Intro: 

This series is an atheist's review of an important skeptical anthology aimed at Christian beliefs called, "The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails" (TCD), that is likely to be popularly discussed across the web.  I'll be reviewing the book in light of just about every other response to TCD on the web (pros and cons) and responding to new Christian objections as I find them.  I think this will be the best that I personally can contribute to improving the online dialogue between Christians and non-believers on popular battleground issues.

It seems that in order to deflect away from the primary skeptical charge of special pleading that atheist John Loftus' "Outsider Test for Faith" represents, Christian reviewers seemed to unanimously reach for any and all philosophical obstacles to throw in the way.  "Why are we just being critical of Christian beliefs?" so many of them asked.  Why not ALL beliefs?  To the extent this isn't a disingenuous diversion from basic critical thinking in regards to the Christian faith, we'll explore one often used example that many Christian reviewers made use of. 

Jayman777 objects:

Paul Manata raises the same objection:

David Marshall didn't even seem to formulate his coverage of this issue into an actual argument against Loftus' position:

I think Loftus is confusing a particular movie with the scenario it illustrates. It is certainly the case that some intelligent people DO take the scenario that the world is some sort of simulation seriously. One atheist philosopher, another told me, put the odds of the world being unreal at about one in five. (Don't ask me how he calculated this -- taking the rationality of his own brain for granted, still!)  I believe in the reality of the external world -- that's why I'm blogging. But Keller and Craig are right to say we can't prove it -- nor do Loftus' arguments manage the trick.

So he pokes fun at one atheist for pulling ratios out of his/her existential arse, notes two Christians can't prove it, and then notes that Loftus can't either.  So what?  Is this where superstitious Christians are "just supposed to know" that magically their belief in a god gets them around this problem?  I want my "get out of philosophical problem free" card, too, please! 

After John Loftus confronts jayman777's review, jayman777 replies:

Yup.  And this isn't hard to do.  I let Loftus' somewhat lame answer slide as I read through the chapter, but atheist Richard Carrier addresses this more directly in his book, Sense and Goodness without God (page 52):

That passes the Indian OTB since the persistent distinctions in our collective illusion are common ground.

I noticed one commenter on Loftus' blog said:

I don't think it is possible for us to know if we are brains in a vat or in the Matrix. How could we possibly know? That is also the consensus of contemporary philosophers. See David Chalmers.

I'd like to see the references on that just out of curiosity.

Into the Matrix:

Manata says:

For this thought experiment, we'll call one party Thomas Anderson and we'll call the other party Trinity.  Now, Trin and Tom both have something in common.  As Carrier pointed out above, they share the pattern  of what Tom calls "reality" and Trinity calls "the Matrix."  So they are both insiders as far as that pattern goes as I'm sure they would agree.  However Tom is an outsider to what Trinity calls "the real world."  Even if Trinity is completely confident that what she calls the real world is in fact the real world, it may not seem to make much sense for her to take an OTF (Or in this case, it would be an OTB).  We're not dealing with faith here, just her holistic past experiences of actually being unplugged and discovering an apocalyptic world that is hosting a computer simulation for most humans.  However, she can still take the test.  She doesn't need to get all indignant about it like Manata does.  It's just the fact she's going to pass so easily because she'd be using all the same standards of evidence that Tom uses for calling the Matrix real applied to her very obvious experiences from outside of the Matrix.  This is a technicality, but the point is, she can do it.  There's nothing logically impossible about it.  And more importantly, for Tom's sake, if she wants to make a more convincing argument without just unplugging him, she should be prepared to expose him to really good reasons for believing they are currently in a simulated world.  She needs to be able to look at things from his perspective and not just pretend like her assertions are going to be credible based on Tom's background knowledge.  Her reasons would need to be based on reasonable standards of evidence in that context. 

Why is that?  Well, incidentally there's another example from the animated anthology The Animatrix.  Specifically, in "A Kid's Story," we find a young man named Michael Popper who doesn't seem to have very credible reasons for thinking he needs to wake up from the Matrix.  Is a vague mystical notion that reality isn't as it should be, having bizarre existential conversations with a random person online, and being chased through school by some government agents a good enough reason to throw yourself off of a building believing you will wake up in the real world?  Would Mike, the day before the story takes place, have a convincing case that passes an OTF if he were trying to convince another student that the Matrix is real?  Probably not.  As far as epistemology goes, being correct about the Matrix was an accident (which is what makes this segment of the movie kind of disturbing, since this is cultish thinking).  He probably shouldn't have believed it himself.  Plenty of people have all sorts of mystical notions and convoluted escapist intuitions.  And there are plenty of people online who are willing to feed your choice delusion.  Getting mixed up with the authorities for some reason or another could happen by chance.  If the Matrix is anything like the world we know, then there would be all sorts of people who believe all sorts of crazy things that go well beyond what is immediately evident to all.  Responsible people know that and are willing to re-think their grasp on reality accordingly.

People like Manata can pretend like their convictions about Christianity are based on personal evidence that is much more like Trinity's situation than Mike's.  It's doubtful that's actually the case.  On the other hand, if I'm mistaken about that, it seems they could easily get into some convincing detail and they'd never bother appealing to anything like faith.  They would also more readily respect how outsiders should view what they say and construct meaningful ways to bridge the gap of credibility to the best of their ability.  And if for some inconvenient reason this simply can't be done, they would respect those unfortunate circumstances like rational caring people do and they wouldn't waste everyone's time arguing with assertions.  Rational, caring people conclude, "You know what?  I wouldn't believe me either if I were you." 

The point is, the OTF still applies in either event.  Neither a Trinity, nor a Mike should have much to fear from it.  Especially, to mince analogies, if they are backed up by a loving god who likely wouldn't put them in inconsiderate epistemic circumstances to begin with.  Then again, that's why Christians have the problem of "divine hiddeness."  Maybe they should fear the OTF since they have everything to lose in the world of intellectual credibility. 

Outro:

In ordinary life, the less people can verify my own claims, and the more it would cost them if they believed me, the less I naturally expect them to take my claims seriously.  I may still have to believe my own experiences (since the real world example I'm thinking of would be unverifiable mental/emotional states that impact interpersonal conflicts) since I personally can't deny it, but I respect the fact I would be asking others to potentially go out on a limb.  That can be a struggle, but that's just how it is. Welcome to what we call reality.

Ben

Intro: 

This series is an atheist's review of an important skeptical anthology critical of Christian beliefs called, "The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails" (TCD), that is likely to be popularly discussed across the web.  I'll be reviewing the book in light of just about every other response to TCD on the web (pros and cons) and responding to new Christian objections as I find them.  I think this will be the best that I personally can contribute to improving the online dialogue between Christians and non-believers on popular battleground issues.

Mainstream Scholarship Vs. Evangelical Scholarship?

Paul Tobin, author of the 6th chapter of TCD, claims:

I noted the disadvantage that conservatives have when it comes to this topic in my previous post and tried to explain where I thought Tobin was coming from with his chapter.  The Triabloggers have come up with a number of weaker arguments in response (which we'll get to in a moment), but Jason Engwer, for example, admits:

Saying that an Evangelical position is a minority view today has some significance...

Because basically that means as far as the popular literature goes, that scholars need to work out their issues amongst themselves and leave us out of it.  If that puts "God's people" in an inconvenient position, maybe the Christian god should have thought of that before decreeing or allowing otherwise. 

Jason Engwer's "Majority Appeal: Dismissing Evangelicals Because Of Their Minority Status"

Engwer continues:

...Tobin's atheism or Price's view that Jesus didn't exist. If modern unpopularity is bad, how much worse is an unpopularity that's lasted even longer?

A.  Humans are not experts on metaphysics and so an unqualified human consensus on the god question is irrelevant (should we ask humanity at large and throughout history about multiverses, too?). 

B.  Price's views that Jesus didn't exist are not the topic of TCD and surely he'd admit that he has a job to do in terms of attempting to convince the scholarly community his position is correct. 

C.  That one heavily mythologized historical figure was slightly more mythical is a much smaller qualitative deviation from the mainstream than trying to defend that Jesus was actually a god and had superpowers and that the Bible is inerrant. 

D.  The duration isn't necessarily as important as the plausibility of a quality consensus.  Historical tools have vastly improved in just the last 50 years and we can say much the same for the sciences in general in the last 200.  A modern consensus on the shape of cosmology is going to count a lot more in just the last few years than anything said 500 years ago even if that view lasted for 3,000 years.  We have satellites.  They lose. 

Engwer continues:

Richard Carrier's view of the genre of Mark's gospel, for instance, has been unpopular in Biblical scholarship...

In that link, Engwer cites Charles Talbert who is actually a scholar that Carrier often cites to support his views on the genre of the gospels.  The gospels can be mythological biographies. Carrier doesn't dispute that.  I didn't realize we needed a century or so of conservative scholarship to tell us that the gospels narrate the life of Jesus, but okay... 

I wonder how long it will take before it is admitted by evangelicals they narrate obvious mythical elements as well.  **holds breath**

Engwer says:

...it's even more significant that his view was unpopular among the ancient sources who addressed the subject. Similarly, Tobin makes much of modern scholarship's doubts about Luke's census, yet the census account seems to have been widely accepted in antiquity. (For a discussion of the significance of those ancient sources, see my series of posts here.) Or when both the ancient Christian and the ancient Jewish sources seem to agree that Jesus' tomb was found empty after His body had been placed there, why do critics like Tobin reject that ancient consensus? Why should we think the sort of highly speculative objections they propose weigh as much as or more than the agreed testimony of ancient Christian and non-Christian sources, who were much closer to the event in question?

Ancient people weren't necessarily in a position to know better than we do and sometimes we know a lot more than they did.  I can Google more ancient documents in a second than most ancient people would ever even know existed.  Any given early Christian may not have even been aware of the entire NT and so on.  When you don't know any better, you are bound to take arbitrary premises for granted if they didn't have any particular reason to challenge them.  That doesn't really mean anything. 

And in fact, skeptical anthologies like "The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave" are still doing that today.  Though you'll find apologists like Steve Hays continually baffled throughout his book long review that skeptics are arguing through layers of ambiguity with various types of provisional conclusions that don't necessarily have to all go together. 

I feel compelled to go so far as to say (in my unqualified opinion) that in all likelihood all skeptical theories are wrong.  I certainly haven't read everything, but from what I have read I get the distinct impression that everyone is arguing in a vacuum of ignorance.  I don't think we do know what happened at the origin of the Christian religion.  It seems likely that most scholars are taking for granted various premises that they don't have a good reason to challenge (out of ignorance) and applying their methods as consistently as they can from there.  The problem is that pretty much none of the source material is that trustworthy and trivial "naturalistic" things are just as easy to invent as mythical things.  I can tell you that I'm holding a ray gun and a baseball bat.  Incidentally both claims are false even though baseball bats exist and I own some.  History isn't necessarily obligated to put a big red arrow over every mundane thing that seems plausible at face value but is nonetheless wholesale invention for who knows what reason.  There may also be some unknown chunk of significant information we don't have.  Who knows.  I can easily quote Steve Hays jumping at any chance to point out the likelihood of a Jewish cover up of certain Christian evidences to save face.  Of course, earlyish Christians would NEVER have any similar motive to do the same.  *eyeroll* 

We don't know what we don't know and even the best "most probable" skeptical case from our vantage point may well be incorrect. 

Engwer says:

Tobin keeps criticizing Steve's citation of Evangelical scholars, but Steve hasn't just cited Evangelicals. Since Steve cited C.E.B. Cranfield, who wasn't an Evangelical, Tobin responded by categorizing him as a "theologian". Apparently, that's Tobin's way of trying to lessen the significance of a non-Evangelical scholar. If he can't dismiss that scholar as an Evangelical, an "apologist", etc., he labels him as a "theologian". But how often has Tobin referred to his own sources that way? He dismisses Cranfield as somebody "whose understanding of the historical method is suspect". Compare Cranfield's credentials to Tobin's. And what about other non-Evangelical scholars who disagree with Tobin? I cited the example of Raymond Brown in my response to Tobin in chapter 6 of The Infidel Delusion. Other non-Evangelicals have disagreed with Tobin's view of the infancy narratives as well, such as Ethelbert Stauffer (Jesus And His Story [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960]), Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, and Joseph Kelly. In fact, as I pointed out in The Infidel Delusion, Tobin's skepticism about the infancy narratives is so radical as to place him in disagreement with the vast majority of modern scholars. If you go to Tobin's web site, you can find more examples of his disagreements with many non-Evangelical scholars. 

I'm assuming that most of Tobin's positions represent the mainstream conclusions and so it would appear that these oddball instances (assuming Engwer is correct) really don't matter.  If Tobin was smarter, he'd have simply ran the ball right down the middle aiming purely at public education of what properly represents modern scholarship (similar to what Bart Ehrman seems to do) rather than bothering with pet theories he doesn't seem qualified to defend.  Oh well.  We'll see how that goes later in this series on chapter six as we sort through all the details.

Engwer says:

Tobin frequently claims that a position is held by a majority or represents "mainstream critical scholars", for example, without presenting any documentation for that conclusion.

That is a problem.  *shrug*  Tobin could certainly have exercised more care with his "scholarly majority heuristic."   It seems his case is still stronger here.

Outro:

Engwer seems only to have waived a bit of dust up in the air.  Not that impressive.  If I'm an average Christian or nonbeliever there's really no reason to be confident about the conclusions of conservative scholarship (over the mainstream) I'm never going to have a chance to dive into and rigorously sort out. 

Steve Hays is up to bat next on the same issue. 

Ben

Intro: 

This series is an atheist's review of an important skeptical anthology critical of Christian beliefs called, "The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails" (TCD), that is likely to be popularly discussed across the web.  I'll be reviewing the book in light of just about every other response to TCD on the web (pros and cons) and responding to new Christian objections as I find them.  I think this will be the best that I personally can contribute to improving the online dialogue between Christians and non-believers on popular battleground issues.

Where was Paul Tobin coming from with his chapter in TCD?

In part one of Tobin's response to The Infidel Delusion (TID), he says:

In part three of Tobin's response to TID, he says:

That makes enough sense to me.  What should we do with this information?  Remember, atheist contributor Richard Carrier had said: 

So how do we apply the OTF to Tobin's chapter?  Similar to dealing with the modern scientific consensus on miracle claims, in terms of scholarship on the vast majority of issues, we'd accept the claims of the consensus of experts and move on with our lives.  This allows Tobin his general assert-a-thon to function well enough in context of the argumentative continuum of TCD.  For those Christian reviewers who will insist that Tobin would need to respond to all of their objections to part 1 to make this stand, please note, I've done exactly that. 

In terms of description, I don't think anyone can contest what the mainstream scholarship generally entails.  For example, Christian reviewer Jason Engwer seems to take this for granted when he says:

Practically speaking for most of us, that really should be the end of the debate.  In this sense Tobin wins all 36 points even if he deviates somewhere from the general consensus or states things wrong.  How can non-scholars hope to do better or be more responsible with the many issues brought up in this chapter and in hundreds if not thousands of scholarly books on the many complicated historical and archeological subjects?  We can't hope to be experts on this, or on physics, philosophy, and whatever other major subject that a "personal" relationship with God would force us to engage to know that we aren't delusional.  You might say, "That's unfair," but then again was it really fair for God to burden people with ancient hearsay that most scholars don't believe stands up to scrutiny?  Even prominent defenders of Christianity like William Lane Craig note the obvious ridiculousness of this situation for ordinary people:

Naturally we've covered the legitimacy of the inner witness many times before in this review series (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).  In short, how can Christians be sure their god-feelings are not just subjective reactions to provocative theistic ideas or are any better than contrary subjective inner feelings from other denominations and religions?  And if we have to marshal all the evidence to responsibly sort this mess out, then we're right back to how ridiculous a situation that is.  Craig is kind enough to sabotage himself in this way:

[note:  A youtuber named antybu86 does a great job of pointing out Craig's general circularity on all his major arguments.]  I also pointed out to Steve Hays that the arguments he appeals to from the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology to show that religious experience would suffice for ordinary people also only fall into the category of compatibility with other theistic arguments that have to actually succeed.  So Christian epistemology is drowning in its own epistemic irresponsibility (and see my my argument map here that defends naturalistic epistemic duties and that entire tangential debate between Hays and myself, since Hays would surely take us right back there). 

Outro:

Now, perhaps the current consensus of Biblical scholarship happens to be wrong.  Certainly as many have pointed out, various contributors to TCD hold some minority positions on various issues.  In all likelihood every scholar in every consensus holds at least some minority views on some issues.  They all should know they have a job to do, an uphill climb so to speak, if they expect those minority views to be taken seriously on whatever those issues are.  Are the serious Christian thinkers among us doing that?  Or more importantly, in a book like "The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails" do nuances like that even really matter in the face of the strength of the basic criticism presented?  If conservatives don't want liberals to be able to appeal to their bias, why should conservatives get to appeal to theirs to blow off mainstream scholarship?  If it comes down to the arguments, where does that leave the average believer who is in over their heads? 

Ben

Intro:

Previously, I posted some chunks of Christian apologist, Steve Hays', views on demons, skeptics, and UFology from "This Joyful Eastertide" (TJET), his ebook length response to the skeptical anthology, "The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave."  Today we're going to get into another example of how he attempts to apply that in debate (see also, "Christian demons vs. Muslim demons"). 

The original conversation started in another skeptical anthology, "The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails" and the ebook length response to it called, "The Infidel Delusion" and then continued into the blog realm with Debunking Christianity and Triablogue "discussing" the issues further.

In his response to Loftus, "Scoring the Outsider Test," Hays says:

Hays is being a little superficial.  For example, in TJET, Hays had said:

*shrug*  It's not like Hays isn't known for the accusation (or the overt suggestion, in the case of Carrier).  And as I showed in a previous post, "Steve Hays' 'Demon-Haunted' Apologetics" it should be pretty clear that if Hays isn't saying it overtly, I don't see why we shouldn't assume he isn't thinking it.  Satan is behind everything!

In his third post to me, "Ne'er shaw yir teeth unless ye can bite!", Hays avoids the issue in favor of a personal attack as though this has something to do with me:

While I'm sure that a Christian like Hays has some lovely things to say about Obama, Stewart, Franken, and Weiner, Loftus' original point is that Hays is willing to think his opponents are demon-possessed (and ignores perfectly mundane explanations like "sleep paralysis hallucination").  Hays avoided the issue to attack Loftus personally and I demonstrated Loftus' inference about Hays was in fact perfectly reasonable. We're all just making perfectly innocent inferences around here, right?

Outro:

Hays doesn't like his inverse scarlet letter, but that's just too bad isn't it?  Maybe he should bother to prove that demons actually exist or that Loftus is actually wrong about something important.  There's a thought.

Ben

Intro:

Last time I posted some chunks of Christian apologist, Steve Hays' views on demons, skeptics, and UFology from "This Joyful Eastertide," his ebook length response to the skeptical anthology, "The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave."  Today we're going to get into how he attempts to apply that in debate. 

This conversation started in "The Infidel Delusion" (TID) which was an ebook length response to another skeptical anthology, "The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails," and from there it continued in blog posts from Debunking Christianity (DC) and Triablogue "discussing" the issues further.

Atheist, John Loftus, at DC says in response to TID:

It would have been nice if he would have said something like that in his chapter as an example of how to consistently apply the "outsider test for faith," but that didn't quite make it in.

In his response to Loftus, "Scoring the Outsider Test," Hays objects:

[Loftus] acts as if Islam and Christianity are symmetrical. Yet that’s obviously not the case. For instance, Muhammad treated the Bible as the standard of comparison. He invited doubters to ask Christians and Jews to vouch for his prophetic credentials. But that’s hardly reversible. It’s not as if Bible writers ever invited Mohammedans to judge the Bible by the Koran.

Just because some aspects are asymmetrical doesn't mean all of them are.  Duh.  Loftus appeals to a point of more substance, since if demons inspired Christianity or Islam, then they can make up any further "tests" or asymmetries that they like which will be superfluous.   
 
In his third post to me, "Ne'er shaw yir teeth unless ye can bite!," Hays objects again:

No, that’s not how Loftus framed the argument. Loftus said:

Muslims claim the same exact thing. They say the reason Christians believe is because demons are deceiving them.

Muslims are in no position to say that, for that would be self-refuting. The Koran claims to be a confirmation of Biblical revelation. If, however, Christians are demonically inspired rather than divinely inspired, then that undercuts the ostensible foundation for the Koran.

Wow.  Alright, well the illustrious all-mundane-things-knowing wikipedia says:

Muslims believe that those texts were neglected, corrupted (tahrif) or altered in time by the Jews and Christians and have been replaced by God's final and perfect revelation, which is the Qur'an.

Hence, it's not so self-refuting to claim that demons helped Christians corrupt the original revelation and inspires them to reject the updated version.

Outro:

Maybe Hays could try a little harder next time?  Christians have lots of epistemic problems like these.  See my argument map, "Could Jesus be lying about hell?" and my coverage of "2 Thessalonians 2:11 and Strong Delusion" for some more examples.

Ben

Intro:

Christian apologists from around the world gathered in San Diego to discuss honestly their misgivings about defending the faith.  It was an unprecedented, no-holds-barred, "skeptifest" of Biblical proportions.  It had been long supposed that Christians could stand up to any intellectual attacks and hence had nothing to fear from brandishing their confidence for all to see.  Everyone was encouraged to get their most skeptical thoughts and doubts "out there" and see what others had to say.  By some accounts, from some of my atheist friends who were allowed to attend, this apparently snow-balled into mass apostasy.  I'm still a little skeptical, but I've pulled some intriguing quotes from the transcript.  Take a look...

At first everyone was a bit squeamish to speak and a few offered some rather vague random points of contention that really didn't matter that much to the big picture.  Finally, William Lane Craig just blurted out why he'd apparently stopped trusting the Holy Spirit:

Of course, anyone (or, at least any sort of theist) can claim to have a self-authenticating witness of God to the truth of his religion. [...] they've just had some emotional experience...

Dead silence.  Um...that's the HOLY FREAKING SPIRIT you are talking about.  And yet Richard Swinburne cheered Craig on and was remarkably sarcastic noting (with air quotes no less) we'd never want to be forced into certain absurdities based on that kind of evidence:

...if it seems to me Poseidon exists, then it is good evidence that Poseidon exists.

He had the whole crowd rolling with laughter since they all knew that the Greek pantheon had a long history of success in the hearts and minds of ancient Greeks.  Were they really going there?  Maybe I'm missing something.

Staunch evidentialist, Lydia McGrew, wanted to turn the conversation to more tangible matters and get the ball rolling on discussing her lack of confidence in the resurrection of Jesus: 

Well of course the prior probability is very low and we all know that. [...]

There’s a most unfortunate passage by G. K. Chesterton in which he says, “If my Apple woman, the woman who sells me apples tells me that she saw a miracle I should believe her. I believe her about apples so I should believe her about miracles.” That’s a paraphrase; it’s not an exact quotation.

I really wish Chesterton hadn’t said that because that’s just wrong as an approach. You don’t just automatically say, “Oh, somebody says they saw a miracle, I’m going to buy it.” You have to have much stronger evidence than that.

Indeed.  I can agree with that.  Triablogger, Steve Hays immediately piped up with three pertinent examples of the kind of evidence we would need to justify various kinds of similar extraordinary claims: 

[In reference to having an alien spaceship]  On the face of it, I could discharge my burden of proof by showing you the spacecraft.  Of course, you might insist on having it properly inspected (to eliminate a hoax).

So what evidence would I need to prove that I own this unique coin? [...]  Ideally, the only evidence I'd need to prove that I own this unique coin is the coin itself. My ability to produce the coin upon request.  Maybe you'd demand that the coin be authenticated. Fine.

...suppose I call you up and tell you I've just won the lottery (and on the first occasion I've ever bought a ticket). Surely that's an extraordinary claim. Naturally you're skeptical, so I invite you over to my house, where you see with your own eyes both my ticket and the newspaper reporting the winning numbers. I'd say that would be sufficient for you to rationally believe that I've won the lottery.

So it was a case of a highly improbable event that required evidence of a[n] admittedly powerful [...] kind in order to be rationally believed.

I can't help but note that it was almost as though the words of atheist, Richard Carrier, were on the minds of all those in attendance:

If Jesus was a god and really wanted to save the world, he would have appeared and delivered his Gospel personally to the whole world.

Recognizing of course that Jesus didn't do this, Craig spoke up again to say what had been weighing on everyone's mind since the conference began: 

...you are thinking, “Well, goodness, if believing in God is a matter of weighing all of these sorts of arguments, then how can anybody know whether God exists? You'd have to be a philosopher or a scientist to figure out whether God exists!” In fact, I agree with you. A loving God would not leave it up to us to figure out by our own ingenuity and cleverness whether or not he exists.

People were clearly shocked.  And it got everyone lingering on the problem of evil.  Hays spoke up again to point out that the long standing explanations for evil from Calvinism and Arminianism both suck: 

...it sounds bad [...] to say that God predestined sin and evil. However, it also sounds bad to say that God allows sin and evil.

Everyone was dismayed by this.  How could they all have been defending such bad explanations for evil all of this time?  How in the world had Christian apologetics kept up with it?  They weren't all that stupid and/or delusion were they!?!  No one especially wanted to hear atheist, John Loftus, say, "I told you so."  Even though their faiths seemed to be cracking under the weight of their collective doubts, they all agreed no one wanted to hear that guy gloat. 

Hays had clearly been thinking things through and gave everyone an astute analogy to help explain where most everyone had gone wrong with their apologetic sensibilities: 

Almost too proud of himself for how well he'd explained things, something clearly snapped in his mind.  Hays collapsed on the floor in front of everyone and started mumbling almost incoherently.  It seemed he was talking about himself though he couldn't bring himself to even speak in the first person:

...he indulges in so many ad hominem attacks [...] which includes that constitutional incapacity for self criticism in its judgmental criticism of others which emboldens him to openly expose his emotional insecurities, oblivious to the disconnect between the image he is laboring to project and what is really coming through.

It also seemed that he was admitting that all of his previous apologetic efforts could not be said to:

...move us from a state of ignorance to a state of knowledge.

He'd realized that too many people had been wondering if Hays was:

...really that dense, or if he is just playing dumb to advance his agenda.

And whether or not it was always just a "rhetorical tactic:"

...to impose an all-or-nothing dilemma on the reader.

Hays was okay apparently and someone nursed him back to health in a corner of the room as the conference moved on.  Was he really talking about himself?!?  We may never know.

The next day after Hays had recomposed himself, he was overheard talking to fellow Triablogger, Jason Engwer, about all the horrible things that he'd said about agnostic, Ed Babinski, to get out of the force of the case in Ed's "The Cosmology of the Bible" chapter in "The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails."  Hays finally admitted it was implausible to dismiss all the evidence that the Bible embraces a false cosmology:

Mixed metaphors are mutually inconsistent if taken literally, but a wide variety of metaphors can and do figurate the very same concept.

So I guess they did understand the criticism after all to all their hairsplitting?  Not sure. 

Elsewhere, William Lane Craig was overheard discussing the many universes hypothesis with Robin Collins:

We appear then to be confronted with two alternatives: posit either a cosmic Designer or an exhaustively random, infinite number of other worlds. Faced with these options, is not theism just as rational a choice as multiple worlds?

They both agreed they hadn't taken the hypothesis seriously enough in the past and that we really weren't in any position to decide between two rational options.   I didn't think Christians were capable of agnosticism on that issue...

Near the end of the conference there were a lot of tears shed and everyone was looking around at each other a bit anxiously, thankful they had not brought any babies to test their new atheist appetites on or any children to dismember to make sure they were made of all atoms.  Triablogger, Paul Manata went around poking walls, waiving his arms up and down, and testing various places on the floor to check on the uniformity of the universe for everyone.  He kept yelling, "It's all clear!" over and over again to the annoyance of all.  Finally they told him to shut up and that they should just go with it until further notice.  However everyone was still bracing for impact and wondering how they could prepare for the inevitable Nazi-brainwashing-rapist-regime that was sure to sweep the whole world away from them now that they'd changed their minds about Jesus.

Fortunately libertarian renegade and (former) theologian extraordinaire, Vox Day spoke up to call attention to atheist, Sam Harris' book, "The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values":

I have to applaud Sam for having the intellectual courage to seize the bull by the horns; unlike his fellow New Atheists (except Daniel Dennett), he has recognized the weak point of the lack of universal warrant and is attempting to do something about it.

So amazingly, all was not lost. 

Outro:

If anyone has any other interesting quotes from the conference, post them in the comments, please.

Ben

Intro:

I've taken the liberty of argument-mapping my exchange with Christian apologist, Steve Hays, on the topic.  The history of this particular conversation started with Triablogue's "The Infidel Delusion" (TID) response to atheist, John Loftus' "The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails" (TCD).  Hays started responding to my review of TCD and that generated three rather long posts of his and contributed a significant chunk to my review of chapter 4.  Hays attempted to undermine TCD in his intro in a number of ways, one of which was questioning the epistemic duties of non-theistic worldviews.

SPOILER ALERT:  All you need is some motivation and some utility to it to care about truth in order to bother addressing or refuting the beliefs of anyone on any topic.  Iknowright?  But that doesn't stop Christian apologists from "objecting" with nonsense anyhow.  It also ends up churning up some interesting other nonsense as well (for those interested). 

"Atheists have no principled reason to care about truth" is a stock objection from Hays so any time he wants to toss this onto the path, it'll be pretty clear where that gets him.

Click on the thumbnail to embiggen:

If anyone would like to contribute more iterations of the debate, feel free.  Also, if there are any typos or grammar errors, I'll make corrections. 

I've used Compendium to start mapping out a huge network of interrelated debates.  A fellow atheist challenged me to a public debate on the TAG which is the Christian presuppositionalist beachhead of all forms of naturalistic incredulity.  Hence, as you can see:

Each of those nodes opens up a whole other argument map (each of which I'll eventually post I'm sure).  I had to be prepared for just about any tangent that could come up. That's the whole idea of the TAG strategy is to be vague and presumptuous, and then pretend that nonbelievers have to solve every problem in philosophy and metaphysics before they are "allowed" to doubt all the other evidential claims of Biblical Christianity.  It would almost be "fair" (since some of the issues are legitimate enough) if they didn't ignore the worldview shopping cart of all things Christian they could honestly at-least-as-equally doubt as well.  But giving all the tough questions of one positive worldview a pass while holding another to the grindstone is dubious to say the least.  Are you not sure about all the implications of metaphysical naturalism?  Okay...we have a word for that.  It's called "agnosticism."  Not "Christian." 

Outro:

I'd covered the vast majority of the material already in my review of TCD, so it was mainly a matter of appropriating it for the argument map network.  Eventually I'll have a network that covers pretty much all the most typical philosophical issues that come up in these debates and I can provide that meta-file to download.   It's on the "to do" list. 

Ben

Intro: 

This series is an atheist's review of an important anthology critical of Christian beliefs called, "The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails" (TCD), that has been popularly discussed across the web.  I'll be reviewing the book in light of just about every other response to TCD on the web (pros and cons) and responding to new Christian objections as I find them.  I think this will be educational and perhaps the best that I personally can contribute to improving the online dialogue between Christians and non-believers on popular battleground issues.

But before we get into the issue of scholarly authority and bias and the details of atheist, Paul Tobin's chapter, a surprising number of Christian reviewers seem relatively okay with an errant word of the Christian god.  Let's take a look.

Looney said this:

I assumed Looney was an inerrantist, but perhaps not.  It seems he is of the opinion at least that inerrancy is optional.

Diglotting said this:

Jayman777 said this:

I'm not clear on what Diglotting and jayman777's views on inspiration are (and I recall that jayman777 doesn't have his views 100% crystallized yet).  Presumably they are fine with their god's word being as generally true and reliable as other human works.  One wonders why a most excellent god aimed so low in terms of quality control, but okay.  The expectations of fundamentalists seem more philosophically justified at face value.

Randal Rauser said this:

Rauser's view of inspiration is the most unsettling since the Christian god can appropriate literally anything that he wants to.  Perhaps mythicism is true and Christianity started out as a mystery cult with a cosmic Jesus who never even existed.  Why couldn't this god just use the urban legend style gospels as "authoritative" and divinely insist the church take historicity seriously?  Maybe Rauser wouldn't have a problem with that, or with my proof that the character of god in the Old Testament lies to Abraham.  I don't know.  But we have to admit here that modern Christians have some extremely lax standards of "inspiration" as far as truth goes and then still manage to be confounded when outsiders looking in have an eyebrow raised.  The only thing left to grant errant documents divine authority is Rauser's flimsy "god perception evidence" and perhaps the "unfair cultural mystique" of the Bible that was discussed in Jason Long's chapter 3.

Each of these Christian folk are willing to defend Biblical contradictions when they think skeptics have gone too far, but ultimately inerrancy (or at least Tobin's standard of inerrancy) isn't an issue for them.  That's a slight majority of Christian reviewers.  The three Triabloggers in The Infidel Delusion will presumably not be giving ground. 

This situation might be inspiring if I thought that the more liberal Christian reviewers were necessarily going to compromise on some of the more important errors in the Bible (as in, something that might help the Christian population get along with the modern world) rather than just covering the Christian god's behind and maintaining the general status quo of mere self-satisfying belief.  I'm not familiar enough with any of their stances on various modern issues to know for sure.

Ben

Intro:

So for research purposes on my review of atheist, Paul Tobin's chapter 6 in "The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails" (TCD) on the "Bible and Modern Scholarship" I've needed to investigate more rigorously the documentary hypothesis (DH) since Tobin neglects to defend it in confrontation with his Christian critics.  Basically the idea is that the Old Testament, especially the first five books traditionally attributed to Moses (for the most part), are actually the work of at least 4 different later sources.  This is justified for a number of reasons, especially but not limited to various contradictions in the stories.  Tobin provides some in TCD that aren't exactly smoking guns and so I've gone looking for better examples.  And the prognosis on that front so far has not been good. 

Tobin cites three books at Christian reviewer, Steve Hays to demonstrate his views represent the consensus, but those books (or the two I can look into via the internet) are much more summaries of conclusions rather than arguments for positions.  The wiki page on the DH has some references I've been looking into and one such reference gives two example pieces of evidence for the DH.  Both suck on the face of it.   

In section "C. Evidence for Composite Character," from The Anchor Bible Dictionary's notes on the Documentary Hypothesis, John Barton says:

Impossible?  Only if you are making crap up.  It doesn't say in 12:1 (or any of the verses referenced) that Terah had to die before Abram left, so I don't see why Abram couldn't have left when Terrah was 145.  Mission Impossible?  Hardly.  Perhaps it is some kind of cultural taboo to ever leave your parents' household before they die and so that is just assumed into context?  Is there some Hebrew death phrase or play on words in 12:1 that doesn't show up in English translations?  Barton doesn't bother to tell us and that's pretty lame. 

The other bit of "evidence" presented is found in these verses:  1 Samuel 9:15-16; 10:1, vs. these verses:  1 Samuel 8:1-22; 10:17-19.  Basically the first point to the people being rebellious against Yahweh and getting a king out of it and the second set points out how Yahweh decrees it to happen.  There's no contradiction theologically since everything good and bad happens on Yahweh's watch and he uses it all towards his own ends.  Other stories portray Yahweh both hardening Pharoah's heart in confrontation with Moses and Pharoah hardening his own heart and not letting the Hebrew slaves go free in Exodus.  Theologically Yahweh is causing things and yet still placing blame on the human agent in use.  It's all part of the plan.  Even if the two sections in 1 Samuel were two accounts woven together the "weaver" could have been fully aware of the "contradiction" and thought nothing of it.  I doubt Christian apologists are impressed.

I'll keep digging into other examples until I find the best ones (assuming they exist).  If anyone wants to point me in the right direction of the best defense of the DH on the internet, please do so.  It would be especially nice if it were presented in light of conservative criticism of it. 

Ben

Intro: 

This series is an atheist's review of an important anthology critical of Christian beliefs called, "The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails" (TCD), that is likely to be popularly discussed across the web.  I'll be reviewing the book in light of just about every other response to TCD on the web (pros and cons) and responding to new Christian objections as I find them.  I think this will be the best that I personally can contribute to improving the online dialogue between Christians and non-believers on popular battleground issues.

First impressions:  This chapter covers way too much ground and doesn't appear to do it very well (since some of the problems are fairly evident in just a first reading).  It is barely argued, mainly asserted and takes for granted the perspective of the first four chapters, where in any other case, we'd just accept secular scholarship and dismiss every defense of supposedly inerrant magical books.  It is a summary of part of another book and Tobin references books that seem to be summaries of conclusions reached by scholars rather than the under-structure of those arguments.   In other words, Tobin opens up a huge cans of worms and leaves himself open to a lot of criticism even if every conclusion he touches on about the Bible and modern scholarship happens to be completely correct.  Many Christian reviewers simply pointed to other evangelical scholarship and said "they disagree."  Any Christian who has some investment in apologetics already and who took offense to the first 3 chapters and especially the "outsider test for faith" in chapter 4 will be unimpressed with Tobin's contribution to TCD (unlike Babinski's chapter 5 which stands on its own merits). 

I will take each issue in turn to the best of my ability and call the debate as it stands presented in TCD vs. the all the responses from Christian reviewers.  As you can see from this post, I will be bringing the entire conversation to my readers, chunk by chunk and will use Christian reviewer, Steve Hays' 36 numbered points (that Tobin uses as well in his responses to Hays) and supplement that framework with the random tidbits less thorough reviewers have contributed.  The table of contents below will eventually be a full set of links for future posts (and I've thrown in some other links for basic reference purposes).  By the end of this survey hopefully it should be clear where each issue stands insofar as what is available online is concerned.  Arguments that require the supplement of books and unavailable academic papers will take a hit in terms of my provisional non-professional conclusions.  It's important though to see how things look through the eyes of the internet-only crowd and people who are in the know can easily figure out which chunks need to be online in the future and easily accessible to all.

Table of contents for my review series on chapter 6 of TCD:

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