June 2, 2010

• (updates) Some of my "Christian Delusion" prophecies come true

  I'm hard at work on my "study guide" for Ed Babinski's well-executed chapter 5, "The Cosmology of the Bible."  Stay tuned for that...  

  Meanwhile, since I've posted my criticisms of the first section of "The Christian Delusion", it seems three of my prophecies have come true:

  1)  Christian reviewer, Randal Rauser points out Dan Barker's baloney just like I did:

  Do atheists care about truth? On "The Christian Delusion" (Part 2)

  Compare to what I said:

  Are atheists really that interested in the facts?

  Most of the atheists' comments on Rauser's post are extremely disappointing.  So unnecessarily defensive.  We could have been thanking this guy for having such a good attitude (that he's really going to need to get through chapters 1, 3, and 4), but instead we punish him for being sensible as though he misunderstood.  It's so ridiculous.

  2)  Christian reviewer, Paul Manata over on Triablogue manages to get himself "logically" stuck in Loftus' unwillingness to grant the possibility that some Christians might have converted for thoughtful reasons:

  The Loftus Delusion and More Loftusian Incoherence

  Compare to what I tediously laid out:

  What about religious people who convert for thoughtful reasons?

  ...where I basically scolded Loftus for lingering after a certain point and not just pointing intellectual Christians to the intellectual battlefield of other arguments.  Manata will probably never get over the mismatched quotes he was able to pluck from Loftus.  Hence he'll be seeing the "lynch pin of the whole book, the fulcrum on which every other chapter does Christianity in" through those eyes.  Good job!  

  3)  And Manata manages to cherry pick one particularly egregious misstep on Loftus' part:

  The Anti-Christian Delusion

  ...and use it to disregard everything else in The Christian Delusion just like I said Christians probably would:

  Loftus' Scientism Blunder?

  Obviously it's impossible to write a perfect book that deals with every objection, but that doesn't mean you carelessly throw Christians red meat while you are attempting to convince them they are delusional.  Maybe I'll just take a magic marker and blot out those tidbits if I want to lend my copy out...

  Ben 

  • 1:14 pm
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