Answers in Genesis BUSTED!

A Universe From Nothing?

2012-01-31T03:41:00.000-06:00

Lawrence Krauss' new book hit the shelves a couple of weeks ago: A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing

Although I'm totally sure, I think I read something in the preview which indicates that he is not simply arguing that the universe emerged from empty space (which is a common philosophical mistake made by scientists; they say "nothing" when they mean "empty space" even though empty space is certainly something!). Rather, he's going to argue that the universe came from literally and absolutely nothing.

Incidentally, a couple of years ago I emailed him about getting a universe from nothing. I said that quantum fluctuations that create energy and particles occur in empty space, and hence are not out of nothing. He responded that empty space itself can come about through a quantum fluctuation. So this should be an important and interesting read on the issue. Here are some other titles I'm looking forward to:

Free Will by Sam Harris

Did Jesus Exist? by Bart Ehrman

Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus Richard Carrier

The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul Robert M. Price

I've also got a few books that are old titles but that I'm interested to read and will hopefully get to in the next few months:

Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing

Evidence and Evolution: The Logic Behind the Science

Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles

A Defense of Hume on Miracles (Princeton Monographs in Philosophy)

So that's it. Hopefully my next book will be killer because of all the stuff I've read!

Test Tube Yeast Evolve Multicellularity

2012-01-29T06:19:00.002-06:00

Read about at Scientific American. After multicellularity evolved, it says that: "The researchers also found evidence of rudimentary division of labor, which is an essential characteristic for more complex multicellular life forms. In a human, for example, some cells may differentiate into blood cells, others may differentiate into immune cells, but only select egg or sperm cells help form the next generation."

Neato!

God Claims: An Index

2012-01-27T16:15:00.003-06:00

So, I'm currently working on a book called An Index to Theistic Claims which will be kind of like An Index to Creationist Claims except focusing only on god belief. I've already written about 70 pages of the book itself, here is my table of contents. Have I missed any arguments or claims made by theists? Leave a comment if I have.

A. Purely Logical and Miscellaneous Arguments for God’s Existence

1. The Classic Ontological Argument
2. The Modal Ontological Argument
3. Descartes’ Conceptual Argument
4. The Argument from Numbers
5. The Moral Argument
6. The Argument from Consciousness
7. The Argument from Personal Experience
8. The Argument from Common Consent
9. Pascal’s Wager
10. If You Don’t Stand for Something, You’ll Fall for Anything

B. Presuppositionalist Arguments

1. The Transcendental Argument
2. Inductive Reasoning Presumes the Existence of God
3. Without God, You Cannot Trust Your Own Thoughts.
4. Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism.
5. We Need an Unprovable Axiom; Christianity May Be It.
6. Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology

C. First-Cause/Cosmological Arguments.

1. The Kalam Cosmological Argument
2. Swinburne’s Cosmological Argument
3. The Argument from Contingency

D. Design Arguments

1. Paley’s Watchmaker Argument
2. The Evolution/Creation Dichotomy
3. Dembski’s Explanatory Filter
4. Irreducible Complexity
5. Information Requires a Creator
6. Only God Could Have Created Life
7. The Argument from Lawfulness
8. The Fine-Tuning Argument
9. The Argument from Beauty in Physical Laws
10. The Argument from an Intelligible Universe

E. Arguments from Holy Scripture

1. Arguments from Biblical Prophecy:
1.1 World Events Predicted
1.2 Claims of Advanced Scientific Knowledge in the Bible
1.3 Old Testament Prophecies of Jesus

2. C.S. Lewis’ Trilemma: Lunatic, Liar, or Lord?
3. Q&A on the Arguments for the Resurrection of Jesus

4. Arguments from Qu’ranic Prophecy:
4.1 World Events Predicted
4.2 Claims of Advanced Scientific Knowledge in Qu’ran

F. Q&A on The Problem of Evil

G. Common Anti-Atheist Claims and Rhetoric

Paganism and Early Christianity

2012-01-25T15:16:00.003-06:00

John Loftus recently posted about an article in the Journal for Biblical Literature that discusses the parallels between Greco-Roman gods and Jesus. Loftus posted a handy table from that article that shows the parallels and the ancient sources that those parallels come from. The article that this comes from is called "Mark's Empty Tomb and Other Translation fables in Antiquity" By Richard C. Miller. You can read the article yourself, as the entire issue of that journal is online here. I was happy to see that Miller wrote about many parallels that I discussed in a 2009 article I wrote called "The Forgotten Sons of God." As a side note: Plutarch wrote Numa Pompilius around 110 AD, not in 75 AD as it says in the article. I've also blogged a bit further about a parallel between a certain gospel/Buddhist story here.

The Evolution of Monkey Faces

2012-01-21T02:47:00.000-06:00

Check it Out. This is interesting.

IMPORTANT Contact Local Representatives Immediately!

2012-01-18T16:58:00.003-06:00

Here is a letter I sent to my local representative:

I understand that a new bill is being proposed nicknamed PIPA. I understand that this bill will "put the burden on website owners to police user-contributed material and call for the unnecessary blocking of entire sites. Small sites won't have sufficient resources to defend themselves. Big media companies may seek to cut off funding sources for their foreign competitors, even if copyright isn't being infringed. Foreign sites will be blacklisted, which means they won't show up in major search engines." (You can find the same statement on wikipedia.org, along with some handy info about how to contact your local representatives and tell them to vote NO!)

This has tremendous power for abuse. As a user of youtube.com, I can attest that I have seen numerous individuals have their accounts disabled because someone told Youtube administrators that copyright infringement occured when in fact it had not. If companies and/or individuals had the power to easily "blackball" someone like this on every website like they can on youtube, then this of course means that people will (at least in some cases) abuse the privilege. Bottom line: we must find a better way to stop copyright infringement than trampling on free speech. The ends don't justify the means. Vote no on PIPA.

Here's a petition you can sign. Sign it, then tell your local reps to vote NO. Here's a handy vid that explains it:

The Gospels Tell You... So What?

2012-01-17T08:09:00.002-06:00

Some Christian bloggers got together and published a free ebook called Is Christianity True? This is my smackdown of one chapter in that book: "The Gospels Tell Me So" by Vocab Malone and Paul Adams. (See pages 109 to 114 in the book to see the chapter I'm responding to).

In a nutshell, the authors argue that since the gospels say that certain miracles happened, we ought to believe them because we usually believe what ancient authors wrote (if they intended to record history). Now let me be very clear: I agree that in general we ought to believe ancient historians. But what about in the specific case of miracles? In the present day, we've investigated lots of miracle reports and found them to be mistakes, frauds, or not credible in some way. See the work of James Randi or Joe Nickell if you don't believe me. That tells us that most of the time, perhaps all of the time, when someone reports a miracle it did not happen. Therefore, when it comes to miracle reports in the gospels, they ought to be considered false until rigorously proven otherwise. This standard is no different from the standard we apply to other ancient authors. After all, most of us wouldn't believe tales of witchcraft occuring in Salem, Massachusetts or ghost stories from the ancient world.

I have some doubts about whether the gospel writers even intended to record history. Though some of what is in the gospels may reflect actual events, large portions of it that at a glance look like historical reporting turn out on closer examination to be symbolic stories. For example, the temple curtain is reported to be torn at Jesus death. The temple curtain was what separated man from God, as the sanctuary was the dwelling place of God himself. Jesus figured in Christian theology as a mediator between man and God (1 Timothy 2:5). So the tearing of the curtain is a removal of the separation between God and man, which occurs when the one who mediates between God and man dies. Anthony Harvey's Companion to the New Testament (Published by Cambridge University Press) page 99 documents this (I've also found a handy webpage with plenty of scripture references that show this). Jennifer Maclean published an article in Harvard Theological Review which argues that the Barabbas narrative in the gospels is symbolism based on the Levitical scapegoat ceremony. In a nutshell, the scapegoat ritual in Leviticus 16:6-10 prescribes that (a) We take two goats (b) release one (c) sacrafice the other for remission of sin. Now look at Mark's Barabbas narrative. Little known fact, Barabbas means "son of the father" and Jesus, of course, is a "Son of the Father." The plot of the story is that (a) We have two sons of the father (b) One is realeased (Barabbas) (c) The other (Jesus) is sacraficed for remission of sin. Spooky, isn't it? The cursing of the fig tree is yet another instance of symbolism. So much symbolism in the gospels introduces a decent chance that any other story there is mere symbolism, too, even if we aren't able to see it (after all, these are cult documents from 2,000 years ago; we may not know what they had in mind when they were writing simply because our knowledge of the time and the authors is limited).

Malone and Adams tell us "Luke’s prologue is clear that he interviewed eyewitnesses before assembling an accurate account of Jesus’s life."

No, it's not clear. Read Luke 1:1-4: "Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled [The NIV says that this can also be translated as "have been surely believed] among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word." In other words, Luke said this information was "handed down" to him. By whom? Most scholars believe that there was an oral tradition about Jesus and his life that was passed down over the generations, and so this is possibly what Luke means, that is, if he is not referring to his source documents, Mark and Q. In any case, Luke is so vague on this point that it cannot be asserted that he went around interviewing eyewitnesses. At best, he got it from people who got it from eyewitnesses. Otherwise, why would he have copied Mark so much? It gets worse, because for all we know, Luke got it from someone who heard from their neighbor who went to church with someone who was the nephew of the supposed eyewitnesses.

Malone and Adams trot out a few tired old examples of gospel reliability based on archaeological evidence, but archaeological evidence doesn't prove a miracle occurred and the level of confidence we can place in a historian based on the fact that archaeology corroborates his writings is weak. As I've written before:

"Herodotus, who was an educated, careful, and generally reliable historian, reports all kinds of fantastic tales, such as a fortress that magically defended itself with armaments. But no one would believe any of Herodotus' wild tales... Herodotus has recieved some fantastic corroboration, and even some corroboration for issues about which some historians thought he was full of it. His fantastic tale of giant ants, for example, probably refers to something real (!), he correctly identified the first pharaoh and the builders of the pyramids, he correctly reported that Medes was overthrown by Cyrus, and he's been vindicated by various topological and archaeological surveys, as has been reported in the Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writings."

In short, Malone and Adams have made an argument which is not only logically unsound, at odds with the facts, but also terribly unconvincing. However, I would like to thank them for the opportunity they gave me to write something fun and interesting for other people. You should too.

Buy My Books, Cheap!

2012-01-15T21:28:00.004-06:00

Through January 20th you will be able to save 20% when you purchase my books:

Atheism and Naturalism
Paperback / Ebook

Selected Essays

Paperback / Ebook

Be sure to use the code PRICETHAW at checkout.

A book is just what you need in the cold month of January, and you won't be able to get them this cheap ever again! Pick one up today.

Love Religion Hate Jesus Pwned

2012-01-14T12:20:00.001-06:00

Amazing Atheist Says, "Go Fuck Yourself, Jesus"

2012-01-12T23:54:00.001-06:00

Review: The Christ Myth Theory and Its Problems

2012-01-11T06:54:00.000-06:00

The Christ Myth Theory and Its Problems is probably the most credible and complete defense of the thesis that Jesus never existed to be written this century. The author, Robert M. Price, is an accredited scholar and fellow of the Jesus Seminar, and is widely read and advanced in the debate over Jesus' historicity. Here are my thoughts on his book.

First, it might be more accurate to call the book "The Christ Myth Theories and Their Problems." I know, it's not quite as catchy of a title, but I make this comment only to bring it to light that there are many theories that entail that Jesus never existed (as Price discusses within the book) and that each come with their own set of problems. For example, Price discusses an older theory that Jesus was a sort of development on a hypothetical Joshua cult from within Judaism, noting that the primary problem with this theory is that there is no evidence at all that there ever was a Joshua cult.

The book is primarily devoted to showing that almost all of the material in the gospels has deep parallels with Old Testament scripture, which is significant because, in Price's view, the early Christians were "'discovering' for the first time what Jesus the Son of God had done and said 'according to the scriptures' by decoding the ancient texts [Old Testament]." In other words, the entire life of Jesus portrayed in the gospels is no historical memory or oral tradition but only the results of unusual Old Testament interpretation. Price's analysis is exhaustive and far more extensive than I have seen in any other book on the Christ Myth theory (something that is lacking greatly in books like Earl Doherty's The Jesus Puzzle).

Price shows remarkable fair-mindedness in assessing the evidence for Jesus' existence, as he dedicates an entire chapter to discussing Paul's reference to James as "the brother of the Lord" going so far as to call it "The most powerful argument against the Christ-Myth theory." He surmises 3 different theories to account for James so-called kinship with Jesus that would not entail a physical relationship with Jesus, which are the following:

"First is the possibility that James was understood, like Thomas, to be the earthly, physical counterpart to a heavenly Jesus. Second is that James was prominent among the missionaries known as 'brothers of the Lord.' Third is that his fraternal connection is fictive and presupposes the historicization of a heavenly Jesus and seeks retrospectively to co-opt the James sect by subordinating its figurehead to Jesus as his brother."

These are not ad-hoc hypotheses, as Price adduces some circumstantial evidence for each of them.

Overall, The Christ Myth Theory is a good read and a must have for anyone interested in the idea that Jesus never existed. You can purchase it on Price's homepage.

Ebook

2012-01-10T16:15:00.002-06:00

As most of you probably know, I'm currently working on a book called An Index to Theistic Claims which will be kind of like An Index to Creationist Claims except focusing only on god belief.

So, leave a comment on this post telling me whether you want the book to be available as a Kindle ebook. Would you only purchase the book if it was made available to Kindle?

The Bible Geek on Paul

2012-01-08T21:38:00.003-06:00

I sent a letter I sent to Robert M. Price aka The Bible Geek. Dr. Price reads and answers the question on the episode of The Bible Geek that aired January 2, 2012 (He reads it towards the end of the episode, over 45 minutes in, I believe). Here's the letter:

Dear Mr. Geek,

As I understand it, the seven "authentic" Pauline letters are thought to be authentic because the style and language of these seven contains deep similarities. The letters that are considered forged are considered that way because, among other things, the style of writing is very different. Are there any other reasons to consider those seven (Galatians, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, etc.) to be authentic other than their shared style of writing? As best I can see, a deep similarity in style at best points to a common author of the seven letters. How do we know that the common author was Paul? I suppose one might argue that these letters are to be considered Pauline because the letters say that they were. In ordinary situations, I think that would be reason enough for accepting the claimed authorship. After all, if a piece of writing says that it was written by Robert M. Price, I would assume that it was indeed written by Robert M. Price unless I was given a reason to believe otherwise. However, I don't think that this simple reasoning may be used in the case of the Pauline letters. As far as I know no one is going around forging books in the name of Robert Price. But when we deal with Biblical writings, we find that forgery is the rule, not the exception. In fact, by the reckoning of most scholars, nearly half of the letters in the New Testament that claim Pauline authorship are certainly or quite possibly forged (and I believe the reasons that they cite for this conclusion are valid). By this logic, claimed Pauline authorship is not to be as readily accepted as Robert Pricean authorship, and so some reason for belief in Pauline authorship must be presented besides "It says right here that Paul wrote this." So, here are my questions to you: Do scholars have such reasons? Does the reasoning that I have presented here partially or completely undergird your own skepticism about the authenticity of the Pauline letters?

"Hurt You" Syqnys Feat. Greydon Square

2012-01-07T13:11:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T00:13:00.002-06:00

Happy 2012 to everyone out there, especially my readers! I hope you have a prosperous and safe 2012.

This January, as boredom sets in and it remains chilly outside, grab a cup of warm cocoa or coffee and curl up with a copy of my book Selected Essays, now available as a paperback book! (Ebook can be purchased here).

In other news, Richard Carrier recently made an excellent blog post about why eating meat isn't wrong ("Meat Not Bad"). Robert M. Price has released a book called The Christ Myth Theory and Its Problems (You can find it for sale on his homepage). I'm reading it right now and should review it within the next several weeks. These two authors also happen to have authored my two most anticipated books of 2012:

The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul

Proving History: Baye's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus

Comments on "Christmas With a Capital C" and More

2011-12-24T23:22:00.004-06:00

I recently viewed the Christian movie Christmas with a Capital C What follows is my comments on it.

I find it ironic that the lead character is played by Ted McGinley, an actor best known for playing gigolo Jefferson D'arcy on Married... With Children. Ted was once on a show boycotted by fundamentalists, and now he stars in a movie that they will love.

The plot of the movie is that two former high school rivals, Mitch Bright (the unbeliever) and Dan Reed (the Christian) butt heads when Mitch moves back into town and brings his evil atheist ideology with him. We learn that Mitch, after graduating from high school, moved to San Francisco (the source of all abonimable liberal evil in America). Mitch is a mean bastard, a liberal, and an atheist. Why, I can't believe he's not also a homosexual!

Mitch seeks to file a lawsuit over some overtly religious Christmas decorations paid for with tax dollars. Mitch has a point there (not on Christmas decorations as such but on overtly religious decorations paid for with tax money), though I personally would never be so bothered by such decorations to file a lawsuit. Mayor Dan Reed is rightly advised that Mitch will win the case, and so he removes the Christmas decorations. The Christians in the town decide that the best way to resolve the conflict is to put up Christmas decorations in privately owned quarters and to "overcome evil with good" and give Mitch Bright a proper and generous welcome to the town. This is a message that I endorse: Yes, Christians, use your freedom of expression when and where it is legal and fair to do so, just as we atheists and everyone else does. And be nice. Represent your faith properly.

Despite that good message being in the film, there also seems to be some scoffing that I found ridiculous. Mayor Dan Reed asks rhetorically if the town is also supposed to have a manorah and a kwanzaa "I don't even know what the symbol is." A comedian featured in the song "Christmas with a Capital C" mockingly says, "I just say happy holidays because you don't believe in Christmas because I don't want to offend you, blah blah blah blah...." as if that were something to laugh about. Ahahahahah! Those people with their tolerance and their inclusiveness, what idiots! The attitude present in these scoffing Christians is remarkably poor, wrong-headed, and hypocritical. They are too arrogant and self-righteous to stop for one second to imagine how people of other faiths, or no faith at all, feel about some things.

How Should Atheists Feel About Christmas?

At one point in the movie the character played by Daniel Baldwin asks rhetorically if the next people Mitch will go after are the ones who say "God Bless You" after you sneeze (he supposes even that would offend an atheist). I'd like to take that and use it as analogy. Though no one knows the origin of that custom for sure, HowStuffWorks reports that "Some people believed that a sneeze causes the soul to escape the body through the nose. Saying 'bless you' would stop the devil from claiming the person's freed soul." No one believes this today, but people still practice the custom of a post-sneeze blessing. Likewise, I think it's completely acceptable to continue Yuletide traditions, even if we know longer endorse the reasons people used to practice them. Little known fact is that the real origin of Christmas is thoroughly pagan. If Christians don't view Christmas as a worship of pagan gods, neither should any atheist think that Christmas is an endorsement of Jesus. It isn't. It was created to celebrate an event in nature, the winter solstice. Regardless of the origins of Christmas, it's fun, and we can have different reasons for liking it than the reasons that people once celebrated it for.

That's my story.

A Critique of Buddhism

2011-12-19T22:03:00.001-06:00

You don't see this often. Here.

Skepticon IV

2011-11-26T07:12:00.000-06:00

Check out the preview of Skepticon IV here. Nice music, and very exciting. Two of the lectures are already available at Hambone Productions' youtube page.

Skeptic's Christmas List 2011

2011-11-21T02:10:00.000-06:00

The End of Christianity An Excellent Collection of essays that effectively destroy Christianity. I've reviewed it here. It's a must have because you won't get through the book without learning something new and interesting.

The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True Richard Dawkins' latest book that answers a large number of questions about science. It's an especially great gift for teens and preteens as it is fun and easy to read, with lots of illustrations.

God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales Penn Jilette, the louder half of Penn and Teller, writes a fun and raunchy collection of stories from his life about sex, atheism, and more.

Atheism and Naturalism My book which makes an excellent introduction to atheist thought.

You should download my book Selected Essays. It'll make great reading during all your downtime during the winter. As I've described it:

"Think of the book like a deluxe DVD edition of this blog. It's packed with never-before-seen writings, and what you saw before has often been transformed.

"There's a fun skeptical chapter on why alien theories for the creation of humans, life, and the pyramids are bogus (besides common sense, there are a lot of fun scientific and historical facts that prove it is baloney!). There's a very original and fresh take on the fine-tuning argument. And in the last chapter of the book I show how a song by Jack Black disproves one of the arguments for God's existence!"

And if you need something to watch this holiday season:

Penn & Teller Bullshit: Eighth Season

Christmas with a Capital C Buy a used copy. It's an anti-atheist Christmas movie. It should be good for a laugh.

New essays

2011-11-02T12:00:00.002-05:00

Hi everyone,

A while back I began writing two essays that served as responses to Christian essays in the ebook Is Christianity True?

I've uploaded them to google documents:

my response to Richard Gerhardt.

My response to Bob Perry.

Others have also written responses to the ebook, and a handy index of these posts can be found here. The other writers' websites are:

http://www.soulsprawl.com
http://www.foxholeatheism.com
http://www.commonsenseatheism.com

Why Not the Supernatural?

2011-10-27T21:30:00.002-05:00

Here is a question that I want to ask all my fellow naturalists, those who believe that only the natural exists. Why is it that there are no supernatural beings? Though it may be the case that none exist, is there a reason that none exist?

I believe there are several possible answers to this question, but I'd like to hear yours. Below are some possibilities I've thought of from my readings in philosophy:

1. Spirits are logically impossible. I think it's fairly well-established that consciousness is really nothing more than an emergent phenomenon from physical stuff. If that's what consciousness is, an emergent physical property, then no non-physical entity could have consciousness. Therefore there could be no mind without a body (a spirit). Richard Carrier has suspicions towards the logical possibility of spirits as well. He writes:

[I]f God has no location, then by definition there is no location at which God exists. And if there is no location at which God exists, then God exists nowhere, which entails that God does not exist. For the proposition "there is nowhere that God exists" is literally synonymous with "God does not exist." From any intelligible definition of being, in order for anything to exist, it must exist somewhere--even if that somewhere is everywhere, or some location other than space.

2. The concept of a spirit is meaningless. This is the position held by most verificationists. They believe that any proposition that does not refer to something that is at least possibly observable is meaningless. A spirit, as a non-physical entity (as defined by believers) means nothing. Of course a statement that means nothing could not rightly be said to be true. Though verificationism is now considered passe amongst most philosophers, it still has notable proponents such as Crispin Wright, Michael Martin, Kai Nielsen, Daniel Dennett, and others.

3. An Indexical understanding of "Real" coupled with conceptual problems with Dualism renders the spiritual unreal. David Kellogg Lewis proposed the idea that the word "real" is an indexical term, and things which we call real are merely those things that we actually or potentially can interact with. Things that are not real are things that we cannot even potentially interact with.

Now remember that as I jump to a seemingly unrelated subject. How can a spirit have any effect on the physical or interact with it in any way if the two have no point of contact (a spirit, being nonphysical, cannot possibly have a point of contact with the physical)? Maybe it can't.

From those two conjectures it follows that spirits cannot be real. To be "real" a spirit has to interact with the world around us in some way. But a spirit cannot interact with the world because there is no point of contact between the two.

Now, I don't take much of the above too seriously. These all seem to me like nothing more than hunches which stand every chance of being wrong. What are your answers?

News

2011-10-22T19:30:00.002-05:00

Rational Responders now hosts a link to my book Atheism and Naturalism (check the book ads on the right side of the page). Thanks you guys!

The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond The Grave is now available for kindle. It's a steal at $9.99. If you're interested in the resurrection of Jesus (as mythology or otherwise) you want to own this book.

John Loftus' masterpiece The End of Christianity is also available for the kindle, at just under ten bucks. Again, if you want a brilliant and amazing collection of articles about Christianity, which range from the philosophical to the historical to the anthropological and beyond, you want a copy of this book. You want it sooooo bad.

This coming Tuesday (October 25th) marks the end of my sale for my latest book. If you want to own a copy of Selected Essays for only five dollars this is your last chance!

On the Philosophy of Sex

2011-10-11T23:10:00.002-05:00

An Earth-Shattering Personal Story of 9/11

2011-10-09T06:07:00.000-05:00

Dear Readers,
Please take the time to read this:

http://www.infidels.org/kiosk/article840.html

On an unrelated note, I've just seen a funny video on homosexuality that is a must watch.

Also, here is a comment I wrote to a Christian commenter on this blog which I feel is worth sharing. It talks about why atheists need to argue against religion:

I think you can understand a lot of practical considerations that atheists have for arguing their case. Imagine if you lived in a country where most people believed in Hinduism. Imagine that lots of people chose the way the voted and they way they behaved towards other people based on what was written in Hindu scriptures. Imagine that you considered some of those behaviors to be manifestly immoral. Would it not be worth your time to show that Hinduism was false (if you had good arguments to back it up)?

That's the situation we atheists feel like we're in. People believe and are teaching their kids about a horrible place called hell to instill a deep-seated fear in them. These kids will then believe that some of their best friends and people that they care about might be going there if those people do not repent before they die.

People aren't treating gays equally, something which is reinforced (if not caused) by Christian belief.

And beliefs that the end of the world is near and Jesus will soon come back may cause people not to take care of planet earth so that it will be habitable in 100 years. In fact, apocalyptic beliefs could even cause people to initiate wars, believing that the beginning of such a war will be the beginning of the apocalypse, and not something to be feared, as it is.

Now, I know you don't believe that Christianity is false, but I think you could agree that IF Christianity is in fact false, then the above are ample reason for atheists to speak out and try to change some minds.

And I don't believe it is an issue of faith. I believe that my worldview is genuinely better supported by far than any other. Just go back to my blog and read about the book I've just published. That book has plenty of info about why I believe that.

Sincerely,
Ryan

How Atheists Can Understand Believers

2011-10-06T22:37:00.000-05:00

It's a video by Shwanerd. In the comments section, user BlackMark52 left the following comment:

"Sorry, I cut listening to your video short, but I think you totally missed FactVsReligions message. I don't mean to offend, but you are young and naive. I have dealt with this since I was 10, I am now 60, my mother is almost 80. It has gotten to the point where when my mother calls I will not pick up the phone. The reason is that the unresolved issues of our differences in belief cannot be resolved without harm to her. I am not good for her -- and now I GET IT."

Shwanerd responded:

"I'm sorry that your situation has reached such a stalemate. My mother used to be as much of a evangelical as I was (where do you think I got it from?) but because I've been able to be honest with her over these past few years, things have gotten better. She's increasingly liberal or 'moderate' about her beliefs, and talking about religion is getting to be easier and easier with time. I can't presume to know your situation, but this video explains what has worked for me."

I too have seen changes in my mother and father since my deconversion, though that may well not be due to my deconversion.

Here's the backstory: Until I was 17 or 18, we all went to a highly conservative denomination called the Church of Christ (the exact congregation varied over the years due to a few different moves).

Shortly after I deconverted and told my parents about it, they got a divorce (again, this had nothing to do with the deconversion itself). The other church-goers, I think, were shocked. Divorce was taboo in the church of christ. People who were divorced could attend, but they were never allowed to preach or even lead songs if they had gotten remarried. My parents both stopped attending the particular church we had attended previously.

Over time, it seems that both of them had gotten remarkably more open minded and moderate. As they stepped out of the dogmatic, self-reinforcing group think of that narrow-minded denomination, they began to see with more clarity.

For example, my Dad, though still a Christian, has confessed that he does not necessarily believe that the earth is less than ten thousand years old. He said he had always had doubts about how Genesis 1 was interpreted, but never voiced those concerns as he knew this would never be accepted.

My mom, after learning more about psychology, has decided that "you can't tell homosexuals that they can never have relationships."

Christian belief does not fade when someone leaves the church. What fades is a dogmatic, self-righteous attitude about Christian belief. Without constant reassurance and assertion from other believers, without a self-assured, Only-I-Have-The-TRUTH preacher speaking every week, people become a good deal more realistic and reasonable.

That's something to think about.

ChipIn!

2011-10-05T12:47:00.002-05:00

Over on the right you'll see a ChipIn box. I'm trying to raise enough money to attend Center for Inquiry's "Science for Everyone!" event. If I can go I'll be sure to write an extensive blog post about it. So, if you'd like me to go, contribute a little ASAP and we can make it happen!

Price Drop!

2011-10-04T17:32:00.003-05:00

I've decided to lower the price on my book. Click here to purchase Selected Essays for only $5!

Think of the book like a deluxe DVD edition of this blog. It's packed with never-before-seen writings, and what you saw before has often been transformed.

There's a fun skeptical chapter on why alien theories for the creation of humans, life, and the pyramids are bogus (besides common sense, there are a lot of fun scientific and historical facts that prove it is baloney!). There's a very original and fresh take on the fine-tuning argument. And in the last chapter of the book I show how a song by Jack Black disproves one of the arguments for God's existence!

Purchase it now, this discount price won't last long!

Selected Essays By Nicholas Covington

2011-09-27T19:55:00.002-05:00

Hi Everybody,

I'm still working on an upcoming book which will catalogue every (or nearly every) argument made by apologists and show why they are wrong, in a style similar to that of Mark Isaak in his work An Index to Creationist Claims. It'll be done in a few months, this post is about another book I just completed.

However, a little while ago I found myself frustrated when the website DB Skeptic suddenly stopped publishing essays, after I had written a knock-out article debunking the "aliens built the pyramids" theory specifically for that website! On top of that, I had also written a short essay on what truth is and why it is important for the magazine Philosophy Now. Sadly, they had so many entries (some of them quite similar to my own) that they decided not to publish it. I also had an essay refuting the fifth chapter of a book called "Is Christianity True?" I and a couple of other people were planning on publishing an entire series of articles responding to each and every chapter of that book. But I have not heard from them in weeks.

What to do with all these essays? Well, I had a couple of other things that I wanted to publish, and so I decided to collect them all and publish them in an ebook called Selected Essays by Nicholas Covington.

The book has 12 essays, some of them published in a different form either on this blog, on DB Skeptic, or elsewhere. Some are original, such as the three I described earlier, plus a short essay called "Why I Am Not a Christian" and a really cool, must-read chapter on what philosophers are currently saying about the "fine-tuning" argument with some original thoughts of my own on the subject. Even the things that have been published before have been altered and improved in various places. Overall, it should make an informative and fun skeptical read.

Dan Barker on Why Christianity Should End

2011-09-26T13:33:00.002-05:00

Sam Harris' New One

2011-09-20T22:21:00.002-05:00

It is a 26 page essay:

Lying (Kindle Single)

You can download kindle software for your PC for free, so read it! For two bucks it is great food for the mind, and Harris is such a great writer.

At one point in the book Harris discusses that age-old awkward question: When a woman asks you, "Does this dress make me look fat?" (and it does) what should you say? Harris, I believe correctly, argues that even in this situation you shouldn't lie. I won't reiterate his reasons for thinking so, but I have something I'd like to add.

Even in an awkward situation like that, you can be totally honest and actually give advice that is constructive but not hurtful. For example: "This dress doesn't suit you well, why don't you try on this one?"

Or you could try the tactic of introducing an honest compliment along with a criticism: "I'll be honest, you would look much better if you were more active and watched what your diet. Overall you're not an unattractive woman because x,y,z."

On Spanking

2011-09-16T15:28:00.002-05:00

Recently an old high school classmate of mine posted something on facebook in favor of spanking. I'll reproduce it for you:

Have to laugh at people who are against spanking. I sometimes got spanked when I disobeyed... I didn't hate them... I didn't have trust issues with them because of it... I didn't fear them... But I sure respected them! And I learned what my boundaries were, and knew what would happen if I broke them. I wasn't abused, I was disciplined....SINCE WE TOOK THIS SOFT APPROACH, LOOK WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO OUR COUNTRY ,YOUNGSTERS, AND SCHOOLS !!!!!!!!!!!

Here's how I responded:

Once again, the truth is in the middle. People who say spanking is child abuse are way overstating their case. On the other hand, spanking has been constantly noted to coincide with violent predispositions in children. Here's some of the research:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=2540224

http://www.jstor.org/pss/584804

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/98/4/837.short

I found it Ironic that you said "SINCE WE TOOK THIS SOFT APPROACH, LOOK WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO OUR COUNTRY ,YOUNGSTERS, AND SCHOOLS!" Yeah, out of all the first world countries that exist, we use corporal punishment more most. We also have the highest murder rate. Just something to think about.

And I'd like to add something to all this: I was spanked as a kid. I don't think it did any good, and I think there are better ways to deal with kids than this.

Michele Bachmann and HPV

2011-09-14T12:49:00.001-05:00

Turek and Geisler Review

2011-09-12T17:30:00.000-05:00

Here's a slightly-modified version of my amazon review of I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist

There's some good things about the book and some bad things about it. The good: It is well-written; it manages to be an easy read even though it is over 400 pages. At times there is light hearted humor. The authors are crystal-clear in the articulation of their positions. And what they say is what you will hear from evangelicals in general, so their book is a good read if you want to understand the evangelical position.

On the other hand, the book contains a large number of factual and logical errors that the average reader won't catch. I won't be able to catalogue all of them in this review, but what I hope to do is to list a large sampling and show you some other material that corrects the rest of what they say.

On page 25 of the book, Turek and Geisler write that it is completely possible that their conclusions are wrong, they would only claim around 95% confidence in their position. But on page 42 of the book, Geisler recounts a conversation he had with an atheist. He asked the atheist if he was *absolutely* sure there was no God, to which the atheist replied that he was not. Geisler then "informs" the man that he is really an agnostic. Well, if that man was agnostic because he was not *absolutely* certain of his position, then Geisler and Turek are both agnostics, too. Obviously this is nonsense; it's nothing but a sneeky move to push the man into admitting uncertainty so that Geisler may weaken his conviction. Absolute certainty cannot be attained most of the time (even in day to day life, as the authors admit on page 25) but that doesn't mean that we are agnostic about most things. Rather, when you judge the probability of some statement to be very high and as long as it is correct we can say that you know that statement is true. That's my own position on atheism. It's not totally certain that no sort of deity exists, it is only very unlikely that one does.

Pages 263-268 offer a list of historical details that the gospel of John supposedly got right. Some of these aren't very impressive, but it's supposed to be a cumulative case for reliability, so that's not a big deal. What is a big deal is the number of "details" on the list that are factually false or which ought not to be judged as accurate based on the authors' reasoning. Here are some examples:

Item #7 says that the pool of Bethesda did not exist in 70 AD. No reference is cited, but that is false. The pool of Bethesda has continually existed from the first century to today and even the church father Origen, writing in the early third century, knew about it. See pages 29-32 of The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide (Oxford Archaeological Guides)(If you go to google books you can view the portion I have cited).

Item #10 says that "sudden and severe squalls are common on the sea of Galilee." Wrong. As Dennis MacDonald pointed out in his book The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark(pages 57-58) the Sea of Galilee is a myth. The largest body of water in Galilee is Lake Chinnereth (probably what Mark was referring to when he wrote of "The Sea of Galilee"), which is a measly 4 miles wide and 7 miles long. MacDonald details how the ancient pagan critic Porphyry lambasted Mark as a terrible exaggerator, such a small lake could not be prone to terrible storms or squalls. MacDonald also points out that Luke, the gospel writer known for his attention to detail, never refers to "The Sea of Galilee" but only to a "lake."

Item #11 says that "Christ's command to eat his flesh and drink his blood would not be made up." On the contrary, it must have been made up. As New Testament scholar Gerd Ludemann put it, "Can one seriously imagine a pious Jewish teacher of righteousness inviting his followers to partake, even symbolically, of his flesh and blood?" (see page 203, Sources of the Jesus Tradition: Separating History from Myth). Judaism had prohibitions on consuming blood, see Leviticus 17:10.

Items 16 and 22 are in conflict. Item 16 says that it is unlikely that John would have "invented" the story of Jewish believers wanting to stone Jesus (John 8:31-59); while Item 22 says that the positive depiction of the Jews comforting Martha and Mary is unlikely to be an invention (John 11:19). So when the Jews are portrayed in a good light, Turek and Geisler think that's unlikely to be an invention. When the Jews are portrayed in a bad light, Turek and Geisler think it's unlikely to be an invention. Heads I win, Tails you lose.

Item 45 says that the Jews exclaiming "We have no king but Caesar" is unlikely to be invented because the Jews hated Romans. What?!? The fact that we know there was animosity between the Jews and Romans means that it is highly implausible that such an exclamation was ever made. Telling implausible stories is not evidence that John was telling the truth; it's evidence that he was playing fast and loose with the facts, probably using his own prejudices and imagination more than reliable historical sources of information.

Item 47 says that John 19:17 is accurate because it was indeed customary for crucifixion victims to carry their own crosses, just as John says. Cool. The same reasoning chips away at the accuracy of Matthew 27:33, Mark 15:21, and Luke 23:26 which all say that Simon of Cyrene carried Jesus' cross for him.

On page 281, Geisler and Turek tell us that we can trust the New Testament because:

"If you were making up 'the Christian story' and trying to pass it off as the truth, wouldn't you simply make up more quotes from Jesus to convince stubborn people to see things your way? Think how convenient it would have been for them to end all debate on controversial issues such as circumcision, obeying the law of Moses, speaking in tongues, women in the church, and so forth by merely making up quotes from Jesus!"

But they did make up such quotes. Speaking in tongues is clearly advocated by Jesus in Mark 16:17, and scholars are in agreement that this verse is a forgery (Mark 16:9-20 is a later addition to gospel, as most bibles will tell you if you read the footnotes to that chapter, and as many scholars like Bart Ehrman have documented in numerous books such as Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (Plus). A sampling of other examples of Jesus' words being made up to serve an agenda are revealed by Robert Price in The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Failspp.287-288.

I think I've said enough on this issue. Turek and Geisler are simply not reliable, and therefore anything they tell you has to be researched and confirmed by more reliable sources before you can believe what they say. I will now list some resources that will allow you to see to get the "other side of the story":

There was a debate that took place between one of the book's authors (Frank Turek) and atheist Richard Carrier. Carrier corrects Turek on many points and effectively refutes him.

The debate between Bart Ehrman and William Lane Craig (available on youtube and as a transcript) will help sort you out on the resurrection of Jesus, as will Doubting Jesus' Resurrection: What Happened in the Black Box?

I have written a booked which addresses many of the arguments that Geisler and Turek give for God: Atheism and Naturalism

Talk Origins is a website which contains a vast amount of material that builds the case for evolution, addresses Turek and Geisler's arguments for creationism, and exposes out of context quotations (they misquote Stephen Jay Gould in their chapter on evolution).

The case against Christianity is effectively made in The End of Christianity(it also contains a couple of chapters on the resurrection, one on the argument from design, and much more, in addition to several strong arguments against the Christian faith).

I Don't Have Faith in Geisler and Turek!

2011-09-11T05:00:00.000-05:00

I'm writing a book that will catalogue and critique every theistic argument ever made* and so I thought it would be a good idea to get Turek and Geisler's book I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist

It seemed like a good repository of standard theistic and evangelical arguments, something that would be useful for me. And it is. So I wrote a review of it, which you'll see here. I think I've written a "must-read" review for anyone who has read that book. I expose so much BS that most people would never even realize was there. In fact, take a look at it even if you haven't read the book, you may get a kick out of it!

Must return to writing book now. That is all. [click]

* I say "all" but what I mean is every one that I have heard and every one that you are remotely likely to hear. I'm sure you'll always be able to drag up some obscure argument that I never saw because it was only ever made in one fundamentalist book from the 1930's that only sold 200 copies.

Mary at Medjugorje by Hector Avalos

2011-09-08T12:22:00.001-05:00

Below is a copy of an article that is interesting and difficult to obtain on the web.

Mary at Medjugorje:
A Critical Inquiry

Hector Avalos

Medjugorje, once a sleepy little town in the province of Bosnia-
Herzegovina (old Yugoslavia), became in the 1980s one of the
world's most visited destinations, attracting perhaps as many as
fifteen million visitors. The attraction had nothing to do with
amusement parks or hotel casinos, but with claims that Mary, the
mother of Jesus in Christian tradition, was making special
appearances in Medjugorje. Cover stories have been published about
the phenomenon in Life (July 1991), Time (December 30, 1991), and
other respected publications, which are not always as critical or
accurate as they should be.

For the past few years I have been studying reports and videotapes
of supposed Marian apparition experiences, and I have spoken to
some of the people who claimed to have witnessed them or who
believe in them. The most frequent defense of Marian apparitions
among believers whom I have encountered usually revolves around one
central question: How can a group of seemingly honest and
apparently normal people report seeing Mary if she is not appearing
there? Other defenders point out that a "scientific" team has
supported the authenticity of the apparitions at Medjugorje.
Ironically, it is the dramatic events themselves at Medjugorje that
support a nonsupernatural explanation.

The Medjugorje reports are different from those of earlier
sightings of Mary in a number of respects. First, written accounts
have been produced while the series of apparitions were still
occurring. Second, most of the principal witnesses are still alive
and have made themselves available for extensive interviews. More
important, modern video and audio equipment has recorded the
visionaries as they are supposedly experiencing their visions.
Finally, the visionaries have submitted to various medical and
scientific tests such as encephalograms during their experiences.

The first reported apparitions at Medjugorje began on June 24,
1981, when six Croatian-speaking children claimed that the Virgin
Mary had appeared to them on a hill. They were met with initial
skepticism and harassment from some authorities. Surprisingly, one
of the most vocal skeptics was Pavao Zanic, their own bishop, who,
according to one transcript of an interview, declared, "In my
opinion Medjugorje is the greatest deceit and swindle in the
history of the Church." In particular, Zanic complained that the
apparition stories were part of a conspiracy instigated by a group
of popular Franciscans who have protested efforts to replace them
with secular clergy in the parish of Medjugorje.

Despite the political conflicts caused by the apparitions within
the local diocese, and despite the fact that the Catholic church
has not officially affirmed the authenticity of the visions, the
number of pilgrims who have gone to Medjugorje since 1981 has been
placed by some at over fifteen million. This number of Marian
devotees at Medjugorje far surpasses the believers of the Jesus
apparition stories of early Christianity. Only the recent civil
war in Yugoslavia has discouraged massive visits.

The `Scientific' Investigation of Henri Joyeux

According to his own account, Henri Joyeux, a surgeon and a
professor of oncology in the Faculty of Medicine at Montpellier,
France, carried out an extensive battery of tests in four separate
missions between March and December of 1984. Joyeux and Father Ren
Laurentin, an ardent Marian apologist and historian, then
synthesized their findings in the definitive work Scientific and
Medical Studies on the Apparitions at Medjugorje.

Joyeux concluded that the visionaries had no mental illness of any
sort. The apparitions are not sleep or dream or hallucination in
the medical or pathological sense of the word. This is
scientifically excluded by the electro-encephalogram and by
clinical observation. He also excludes "any element of deceit."
Since Joyeux could not find any condition that he would label
"pathological," he concludes, "We are dealing with a perception
which is essentially objective both in its causality and in its
scope." As to the cause of the youngsters' experience, he says,
"The most obvious answer is that given by the visionaries who claim
to meet the Virgin Mary, Mother of God." In sum, Laurentin and
Joyeux conclude that there is no scientific or natural explanation
available to account for the reports of the visionaries. More
important, they conclude that the absence of any condition labeled
as "pathological" is evidence that the reported experience of the
visionaries is authentically supernatural. Can `Normal' Persons
Report Seeing and Hearing Non-Occurring Events?

Contrary to the conclusions of Laurentin and Joyeux, abundant and
empirically verifiable evidence and experiments demonstrate that
persons with no known pathological conditions can report hearing
and seeing events that are not occurring. Psychological
experiments show that such reports of non- occurring events are
part of well-known and relatively natural psycho-social processes
experienced to some degree by most human beings.

One of the most noted of such experiments was published by T. X.
Barber and D. S. Calverley in 1964. Seventy-eight unselected
"normal" female secretarial students had volunteered for what was
described to the subjects only as a "psychological experiment."
Barber and Calverley divided these seventy-eight subjects into
three groups of twenty-six. One group was subjected to suggestions
to see and hear non-occurring events under hypnosis. A second
group was given "task-motivating instructions" without the use of
hypnosis. The third group served as a control that received the
same instructions without hypnosis or task-motivating requests.

The second group's "task-motivating instructions" consisted of
asking subjects to see and hear events that were implied to be real
but were actually nonexistent. The subject was told, "I want you
to close your eyes and to hear a phonograph record with words and
music playing White Christmas. Keep listening to the phonograph
record playing White Christmas until I tell you to stop." The
astounding result was that 38 percent of the "normal" subjects in
the second group stated that they clearly heard White Christmas,
even though nothing was played. Sixty-five percent of the subjects
in the control group reported the same result. An average of 5.1
percent of these unselected people in each experimental group state
that they not only heard the record, but they also believed that
the record was actually playing.

Immediately after this portion of the experiment, the subject was
instructed as follows, in a firm and earnest tone of voice: "I
want you to look at your lap and to see a cat sitting there. Keep
looking at the cat until I tell you to stop." An average of 33.3
percent stated they saw the cat clearly even though they believed
it was not there. However, an average of 2.5 percent of the
subjects in each group (3.8 percent in the second group) reported
they not only saw the cat clearly but also believed it was actually
present.

Similar results were reported in experiments performed by K. S.
Bowers and by N. P. Spanos and T. X. Barber. Even if many subjects
reported non- occurring events only to please others (Bowers),
these experiments clearly showed that otherwise "normal" people
under relatively "normal" conditions can and do report hearing and
seeing events that, by recognized objective measures, are
nonexistent.

The Barber and Calverley experiments also showed that the subjects
used the strongest objective terminology available to describe
non-occurring events. For example, the subjects in the experiments
used the terms see and hear to describe their experience.

Why do otherwise normal people come to believe that they are
witnessing non-occurring entities and events? The Barber and
Calverley experiment, as well as a host of recent research,
indicates that human acts of perception always involve
interpretations and inferences that may be held in common by large
groups of people. Raw visual and auditory data are combined with
inferences about what was thought to be seen and heard. We often
select out of the large raw input of visual and auditory data those
that we regard as important and that confirm expectations,
especially if they are desirable.

Many recent experiments show that the human mind is biologically
wired to interpolate many expected images or portions thereof, even
if such images are not objectively present. People often form
mental images of all types of objects, real and unreal. We've all
heard how difficult it is not to form an image of a pink elephant
when someone tells us not to. One can also form mental images that
are believed to be situated in real time and space (e.g., imagine a
pink elephant in the middle of a parking lot).

Believers may be following a rationale with premises that can
yield, at least in their minds, very solid conclusions. Once a
believer is convinced that an inference is valid, then the
conclusion may be considered sufficiently certain to contradict or
suppress raw visual data. Any further disconfirmation of their
interpretation may be either ignored or disregarded in favor of the
inference. This type of avoidance of disconfirming data among
Marian devotees is clearly manifested in the oft-repeated dictum:
"To those who believe, no proof is necessary; to those who doubt,
no proof is sufficient."

The implications of these experiments for the reports of Medjugorje
are quite clear. If, as in the Barber and Calverley experiments,
an average of at least 33 percent of people with no obvious
pathology can report clearly seeing or hearing events that are not
occurring, then it would not be extraordinary to find 333 "normal"
people in a parish of at least one thousand believers who could
report seeing or hearing non-occurring events, especially when, as
is the case with supposed Marian apparitions, the events in
question are believed to be not only possible but desirable as
well.

If, as in the Barber and Calverley experiment, at least 2.5 percent
believe what they are seeing or hearing is actually present, then
it would not be extraordinary to find at least twenty-five people
in a parish of one thousand members who actually believe what they
are seeing and hearing is present in real time and space. In fact,
there are many more reported visionaries in the parish who did not
receive the attention of the six principal ones.

If the results obtained by Barber and Calverley occurred after only
one suggestion to hear and see non-occurring events, then what
would we reasonably expect from persons, and especially
impressionable youngsters, who are repeatedly requested to see
non-occurring events? Does anything akin to the task-motivating
suggestions exist in the subculture of the visionaries?

Imagine living in a subculture that constantly and repeatedly
suggests to its members the desirability of experiencing a Marian
apparition. Imagine living in a subculture where young people who
have claimed to have seen Marian apparitions at Lourdes, Fatima,
and other places also are beloved role models. Suggestions
presented to believers in sermons, prayers, and written materials
may be just as effective as the simple requests made by Barber and
Calverley. Although conspiracy or formalized coaching is not
required to produce people who will report non-occurring events, it
should be noted that Bishop Zanic declared that the visionaries
were indeed coached and manipulated by the Franciscans.

Not only can the subculture of the visionaries encourage the
apparitions with words, it also provides detailed and coherent
imagery of how the Virgin Mary ought to look and speak. According
to P. and I. Rodgers, a picture of Mary supported by a cloud rising
above Medjugorje has been present in the church of the visionaries
since about 1971. Not surprisingly, the youngsters' description of
the Virgin is quite consistent with the picture to which they were
exposed for years. Is Group Simultaneity Always Evidence of an
Objective Experience?

Aside from the supposed lack of pathology in the visionaries,
Laurentin and Joyeux cite the simultaneity of their key movements
during the supposed apparitions as evidence for the objectivity of
their experiences. For example, they point to the convergence of
their gaze as confirmed by video recording made face-on to the
visionaries during the ecstasy and the simultaneous raising of
their eyes and heads as the apparition disappears upwards.

I have studied Joyeux's report and have looked at the videotape of
two separate events that show such alleged simultaneous behavior.
My examination reveals nothing so extraordinary as to demand a
supernatural explanation.

Joyeux and other writers often make statements that may mislead the
reader into thinking that the whole group exhibits simultaneous
behavior that, at most, occurs in only part of the group. For
example, they report administering an electro-oculogram to Ivan and
Marija on December 28, 1984. The movement of the eyeballs of both
youngsters reportedly showed simultaneity to the second in the
cessation of movement at the beginning of the ecstasy and again,
simultaneity to the second in the return of movement at the end of
the ecstasy. But in a Paris Match interview, Joyeux generalizes
this result to the visionaries as a whole ("des voyants"). In his
translation of this interview Father M. O'Carroll makes the
generalization even more emphatic by saying that "all the
visionaries" had such simultaneity.

Likewise, sometimes the ecstasy that is taken to be evidence of a
real apparition experience is not as uniform as might first appear.
For example, regarding the youngsters' supposed disconnection from
the world during their ecstasy, Joyeux says that "disconnection is
not total; rather it is partial and variable."

More important, the supposed vision experiences have a regular
schedule and duration that may result, with or without sinister
collusion, in simultaneous behavior. Laurentin and Joyeux
themselves note the regularity of the behavior, for they divide the
experiences into three phases: contemplation or conversation;
prayer with the apparition; and contemplation or conversation.

Insofar as duration is concerned, Laurentin and Joyeux themselves
note that "no apparition has lasted for more than one or two
minutes since the end of 1983." This is important because they
made their measurements of simultaneity in 1984, when the duration
of each event was quite short and predictable. In fact, they
report recording the precise duration of only five ecstasies, with
each one lasting sixty-five to eighty-five seconds.

The schedule for the start of the ecstasy is certainly familiar to
Laurentin and Joyeux, who themselves say: "Since the end of 1983,
ecstasy begins before they have finished the first Our Father."
They also note, following an earlier study of Dr. Lucia Capello,
that: Their voices become audible at the same time, on the third
word of the Our Father, the apparition having recited the first
two. This phenomenon militates against the theory of a prior
agreement and cannot be put down to natural causes. Even without a
sinister conspiracy, the regular schedule noted by Laurentin and
Joyeux clearly is sufficient to produce the type of simultaneity
they find so unnatural. Indeed, beginning to pray audibly with the
third word of the Our Father is as good a cue as beginning to pray
audibly with the first word. It is, of course, poor science to
represent as a verifiable fact the belief that the apparition
recites the first two words.

Likewise, the convergence of the gaze is usually toward the front
of the room when the visions take place within a church. Even
Laurentin and Joyeux observe: "The visionaries' gaze converges on
the same well-located spot." Again, gazing at a well-known
location is something that may be learned and conditioned
naturally, thus producing the simultaneity reported.

In one videotape recording the experience of visionaries Jacob and
Marija, I observed that after assembling at the front of the room
to begin the supposed encounter with Mary, Jacob began to gaze
upward as he crossed himself. About one second later Marija did
the same. Aside from the fact that the supposed apparition takes
place at the same time in the schedule, both children had
peripheral vision and could observe each other gaze upward.

The kneeling, which even Joyeux admits is not perfectly
synchronized, occurs at the end of the recitation of the Our
Father, which in turn is usually recited after the initial
crossing. Another videotape shows that the near simultaneous
kneeling by five of the visionaries also occurs at the end of the
initial Our Father. A visual cue to kneel is not even necessary
here because the end of the audible prayer could be a sufficient
cue. Such simultaneity in kneeling can even be achieved without
visual cues in multiple locations if the worshippers are all
listening to the recitation of the Our Father on a radio.

Although near-simultaneous behavior is considered an indication of
an "objective" experience for Joyeux, non-simultaneous behavior
does not appear to be evidence for a "subjective" experience.
Laurentin and Joyeux report, "The visionaries had independent
conversations and even had different conversations simultaneously
at times." They use an unverifiable phenomenon to explain the
variable conversations--namely the possible use of different
channels of supernatural communication by the Virgin. However,
each informant may be constructing his or her own imaginary
dialogue. Furthermore, the type of coherence that they cite in the
apparition reports can also derive from the common imagery and
forms of speech that are stereotypical in the Marian subculture.

Joyeux wasted a unique opportunity to design experiments that would
have provided more of a challenge to skeptics on the issue of
simultaneity. Indeed, his experimental design was quite careless.
For example, since even Joyeux repeatedly claims that normal vision
or hearing is not necessary to perceive the apparitions, each of
the visionaries could have been blindfolded before they assembled
at the front of the room. Earphones that render any external sound
inaudible could have been placed upon them. Yet, there were no
reported attempts to cover their ears or eyes throughout an event.

Partitions could have been placed between the visionaries to
exclude the possibility of cues from air disturbances produced by
body movements (e.g., kneeling). A more rigorous experimenter
might have spun all the visionaries around and pointed them in
different directions within the partitions. If those visionaries
truly had a special ability that was not based on normal hearing or
seeing, then we would expect them to have all heard the apparition
calling them from the same spot at the same time. We would expect
that each of the children initially pointed in different directions
would turn simultaneously toward the same direction even if
blindfolded. If a recorded version of the Our Father were recited
to each visionary at different times through the earphones, we
would still expect them to ignore the voice on the earphones and
kneel in synchrony with the supposed actions of the apparition.

Insofar as experimental design is concerned, the exaggerated claims
of Joyeux are most apparent in the "screening test" he discusses.
What Joyeux describes as a "screening test" and a "screen" actually
refers to the brief placement of a postcard-size object in front of
Marija and Ivanka. It does not block out peripheral vision. Note
how Joyeux interprets the brief visual screening test: a screen
which is held up does not block out the perception of the
apparition. Again Joyeux assumes a priori the existence of the
supernatural object that the youngsters claim to perceive. What
Joyeux actually observed is that the gaze of two visionaries
remained fixed when a postcard-size card was placed in front of
them. Such a fixed gaze does not constitute proof for the
existence of an object at the point in space where the visionaries
are looking because one can observe that during prayer many
worshippers in Christian and non-Christian religions gaze upward at
what they believe to be heaven even when temple walls or other
screening objects are interposed.

However, even if rigorous visual and auditory blocking procedures
were used, they could not eliminate the possibility of a learned
simultaneity after 1983 when the whole schedule became very regular
and lasted one to two minutes. In sum, the simultaneity cited by
Laurentin and Joyeux, even if genuine, is not extraordinary, and it
does not constitute evidence for the objectivity of the experience
at all, especially in light of poor experimental design.

The Incoherence of Laurentin and Joyeux's View of `Objectivity'

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the conclusions of Laurentin
and Joyeux is that they use the word objective in a wildly
inconsistent manner, resulting in special pleading and in logically
absurd conclusions. For example, in a discussion of whether the
phenomena exhibited by the visionaries are supernatural, they
state, "As research has not reached any objective proofs, it would
be difficult to discuss the matter in the absence of definite
criteria." But they still purport to have proof in favor of the
objective experience of the visionaries. Note their reasoning: The
mere fact that others present do not see the apparition which is
visible only to the visionaries in no way proves that it is a
perception without an object. It simply proves that the manner of
perceiving is not the same as that involved in the perception of
other ordinary material objects. . . . Bats, for example, are
capable of discerning certain radiations that escape us. Other,
more radically different, means of perception may well exist. A
claim for an ability does not prove that one possesses the ability,
and Joyeux's example of animals who possess abilities that humans
do not will not help his case. And in the case of bats, the
existence of their ability to hear high frequency sounds is not
based on a claim made by the bats. We can verify empirically
(e.g., by means of instruments) and with mathematical precision the
existence of both the object (high frequency sounds) and the
special and quantifiable ability of bats to perceive that object.
The criteria and methodology are sufficiently objective to elicit
the agreement of both atheists and Christians.

Such is not the case with the visionaries. Laurentin and Joyeux
themselves admit that no experiments, videotapes, or other
instruments have been able to detect the object that the
visionaries claim to perceive with an equally unverifiable and
non-quantifiable ability. They are apparently aware of this
difficulty in their logic, and so they attempt to plead the case of
the visionaries by using even more speculative hypotheses and
conclusions. Our tests tend to lead us to the hypothesis of a
person-to-person communication which takes place at a spiritual
level, analogous to the angelic act of knowing. Such statements
clearly show that theology, not rigorous science, motivates their
plea for the visionaries.

Note also the logical problems produced when they discuss the
definition of a "hallucination." The Concise Oxford Dictionary
defines hallucination as "apparent perception of external object
not actually present," which might fit the case of Medjugorje if a
priori one held that an object from another world does not exist or
if one understands "not actually present" in a purely empirical
way. Medically speaking "hallucination" indicates a pathological
state and it would appear to us that use of the word should be
restricted to psychiatric illness. But if one does not deny a
priori the existence of the object that the "psychiatric"
hallucinator claims to see, then it follows that the claims of the
latter have no less validity than those of the Medjugorje
visionaries. Since the objects seen by the psychiatric
hallucinator and the Medjugorje visionaries are equally invisible
to other people and to cameras, then it is only special pleading,
not verifiable criteria, that leads Laurentin and Joyeux to affirm
the credibility of the Medjugorje visionaries while denying
credibility to the "psychiatric" hallucinator. Thus, Laurentin and
Joyeux provide no verifiable reason to ascribe accuracy to the
perception of the six who claim to see Mary, and yet deny the
accuracy of the perception of the thousands who claim to be equally
certain that they do not see Mary.

`Solar Miracles' as Evidence for Marian Apparitions

Solar miracles are cited often by theologians and laypersons as
proof of the authenticity of the visionaries' experiences.
Ironically, the reports of such solar miracles are the most
definitive proof that people can and do report the occurrence of
non-occurring events at Medjugorje.

One dramatic case may be found in a 1988 videotape recorded by
"20/20," the ABC news program. Stone Phillips was sent to
accompany a group of pilgrims to Medjugorje. At one point in the
report a crowd of pilgrims reported seeing the sun "coming closer"
and "dancing" at the same time that ABC cameras were trained on the
sun. Of course, any such movement of the sun would be an event of
astronomical proportions that should have been witnessed by a large
part of the planet, astronomical observatories, and hundreds of
different types of instruments. Yet, the videotape showed no
movement in the sun, and Stone Phillips likewise confirmed that he
saw no movement in the sun. As in the case of the subjects in the
Barber and Calverley experiment, the report by a group that a
non-occurring event is occurring indicates that a psycho-social
process is the best explanation.

The report of a "dancing sun" also demonstrates other important
points about group delusions. The reports of non-occurring events
need not be due to lying, which involves making statements that the
speaker believes to be false. For example, a pilgrim may say, "I
see the sun moving," to express the following interpretation of raw
perceptions: "Marian apparitions should be accompanied by a moving
sun, and therefore that is what must be happening." Once the
believer assumes that this rationale is true, then he or she allows
the use of phrases such as "see" (e.g., "I see the sun moving")
even though empirical evidence says otherwise.

Crying Icons, Metallic Transformations, and Healings

Crying icons are often reported at sites of Marian apparitions. I
examined one such case in Arizona in 1982, when a group of Mexican
immigrant neighbors reported that a statue of the Virgin outside
their apartment "cried" around dawn. I found that the liquid under
the eyes of this "crying icon" was indistinguishable from dew that
also was present on other objects and on many parts of the icon.
One may characterize as "selective seeing" any claim that ignores
the moisture on most parts of the icon and yet attributes to crying
the moisture below the eyes. Psycho-social processes can explain
all of the reports of icon "miracles" at Medjugorje with which I am
familiar.

Reports of metal transformations are also common. There is indeed
a long history that associates the Virgin with metal workers. The
fact that metal color can change is a known phenomenon, most often
due to oxidation. However, the instantaneous metallic changes
reported by Marian devotees have simply never been verified by
science.

Reports of healings are also poorly investigated. Most of the
testimonies come from people who, by their own words, already have
had medical treatment, and so it is virtually impossible to
distinguish the effects of medical treatment from those of supposed
miracles. Another problem is that most of the reports represent as
facts diagnoses and symptoms that the compilers have not verified.
Equally important, most readers of reports of supposed miracles are
not apprised of negative follow-up reports. For example, a book by
R. Laurentin and L. Rupcic relates the case of Venka Bilic- Brajcic
(of Split) as follows: In January, 1980, the patient had her left
breast removed, and afterward, she received postoperative radiation
treatment. Nine months after the operation there were numerous
metastases. These had reached the right breast on which radiation
treatment began in April, 1981. . . . Venka herself reported . . .
"My sister said that Our Lady of Medjugorje could help me, and
suggested that I pray to her. . . . Two or three days after this
prayer the appearance of the sores started to change. . . ." Venka
feels well, and the medical certificate confirms that there is no
sign of further metastases into the bone or other organs. Venka
returned to Medjugorje to thank Our Lady. She submitted medical
documents on September 8, 1982. But Father O'Carroll's book reports
that, in response to Laurentin and Rupcic's claims, Zanic noted
that this patient died in June 1984, and that her doctor protested
the claim that she was cured at the time that she had stated.

Conclusion

A supernatural explanation for reports of Marian apparitions is
unnecessary, unverifiable, and ultimately self-defeating for
believers. It is unnecessary because we have verifiable and
repeatable experiments that show that otherwise "normal" people can
and do report seeing and hearing non- occurring events. It is
unwarranted because the criteria, methods, and assumptions are
unverifiable. It is ultimately self-defeating because believers
themselves would have no way to refute, by verifiable means, the
claims of "apparitions" made by non-Christian religions.

We need not firmly diagnose the experience of the visionaries as a
psychiatric hallucination or a delusion in the sense of the
authoritative definitions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders (DSM- III) (American Psychiatric Association
[APA] 1980). Though we do not a priori exclude psychiatric
factors, our point has been that the normal social processes and
internal logic of their Marian subculture are sufficient to explain
their behavior. To refute Joyeux,, we also need not enter into the
recent debates about whether the criteria of the APA are subjective
or culturally biased against religious phenomena.

The refutation of Joyeux ultimately rests on the fact that he does
not fulfil the requirements of the two adjectives in the title of
his own book: Scientific and Medical Studies on the Apparitions at
Medjugorje. By his own words science has not reached any
"objective proofs," and all the evidence he offers is unverifiable
theology (e.g., "the angelic act of knowing"). Since the main
principle of scientific inquiry is verifiability, his constant use
of unverifiable theological hypotheses to support the visionaries
nullifies any claim to scientific or medical validity for his
studies and conclusions. It is no miracle that a supernatural
explanation for the Medjugorje apparition reports has been rejected
by both a Catholic bishop and secular humanists.

Hallquist/Rising God

2011-09-05T20:35:00.002-05:00

It was on my amazon wishlist for quite some time, but I finally got around to buying it, and I'm glad I did: Chris Hallquist's UFOs, Ghosts, and a Rising God: Debunking the Resurrection of Jesus

Here's my review:

Hallquist writes with great clarity, simplicity, and (when necessary) emotion.

This book carefully documents a vast number of weird claims, legends, and other bunk which in and of in itself makes the book worth having. Even if you don't agree with his conclusions about Christianity, you'll get a kick out of the stuff he describes. For example, at one point in the book he quotes evangelical Stage Magician Andre Kole on how people would greatly embellish the magic tricks he performed within a couple of days. That is mythmaking at its best.

I was surprised at how well he was able to support the hallucination hypothesis (the hypothesis that the resurrection appearances were hallucinations). He points out that the gospels themselves seem to be describing a suddenly disappearing and reappearing Jesus (this is also supported in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, in which Paul seems to describe a series of isolated appearances), which is indicative of hallucination (hallucinations are usually fairly brief and fleeting).

I think there are only a couple of instances in the book in which Hallquist left out something important, and in both these cases what is left out only supports his arguments. Here are the two instances:

Paul and epilepsy - Hallquist quotes Dr. Barry Beyerstein's description of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), and notes a surprising correlation between the symptoms of TLE and the character of St. Paul (Paul displays excessive moral zeal, is preoccupied with religion, has a conversion experience, and so on). The quote Hallquist provides says that TLEs report mystical religious presence. Mystical Religious Presence? Hmmm... "Christ lives in me" -- Galatians 2:20. It's an astonishing link, one that I wish Hallquist had pointed out explicitly.

Second, Hallquist seems to think that legend explains all of the gospel miracle stories. Though that could well be, another possibility which explains at least some of them is symbolism. For instance: the cursing of the fig tree is symbolic, See pp.56-58 of Richard Burridge, Four Gospels, One Jesus?: A Symbolic Reading.

Overall, this is a great read and a book which will help give you the "other side of the story" if you've read a book like The Case for Christ.

Craig and Komarnitsky

2011-08-30T20:24:00.002-05:00

William Lane Craig posted a video on youtube attempting to rebut Kris Komarnitsky's theory about cognitive dissonance the origin of Christianity, as he articulated it in his book Doubting Jesus' Resurrection: What Happened in the Black Box?

Komarnitsky responded to him. Boy oh boy. Craig brought up criticisms that Komarnitsky addressed in his book! And things get worse. Look at what Kevin Harris, the man interviewing Craig, had to say:

"I had no time to read Kris' book and was keying off an article on it. Bill hadn't read the book either; I rather threw it at him knowing he could address cognitive dissonance."

That's very revealing. Both of you think that you have the power to divine the contents of Kris' book, and on top of that, you demonstrate just what a sheep you are: You just know Craig will be able to address the issue at hand, even without knowing the facts yourself, and ironically not even realizing that Craig's fallacious rebuttals were addressed in Kris' book. Shame on you.

Addendum: Here's a real howler in Craig's video: About 7 minutes in Craig starts talking about how we need to put ourselves in the shoes of a first century Palestinian after his messiah has been killed. What would such a person do? They probably wouldn't say Jesus had been resurrected, they would probably get a new messiah or they would, in Craig's words from 8:05 to 8:15: "They could've spiritualized the messiah. Maybe they could've said, 'Well, Jesus is a spiritual king and his kingdom is a spiritual kingdom, despite his death, and therefore we can still believe in his messiahship in a spiritual sense.'

I know. And it's not as if there are any signs of that occurring in the New Testament. Oh. Except that there are; John 18:36: "My kingdom is not of this world..."

The rest Craig says is dead wrong, and if you don't know that already, I'm preparing a book which will deal with all of this in some detail.

The Bible Geek Aug. 27

2011-08-28T16:12:00.001-05:00

Here's a transcript of a question I sent in to the Bible Geek which Bob Price read and responded to in the August 27 podcast about 52 minutes in:

"In Dennis MacDonald's book The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark he puts forward the idea that as Mark wrote his gospel he imitated the epics of Homer but sometimes altered the story in such a way as to show how his values were different from Homer's. I think I've found an example in the gospel of Matthew where Buddhist scriptures (you read right!) are imitated with a twist in order to emphasize different theological values. Buddhism was alive and well in the Hellenistic world (Wikipedia has some good links and historical references on that) and there were apparently Buddhist missionaries in the Middle East/Mediterranean prior to the gospels. In the Buddhist scripture, (Jataka 190), there is a story about a disciple of the Buddha who begins walking on water but begins to sink after he loses his meditational trance. The point of the story is that you can do anything through focus. Contrast this with Matthew 14:22-33 in which a disciple of Jesus begins to walk on water but sinks when he loses faith. Point of the story: You can do anything through faith.

"I think the early Christians knew about the Buddhist story (it was likely present in the culture of the time) and imitated it but with their own change in order to show how their values differed from Buddhism. Though many others have noticed this similarity and Randel Helms has suggested borrowing, as far as I know I am the first one to recognize why it was borrowed. What sayest thou?"

By the way, you can now purchase Robert Price's Deconstructing Jesus and Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition? for your kindle for under ten bucks each. Fascinating books.

Why No Posts?

2011-08-26T23:38:00.001-05:00

Yep, it's been a month since I've posted anything. But I have a good reason: I've been working on a new book. I would say it's about 15% complete. Progress has been slow, but it should be good. Stay tuned for updates.

New PC

2011-07-21T12:32:00.002-05:00

Okay, so I finally bought my own home PC (before I had been using ones at the library or at a friend's). So I'll be writing a lot more from now on! Also, my PC came with Plants Vs. Zombies. It is the most fun, addicting game ever!

The Kalam Argument is a Deepity

2011-07-18T04:32:00.000-05:00

I'm sure most of you have seen or heard William Lane Craig's presentation of his Kalam cosmological argument. I think the argument is misleading to most people, as this argument is not one but two.

The first version is the one that Craig presents to lay audiences. It is highly misleading. Craig wants you to think that science has proven that at one time nothing existed, and that at a later point something existed, and this could only be explained by God. But that isn't true: there is no science at all that supports the idea that there was a time when NOTHING existed. In fact, even under the standard model of the Big Bang something has existed for every single moment of time (even though time itself doesn't stretch back for infinity).

The second version is the academic version. More or less, Craig argues that the first moment of time (and everything in it) must have some sort of reason for its existence (or cause) and of course by definition any cause for this first moment of time must be outside of time. And here's where we've opened up a huge can of metaphysical worms.

It's not obvious to me, or even to most people (I think?) that the first moment of time just had to have some type of nontemporal cause. So how can Craig argue that it does? To justify the notion that time's first moment had an atemporal cause, Craig appeals to intuition (which is surely no guide to matters so far removed from our experience, which is where we get our intuition) and to everyday experience (our experience of events always having a cause).

But our everyday experience is irrelevant to this issue, so say I. First, our everyday experience is that every event we know of was caused by another temporal event. Taken at face value this means an infinite regress, unless there is one or more special exceptions to this law of cause-and-effect. Suppose there is a special exception, some type of occurence that could happen without a previous temporal cause. Could this special exception also be without any cause whatsoever (even a timeless one)? If we're going to break one inductive rule (that every temporal event is caused by a previous temporal event) then why not break an artificial rule that doesn't really have any support? The artificial rule I speak of is the unstated premise that every event has a temporal or atemporal cause, which I find insupportable: we have no examples of atemporal causation. Using our everyday experience (and nothing more) would seem to make an uncaused event just as unique and just as seemingly unlikely as an event caused by a timeless thing.

And this is only the beginning of the problems with the Kalam. The Kalam assumes that an infinite past is impossible, but Craig's arguments for that are unconvincing, and, in any case, are refuted by his own philosophy of time:
http://www.uncrediblehallq.net/2010/12/10/a-quick-and-dirty-rebuttal-to-craigs-argument-from-the-impossibility-of-an-actual-infinite/

Moreover, there's even a paper published by Quentin Smith called "Time Began with a Timeless Point" which argues for a nontheistic cause of the universe that is outside of time.

The Kalam, I would suggest, is dead.

The Carrier-Holding Debate

2011-07-16T07:00:00.000-05:00

You can watch the debate between Christian apologist J.P. Holding and Atheist Richard Carrier here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/bensonshays

Holding is the author of The Impossible Faith and Carrier is the author of Not the Impossible Faith

Name That Bible Passage

2011-07-14T14:20:00.000-05:00

I recall reading a story (I'm fairly certain from the Old Testament) which I have not been able to locate. If you can find any biblical passage which bears a vague resemblance to the following description, I'd be very grateful. Just leave a comment in the comment section. Here's the description:

God keeps a distance between himself and his people because God thought that if he dwelt among the people he might lose control of himself and lash out and kill them.

If you can name this passage, I'll owe you one. If you want me to post a link to your blog, I'd be happy to do it.

The Status of God in Light of Evolution

2011-07-09T09:00:00.002-05:00

I would go even further than that: I'd say evolution provides strong evidence that no god worth having exists. I would define a god worth having as being at least an approximation of the traditional view of god: all-powerful, all-knowing, supremely benevolent. Now, if this god does not exist, what is the probability that complex and morally valuable agents like us (and some animals) came about through evolution? Well, if god doesn't exist, then the probability is basically 100 percent. On the other hand, if there is a god, he could create life all at once or allow it to develop through evolution. Which means that theism doesn't predict the evidence of evolution as well as atheism. And if you know something about Bayes' Theorem,* you'll know that this means that evolution counts as good evidence that there is no god.

Now, before I leave you with that let me return to a point I just made: that if god existed he could have created everything at once or allowed it to evolve. That sounds like a 50/50 split. But if you think about it, the probability that God would create through evolution has to be a lot less likely than 50 percent. There are many reasons that a God would prefer direct creation: it would provide more evidence of his existence so that people could know the truth (which a good God would surely want), it would avoid the millions of years of animal death and suffering that evolution entails, and it would also make more sense for a rational agent with all-power to go the most direct route to his goals. When we put it in that perspective, evolution is a devastating piece of evidence against god.

* Which is covered to some degree in Richard Carrier's chapters in The End of Christianity

Review of "The End of Christianity"

2011-07-07T17:00:00.001-05:00

I've written a review of The End of Christianity on amazon, which I am reposting here:

Loftus and his distinguished colleagues have managed to produce yet another excellent and invaluable addition to the debate over the truth of Christianity.

In the introduction John reviews his "outsider test for faith" and considers some objections. Nothing new here. People are still trying to avoid testing their worldview without there biases towards that worldview, and John rightly shows that this is nothing more than special pleading.

In chapter 1, "Christianity Evolving", Dr. David Eller treats us to a fascinating anthropological look at how Christianity, like a species that evolves and adapts to its in enviroment, has managed to blossom into a large family of peculiar sects.

In chapter 2, "Christianity's Success was not Incredible", Dr. Richard Carrier gives a capsule summary of his book Not the Impossible Faith and then discusses some reasons that the facts about the origin of Christianity demonstrate that Christianity is not true. That may sound like "the genetic fallacy" but it isn't: he's saying that the claims Christianity makes about the nature of the universe (that there is an all powerful God who sent his son to die and that everyone must believe this in order to recieve eternal life, and that God wants all men to be saved) entails with some probability that God would make that message known to everyone all over the world, and thus Native Americans and the Chinese and everyone else ought to have been visited by God and told the truth. In past debates Carrier has had, Christians have responded that we don't know that God would actually do something like this, and maybe there are good reasons he wouldn't. But in this new chapter, Carrier sets up his argument in such a way that this objection is irrelevant. It involves Bayes' Theorem, and while I can't explain that here (Carrier himself explains it in a later chapter) more or less Bayes' theorem entails that when theory A predicts a piece of evidence with greater probability than theory B, that piece of evidence increases the probability of theory A. So, theory A (that Christianity is false) predicts with basically 100 percent certainty that Jesus would NOT have travelled all over the world after his death and explained the gospel to the Native Americans, chinese, and so forth. Theory B (Christianity is true) does not predict this information with 100 percent (or nearly 100 percent) certainty because if Christianity is true then there is a valid and non-neglible chance that God something like that would happen. Since the falsity of Christianity better predicts that piece of evidence than the truth of Christianity, then this raises the overall probability that Christianity is false to some degree.

In chapter 3, "Christianity is Wildly Improbable" John Loftus reviews a laundry list of weird and unlikely (and perhaps impossible) beliefs that Christians must defend, and concludes that the combination of all this things together results in Christianity having a negligible chance of being true.

Chapter 4, "Why Biblical Studies Must End" presents a capsule summary of Hector Avalos' book The End of Biblical Studies which shows how the bible is irrelevant to modern life and is not really special in anyway except as a testament to what some people thought and believed in the ancient past.

In chapter 5, "Can God Exist if Yahweh Doesn't?" Dr. Jaco Gericke takes a bottom-up approach to disproving the existence of God. I call it "bottom-up" because I would describe the arguments of most other atheists as being "top-down": that is, they argue that the God of the bible can't exist because the God of the philosophers does not. Gericke, on the other hand, argues that the concept of God that Christian philosophers hold to cannot exist because not only are these two not the same thing, but more importantly because the biblical God is an absurdity. The Old Testament God is just an ancient Hebrew Superman. While any of the passages that indicate this (that God was thought of as having a body, for example) might be disputed or interpreted differently, the cumulative case brought forth by so many passages argues that the god being described by the Old Testament very probably was an ancient Hebrew superman. In chapter 6 Valerie Tarico adds further weight to this case by arguing that an all-powerful and immaterial being like God would not, and could not, have emotions like anger, which the Biblical God is said to have had. This is because emotions serve a function that is only necessary in limited creatures like humans. For example, anger is there to allow you to prepare for situations of conflict, because in a situation of conflict you need to be more aggressive and alert, lest you lose the fight. All of that is obviously advantageous in evolutionary terms. But a God wouldn't really need any emotions. After all, how could an all-powerful being need to become more alert or more aggressive to ensure that it didn't "lose the fight" against some other entity? Though many might describe those passages on God's anger as metaphorical, that is not the most obvious or plain meaning of the text. I recall reading a story in the OT (Exodus 33:3) in which God had to keep a distance between himself and his people because God thought that if he dwelt among the people he might lose control of himself and lash out and kill them. This offers dramatic support to the views of Tarico and Gericke and shows that the biblical God is an absurdity.

In chapter 7, "The Absurdity of the atonement" Dr. Ken Pulliam fully demonstrates that the evangelical theory of Jesus' death (that Jesus' death occurred as a substitute for our suffering for our sins) is indefensible. The knockout comes on page 185: "If man knows right from wrong as a a result of being made in the image of God, and if one of the things man knows from his being so created is that it is wrong to punish the innocent, then how can the central doctrine of Evangelical Christianity, namely penal substitution, be maintained?"

Matt McCormick argues in chapter 8 that there is more and better quality evidence for witchcraft going on in 18th century Salem, Massachusetts than there is for the resurrection of Jesus. This means that accepting Christianity means accepting that witchcraft also occurred in Salem. But adopting that position is obviously absurd and problematic. One point that I wish Matt had brought out is that if one adopted an epistemic standard that was so low that it allowed the acceptance of the Salem witchcraft, as well as the many millions of other miracle claims, then such a position would mean that the resurrection offered only negligible support for Christianity. Think about it: if you are a Christian who accepts the claims of witchcraft and the miracle claims of other religions, you would have to adopt the position that some of these miracles were worked by demons or were worked by your God and the people witnessing the miracle did not realize. But then who's to say the miracle of the resurrection wasn't performed by a demon or by someone else's God?

In chapter 9 Bob Price offers a list of natural explanations for the gospel material on the resurrection, assuming that the gospel accounts themselves are basically correct, and he defends these as plausible. I agree, but incidentally I don't think anyone needs to concede that the material in the is that reliable.

Chapter 10 is a discussion of how the doctrine of Hell is a damnable and indefensible doctrine. Excellent material, and good food for thought: how can anyone be a Christian (or at least, an evangelical Christian) if it means defending a demonstrably immoral doctrine?

The remaining chapters I have no comment on, except for Richard Carrier's two excellent chapters. One is on whether the universe is intelligently-designed, and while I'm in agreement that it isn't, I am not completely sure if his refutations of the fine-tuning argument are totally sound (I will likely blog on this at a later time).

Overall, this is an excellent book, and every open minded Christian ought to have a copy on their bookshelf right next to The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails. I doubt that any rational person could remain a Christian after being informed of the arguments in these two books. At least, I can't imagine and have never seen a reasonable response to the points in these books. Highly recommended.

New Blog Added and More

2011-07-01T13:30:00.000-05:00

Just added a blog to my blog list that I've known about for a very long time: Debunking William Lane Craig.

It's official: Bart Ehrman's upcoming book Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical, Non-Religious Argument for Jesus of Nazareth can be pre-ordered as a kindle ebook. But it won't be out until November. So in the meantime you better download Why I Am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons to Reject the Faith and The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe Is Not Designed for Us (I will be reviewing the latter very soon).

There are Open Minds

2011-06-30T17:51:00.003-05:00

Some time ago, I got into a long and extensive debate with Dr. Gunter Bechly. He posted an update on his views recently in a comment:

"I meanwhile read Gary Drescher`s book several times. I have to agree with AIGBusted that it is a highly recommendable book that profoundly changed my views (incl. solving my problems with the nature of causality, time, consciousnes and free will). To make a long story short: I withdraw my above objections (and my support for 'Process Philosophy' as metaphysics), and now agree that the completely naturalistic worldview as presented by Gary Drescher is indeed the most parsimonious and most convincing explanation for all phenomena. Drescher's metaphysic is by the way not really 'materialist' but rather corresponds to the 'mathematical universe hypothesis' and 'ultimate ensemble' of Max Tegmark."

The book under discussion is Good and Real: Demystifying Paradoxes from Physics to Ethics (A Bradford Book)

Books, Books, Books

2011-06-28T17:31:00.006-05:00

Just made a change-up in the books advertised on the right-hand side of the blog: I've dropped Atheism Explained: From Folly to Philosophy (Ideas Explained) and The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails and replaced them with Good and Real: Demystifying Paradoxes from Physics to Ethics (A Bradford Book) and The End of Christianity. Don't get me wrong, those two books are great, especially The Christian Delusion, which presents one of the most devastating attacks on the Christian faith I've ever read. But ya know, I wanted to add those two books and something had to go.

My Moral Philosophy

2011-06-16T18:04:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about morality lately, and here are some conclusions that I have come to.

The root of morality is concern for the well-being of other people. This is the only clear definition of morality I have found which matches our use and intuitions about the word. A truly moral concern for other people is not valuing people because of what they can do for you or because caring for other people fulfills some selfish desire on your part. Rather, a moral concern for other people is valuing people for their own sake.

We've all heard the saying "The buck stops here." We often value things because of deeper values that we hold. For example, I value Subway sandwiches because of the pleasure I get from eating them. Why do I value pleasure? Is there some reason to value pleasure? No. The buck stops there. Pleasure is a basic, primary desire (or value).

Likewise, if you ask yourself why you value other people, there are only two possible answers you can come up with: Either "the buck stops there" and valuing other people is one of those basic desires you have, or you value other people because of some deeper, more basic desire you have. If you value other people for some deeper desire, then what, we may ask, might that desire be? Is that desire a selfish desire or an unselfish one? Since an unselfish desire is, by definition, a desire that values other people, then it wouldn't make any sense to say that you value other people because of a more fundamental desire to value other people.

So if you value other people because of some other desire that you have, then you could only be doing it because of a selfish desire (so that you won't go to prison, let's say). If that's true about you, then are you really moral? I mean, if a criminal decides not to commit a crime because he's being video-taped at the moment, could we really call such a person moral? He did the right thing by not committing the crime, but it was for the wrong reasons. Such a person is immoral. On the other hand, someone who chooses not to commit a crime, even when they know that they can get away with it, because they want to avoid the damage it will cause other people, is a moral person.

William Lane Craig, I think, spends much of his philosophizing about morality thinking about arguing with a hypothetical extremist moral skeptic (someone who doesn't believe in morality). Craig deeply wants (I might even say needs) for morality to be grounded in something higher than animal minds. The moral skeptic may point out that he has his opinions, and his desires, and we have ours, and by what authority could one claim that one is better than the other? That one is right and one is wrong? Craig's answer, I think, is that his morality is endorsed by God, an infinitely great and wise being, and that settles the whole issue. Craig seems to believe this is the only answer possible, or that it is at least the best answer anyone has come up with so far, therefore that means that his answer is probably correct. Since his answer includes the existence of God, we must conclude that God exists.

In reality, there is no way at all to answer the moral skeptic. What does it mean for something to be better than something else? When something is better than something else, it satfisfies some assumed goal. Example: I may be a better swimmer than anyone else in my family, if by "better at swimming" we meaning faster which is essential just saying that my swimming satisfies the goal of speed more fully than any other member of my family. When the moral skeptic asks "Why is your set of opinions better than mine?" What end goal is, or could he, be talking about? If he is asking why valuing others actually works to help other people, then it is quite obvious how could be answered. And if the happiness of other people is not among his set of end-goals, then he could only be asking how valuing other people would help him. Well, there are benefits to behaving in a way that shows value (staying out of prison, creating enjoyable friendships, and so on) But if the moral skeptic only acts like he values other people in order to recieve those benefits (staying out of prison, friendship, etc.) and he does not really and truly hold the happiness of others amongst his basic values, then he is not, and can not, be moral, as we have established earlier.

Nor can we persuade the moral skeptic to adopt the happiness of others amongst his basic values. For the only way you can persuade someone to do anything is by appealing to values which they already hold to. Think about it: when have you ever convinced something that they ought to do something without showing them how it fulfills their goals? How could you? Further, Richard Carrier and Alonzo Fyfe have both (independently, I think) proposed that the word "ought" simply designates what must be done in order to fulfill an assumed desire (example: If you want to eat a good hamburger, and McDonald's sells good hamburgers, then you ought to go to McDonald's). Since I believe that they are correct, that makes the statement that "one cannot persuade anyone without appealing to values they already have" true by definition.

Now, since we can't get the moral skeptic to be really and truly moral by appealing to his selfish values, and since the moral skeptic, if he really is one, has no unselfish values, then it follows that the moral skeptic cannot be persuaded. This conclusion is logically necessary, as it follows from the premises, and the premises, as I have argued, are indisputable. And notice that this conclusions makes no reference to theism or atheism. The conclusion applies regardless of which position one takes, which means that Craig cannot claim that his moral system is greater in light of its being able to answer the moral skeptic, because it can't.

Drescher's Modal Realism

2011-06-13T14:48:00.000-05:00

One of the most brilliant books I have ever read in my life is Gary Drescher's book Good and Real: Demystifying Paradoxes from Physics to Ethics. I highly recommend it: it covers naturalistic perspectives on consciousness, ethics, and manages to be fairly brief on each topic even though it explicates numerous philosophical problems and blossoms with fresh new solutions to many of them. I say that to say this: Reading pages 323-327 of that book is going to be a pre-requisite to reading this blog post, as what I attempt to do here is to explicate Gary's argument for Modal Realism. If you don't have the book, all of those pages except one are available here. Anyway, what I'm writing here is an attempt to put his argument into a series of syllogisms. What I say here is my own interpretation of his work and I could be mistaken. Also, I have speculated and filled in some gaps about what he meant when I felt it was necessary.

I take Drescher's argument to boil down to one simple syllogism, though in order to be valid this syllogism requires lots of justification through further syllogisms. Here's the basic argument:

1. Two things are the same when no difference could ever [even in principle] be detected between them.
2. No difference can be detected (even in principle) between the objective ontological status of logically possible worlds.
Conclusion: Therefore, the objective ontological status of this world and all possible worlds is the same.

A common sense way to phrase the conclusion, I think, is that all possible worlds are just as real as this one.

Now, we've got some serious philosophical legwork to do. Since the conclusion follows from the premises, we only have to worry about whether the premises are true. I take premise one to be uncontroversial. But what about premise 2? Is it true? Here's Drescher's argument for it:

1. Any statement which is not true by definition or theoretically verifiable/falsifiable is meaningless.
2. The statement that "The universe exists" in the sense that it has some external "spark of existence" as Drescher puts it, is not true by definition nor is it even theoretically verifiable/falsifiable.
Conclusion: Therefore, the statement "The universe exists" (as defined above) is meaningless.

Now, the first premise expresses a version of something known as the Verification Principle. This principle is highly controversial in philosophy, as the link I gave will show you. However, Michael Martin has valiantly defended this principle in his book Atheism: A Philosophical Justification and personally I suspect that some form of the verification principle is correct.

What about the second premise? What justifies the contention that there we could never know of the universe having an external "spark of existence" as Drescher says? Drescher runs a thought experiment similar to this one that I have written about before:

Imagine that you "invent" your own universe. You write down the physical laws of your imaginary universe, and you work out the equations to figure out how it would evolve over time. Eventually your equations show that your universe develops planets and life at some point in its history. Further equations prove that intelligent, humanoid creatures would evolve in this universe. Working even more equations reveals that a pair of these humanoids are having a conversation about their universe, wondering why it exists. They are not troubled, or even aware, that their universe "doesn't exist." In their eyes, their universe does exist. It is quite real to them. Their "imaginary" universe seems just as real to them as our "real" universe seems to us. We have no way to tell what "exists" except our experiences. And yet experiences exist within universes that we would call "imaginary": For as our thought experiement shows, 'imaginary' beings in 'imaginary' universes still experience their universe as real. And therefore they have the same evidence that their universe exists as we have that our universe exists.

Something must be explained here: Am I concluding that we can't know whether the universe exists? No, obviously the universe does exist. But maybe our intuitions about what existence means have lead us astray. So, what is existence? Drescher proposes that we call things "real" only when they can have an effect of some sort upon us. Defined this way, of course our universe is real, since the universe is just a label for everything we call real (in the sense of having, or being able to have, an effect upon us). Notice that when we use this definition of "real" an imaginary being (think three-eyed monster alien) in a possible world (with its own unique set of galaxies and planets) could also rightly refer to itself and its surroundings as being real. We, on the other hand, refer to it as not real because such a thing has no effect upon us. Even as we contemplate such alien worlds, it is not the worlds themselves which affect us, but only our mental representations of them that were generated by our brains.

Some have objected that the theory of Modal Realism violates Occam's razor. I think not. First of all, the principle that "the simplest explanation is most probably correct" does not apply if one proves logically that there is only one explanation, as I believe I have just done. Nor is it even clear that Occam's razor would be violated even if there were other possible explanations of existence. I mean, if someone were proposing a theory that granted a "spark of existence" to every possible world, such a theory would run afoul of Occam's razor. But modal realism actually denies that any universe, even ours, has anything extra that other universes do not. It is, then, simpler than alternative theories. Our universe, ontologically, is no different than any other abstraction.

Whose Word is it?

2011-06-02T00:55:00.001-05:00

Bart Ehrman explicated an argument in his masterful book Misquoting Jesus which I take to be something like this:

1. If God inspired the words of the Bible, he would have preserved the words of the Bible.
2. God did not preserve the words of the Bible.
Conclusion: God did not inspire the words of the Bible.

The conclusion follows from the premises, so the only the thing we need to worry about is whether or not the premises are correct.

That "God did not preserve the words of the Bible" is undoubtable, since the words of the original New Testament manuscripts weren't preserved at all, as thousands upon thousands of changes were made to the New Testament as it was copied again and again.

The only thing one may question is premise 1: If God inspired the words of the Bible would He preserve them? Evangelicals have cautioned us on this. Not so fast, they say. By far most of the changes that occurred when the New Testament was copied are trivial (such as a spelling error) and it is dubious to claim that God would have preserved everything down to the very letter. God would preserve the original meaning of the text, of course, but to claim God would preserve more than that is not a reasonable or warranted expectation. Besides, evangelicals tell us, scholars have a vast number of manuscripts to look at and are able to deduce what the original text said. So according to evangelicals, the words were (kinda sorta) preserved.

A few caveats: There were at least a few significant interpolations. Example: In Mark 16 everything after verse 8 is an interpolation. No biggie, say the evangelicals, we know that because the earliest manuscripts lack those verses, so we still have access to the originals. Besides, there were no doctrinal changes.

And Scholars are not able to reconstruct "the original" version of the book, they are only able to reconstruct the common source that all of the manuscripts we now have were copied from. Is that a problem? Well, the common source for all of our manuscripts was probably not more than a few generations of copying away from the original (i.e. the common source was a copy of a copy of a copy of the original) so there wasn't much time for interpolations to occur. Then again, some scholars believe that there were lots of interpolations that occurred back in those early days (Richard Pervo commented in The Mystery of Acts that during the early days, every new copy was "a new edition" and if I recall correctly it was because of his study of the Q document). Richard Carrier has even made the point that interpolations would be more likely to occur in the early days because there were few manuscripts around and the odds were thus better that you wouldn't get caught if you added something.

All that leads to an important question: what if one of the books of the New Testament was altered early on in a way that seriously changed the meaning of the text, or affected some core doctrine of Christianity? As far as I knew, no one could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this had happened and thus the argument wasn't really a serious hurdle for Christians.

Up until now I was basically in agreement with the Evangelical point of view in that I didn't think Ehrman's argument falsified Christianity. I thought it created some problems: Namely, because every non-fragmentary manuscript we have of the New Testament dates well over 100 years after the books were originally written, we can't really know for sure if any changes concerning substantial issues were made in that time frame. Further, for those who argue for the resurrection of Jesus, it is tricky to make the case when your only evidence is the New Testament, a book that could have been (and probably was) altered in all kinds of ways that you'll never even know about. But let us put these concerns aside for a moment.

On reading Richard Carrier's blog recently I discovered that 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is an interpolation. Let's take a look at the passage in question:

"Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church."

How do we know it's an interpolation? Carrier explains the reasons on his blog, and I would only like to add that Philip Payne's article (which presents evidence that this passage was missing from some manuscripts) is located on his website for all to read.

The church that I went to as a kid always forbid women to speak during services AT ALL because of this passage, which, as it turns out, was fabricated. Ehrman's argument shines with new force.

Why Solipsism is False

2011-05-23T23:49:00.002-05:00

Have you ever wondered if the whole world around you was a dream, a creation of your own mind? I'll bet you never took it seriously, but the thought must have crossed your mind at some point. The position that the world is a product of your mind (including all the people, animals, rocks, EVERYTHING) is called solipsism. I'm sure you don't believe in solipsism. Solipsism just doesn't feel plausible enough to be believed. Nor is it even plausible enough to be contemplated for more than a brief moment before it is forgotten and abandoned, like a daydream, as you are pulled out of the world of philosophical fantasy and back into the reality of daily routine.

Now for the $64,000 question: how do you know that solipsism is false? You don't believe it, but what rational reason could you spell out for that disbelief? Recently a post was made on a discussion board which I believe conclusively refutes solipsism. In order to understand it is necessary to explain a few things to lay the groundwork for the solution.

Daniel Dennett is a philosopher who has coined the terms 'skyhook' and 'crane' to describe two different types of explanation (See Darwin's Dangerous Idea). A 'skyhook' explanation explains a complex object as the product of something even more complex. Example: my computer (a very complicated object) was designed and built by other human beings (who are, of course, very complicated). A 'crane' explanation takes a complex object and explains it as the result of simpler objects which over time became more complex. Example: Evolution by natural selection.

'Skyhooks' can't serve as ultimate explanations. If you explain item A as the product of a more complex thing (call it item B) which you say the product of an even more complex thing (item C) which was brought into existence by super-complex item D, etc. etc., then your chain of explanation is self-refuting. You can't say that, on the one hand, every complex thing must have an explanation and then turn around and postulate an extremely complex "uncaused first-cause."

Self-contradiction, as it turns out, may be the least of your worries if you want to buy into the "complexity only comes from complexity" theory. You see, postulating an extremely complicated, "uncaused first-cause" can be shown to be improbable on other grounds. Example: suppose that I theorize that the universe was created by a giant super-computer that existed for no reason at all. Such a computer! Can you imagine how many parts it would have, and how precisely they would have to be arranged? After all, you can't just toss together any old combination of metals and plastic and expect to get a working computer. It takes an extremely precise arrangement of matter to create a working computer of even the simplest variety, and if you looked at the number of ways that you could arrange the same molecules that make up the computer, you would find that the vast majority of these arrangements are non-functional. Back to the thought experiment: If I were to postulate a supercomputer that generated the universe, that ought to strike as an astoundingly, jaw-dropping, shit-a-brick ludicrous explanation because it is unlikely that, if some matter and energy existed without a cause or explanation, it would be arranged in such a precise and specific pattern rather than some other, more random and useless, configuration.

To postulate that one's mind is all that truly exists, that one's mind is uncreated, is ludicrous for similar reasons. Perhaps the mind is not a material thing, but whether it is or it isn't, we can be sure of one thing: minds are extremely complicated. Think about the complexity of being able to process, piece together, even create-- information. Such tasks require a very complex and highly precise mind. Now, since we've established that extremely complex and highly specific things are wildly unlikely to be the "uncaused first cause", and since we've established that minds are complex and highly specific, then it follows that the uncaused first cause (if there be one) is very probably not a mind. Since solipsism postulates that your mind (or in my cause, my mind) is a sort of "uncaused first cause" -- the creator of the universe, basically, then it follows that solipsism is very, very, very probably false. Solipsism is a logical possibility, but it is so wildly unlikely, for reasons discussed above, that it need not be given a thought (other than an occasional fun philosophical musing).

What if Acts is Mostly Fiction?

2011-05-10T15:00:00.000-05:00

That's the title of a recent blogpost by Presbyterian Minister John Shuck. In it was mentioned the works of Richard Pervo, such as

Arizona Atheist Reviews My Book!

2011-05-04T01:53:00.002-05:00

Blogger Arizona Atheist has written a review of my book. My book Atheism and Naturalism is available at amazon.com (click the link) and is also available on lulu as both a paperback and download.

Along with King Heathen's video review of my book, this stands as the sixth positive review I have received. Since I've only gotten six reviews and all of them were positive, that means that the book has 100% batting average. They all liked it. You probably will too! Order now.

Click the Book!

JT Eberhard, Dear Christian

2011-05-03T14:06:00.002-05:00

From last year's skepticon, I've found JT Eberhard's talk Dear Christian.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Victor Stenger, who was a speaker at Skepticon III, has jus released his book The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe Is Not Designed for Us

The Final Stage of Transhumanism

2011-04-30T03:38:00.000-05:00

Advice to Future Authors

2011-04-28T07:46:00.002-05:00

The following is an email that I sent to someone asking advice about publishing a book:

There are two publishers whom you can publish anything you want for free: Lulu.com and Createspace.com . The only cost that may be incurred to you is ordering one "proof copy" of your book, and that should not cost more than about ten bucks (or less).

I've used Lulu and it's fine. However, a friend of mine, Richard Carrier, has used both publishers and he says that createspace is the way to go. When people order your book, you will recieve royalties (profits) based on the book's price (which you set yourself) minus the cost of printing the book and a percentage taken by the company. If you publish on Lulu, you'll probably want to join their "distribution plan" which will post your book on amazon. However, when you publish through Lulu, the books sold through amazon.com will generate smaller royalties, simply because lulu and amazon both take a cut of your money.

So here's why createspace is better: createspace is almost the same as lulu in its service, but createspace is owned by the amazon corporation. So the revenue you earn from books sold on amazon will be higher because now you only have one company (instead of two) taking a cut of your money. In my experience, most people would rather buy a book on amazon than on Lulu, so most of your books will be sold on amazon, and since createspace is so "Amazon-efficient" it is the better choice.

Some other advice: do some "google research" on writing books with Microsoft Word (or whatever program you are using). I did, and it helped me out a lot. Also, I've read that anything you upload to createspace has to be in pdf format, but it shouldn't be to hard to find a program to help you do that. In fact, you could sign up for lulu (for free) and then start a project, upload your microsoft wordfiles, and then generate a top-notch pdf from those. Doing that requires no special skill at all, Lulu advertises these services, and they are free.

Other than that: make a point to read the advice and instructions of the company you choose, and choose good, knowledgable friends to proof-read your book. In case you're wondering, I use Lulu (I hadn't heard of createspace when I published) and even copies of my book that I sell through Amazon bring in over a dollar a copy, and my book is priced at only $13.99! My book:

King Heathen Reviews my book!

2011-04-24T23:31:00.005-05:00

Below is a video review of my book Atheism and Naturalism. My book is available in print and download from LULU. It is also available on amazon.com if you click here.

Anyone out there have a "Net 10" phone

2011-04-23T13:24:00.003-05:00

Recently I purchased a Net 10 phone card with 300 minutes/60 service days from walmart for 30 bucks. Long story short, I won't myself be needing the card. Is there anyone out there who could use this card? If so, leave a comment on this post so we can get in contact. I'd like a little bit of compensation for it (after all, I did use my money on it) but I'm not expecting more than twenty bucks for it.

A little off topic: For those interested in the Resurrection, here's a great blog:

http://remnantofgiants.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/caseys-jesus-2-empty-tomb/

Jesus as an Archetype

2011-04-23T02:47:00.000-05:00

One idea that I have been contemplating lately is that Jesus may have been viewed as a sort of archetype. If you read the link and understand the definition of an archetype, it makes sense to think that this is what Jesus was to early Christians. For example, Jesus is baptized even though he did not sin (according to the gospels). Why? I've always thought that he was portrayed this way in the gospels as a man setting an example for what Christians were supposed to do. And how would this bear on the resurrection issue? Christians believed that at the end of time they would be resurrected, and so it only makes sense that Jesus would have been said to have been resurrected after his death.

Question During the Carrier-Holding Debate

2011-04-22T00:57:00.002-05:00

Richard Carrier recently debate Christian apologist Robert Turkel aka "JP Holding" and here is some audio I found from the debate. In the video below both speakers are asked what evidence they would need to see in order to change their belief system. Carrier, of course, has answered this question at length in his essay Why I am Not a Christian (which has now been revised and published as a book: Why I Am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons to Reject the Faith Holding's answer to this question is rather bizarre and somewhat nonsensical, as the video itself points out:

Shows That Are Like Me

2011-04-21T00:26:00.000-05:00

Ever seen "Malcolm in the Middle"? That show has multiple parallels to my own life, almost like the creators vaguely knew my family. Malcolm, Reese, and Francis are all different aspects of me. When I was growing up, I was an evil genius of rebellion just like Francis. I knew all my parents' passwords on the TV and computer. I was smart and studious like Malcolm, but also destructive and stupid at times (like Reese). Like the boys in the show, I too have a foreign, chainsmoking grandmother who was mean as hell (how many people can say that?).

"Family Guy" also has a strange parallel to me. The dog on that show loves to write, is an atheist, is moody at times (though very intelligent). And his name? Brian (=Ryan).

Funny A** Songs.

2011-04-19T00:45:00.002-05:00

She Believes, He Doesn't

2011-04-16T03:52:00.002-05:00

Matt and Tracy on The Atheist Experience give some advice to a male atheist who loves a female Christian. That's really a tough issue. In fact, I know I need to think about this a lot more. I'm single now, but nonetheless I would like to marry one day, and I need to work out my views about this. I've never had a problem dating Christian women, and most of the time they haven't had any issues with my views. Truth be told, I would like to find a woman who shares my naturalistic outlook on life. But that wish may very well (and in all probability, I'm afraid) not be fulfilled. Then what? If she's agnostic or some sort of generic theist, then I doubt any problem will arise. I'm not overeager to corral someone in to my exact belief system, especially since I consider atheism to be pretty well irrelevant to my day-to-day life. What worries me is falling for someone who is head-over-heels for Jesus or who is involved enough in Christianity that her beliefs end up causing her to worry about my eternal fate, or to do/say/support things that I consider foolish/wrong/immoral. I guess my solution to this problem is that I will generally try to seek women who do not meet the description I just gave, and further, if I do begin to get involved with a woman who meets that description, I'll try and persuade her of my point of view. And if that can't be done, I will know it is because she is a) correct, in which case my beliefs change and no conflict arises, b) wrong, but only because she doesn't have enough exposure to my beliefs, in which case further exposure and discussion will be called for and in which case she will either end up in the same boat as me or will fall under categories a or c, or c) wrong, and wrong because she refuses to listen to reason. If this woman is a C, then things become difficult. I mean, who would turn down a near-perfect woman just because she was short-sighted about one issue? On the other hand, a C could be a real problem when it comes to raising children or just in day to day life issues. Could a Christian woman with a more-than-lukewarm passion for her faith accept living with an atheist who blogs all kinds of things that she would consider devilspeak? Could I accept her? Should I? It's a difficult question, but at this point I'm just mulling over hypotheticals. And again, I'm hoping to dodge this one altogether.

Homologous Legs This Week

2011-04-05T15:45:00.001-05:00

Homologous Legs does a great job of showing the predictive bankruptcy of "intelligent design" here.

Having Pizza Tonight?

2011-03-25T03:00:00.002-05:00

I was cutting into a delicious pepperoni-and-canadian-bacon-thin-crust just a few days ago, and having a tough time trying to hack out a piece with my spatula. I've used pizza cutters before, but even those aren't usually great for getting through the crust. It suddenly occurred to me that I probably owned the perfect utensil to cut a piece of pizza with, though I had never used it nor seen it used. Guess what it is?

Pair of Scissors. I swear, a pair of scissors is the most excellent thing to cut a pizza ever. And you don't need to run out and buy any special or fancy kind of scissors (believe it or not, there's actually a fancy and overpriced pair of "pizza scissors"). Just get the cheap 1-2 dollar pair at your local Wal-Mart or Target and you are good to go.

I knew I couldn't be the first one to think of doing this, so I did some "google research" on it. I found one discussion thread about it, and look what people are saying about cutting pizza with scissors:

"Maybe in Asylums they do it"

"I prefer to use a big f#ck-off knife"

"My friend Katie does this she came over my house and tried to do it to my pizza, i rightfully slapped her to the ground and booted her firmly in the face.*

*may be a slight over exaggeration"

Intuition Skepticism

2011-03-21T15:31:00.002-05:00

Luke over @ CommonSenseAtheism, recently posted something about his skepticism that intuition is a reliable source of information. Below is a modified version of a comment I left on that blog post:

I used to be a sort of “intuiton skeptic” as well. I’ve now changed my mind (somewhat).

Daniel Dennett describes intuition as “when you know the answer to something, but you don’t know how you know it.” This requires a bit of unpacking: There have been experiments done on people who literally see the world in black and white; they can’t see color. Nonetheless, some of these people are able to tell the difference between red and green without actually experiencing that color. The cognitive science behind this is that some parts of the brain recieve information about color from eyes, but that information never fully makes it into the “stream of consciousness”; The “stream of consciousness” recieves the knowledge that object X is green, but it does not have the actual experience of seeing green.

Intuition, in some cases at least, may be an example of a similar phenomenon. Some part of your brain has correctly understood and reasoned the correct conclusion, but only the conclusion (and not the actual process of reasoning) makes it into your conscious experience. Malcolm Gladwell has written a book called Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking that is highly relevant to this. He describes an expert in Greek artifacts (I believe?) who “just knew” upon examing an artifact for a few seconds that it was a forgery. In fact, when I first read Ray Comfort’s “special introduction” to the Origin of Species, I “just knew” that Ray Comfort did not write it, though I could not put my finger on any explicit reason for thinking so. A bit of google research confirmed my intuition.

In my own life, I have observed that intuition is right more often than not. Intuitions are not “properly basic beliefs”. Rather, we should grant intuition some epistemic weight only because intuition is inductively supported as a source of knowledge that is correct more often than not.

Intuition, however, is not infallible, or even close to infallible. Intuition can lend only weak epistemic support to a claim. As we have observed, intuition can go horribly wrong sometimes. Don't believe me? Check out the Monty Hall Problem.

Further, we must be cautious about applying intuition to solve problems that lie far outside of our experience. Example: I've read that when people are trained as airplane pilots, they are cautioned NOT to trust there intuitive feelings about which direction is "up" and which direction is "down" when they are flying their planes. Flying a plane is so different from anything else we humans ordinarily do that our intuition is simply not able to provide reliable information in that situation. Hence, we ought to be extremely cautious about "going with our gut" to solve a problem if that problem is one that lies far outside what we humans are used to thinking about.

So long as we confine our speculations to trade, or
morals, or politics, or criticism, we make appeals,
every moment, to common sense and experience, which
strengthen our philosophical conclusions, and remove
(at least, in part) the suspicion, which we so justly en-
tertain with regard to every reasoning that is very
subtile and refined. But in theological reasonings, we
have not this advantage; while at the same time we are
employed upon objects, which, we must be sensible, are
too large for our grasp, and of all others, require most
to be familiarised to our apprehension.

-David Hume

Books I'm Looking Forward To

2011-03-14T13:04:00.003-05:00

Divinity of Doubt: The God Question by Vincent Bugliosi

Bugliosi is the lawyer who prosecuted Charles Manson and the author of "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder". I think he's a very sharp and original thinker, and that's why I'm looking forward to reading what he has to say about religion. Apparently he argues for agnosticism.

The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe Is Not Designed for Us by Victor Stenger

A revised, book-length critique of the fine tuning argument by physicist Victor Stenger.

The End of Christianity Ed. John Loftus

Why would I want that book? Just look at the table of contents!

Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are by Bart Ehrman

Bart Ehrman's ebook on Jesus Mythicism (Yes, You read right. Read the link).

What books are you looking forward to?

Was Jesus Raised: The Jesus Inquest, Part 1

2011-03-09T15:32:00.000-06:00

Once again, we'll be heading off-track from the McGrews and focusing on a new book about Jesus' resurrection called The Jesus Inquest: The Case For and Against the Resurrection of the Christ

The book takes place as a dialogue about various issues having to do with Jesus' resurrection: Whether Jesus really died on the cross, whether he was buried, and so on. The dialogue is between two imaginary characters created by the author, Charles Foster. They are, unimaginatively, named 'X' and 'Y' (X is the skeptic, Y is the Christian). I thought it would have been a lot nicer to give the characters actual names that subtlely indicated their theological positions. For example, the skeptic should have been named Tommy after Thomas the doubting disiple and the Christian could have been named Mark after Mark the gospel writer. Naming your characters 'X' and 'Y' just seems so uncreative and dry. But it's a very small point and it doesn't detract from the book's content, and to that I now turn.

Naturally, X the skeptic spins many different, mutually exclusive theories about what happened that weekend 2000 years ago. At one point X argues that Jesus may have survived the cross, and trots out the so-called Jesus family tomb, and refers to fringe work such as Michael Baigent's Holy Blood, Holy Grail

Foster shows off his ability as a writer here, as he vividly describes the various fringe theories about conspiracies surrounding Jesus' crucifixion, and that makes for fun reading. However, as Foster is careful to have Y the Christian point out, such theories are nothing more than fantasy novels; they have little solid historical ground to stand upon.

Things become a little tricker for Y as the book progresses to more complex issues, and throughout much of the rest of the book I found Y's arguments to be weak or engaging in special pleading or circular reasoning. Example: X makes the point that archaeological evidence appears to indicate that poorer criminals were normally buried in the dirt, and not in tomb as the gospels say that Jesus was. Y responds by pointing out that customs are not like immutable, physical laws. Rather, customary practices revealed through archaeology and textual study simply record human behavior and practice, which is often highly variable. Well, of course, that's a correct and fine point to make. But for someone who is arguing that Jesus was buried in a tomb, this is merely an appeal to possibility rather than an appeal to probability. Customs describe what usually happened, and hence dictate the probability of what would happen in any specific case. So if most crucified victims were buried in the ground, then Jesus probably was too (unless we have good evidence to the contrary). To deny that line of reasoning is too engage in special pleading.

And do we have any good evidence to the contrary? Not really. Paul tells us that Jesus was buried (1 Corinthians 15:3-5) but he doesn't tell us whether Jesus was buried in a tomb or in the dirt. The gospel accounts tell us that Jesus was buried in a tomb, but are the gospel reports "good evidence"? Since it was common for historians of that time to speculate and create narratives around bare-bone sets of information that they recieved, it could very well be that Mark recieved word that Joseph of Arimathea had buried Jesus, and Mark "filled in the blanks" by creating a narrative in which Joseph placed Jesus in a tomb. It's quite possible that Joseph of Arimathea (if he existed), really did bury Jesus. However, it must be pointed out that we don't know if Joseph buried Jesus in his tomb or in the ground. Mark may not have known, and he may have simply speculated the burial location was Joseph's own tomb. In fact, such a speculation may not even be original to Mark. It could be that some of Jesus' followers thought he was buried in Joseph's tomb when in fact Joseph had buried him in a common criminal's graveyard. Supposing that the empty tomb story is true, that would explain why Jesus' followers never found him in Joseph's tomb when they went to anoint him!

That brings me to another issue: Y argues that the Christian story about Joseph of Arimathea burying Jesus is true. After all, if the story were an invention, why would the Christians have gone to the trouble of naming the person and his place of origin? Wouldn't that have been nothing but a big damn liability for getting caught in a lie? Why not simply say that Jesus had been buried by some anonymous character? Now this is an interesting point of contention. And before I continue I just want to point out that even if Y is right and the burial by Joseph of Arimathea is correct, it is still completely plausible that Joseph did not bury Jesus in his tomb. Although Y has a point here, it is quite possible that Joseph of Arimathea was a literary creation and would have been understood as such by Christian and Jew alike who read Mark's gospel. As Richard Carrier pointed out in chapter 6 of The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond The Grave "Arimathea" can be translated as "Town of the Best Disciple". Joseph, of course, was Jesus' father, and it is rather ironic that Jesus is buried not in the tomb of Joseph his father, as he should have been, but with another Joseph, Joseph of Arimathea.

I plan on continuing this review in the future, but for now, that's all folks. In conclusion: There's much to be said for this book. The writing style is engaging. The information, as far as I can tell, is correct in all but a few small places (which I will point out in further blog posts and which do not, to my mind, indicate dishonesty on the author's part but rather simply missing a few things on an extraordinarily vast subject.). And the author, though obviously writing from a Christian apologetic standpoint, has made a conscious effort to be fair and present both sides of the issue as best he can. For that, he has more going for him than The Case for Christ

So, if you're interested in the resurrection, it's worth picking up a copy of The Jesus Inquest: The Case For and Against the Resurrection of the Christ

And if you want to balance your intake about the resurrection, pick up Doubting Jesus' Resurrection: What Happened in the Black Box?

The Inquest is an honest attempt to objectively look at the evidence written by a Christian, Doubting is an honest attempt to objectively look at the evidence written by an agnostic. They're Yin and Yang, and if it's a subject of interest for you then you should own them both.

Cosmological Creationism

2011-03-08T05:46:00.001-06:00

Found an article on Theism and Physical Cosmology which does a great job of summing up the issues:
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/8441/1/cosmology-word2pdf.pdf

It Had to Happen

2011-03-07T05:03:00.001-06:00

Here you go, Abbie Smith.
Evilution: The Movie

Terry Mortenson: Another AiG fraudster

2011-03-03T15:12:00.001-06:00

This little stinker's antics have been covered on the following blog posts:

http://phylogenous.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/terry-mortensens-creationist-claims/

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/03/the_mendacity_of_terry_mortens.php

I Wish I Had Realized This At 14

2011-02-25T23:09:00.000-06:00

Was Jesus Raised: Why Invent an Empty Tomb?

2011-02-23T15:59:00.002-06:00

Why would the early Christians invent the story of an empty tomb? At least two factors (besides sheer mythmaking) may be the sole or contributing reason(s):

1. On page 147 of Scripting Jesus: The Gospels in RewriteL. Michael White figures that there was a sort of back and forth arms race between claims of Jesus' resurrection and skeptical opponents. The Christians began by claiming "Jesus was raised". Skeptics, White hypothesizes, responded with "You only saw a ghost!" It is notable that conservative scholar N. T. Wright, in his book Resurrection of the Son of God, points out that post-mortem appearances were normally understood in ways other than bodily resurrection. Hence, critics of Christianity might have been especially likely to reply that the Christians had "only seen a ghost". White figures that the empty tomb story originated in order to emphasize the physical nature of what the Christians were proclaiming about Jesus. They didn't simply see a ghost, they saw a resurrection, and they were sure of it because the body had gone missing. To which the Jews (or perhaps some other opponents of Christianity) responded that the disciples stole the body (see Matthew 28) to which the Christians responded that there were guards at the tomb (see Matthew 27 and 28) to which the opponents responded that the guards had fallen asleep, to which Christians responded that the guards had been bribed to say they had fallen asleep when they hadn't.

Hence, the origin of the empty tomb story as part of a propaganda war is highly plausible. It's plausible, if not highly probable, that there were propaganda wars between Christians and their detractors (Matthew makes that much clear). It's plausible, if not probable, that the Christians claiming to have seen the post-mortem Jesus would have been answered with "you only saw a ghost." And one response to such a charge would be: "We didn't see a ghost, it was really Jesus. If we had seen a ghost, the tomb wouldn't have been empty." That response would be very plausible. In fact, I'm willing to bet that someone would have made such a response whether it was true or not.

2. Pre-Christian Jewish and Pagan traditions contained stories of a hero figure whose body went missing after death. Some examples are listed below. Suffice it to say that if this was a common story to tell about a hero figure (and it was), then it is likely that the Christians would have borrowed it. Why? Because it was what was commonly expected of a prophet or Son of God or hero. Because people might naturally wind up confusing the already similar stories of Jesus with the missing body stories of other Sons of God/ancient holy prophets.

2 Kings chapter 2 records Elijah going missing and his body not being found even after being looked for for three days. If you read the second paragraph of Plutarch's Numa Pompilius you'll find out that Romulus' body was "never seen alive or dead" after Romulus disappears in a whirlwind. Other parallels can be found in my DB Skeptic article and also in Robert M. Price's book The Incredible Shrinking Son of Manin which Price demonstrates extensively that many "apotheosis" narratives like the two I've mentioned were told about other figures around the same time Christianity was born.

William Lane Craig: Plagiarism?

2011-02-14T01:35:00.002-06:00

I recently stumbled upon the following video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L85oePTQZoQ&feature=related

Check out this:

https://docs.google.com/View?id=ddj2zbjj_1628dn52vbg8

Assuming that the creator of this video and document has reported this accurately, William Lane Craig looks sure to be a plagiarist. If this is true, shame, shame, shame on you Mr. Craig.

Of course, this isn't the first time I've doubted Craig's honesty. If you watch enough of his debates, it is quite clear that he doesn't hold to his own standards during debates. Example: he says that the point of a debate is to make an attempt to get at the truth (he says that here, roughly 50 seconds in). But watch his debates and notice the tactics. He likes to flood his opponents with more arguments than they can possibly refute. In his debate with Paul Draper (which I believe is available on youtube), for example, he threw out tons of bogus calculations that purported to show that naturalistic evolution is impossible. That's not an honest debate technique, for no one could sit there and refute all of those BS calculations in the time given for response. Moreover, it isn't honest because Craig, trained as a philosopher, knew they were fallacious. It's easy enough to see that they are fallacious if you look at the assumptions that go into them. For that, I recommend Richard Carrier, "The Argument from Biogenesis: Probabilities against a Natural Origin of Life," Biology & Philosophy 19.5 (November, 2004), pp. 739-64. Also see Carrier's online piece on the subject.

Even better is the time I caught Craig making a very ignorant criticism of Smolin's theory of Cosmological Natural Selection. Here's what Craig said. I emailed Dr. Lee Smolin about this and got the following reply:

Dear Ryan,
Thanks for writing to me. There are answers to both of these issues. The issue of primordial black holes was directly addressed in the first paper I published on the subject in 1992, which can be found here: http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/9/1/016/. It is discussed briefly also on p 310 of The Life of the Cosmos, which is the book I wrote on cosmological natural selection, published in 1997. Dr. Craig is apparently not doing his homework, had he read the original sources, as a scholar should, he would know about this. The point can be put this way: in a one parameter, single field inflation model, which so far accords well with observation, there is a parameter that would haveto be tuned up a lot to make a lot of primordial black holes. But this parameter also controls how long inflation goes on and so how large the universe is. It turnsout that to get a large production rate of primordial black holes you need a very small universe so the overall number of primordial black holes is never higher than the number of stellar black holes. Thus CNS requires that if inflation is true, it is single field, single parameter inflation. This is one of the predictions I published in the 1992 paper above.The second issue is dealt with in detail in a recent paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.3156, published in physical review. Unfortunately, Hawking is wrong, indeed,his paper related to this was not very convincing. There is no inconsistency between what we know about quantum gravity and the possibility that there are babyuniverses made in black holes. Baby universes are in fact a viable solution to the information loss problem. The reasons why are discussed in detail in that paper. I am happy if you pass this message on or post it on the web site raising the issue, but only if you post in full what I wrote. Thanks, Lee

Are Christians Delusional?

2011-02-11T04:05:00.003-06:00

From Skepticon 3, Richard Carrier gives a talk called "Are Christians Delusional?". It's fairly entertaining, it's mostly a big preview for the book The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails

Carrier is the author of Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism

Was Jesus Raised: Evidence for the Empty Tomb

2011-02-09T04:00:00.003-06:00

This is the tenth post of my blog series concerning Tim and Lydia McGrews' A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. This post will concern portions of pages 15-16.

Christian apologists frequently confuse facts with hypotheses. For example, William Lane Craig often likes to bring out the "empty tomb" as a "fact" which needs to be explained. But the empty tomb is not a fact. I have never seen it. You have never seen it. It is not something available for direct verification. What is available for direct verification is that there are reports of an empty tomb in the New Testament. The Empty Tomb Stories might be reported in the New Testament because there really was an empty tomb that Easter morning. Or the Empty Tomb Story might be sheer legend, which I will refer to as the "legend hypothesis". On any naturalistic account of the origin of Christianity, the money lies on the legend hypothesis. Although there are ways to explain an empty tomb without appealing to any supernatural processes,* I consider these to be far inferior to the legend hypothesis.

We'll start with the evidence that the McGrews offer in favor of an empty tomb:

"That some women claimed to have seen Jesus risen is a slightly more controversial matter, but it is supported by the existing evidence. Mary Magdalene’s meeting with Jesus is not mentioned in Mark except in the long ending which is probably spurious, but the account of Mary Magdalene and Jesus is found in John 20:11-18 in some detail, and it ends with her going to the disciples and telling them what has happened. In Matthew 28:9-10 a brief account is given of Jesus’ meeting the women who had been to the tomb in a group."

I believe that probably a few of Jesus' female followers did believe they saw him. I'm not necessarily willing to accept the word of the Matthew, Luke, and John concerning what the exact nature of this encounter was, and indeed, neither can the McGrews trust the gospel on exact details, since they have already made it known that they accept that these stories are contradictory and have tried to use that point to make their case.

"Though some scholars have challenged these accounts as later additions, there are serious reasons to take them to be authentic reports of what the women said. First, the prima facie tensions in the narratives of the discovery of the tomb and the first appearances of Christ tell strongly against collusion, copying, and embellishment. One evangelist gives an account of one angel at the tomb, another of two; one has the women setting out 'early, while it was yet dark,' another sets the scene 'when the sun was risen.' The lists of the women who are named in the
various gospels overlap only partially. Some puzzling details are never worked out for the reader. If Mary Magdalene ran back to tell Peter and John, how did they fail to meet the other women as they returned? What did Jesus mean when he said 'Touch me not' to Mary Magdalene? These are the sorts of loose ends and incongruities one would expect from independent eyewitness accounts of the same event, where substantial unity – agreement on the main facts –is accompanied by circumstantial variety."

I agree that collusion, properly defined, is highly unlikely. On the other hand, that the gospel writers may have copied (to some extent) from one another and embellished the narrative is the most probable hypothesis, in my opinion. I have been engaging L. Michael White's masterful book on the gospels Scripting Jesus: The Gospels in Rewrite What he tells us is that oral tradition does not seem to preserve stories in a certain order. Since the synoptic gospels appear to follow a similar "timeline" so to speak, and since it seems more likely that such a chronology would be preserved in written, rather than oral, sources, it is therefore prima facie likely that the relationship between the gospels is one of literary borrowing with some embellishments and theological changes that went on in the process.

However, even if the above hypothesis is wrong, the gospel stories could still end up being somewhat similar with some big discrepancies if some sort of oral tradition was in place. The discrepancies could easily show up as being due to ordinary failures of human memory, hearing, or embellishment over the long process of oral transmission from the eyewitnesses (assuming it started with eyewitnesses) to the gospels. It is even possible that both literary borrowing and use of oral tradition occurred: For example, that Matthew copied substantially from Mark but "corrected" Mark on points that disagreed with the oral tradition he was familiar with.

Therefore, the incongruities in the gospel stories cannot be taken as evidence that they are from eyewitnesses, since there is already a far more probable alternative (literary borrowing with embellishment) and two other highly plausible alternatives.

Nor is "multiple attestation" lend any credence to their case. Since Matthew and Luke seem heavily dependent on Mark, and since even the gospel of John shows signs of awareness of Luke and Mark (though it is far from clear what sort of relationship exists between Luke and John, it is clear that there is a relationship)** they don't qualify as independent, multiple attestation. The Empty Tomb story is not to be found in the hypothetical Q document (the link presents four "transcripts" of Q and Michael White's book Scripting Jesus contains another, and none of them contain the empty tomb story). As far as my reading has taken me, it remains to be seen whether other hypothetical source documents contain anything concerning the empty tomb story.

Nor are the "loose ends" and strange things that the McGrews cite evidence of anything. In the case of the "Touch me not" Jesus, for example, the McGrews don't attempt any formal argument to show that this is somehow evidence of eyewitness testimony. And I can't think of how it would be; certainly not in any way that would constitute a strong argument.

The Old "Women at the Tomb" Routine

The McGrews present us with yet another argument for the historicity of the empty tomb:

"Second, there is the remarkable fact that in the accounts in Matthew and John where the women are shown as seeing the risen Christ, they are the first witnesses. It is not controversial that in first century Jewish society women were widely considered to be unreliable as witnesses to serious matters. (See Wright, 2003, pp. 607-8.) A few quotations illustrate this point:

But let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex; ... (Josephus, Antiquities, 4.8.15).

Any evidence which a woman [gives] is not valid (to offer) ... (Talmud, Rosh Hashana 1.8c)."

The comment from Josephus refers to a courtroom setting (not day-to-day life) and does not say that women are "unreliable." Rather, it says that women are not to be admitted because of the levity and boldness of their sex. Levity refers to having a lack of seriousness (i.e. not solemn and serious as would be required in court) and boldness I assume would mean not being controlled and solemn. None this says anything about women being untrustworthy.

I have not been able to find a text of the Rosh Hashana, so I can't say for myself what this may refer to. However, Richard Carrier has written about this and offers us the following commentary (which I have abbreviated for space):***

Rosh Hashshanah 1:8c says of various scofflaws that "all evidence that cannot be received from a woman cannot be received from" these scofflaws either, with regard to testifying that the new moon was seen, which implies...that women were not qualified to testify to the moon being new... Since witnessing the new moon called you to the duty of traveling to the Temple to report it, even to the point of violating the Sabbath if necessary (ibid. 1:3-2:3), this entailed taking a public religious role (including remaining in the Temple for a whole day and sharing a communal meal with men: ibid. 2:5), which all no doubt entailed a boldness that was unseemly for a woman. At the same time, witnesses were interrogated on minute astronomical details (2:6-2:8), suggesting that significant technical knowledge was necessary for your testimony to count, knowledge a woman was not supposed to have, and certainly was not expected to have.

I'm not sure if Carrier is right on this or not, as I said, I have not checked the source for myself. Nonetheless, it is notable that the McGrews make a pretty big concession right after citing those two passages:

"The point should not be overstated, for there are disagreements reported in the Talmud regarding the degree of credibility to be granted to the testimony of women.

Wherever the Torah accepts the testimony of one witness, it follows the majority of persons, so that two women against one man is identical with two men against one man. But there are some who declare that wherever a competent witness came first, even a hundred women are regarded as equal to one witness ... but when it is a woman who came first, then two women against one man is like half-and-half (Talmud, b.Mas. Sotah 31b).

"Nevertheless, it would plainly be better from the standpoint of enhancing the credibility of a contrived story to put a group of respectable males at the tomb and as the first to see the risen Christ than a group of women."

Actually, Luke and John do put "respectable males" at the tomb. Luke and John do not, however, place the men first, though I would regard that as so minor a point as to be irrelevant. What about Matthew and Mark? Since Matthew feels the need to place guards at Jesus' tomb and to fend off the Jewish rumor that the (male) disciples stole Jesus' body (Matt. 28:13-15), obviously the worst thing he could do is to place the male disciples as being the first discovers of the empty tomb! As for the presence of women in the gospel of Mark, Bart Ehrman makes a case that they are simply a literary device showing that the "last shall be first":

"One of Mark’s overarching themes is that virtually no one during the ministry of Jesus could understand who he was. His family didn’t understand. His townspeople didn’t understand. The leaders of his own people didn’t understand.Not even the disciples understood in Mark—especially not the disciples! For Mark, only outsiders have an inkling of who Jesus was: the unnamed woman who anointed him, the centurion at the cross. Who understands at the end? Not the family of Jesus! Not the disciples! It’s a group of previously unknown women. The women at the tomb fit in perfectly with Mark’s literary purposes otherwise. So they can’t simply be taken as some kind of objective historical statement of fact. They too neatly fit the literary agenda of the Gospel. The same can be said of Joseph of Arimathea. Anyone who cannot think why Christians might invent the idea that Jesus had a secret follower among the Jewish leaders is simply lacking in historical imagination." (See Page 20 of Ehrman versus Craig)

I wonder whether the women were originally understood as the first to discover Jesus' empty tomb in the gospel of Mark. Does that sound strange? Take a look at Mark 14:51-52, when during Jesus' arrest a young man loses his garment and flees. Who is this young man? Some believe that the young man was the author of the gospel of Mark.**** Now look at Mark 16:5, in which the women go to the tomb and disocover a young man clothed in white. Was the author of Mark trying to identify himself as a witness to Christ's resurrection? (Which strangely recalls, "The Lord has said, you will be my witnesses"). If so, the gospel of Mark has a male witness as the first witness to Christ's resurrection, and therefore the presence of women in Mark is irrelevant.

The blogger NT Wrong has conjectured that the women merely had a vision of an empty tomb. He has pointed out that if the women were used as witnesses (in a sense) then this would not have been "embarassing" in any sense, since misogynistic societies often do hold a special place for women who recieve visions, indeed. He cites both medieval and Biblical evidence for that claim. I would point out that Acts 16:16, of the possessed girl who made a great living telling fortunes, as yet another example of this.

The McGrews make one last attempt to establish the credibility of this account:

"The last important fact concerning the women’s reports is that they were not believed. Luke says of the women’s report of the empty tomb to the disciples, 'And these words appeared to them as nonsense, and they would not believe them' (Luke 24:11)."

Sure, that's credible. As we all know, cult members are highly prone to disbelieving suggestions that would confirm their prior views.

Seriously: According to the gospels Jesus predicted his death and resurrection, his disciples thought enough of him to give everything up and follow him, they saw him perform many miracles, they hear the women's testimony, Peter even goes to the tomb and finds nothing but Jesus' clothes in Luke 24 (!) and apparently Peter just walks away wondering to himself what had happened. This just isn't plausible. These stories are very probably later contrivances concocted for the sole purpose of inspiring faith in those who read the accounts. As Luke tells us in the introduction of his gospel: "I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught." Or as the gospel of John would have it: "These are written that you may believe."

Conclusion

I conclude that the McGrews have failed to show that the empty tomb narratives were probably derived from eyewitness testimony. In my next post I will explore why the empty tomb narrative might have been invented (assuming the empty tomb was not derived from some sort of visionary experience).

Endnotes

* See The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond The Grave
Especially Jeffrey Jay Lowder's chapter, which completely destroys the arguments called on to support an empty tomb [that I have not addressed here], and debunks standard canards such as "If Jesus hadn't been raised, the Jewish leaders would have hauled out the body and Christianity would have died instantly." In case your curious, one of the more devastating counters to this argument is that first-century Jews did not consider a body to be identifiable for legal means after 3 days. This is supported and strengthened with further references from Jews for Judaism.

** See Pages 58-60, Andrew Gregory, The reception of Luke and Acts in the period before Irenaeus, as well as page 54, John Amedee Bailey, The Traditions Common to the Gospels of Luke and John.

*** See here:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/improbable/women.html

And by the by, Carrier's revised version of this series of essays is well worth owning:
Not the Impossible Faith

**** Pages 198-200, Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Also see page 22, R. Alan Cole, The Gospel According to Mark: An Introduction and Commentary.

Victor Stenger: The Abuse of Physics by Theists and Spiritualists

2011-02-08T05:21:00.000-06:00

Here is Dr. Victor Stenger's lecture from skepticon 3 about how the science of Physicis is abused by Spiritualists and Theists. Victor Stenger is the author of God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist
That book is one of my favorites, as it is one of the first books that really got me thinking critically. Dr. Stenger also has a forthcoming book that I cannot wait to read called The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe Is Not Designed for Us

Update on "Was Jesus Raised" Series

2011-02-06T19:11:00.002-06:00

I've been reading a lot lately on various issues surrounding the resurrection of Jesus. So here's an update:

1. I will no longer be attempting a formal Bayesian analysis of the case for the resurrection. As was recently pointed out to me by someone, the calculations that would be involved in such a thing would be incredibly complicated. For example, Bayes' Theorem requires that the hypotheses in question are mutually exclusive and exhaustive. The hallucination theory, commonly called upon to explain the post-mortem "appearances" of Jesus, isn't mutually exclusive with the resurrection theory. It could be that some people hallucinated a Jesus while others actually did see the genuine risen Jesus.

The angle I'm going to take is that the resurrection theory isn't necessary to explain any of the evidence that we have and that other theories (such as hallucinations) are not wildy unlikely and do a fine job of explaining the evidence. Calculations won't be done, however, I think it will be quite clear that if someone ever did take up the task of making them, the resurrection hypothesis would not almost certainly not come out with any considerable probability. One note: If there is anyone who is an expert in Bayes' Theorem and would care to undertake the task of helping me figure out the right numbers to put in, I would love to do so, I've pretty well gathered the data already that would allow someone skilled in Bayesian analysis to figure out how to use. The results of such an effort would make a great paper to submit to a journal of philosophy. But unless I hear from someone interested in such a thing, the effort can't get off the ground.

2. I have a number of books on my amazon wishlist that I think would greatly contribute to this discussion. Some of these books feature contributions from Christians who argue for the resurrection, such as:

Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Figment?: A Debate Between William Lane Craig & Gerd Ludemann

How Did Christianity Begin?: A Believer and Non-Believer Examine the Evidence

Resurrection Reconsidered

If you're a Christian who wants a chance to convert me, and if you're willing to spare four to eight dollars to purchase a used book that might do the trick, then by all means, feel free. All of these books are on my amazon wishlist and purchasing it from that list ensures the book will make it to my mailbox.

Alternately, if you're a secular person who wants to see my examination of the resurrection be as well-informed as possible, any of the Jesus books on my wishlist would help (especially the ones I just listed).

Ancient Texts are a Thin Reed to Hang Your Faith On

2011-02-04T18:44:00.003-06:00

I'm currently reading The Mystery of Acts: Unraveling Its Story by Richard Pervo. Interestingly, another book of Pervo's was recently released entitled The Making of Paul: Constructions of the Apostle in Early Christianity

Here's a portion of a review of the book:

"[Pervo] addresses how Paul became a book, how the tradition was shaped in thepseudepigraphic Pauline letters, what became of Paul in early Christian epistolary andnarrative tradition, and how he fared among the anti-Paulinists as well as those for whomhe became an object of interpretation.

"The thesis of this book is that the only real Paul is the dead Paul. Even though some of Paul’s actual words undoubtedly survive, the entire Pauline corpus has gone through a process of selection and editing that served the needs of varied and diverse early Christian communities. Likewise, as the author rightly points out, authorship in the ancient worldhad more to do with what he calls authority and orientation than it did actual textual composition."

For those who want to present the letters of Paul and other New Testament documents as evidence of miracles, maybe you should give it up. We don't have the original manuscripts. The more I read New Testament scholarship, the less I believe the apologetical reassurances that "even if we don't have the originals, we can still deduce what they said with over 99% accuracy." Don't be so sure. We don't have any copies of these until the fourth century, even fourth and fifth century manuscripts are rare. As the review of this book shows, just exactly how much of the New Testament has been doctored is open to debate.

Wizard of Oz Verified by New Testament Methods

2011-02-03T16:18:00.002-06:00

Luke over at Common sense atheism posted a very hilarious video:

My comment:

Here's a more scholarly approach to Oz:

Oz has early attestation in "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" which all Oz scholars agree is the first Oz book ever written.

Oz has multiple attestation: The land of Oz is mentioned not only in our earliest sources but also in "Rinkitink in Oz" "The Patchwork Girl of Oz" "The Emerald City of Oz" and "Glinda of Oz".

As the guy in the video pointed out, much of what is written about Oz is eminently plausible given what we know about history. Further, many stories about Oz pass the criterion of embarrassment: The Cowardly Lion, for example, is portrayed as being very cowardly and the whole lot of Dorothy, the tin man, and the scarecrow are portrayed in various points of the story as being weak, which isn't the sort of story that would simply be made up. Think about: If the Oz books were written by close companion of Dorothy, as most scholars believe, then why would Dorothy or the author simply invent stories that portrayed themselves in a bad light. It doesn't make sense unless you believe in Oz.

Wanted: Bayesian Mentor

2011-02-01T10:35:00.002-06:00

So, I've been doing a lot of reading and research lately for my blog series on the Resurrection Argument. So far I think I've done fine collecting the facts I need. I've outlined several hypotheses for explaining the "evidence" of the resurrection (i.e. the report of an empty tomb and reports of individual and mass hallucination) and of course have gathered plenty of information concerning the plausibility of these hypotheses.

But when it comes time to convert the facts into the valid numbers I should plug in to Bayes' Theorem, I feel a certain lack of confidence as to whether I'm using Bayes' Theorem correctly. This is probably because I, of course, have no formal training in using it. So I could use a little help: I'd like someone who knows Bayes' Theorem well to spend a little time exchanging a few emails in order to help me get the numbers right.

Leave a comment and let me know if you're interested or if you know anyone that would be.

Was Jesus Raised: Finding Our Values

2011-01-31T14:34:00.002-06:00

Remember those four questions that needed to be answered:

1. What is the probability of our hypothesis being true independent of its explanatory power?
2. Assuming our hypothesis is true, and taking into account other facts we know about the world, how likely is it that we would have the evidence that we have?
3. What is the probability of our hypothesis not being true independent of its explanatory power?
4. Assuming our hypothesis is not true, and taking into account other facts we know about the world, how likely is it that we would have the evidence that we have?

We can now begin to answer these questions. I will assume that, for the sake of argument, all the evidence we have is 100% likely if the resurrection occurred (that's our answer to question 2).

On question 1: Since we have strong confirmation that billions of people have died and stayed dead, never returning to life, and since we also have no other strong evidence that a miracle has occurred, it follows that miracles, if they even occur at all, are rare. After all, if miracles were even a one-in-ten-million sort of event, wouldn't we have overwhelming confirmation of one having occurred? With all those video cameras running (some 24/7) all over the world, wouldn't we know about miracles if they occurred with a frequency of even 1 in 100 million? Therefore, even granting the existence of a miracle-working God, the prior probability of a miracle is low. It is even lower if one takes the evidence against God's existence into account, which I won't do here. For now, we'll set the prior probability of God raising Jesus at 1 in 100 billion (That's our answer to question 1). It follows that the prior probability of God not raising Jesus is 99,999,999,999 out of 100 billion (that's our answer to question 3). The McGrews shouldn't have any problem with the prior probability being what it is, as they allow that the prior could be as low as 1 in 10^40.

Question #4 is more difficult to answer and will require at least two more long blog posts: If the resurrection didn't happen, how likely is it that we would have the report of an empty tomb, reports of various people seeing Jesus individually and in groups on a couple of occasions? Lots of considerations will go into figuring that out.

To my surprise, the McGrews actually didn't even present all of the various arguments for the resurrection. They're not to be blamed for this, necessarily, since they can only focus on a few things in their article. However, I'm going to incorporate some of the other arguments for the resurrection into my considerations.

Was Jesus Raised Index

2011-01-30T14:18:00.009-06:00

This is an index to myt blog series "Was Jesus Raised" which explores the evidence for Jesus' Resurrection and is primarily a response to Timothy and Lydia McGrew's A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

Introduction

Contradictions and Silence

Form Criticism, Archaeology, and the Gospels

Notes on Carrier

Reliability and Authorship of the Gospels

Backround Facts

Burial of Jesus

Bayes' Theorem

Finding Our Values

Evidence for the Empty Tomb

Why Invent An Empty Tomb

Was Jesus Raised: Bayes' Theorem

2011-01-29T23:20:00.002-06:00

The McGrews' approach to proving the resurrection is Bayesian; That is, it employs Bayes' Theorem.

In order to address their argument I realized that I had to become familiar with Bayes' Theorem. So I went to my local library and found a textbook called Introduction to Probability and Statistics which had an introduction to Bayes' Theorem.

According to the book, the theorem should be used when various theories are both mutually exclusive and exhaustive. In the case of the Resurrection, I think it's quite clear how we can do this; Logically there are only two possibilities: Either the resurrection occurred or it did not, and these are mutually exclusive.

Bayes' Theorem can be expressed this way:

Pr (h/e.b) = Pr (h.b) x Pr (e.h&b) / [Pr (h.b) x Pr (e.h&b)] + [Pr (not-h.b) x Pr (e.not-h&b)]

This looks scary as hell, I know. So let me explain what all this means Pr (h/e.b) describes what we're trying to figure out: What is the probability (Pr) of a hypothesis (h) given the evidence we have (e) and our "backround knowledge" (b) ? In other words, how likely is the hypothesis we are proposing, all things considered? That's what Bayes' Theorem helps us figure out.

According to Bayes, we can figure out how likely a hypothesis is if we know the following values:

1. What is the probability of our hypothesis being true independent of its explanatory power?
2. Assuming our hypothesis is true, and taking into account other facts we know about the world, how likely is it that we would have the evidence that we have?
3. What is the probability of our hypothesis not being true independent of its explanatory power?
4. Assuming our hypothesis is not true, and taking into account other facts we know about the world, how likely is it that we would have the evidence that we have?

The values of these four things can then be plugged into Bayes' Theorem and will answer how our question: All things considered, how likely is it that our hypothesis is correct?

A Test Case

The book that I checked out gives the following example on page 157 which I will paraphrase:

Medical case histories tell us that different illnesses may produce the same symptoms. Pretend that a particular set of symptoms (refered "H") occurs only when any of the three illnesses A, B, or C occur. For simplicity assume that these illnesses are mutually exclusive (they never occur in the same person).

Here's how often people in general get these illnesses:
A occurs in one percent of the population
B occurs in half of one percent of the population
C occurs in two percent of the population

When illness A is present, the probability of symptom H developing is .9 (or 90 percent). When illness B is present, the probability of symptom H developing is .95 When illness C is present, it's .75 .

Now, pretend we're doctors and we observe that our patient has symptom H. How likely is it that this person has illness A?

Bayes' Theorem allows us to figure that out from the above information. Remember those four questions I posed earlier? Let's take them one at a time:

1. What is the probability of our hypothesis being true independent of its explanatory power?

Our hypothesis, in this case, is that the patient has illness A. We know illness A occurs in one percent of the population, so the answer to this is .01

2. Assuming our hypothesis is true, and taking into account other facts we know about the world, how likely is it that we would have the evidence that we have?

The answer to this is in the information that we're given about the probability of symptom H occurring if illness A is present. The answer to that is .9

3. What is the probability of our hypothesis not being true independent of its explanatory power?

Things are a little bit trickier here, since there are two other hypotheses on the table (the hypothesis of illness B and the hypothesis of illness C). But we do know how likely they are, independent of their explanatory value, and that is contained in the statement given earlier:
Here's how often people in general get these illnesses:
B occurs in half of one percent of the population
C occurs in two percent of the population

4. Assuming our hypothesis is not true, and taking into account other facts we know about the world, how likely is it that we would have the evidence that we have?

The probability of the evidence that illnesses B and C is, of course, given earlier as .95 and .75, respectively.

These four questions give us every value we need to figure out the overall likelihood that the patient has illness A. Let's go back to the equation:

Pr (h.b) x Pr (e.h&b) / [Pr (h.b) x Pr (e.h&b)] + [Pr (not-h.b) x Pr (e.not-h&b)]

One at a time: The probability (Pr) of the hypothesis (h) given our backround knowledge (b) is answered by question 1, it is .01

We must multiply that number by the Probability (Pr) of the evidence (e) assuming our hypothesis is true (h) and given all our other medical knowledge (b). This value is given by question 2, it is .9

When we multiply .01 by .9, we get .009
We can put that in our equation:

.009 / [Pr (h.b) x Pr (e.h&b)] + [Pr (not-h.b) x Pr (e.not-h&b)]

Now, look at what's in that first set of brackets following the slash. The symbols there are precisely the same as those that were in front of the slash. Therefore that should be replaced with the same number:

.009 / [.009] + [Pr (not-h.b) x Pr (e.not-h&b)]

Not so scary anymore, huh?

The only thing left is to plug in the alternatives to our hypothesis. There are two alternatives to our hypothesis, not just one alternative which might be implied by the crude expression "not-h" or NOT our hypothesis. So our equation needs to take into account B and C:

.009 / [.009] + [Pr (B.b) x Pr (e.B&b)] + [Pr (C.b) x Pr (e.C&b]

For both of these bracketed equations we're doing something very similar to what we've done before. We need to find the probability of B given our backround knowledge, then find how likely the evidence is assuming B is true, then multiply those two figures together. The same goes for our next set of bracketed symbols: find the probability of C given our backround knowledge, then find how likely the evidence is assuming C is true, then multiply those two figures together.

If you've been reading my post and paying attention, you'll already know what numbers to put in:

.009 / [.009] + [.005 x .95] + [.02 x .75]

Now work that out:

.009 / [.009] + [.00475] + [.015]

Add the numbers in brackets together:

.009 / .02875

Now divide, of course, and you'll get a number of roughly .3130 or 31.3%

I checked the answer I got here against the answer given in the end of my textbook and it confirmed this answer.

The Relevance of This Post

Now that we've gotten some backround in Bayes' Theorem, how does this apply to the Resurrection? Just as we can estimate the intrinsic likelihood of a disease, so too we can estimate the intrinsic likelihood of a resurrection, as I will demonstrate in future posts. Just as we can look for symptoms of a disease, so too can we look for "symptoms" of a resurrection (i.e. the tradition of an empty tomb) and we can estimate how likely these symptoms are if the resurrection happened versus how likely these symptoms are if the resurrection did not happen. As I'll demonstrate in future posts, we have ways of estimating values for each of the four questions I presented earlier. And so we can make a definitive statement about whether the resurrection happened.

Was Jesus Raised: Burial of Jesus

2011-01-27T19:30:00.000-06:00

Lately I've been trying to come to some conclusions on Jesus' burial.

It seems highly probable to me that Jesus was buried somewhere, however, the question of whether the burial was simply in a hole in the ground or a tomb is difficult to sort out.

It has been suggested by some (i.e. John Dominic Crossan) that Jesus was simply left on the cross and not given a burial. But look at Deuteronomy 21:22-23:

"If someone guilty of a capital offense is put to death and their body is exposed on a pole, you must not leave the body hanging on the pole overnight. Be sure to bury it that same day, because anyone who is hung on a pole is under God’s curse. You must not desecrate the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance." (Note that some translations say "tree" instead of "pole").

This theme is repeated throughout Jewish literature: that even criminals are supposed to buried, and therefore it is likely that Jesus would have been buried, at least if the Jewish authorities had any say-so in the matter. And they probably did, for there is evidence that during peacetime Roman authorities would comply with the local Jewish customs. See chapter 2 of Doubting Jesus' Resurrection

Also note that Shimon Gibson concurs with this on page 132 of The Final Days of Jesus: The Archaeological Evidence

Last night I was reading something on google.books but I can no longer find it. It was discussing John Dominic Crossan's suggestion that most (perhaps all) criminals in first-century Palestine were simply tossed in burial pits. Against this claim was an archaeological find in which a skeleton was found in a tomb with a nail lodged in its foot. Crossan claimed that the fact that the we have only one skeleton of a crucified victim in a tomb proves that it was the exception and not the rule. Against this claim it was shown that crucifixion did not always involve nails and that when it did the nails were often removed because they were reguarded as having magical powers (in this particular find the nail wasn't removed because it was stuck between the bones). I'd say, on this issue, Crossan is completely wrong. The fact that we have a skeleton with such an usual feature (having the nail stuck in bones) would be something very rare, and we would only be likely to make such a find if many other crucified victims were buried in tombs (the other victims would not, of course, be recognizable as victims of crucifixion because of reasons mentioned previously).

So, based on what I've found so far, burial in a tomb is at least plausible, although some of the details in Mark's story are not. Burial in the ground is also plausible, I think, and I know of no good evidence that would render ground-burial-of-Jesus implausible.

In future posts concerning this issue I won't bring up Jesus' burial in a tomb as a point of contention, since, as I've said, I consider it to be a highly plausible hypothesis (though I don't consider it proven or greatly superior to the ground burial hypothesis).

James McGrath's Blogging on Mythicism

2011-01-26T18:20:00.002-06:00

James McGrath has posted a list of blog posts he's written concerning Jesus mythicism:

http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2011/01/round-up-my-blogging-on-mythicism-thus.html

I haven't read every post yet, but I have read a few. And I'd say it's definitely a must if you are thinking about mythicism. The problems he's outlined with the theory and with the way in which its proponents argue (of which I have been guilty of in the past, I'm ashamed to say) are very clear.

Was Jesus Raised: Backround Facts

2011-01-26T08:30:00.001-06:00

This is the sixth post of my blog series concerning Tim and Lydia McGrews' A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. This post will concern pages 12 through 14.

The McGrews seek to establish two facts: one being that Jesus died and the second being that he was buried in a tomb.

The first fact, that Jesus died, is intended to establish that Jesus did not simply "faint" or "swoon" on the cross and then later appear to his followers. I agree that Jesus probably died. Nonetheless, it is worth inquiring: Is it more likely that Jesus was raised from the dead or that he simply fainted on the cross, recovered in the tomb, and appeared to his followers later on before disappearing? Both the resurrection and the swoon theory have exceedingly low prior probabilities. We know resurrection is improbable because it doesn't happen to anyone in our experience. On the other hand, people have been mistaken for dead before. Though it seems unlikely that Roman executioners would be bad enough at their job not to make sure Jesus was dead, the improbability does not equal impossibility. Another thing: I have no backround knowledge that supernatural entities exist, from which it follows that it might not even be possible for a resurrection to occur. On the other hand, the swoon theory, though very, very, very unlikely, is at least possible.

The swoon theory, on the other hand, seems to fall on the horns of whether it would cause early Christian belief. Would the disciples actually see a worn out, bloody Jesus and conclude that it was a supernatural resurrection from the dead and that God had vindicated Jesus? On this point I genuinely don't know. Seeing Jesus alive again (even in bad condition) might have been monumental enough to the disciples to conclude that it was a miracle.

Anyway, it's not important or worth my time to spend much time disputing whether Jesus actually died or whether the swoon theory (as shitty a theory as it is) has more merit than the resurrection hypothesis, since there are other, better alternatives that I will blog on later.

The only other point of focus here is whether Jesus was buried in a tomb or in the ground. If it was more likely the latter, then the empty tomb story is bogus, in which case Christians lose a big piece of their case for the resurrection. The case that Jesus was buried in the ground is made superbly by Kris Komarnitsky in Doubting Jesus' Resurrection: What Happened in the Black Box?

The McGrews object to the common burial hypothesis on two grounds: 1) It requires dismissing the Markan burial report and 2) It requires dismissing the burial report in 1 Corinthians. Neither of these objections are strong.

To take the second objection first, the McGrews contention that 1 Corinthinas argues against the common burial hypothesis is absurd. 1 Corinthians 15 simply reports that Jesus "was buried... was raised" it doesn't tell us whether Jesus was buried in a rock-hewn tomb or in the ground.

On the Markan burial report, the McGrews tell us:

"In order to maintain this position, Crossan must dismiss the burial narrative in Mark 15:42-47 as a fabrication; accordingly he does, stressing the incongruity in the description of Joseph of Arimathea (a follower of Jesus vs. a member of the Sanhedrin, who all condemned Jesus) and the absence of a motive for his burying just Jesus rather than all three of the crucifixion victims. Crossan argues that the motive cannot have been either piety or duty, for then he would have buried the thieves as well; he concludes that 'Mark created that burial by Joseph of Arimathea in 15:42-47. It contains no pre-Markan tradition.' (Crossan, 1998, p. 555) For good measure, Crossan adds that Mark created the story of the women’s discovery of the empty tomb.

"In company with the majority of New Testament scholars, we find this argument wholly unpersuasive. The very tension Crossan sees in the description of Joseph of Arimathea would count as evidence against his being an invented character. Why, if Mark were embellishing the narrative, would he invent someone who appears nowhere else in his gospel and give him such a pivotal role?"

There's a very easy explanation for this one: Mark's theme of reversal of expectation. Jesus was supposed to be buried by his father, Joseph, but is instead buried by another Joseph, Joseph of Arimathea. See especially pages 226-228 of Bart Ehrman's book Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend.

The McGrews continue with their objections:

"If he did, why would he present a description of that character that generated questions? But in any event, it is not terribly hard to find plausible answers to Crossan’s questions. Anyone who has ever been a member of a committee understands that sometimes decisions are made by the committee as a body in the absence of some of its members, and those decisions are recorded as unanimous. As for Joseph’s motives for burying Jesus, Crossan employs too narrow a set of alternatives when he considers only piety and duty. There is also the reason implicitly given in the text itself: a disciple’s love, which would not extend to the thieves. And we do not know in any event whether, had he been so inclined, he would have had either time or the opportunity to bury the others. This is a profoundly inadequate set of reasons to abandon an inconvenient section of a primary source – or, in this case, four primary sources."

A "disciple's love" of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea is ad hoc. Nonetheless, why would Joseph of Arimathea only attend to Jesus' body and not the other three? Even if he did have a secret love for Jesus, why would he do something like this that might call attention to him and get him killed? I mean, as a member of the Sanhedrin you wouldn't want anyone to know that you had any special admiration for Jesus as opposed to the other two criminals?

As a final consideration, I quote from Peter Kirby's essay on the empty tomb:

[T]here is a plausible significance to the name Arimathea. Richard Carrier speculates, Is the word a pun on 'best disciple,' ari[stos] mathe[tes]? Matheia means 'disciple town' in Greek; Ari- is a common prefix for superiority." Since commentators have seen the burial by the outsider Joseph of Arimathea as a contrast to the failure of the disciples and intimates of Jesus, the coincidence that Arimathea can be read as "best disciple town" is staggering. Indeed, it is good evidence that Joseph of Arimathea is a fictional character and that the
tomb burial story in the Gospel of Mark is also fictional.

In conclusion, I find that there is a very strong consideration against Jesus' burial in a tomb: Tomb burial was not common amongst the poor (See Komarnitsky on this point) and therefore unlikely in the case of Jesus. On the other hand, there aren't any very strong considerations that Jesus was buried in a tomb. Our information on that point derives from the gospel of Mark but there are plausible reasons that show that Mark's story is a fiction and there are some points on which Mark's narrative makes little sense.

Was Jesus Raised: Reliability and Authorship of NT Documents

2011-01-24T16:45:00.000-06:00

This is the fifth post of my blog series concerning Tim and Lydia McGrews' A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. This post will concern pages 8 through 12.

The McGrews tell us that:

"The extreme late dating of John’s gospel advocated by Loisy had already been undermined by discoveries in another field. The papyrus fragment p52, which is independently dated by paleographers to the first half of the second century, contains a few sentences of John’s gospel."

The source cited for this claim was Bruce Metzger in a publication from 1978 (!). Metzger was a great scholar, no doubt, but I don't think that's legitimate to toss out such an old reference with checking it against newer material. So, I took it upon myself to check the current scholarly thinking about the dating of John. What do they think?

On page 194 of Expectations of the End (2009) Albert Hogeterp tells us that the gospel of John is usually dated about 90 AD, but cautions us in a footnote that papyrus 52 could date as early as the second century or as late as the early third century (!!) based on a recent analysis.

On Page 165 of Jesus in the Gospels and Acts (2009) similar reservations are expressed. It is stated that scholars have questioned the early dating of the papyrus fragment and seems to imply that since the gospel of John underwent at least one major revision, we can't really know which version of John's Gospel this papyrus was, since we have only a tiny fragment.

On Page 108 of John: The Son of Zebedee (2000) we find yet another iteration of current scholarly opinion: that papyrus 52 may date as late as 200 AD.

On the Reliability of Acts

The McGrews take a few stabs at establishing the reliability of the book of Acts. Here are the historical accuracies they have listed:

"The discovery in Caesarea Maritima in 1961 of an inscription bearing Pilate’s name and title, the discovery of a boundary stone of the emperor Claudius bearing the name of Sergius Paulus (cf. Acts 13:7)..."

"Small details [of Acts] were questioned by members of the Tübingen school, such as the use of kyrios as a designation for the emperor in Acts 25:26, have turned out instead to provide evidence for the accuracy of Acts, since numerous papyri subsequently discovered show that this term had been used in Egypt and the East for the reigning emperor since Ptolemaic times, though it became widespread under Nero and later."

It's not been easy for me to tell exactly what they mean with these examples. The first quote: an inscription was discovered which bore Pilate's name and title. To my knowledge the existence of Pontius Pilate has never been in doubt, nor has his title of "prefect" been in doubt or used as some sort of basis to attack the gospels. In fact, Pilate and his title as prefect are mentioned in Tacitus' Annals. So how can this be seen as anything but a trivial detail which that the New Testament documents get right? This isn't overwhelming confirmation by any stretch of charitable imagination. The same can be said for the boundary stone of Claudius and the use of kyrios as a designation for the emperor: these may provide corroboration for Acts, but the corroboration seems to me very, very weak.

With that in mind, are there any reasons not to trust the book of Acts? I think so. In Galatians chapter 1:15-17 Paul gives us his own account of what happened after his vision of Jesus:

"But when it pleased God...to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went to Arabia, and returned again to Damascus."

On the other hand, the Book of Acts chapter 9:5-18 tells us us that after Paul's vision he met with Ananias (i.e., consorted with flesh and blood) after being brought directly into Damascus (not going to Arabia before returning to Damascus). Acts 9:9 tells us that Paul was without sight three days; and yet Ananias is with Paul when he recieves his sight back. That's important because Paul has just told us that he did "not immediately confer with flesh and blood" after his conversion but according to Acts he did so within three days. There's also the issue of whether or not Paul visited with all of the disciples after his conversion. Acts tells us one thing, Paul himself tells us another in Galatians.

At the present time I don't know of any other reasons for distrusting Acts, but as I've detailed below I am planning on reading a book about Acts, so at some point in the future I'll blog on this issue further.

On the Date of Acts

Should the Book of Acts be dated as early (as in mid-first century) or late (as in early second century)? I am undecided. I have managed to find an online copy of a book cited by the McGrews called Redating the New Testament which argues that the bulk of the New Testament was written before the end of the first century. When I have the time I am going to read it. I've also found a critique of the work on the website Rejection of Pascal's Wager. Yesterday I ordered a copy of Richard Pervo's work The Mystery of Acts: Unraveling Its Story which is supposed to be a highly critical work on the Book of Acts that shows that the book is ahistorical. I'm on the lookout for any critiques of that work that I can find, so if anyone can direct me to a criticial review of his work please post a comment letting me know where to find it. At some point in the future when I have managed to read and digest all of these things I will post a summary of my conclusions.

On Q

On page 9 the McGrews once again try to kick sand over New Testament theories they don't like, in this case they go after the Q document. They gleefully report that Q is "entirely hypothetical" and that there is "not a whisper of it in any writing of the early church fathers."
It is true that we don't have a hard copy of Q. Nonetheless, Q, or something like Q, is a practically inescapable deduction from the facts we have. How else would we explain so much common material between Matthew and Luke which aren't found in Mark? The McGrews reasons for doubting Q, that a hard copy of it doesn't exist and that no church fathers mention it, are very weak. First: They are contradicting themselves by making an "Argument from Silence" against the Q document (if you recall, they were extremely dismissive towards arguments from silence... That is, when such arguments were used to cast doubt upon the gospels). Second, we already know that a lot of early church documents weren't handed down to us in the present day. In 1 Corinthians 5:9 Paul tells us that he had previously written a letter to the Corinthians... A letter which we don't have, which was lost over time. Nor do we have the Logia of Jesus that Papias refers to, but that doesn't mean there was no such thing. Third, and this is the most damning point of all: The word "Q" is a recent invention to designate the postulated source between Matthew and Luke. If the document originally had a name, it most certainly wasn't Q. And that's important, because some scholars believe that the Logia of Jesus is the Q document, which means that there is no argument from silence to be made after all. In the book Sources of the Jesus Tradition Dennis MacDonald argues that the Logia is the long lost hypothetical Q document, and that in fact this document was a rewritten version of Deuteronomy designed to show Jesus' superiority to Moses (fascinating, I know!).

On the Gospel of Matthew

According to the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE), Papias mentions the Logia of Matthew as being first written in Hebrew, which the McGrews interpret as being the Gospel of Matthew, and at that being the gospel which we have in the New Testament today. This is extremely dubious. As is laid out in the ISBE on pages 280-282, "Logia" probably does not refer to a Gospel, not least because the evidence clearly shows that the Gospel of Matthew we have is not a translated document. Secondly, the Gospel of Matthew that we have today may very well not have been written by Matthew. In fact, if the real Matthew wrote a gospel that wouldn't preclude in any way the possibility that the gospel was lost and Matthew's name was attached to another gospel that he didn't write which became what we now have in our bibles as "The Gospel of Matthew"). As documented by Helmut Koester, more than one early church father attributed the gospel of Thomas to Thomas the follower of Jesus. Would the McGrews accept this evidence as strong indications that the Gospel of Thomas really was written by Thomas? I doubt it, and neither would I. Bottom line: The church traditions concerning the gospels aren't reliable, not least because they are wildly contradictory (which the McGrews give examples of). And that they contradict one another doesn't prove they are totally independent traditions. If, in the early Christian community, there arose a rumor that Matthew wrote one of the gospels circulating, then that rumor might get passed around through many "chinese whisper" generations and evolve into several distinct (yet similar) traditions about the gospel. And if the church fathers were relying purely on their on memory of the traditions in question when they were writing about them, then they become even more unreliable. All of us have seen someone botch the details of a story they are recalling.

Were the Gospels from Eyewitnesses? And if they were then doesn't that mean they're reliable?

No and No. The McGrews quote Richard Bauckham, who believes that the gospels show indications that they were composed on the basis of eyewitness testimony. As John J. Pilch pointed out in his review of Bauckham*: "[A]nyone even superficially familiar with Mediterranean society understandsthat people often report what others want to hear (e.g., eyewitnesses testifying to weaponsof mass destmction in Iraq). In the Bible, consider 1 Kings 22 or Jeremiah 27-28."

And things get even worse. For one of the things Bauckham proposes is that the Twelve Apostles are named in order to identify them as eyewitnesses and also that the twelve were responsible for assuring the accuracy of the gospel narratives. But if that were true, how is it (As Stephen J. Patterson noted**) that we ended up with four wildly divergent accounts? If the Twelve took it upon themselves to "peer review" the manuscripts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, then whence so many discrepancies? I have already pointed to plenty of bullshit in the gospels. As Richard Carrier pointed out in his essay on the Resurrection, why is it that no one else in history noticed the tearing of the temple veil mentioned in Mark's passion narrative, not even the priests whose sole duty was attendance of the veil? Also see my previous post on the subject of gospel reliability here. Fact is, either the gospels are not based on eyewitness testimony or the eyewitnesses are pathological liars. Neither hypothesis is encouraging for someone arguing the resurrection.

Endnotes

* John J. Pilch, Review of "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses," Catholic Biblical Quarterly; Jan. 2008, Vol. 70 Issue 1, p137-139.

** Stephen J. Patterson, Review of "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses," Review of Biblical Literature; 2010, Vol. 12, p365-369.

Was Jesus Raised: Notes on Carrier

2011-01-19T12:40:00.000-06:00

Although I have been reviewing Tim and Lydia McGrew's argument on the resurrection, I have decided to give a brief rundown of Richard Carrier's Why the Resurrection is Unbelievable which is a chapter of that (highly recommended) book The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails.

Carrier's Basic Contentions

1. Herodotus, who was an educated, careful, and generally reliable historian, reports all kinds of fantastic tales, such as a fortress that magically defended itself with armaments. But no one would believe any of Herodotus' wild tales, and since Herodotus' credibility is equal to or greater than the Gospels, we shouldn't believe the Gospels when they tell us that a man came back from the dead.

Point of interest: yesterday I posted about how the gospels had some degree of archaeological support, a real boasting point for Tim and Lydia McGrew. Well, guess what: Herodotus has recieved some fantastic corroboration, and even some corroboration for issues about which some historians thought he was full of it. His fantastic tale of giant ants, for example, probably refers to something real (!), he correctly identified the first pharaoh and the builders of the pyramids, he correctly reported that Medes was overthrown by Cyrus, and he's been vindicated by various topological and archaeological surveys, as has been reported in the Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writings.

2. The Resurrection of Jesus is an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The evidence for the resurrection is not extraordinary because it comes from poor sources, and, even if those poor sources were right about basic things such as an empty tomb, such evidence could never be called truly "extraordinary."

On the sources: Our Sources are (1) Paul and (2) the Gospels. Paul is not reliable because, as he tells us in Galatians 1, he gets his gospel from Old Testament Scripture and from personal revelation of God. We wouldn't accept the word of a cult leader today who claimed God revealed the truth to him or that he could find hidden messages in Old Scripture (such claims are reminiscent of Charles Manson believing that the Beatles were giving him messages through their songs). Therefore Paul is not a reliable source for true historical events, because he does not use a method we would consider to be reliably tracking the truth.

The gospels aren't reliable either, for a number of reasons:
(a) they are wildly contradictory (just read the resurrection stories of each one).
(b) they report extravagent events that aren't reported anywhere else, even though such fantastic things would have been reported if they really happened. For example, they report that the temple curtain was torn after Jesus' death. But that isn't reported anywhere by anyone, even though there were priests whose sole duty was to attend the temple veil.
(c) The gospels are full of symbolic fiction, as Carrier demonstrates with his example of the passion narrative imitating the scapegoat ritual, and has been shown by others in works such as Gospel Fictions and The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark.
(d) they contain interpolations and later additions, which makes their original content somewhat suspect (I don't fully agree with Carrier on this point, and I'll elaborate on that later).
(e) the gospels were born in an environment that was short on skepticism and full of credulity and fraud, which doesn't give us any reassurance that the gospels must be true; the fact that they were passed down to us is not an indication that they were considered credible by any careful, critical, and skeptical person(s).

3. Natural explanations of Christian beliefs are more credible. This true because (a) natural explanations are intrinsically more likely (b) they have greater explanatory scope, they explain why Christianity has so much in common with other religious movements of the time and (c) natural explanations explain why Jesus was only seen by a Paul and a handful of others after his death, instead of appearing to the whole world, which is something God would certainly do if he endorsed the Christian religion.

Where I Disagree with Carrier

On page 302 Carrier tells us that Mark 16:9-20 was "'snuck in'" by "dishonest Christians." He says that the story of the woman caught in adultery, long known to be a later addition to the text of John, a "forgery" which was "deceitfully inserted after the fact." He finishes up with, "We have no way of knowing what got added to the version we now have in the Bible."

I think this is a little uncharitable. First, the insertions and additions that occurred in the New Testament may not be dishonest. Maybe a scribe figured that Mark's ending had been "cut off" from his copy of the Gospel (as some scholars have proposed today), and decided to fill in the blanks as best he could by writing a new ending. Such an action wouldn't be dishonest to my mind. The same goes for the story of the woman in adultery: it could be an illicit forgery, or it could simply be some piece of oral tradition or something that got inserted into the gospel by a Christian who wanted to see it preserved; by a Christian who thought he was doing nothing more than augmenting someone else's gospel.

And as for Carrier's statement: "We have no way of knowing what got added to the version we now have in the Bible." That is way off. The field of lower criticism has ways of knowing (such as: when a verse isn't present in our earliest manuscripts, which is how we know Mark 16:9-20 is a later addition). The field of higher criticism has ways of telling when something is out of place or uncharacteristic, an example being 1 Thessalonians 2:13-16 which, to my mind, is certainly an interpolation because of its antisemitism (not characteristic of Thessalonian's author) and because the chapter reads just fine when the passage in question is removed.

Carrier may have meant something along the lines of, "We have no way of being absolutely certain about the original text of the New Testament." Which is true. If some addition or change was made to the New Testament in the early time from which we have no manuscripts, and if the finished text reveals no clues showing us that the passage in question is interpolated, then we won't know about it. And that is a significant concern which ought to decrease our confidence in the evidence for the resurrection, at least slightly.

And that's it. Those are my only concerns with Carrier's chapter. Other than that, I approve of it and highly recommend it.

Was Jesus Raised: Form Criticism, Archaeology, and the Gospels

2011-01-18T16:10:00.000-06:00

This is the third post of my blog series concerning Tim and Lydia McGrews' A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. It will concern portions of pages 7 and 8 of that document, and will discuss how archaeology and form criticism reflect on the reliability of the gospels.

The McGrews begin:

"The assumption that the gospels and Acts are basically historically reliable has
knowledgeable contemporary advocates. But it flies in the face of nearly a century of New
Testament scholarship based on form criticism and its methodological offshoot, redaction
criticism. In brief, these are versions of literary criticism whose adherents have proclaimed the
gospels in their present form to be late productions of the Christian community and have
attempted to excavate the texts as they have come down to us in order to discover the
hypothesized original layers beneath the postulated accretion of oral tradition and legend or to
determine the intentions of the last redactor, or editor."

All of this is accurate to my knowledge. The gospels and the book of Acts are defended by contemporary scholars, and sometimes the strong reliability claimed by those defenders does fly in the face of the more liberal literary critics. This isn't to say that the conservative or liberal position is correct, this only reports that such critics exist. The McGrews continue:

"The chief requirement for this theory of literary layers is time – time for originals to be gradually edited into a radically different form, time for the development of miracle legends, time for the evolution of John’s high Christology that could be grafted onto a set of original simple parables and sayings of Jesus or for those sayings to be midrashically expanded without the fact’s attracting notice or criticism."

I agree, of course, that an extensive project of editing, re-editing, and expanding on some body of material would take time. But the question is, how much time would it take? Miracle stories and other fantastic claims do not take decades to form, even if they are false. They can spring up overnight. Don't believe me? Visit snopes.com and see for yourself.

Of course, literary theories necessarily require a bit of time if they postulate (for example) the Gospel of Q was edited three times and then used as a source for Matthew and Luke. How much time? It's not entirely clear, but it would seem implausible to postulate so much change within ten years, for example. Is such time available for the development of the narratives? I do not know. I may decide to pursue that issue in the future. The McGrews go on:

"It is therefore no accident that the dominant position in New Testament studies since the pioneering Formgeschichtliche work of Martin Dibelius and Rudolf Bultmann has been that the gospels are very late productions, preferably well into the second century but in all events after A.D. 70, since any earlier dating would require us to attribute to Jesus prophetic abilities with respect to the destruction of Jerusalem that would run afoul of the philosophical naturalism driving the project.

"The role of such naturalism as a motivating factor in the work of the form critics is often
explicit, but as an argument against a more traditional position it suffers from the obvious
drawback of circularity."

I agree that philosophical naturalism shouldn't be merely assumed in this debate, because that would indeed be circular.

I'd like to return to comment that the McGrews made, that the gospels dating well before 70 AD would imply Jesus had prophetic abilities. I think I know what the McGrews are talking about: Mark 13. Mark 13 is typically the chapter used to date the gospels to 70 AD. But what exactly does it say? Read it. The "prophecies" in question appear to be (1) that the temple will be destroyed and (2) that Christians will be persecuted in Jesus' name. Neither one of these strikes me as miraculous, even if it was written down before the fact (and I'm not saying it is, by the way).

But was it written down before the fact? I genuinely do not know. On the one hand, there is James Crossley, a thoroughly secular scholar who argues for dating Mark (the first gospel) at 35-45 AD. He's written an entire book on this entitled The Date of Mark's Gospel: Insight from the Law in Earliest Christianity. Is he right? Again, I don't know. I can't afford the book, and the preview I read on google.books wasn't overly convincing, although it was intriguing.

On the other hand, there is at least one good reason to peg the gospels after 70 AD. This is the fact that all of the gospels say that the stone at Jesus' tomb was "rolled" away, which implies the stone was round. This is important because the vast majority of tombs before 70 AD had stone doors that were square,** i.e. not the sort of shape one would envision as "rolling." Of course, there are some caveats as to whether the Greek word translated as "rolled" might possibly just mean "moved." In spite of this I think this piece of evidence still argues firmly for a post 70 AD date for Mark, although this evidence is not infallible or completely airtight.

On page 7 We read that, "there are good reasons for dismissing the sweeping negative
conclusions of form criticism regarding the authenticity and reliability of the narratives." One reason being that "There are no independent textual traditions preserving the allegedly earliest forms." It's quite ironic that just a few pages ago the McGrews were attempting to show us how worthless arguments from silence are, and yet now, when it is convenient for them, they embrace a sort of argument from silence: the fact that early textual traditions such as the Q document aren't attested to anywhere else means that it didn't exist. We must, as always, consider how strong the absence of the "earlist forms" of textual traditions weighs against their theorized existence. My answer is: not very strongly. It's only too easy to imagine why such documents became lost over time. Readers may want to refer back to my previous post about arguments from absence and silence:
http://aigbusted.blogspot.com/2011/01/was-jesus-raised-contradictions-and.html

The McGrews go on to detail how they believe that Archaeology has vindicated the gospels and the book of Acts. First, their defense of the gospels: they argue that the pool of Bethesda had five porches (this has been discovered through archaeology) just as the gospel of John said, and then go on to detail similar archaeological discoveries that provide support for the gospels and Acts.

I have no particular bone to pick with the examples they give. I managed to find a book called Jesus and Archaeology, which recieved good reviews in scholarly journals such as Catholic Biblical Quarterly and Review of Biblical Literature, which details many of the sorts of finds that the McGrews refer to. It is interesting to read the comments Jodi Magness made concerning "Jesus and Archaeology":

"despite its clear theological tone and agenda and the presence of obvious anachronisms, the Gospel of John should not be dismissed as ahistorical."*** (emphasis mine)

Reading the McGrews one might get the idea that the gospels have been completely vindicated and shown to be careful and totally accurate histories. But I think the above quote shows the reality of the situation, which is that the gospels contain some historical errors as well as some remarkably correct historical reports.

The McGrews' entire point here is that the level of historical accuracy present in John and Acts is too great to be the result of embellishment and whatnot over several decades. That could be true, but then who's to say that this means that John and Acts, as we know them today, must be very early creations? Perhaps both of these books used sources which had been written in the 30's, 40's, 50's or 60's, and that is why these books have some level of historical accuracy. Indeed, from my reading it is accepted by many in New Testament studies that the gospel of John, as we know it today, has been edited and altered from an earlier edition. See, for example, The Fourth Gospel And Its Predecessor. The theory that the gospel of John was redacted is not simply some contrivance designed to avoid the terrible fate of acknowledging the gospel's early date. There's evidence from within the text that the gospel of John has been fiddled with. Take this passage:

"Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."

Sounds like the conclusion of the gospel, doesn't it? But it isn't! Strangely, the gospel of John has entire chapter tacked on to this passage. The conclusion is obvious: the gospel of John originally ended with this passage, but someone came along later and tacked on the extra chapter. And that's not the only evidence of tampering, as any decent book on the gospel of John will tell you, but that's another story and is too much to go into in this blog post.

Footnotes:

** See Richard Carrier, "Craig's Empty Tomb and Habermas on Visions" (1999, 2005). Available at:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/indef/4e.html

*** See Jodi Magness, Review of "Jesus and Archaeology," The Journal of the American Oriental Society. 127.1 (January-March 2007) p. 87.

A Melody from the Ancient Past

2011-01-17T01:16:00.002-06:00

It's the oldest written melody, from 3400 years ago. Very beautiful.

Another one sees the light

2011-01-15T19:54:00.002-06:00

Please have a look at this recently deconverted Christian's blog:
http://bmejake.blogspot.com/

His story has so much I can relate to. And listen to this:

"In middle school my Bible teacher preached to us his unwavering belief that the smurfs (yes, the little blue elves) were satanic. His entire theory based off the name given to the antagonist’s animated cat, Azrael, was blatantly delusional. (Azrael is the name of the fallen arch-angel of death - Satan’s right-hand man)."

I briefly attended a Christian middle school and I can remember peculiar individuals who thought Pokemon was evil, the work of the devil. I mean, can't you just see Satan in Pikachu?

Was Jesus Raised: Contradictions and Silence

2011-01-14T17:14:00.001-06:00

This is the second post of my blog series concerning Tim and Lydia McGrews' A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. This post will concern pages 5 and 6 and the first paragraph of page 7.

The McGrews observe that:

"A favorite tactic of the adversaries of Christianity in the eighteenth century... is to point to various discrepancies, real or imagined, in the telling of the same story and to conclude that the texts contradict each other and therefore are untrustworthy at best and worthless at worst.

The McGrews go on to point out that the discrepancies can be exaggerated and multiplied by the use of "arguments from silence" which are arguments that assume that because some piece of information was not mentioned by an author, that therefore the author did not know such an event occurred (or, more strongly, that the author believed the event NEVER occurred). The McGrews add that such arguments from silence are "tenuous" and that,

"By such reasoning we can easily find 'contradictions' even in the writings of one and the same historian, as when Josephus mentions facts in his Antiquities that we might have expected him to repeat in his Jewish Wars (Paley, 1859, p. 337). When we extend it to the comparison of multiple authors who treat of the same subject, the results are ridiculous... [I]t is a risky business to speculate upon the motives of authors for including or omitting various facts. To create an appearance of inconsistency by this device, or by such means to justify elaborate hypotheses regarding editors and recensions of the gospels, is methodologically unsound."

The McGrews go on to offer up the old "The contradictions prove the testimony of the gospels was independent..." argument, and finally they remind us that their case for the resurrection will not rest itself upon simply assuming that the gospel's reports are true.

So let's take these assertions, one at a time.

An argument from silence is just a special type of argument from absence. An argument from absence is just what it sounds like: an argument in which not seeing something is used as evidence to argue for or against some conclusion. The usual counterpoint to these arguments is that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". PZ Myers provides a perfect reply to this canard:

"[Absence of evidence] is just evidence of variable strength, from laughably weak (I have no evidence of a teapot in orbit around the sun, which isn't a very strong case since no one has looked for an orbiting teapot, and it's a tiny target in a vast volume anyway) to extremely strong (there are no dragons in my backyard; I have looked, and there are no large firebreathing reptiles gnawing on virgins back there)."

We can apply PZ's method to the gospels and to Paul easily. Some parables, some miracles, are reported in one or two gospels and are never reported again. That's easy enough to understand. If Jesus was always going around performing healings and teaching wisdom we could expect that certain examples would not be known or remembered or written about to each gospel author. So I won't spend time arguing for a contradiction based on silence unless I think that the silence is very unlikely and peculiar for the writer, given that he knew about the facts in question.

To give you an example: the Gospel of Matthew reports that a bunch of saints rose from the dead and wandered around the city when Jesus was crucified. No other gospel reports this "night of the living dead" scene, which is a little odd since one would think that this would've been one of the most astonishing and gut-wrenching events that would've stuck in the minds of those who saw it... That is, unless the event is a fiction by Matthew. And things get even worse: even if the silence of the other gospel writers doesn't affect you, then riddle me this: why is the zombie-fest of Matthew, surely one of the most chilling, shocking, and ripe-for-story-telling event in history not mentioned by any historian during any decade ever? You reckon maybe it just didn't happen?

Another example: Take a look at the Easter narratives in the gospels. Mark says the women saw a young man but does not mention the women seeing Jesus at or near the tomb. Matthew says the women saw an angel. Luke says they saw two men. John says they saw two angels, and adds that Mary finds Jesus (upon leaving?) the tomb. No apologist can reconcile these by using the old line: "Well, Mark didn't say that there was only one man, or that the man wasn't an angel disguised as a man, and it doesn't say that Mary definitely did not see Jesus on her tomb visit, so there's no contradiction. You're just arguing from silence." The whole thing is absurd.

What about the McGrews' claim that "By such reasoning [arguments from silence] we can easily find 'contradictions' even in the writings of one and the same historian, as when Josephus mentions facts in his Antiquities that we might have expected him to repeat in his Jewish Wars (Paley, 1859, p. 337)." [words in brackets are my addition for clarity].

I've found the original document written by William Paley and read the relevant part of it. Click here to read it yourself. It is strange that the McGrews refer to Paley, since Paley doesn't lay out this argument himself, but simply refers us to "Lard. part i. vol. ii. p.735 et. seq". Not very helpful. From what I have gathered, this reference probably refers to some work of 18th century Christian apologist Nathaniel Lardner. But which book does Paley refer to? Perhaps it is part i. vol. ii of "The Credibility of the Gospel History"? But that book, insofar as I found on googlebooks, doesn't have more than 700 pages (which is a problem since Paley refers us to page 735). What to do? I'm not sure. But I shouldn't have to chase down a source like this. The McGrews could've done a better job of citing specific examples in Josephus of what they mean. Or they could've at least given a source which actually does list such examples.

The McGrews further argue that minor differences and small contradictions on matters of detail prove that the witnesses to Jesus' resurrection were not in collusion, and therefore the contradictions are actually beneficial to their case for the resurrection! Not so fast, say I. I'm not arguing for collusion. But the contradictions we've seen here are not just simple differences like "Was Jesus' robe purple or scarlet?" If this was the only sort of contradiction in the gospel narratives, the McGrews would be completely correct in their point that little differences can add strength to their case. But it isn't, as demonstrated above.

And what we've discussed does affect their case very seriously. Yes, contradictions, especially really serious ones that we've been discussing, don't mean that "nothing at all happened that Easter morning." But it does mean that our only sources on the issue are wildly unreliable, which is not encouraging for someone who must rely solely on them to prove an extraordinary claim of a miracle.

Was Jesus Raised: Introduction

2011-01-12T03:23:00.003-06:00

I decided to wrap up my "Mapping the fine-tuning argument" project the day before yesterday in part because I wanted to make way for a new project: I am going to blog my way through Lydia and Timothy McGrew's A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. At the link you can read it yourself.

A notice about the series: what I am going to do is read the document a little at a time and then blog on it. This method may occasionally cause me to err: I might criticize the article, then read a little further and find out that my objection was answered. If that happens, I will make a note of it and I will go back and correct my older blog post. Why am I doing it that way? Because I feel like it.

I am also not going to analyze every sentence, paragraph, or claim made in the article. For example, the introduction of A Cumulative Case begins with some historical backround on arguments for miracles. This is interesting and certainly a fine introduction to the article, but I won't spend any time analyzing it because it isn't of interest to me. What I am interested in will concern matters of fact and logic which have a bearing on whether we should conclude that Jesus was raised from the dead. The dates and reliability of the gospels have a bearing on the conclusion. David Hume's argument has a bearing on that issue. The personal opinions of 18th and 19th century philosophers and polemicists have no bearing on this issue, unless those opinions happen to include correct observations or reasoning that will help us reach a conclusion.

On David Hume

My Dad and I were watching David Blaine performing magic tricks on TV late one night. I expressed complete amazement when David Blaine appeared to bring a bird back to life. Remember that, we will discuss it later. And feel free to take two minutes to watch it yourself. Pay attention as best you can, I want to discuss it more later on.

Replying to my amazement, my dad said, "You know there's no way he's actually doing what it looks like he's doing." Behind that simple comment lies the same reasoning that lies behind the "everlasting check" David Hume set against miracle claims.

There's no way he's actually doing what it looks like he's doing. Why not? Why shouldn't we believe that David Blaine is a miracle worker? Of course Blaine has told us that he's only an illusionist and not a miracle-worker. But what if he hadn't told us that? Could we then believe David Blaine was a miracle worker? My father would say no. I would say no. David Hume would say no. Anyone with a sliver of reason and good sense would say no. So what reasoning lies beneath our answer?

The reasoning is this: all of us have an extraordinary amount of evidence that dead birds, and animals in general, cannot be brought back to life. We've seen them die. We have not seen them come back to life. On the other hand, we also have some good evidence that people can fool us. If you see a stage magician who'll reveal how they do their tricks, then you know this. So, there are two theories that can account for the apparent bird resurrection. Either (1) The bird was raised from the dead or (2) The apparent resurrection was nothing more than... apparent. Theory 1 is extremely improbable due to the overwhelming evidence that the dead stay dead. Theory 2 is not improbable, in light of the fact that we know that we can be fooled.

The argument I've just given you is like a miracle-eating acid, and it is especially deadly to miracles that are known only through the report of other people. For when we haven't seen the alleged miracle with our own eyes, we have another factor to consider: honesty.

When we see a stage magician do a trick, we certainly can't doubt our own honesty with ourselves. But when someone tells you something, that report is never as reliable as your own experience, simply because that person may be lying. And people lie all the time. So if our evidence is the report of a miracle, and we can explain the report as either a lie or a miracle, which one should we conclude? It's a lie; because we have no other evidence of miracles but lots of other evidence that lies are told. And lies aren't the only possible explanation on the table: people can be mistaken about their experience (as they are fooled by magic tricks and optical illusions, for example). Again, people are mistaken frequently, while miracles, if they occur at all, must be rare since we have no other evidence of them.

David Hume established a principle from such reasoning: "No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish." Notice that Hume has "left the door open" for miracles: we can't conclude that a miracle occurred from someone's testimony unless the testimony itself is of such a kind that its falsehood would be even more miraculous than the miracle that the testimony bears witness to.

And what does that mean? I can't think of any examples that would do the trick (off the top of my head) but in abstract it means this: the evidence we have is the testimony of the miracle. The miracle is unlikely to have happened, so we normally explain the miracle report as some sort of deception. But what if we found some special kind of testimony, some kind of testimony that was incredibly unlikely to have been produced by anything other than a miracle (in fact, was so unlikely to have come about through non-miraculous means that the miracle told to us in the report is more likely to have happened than the non-miraculous generation of the miracle report itself)? In that case, we would have to conclude that the miracle occurred (Read the last sentence a few more times if you need to).

All of this discussion is simply calling attention to the fact that miracles have a low prior probability of occurring in some specific case. Usually we have on hand some other non-miraculous explanations which fit the data about as well and which have a far higher prior probability, and when an explanation meets those two conditions that means that the nonmiraculous explanation will win the title of "most likely explanation for the evidence."

Now, just because a hypothesis has an extremely low prior probability doesn't mean that the hypothesis is automatically wrong. It just means that the hypothesis needs an extraordinary amount of evidential support before it can be believed. In the lens of Bayes' Theorem (which is what the McGrews' use in their article) what this means is that the posterior probability of that hypothesis needs to be so much higher than the posterior probabilities of other hypotheses which attempt to explain the event(s) we are trying to explain. How much higher does the posterior probability have to be? The short answer is that the number has to be high enough that when we plug it into the Bayes' equation it will tell us that the hypothesis is more than 50% probable.

Now, it is NOT logically impossible for us to find evidence of good enough quality which generate a favorable posterior probability for the miraculous explanation (which would make the miracle believable). However, the evidence required to believe a miracle is a tall order.

Here's an analogy that might help: think of the various competing theories as stones. Think of evidence as being energy that propels the stones forward. Think of those stones sitting at a starting mark, just a few feet from a finish line. The stones are different sizes: some are large and heavy, some are small and light, others are in between. Now, to get a great big stone across the finish line you need lots of energy. More energy than you'd need for a light stone. That's kind of like what is going on here: the miraculous explanation of an event is extremely heavy and overbearing, and it needs a huge burst of evidence to push it across the finish line so that it can become the most likely explanation for the evidence. Sure, it can happen, but it is a big burden that will only happen under special circumstances when we have the powerful evidence we need.

Closing Statements

I think I've gotten us to the point in which I can say that we need extremely strong evidence before we can believe the resurrection. But I want to make a further point: remember that video of David Blaine apparently raising a dead bird to life. If you didn't watch it before, watch it now before you continue. Think how it would be if you couldn't see this for yourself, if you had to take it on the word of one or a few people. When they told you the story how much detail would they include? Would they tell you that David Blaine rubbed his hands together many times before laying them on the bird? I suspect they wouldn't. And that is important, because David Blaine's hand rubbing goes a long way toward showing how the trick is done.

You see, I have a theory about David Blaine's trick. My theory is that the bird was placed in a storage freezer and its heart-rate slowed down dramatically before someone took it and put it out on the grass for Blaine and his companion to "find". When Blaine was rubbing his hands together, he was warming them up so that when he picked up the bird the heat would transfer from his hands to the bird's body. And that would make the bird "wake up" from its icy coma.

What does all this have to do with Jesus? Well, all of our evidence affirming Jesus' resurrection comes from testimony (perhaps not even eyewitness testimony) that was passed along to us. In the case of David Blaine, if we had gotten our information about the bird resurrection from eyewitnesses, we would have probably lacked the crucial information we needed to solve that case. And so it is with Jesus: if there was any peculiar evidence that proved some alternative theory about the resurrection of Jesus, we would not have it, either because Jesus' disciples honestly never saw any need to report such evidence because they didn't realize what it meant, or because they didn't want to report something damning to their beliefs.

So, those are preliminary thoughts on the subject. I'm planning on reading about Bayes' Theorem as much as I can, because the McGrews' case uses it and I have little knowledge of it.

Marcotte, Randi, Nickell

2011-01-11T06:02:00.000-06:00

Amanda Marcotte spoke about feminism at Skepticon 3, and the recorded talk is on youtube (click her name). I found the New York Times Article that she mentioned in her talk concerning the women who go around preaching to other women about being submissive. Marcotte is the author of It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments. Haven't read it, if anyone has let me know how it is.

James Randi's talk is also available, very funny, and very inspiring to see him still giving lectures. Randi is the author of the wonderful book Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions as well as The Faith Healers.

Last, but most certainly not least, is Joe Nickell's lecture. Nickell's lecture was one of the crowning jewels of the event; a fascinating look at some of his investigations. Joe Nickell is the author of Looking for a Miracle: Weeping Icons, Relics, Stigmata, Visions & Healing Cures. I've referenced his work several times, such as in the article on miracles I wrote for DB Skeptic.

A Hasty Conclusion

2011-01-10T02:00:00.000-06:00

Several months ago I began a project called "Mapping the Fine-Tuning Argument". I started off with a lot of dedication, but gradually I forgot about it and the result is that I haven't posted anything about it in months, in spite of the fact that I had not yet examined all of the premises of the argument. Anyway, here is the argument as I stated it, here are the posts I made on the argument so far. I'm now going to attempt to do a hasty and sloppy wrap-up to this project (It's better than nothing, right?). So, here are my closing points:

1. I blogged that I did not believe there was any reason for God to create a physical universe. On closer inspection, I think this is false. "Physical" and "Natural" things are basically just things that can't think (objects, if you will). I don't think it's a big stretch to imagine God creating a universe with physical (or unthinking) things for sentient creatures like us to interact with. So God might create a physical universe.

2. Even if the universe is fine-tuned for life and God explains this perfectly, we are still left wondering whether God is the best explanation for our life-friendly universe. Here are some considerations against the God hypothesis:

A. Every mind we have any experience of is a physical mind which has a body. We have all known thousands of minds, but each and every one has a body, which implies that all minds probably have bodies. God is a spirit, which means that he is a disembodied mind. The strong inductive evidence we have against disembodied minds also counts strongly against God.

B. The God hypothesis postulates not just a new entity, but a new type of entity, a supernatural being. Remember Ockham's razor (aka The Principle of Parsimony): Do not multiply entities beyond necessity, the simplest explanation is most probably correct? Philosophers now distinguish between quantitative and qualitative parsimony: Quantitative parsimony concerns the number of entities you postulate, qualitative parsimony concerns how many types of entity you postulate. In both cases, fewer is better: a smaller number of starting assumptions increases the odds that the explanation is right.

As I said: The God hypothesis postulates not just a new entity, but a new type of entity, a supernatural being. And this means that other explanations, such as the multiverse theory, which invent no new types of entities, may be seen as superior to supernatural explanations, because (amongst other things) they invoke no new types of entities.

C. Supernatural explanations (like the God hypothesis) are further degraded by the fact that they have a bad track record. In this book review I wrote, I explain why.

D. If God wanted the universe to be friendly to life, it is very difficult to explain why most of the universe is not able to support life. From the radiation filled vacuum of space, to the super-chilled astronomical bodies so far away from stars that they are nothing but icy deserts, to the feverish bodies that are too hot to be anything except living hell, the universe seems to be anything but designed for life. Sure, the laws of physics may seem 'rigged' to support life, but other aspects of the universe, like those just mentioned, are not.

The fact that I have just mentioned weighs in on this debate for three reasons:
Because the God hypothesis cannot explain the hostility to life in the universe whereas essentially any atheistic explanation could (the universe not being designed for life entails that it could be hostile to life in some ways) which gives atheistic explanations more explanatory scope.

Because the life-hostility is evidence against God which decreases the probability that the God hypothesis is correct. Think about it: if life-friendliness is evidence for God, then life-hostility must be evidence against God.

Because the life hostility alerts us to the anthropic principle: Since we exist, we can expect to find ourselves on one of those rare islands of life, and we can expect the rare islands of life to exist because the universe is vast (100 billion galaxies) and is highly variable in its conditions from planet to planet. This explanation has proven itself correct and adequate to explain why a life-friendly planet exists, and therefore it has a weighty precedent which suggest it be given more weight as a possible explanation for the life-friendly laws of physics.

E. No other explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe suffers from the problem of evil or any other consideration that usually weighs against God. Other than the problem of evil, there is at least one other extremely powerful, knockout argument against God that comes close to disproving God's existence, called the Ultimate 747 Gambit.

With all of this in mind, my judgement is that the fine-tuning can be explained by (1) postulating a large number of universes (called the 'Multiverse) (2) Postulating some variation in the physical constants of these universes and (3) Invoking the anthropic principle: we exist in one of those few universe capable of supporting life because we could not find ourselves (as living beings) in a typical barren universe.

On various multiverse theories:

David Darling's article

Lee Smolin explains Cosmological Natural Selection in Two Minutes

The Life of the Cosmos by Lee Smolin

Modal Realism

Pages 141-150 of Dawkins, The God Delusion

The Checkerboard Illusion

2011-01-09T18:32:00.001-06:00

Can you tell when two things are the same color? Maybe not. When you've looked at that, also see here.

"The Moon is God" Says Astrophysicist

2011-01-09T13:53:00.001-06:00

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Bill O'Reilly Proves God's Existence - Neil deGrasse Tyson

http://www.colbertnation.com/

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog</a>

Video Archive

BTW: The title of this post is a misquote made on purpose to make fun of sensationalist journalist who quote people out of context.

NCSE's Blast from the Past

2011-01-07T15:59:00.002-06:00

The National Center for Science Education has uploaded an enormous amount of video material from the 1980's. Absolutely classic stuff and worth passing on to your young earth creationist friends:

http://www.youtube.com/user/NatCen4ScienceEd

Also worth reading is the debate between Henry Morris and Kenneth Miller here:
http://ncse.com/creationism/general/miller-morris-debate-1981

Morris was entirely misleading in this debate. He trots out his second law of thermodynamics argument:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CF/CF001.html

Get out an encyclopedia and read the entry on the second law of thermodynamics. It has nothing to do with evolution one way or another. Most of Morris' quotes and what-not can be searched for and debunked here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/project.html