Daily Devotional 2: Road Rage Without Cars Or a Road

0 comments
I could write a daily devotional, well, advice for the day anyway. I now have a title in mind! So here's some more advice: Don't judge others based solely on one or two actions, or you'll probably judge them unfairly.

At a concert I went to there was a table in front of us where some guy was being a jerk by being rude.

When one guy got up from the table the jerk sat in his seat, which had a better view. So this guy's girlfriend, I'm supposing, got angry and went over to the jerk and got in his face, telling him in no uncertain terms to get out of that seat. Even jerks don't want to mess with an angry woman in front others. So begrudgingly jerk-guy moved back to his own seat. Her boyfriend once again claimed his seat.

She wasn't done with the jerk though. She left and came back. Then in a few minutes two police officers appeared, who were there to monitor the crowd. One reached into the back pocket of the jerk who was sitting down, and pulled out a small bottle of liquor from his back pocket. Then they unceremoniously escorted the jerk out of the place. For in these venues you cannot bring your own drinks. You have to buy them at the concession stand. She ratted him out, I'm sure of it. Payback is...shitty.

Some people behave badly under certain circumstances. Over-all that jerk may be a nice guy with family and friends who like him a great deal. The same goes for the girlfriend. What I witnessed was road rage, without cars, or a road. Who among us can say we haven't had a little bit of road rage? We're told road rage is fairly rampant right now. People have it. Lots of us on occasion. YOU have probably had it, and lived to tell the story!

We should not judge people based solely on one or two incidents, apart from serious heinous crimes which have no excuses in our society. While it's certainly a piece of who someone is, people are almost always more than any one particular incident. To judge someone from such a limited knowledge base is to be unfair with them. They may turn out to be as we judge them, but we can't say until we know them better.

Don't judge others based solely on one or two actions, or you'll probably judge them unfairly.

Somewhat along the same lines read what David Smalley wrote: What’s Killing The Atheist Movement? Thoughts?

An Update On William Lane Craig's Policy Not To Debate Me

0 comments
A friend emailed reasonablefaith.org:

I'd love to watch Dr Craig debate John W Loftus. Do you know if he has any plans to?

Best,

Joshua

The response from the Executive Director at Reasonable Faith is below:

Faith is Superfluous and Unnecessary

0 comments
If faith is involved in everything we claim to know then some things we know have very little faith involved, while other things we claim to know are heavily saturated in faith. Faith would be superfluous at that point and unnecessary. For we could say it differently, saying that some things we know have a very high degree of probability to them, while other things we claim to know have a very low degree of probability to them. Faith represents nothing except the acknowledgement that someone is believing something that has a low degree of probability to it and yet calling it knowledge. If we thought exclusively in terms of the probabilities then by depending on faith for knowledge whenever the probabilities are low is an abdication of intellectual responsibility.

Hemant Mehta's take down of David Barton the liar:

0 comments
LINK. I mentioned a related case in an early comment.

To Have Faith Is To Lack Evidence. It's To Pretend To Know Something You Don't Actually Know!

0 comments
John Appleton, an educated and respectful Christian on Facebook said, "For me to believe [that Jesus didn't exist] takes more faith than to believe that Jesus is who he said he was."

I want readers to think about how the word "faith" functions in his sentence, irrespective of the issue being discussed. Tacitly John acknowledges the word has to do with the lack of evidence. Norman Geisler's book "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist" does the same thing. Don't tell me faith is trusting God's Word, or God. The way the word is typically used is to be uttered whenever there is a lack of evidence. If faith is trust then I don't have any reason to trust faith anyway.

Faith is a cognitive bias to be avoided if anyone wants to know the truth.

0 comments
Here's a discussion starter for the above quotation:

My Latest Book "Unapologetic" Is Going To Print Today!

0 comments
My new book is being sent off to be printed today! The following clip from "The Wrath of Khan" expresses my thoughts as I ponder its impact:



No violence is intended. It's purely metaphorical. We do battle against ideas though. It should be available by the 1st of November. Various online bookstores will have it along with an ebook and maybe an audible version. Below are all the blurbs received for it:

Quote of the Day, by Robert G. Ingersoll

0 comments
Most nations, at the time the Old Testament was written, believed in slavery, polygamy, wars of extermination, and religious persecution; and it is not wonderful that the book contained nothing contrary to such belief. The fact that it was in exact accord with the morality of its time proves that it was not the product of any being superior to man.

“The inspired writers” upheld or established slavery, countenanced polygamy, commanded wars of extermination, and ordered the slaughter of women and babes. In these respects they were precisely like the uninspired savages by whom they were surrounded.

They also taught and commanded religious persecution as a duty, and visited the most trivial offences with the punishment of death. In these particulars they were in exact accord with their barbarian neighbors.

They were utterly ignorant of geology and astronomy, and knew no more of what had happened than of what would happen; and, so far as accuracy is concerned, their history and prophecy were about equal; in other words, they were just as ignorant as those who lived and died in nature’s night.

More Advanced Praise for My Upcoming Book "Unapologetic"

0 comments
In this powerful book, former preacher and veteran scholar John Loftus demands to know why so much time and energy is still being wasted analyzing and debating fringe details of a thing no one has yet shown to be real. This passionate, hard-hitting, and important book will enlighten and inspire readers to think in new ways about an old battleground of thought. It’s clear that Loftus is running out of patience when it comes to the faithful but he certainly has not run out of steam.
--Guy Harrison, author of Good Thinking: What You Need to Know to be Smarter, Safer, Wealthier, and Wiser and 50 Simple Questions for Every Christian. He's not the only one to say such things. So do others, for which I am extremely grateful:

Dr. Paul Copan and I Are Publishing On The Same Topics

0 comments
Paul Copan is the President of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. We both studied under William Lane Craig and earned masters degrees at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS). He earned a M.A. at TEDS, whereas since I had already earned two masters degrees prior to enrolling at TEDS (MA and M.Div degrees at Lincoln Christian University) I earned a Th.M at TEDS. Then we both enrolled in Marquette University for Doctoral work. He earned his PhD there, whereas I was two classes and one dissertation short of doing so. Life interrupted me when my father learned he had cancer, so I took a ministry near him hoping to return to school, which didn't happen.

Well as it turns out, we are both publishing machines. He for a ridiculous set of evangelical beliefs, while I debunk what he and his cohorts defend. Recently we are publishing books in the same area. He's publishing a book titled, A Little Book for New Philosophers: Why and How to Study Philosophy. He announced that book on Facebook, so I announced mine, and got into a "discussion" with a Carrie Hunter. *Sheesh* Such ignorance.

Then Paul announced another book of his on Facebook titled, Dictionary of Christianity and Science: The Definitive Reference for the Intersection of Christian Faith and Contemporary Science, and so I announced mine, and got into a "discussion" with Kris Key. *Sheesh* I'll copy and paste that "discussion" below for your comments. How would you respond to Kris? How would you rate my responses? There are a lot of issues there to discuss. Enjoy. I've linked to this so he might be interested enough to check it out. At the end he tells who he is. You'll notice I did not respond to his irrelevant personal attacks.

My Blurb for Dr. Karen Garst's Newly Released Book "Women Beyond Belief" And More

0 comments
Why would anyone embrace a male-dominated religion in today’s world, or any religion for that matter? Specifically, why would women embrace the religion of their male oppressors? Given the stories told in this wonderful tell-all book they shouldn’t. It’s one of the main reasons I argue against the Christian faith. I bid all readers to follow the reasoning and examples of the authors in this book. Their stories are quite revealing and fascinating. Highly recommended! --John W. Loftus.
I encourage my readers to check out Dr. Garst’s blog at www.faithlessfeminist.com and to order this excellent book, now available on Amazon and other online stores.
Reading the Bible is like playing the game of telephone: One person whispers a sentence to another person. The second person whispers it to a third, and then the third person to the fourth, and so on. By the end the original message has been garbled and often bears little resemblance to the sentence announced by the last person. “I haven’t got a gun,” for example, can end up as “I have bought a bun.” But in the biblical game of telephone, the original message is further garbled by the time that has passed between the life of Jesus and the time the New Testament was written, the foreign culture that filtered the message of the biblical writers, and the human fallibility of those who chose the books of the Bible and designated them asthe inspired word of God.

Philosophy of Religion's Focus is Wrongheaded

0 comments
Imagine university classes that take seriously the Mormon conception of a god who has a body with a plethora of wives living on the planet Koleb. Can you imagine atheist philosophers of religion bothering to teach such classes? I can't. Wouldn't doing so be to give those beliefs legitimacy in their own right? Now imagine an internet atheist who publishes the latest argument on behalf of this god, saying "Here's a new argument for the Mormon god I just discovered." Isn't this also silly? My guess is we wouldn't take atheists seriously who did these things, just as we wouldn't take seriously the arguments themselves. Why should we take any atheist seriously who thinks there is a good argument for the Mormon god? Why should we not transfer this same line of thinking to the Abrahamic gods?; or the Norse gods?; or the Greek gods?; or the Egyptian gods...? I think we should, thus destroying the philosophy of religion in the process. Yes, I'm serious. To read a more complete account of this see here.

Quote of the Day From My Book "Unapologetic"

0 comments
In Philosophy of Religion (PoR) one finds very little to count as a success. In fact, in PoR there aren’t any successes. Not one of the many PoR arguments of the distant past is accepted as put forth in its original form by modern philosophers of religion. This includes anything from Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Anselm, Descartes or the lot of them. All of the previous arguments in PoR lacked some important distinction, or failed to handle future objections adequately or needed to be revised due to the discovery of new evidence. So in order to understand the current state of PoR budding philosophers of religion must study its failures, because that’s all they’ve got to study! The whole discipline is a failure. Why then is it important to study Descartes if we want to gain knowledge about matters of fact? It has some minimal historical value to it, sure. But the PoR has never produced a fact. LINK.

Course at Marquette Discusses The End of Biblical Studies

0 comments

The End of Biblical Studies continues to be taken seriously in graduate courses in biblical studies. One example is at Marquette University, a Catholic institution where Dr. Julian Hills, a highly respected New Testament scholar, is teaching a course on New Testament Method. Here is the course description:

“In 1973, a young Walter Wink wrote, ‘Historical biblical criticism is bankrupt’ (The Bible in Human Transformation, p. 1). More recently a new young firebrand, Hector Avalos, has published a book announcing The End of Biblical Studies (2007) as an academic discipline with any sort of integrity — suggesting that scholars employ ‘a variety of flawed and specious techniques that are aimed at maintaining the illusion that the Bible is still relevant in today's world’ (cover blurb).

This course will be, I hope, a vigorous re-affirmation of the necessity and the rich fruit of appropriate method, or methods, in biblical studies. Of course, we shall want to hear what Wink and Avalos have to say; but not in a purely defensive posture. Instead, we shall examine a host of first-rate examples of biblical criticism well employed, and each student will write several exegetical papers that will correspond to the best canons of scholarly research and writing. In addition, we shall discuss the role of biblical studies in the academy (say, in a religious or secular university setting) and in the service of the Church.”


Most Atheists Just Talk to Themselves

0 comments
I've found it to be the case that most atheists just talk to themselves, as most Christians just talk to themselves. I can't back those statements up with any scientific polls, I know. But it seems true for all I know. If true, I have one answer as to why this is true. When people identify with a group, any group, they want to influence that group and want the recognition of that group. So atheists write about issues of concern to atheists and Christians write about issues of concern to Christians. There will always be fewer people reaching out to others because of this. Your thoughts please. *People have recently told me they cannot comment here, and I don't know what to do about it*

Brand Over Brain & Religion Over Brain

0 comments
The Ted Radio Hour on NPR is really good! I heard this program recently on the Brand Over Brain. There were some startling findings. We can be fooled, all of us, about which products are the best ones for the best price. We can be convinced that drinking an average cup of coffee is the best glass of coffee we ever drank. It's called branding. I think this hits religious beliefs hard, very hard. It's because one's own adopted religion was branded as having more value than the other religions in the world. Just like that cup of coffee, with branding people can come to believe their own religion is the best one in the world, the true one. The antidote to this cognitive bias is for young adults who leave the homes of their parents to demand hard cold objective sufficient evidence for what they were indoctrinated to believe. It's to take the Outsider Test for Faith.

Dr. David Madison's New Book

0 comments
Dr. David Madison is part of a growing wave of openly atheist biblical scholars, and a signatory of The Manifesto for Secular Scriptural Scholarship and Religious Studies.
As a former believer, he knows how believers think. As an academically trained biblical scholar (PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University), he knows how to detect the defects of apologetic arguments.
Dr. Madison now has published Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: A Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why you Should Ditch the Faith that provides a good survey of the basic problems with Christian belief. I highly recommend it.
Here is the published description.
 “An all-powerful God who permits unspeakable horrors and sent a Son who threatened more to come, forever, to those who don’t believe in him. An inspired holy book that turns out to be full of archaic nonsense, moral failures, and contradictions. A world of disagreement not just between Christians and other religions, but within Christianity itself. Blood sacrifice and a tale of the walking dead as the very foundation of faith. These are just a few aspects of Ten very Tough Problems that David Madison describes in this wonderfully deep yet humorous dismantling of his former faith. Combining rigorous scholarship with engaging personal reflections and refreshing wit, he offers understanding and even some laughs while walking with readers past the gravestones of Christian thought and belief.”

Annabelle & Aiden: The Story of Life, a Book by Joseph Raphael Becker

0 comments
This is a needed children's book on evolution, and it sounds fantastic!
In this inspirational storybook written in rhyme, Annabelle asks,

"Why do we look, the way that we do?
With hands and feet, in neat sets of two?
What made my eyes? And what made my nose?
And the shape of my body, from my head to my toes?"

A wise owl answers by taking the characters on an incredible journey through Darwinian evolution. Join our characters as they visit outer space, watch the Earth go through its earliest stages, and gaze in wonder at the earliest forms of life. Young readers will gain a basic understanding of evolution, and perhaps more importantly, what we can learn from it: to be kind to one another, as we are all related in the same family tree. LINK

I'll Be Speaking for Atheist Alliance of America at Dragoncon

0 comments
On July 21st I was elected to the board of Atheist Alliance of America (AAoA). On that night we elected Aron Ra as our new president. What is AAoA? Read about us at the Ra man's page right here. Yes, I'm very excited. It's a great organization. We have some visionary and talented officers and board members who have adopted some great goals. Since I may be done writing and editing books (who knows?), I'm now entering an activist stage. Stay tuned.

Soon after becoming a board member of AAoA I was quickly given some speaking engagements on Labor Day Weekend at the 2016 Dragoncon, in Atlanta, Georgia, September 2-5th. Dragoncon is the "largest multi-media, popular culture convention focusing on science fiction & fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film in the universe!" I've heard they're projecting 60,000 convention goers this year! You can see the schedule of skeptic events right here. The problem is the 2016 AAoA budget didn't include money for me to go, so I'm paying my own way from Fort Wayne, Indiana. Any help that allows me to go comfortably to Dragoncon without a big drain on my own limited resources at will surely be appreciated. If you care to do so, donate to me at PayPal by using my email address, loftusjohnw@gmail.com. Over the years I've been truly grateful to my peeps, who have financially helped me from time to time do what I do best. This will be no exception. Thank you, no matter how small your donation is, or how small the total amount comes to be.

Peter Boghossian did a yeoman's job on this app!

0 comments

Dr. John Goldingay on the Bible and Slavery

0 comments


Dr. John Goldingay of Fuller Theological Seminary is not a scholar that I would expect to agree with me on biblical ethics. He is a well-known evangelical biblical scholar and I am an openly atheist biblical scholar.
Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised to read this passage on pages 42-43 of his book, Do We Still Need the New Testament?:
 “What difference did Jesus’ coming make to the world? It has been argued that ‘The Church has made more changes on earth for good than any other movements of force in history,’
including the growth of hospitals, universities, literacy and education, capitalism and free enterprise, representative government, separation of political powers, civil liberty, the abolition of slavery, modern science, the discovery of the Americas, the elevation of women, the civilizing of primitive cultures, and the setting of languages to writing.
It is easy to dispute this claim. The church resisted some of these developments just listed, some are not particularly Christian, and all were encouraged by humanistic forces and reflect Greek thinking as much as gospel thinking.
[Footnote 10]: On slavery in particular (even when one allows for overstatement) Hector Avalos, Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2011).”
Of course, Dr. Goldingay still thinks the Bible is generally a good set of books. But Dr. Goldingays comments show that even evangelical biblical scholars can acknowledge the powerful evidence that atheist biblical scholars have presented to refute the claim that biblical ethics led to abolition.




In Defense of Steve King

0 comments
Steve King (R-Iowa) is a congressman from the fourth congressional district in Iowa. In other words, he is my congressman. I have written a newspaper column about his belief that white Christian culture is superior to all others. His first remarks of note on this issue were on MSNBC.