impossible, so you are not "defeating" any opposing hypothesis merely because your own theory is "possible".

You are also not "defeating" any opposing hypothesis merely because you can drum up a few supporting evidences for your theory.  You'd have to extend that luxury to anybody whose counter-theory had some supporting evidences, and then you'd endure the illogical outcome that both parties "won" that debate.

What actually happened in ancient history is not determined by mere possibilities, otherwise, both sides of every historical debate would 'win', which is illogical.

What actually happened in ancient history is determined by probabilities (i.e., whose theory to explain the evidence is more probable, or, can both theories boast of equal likelihood?).

That being the case, the Christian apologist is not "defeating" my above-stated theory by simply pointing out that his own counter-theory can be "supported".  Very few positions on biblical matters are without at least some support. No fool thinks all scholars win every biblical debate.

You need to show that your inerrantist-theory is more likely to be true than my skeptical theory that says Matthew invented the longer version.

While I expect apologists to be honest and engage with me in argument, I also expect James Patrick Holding to deceive his followers into thinking a 2 minute cartoon video that feeds his narcissistic lust will conclusively dispose of this allegation of error in the bible.  Yes, that is his idea of "rebuttal".

 "You are wrong, here's the reasons, you could not possibly have any significant rejoinder, so, discussion closed to everybody except those whose comments I choose not to delete."

Doesn't your heart just race with fear at the very thought of disagreeing with such a fearless warrior?  I can barely type, I'm shaking so bad.  LOL

Always remember:  it wouldn't even matter if you the skeptic conceded the miracle of Jesus' resurrection for the sake of argument:  the god of the Christians does not think a person's working a genuinely supernatural miracle automatically justifies their theology, a worker of real miracles can STILL be condemned by God for promoting false theology:

 1 "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, 2 and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,'
 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
 4 "You shall follow the LORD your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.
 5 "But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the LORD your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you.
 (Deut. 13:1-5 NAU)

So, obviously, the bible-god disagrees with modern loud-mouth Christian apologists like Frank Turek who insist that if Jesus truly rose from the dead, this miracle automatically proves he is the true Son of God.

Atheism is not inconsistent with the scientific method

Triablogue, never tiring in its quest to prove that all things non-Christian are just so much crazy nonsense, links to an article (here, here)  saying atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method.  The physicist in question is Marcelo Gleiser.

I now respond to the relevant portion of that article.  Genereally, Gleiser does a liberal tap dance, and spends no time whatsoever showing any contrast being basic atheism and the scientific method.  Instead, he notes that some atheists are too extreme and end up embracing scientism.  Let's just say I didn't start shaking with nervousness because the guy attacking atheism was a "prizewinning physicist".  However, I noted that by putting "prizewinning physicist" into the title of the article, the author correctly believed it would hook a lot of people who routinely and happily commit the argument-from-authority fallacy.

Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method, Prizewinning Physicist Says

Then there is nothing to debate, because all statements from prizewinning physicists are by logical necessity self-evidently true.  Did you notice how I pissed myself with worry upon reading the title to that article?

Why are you against atheism?
I honestly think atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method. What I mean by that is, what is atheism? It’s a statement, a categorical statement that expresses belief in nonbelief. “I don’t believe even though I have no evidence for or against, simply I don’t believe.” Period. It’s a declaration.

First, I attack the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus by critiquing the arguments from Mike Licona, Gary Habermas and William Lane Craig.  Paul admitted that to falsify Christianity was to turn Christians into false witnesses (1st Corinthians 15:15).  If those arguments are successful, the best the Christian could do to save face would be to invoke the YHWH of the OT (i.e., just because Jesus didn't rise from the dead doesn't mean there's no god). 

That's correct.  But if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, that turns Jesus and Paul into "false witnesses".  Assuming the true god does not inspire falsehood, then the OT YHWH must be presumed to view Christianity as heresy.  Even assuming Jesus and Paul worked genuinely supernatural miracles, the OT still condemns them to the death penalty:

1 "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, 2 and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,' 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
 4 "You shall follow the LORD your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.
 5 "But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the LORD your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you. (Deut. 13:1-5 NAU)

 18 'I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.
 19 'It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him.
 20 'But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.'
 21 "You may say in your heart, 'How will we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?'
 22 "When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.   (Deut. 18:18-22 NAU)

The point?  If my arguments against Jesus' resurrection are reasonable, I am equally reasonable to believe that the OT god is just as pissed off at Christians as he is at atheists.  At least we can say the bible doesn't make the death penalty for atheists anywhere near as clear as it does the death penalty for false prophets.

Second, atheism need not be categorical.  Atheism simply means lack of belief in god, or a belief that no god exists.  That's all. Atheism does not dictate the level of dogmatism that an atheist should have about atheism's truth.

Third, "belief in non-belief" was intended to make the reader draw the conclusion that atheism harbors a self-contradictory premise.  Not true.  Atheists do not deny the fact that belief exists.  They simply reject one of those beliefs.  If you deny the existence of the tooth-fairy, are you guilty of belief in non-belief?  No, you are only asserting that one particular belief is unworthy of your assent.

Fourth, atheism is not guilty of "I have no evidence for or against".  You probably deny the existence of the tooth-fairy.  Does her non-existence mean you "have no evidence for or against"?  No.  Rather, your basis for denying the tooth-fairy is clear:  the evidence in favor of her existence is horrifically unpersuasive.  Wel gee, guess why atheists don't believe in 'god'.

But in science we don’t really do declarations.

That's right.  And as shown above, atheism is simply a belief about a proposition, and like science, atheism doesn't dictate the level of dogmatism with which atheists should consider the proposition true.  Scientists disagree with each other all the time on whether some proposition is true, false, better supported than others, etc.  Atheism doesn't demand that its followers be fanatical about it.  it isn't like there is some magical book out there in support of atheism which says "be ye transformed by the renewing of your brain" (Romans 12:2) ..."blessed are they who have not seen and yet have disbelieved" (John 20:29), "whatsoever is not of disbelief is criminal", (Romans 14:23), nor do atheists think the only way they can better themselves is to gather in groups on Sunday with other people who agree that one magic book has all the answers to life, etc, etc., and they usually don't hurl the worst possible curses at other atheists merely for disagreeing with them about certain beliefs (Galatians 1:8-9).

We say, “Okay, you can have a hypothesis, you have to have some evidence against or for that.” And so an agnostic would say, look, I have no evidence for God or any kind of god (What god, first of all? The Maori gods, or the Jewish or Christian or Muslim God? Which god is that?) But on the other hand, an agnostic would acknowledge no right to make a final statement about something he or she doesn’t know about. “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” and all that.

One reason I am a "strong" atheist is because the word "god" is, like 'spirit', incoherent.  it refers to nothing demonstrably real, and produces about as much good as does debating the concept "creation from nothing".
Since Christians refuse to believe their god can be physical, they cannot refute atheism by speculating the existence of advanced space aliens with god-like powers.  If they wish to say God can be physical, I would not be as opposed to that as I am to the idea of an "immaterial" god.

This positions me very much against all of the “New Atheist” guys

I would agree that there are serious problems with some of the fodder thrown around by Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.  But the "new atheists" are not necessarily consistent with the basic definition of atheism.  Atheism doesn't recommend publishing books about how religion poisons everything, or books on how matter not guided by any intelligence still ends up becoming more complexly organized when there are certain types of energy inputs.  Atheism is just atheism.  How far you want to take the concept, is, like Christianity, up to nobody but you.

—even though I want my message to be respectful of people’s beliefs and reasoning, which might be community-based, or dignity-based, and so on. And I think obviously the Templeton Foundation likes all of this, because this is part of an emerging conversation.

yup, there's money to be made off the fact that people disagree about religion.

It’s not just me; it’s also my colleague the astrophysicist Adam Frank, and a bunch of others, talking more and more about the relation between science and spirituality.

That's your first problem:  Unless you define "spirituality" in material physical terms, you'll be talking about something that has no demonstrable tether to the real world.  Making one wonder why human beings are so dependent on their 5 senses (which detect nothing but physical realities).  Something tells me that at the end of the day, paying more attention to physically sensed realities is probably going to be better than paying attention to "non-physical" stuff. 

So, a message of humility, open-mindedness and tolerance.

Sorry, I cannot be openminded to the possibility that an incoherent concept is an actual reality.

Other than in discussions of God, where else do you see the most urgent need for this ethos?

You know, I’m a “Rare Earth” kind of guy. I think our situation may be rather special, on a planetary or even galactic scale. So when people talk about Copernicus and Copernicanism—the ‘principle of mediocrity’ that states we should expect to be average and typical, I say, “You know what? It’s time to get beyond that.”

No, I argue that the universe is infinite in size, and therefore, the earth is about as unique as a grain of sand on a beach.  See here.  The idea that there is a limit the amount of 'stuff' in the universe is just plain foolish.  In one of my rebuttals to Frank Turek, I quoted:

"There are a dizzying 2 trillion galaxies in the universe, up to 20 times more than previously thought, astronomers reported on Thursday."

See my full rebuttal to Turek here.

When you look out there at the other planets (and the exoplanets that we can make some sense of), when you look at the history of life on Earth, you will realize this place called Earth is absolutely amazing.

We naturally cease to be amazed at x if we have reason to believe x is very common.

And maybe, yes, there are others out there, possibly—who knows, we certainly expect so—but right now what we know is that we have this world, and we are these amazing molecular machines capable of self-awareness, and all that makes us very special indeed.

Life forms naturally prioritize their own importance.  To do otherwise is to perish, which is the exact opposite of the body's tendency to try and continue living.

And we know for a fact that there will be no other humans in the universe; there may be some humanoids somewhere out there, but we are unique products of our single, small planet’s long history.

As an atheist, I argue that we have a theory of human worth superior to that of Christians:  most people agree that worth arises from rarity.  The more rare or unique something is, the more we either value it in money-terms, or desire to have it in our possession.  Many collectors of antiques would not wish to sell.  In this atheist universe, yes, that which makes up you is probably never going to happen again.  That's how you draw legitimacy and purpose from temporal significance, even admitting that it doesn't sound as yummy and exciting as drawing legitimacy and purpose from ultimate significance. No fool avoids going to the store to buy a candy bar merely because this would not be significant on an ultimate or cosmic scale.  Every single one of us recognizes how important it is that we often look away from the clouds and make sure we aren't driving the car off the edge of a cliff.

The point is, to understand modern science within this framework is to put humanity back into kind of a moral center of the universe, in which we have the moral duty to preserve this planet and its life with everything that we’ve got, because we understand how rare this whole game is and that for all practical purposes we are alone.

Except that this does not follow unless you care about future generations of human beings, and we can manifest such care in ways that do not involve taking care of the dirt.  I care about future people enough to write rebuttals to false fundamentalist religion, but not enough to convert my car from gas to electric.

For now, anyways. We have to do this! This is a message that I hope will resonate with lots of people, because to me what we really need right now in this increasingly divisive world is a new unifying myth. I mean “myth” as a story that defines a culture. So, what is the myth that will define the culture of the 21st century? It has to be a myth of our species, not about any particular belief system or political party.

That means you refuse to see Christianity as true, which means Triablogue's posting the link to your article indicates Triablogue has gone liberal.  Go ahead and let the devil babysit your kids.

How can we possibly do that? Well, we can do that using astronomy, using what we have learned from other worlds, to position ourselves and say, “Look, folks, this is not about tribal allegiance, this is about us as a species on a very specific planet that will go on with us—or without us.” I think you know this message well.

The stupid presuppostionalists at Triablogue would disagree and say you aren't engaged in 'true' learning if you attempt to take in naturalistic knowledge absent a specifically Christian philosophical foundation.

I do. But let me play devil’s advocate for a moment, only because earlier you referred to the value of humility in science. Some would say now is not the time to be humble, given the rising tide of active, open hostility to science and objectivity around the globe. How would you respond to that?

This is of course something people have already told me: “Are you really sure you want to be saying these things?” And my answer is yes, absolutely. There is a difference between “science” and what we can call “scientism,” which is the notion that science can solve all problems.

Exactly, and I've never heard of any atheist who thought science can solve all problems.  Humanity, being what it is, does not appear likely to ever evolve to a state where they no longer disagree with each other.   So I see no basis for thinking science can solve all problems.  And the universe being infinite in size is definitely something that science will never be able to "solve", since it takes limited human beings to measure the universe, and we can never be knowledgeable of everything existence has to offer.

To a large extent, it is not science but rather how humanity has used science that has put us in our present difficulties. Because most people, in general, have no awareness of what science can and cannot do. So they misuse it, and they do not think about science in a more pluralistic way. So, okay, you’re going to develop a self-driving car? Good! But how will that car handle hard choices, like whether to prioritize the lives of its occupants or the lives of pedestrian bystanders? Is it going to just be the technologist from Google who decides? Let us hope not!

Now you know why I agree with Joseph Tainter that because America incessantly insists on becoming more and more complex, American society is certain to collapse.

snip.

Wow.  I've suddenly stopped being an atheist.  And all because a "prizewinning" physicist thinks atheism inconsistent with the scientific method.  LOL.  All he did was prove the admitted stupidity of certain extreme forms of atheism that misrepresent science's abilities.

Answering AnoyedPinoy's objections

AnoyedPinoy, ("AP") for whatever reason, cannot resist mistaking quantity for quality, and telling himself that Christianity's truthfulness can be proven because of the trainloads of evidence that it is possible to post onto other people's blogs.

I've warned him for the last time to stop doing this and to limit his replies here to single points...since narrowing the issues down that far works wonders at preventing deceived apologists from wiggling out of an argument.  If you doubt that, ask yourself how many liars are cheerful at the thought of being grilled on the witness stand by an experienced prosecutor.  

For example, while 

"how do you know the bible is the word of God" 

is rather easy for an apologist to tackle,  a more nuanced challenge can cause apologists to have a bad day.  Consider:

"what rule of hermeneutics am I violating when I use Galatians 1:1, 11-12 

to clarify Paul's unqualified "received" in 1st Corinthians 15:3?"

or

"aren't you putting just as much faith in mere human tradition as Roman
Catholics do,when you treat the historical evidence in favor of the Protestant
NT canonas if it revealed God's intentions equally as strongly as biblical evidence?"

I trust that the reader is satisfied that I correctly refute AP on this point:  forcing the questions at issue to be narrowly drawn dramatically increases the probability that the person in error will not be able to save face when their errors are exposed.

However, somebody may fall into the same error AP does, and perhaps think that because AP posted all that crap here, it "refutes" whatever i believe unless I offer a point by point rebuttal.

I now respond to most of AP's assertions.  Hopefully AP will learn to argue more succinctly so that the reader will be more easily enabled to detect which of us is in the wrong:

ANNOYED PINOYNovember 25, 2019 at 9:34 PM
It seems a reoccurring theme in all your blogs is about about "reasonableness".

That's because many prominent Christian apologists, like Frank Turek, overstate their case and insist either
a) the Christian interpretation of something is the only reasonable one, or
b) the atheist viewpoint is unreasonable.

Those apologists are all high on crack.  They don't have a robust understanding of "reasonable", they think it is a synonym for "biblical".  That would most especially be true for the Calvinists, the presuppositionalists and mostly the Van Tilians.  Jeff Durbin and Sye Ten Bruggencate are examples of the latter.  Steve Hays might deny being in the same group, but his fanatical committment to bible inerracy makes it reasonable to lump him into the group anyway.  He's still going to say any concept is crazy unless it harmonizes with the bible.

So, in answer to that I've written the following.
----//If even Calvinists can disagree with each other over what the bible is teaching, then ----apparently learning hermenutics is an exercise in futility. //
That seems to assume that the Bible has to have been written so that every reader would come the exact same conclusions.

No, it only assumes what is plainly obvious, that even if somebody earned advanced degrees in biblical theology, or took a course in "hermeneutics", this does precisely nothing to ensure that the way they interpret the bible is "correct".  They are prevented from babyish errors, perhaps, but that's all. And if you foolishly insist that "bible inerrancy" be used as a herrmeneutic, you further harm the whole purpose of interpretation.

This is a powerful argument, since you refuse to say that the only reason 2 Christians disagree on bible interpretation is because one of them is unsaved or insincere or has unconfessed sin, etc.  You know full well that equally saved, equally sincere, equally smart, equally Christ-walking Christians can disagree with each other, for decades, lifetimes and centuries, about how to interpret something in the bible.  Since at least one such person in every such debate logically has to be in the wrong, they become a supporting evidence that a Christian's attempt to learn hermeneutics will never suffice to make them see actual biblical truth.  If there is any person who actually does have the correct interpretation, they cannot demonstrate they have it.  Apparently, there's nothing more special about the bible than there is in any other similarly ancient piece of theological sophistry:  the meaning of all those other ancient religious tracts can also be endlessly debated.

But God didn't inspire the Bible to be completely understood upon first reading.

I was talking about Christians, who have been reading the bible for years, still disagreeing with each other.  Nobody said anything about correctly interpreting the whole thing at the first reading.

Or even multiple reading throughout a lifetime.

The irony is that many Christians, all of them Arminian to one degree or other, would disagree, and say God always desires the genuinely born-again, sin-confessing, light-walking sincere Christian to correctly understand whatever part of the bible that they ask God to guide their understanding of.  Therefore, while my argument might not faze YOU, a Calvinist, my argument about why this 'god' doesn't do for us today what he allegedly did in biblical times and MAKE us believe either infallibly or with forceful presentation, remains a legitimate rebuttal to the Arminians...who stand a chance of taking my argument, bypassing Calvinism and other modes of Christianity, and going straight to skeptical jail, don't collect $200.

I hope everybody goes to jail.

The subjects involved are too lofty/august/transcendent to exhaust the topics in a single book of any size.

That's funny, I thought Christians had a "holy spirit" who not only "teaches" them (John 14:26) but CAUSES them and others to understand or else do and believe whatever he wants them to do and believe (Exodus 4:21, Numbers 22:35, 38, 1st Kings 22:19-23, Ezra 1:1,  Jeremiah 20:9, Acts 9:3-8, Acts 16:14, Revelation 17:17)?  See especially Ezekiel 38-39, where God characterizes a future army's attack on Israel as the army being a fish on a hook, and god is drawing them against Israel.   If God then chooses whether or not he will cause a person to correctly discern truth, he can hardly blame those whom he wishes to keep ignorant.  But because the biblical answer is "who are you to answer back to god" (Romans 9:20), I'm pretty sure this particular fictional character is merely a sadistic lunatic.

Furthermore, the fact that Christians have disagreed on biblical theology for so many centuries sounds more like a case of the bible making ambiguous statements about unprovable premises, another justification for skeptics to give the bible the middle finger and consider earning a living and raising a family more important than trifling with somebody on the internet about things nobody can ever nail down with any reasonable certainty...like god's "will"...a thing Christians could not be in more disagreement about, despite the presumed authenticity of their salvation, sincerity of purpose, and respect for context, genre and bible "inerrancy".

And contrary to your predictable excuse, no, you don't do anything by invoking god's mysterious ways or "well maybe god...", except demonstrate that you have lost the debate.  Since heretics appeal to such excuses and you find them unpersuasive, logic dictates that YOU not be allowed to benefit from this cop-out either.

Hume said it best:  Commit it to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

Morever, it's providentially inspired in such a way that it takes the Spirit of God to understand it, perceive it spiritually and believe it.

That's the same excuse non-Calvinists use to explain the "error" of Calvinism when they are asked how they explain that Calvinists can be true Christains yet adopt that heresy.  Many Arminians insist that Calvinism cannot quality as heterodox, it is purely unorthodox and is worthy dividing fellowship over.  Remember Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel?.  Apparently, "you just aren't spiritual" is a false excuse that could be employed by anybody to get away from having to actually justify their bible-interpretation on the merits.

To those who have spiritual eyes and ears.

How conveniently useless to argumentation: see above.

But yes, this is how apostle Paul and Jesus thought, so there's no compelling reason to distinguish them from typical cultists and fanatics who employ the same excuse in the effort to facilitate a fallacious-yet-useful "us v them" herd-mentality in their group.  That kind of mentality is intentionally designed to shelter one from the rigors of logic and argumentation.  You don't believe in Jesus because you aren't spiritual.  Quick, easy, and let's get back to saying grace over dinner for 5 hours because the infinite God is worthy of so much more.

Just as Jesus spoke in parables not to elucidate, but to veil His meaning [Mark 4:11ff.; Matt. 13:10ff.; Luke 8:10ff.; John 12:39ff.].

That doesn't get rid of the problem, he also told the disciples to reveal whatever hidden things he formerly told them. Matthew 10:27.  See also Matthew 28:20, the part of the great commission most Christians miss.  So Jesus' intention to veil his teachings before the crucifixion isn't supposed to be used to justify continued veiling after he issued the Great Commission.  But I suppose your presupposition of biblical inerrancy will motivate you to simply combine your theory with something apostle Paul said, and presto, look how many rainbows we can created by drawing with all the crayons in the box at the same time.

And in such a way that as people fallibly read it down through the centuries God's providential plan in & for HIStory unfolds as He predetermined it.

Why should anybody find study of biblical hermeneutics as helping them to figure out how to avoid misinterpreting the bible? After all, you will not credit their getting something right in the bible to their study, you will simply say God predestined them to get it right. If they get something wrong in the bible, you will not credit this to their misunderstanding of hermeneutics, or the limited nature of the evidence, you will conclude God predestined them to get it wrong.  Your problem still exists:  We don't have to worry about anything, ever, because nothing can possibly happen except what God has infallibly predestined...including sin.  That's Calvinism, stripped of all the car-salesman pitch that James White constantly smothers it with.  See Steve Hays' admission that God secretly wills ALL disobedience to his revealed will. Link. Which can only mean that when God gets angry over somebody's sin, he is getting angry that they did exactly what he wanted, when he wanted, where he wanted, why he wanted and how he wanted.

If any human being secretly willed for his subjects to disobey his revealed will, we'd call that idiot a sadist.  You will say human analogies break down with God, but perhaps they do because god is like every other concept for which human logic is insufficient; both are false theories.  yoru god's allege being "inscrutible" and "incomprehensible" might actually suggest that literally NOTHING about him can be reasonably deduced...whether that threatens your sense of theological security or not.

I've snipped the bible quotations you posted.  Probably because your god infallibly predestined me to...which means I didn't have a choice...which means the only way God could still blame me for failing to deviate from infallible predestination decree is for him to be a sadistic lunatic.

And then you want me to think the only 'true' love is the love from this god?

ANNOYED PINOYNovember 25, 2019 at 9:34 PM
Moreover, it's difficult for ANY document on an important and involved topic to be written in such a way that multiple interpretations are precluded.

Not when you have an all-powerful God who allegedly has the ability to MAKE people believe whatever he wants them to believe. Exodus 4:21, Numbers 22:35, 38, 1st Kings 22:19-23, Ezra 1:1,  Jeremiah 20:9, Acts 9:3-8, Acts 16:14, Revelation 17:17.  Your objection is frivolous; your Calvinist god can make ANYBODY understand ANYTHING he wishes for them to understand.  So the problem of why equally saved equally sincere Christians disagree for centuries on how to interpret biblical phrases remains.  Of course, you offer one solution:  God causes everything, including misunderstanding, but you have to remember that I also preach my skeptical arguments to Arminians, that is:  some of the power of my skeptical arguments draws from presumptions about God that are Arminian (i.e., god wants everybody to get saved and avoid teaching heresy).

Including non-religious documents. Even an error free book on math can be misunderstood by humans.

Not if the author the power to make humans correctly understand it.

Also, other things contribute to differing interpretations like:
level of intelligence/aptitude;
level of education;
knowledge of cultural background;
human traditions and presuppositions brought to the text;
amount of time studying the document. A man who has studied the U.S. Constitution (or the Bible) for 50 years will understand it better than someone who has only studied it for 2 years.;
opportunity and access to resources and available time can hinder people. For example, a simple missionary in the 17th century didn't have access to 21st century Logos Bible software; archaeological and textual discoveries etc.;
degree of sinfulness, rebellion and attitudes brought to the text;

But since as a Calvinist you are forced to believe that all this misunderstanding is ULTIMATELY caused by God's infallible predestining decree, all you are doing with the above is wasting time on secondary causation.  Truth is not served solely by focus on secondary causation.  And once again, my skeptical position speaks mostly to Arminian Christians and their assumption that God wants everybody to get saved and avoid heresy.

As Blaise Pascal wrote in his Pensées:

God predestined me to snip your quote.

ANNOYED PINOYNovember 25, 2019 at 9:35 PM
If the Christian God exists, then it's not reasonable to read the Bible, and to expect it to have been written as if the Christian God were the one on trial.

That IF is so big that I deny its legitimacy.

Rather, it's reasonable to expect it to be inspired as if we're on trial and being judged by our attitude toward the God behind the text and the subjects addressed in the book.

But only "if" the Christian god exists.  That hypothetical is too extreme.
snip

ANNOYED PINOYNovember 25, 2019 at 9:47 PM
And all that sets aside the positive evidence for God and the weakness against belief in the Christian God.
Evidence for God
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2016/12/im-going-to-list-and-summarize-what-i.html
Required reading for atheists
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/11/required-reading-for-atheists.html
Making a case for Christianity
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2017/12/making-case-for-christianity.html
A case for Christ
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/01/a-case-for-christ.html
Common Objections to Christianity from Skeptics
http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/qa_steve_hays.html
Book Reviews of Recent Atheist Authors by Christian Apologists https://misclane.blogspot.com/2013/09/book-reviews-of-recent-atheist-authors.html

That's old news to me.  But more importantly none of it overcomes my interpretation of the biblical evidence Christians typically cite in favor of the historicity of Jesus' resurrection.

That's important because if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, he was a false prophet at best, and his followers who composed the NT book certainly were false witnesses, which would then mean the only thing you gain by defaulting to the OT YHWH is his calling for your death for having followed a worker of miracles who wasn't preaching the truth.  Deuteronomy 13 and 18.

Hopefully, then, you can understand why I agree with Paul that Christianity's veracity cannot be rescued if Jesus didn't rise from the dead. You lose the resurrection, you lose the significance of Calvinism, debating god's sovereignty, refuting the Arminians, the transcendental argument and your motive to post trainloads of old hat to other people's blogs.

I posted the above things because I'm concerned for your soul.

But only because God infallibly predestined you to care.  If God predestined you to be apathetic toward my soul, you would be.  Hence, Calvinist theology steals the soul out of human compassion by turning everything into robots.  Your caring attitude thus isn't really your own individual creation.  That's not a true friend.

If you are concerned about my soul, you might consider answering my objections to the historicity of Jesus resurrection...like the fact that 1st Corinthians 15:3-4 is not historical evidence of early resurrection belief among the apostles, because it is not a 'creed' in the first place.  And numerous other objections.

Not because I'm trying to overwhelm you with information.

I'm sorry, Mr. Pinoy, but you've demonstrated, at your own blog and here, that you do indeed happily mistake quantity for quality.  You simply do not like being required to limit your replies to singular issues.  I suspect it is because you realize that when the issues are narrowed, it makes it much more difficult for you to escape a rebuttal.  That is exactly what happened when you tried to argue narrowed issues of bible inerrancy with me.

If you wish to prove me wrong, I'll start a new blog piece where I confront you, one point at a time, with my objections to the resurrection of Jesus, and we'll just see how long you last.

I'm just trying to fill in some of the lacunae in your knowledge.

Then God must have infallibly predestined you to be misinformed...the material you linked me to is stuff I already know and stuff I've already rebutted in the draft for my book, not yet published.

And in hopes that you might eventually come to embrace the Savior as your own hope and joy one day.

Except that because Jesus didn't preach hell-fire to Gentiles, I have a very reasonable basis to accuse the later NT authors of expanding his message far beyond what he intended, and therefore, your Jesus probably doesn't concern himself with becoming my daily lord anymore than he concerned himself to be the daily lord of the Gentiles he interacted with.  For example:

 33 And the demons came out of the man and entered the swine; and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
 34 When the herdsmen saw what had happened, they ran away and reported it in the city and out in the country.
 35 The people went out to see what had happened; and they came to Jesus, and found the man from whom the demons had gone out, sitting down at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind; and they became frightened.
 36 Those who had seen it reported to them how the man who was demon-possessed had been made well.
 37 And all the people of the country of the Gerasenes and the surrounding district asked Him to leave them, for they were gripped with great fear; and He got into a boat and returned.
 38 But the man from whom the demons had gone out was begging Him that he might accompany Him; but He sent him away, saying,
 39 "Return to your house and describe what great things God has done for you." So he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him.
 (Lk. 8:33-39 NAU)

What I'm not seeing is any sign that Jesus wanted that guy to do what you think Jesus wants today's Gentiles to do:  study the scriptures, or "get saved".  Jesus exorcised the demons out of that man.  That's not evidence that he "got saved".  That man sat at the feet of Jesus.  You have no fucking clue what Jesus and that man talked about.  That's not evidence that he "got saved".  But since in context Jesus wants that man to go away, we can be god-damn sure that Jesus rejects MacArthur's "lordship salvation" doctrine, a doctrine that Calvinists tightly embrace.

The sad fact is that Jesus was nowhere near the loudmouth today's Calvinists are in stuffing the scriptures down the throats of Gentiles, or warning them about hell fire.

So you might consider that the only reason you are concerned for my soul is because you have allowed later NT authors to pervert the original gospel of Jesus.  And of course I assume you know that I designate apostle Paul as a heretic...and I think using bible inerrancy as a hermeneutic does little more than facilitate misunderstanding.

My YouTube reply to Gary Habermas and Jesus' Resurrection

I posted the following comment in reply to Gary Habermas' video summarizing his "minimal facts" argument (See video here). The comments are preserved here since there is a chance that comment will be deleted from the YouTube channel:

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


If Habermas were being prosecuted for murder on the basis of documents authored within the last couple of years that contain the same types of ambiguities of authorship and unknown levels of hearsay present in the gospels and Paul's 1st Cor. 15 "creed", he would be screaming for the charges to be dropped for lack of evidence.


in Galatians 1:1, 11-12, Paul specifies that when he received the gospel, it was by telepathic communication from god, and he specifies this did not involve input from any other human being. So since Paul doesn't qualify the sense of "what I received" in 1st Cor. 15:3, it is perfectly reasonable to interpret 1st Cor. 15:3 in the light of Paul's more specific comments in Galtians, and thereore interpret his phrase in Corinthians to mean "For I passed on you to that which I received apart from any human being..." If that is reasonable, then this "creed" has nothing to do with other human beings, and loses its historical value accordingly.


Since most Christian scholars deny the authenticity of Mark's long ending, the skeptic is reasonable to conclude that authentic Mark stops at 16:8, and therefore the author did not see any apologetic value in telling the reader that the risen Christ actually appeared to anybody. The mere fact that Mark has Jesus sometimes predict his resurrection appearances, doesn't count as resurrection appearances.


Since most Christian scholars say Mark was the earliest gospel, the skeptic is reasonable to conclude that the earliest form of the gospel did not allege that the risen Christ was actually seen by anybody.


Matthew with his being the longest gospel of the canonnical 4 was extremely interested in recording reams of data on what Jesus said and did, obviously. So a skeptic would be reasonable to conclude that the reason this Matthew provides for the reader no words from the resurrected Christ beyond 15-second speech from the risen Christ (28:18-20), Matthew wasn't "compressing" anything, Matthew wished to give the impression this is ALL the risen Christ said. But Acts 1:3 necessarily implies, by saying Jesus appeared to the apostles over a period of 40 days speaking things concerning the kingdom of god, that Jesus had more to say to the apostles than merely a 15 second speech. And since this was allegedly "things concerning the kingdom of God", a theme Matthew is obviously interested in, it is highly unlikely Matthew is merely "choosing to exclude" from his gospel speeches that the risen Christ made. If the risen Christ taught "things concerning the kingdom of God", a person interested in that specific topic, like Matthew, would more than likely, in light of his willingness to quote Jesus extensively elsewhere, gave the reader those speeches, had he thought Jesus spoke such things. So the skeptic is quite reasonable, even if not infallibly so, to conclude that the later version we get in Acts 1:3 is an embellishment.


Matthew's brevity suggests his account is earlier, and therefore, the story from Luke's later account that has Jesus say more than what could be said in a 15 second "Great Commission", is the embellished account.


Generously assuming obviously false presuppositions of apostolic authorship of the gospels, there are only 3 resurrection accounts in the bible that come down to us today in first-hand form; Matthew, John and Paul. Every other biblical resurrection testimony is either hearsay or vision. You won't find too many legitimately credentialed historians who will say you are under some type of intellectual compulsion to give a shit about ancient hearsay. I'd go further and say Christianity's need to tromp through ancient histority and implicate the rules of historiography, might be a fun mind game, but does not place an intellectual compulsion on anybody to believe or provide a naturalistic explanation. Juries today often deliberate for weeks after being given evidence in Court of a crime that occurred within the last year. What fool is going to say that 2,000 year old evidence of questionable authorship and origin is "clear"?


Conservative Trinitarian evangelical scholars often admit that Matthew and Luke "toned down" the text that they copied from Mark. The only reasonable interpretation of such viewpoint is that Matthew and Luke did not believe Mark's gospel was inerrant. While the inerrantists who adopt markan priority might deny this interpretation, that's exactly where their logic leads. If the math professor says 2+2=5, i don't humbly ask him to explain himself, I call him a fool and presume my own knowledge to justify giving a definitive adjudication.


If Habermas were on trial for murder, and the only witness against him was some guy who claimed he was physical flying into the sky solely by divine power when he looked down and saw Habermas pull the trigger, Habermas would not be asking the Court for a jury instruction telling them they can consider the viability of supernatural explanations, he would be screaming his head off that such a witness is entirely lacking in credibility, and the murder charge should be dropped for lack of evidence. While that makes good common sense, Paul himself, 14 years after the fact, still didn't know whether his flying into the sky was physical or spiritual. See 2nd Corinthians 12:1-4. Yet Habermas wants people to think Paul should be taken seriously (!?). Yeah, maybe I'll also take Gnosticism seriously!


Skeptics are also reasonable to simply ignore Christianity even if they believe it true, since the case for eternal conscious torment (the fundamentalist interpretation of biblical "hell") is exceptionally weak, and therefore, skeptics have no reason to expect that God's wrath against them will involve any more danger to them than the permanent extinction of consciousness that they already expect at physical death. This is especially supportive of apathy toward Christianity when we remember that god gets extremely pissed off at people who join the wrong form of Christianity (Galatians 1:8-9). If the skeptic is already in some type of "trouble" with god, might make more sense to play it safe and not make a "decision for Christ" that could very well cause that skeptic to suffer the divine curse even more.


Let's just say Haberas's "minimal facts" are closer to laughable than convincing, for skeptics like me who actually know what we are talking about.


Find your freedom from the shackles of religious "grace" at my blog, where I steamroll Christian apologetics arguments like a brick through a plate glass window. https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/

Demolishing Triablogue: Jason Engwer's stupidity in pushing the Enfield Poltergeist

Jason Engwer can't seem to get enough of the Enfield Poltergiest case.  See here.

Engwer seems to think that because he can trifle all day long about non-absolute evidence deriving from accounts that contain a mixture of gullibility, intentional deceit, and unfathomable stupidity and coincidences, this "poltergeist" continues to disprove atheism by proving that immaterial life forms do indeed exist, hence, "god" cannot be automatically dismissed merely because he is an "immaterial" life form.

I've got news for Engwer.  There are several compelling reasons why the real existence of immaterial life forms isn't enough to render atheism foolish.

For the last 20 years I've been attacking the arguments for the historicity of Jesus' resurrection, which are now most cogently set forth by Christian apologists Mike Licona, Gary Habermas, and Bill Craig.

1st Corinthians 15:17 says Christian faith is futile if Jesus did not rise from the dead.  So the bible forces Engwer to admit that his whole theological world necessarily falls apart if Jesus didn't rise from the dead.  he cannot avoid that danger by merely carping that God's basic existence remain unaffected by Jesus' staying dead for 2,000 years.  In other words, Engwer must candidly acknowledge that if Jesus didn't rise, Engwer would still be in his sins, and his faith would be in vain, even if a resurrection failure left God's basic existence unaffected.  Engwer could not merely jump from "jesus didn't rise from the dead" straight over to "this doesn't mean atheists are out of danger!"   Jesus' failure to rise from the dead would, alone, put Engwer in the same degree of danger he thinks atheists are in.  How much danger is there in "your faith is in vain" and "you are still in your sins", and "we are found false witnesses" (1st Cor. 15)?

Let's inquire anyway:  What relevance would the alleged falsity of atheism have, if Jesus didn't rise from the dead?  Would the generic existence of the OT YHWH still somehow "show" that the atheist was in the same degree of "danger" of divine judgment?

Fanatics like Engwer, constantly hawking the Christian merchandise,  would insist that a successful debunking of Jesus' resurrection doesn't remove the atheist's own danger, for in that case, Engwer would use the OT YHWH as the fallback option, and this god is still wrathful against atheists (Psalm 53:1).

But there are serious problems with employing the OT YHWH in the effort to overcome the embarrassment of Jesus staying dead for 2,000 years:

First, as demosntrated above, Jesus' failure to rise from the dead results in vain faith, still being in your sins, and being false witnesses before god, and being "most miserable".  That will not disappear merely because Engwer would prefer to jump immediately from "Jesus didn't rise from the dead" to "that doesn't get the atheist out of trouble!".

Second, would Engwer encourage atheists who remain unimpressed with the historical evidences for Jesus resurrection, to become Orthodox Jews in a way that was consistent with the OT?  Probably not, yet using this god as the fallback position leads to that consequence.  How could Engwer argue that even if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, the OT YHWH doesn't want people to worship him today the way he instructed Moses and the prophets to worship him?  Did the classical theist god change his mind in the last few centuries?

Third, the OT makes God's wrath against deceptive theists far more clear than Psalm 53 sets forth God's wrath against atheists.  Deuteronomy 13 and Deuteronomy 18 prescribe the death penalty for anybody who would use signs/wonders or "word of the Lord" in a way that is not truly from God:

1 "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder,
 2 and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,'
 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
 4 "You shall follow the LORD your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.
 5 "But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the LORD your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you.   (Deut. 13:1-5 NAU)

 19 'It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him.
 20 'But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.'
 21 "You may say in your heart, 'How will we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?'
 22 "When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him. (Deut. 18:19-22 NAU)

But no equally clear requirement of the death penalty is prescribed for Gentiles who deny this god's basic existence.  Where does the bible say people who deny god's basic existence are to be put to death?  It doesn't.

If it be more likely that Jesus remained dead for 2,000 years than that he rose (i.e., if any naturalistic explanation for the resurrection testimony is more likely true than the "god did it" explanation), then the sign or wonder of Jesus' resurrection, along with the Christian "word of the Lord" accompanying such sign, constitute the very types of misleading misconduct that this particular OT god is wrathful against.

In other words, if the historical probabilities favor Jesus staying dead more than the theory that he "resurrected", then the Christians would be in just as much trouble from the OT god as they think the atheists are.  If that is the case, then the fact that Christians are under the wrath of God as much as atheists, would intellectually justify the atheist to conclude that Christians do not have spiritual authority, so that what "god" wants is anybody's guess.

Hammering into oblivion the alleged evidence in favor of Jesus' resurrection renders irrelevant any evidence for immaterial life.  The point is that Engwer is accomplishing zero apologetics good with all the time, money and effort he expends pushing this "immaterial life is more likely than not" crap.  As the above indicates, attacks on Jesus' resurrection can be so powerful that they render god's basic existence irrelevant to the atheist. 

This is why I encourage other bible skeptics to recognize that refuting the historical theory that Jesus rose from the dead has more power than in trifling with apologists about the philosophical shortcomings of "theism"...or in helping Engwer commit the sin of word-wrangling (2nd Timothy 2:14) by bickering with him about whether there is anything about the Enfield Poltergeist case that puts the honest reader under any degree of intellectual compulsion to keep the door open to the possibility of immaterial life forms or the "spirit world".

And what do smart people do when they conclude that the preacher is in just as much trouble with his own god, as he thinks YOU are?  We convert to his religion, obviously, but only after Googling his claims for the next 55 years to make sure we don't end up incurring the wrath of god for making a theological mistake in the process.

A final argument is that Christianity's "truth" is irrelevant to modern-day people, since there is nothing in the bible indicating its authors ever intended anybody beyond the audiences they identified, to bother with what they had to say.  Engwer can trifle that an author can possibly intend for a wider audience than he specifically identifies, but that would be Engwer's burden, and he isn't going to turn that possibiltiy into a probability by merely noting that the bible and Christianity have survived for 2,000 years. 

For the Christian to argue that Christianity only survived for 2,000 years only because God was pushing it, is for the Christian to necessarily go outside their happy place (the bible) to make use of non-biblical historical evidence.  After all, precision requires that we ask the nuanced question "what form of Christianity is the right one, and how do we know it survived for 2,000 years?"  And the NT has no tolerance for forms of Christianity that Paul disapproved of (Titus 3:9-11, Galatians 1:8-9).  The mere historical survival of various groups that named the name of Christ in ways contradictory to each other, doesn't constitute the survival of "Christianity", but only the survival of "various contradictory Christianities".  Nothing about this suggests that among the lies and embellishments, one of those forms of surviving Christianity was the "true" one.

Since forms of Christianity Engwer says are false, were part of that rise (i.e., Roman Catholicism), we are not unreasonable to deny "god's" activity in keeping Christianity alive through the years.  Since Engwer is not a Calvinist (at least that's what he said some years ago), he cannot pretend that we are under some type of intellectual compulsion to accept that God also wanted the heretical forms of Christianity to survive in history.  Non-Calvinist theology allows for people to do things contrary to god's will.

Furthermore, a strong argument could be made that Paul was a heretic, the Judaizer gospel was much closer to what Jesus intended for Gentiles, and therefore, the very fact that the true form of Christianity died out and continued being replaced for 2,000 years by various fake forms, makes it reasonable, even if not infallible, to conclude that Christianity's evolution through 2,000 years had more to do with a misrepresentation that the bible god hates (Deut. 13 and 18, supra) and less to do with God trying to keep some semblance of the truth alive. 

This rebuttal to the "Christianity survived through the centuries" apologetic will be formidable to most Christian apologists even if it isn't in the eyes of "Calvinists", who say God infallibly predestined people to commit all the sins they will ever commit.

Triablogue: Steve Hays' lies about his perfect moral character

This is my reply to a blog post by Steve Hays at Triablogue, entitled

Why not commit apostasy?

Thursday, November 21, 2019

The primary reason I wouldn't commit apostasy is because the case for Christianity is overwhelming, based on multiple lines of evidence, direct and indirect, public and private.

Sorry, Steve, but you are forgetting your own Calvinism:  The ONLY reason you allegedly find the evidence for Christianity to be overwhelming is because God has foisted irresistable grace upon you.  Consult your own irresistible grace interpretation of 1st Cor. 4:7 and John 6:44.  Your audience would have gotten a bit more honest of an answer had you said that it is only by god's grace that you are capable of appreciating the force of Christian apologetics evidences.  But the answer you gave makes it appear that you are capable of recognizing, on your own, without grace, that Christianity is true, no less than a jury is capable, without divine grace, of appreciating the force of an attorney's argument.

But for now, your attempt to sound as if you can independently vouch for the persuasiveness of the gospels, contradicts your own Calvinistic belief that you can do nothing, at all, except what God has infallibly predestined you to do.  So in your view, the ultimate reason you find Chrstianity persuasive is the same as the reason the atheist finds it unpersuasive:  God predestined us to believe the precise way that we do.  Since that predestination-decree was "infallible" (i.e., incapable of failing, see dictionary) then my espousing atheism, and your espousing Calvinism, were worldview choices that were incapable of failing. 

But either way, a skeptic could just as easily assert the contrary, that they will never convert to Christianity because the evidence is so weak.  That's exactly what I say:   After reviewing the apologetics arguments set forth by the likes of Licona, Habermas and Bill Craig, I feel supremely confident asserting that the hypothesis that Jesus has stayed dead consistently ever since he died on the cross, has far more explanatory scope and power, and is thus more likely, than the supernatural hypothesis that he resurrected.

Of course, you are a Calvinist and thus a presuppositionalist, and you will assert that my denial of theism (and other things like Total Inability) is precisely why I cannot see the power of resurrection evidences. What you are obviously missing is that I don't just opine that Licona, Habermas and Craig are wrong.  I have specific articulable reasons for finding many of their arguments fallacious, or their evidence unpersuasive.  The only fool here is the idiot who thinks Romans 1:20 is the answer to why unbelievers think the gospel is false.  At least I'm not resorting to the words of some 2,000 year old pagan rambler to "explain" why Steve Hays doesn't see the truth of naturalism.

But there are additional considerations:
i) It would be a betrayal of my own generation, as well as younger generations in the pipeline.

Then you cannot fault skeptics if one of their reasons for refusing to apostatize from skepticism is that it would be a "betrayal of my own generation, as well as younger generations in the pipeline."

I care what happens to them.

Skeptics also care what happens to the younger generation of skeptics.  If such care is sufficient to justify your own stability of worldview, why wouldn't it be sufficient to justify my stability of worldview? Is there some law of the universe that says only bible-believing Christians are allowed to make use of convenient excuses?

It would be as if I know the way out of the cave, but I keep that to myself. I refuse to show lost men, women, and children the way out of the cave. I leave them there to die in the dark, leave them there to die of thirst. Even if I personally wanted to commit suicide in the cave, I have a duty to show the lost the way out of the cave, and go back for more.

We skeptics feel the same duty to show the lost the way out of the fundamentalist cave.

ii) As a Christian blogger, I've had enormous exposure to apostates and atheists.

As a skeptical blogger, I've had enormous exposure to Christian apologists.

I find them repellent.

I find Christian apologists repellent.

Even if I lost my faith, I'd far rather continue attending church than spend my time in the social company of apostates and atheists.

But since you couldn't attend church as an atheist being honest about your atheism for very long before the congregation sees you as an "apostate" and wants to kick you out, the only way you could avoid being exposed like that is to lie and pretend you are still a Christian.  being honest with them about your apostasy means you'd bounce around from church to church.  Which would then mean that as an atheist you were trying to subvert 2nd Cor. 6:15 and cause your darkness to have fellowship with their light.  Those churches would have obvious biblical justification to demand that you leave, so, like I said, bounce.  Perhaps you meant that if you became an atheist, you'd prefer to attend liberal churches?

Which is exactly why my argument about certain Christian apologists secretly being atheists, but not daring to admit it, is a powerful consideration.  If Steve Hays actually was an atheist, there is no reason to think he would honestly admit it, as he has invested far too much time and energy into getting others to be dazzled at his intellectual brilliance in accepting Christ and defending the faith. 

But for all we know, you are just another Ted Haggard waiting to be exposed.

The day you admit being an atheist is the day you admit that Christianity is so deceptive, even "smart guys" like you can get hoodwinked by it for decades.  You want the world to believe you are a smart guy.  You are not about to honestly admit it if you seriously become an atheist.  Smart guys don't miss the forest for the trees for decades at a time, remember?

They'd make dreadful company. People who think this life is enough are unbearably shallow, and willfully superficial.

Thanks for confirming that you mistake atheism as being limited to the personas emitted by those select atheists who specialize in bashing Christian fundamentalist.  There is no reason to think you have any real-time experience with atheists who stay away from religious debates.  If you were a "smart guy", you'd know that in real life, most atheists do not simply bash Christianity 24 hours per day.  As you admit, your interactions with atheists have more to do with their online presence as skeptics, and little or none to do with living with them on a day-to-day basis. 

Surely a smart guy like you realizes that you don't get a correct impression of a person simply because you see what they blog about.  Reading their posts doesn't cause you to notice other truths that come from interacting with them in real-time face to face.  But your incessant addiction to blogging has probably caused you to mistake your computer screen for actual human compansionship.  You probably get more pleasure from email than an handshake.

And how many would take a bullet for a friend.

That's a rather useless comparison, you have no fucking clue whether "Christians" would be more willing to die for each other than atheists would be willing to die for each other, especially given Christian apologist J. Warner Wallace's constant dirge that today's Christians are falling away from the faith faster than they did in previous generations. See here.

But in fact the comparison is invalid, as you are assuming that "true" friends would be willing to lay down their lives for each other, when in fact what friendship "must" minimally consist of is horrifically subjective, there is no absolute moral that says one's relationship iwth another cannot be "friends" until they both agree that they would die for each other. 

Two guys meet at Starbucks and become "buddies" who sometimes go out chasing woman at bars together, or hand each other work every now and then.  This qualifies as "friendship" even if it doesn't imply that one would be willing to give up their lives to save the other.  Then we have the man who meets the woman, they have sex, they like each other, but not in the relationship way, so they maintain "fuck buddy" status.  Your bible is not their standard, so if they choose to call their interactions "friendship" despite your automatic resorting to the bible, they are not unreasonable, as once again, "friendship" is highly subjective, and isn't dictated by what the bible says.  It's dictated by how two people feel about each other.  Otherwise, you'd have to say kids cannot be friends with one another, since the interactions with each other that they call "friendship" often do not evince the deep concern for other's lives that implies willingness to die for others.

And since atheists don't believe in an afterlife, their prioritizing their own lives above those of their friends is merely consistent with their beliefs, and represents a harsh truth that a lot of people are guilty of lying about.  We can only wonder how many smooth talking Christians ("I'd die for you") would be proven liars if placed in a situation that put that claim to a real test. 

Have fun pandering to the stupid idiot masses that Christianity facilitates that  deeper camaraderie we all wish for, but then you'll be deluged by an onslaught of Christians who will happily testify to how they were shit-canned as soon as the church found out they didn't believe precisely as the church required.  Friends "in Christ" means exactly that and nothing more:  No longer in Christ?  No longer your friend.  FUCK YOU.  

In fairness, there's the occasional atheist who will take a bullet for a friend, but nothing is dumber than idealistic atheists. That's not an attitude I respect or admire.

Then you are just as ignorant about morality's relationship to atheism as Frank Turek is.  I've already refuted his bullshit thesis that atheism leaves a person with no ability to justify having any specific morals.  I've also refuted his bullshit thesis that there are some morals that cannot be accounted for in purely naturalistic terms (i.e., moral argument for god).  See here.

I'm not talking about friendship evangelism or outreach to unbelievers. I'm talking about the notion that the company of apostates and atheists would ever be an appealing alternative to Christian friendship and fellowship.

Then the fact that atheists can be mature adults and yet derive just as much sense of fulfillment from their interactions with one another, as you allegedly derive from interactions with other Christians, opens the door to the highly probable possibility that atheist have a side to them that doesn't involve promoting gay pride parades or other liberal agendas.  I'm an atheist, and I think male homosexuality is revolting.  The atheists who think atheism automatically means duty to jump on the gay support band wagon are just stupid.  What works for two individuals in the privacy of their own home, obviously doesn't automatically translate into good national policy, because certain things that consenting adults do in private have a nasty habit of bring more and more corruption into being.  If I had my way, I'd enforce the death penalty for the manufacture, distribution or possession of alcoholic beverages and pornography, with profoundly persuasive justifications for the collateral damages that would inevitably ensue.

I'm afraid that you think the asshole atheists you've dealt with online constitute the sum and substance of all that real-time interaction with atheists has to offer. It isn't. It's not like every atheist in the world bashes Christianity.  You might try getting off the computer for once in your life and seek out atheists in real time to see how they interact with you where religion and apologetics are never the issue.  You might be surprised to discover that being a slave of Jesus isn't the only context within which legitimate friendship can emerge.  But alas, you only view this from the Calvinist side, you cannot help but maintain consistency and boo anything that might claim authenticity apart from the imperfect apostle Paul.

Hey Steve, how many times did you enjoy the company of an atheist (i.e., waitress, auto mechanic, librarian, cop, homeless, employer, etc,) without realizing that they were atheists?   You don't know, and you'll never know, but the odds are, you probably had plenty of friendly quick interactions with atheists.

Do you pay attention to Paul as often as atheists pay attention to money, fame, sex, power?  If so, then why doesn't the logic that says those atheists are "worshiping" that stuff, also require that YOU are "worshiping" Paul? 

I'd add that some people who lose their faith regain their faith. So maintaining Christian fellowship wouldn't just be a palliative.

I'd add that some skeptics who become Christians regain their skepticism.  So maintaining fellowship with other skeptics wouldn't just be a palliative.

Sorry Steve, but it appears that it sucked being you a LONG time ago.