Blog for God is REAL! Moved Right Here
I’ve merged the blog I was keeping contra Why Won’t God Heal Amputees and God is Imaginary to this one.
Earlier this week, I did the same to the Answering Loftus blog. This means that all the blogs I keep are now merged into one, this one.
All of the Loftus entries will appear under the category Christian Delusion. All of the entries just merged will be under the category WWGHA.
Within the next 90 days, both blogs will be deleted. This is part of following the three keys to life: “Simplify, Simplify, and Simplify.” I’ll be able to keep up with work a lot more efficiently. Perhaps I’ll even accomplish more than I’ve been lately.
Yes, part of this has to do with criticism received on the WWGHA forums, specifically in this thread. I’m also tired of starting projects that I never finish.
In the coming days, I’m going to announce (and stick to) a schedule for completing all of my open projects–of which there are many. What I’m going to do is pick a theme for a given month, beginning in December. Then, I will pay special focus on apologetics for that specific theme. Each theme is going to be something that I wish to learn more about. I will read books and articles on both sides of issues for each month’s theme and post regular blog updates on each.
I’m also going to watch the blogosphere for topics on my subject. Mostly I figure I’ll answer stuff contrary to the given topic.
December should be a no-brainer: Christmas! But surprisingly, no. I’m going to actually make December’s theme prayer. I have a two books on prayer that I haven’t read, and I requested a review copy of a new book on prayer that I’ll be reviewing once I get it. Hopefully I get it; there’s no guarantee that you get review copies once you request them. It depends on how many others request copies and how quickly you got your request in.
Weekends will be devoted exclusively to long term projects that I’ve announced but never got around to. That means the promised updates of my refutations to WWGHA and GII, as well as my review of John Loftus’s The Christian Delusion. Those two are first. I already know what’s next, and I’m actually hoping to get the next one down by the first of the year.
So we shall see if this makes me more productive in apologetics. Let’s face it, something needed to change real quick.
That said, happy Thanksgiving to all my readers! Hope everyone enjoyed Black Friday! After working a few in my brief stint in retail, I won’t go near a store the day after Thanksgiving, so good luck to those of you that did!
Thread on WWGHA Forums
In this thread, my (currently empty) website that will eventually refute Why Won’t God Heal Amputees is being lampooned since it’s currently empty. I decided, against my better judgment, to open a discussion with these guys. It’s been more pleasant than I thought it would be, at least so far.
In the thread, I discussed the huge difference between morality and ethics. The believer, I said, is moral meaning that he won’t do wrong. The unbeliever is merely ethical, which means that he doesn’t do wrong. There’s a big difference.
I qualified that by discussing what a spiritual battle is. In Romans 7:X-X, Paul brings the spiritual battle milieu to the forefront. Believers still do wrong because our flesh fights a battle with our spirits. The law is spiritual, but the needs of the flesh are more immediate. Therefore, the believer will still do wrong (i.e., sin). One of the atheists in the board asked me, then, what’s the difference between a believer and an unbeliever?
I simply answered, “Hope.” The believer has it, while the unbeliever dies without it.
That’s true, but there’s an even better answer. In the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon writes:
Then I saw the wicked buried. They used to go in and out of the holy place and were praised in the city where they had done such things. This also is vanity. Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil. Though a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God, because they fear before him. But it will not be well with the wicked, neither will he prolong his days like a shadow, because he does not fear before God. (Eccl 8:10-13, emphasis added)
The trick is that, very often, since the punishment for sin isn’t seen immediately, the tendency is to think that there is no ultimate justice. But with God, holy and just to perfection, that isn’t the case. There’s an ultimate punishment down the line somewhere. Just because we don’t see it doesn’t mean that it isn’t there.
Same with the reward.
But it comes back to hope. How hopeless our existence would be if there was literally no justice for the sinner, nor reward for the righteous. As the bumper sticker says, Jesus is our strength for today, and our hope for tomorrow.
WWGHA Forums
An admin for the Why Won’t God Heal Amputees forum sent me an invitation to be a part of their discussion, as some of the members have found the sites I have contra their position and would like to discuss my views in person.
I’m contemplating accepting, but I’m not sure. Scanning the forum, the level of ignorance is absolutely intolerable. For example, in this thread, they are discussing the removal of a man dressed like Jesus from a church. The topic inevitable turns to the legality of kicking someone out of a church:
I wonder if removing him from church was legal? If it was, then the church could call the cops and ask them to remove anyone for any reason like their hair color, age or race. Anyone here know the laws around this by any chance?
Reasonable question, and it was answered correctly by another user. Basically, a church is a quasi-public building, and since it is privately owned, retains the right to remove people from the premises. “Quasi-public” only means that the public is welcome provided they act in a manner deemed appropriate by those with the authority to remove them. If they do not, then the church has every right to remove the offender.
That said, I don’t think that the “Jesus-guy” should have been removed. As far as I could see, he wasn’t causing a disturbance and the police didn’t even file a report. So the elders probably jumped the gun and, in the process, made themselves look pretty much like hypocrites. The same user with the legal question points it out colorfully:
I’m not saying ‘jesus guy’ isn’t a bit of an eccentric nutter and of course he is open to ridicule… but to have him thrown out by a “non-profit” tax-free organization that is supposed to welcome all? Damn hypocrites.
Now, here’s where I question the sanity of trying to debate or disagree with the members of this forum. In reply to the question of whether or not Jesus-guy could be legally kicked out of the church, once it was established that the church was within its rights, someone gets up on a soapbox:
If the churches didn’t get special treatment, such as tax breaks, that amounts to every citizen supporting them, then I’d agree they have the right to remove people. Otherwise, they should be treated like any other taxpayer-funded establishment.
I would like to thank the two users (I’m not sure if they’re religious or atheist) who spoke sanity into that idiotic drool. One (correctly) pointed out to this character that “tax break” isn’t even in the ballpark with “tax-payer supported.” The other reminded him that tax-payer funded establishments still have the right to remove folks from the property.
In another thread, a user complained about street preaching. A Christian group was preaching using a megaphone and playing Christian music on the (public) street corner, and some of the message was about how atheists need salvation by Jesus Christ. I’m glad it offended the user, and it should have. Rather than consider the content of the message, he wants to censer it:
This is where I draw the line on “free speech”. One guy giving out fliers and politely asking people for a few minutes of their time is fine. 20 people harrassing passers-by with loud music and speakers preaching their crap to me is dirturbing the public peace.
How the hell is this legal? I say allow street preaching but under very strict restrictions. NO mega-phones or loud speakers … NO music … NO f***ing noise. Let them only be able to hand out fliers and approach people politely and respectfully. If the person says “no thanks”, move on.
What these people were doing was forcing us to listen to their religious crap and I will not put up with it on the street of my local town centre.
In other words, it’s okay until he has to hear it. Once he has to hear it, it should be illegal. Well, I don’t much care for atheist bus ads. They’re big and unavoidable. Same with billboards. Should those be illegal by this logic?
If I have the story right, he could have just ignored these people, but he chose to walk up and say something to them. His wife had to calm him down and take him out of there. Approaching these people was his choice. He exercised his free speech rights to tell them that they were doing something wrong. Is that also harassment by his definition?
I signed up, but I have yet to post. I’m not sure it’s going to be worth my time. Everyone there has already made up their minds, and they all hate religion (especially Christianity). I see evidence that other Christians have brought charges of favoritism to atheists and moderators editing the Christians’ posts without their consent. I know this, because some of the atheists are discussing those charges in a thread titled “Theist Liars.” That should give some insight as to what the atheists running the forum think of those charges.
Looking for the title of that thread, I spotted another one I had missed before declaring that Christianity isn’t monotheistic.
This board is probably a waste of my time.
Nail on the Head
Guest blogging for J.P. Holding, apologist Nick Peters hit the nail on the head with a recent review of Valerie Tarico’s book Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light (Oracle Institute Press LLC, 2010). Peters tells us:
Towards the end, she [Tarico] seems to say that she does not believe in any deity, but the terminology is ambiguous. I see Tarico as simply wanting to have the beliefs that come naturally with a theistic worldview, such as objective morality and reliability of reason, without having that extra annoying baggage (to her) that comes with it, such as God. (source)
I happen to think that this sums up what most atheists think of theistic worldviews. There is no reason to think that free will exists, objective morality, or that our brains are even validly processing information unless you ground all of that in something. Yet, the atheist just kind of shrugs, affirms that it all works without ever giving a reason, and goes on. “It just does” is good enough for them, I guess.
They want to make the same assumptions that a God-centered worldview can make, but without the annoyance of actually submitting to God. Doesn’t work that way, guys. Sorry.
Questions Theists Can’t Answer
The Blog for WhyWon’tGodHealAmputees has directed my attention to a Reddit thread where unbelievers seek to compile a list of questions that theists supposedly can’t answer. So I thought I’d take a quick peek at some of the questions, because you just know they not only have answers, but they’ve been answered countless times in countless (but consistent) ways but ignored by unbelievers intent in their unbelief.
Who created God? God is a necessary being. He is the starting point of existence, because existence had to have a starting point and the creation and fine tuning of the universe suggests that the beginning of it all had power and intelligence. So this is a really stupid question; which is what made me laugh at Dawkins’s The God Delusion when I read it. This is the kind of question that kindergartner asks. Please tell me the rest of these questions are going to be better.
Why do innocent babies suffer and die? That’s better, but still not good. Really, all humans suffer and die without exception, the good and the bad. Why should babies be immune to this?
If God didn’t want Adam and Eve to sin, why did he create them without knowledge of good and evil? God is the good. Since Adam and Eve were originally created for fellowship with God, God (as the good) would be their source of information for good and evil. By eating from the Tree of Knowledge, they effectively sent the message that they would decide good and evil for themselves, apart from God.
What sets your religion apart from any other? In the case of Christianity, the unique theology has God reaching down to man by Jesus. No other religion provides perfect mediation or complete salvation from sin. In every other religion, you have a set of specific behaviors or attitudes that tries to get man back into good standing with God, nature, the universe, or some other sense of the divine. Only Christianity has God doing the reaching and mending.
Numerous answers have been proposed to this question by many thinkers. Augustine believed that unbaptized infants went to hell. The Westminster Confession of Faith holds that elect infants go to heaven, while reprobate ones will go to hell. It was the Roman Catholic belief for ages (and many still hold to this) that baptized infants go to heaven and unbaptized infants reside in limbo (a sort of void in between heaven and hell).
But, as I said, there is literally no Scriptural answer. Anything said in this area is pure conjecture.
How we can enjoy heaven when a child suffers in hell qualifies as a genuine mystery–at least right now. We (as parents) should do all that we can to demonstrate a Christian lifestyle to our children, and pray they grow up and remain in it. But the old saying, while not in the Bible, is nonetheless true: “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” Per Luke 14:26, 33, we should be willing to surrender our own family ties if that’s what it takes to continue walking with the Lord. These ties aren’t going to mean anything in heaven anymore (Mt 22:30).
Atheism offers us nothing better or more logical than, “We exist. Pass the beer nuts.”
There are many, many more questions that were proposed. I’m only going to answer the ones that I’ve gathered previously from the tread; I’m not going to continuously check back and answer all of the questions that they propose. I actually have a life outside of blogging! I have a second part of miscellaneous questions coming soon, four categories of questions: . Lastly, I have two wise observations about the questions in general. Stick around; things should get interesting!
Old Post, but New to Me
Sometimes, I gloss over the really good posts in my reader with the promise that I’ll get back to them later. Which of course I seldom actually get back to them later. But in this case, I did and I’m glad.
Dr. Randal Rauser (who I’m mad at for this post describing the plot of the movie The Human Centipede, which I’m having a hard time getting out of my head because the very idea of one person eating then pushing excrement into the mouth of a second person sewed to their anus is really gross–and how does Dr. Rauser know the plot of that movie, anyway?) gave us insight into John W. Loftus’s character:
Every so often people provide challenges to our positions that we cannot seem to answer. So what are we to do? Concede the difficulty and work to revise or reject our position? Well we could do that, but nobody likes to eat crow. And we have our reputations to protect, don’t we? So I am grateful to John Loftus for providing an alternative. First, create a diversion; second, insult with a range of slurs; and third (and most interestingly) accuse of heinous actions in counterfactual situations. (source)
Sounds like Loftus to me. Dr. Rauser explains that he critiqued Loftus’s essay on the Problem of Miscommunication, and Loftus responded, cordially at first, but then Dr. Rauser backed him into a corner from which he couldn’t escape.
Rather than admit defeat and revise his argument, Loftus changed the subject completely, demanding a coherent theodicy from Dr. Rauser before he’d answer the simple question of what divine revelation should look like. In other words, what criteria would separate divine revelation from simple human meanderings?
When Dr. Rauser tried to get the debate back on track, Loftus called him a snake and a Pharisee, demanding he answer the irrelevant question.
Then, Loftus told Dr. Rauser that he would have lit the fire that burned Anne Askew.
So, to recap: irrelevant question, name calling, slanderous accusations. I’ll have to remember that for my current conversation with Doug Crews, in case Crews backs me into a corner (it doesn’t look like that is going to happen, but you never know).
Continuing Discussion With Doug Crews
I did a podcast a while back (part 1 | part 2) where I answered some tough questions for Christians proposed by Doug Crews. My comment policy has comments closed after 30 days, since I’m trying to spend time coming up with new material and normally after that time additional comments tend to rate higher on the ignorance scale than comments left in a more timely fashion.
However, Doug’s discussion is an exception to the rule. I can’t re-open comments on that thread without reopening comments across the board, so I’m going to open this new thread.
And so, the discussion continues: Read the rest of this entry
Ooops!!
On Facebook, I recently made reference to a new textual-critical edition of the New Testament put out by the Society for Biblical Literature (the SBLGNT). What appealed to me is that it is made freely available, with a generous end-user license. It’s the closest I’ve seen to a Creative Commons License with the work still under a copyright.
I should have checked it out more carefully. James White pans this edition on a recent Dividing Line podcast. White uses two examples, Mark 1:41 and Hebrews 2:9, where the SBLGNT uses minority readings that literally have no manuscript support.
A leper approaches Jesus and tells Jesus that Jesus could heal him if Jesus so chose. In the ESV, Mark 1:41 reads “Moved with pity, he [Jesus] stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, ‘I will; be clean.'”
However, the SBLGNT uses a variant reading that originates in Codex D, which is dated to 1500s. Only MSS that bear relation to Codex D actually have that reading. No scholar gives Codex D any weight. It has too many readings unique to it, even whole passages and stories that are found nowhere else.
The variant reading that the SBLGNT uses for Mark 1:41 is: “Moved with anger, he [Jesus] stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, ‘I will; be clean.'”
Hebrews 2:9 is rendered “But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone” in the ESV.
The SBLGNT renders it “But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that apart from God he might taste death for everyone.”
There’s more support for that reading than for the Mark 1:41 variant, but it still isn’t widely supported. It is more of a theological curiosity, and may have been changed because many believe that Jesus became wholly separated from God upon his death.
The Post that Makes Me Want to Ask Lofus, “Are You Stupid?”
Just read what I have to say before you start quoting 1 Peter 3:15 at me.
This post from Debunking Christianity may just be the height of John W. Loftus’s stupidity. In a short space, Loftus asks questions that just prove that he is not just ignorant, but willfully ignorant (and that’s the worst kind of ignorant). The crux of his argument:
Christians have faulted the so-called New Atheists with ignorance. They do the same thing with me. If only I knew this or that I would see the error of my way and believe again.
He closes appropriately, “Surely the theist cannot possibly demand that nonbelievers must know all that can be known before their rejection of religion is warranted.” No, we can’t ask for that, since we ourselves can’t know everything there is to know to accept our position as rational. But, that’s not really the focus. The focus here is the naivety and outright stupidity of the so-called rhetorical questions being asked. Let’s look at them:
How much philosophy should Richard Dawkins know to rationally reject religion?
He doesn’t need to know any philosophy to rationally reject religion, but if he’s going to write a book for the general populace using naturalism to debunk philosophical arguments of the existence of God, he ought to at least study his philosophy and learn what philosophers, both ancient and modern, have to say on the philosophical points he wishes to raise.
Had he done so, he would have known that “Who designed the Designer?” is a naive and silly question often asked by second graders who fail to distinguish between the heavenly and earthly realms. If God was a material entity, originating in a created plane of existence, then he would require a designer. However, he transcends the universe itself, existing outside of time and space, and therefore doesn’t require a cause the way a material entity or event does. Without the constrains of time, a cause-and-effect chain isn’t necessary to bring about a desired result or to create a being, event, or formation. God is, and always will be.
How much science should Christopher Hitchens know?
As above, to reject religion he doesn’t need to know. But, if he’s going to write a book that logically debunks religion with science, he ought to be familiar with his subject matter.
How much Bible should Daniel Dennett know?
Depends. If he’s going to write a book about the Bible, its history and construction, and contrast that with evolutionary development, then he ought to know quite a bit about the Bible.
How much theology should Sam Harris know?
If he’s going to argue the morality of Christian theology, he ought to have a basic grasp of it. He also ought to have a basic grasp of the cultural morality of the time in which the Bible was written. However, he doesn’t have even a 101-level grasp of any of those things and therefore shouldn’t argue it. Of course, that hasn’t stopped him from writing three books on those exact topics.
How much should we know to rationally reject religion? How much? What if we know very little? What if all we know is that God did not save our child and she died from Leukemia?
Let’s say all you think you know is that God couldn’t save a child from leukemia. Before you conclude that religion is stupid, don’t you think that you should at least investigate what a learned theologian may have to say on that matter, instead of just going the completely emotional route?
Here’s John being extremely inconsistent again. Atheism is a reasoned conclusion, religion is being biased and defending what you prefer to be true. But if you reject God solely on the basis of your child’s untimely death from leukemia, that is taking your visceral, emotional reply to a tragedy and rather than applying your mind to the task of weighing evidence or considering arguments, you shut your heart down to any possibility of God because you’re mad at him.
Exactly like my three-year old when she doesn’t get her way.
What if a scientist rejects religion because s/he cannot adequately test supernatural hypotheses?
What if a historian rejects the claims of a religion because as a historian s/he must assume a natural explanation for the events in the past?
Are they culpable for doing so when this is all they know to do?
Yes, they are culpable.
For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. (Rom 1:20-25)
Everyone knows about God. Everyone can see God’s eternal nature and divine power. These folks are using their professions to hide what they know to be true under a thin cloak of pseudo-rationality. That’s willful rejection of God, gross idolatry, and a major sin.
When can it be said that a person can rationally reject a religion?
I don’t know the answer to that. But the rejections of religion that I’ve seen are emotional rejections of God because of anger directed at God, or disgust at the behavior of Christians. Not exactly rationally concluded atheism, is it?
I’ll let you know when I actually see a rational rejection of religion. I have yet to come across any.
Loftus Writing a Book with a Christian Scholar
If you’ve been following John W. Loftus’s blog, you know that he’s now writing a debate book with a Christian scholar. It looks like it’s going to be pretty shallow, at only 160 pages. Each debate is going to be less than 2000 words, with 750 words each presenting affirmation and denial, then a 100 word rebuttal each, and finally a 50 word conclusion each.
The good news is that Loftus is softballing questions to the unnamed scholar. The first three questions are:
- The biblical god ruled over a pantheon of gods and had a wife, Asherah.
- The biblical god required human sacrifices for his pleasure.
- The biblical god commanded the genocide of whole people groups.
As to (1), that is a big fat NEGATIVE. The people of Israel often worshiped Asherah (a Canaanite fertility goddess who also governed prosperity, I believe), and perhaps some of them may have believed that God took her as a wife. But the heretical beliefs of any religion do not define that religion.
The monotheism of ancient Israel (and most probably Abraham’s own journey to monotheism) didn’t conceive of God as a single entity or being. Rather, God was a plurality of powers. In polytheism, each discrete deity of a pantheon had a portfolio: a set of related areas of mortal life which that particular deity oversaw. Zeus, for example, ruled the skies, thunder, and lightning. Hades ruled death. Aphrodite ruled love and beauty, and her son Eros was responsible for matchmaking and sex (Eros is where we get our word erotica). When Abraham journeyed to monotheism, he (and people who followed after him) saw God the might of heavens (like clouds, thunder, and lightning) as an aspect of God. Similarly, death, love, beauty, matchmaking, and sex were all aspects of God. So, in our Greek example, Zeus, Aphrodite, and Eros were all seen as discrete powers, but unified in essence, purpose, and intelligence. They wouldn’t have individuality, but would be part of the divine.
This means that the Israelites didn’t see anything specifically wrong or blasphemous about worshiping the gods of the Canaanites, since these gods were seen as aspects of the One, True God of Israel. But in the Law, God through Moses sought to correct that way of thinking by forbidding Israel to make images of things on earth (you can’t worship nature, trees, or animals) and in heaven (forbidding both ancestor worship of oriental religions and the polytheism of most ancient cultures). God didn’t wish to be thought of as a set of individual entities, but as One.
As difficult as this is to wrap our modern minds around, it proved even more difficult for the Israelites to grasp. Hence, other deities (especially Canaanite deities) were worshiped throughout Israel. Asherah was by far the most common. The Bible makes repeated references to this, and consistently condemns it.
Whatever Loftus’s source for (1), it isn’t the Bible. The Bible is the infallible rule of faith and practice, and nowhere in it do we find a hint that God married Asherah. Nor do we find this alleged Israelite pantheon. Viewing God as the unity of intelligence and purpose behind a plurality of powers doesn’t make the Israelites into polytheists. Judging the whole of an ancient religion by its heretics is also dangerous. When Loftus was a Christian, I’m sure that he would take great exception if an opponent were to judge him by the tenets of Marcionism.
I’ve repeatedly said that (2) is just false, and I would love to see a biblical challenge to it. I’ll save you time: there ain’t one. God forbid human sacrifices. Yes, the Israelites often practiced them (I’ll even grant the famous story in Judges, but you have to show me where God accepted the sacrifice explicitly or implicitly without appealing to an argument like, “God is omniscient and omnipotent and could have stopped it if he wanted to”). But, as I stated in (1), you can’t judge a religion by its heretics. Every religion has them, but don’t use their practices to condemn the religion as a whole, especially when there are clear, unambiguous biblical mandates against human sacrifice.
We’ve also addressed (3) so many times that I don’t even want to get into it again. No one is innocent before God; we are all sinners, worthy of death and deserving of hell. Life, also, isn’t a guarantee. Nothing in the Bible promises that humans won’t be the victims of murder, genocide, war, or a tragic car accident. Whether we die in our beds of old age with our families around us, or by application of a strangle wire after being raped for the two previous hours, we will die. For good or ill, it is our destiny, and has been since Adam first ate the fruit of the forbidden tree.
God is perfectly able to judge guilty sinners as such and even use a human war machine as that people’s undoing. And that’s exactly what we see in the commanded genocides. Indeed, we see similarities in all deaths; it is all God’s judgment upon a sinful people.
Back Rome Again 