Invisible Bigotry

It has been a month since I last posted on my blog unfortunately, but this really prompted me to speak out. In the wake of the KONY 2012 campaign, a friend of mine posted a link to another blog on facebook. The title of the post was "Invisible Children Funded By Antigay, Creationist Christian Right" which caught my attention. I had been somewhat critical of the movement for other reasons, such as the tacit, or sometimes explicit support for foreign military occupation in the region.

I'll just take a quote from this post, which you should really read for yourself.

But Invisible Children’s first yearly report, from 2006, gives “special thanks” to the “Caster Family Foundation” and IC’s 2007 report is more specific, thanking Terry and Barbara Caster. In the lead up to the 2008 election, the California-based Caster family was identified as one of the biggest financial backers of the push for California’s anti-same sex marriage Proposition 8.

 Always be skeptical of popular movements, and if they pass the test, give them your support, but don't blindly support causes, ever.

John Loftus' Challenge to William Lane Craig

John Loftus has recently posted a challenge to Dr. Craig regarding his claims of the evidential status of the 'inner witness of the holy spirit'. In the past John has defended the integrity of Dr. Craig in the face of many accusations from within the skeptical movement that Craig is dishonest. I personally don't think Craig is intentionally dishonest, but his portrayals of modern physics are possibly bordering on dishonesty.

Loftus' challenge to Craig involves three specific questions, they are as follows.

One:

Do you agree that objective evidence is external to the knower and can be verified by a third party at least in principle? Yes or no? How then can any third party verify a claim such as someone else's inner witness of the Spirit? At least someone's claim to be abducted by aliens is able to be verified in principle by a third party. Anyone in any religion or sect within one can claim to have had a veridical religious experience. These claims are a dime a dozen when they cannot be verified even in principle by a third party. What then do you say to the argument that these claims are subject to the charge of delusion, and as such, no evidence at all even to someone who claims to have had one? 

Two:

Dr. Craig, here is a follow-up question given the inherent subjectivity of the inner witness of the Spirit. How is possible for a reasonable faith to be based upon a subjective experience? Furthermore and more importantly, how is it possible for a reasonable man like yourself to claim such a subjective experience defeats all objective evidence? Now it's one thing to say a subjective experience is to be considered objective evidence. It's another thing entirely to say a subjective experience carries more weight than all objective evidence. 

Three:

One last question my friend. Put all three of them together and answer them all at one time if you wish.

Would you please specify the propositional content of the inner witness of the Holy Spirit? Plantinga calls the content "the great things of the gospel", and includes the idea that "God exists", "God has forgiven and accepted me", or "God is the author of the Bible." You claim this content assures Christians that they are children of God. But such a notion echoes the poet whom Paul quoted who said, "we are his offspring." (Acts 17:28) You are surely arguing that the inner witness of the third person of the trinity contains more propositional content than that. Shouldn't this witness be more specific about what is meant to be a "child" of the kind of "God" one believes in, how one becomes a child of this God, where one can learn additional information about this God, what he must think of the authority of that source of information, and how he can best interpret it? For instance, to say "God exists" does not say anything about the attributes of this God, and might even be consistent with panentheism. To say "God is the author of the Bible" doesn't say what a believer should think about the specific nature of the Bible, or how to best interpret it.

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I have repeatedly asked you this last question and have posted it on my blog several times. Again, these types of arguments are swaying the faithful. You need to answer them if you want to be perceived as being honest with the facts. Many skeptics are saying you are not honest and I have been defending you.

If you refuse to answer these questions about the inner witness of the Spirit then I can no longer defend you from the charge of being dishonest with the facts. I hope you do respond, I really do.

Sorry, but it's your choice now.

It will be interested to see if Craig responds, and if he does, in what manner will he do so.

The Absurdity of Christ

Today I want to explore the supposed purpose behind the message of Christ. The main message, blood sacrifice, not any of the other things like moral teaching or anything like that. We are told that Christ came to earth to die for our sins, so we can be reconciled to God. One could dispute the concept of sin and would be justified in doing so, I think the concept is meaningless but it distracts us from the more important issue of the actual atonement. I wish to argue that the concept of blood sacrifice and substitutional punishment is outdated, barbaric and illogical.

Firstly, the idea bloodshed will pay for wrongdoings assumes that the god in question desires blood. Believing in the god of the philosophers does not get you to this position. Admittedly, the god of the old testament is such a god, in fact there are passages such as Exodus 29:18 which explicitly state that the smell of burnt flesh is a pleasing odour to God. However this is not the god that modern Christians actually believe in. If it were, then Christians would still be engaging in the practice of burnt sacrifices, not to atone for the sins, because God killed himself in human form for that, but because they would believe it to be pleasing to god. After all, isn't that the reason Christians sing songs of praise to God? To please him?

The idea is outdated because it has no relevance to the modern conceptions of justice. Evangelists like Ray Comfort like to use the following analogy:
You commit a crime, the punishment for which is monetary compensation. Someone else pays your fine for you and you are let off the hook. They claim that the execution of Jesus does the same thing, you committed the crime of existing, and for it you deserve to die, Jesus was executed instead of you, so you are let off the hook. Is justice done in either of these cases? I contend that it is not, in fact that to allow such an event to take place would rather be a perversion of justice, yet Christians want you to believe that this is perfect justice.

Let me also try a logical reconstruction of the Christian theory of atonement as I see it. This is possibly an over-simplification, but it should suffice for my purposes here.

1. You trespassed God
2. Trespassing God deserves death
3. Jesus was killed instead of you
Therefore
C. You are no longer culpable for your actions.

It should be quite plain that such an argument is logically invalid as it is currently written above. In order to make the conclusion follow from the premises, a fourth suppressed premise would need to be added.

1. You trespassed God
2. Trespassing God deserves death
3. Jesus was killed instead of you
[4. Any person who has not trespassed God and is killed in the place of another removes the accountability of the guilty person to their actions]
Therefore
C. You are no longer culpable for your actions.

When it is expressed in this way it becomes quite apparent that such a principle is a blatant perversion of justice. If the same principle was applied in society toward its legal system, the entire social structure would likely collapse, as many innocent, honest persons would be imprisoned or killed, while many manipulative and sociopathic individuals would roam free.

Aside from that extremely contentious suppressed premise I think that premises 1 through 3 are not legitimate either. More than that, I think they cannot be established to be legitimate, they are things which we can only ever be in the dark about (assuming that it's impossible to prove God does not exist).

So in conclusion to all of that, I maintain that the message of Christ is absurd. It is outdated, barbaric and without reasonable support. The conclusions of the atonement will only be seen as viable by those who have already committed belief in Christianity. Perhaps it is possible to formulate a more cogent explanation of the atonement, but I suspect that it too will suffer from many of the same failings as my example.

The Case Against Christianity

I just finished reading 'The Case Against Christianity' by Michael Martin. The book is around 250 pages long and covers topics such as the historicity of Jesus, the resurrection, the virgin birth, the second coming, the incarnation, Christian ethics, salvation by faith, divine command theory, the atonement and the philosophical basis of Christian belief. The two chapters I thought were the best were Chapter 3: 'The Resurrection' and Chapter 4: 'The Virgin Birth and the Second Coming', though the rest of the book was very good also.

Some of the chapters are quite jargon-laden, but if one is familiar with the technical terms used in logic then understanding the book won't be an issue. I think perhaps the best feature of this book is the philosophical and logical nature of many of the arguments against Christianity, as opposed to the scientific approach of Dawkins, or the 'bad for society' approach of Harris and Hitchens (I'm not saying this is the only trick up their sleeves, but it forms a large portion!). Having a different approach to the discussion I feel brings a breath of fresh air to a debate that all too often revolves around the same stale talking points.

I highly recommend that everyone reads this book, it's well worth your time.

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses - My Thoughts

I recently finished reading Richard Bauckham's book 'Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony' and thought I would share my thoughts with you. I'm not going to do a lengthy-ish review of it like I did with Timothy Keller's 'The Reason For God' last month, as there are really only a handful of things I wanted to say in response to this book.

For starters the book is quite a hefty tome, but it has long footnotes at the bottom of most pages which significantly reduces the average page length of actual content, so it's not as long of a read as it first gives the impression of. The book is fairly easy to understand although Bauckham tends to be quite tangential, and by that I mean he has asides which last up to 10 pages before continuing his argument, this detracts somewhat from his arguments, but I managed to follow them well enough.

The content and arguments however I found extremely underwhelming and often particularly specious. He often relies on many assumptions which I am not willing to accept and I do not think he provided sufficient reason for them. The first of these is his reliance on Papias of Hierapolis. The problem I see with Bauckham's reliance on Papias is that we do not have Papias' writings. What we have are a few quotations of his works by Eusebius and a mention by Iranaeus. Despite this, Bauckham takes the liberty to espouse the mind of Papias well beyond what the dubious quotes can possibly tell us. Bauckham does not address many of the problems associated with Papias such as the fact that his descriptions (via quotation) of the Gospel of Matthew and Mark do not match up with the gospels that we have today, so to rely so uncritically on the word of Papias as attesting to the eyewitness tradition within these gospels I find is very credulous and disappointing.

The other frustrating assumption I encountered while reading the book was the trustworthiness of the canonical gospels. Bauckham uses internal evidence within the gospel narratives to point to eyewitness testimony. One of the examples he uses is the preface of Luke, which alludes to the testimony upon which the author says he based his writing on. Bauckham pokes around the words used in this passage and finds a definition that supports his case, which has connotations of eye-witness testimony to the actual events. He seems to accept this rather uncritically, how we know the author was telling the truth Bauckham never reveals. His other main piece of internal evidence really requires a stretch of the imagination, it is what he called the 'Inclusio'. This is a literary device used in ancient literature by which the author conveys the source of information via using their perspective in the text, without outright claiming it came from them. Bauckham primarily claims Inclusio in the gospel of Mark as Peter's witness and in the gospel of Luke as the women disciples' witness. Bauckham seemed pretty convinced of his arguments strength here but I simply failed to see how he actually demonstrated that this was in fact the case. Like I said, it's a stretch of the imagination.

Overall I think Bauckham overstates the force of his arguments, but I commend him for putting forth new arguments and as he admits in the text, he is effectively going against the grain of nearly all modern New Testament scholarship. Credit is due to him for bringing a new spark to the debate, but I think the book was overwhelmingly unsuccessful in giving a solid case for eyewitness testimony.


For a far more in-depth critical analysis of the book and its specific arguments I suggest having a read of Neil Godfrey's blog Vridar, where he did a thorough review of the book in 2007. If you're more audio-inclined you may want to have a listen to a few of Robert M. Price's Bible Geek podcast, relevant episodes linked below.
January 19th 2012, Dr. Price reads Theodore J. Weeden's review of 'Jesus and the Eyewitnesses'
February 14th 2011, Dr. Price answers a listener's questions about the validity of Bauckham's arguments.

Why I Rarely Post About Creationism

For the few regular readers that I have, you may or may not have noticed that lately I very rarely post about creationism. The main reason for this is because the debate is well and truly over and it has been for a long, long time. Creationists (I include ID as a sub-category of creationism) should know this, and I'd wager that most professional creationists do realise it. People like Answers in Genesis, Creation Ministries International, Creation Science Evangelism, The Discovery Institute, Institute for Creation Research and any others you can think of are actively putting out information that they must know is false. They are after all the deceitful demagogues that I mentioned in my 'Two Types of Creationist' post back in 2010.

If on the odd chance they are really just willfully ignorant and delusional, what can we do about that? We can't go around locking them up or sending them into looney bins can we? The scientific battle is over, but the social war will never end. I hate to be so pessimistic, but I fear that as long as humanity is rife with shit-heads like the aforementioned creationist groups whose main goal is to undermine science with a religious agenda we will never stamp out the pestilence that is creationism.

We will never get rid of magical thinking, faulty reasoning and conspiratorial tendencies. These mis-firings of our thinking faculties are hard wired into humanity.

This is not to say that we do nothing, I still make efforts in my personal life to combat creationism. A few of the Christians that I know (that number dwindles by the year too) are still creationists. I don't try and force them to accept evolution, but I do try and convey to them how serious the evidence for evolution really is, within the context of an amicable conversation. I have a few books and online resources that I try to pass along to them, but they're rarely, if ever interested. There seems to be comfort in delusion. They're more content thinking wrong-headed beliefs are true than actually learning something new.

If there is some 'miracle' cure for the plague of creationism, I'd love to know about it but until then, I think I'll just carry on as I have been, pessimistic about the intellectual honesty of humankind, and continuing to learn new things myself every day.

Sucker For Punishment - Christian Books

It hasn't been that long since I endured 'The Reason for God', and I have somehow managed to agree to read 'Jesus and the Eyewitnesses' by Richard Bauckham. It's like 550 pages long and I heard it was a difficult read so I guess that makes me a sucker for punishment. My university library has a copy, so I'll probably read it slowly between now and the end of the first semester. I guess the good thing about me doing this kind of thing is that no one can accuse me of only reading one side of the debate.

How about I make it official. I'm going to try and make an effort to read at least two scholarly Christian books a year. I actually finished reading Timothy Keller in December, so my tally this year is 0.

In other book news, I'm currently reading 'The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity' by the late Hyam Maccoby. I don't agree with everything in the book but he brings up some analyses of the New Testament texts that I haven't seen before and draws some novel and thought provoking conclusions. Since Maccoby is a Jewish Talmudic scholar the book is quite notably pro-Judaism but it makes for fresh reading.

Why the Christian God would be Stupid if He Existed - Part 2: Special Revelation

I’ve brought this issue up in several venues before but I thought it really deserved its own post. Special revelation, i.e. a god giving its message to specific individuals to relay on to others is an imbecilic system and I’ll try to explain why I think so.

The Weakest Link

The weakest link of a chain is where it is going to break first, so let’s imagine the conveying of God’s message as a chain. At the very least, a special revelation chain has to have 3 links, God, the receiver of the message, and then the rest of the population. In that circumstance the populace first has to have faith in the conveyor before they can have faith in the message being conveyed. This is not an ideal situation, as obviously the messenger is the weakest link of the chain, whether interpreting the message from the deity incorrectly, relaying it incorrectly, or something not being believed by others. This is a faulty chain and a god that would use such a chain should be considered stupid in my books. However, this is not the chain that we supposedly have (given the assumption that the Bible is actually God’s message).

The special revelation chain that we would actually have would be something like this (for the New Testament Gospels).
God/Jesus->First Century Followers->Converts->[insert several decades and who knows how many other transmissions]->Anonymous Gospel Authors->Scribes (who altered the texts)->Translators (for those of us who don’t read Greek)->Us

The number of weak links in this chain is stunning, and many of them have already been broken in the texts, as we have numerous contradictions between gospels and sometimes within the same gospel, perhaps due to interpolations. Any god who would use such a system, where one must place faith in the transmission process before one can have faith in the message and then believe the true religion must be a moron. This is one reason why I think the better explanation is that no such God exists.


Faith in Humans

As I mentioned, in order to have faith in the religion, you must first have faith in the people who transmitted it to you. In some circumstances I am willing to put faith (trust) in other human beings, if they have been shown to have a track record of trustworthiness. For example, a Scientist who has a history of being innovative and ahead of his time, who has later been confirmed to be correct many times over would deserve considerably more faith in their judgment than a John Doe off the street with no credentials.

Surely if a God was dead-set on transmitting his one true religion via special revelation through many people he would at least make sure that the people had an air of trustworthiness around them? Unfortunately for the Christian, that isn’t the case with the Bible. The overwhelming majority of which is anonymously authored. The only books from the Old Testament of moderately ‘certain’ authorship are a few of the prophets (the first part of Isaiah for example). All of the ‘history’ and myth, and law found in the Old Testament is completely anonymous (No, Moses did not write any of it). The New Testament is arguably worse off than the Old, as a substantial portion of that which isn’t anonymous is forged. Half of the letters claimed in Paul’s name are forgeries (2 Thessalonians, Colossians, 1&2 Timothy, Titus, Ephesians) and some of the ones we’re pretty sure were written by him have anonymous interpolations added into them by scribes. 1 & 2 Peter are forgeries; Jude is a forgery and so on. I am not about to go placing my faith in anonymous writers 1900-1800 years ago nor am I going to place my faith in writers who lied about they were. Hell, I’m not even going to place faith in the single identified author of the New Testament (Paul) because I have absolutely no reason to trust him on anything. An Intelligent god surely would have accounted for this, which is why I cannot avoid the conclusion that if the Christian God existed, he would be an idiot.

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Review of 'The Reason for God' - Part 5

Chapter 13: “The Reality of the Resurrection”

At the start of the chapter Keller mentions that he studied religion and philosophy in college, which means he can’t have been ignorant of moral philosophy. That leads me to conclude he either ignores it, or is intentionally presenting an uncharitable interpretation of opposing views. I am no doubt guilty of the same thing (though not intentionally), perhaps even in this strange review of his book. The best explanation of his seeming ignorant of moral philosophy is probably due to the Christian-tinted glasses that he undoubtedly wears.

Much of the chapter is fairly conventional Christian apologetics, and as he is arguing straight out of the work of N.T. Wright it is unsurprising. I find the work of people like Richard Carrier, Bart Ehrman and Robert M. Price far more interesting and compelling, but perhaps I am biased too. Regardless, Keller does not address works like these, and at times presents the skeptic position as saying “It (the resurrection) just couldn’t have happened.” Point me to a single serious skeptical source that says anything remotely along those lines. You can’t? That’s because that’s not what skeptics are saying. Keller is out of touch with his opponents, or perhaps he just isn’t interested in going after the best arguments and only interested in the low-hanging fruit and in burning straw men.

Chapter 14: “The Dance of God”

This chapter reads like one should expect of a book that finds itself successful in arguing its points in previous chapters. For someone like me who went into it trying to be as open-minded as possible, only to be insulted in the introduction and bored for much of the rest of it this chapter was dull. It does things like trying to explain the trinity and ties off some threads on other Christian doctrines. This chapter along with the epilogue which I won’t do an entry on really sum up the book for me. This is not a book for skeptics to convert them to Christianity even though it claims to be. This is probably a really great book for a doubting Christian who doesn’t know much about their own religion but wants to reassure themselves that they’ve picked the right belief. The arguments are incredibly superficial and the refutations are weak. He provides no evidence or reason to believe, and the only chapter that comes close to this is the one where he talks about ‘clues’ of god.

Conclusion

I give the book overall a 2/5. One star for effort and one star for what seems to me to be an honest attempt to reach skeptics. Keller’s biggest downfall in this book is that he doesn’t really address much in the way of real skepticism, doesn’t take on the best arguments, proclaims victory prematurely and obviously hasn’t put any effort into actually understanding the position of the people he is attempting to write for. What I’m trying to say is, the book is crap.

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Review of 'The Reason for God' - Part 4

Chapter 9: “The Knowledge of God”

Okay this chapter seals the deal; Keller must be ignorant of moral philosophy. He shows no working knowledge of ethical models like utilitarianism or desirism. He just goes on the incredibly weak assumption that because some people can’t explain why they hold certain values (such as human rights) that they’re objective values imprinted upon our subconscious. He also jumps from saying that there are debates about evolutionary mechanisms for morality to 'evolution can’t explain moral intuition'. I don’t want to say I’m done with the book just yet, but my patience is diminishing rapidly.

Chapter 10: “The Problem of Sin”

What a boring chapter. I really have nothing else to say about it. It reads like a chapter written for Christians who don’t understand the doctrine of sin. I feel I somewhat understand it (a few interpretations of it at least) and I’m not really interested in it and reject the concept. Yawn.

Chapter 11: “Religion and the Gospel”

This chapter immediately builds on the previous one, and delves straight into an allusion to the pop-Christianity idea that Christianity is not a religion. Get real. This chapter is effectively a sermon. If one doesn’t accept the conclusion of the previous chapter, one will likely finish the chapter as I did: uninterested. Even if Christianity was true, I don’t feel like I need saving, so it doesn’t appeal to me. There is no argumentation in here, just sermonising.

Chapter 12: “The (True) Story of the Cross"

I feel like I’m letting down anyone reading this, as with the last two chapters I found it simply boring. I don’t really have much to say about it either. The chapter title got me interested, but it didn’t pan out the way I thought it was going to. It ended up being another sermon.
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Review of 'The Reason for God' - Part 3

Chapter 6: “Science has disproved Christianity”

Most of this chapter is non-contentious and doesn’t really need much said about it. It’s basically just a discussion of the conflict model of science vs. Religion, which I agree is not an accurate description of reality. This is not because I think religion and science coalesce, but because like many popular level criticisms of religion, it is too simplistic, and too black and white. The reality of the situation is much more complicated than some atheist writers would lead you to believe.

Despite the fact that the chapter doesn’t say anything starkly wrong in my opinion, I think Keller still fails to address the best skeptical arguments against religion from the scientific perspective so I walk away unsatisfied once again.

Chapter 7: “You Can’t Take The Bible Literally”

My mouth was hanging open for approximately two thirds of this chapter out of sheer surprise of what he was saying (in a bad way). I don’t really feel like trying to refute any of his points here, as this is supposed to be a book review not a refutation. Keller refers to the Da Vinci Code many times as examples of “biblical skepticism” and “historical revisionism”. I understand he is trying to write for the popular level, but seriously, no one interested in this subject takes the Da Vinci Code seriously anyway, stop wasting my time Keller!

I was especially gobsmacked at Keller’s attempt to gloss over cultural anachronisms in the Bible and moral horrors (such as slavery) by trying to say that they aren’t the key message, so you should first accept Christianity as true, and then try and figure those out later. It’s a package deal, If I disagree with biblical teachings, I’m not going to follow the Bible. Honestly, I almost feel like saying that even if Jesus were God, I wouldn’t be a Christian because of the content of the Bible.

He attempts the argument that Biblical slavery wasn’t as bad as the slavery of the middle ages. He tries to say that slaves weren’t actually owned by slave-masters back then, only their labour was, but ignores the passage in Exodus where it explicitly states that the slave is the property of his master. I find this is typical of Christian apologetics, it’s disingenuous. At least he makes some reference to views that skeptics actually hold, but his refutations of them are extremely vapid and effectively amount to “the evidence for this older, skeptical view of the Bible has been crumbling steadily for the past thirty years, even as it has been promoted by the popular media...” Weak man, weak.

Chapter 8: “The Clues of God”

This chapter was bad. His first argument relies on outdated science, he quotes Stephen Hawking from the 90’s saying that “almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the big bang.” This is problematic because the most up-to-date understanding of the Big Bang Theory is that it only shows us an inflationary event from a dense state, it does not reveal a singularity or a creation moment. Keller’s use of this argument shows that he has either not kept up to date, or is intentionally staying out-of-date because he can use it to support his case.

His second argument is the fine-tuning argument. This is dealt (in my opinion) a death-blow in Victor Stenger’s latest book ‘The Fallacy of Fine Tuning’. The fine tuning argument is built on many false premises two of which I’ll list here.
1) That the ‘constants’ are variable
2) That the constants are independent

Once those assumptions are removed, fine tuning falls flat.

His next argument is that because nature is regular, god must exist, because we can’t create a rational explanation for why nature should be regular. This weak argument encounters a fatal flaw when one points out that one cannot make a rational argument for why nature shouldn’t be regular either.
Then he goes to beauty, and says that’s a clue for god. I’m not convinced, beauty is subjective, it doesn’t actually exist and is entirely explicable under naturalism.
He finishes the chapter with what is essentially Alvin Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism, which is built upon an argument of C.S. Lewis’ from Miracles. The argument basically says that if our brains are the result of natural evolution, we cannot trust them. I find that every person I’ve seen making this argument doesn’t really understand evolution or the scientific method.
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Review of 'The Reason for God' - Part 2

Chapter 4: “The Church is responsible for so much injustice”

This chapter boils down to one giant ‘no-true Scotsman’ fallacy in the end. Slave owners, crusaders and anyone motivated by Christianity to do wrong is not a real Christian, while true Christianity motivates abolitionists, the civil rights movement and peace according to Keller. Even if I was to grant Keller everything in the chapter, it would still have no bearing on the truth of Christianity. However I think Keller would do well to note that his scriptures contain morally questionable (read: horrific) content, like the blatant endorsement of slavery. I have no doubt that many, many people are inspired by Christianity to do good, but people are also inspired by poetry, music, film, art and literature, and this inspiration has no bearing on the truth or falsity of any subject in question.

Keller also tries to slander moral relativism by offering a very crude description of it he says “If everything is relative, there would have been no inventive for white people in the South to give up their power.” (referring to the end of the slave trade in the United States). Earlier in the chapter he effectively claims that Christianity invented the golden rule saying “to give up Christian standards would be to leave us with no basis for the criticism.” Either Tim Keller is ignorant of moral philosophy, or he is ignorant of moral philosophy, there is no way around it. To claim that without Christianity you cannot morally criticise the Crusades (as he was referring to in that quote) is incredibly pathetic.

Chapter 5: “How can a loving God send people to Hell?”

Firstly, this chapter is barely about Hell at all and the picture that Keller attempts to paint of Hell is one that people choose to go to and do not want to leave. I find this extremely puzzling, as one can find biblical support for annihilationism and for agonising eternal torture depending on how one interprets various passages, but Keller’s view seems incredibly weak. He bases this doctrine of his own invention (correct me if I’m wrong) on the fact that in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, “[the rich man] does not ask to get out of hell”.

Near the end of the chapter it becomes incredibly clear why this book is failing so miserably to actually address anything atheists and skeptics actually say. Keller says “Today many of the skeptics I talk to say, as I once did, they can’t believe in the God of the Bible, who punishes and judges people, because they “believe in a God of Love.”” There you have it, the elusive skeptics that Keller refers to in the book are at the very least Theists, or at the most, Christians who have doubts. If the rest of the book continues down this path, I envisage face-palms of epic proportions.
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Review of 'The Reason for God' - Part 1

I've decided to split this into several parts, as I ended up writing quite a bit.

Also, the way I wrote the review changed considerably over the course of reading it.

The Introduction

I started reading this book with the intention of being as open to the possibility of being wrong as possible, but the introduction really irritated me. It didn't feel to me like it was really introducing the book and there were a few things he says that got on my nerves which I have written here. Perhaps I'm being pedantic though, and if so I apologize.

Keller conflates relative morality with arbitrary morality and says this "If morality is relative, why isn't social justice as well?"

He tries to insult moral relativists by comparing them to "the morally upright".

"The people most passionate about social justice were moral relativists, while the morally upright didn't seem to care about the oppression going on all over the world."

Shows more bias here: "Liberals' individualism comes out in their views of abortion, sex, and marriage. Conservatives' individualism comes out in their deep distrust of the public sector and in their understanding of poverty as simply a failure of personal responsibility."
It seems like he is trying to paint liberals as shallow and superficial, while portraying conservatives as "deep" and showing "understanding". I hope this isn't indicative of the rest of the book.

Chapter 1: "There Can't Just Be One True Religion"

"Skeptics believe that any exclusive claims to a superior knowledge of spiritual reality cannot be true." Wrong. That's not what skepticism is at all, either Timothy Keller is an idiot, or he's never picked up a dictionary in his life (He'd still be an idiot in that case).

Furthermore, the crux of this chapter is arguing against something that skeptics DO NOT CLAIM. The fact that all religions cannot be true is something that skeptics acknowledge and use as ammunition against specific religious claims. The people who claim that all religions are true are spiritualists or new-agers or members of inclusive religious sects. Keller fails miserably in actually arguing against skepticism in this chapter.

Chapter 2: "How Could a Good God Allow Suffering?"

Keller simply parrots C.S. Lewis here and pays no attention to the actual arguments made by skeptics that he claims to be rebutting.
"C.S. Lewis described how he had originally rejected the idea of God because of the cruelty of life. Then he came to realize that evil was more problematic for his new atheism. In the end, he realized that suffering provided a better argument for God's existence than one against it."

Keller just accepts this and moves on. I'm not impressed. He spends most of the rest of the chapter talking about how Christianity can comfort those that suffer. I do not dispute that this may be the case, but it has absolutely no bearing on the truth of the religion, which is the reason I do not believe. Keller seems to assume people all disbelieve for emotional reasons.

Chapter 3: "Christianity is a Straitjacket"

Keller attempts to rebut multiple arguments in this chapter. The first is the idea of relative truth. I do not disagree with him that many contradictory statements can't all be true. He falls flat on his face once again though, because he isn't actually addressing the arguments of skeptics, but rather of spiritualists, new-agers or members of inclusive religious sects. He also goes after the idea of freedom saying "Freedom, then, is not the absence of limitations and constraints but it is finding the right ones, those that fit our nature and liberate us." His justification for this is a quote from C.S. Lewis, so once again he is just parroting another apologist while not actually addressing skeptics. Unimpressive.
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Why the Christian God Would be Stupid if He Existed - Part 1

I decided to start a new post series. I hope you enjoy it.

Creation

There are many aspects of 'creation' that make me think if the Christian God did exist, he would have to be classified as an idiot. The first of these being evidence. If he had created everything, he left no evidence of his activity. Painters generally sign their paintings and manufacturers generally put their logo on their products but for some reason Yahweh felt no need to leave behind any trace. This puts us homo sapiens in a strange predicament, we live in a universe that appears to us as if there is no god, everything we observe happens as a result of unguided natural processes so if the Christian God existed and created everything he would be an idiot based on this alone.

The second aspect of 'creation' that would qualify any prospective creator as incompetent are the many examples of un-intelligent design, I'll list just a few here to demonstrate my point. We breathe through the same orifice we eat with. Our lower backs are poorly constructed for walking upright resulting in widespread back problems. The birth canal is not large enough for fully developed human babies to be born prematurely compared to other mammals, leaving the mother and the baby vulnerable. Many more examples can be found but 3 should suffice for my purposes.

Related to the other two facets is evolution. Evolution is quite possibly the most inefficient way in which a god could create life. Inefficiency isn't one of the attributes you hear Christians worshiping Yahweh for so I assume that was a mistake, which would make him stupid.

If the Christian God did in fact create everything as creationism describes he shot himself in the foot by making all the evidence point towards evolution, which would make him stupid, unless he really wanted to deceive humanity, which would make him malicious. So there you have it, by looking at 'creation' I conclude that if the Christian god existed, he would be stupid or malicious.

Part 2

Upcoming Apologetics Book Review

I have agreed to trade books with a Christian family member, I will be giving them 'Why I Became an Atheist' by John W. Loftus, and in return I will be getting 'The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism' by Timothy Keller. Don't expect anything great, I'll probably write a chapter-by-chapter summary of my thoughts and then write some final words. It will probably be up at the end of November or the beginning of December.

Faith and Intuition

Many Christians laud faith as a virtue, and value intuition and gut feelings as confirmation of their beliefs. I reject all of this as unreliable, and it is my goal to elucidate why.

I will start by defining what I mean by faith, and then respond to some theistic uses of it. I accept the definition of faith in the letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament. "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see." Hebrews 11:1. So the atheistic definition that 'faith is belief without evidence' is accurate to the definition found in Hebrews. If Christians wish to dispute this they should take it up with the New Testament canon and the anonymous author of the epistle, not with us.

When dialoguing with Christians, I am often scolded for not giving faith a chance and that I'm dogmatically accepting scientific naturalism. I would like to point out that I did give faith a chance, I was raised on faith. I consciously followed the Christian faith and bought into its conclusions for years. I read apologetics and debated online with atheists for about 4 years before jumping ship. I also do not dogmatically accept anything. If it became apparent that scientific naturalism was not producing intellectual progress or contributing to the wealth of knowledge that furthers the advancement of our species, I would abandon it just as I abandoned by former religion. The thing is though, that scientific naturalism is making progress, and we are constantly finding out more and more about the world we live in by scientific methods.

The other common thing that I hear from the Christians that I discuss/debate with is that they think faith is a path to knowledge. This is usually coupled with the two statements in the previous paragraph. When I have asked how faith is a path to knowledge, I am only ever met with distractions and diversions. I don't see the connection between faith as defined in Hebrews and knowledge. How can you learn something from having confidence in what you hope for, or from having assurance about what you don't see? In every aspect of my life I learn things by examining the world around me, or by listening, reading or doing things. I have never learned anything by believing something a priori, without evidence. In fact I contend that doing so is the antithesis of learning, and only takes away from potential knowledge, rather than contributing to it as my theist friends insist. On top of the dodging of this question, I have never received an acceptable answer when I ask what knowledge faith has given them. If as they say faith is an alternative path to knowledge than the rational methods I apply, then surely they could point to an example of knowledge that has been revealed by faith? It seems like a reasonable question to me.

When the issue of morality arises I am met constantly with the view that God instils moral values into our intuitions, or something akin to it. No amount of sociological, evolutionary or neuro-scientific reasoning seems to be able to convince them that intuitions are not reliable ways to know anything. Moral ideas are  largely the product of cultural conditioning, and many intuitions come from our evolutionary heritage and are explicable by natural, hormonal or neural means. We have learned so much about how our brain works and the natural world we live in, and as a result we can correct for errors in our cognition and intuition. Similarly, we can correct moral beliefs that are conditioned into us from cultural or evolutionary heritage. Pointing to moral intuition is not a cogent argument for the existence of God, as our moral intuitions are constantly changing as a result of cultural change. Our intuitions and gut feelings are useful tools in every day life, as we often can not afford the time to sit and think rationally about every decision we make, but we must also realise that they are often error-prone and sometimes flat out wrong. If you think God exists because you have a gut feeling that something exists out there it is my opinion that this is but another example of cognitive failure.

Good Old-Fashioned Christian Hate

I can't remember how, but I managed to stumble upon a video on YouTube posted by drcraigvideos. The video contained a clip from a radio show/podcast by the Christian apologist Frank Turek talking about 'angry atheists' leaving hateful comments on William Lane Craig debate videos. He said something that made me want to leave a comment. He said that he looked at the comments "to see what names were called, or were attributed to Craig and what names were attributed to Hitchens, in other words ad hominen [sic (Yes, he pronounced it hominen)] attacks, insults if you will." I left a comment pointing out that insults and ad hominem attacks were not the same thing. See for yourself what I got in response from drcraigvideos.

I actually thought he was using it as an example, I should have realised from the "3rd option" that he was actually just straight up insulting me. So it seems that this evangelical Christian is just as bad as the trolls who post inflammatory comments on his channel. In fact it's rather ironic that this video was about inflammatory comments, I left a serious comment, was insulted in return, and when I explained my initial comment further, I was insulted again. In fact I think drcraigvideos is even worse than the trolls, because he's a filthy hypocrite.

Just to clarify, the comment I left that is pending approval in the picture was intended to be sarcastic.

EDIT: It seems I'm not alone in my experience with this deplorable character. See here and here for more details.

EDIT 2: I have now been blocked by drcraigvideos. He must be scared of legitimate, civil criticism. What a disingenuous tool.

Theists Justifying Torture

A friend of mine is running an event this month where people have the opportunity to ask tough questions to Christians and get some free food. He asked me (being an atheist) to pose a few tough questions on the event page on facebook to prepare Christians for tough questions at the event. I put up 3 sample questions

1) If morality is absolute and defined by God; and the Bible is the word of (or inspired by, depending on your doctrinal orientation) God, then why does the Bible endorse views that are by and large considered to be immoral, if not inhuman?
2) How is it moral to condemn humans to infinite punishment (or torture, if you're that way inclined) for finite crimes?
3) How do you reconcile the biblical view of an original pair of human beings whose sin brought death and suffering to all their descendants with the findings of modern science?

To the first question, I provided two quotations from the Bible where it endorses rape, genocide and slavery most of the responses were fairly typical, ranging from “That’s out of context!” to claiming that Biblical slavery was actually really nice. Both of these responses are quite plainly absurd. Interestingly enough no one felt game enough to try and justify the rape and genocide from Numbers 31.

The third question attracted a legit fundie, who said things like “Nothing in modern science goes against the traditional, literal teachings from the Bible.” And “Evolution describes a possible history. Creation describes a possible history. Science does not support or disprove either one.” I responded fairly briefly to his smorgasbord of fallacies and mistruths, providing him with links to learn more about the subjects he obviously hasn’t the slightest clue about. Some of the other responses included misusing the ‘Mitochondrial Eve’, claiming it supports a literal Adam and Eve, when it does no such thing.

Where the real juicy moral dissonance came pouring in was the question about eternal torture. Here are some quotes from the responses.
 

“The offended one dictates the extent of punishment. Offending an infinite God requires an infinite punishment. Since humans are finite beings, except for their immortality, the punishment must take eternity, or else an infinite payment credited instead.”

“Without hell, then there is no proof of God's holiness, or mercy or love.” 

“Yes hell is a terrible and torturous place, but it is proof of just how important love, mercy and justice are to the God of the Bible”

“Those who are commanded or judged to go to hell and suffer, are those who chose not to do so[To love God], but instead of their own free will disobeyed instead.”

It amazes me that people have allowed this religious doctrine to poison their moral thought and their empathy for their fellow humans. What was going through their heads when the words “eternal torture” came up on the screen?

Here are some excerpts from my responses to them.

Isn't God supposed to be merciful? Not to mention omni-benevolent (though this is admittedly not from the Bible)? Yet you still think that in God's dishing out of eternal punishment/torture he is satisfying his merciful, just and benevolent natures?

What of the 'sin' of non-belief? What of a person who despite their trying, and at one point desire to believe in Christianity, simply cannot? Is it just at all to punish someone who can't bring themselves to believe that a God even exists? I am of course speaking of myself here, I was raised in the church, and became an atheist just before my 20th birthday, I just couldn't believe any more. Do you honestly believe that I deserve eternal torture for simply being honest to myself?

I care for my fellow human beings and that is exactly why I find the doctrine of hell repugnant. I do not 'love God' in fact I think that a being that thinks it right to torture his dissidents would not be deserving of love, but rather would only be deserving of loathing and contempt. I do not steal, cheat, lie, am not violent and I am very interested in social justice and helping the poor. Despite all this, because I care for the wellbeing of my fellow hominids, and care very much whether my beliefs are true, I will be tortured for eternity according to your belief system.

False Analogies

It generally annoys me when I hear people making comparisons between Jesus and other mythical deities, because most of the time, they make false analogies. The most common ones are what people learned from movies like Zeitgeist (which is horrible), and they make bold claims like "The Jesus story was copied directly from pagan religions!" and "All of these gods (10s or 100s of them) were born on December 25th of a virgin and when they died rose 3 days later!"

My biggest gripe with these faux arguments is that there ARE legitimate comparisons to be made. There are quite a number of dying and rising gods in ancient religions. There are a number of mythical man-god figures who were said to have been fathered by gods. There are also other figures who are ascribed many of the same kinds of miracles that Jesus did. These are the comparisons that should be made, and are made by people who know what's what. It isn't a black and white issue and the stories are not identical. I really wish people would stop speaking out their ass and treating movies like Zeitgeist and Religious as scholarly sources.

Reasons I doubted

I have written in the past about the things that caused me to leave Christianity, but today I will discuss the things that lead up to that deconversion. The reasons I doubted my faith in the first place.

1)The silence and hiddenness of God
This wasn't the main thing going through my head when I decided that I no longer believed in a god, but in hindsight it was definitely one of the leading factors in my path to apostasy. In my YouTube Video discussing my Christian upbringing I recall pivotal experiences , most notably the ones where despite hours of praying, I did not receive word from God, nor did I feel any supernatural presence. At the time I rationalised this by blaming myself, it was MY fault that I didn't feel the presence of God.

2)Natural explanations
I had grown up under the pretence that evolution was false and that the Bible was literally true. Upon learning more about science, I found it harder and harder to reconcile my literalism with reality. I gradually conceded point after point until I no longer considered the Bible to be the infallible word of God. First to go was a young earth, then the global flood, then the fixity of species, then a literal Adam and Eve (and consequently a literal fall) and finally the origin of life and the universe.

3)The sterility of the bible
Even the staunchest Bible-fanatics will have to admit that it's not exactly a good read and is actually quite boring in a lot of places (the begats?). I found this fact to be quite disconcerting, how was it possible that texts inspired by the omnipotent, omniscient God I believed in would be so unappealing and tedious? Surely God would have made the text be fascinating and engaging throughout, but this simply wasn't the case. I heard other believer claim that when they read the Bible the spirit speaks to them and the words "come to life" on the page (relates to reason 1). This simply wasn't the case for me, I found it incredibly laborious to read, yet I persevered and by the time I deconverted I had read the Old Testament completely once (some books many times) and the New Testament at least 4 times.


4)Immoral Old Testament
This was something that hadn't really occurred to me until I read The Age of Reason  and Biblical Blasphemy by Thomas Paine. It is no coincidence that within a few months of reading these books, I became an atheist, and immediately after reading them, I no longer considered myself a Christian, but rather some sort of Deist. I'll end with a quote from The Age of Reason.

"Besides, the character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the history of any nation. Of which I will state only one instance:

When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers xxxi. 13):[KJ: I have used a different translation here (NLT), Paine quoted the King James version.] "After they had gathered the plunder and captives, both people and animals,  they brought them all to Moses and Eleazar the priest, and to the whole community of Israel, which was camped on the plains of Moab beside the Jordan River, across from Jericho.  Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the community went to meet them outside the camp. But Moses was furious with all the generals and captains[a] who had returned from the battle.
“Why have you let all the women live?” he demanded. “These are the very ones who followed Balaam’s advice and caused the people of Israel to rebel against the Lord at Mount Peor. They are the ones who caused the plague to strike the Lord’s people. So kill all the boys and all the women who have had intercourse with a man. Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves.""