Ep. 5 | The Evidence for the Historical Jesus

FacePalm of the Day - Debunking Christianity: Is There Any Evidence For Christianity At All? A Review.

John Loftus keep making really bad arguments that I have a hard time believing that he actually gets people to agree with his mistakes. I don't get it how anyone can find the following credible. 

Here's the evidence. Are you ready? Christians have the argument from ignorance which is a known informal fallacy, that is, the as yet unexplainable mysteries of existence.

Often times Loftus appeals to his own ignorance about God and pretend that it is true that Christians believe the unreasonable. For example Loftus just wrote the following a couple of days ago:

How dare I question the reasonableness of revealing himself in the pre-scientific past such that I must accept what ancient people claimed to have seen in a remote part of the world, or be condemned to hell if I don't? How dare I disbelieve because of the so-called mysteries of an eternal three-in-one God, who became incarnate, and who died for my sins, even though none of these doctrines make any rational sense at all.  link

Why not consider that Christianity is the part of this that isn't unreasonable?

Then you have private subjective anecdotal religious experiences, something every believer claims to have, which basically nullifies that subjective private evidence.

Private subjective experiences are not enough. I don't know anyone who has pledge their lives to Jesus to have done so solely based on that. That's not saying that the born-again experience is personal. It is. But it also results in a transformed life. You are not the same person. Your desires are not the same. Your personal testimony about what God does to you and through you is your ultimate apologetic and I'd put it up against any other religious experience. They don't compare. 

Then you have historical evidence from the ancient pre-scientific superstitious past. Historical evidence is paltry evidence indeed, especially when it comes to the ancient superstitious past. Am I missing anything?

Interesting rant. Where's the beef? So there is no way that people in ancient times can reliably tell any historical truth? It's all  superstition? Really? I don't believe that. Why should anyone believe that?  Far from a given. Yup, lots missing here. 

Christians basically got nothing, nothing substantial that is. Not in comparison to science. All Christians do is attack science at this point which is a mark of a deluded person. Who in their right mind would not see this as it is? There is no parity between the evidence to believe and the evidence that causes me to disbelieve at all.

Yes, let's look at what science offers in terms of evidence.  Science cannot and does not prove the existence of a relationship. Christianity - at it's core - is a relationship with God.  That is what being a Christian is about. Science cannot disprove evidence for my relationship with any person, why would you think that science can disprove my relationship with God? That's not saying that science is not useful. I would argue that the design and structure of the physical universe and time are more than enough to establish scientific evidence for God's existence. If you want to know more about that God's character, you need to get to know Him. That that is what relationship is about. 

Debunking Christianity: Is There Any Evidence For Christianity At All? A Review.

Five Strands of Evidence for Jesus Christ’s Resurrection | Reflections

Dr Kenneth Samples has posted an article that summarizes 5 points of evidence for Jesus' Resurrection. Not new, but well explained.

Five Strands of Evidence for Jesus Christ’s Resurrection | Reflections

Does the Bible teach that faith is opposed to logic and evidence? « Wintery Knight

Wintery Knight posted a great article about what faith really is. Today, people are really confused but this will help you if you think faith is antithetical to logic and evidence.

Does the Bible teach that faith is opposed to logic and evidence? « Wintery Knight

FacePalm of the Day: Debunking Christianity - The Power of the Delusion is So Strong We Cannot Ordinarily Reason Believers Out of Their Faith

John Loftus is always good for writing something that is always such an example Facepalm-inducing failure.

David Eller makes the point in chapter one of The Christian Delusion that we cannot ordinarily reason believers out of their faith because they were never reasoned into it in the first place. I share his conclusion. I cannot reason with people who have faith because faith is an irrational leap over the probabilities.

And just where does Loftus get the definition that faith is an irrational leap over the probabilities?  What probabilities are he referring to?

I must show believers that their faith is nearly impossible before they will ever consider it to be improbable, and that’s an utterly unreasonable standard. That’s the power of the delusion.

So...let's get this straight: He can't prove that Christianity is true only that it probably isn't true according to the standard he has in his mind. He is frustrated because believers won't stop believing if he can't prove that Christianity is impossible when he can't even truly prove that it is improbable. And he thinks we are the ones who are deluded.

I can dialogue with believers even with such a conclusion. This particular post is part of that dialogue. It is meant to shock believers out of their dogmatic slumbers. If they hear this enough times from former believers like me then it may sink in to a few of them. Therefore I must state my conclusion from time to time. The rest is education. I am an educator. So that’s what I do regardless of whether believers are listening in or not. I hope they do though.

Listen to what? I've been watching John Loftus' blogs for a couple of years now and I have yet to see anything that remotely proved that Christianity is improbable, let alone impossible. And as for a dialogue, he and many other atheists really only want monologue not dialogue.

In most cases it takes some kind of personal crisis for believers to do what they should have been doing all along, critically evaluating their faith as an outsider. When that happens then what I have written will sink in. I’m priming the pump so to speak, and providing believers with the information that will help them when they encounter their crisis.

My experiences and many others that I know have had an opposite experience. Personal crisis leads you to know God better. This is what the book of Job also demonstrates. From what I've heard of Loftus' personal crisis, he had a crisis of faith when refused to accept responsibility for sin when the church he was at tried to hold him accountable for it because he was one of the leaders in that church. Instead of  repenting and accepting the correction from his church instead he rejected God's authority over his life by rejecting Him. This is true regarding all apostates. 

Original source: http://freethoughtblogs.com/loftus/2012/01/10/the-power-of-the-delusion-is-so-strong-we-cannot-ordinarily-reason-believers-out-of-their-faith/

Fistbump of the Day: Faithful Thinkers: Evidence For vs. Proof Of

Luke Nix blogged a wonderful post in which he discussed the difference between "evidence" and "proof"! He wrote:

Not too long ago, the distinction between proof and evidence was offered to me. Evidence being a series of arguments that, if sound, point towards the truth of Christianity. Evidence has an objective sense about it. Arguments that are sound do provide evidence of their conclusion. However, a lot of the time, the conclusion offered is not exclusive.

Proof is the more subjective cousin of evidence. Proof may consist of evidence, it may not. Proof is what convinces people of the truth of a claim. Many people are convinced of the truth of things without any evidence, while others have lots of evidence. Either way, the truth of that something has been proven to them.

When a person claims that an argument "doesn't prove anything," they are typically saying that that particular argument is not persuasive to them. Unfortunately, we tend to interpret that same statement as the person saying that there is no evidence for the conclusion. I discovered this mistake when I attempted to show the logical path to the conclusion. The person wasn't looking for evidence, they were looking for something to convince them specifically.

Read the full article at the following link!

Faithful Thinkers: Evidence For vs. Proof Of

FacePalm of the Day #69 - Debunking Christianity: One of the Most Asinine Christian Claims I've Heard

Recently, John Loftus has yet again made another statement that make me wonder if he truly understands what he is saying.

It's claimed that people like Dawkins, or Hitchens, or Harris don't know enough to reject Christianity. How much should a person know about a religion or the various branches of it in order to reject them all? Really. I'd like to know. These very Christians do not know much about other branches of their own religion, so how can they reject them? And they do not know much about the various other religions around the world or the branches within them, so how can they reject them? Most Christians do not know enough about their own religion! All a person has to do to reject their own inherited religion is to subject it to the same level of skepticism they use when rejecting all other religions. This represents The Outsider Test for Faith I argue. Just think what Christians are saying. They're saying that in order to reject any given religion a person must know a lot about it. How much, I ask? And how long would it take to learn a lot enough about all religions in order to reject them all? And wouldn't Jesus himself be opposed to granting salvation only to people who knew a lot about the religions of the world to gain the proper amount of knowledge that Christians require in order to find the one correct one, if there is one? Didn't Jesus come for the lowly, the outcasts, and the babes? Such inconsistency knows no bounds. No wonder my claim is that Christians demand that we prove their faith is impossible before they will see it as improbable.

It's like asking how do you know that apples are good to eat unless you have ate every possible thing on the earth to find out what the poisons are? Or how do you know what truth is unless you have heard every single possible lie? The thought is asinine. When you know the truth, do you really need to do more than just compare other things to it to expose lies? Of course the question is how do you know the truth? Salvation is not about what you know, but who you know - Jesus Christ. So the very point is more than asinine - it is downright like asking what does pink tastes like? We are commanded to search and to test everything in light of what evidence we have - taking into account our own presuppositions and biases.

The thing is that when you really look into what the Bible says I've got to ask "Why would anyone want it to be true?" We know that it sounds foolish to those who don't believe. It seemed foolish to many of us before God changed us. We believe because God literally revealed himself to us and he can do the same for Loftus or anyone. The evidence just confirms it. When we become a Christian we agree that we are sinners and in need of salvation. We agree that we deserve to be punished and stand in guilt. We agree that we are unable to save ourselves and that we need Jesus' righteousness to stand before our creator. This is why unbelievers try so hard to deny God as creator.

Debunking Christianity: One of the Most Asinine Christian Claims I've Heard

Evidence for Christianity by J.P. Moreland - Apologetics 315

Brian Auten has posted a lecture by Dr J.P. Moreland that is well-worth listening to. A link to the video and the audio was posted on his blog at Apologetics 315. Please visit his blog post to get the links.

Evidence for Christianity by J.P. Moreland - Apologetics 315

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FacePalm of the Day #20 - Debunking Christianity: Quote of the Day, by Jeffrey A. Myers

John Loftus recently posted a link and a quote from Jeffrey Myers describing "Faith". Let's look at the quote.

Faith is a belief in an unknown or unrealized proposition in spite of evidence that the belief is incorrect. Faith is clearly NOT a belief in an unknown or unrealized proposition that is SUPPORTED by the evidence, because if that belief was supported by the evidence, it ipso facto does NOT REQUIRE Faith. See his post on Faith

Juxtapose Myers' definition with how the Bible describes "Faith" in Hebrews 11:1 which says:

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

Notice that the author of Hebrews and Myer are not talking about the same thing. The Bible is not commending people for believing or trusting something that they have evidence that shows his/her belief false. We are not supposed to turn our minds off. Faith is about trusting what God has promised although you cannot see it. It's about being certain while we wait for the promises to be fulfilled. The other point is who says that God's will and character is unknowable, unrealized, or supported? Just because Loftus nor Myer neither realized a personal relationship with God doesn't mean no one has.

Debunking Christianity: Quote of the Day, by Jeffrey A. Myers