Bring it On: Debunking Christianity: Okay, The Time Has Come, I'm Done

John Loftus is now saying that he's tired of talking to Christians and frustrated in talking to us. 

I have no more desire to engage Christians. They are deluded, all of them. I have never been more convinced of this than I am now. I have better things to do. I spent 39+ years of my adult life on a delusion. If I add the years of my childhood that's almost my entire life. Yet this is the only life I will ever have. It's time to move on, or at a minimum take a very long hiatus. I just finished what may be my last book, on The Outsider Test for Faith, to be published by Prometheus Books early next year. How many times do I need to kick the dead horse of Christianity? I don't think I need to say anything more. If what I have written isn't good enough then nothing is good enough for some Christians. What I intend to do is turn this blog over to a few qualified people. I'll still be a part of it and I suppose I'll post something from time to time. But I see no reason to waste large chunks of my time on this delusion anymore.

Why is he so frustrated? He has said in several posts that Atheism is winning and Christianity is loosing ground. If this is true, then why quit? I am detecting crocodile tears. If you are really winning why quit or take a hiatus, why not press the attack? Simple...he is not winning.  Personally, I'm disappointed. I mean the more Loftus tries to debunk Christianity, the more he helps us. The more he opines, the more the gospel is preached.

⁷ Now we pray to God that you will not do anything wrong—not so that people will see that we have stood the test but so that you will do what is right even though we may seem to have failed. ⁸ For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth. ⁹ We are glad whenever we are weak but you are strong; and our prayer is that you may be fully restored. - 2 Corinthians 13:7-9

Thanks, John Loftus. Say it ain't so?!!! We'd miss you! One comment on the post that I thought was telling was this one:

Jonathan MS Pearce Collapse

Wow. I suppose I'll need time to digest this. Although i utterly understand your frustration, I would imagine you might start seeing it as a job, rather than a calling, or something. The problem is it doesn't pay enough, admittedly. Is there any way of making it pay financially?

Calling? By whom? For what? How does a non-Christian even begin to answer questions like this one. 

Debunking Christianity: Okay, The Time Has Come, I'm Done

FacePalm of the Day: Debunking Christianity: The OTF is the Solution to Religious Diversity

John Loftus has again provided a summary of the Outsider Test of Faith (OTF). Let us work through his "logic".

I want people to see the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) as the solution to an incredible amount of religious diversity. This is a problem that needs a solution. No other methods have worked before. If people cannot find solutions to problems within a business they hire solution specialists who offer ways to solve it. Mediators find ways to bring people together by offering ways they can see their differences in a better light. That’s what the OTF does. The goal is to offer a fair test to find out which religion is true if there is one.

I don't really think that the OTF is a bad idea, initially. I think that it has never been fairly applied on Debunking Christianity. Let us see if this post shows any more fairness.

The OTF grants that a religious faith can be reasonable and asks believers to test their faith with it, just as it grants that non-belief is reasonable and asks non-believers to consider the religious options available.

How can a belief that there exist one god or several gods be consistent or simultaneously reasonable with the belief in no gods? Hint: it isn't.

It grants the possibility that one particular religious faith could pass the test, just as it grants the possibility that none of them do. To be a fair and objective test it must allow that any conclusion could result from taking the test, and the OTF does just that. If someone disagrees he or she will not only need to find fault with it, but also propose a better test. What’s the alternative?

I have no problem with the test but the issue is how do you make such a test? How do you run the test? How do you measure success or failure?

The skepticism required by the OTF is expressed as follows: 1) It assumes one's own religious faith has the burden of proof; 2) It adopts the methodological naturalist viewpoint where we assume there is a natural explanation for the origins of that religion, its holy books, and it’s extraordinary claims of miracles;

Why is number 2, reasonable? If a religion does not agree that there is a natural explanation for the origins of that  religion, its holy books, and it's extraordinary claims of miracles it believes in then it's not a fair test unless you can show that naturalism does indeed explain these things. I thought the whole point of OTF was to show that the the methodological naturalist viewpoint where we assume there is a natural explanation for the origins of that religion, its holy books, and it’s extraordinary claims of miracles not to assume them from the beginning.

3)  It demands sufficient evidence, scientific evidence, before concluding a religion is true; and most importantly,

Is something only true if it can be weighed, counted, or measured? Can science be used to substantiate everything?! I don't think so. Somethings we all agree are true, but  have no scientific basis for believing it. Well, I guess fair tests aren't really what Loftus is looking for.

4) It disallows any faith in the religion under investigation since it cannot leap over the lack of evidence by punting to faith.

In order to apply number 4, you would need to correctly define what faith means. Something Loftus consistently fails to do. 

Believers may object that if they assume the skepticism of the OTF it will automatically cause them to reject their religious faith, and as such, doing so unfairly presumes its own conclusion.

You cannot rationally grant that Christianity or Islam may be true and then say that everything about testing them can only be explained by naturalistic evidence. That is assuming failure without really weighing the evidence.  Fortunately for Christianity there are naturalistic evidence, but there is much that is considered from such a myopic viewpoint.  

But I think not, not if there is objective evidence, sufficient evidence, for one’s religious faith. For if it exists then even a skeptic should come to accept it.

But there have been many who began as skeptics and upon examining the evidence from the outside, became born-again Christians. If Loftus is correct, then everyone who examines the evidence would be staunch atheist and never Christians.

Many people are convinced every day about issues when the evidence suggests otherwise. If God created us as reasonable people then the correct religious faith should have sufficient evidence for it since that’s what reasonable people require.

This one always gets me. Observation and the Bible always bear out that no one - not one of us - is reasonable enough or understanding enough to figure this out. We are all broken and fallen. Why should you assume that your intellect is enough to even know what sufficient evidence is?

Otherwise, if this evidence doesn’t exist in sufficient quantities then God counter-productively created us as reasonable people who would reject the correct faith.

We reject Christ not because of a lack of sufficient evidence but because of our own sin and hatred of God. And even if you are saved now, you once were a hater of God and God's ways.

It also means that people born as outsiders in different geographical locations will be condemned to hell (however conceived) by God merely because of when and where they were born.

Hogwash. Everyone is born in the time and place where we can best find God. Re-read Acts 17.

This doesn’t bode well for an omniscient omnibenelovent but wrathful kind of God. Even apart from such a God concept the only way to settle which religious faith is true is to rely on sufficient evidence.

Again, I don't think any one of us is capable of deciding what sufficient evidence is and what it is not. If you cannot see God as God is (or even  as the religion you are testing sees God), how can you correctly apply OTF. Loftus does not know the God of the Bible. His god indeed fails the OTF because his god does not exist. His god is a concept not a being. A god that knows everything but how to apply justice and mercy. A god that has much of the same limitations we do. This is not the God of the Bible - not the God of Christianity. Utter failure.

Debunking Christianity: The OTF is the Solution to Religious Diversity

FacePalm of the Day #124 - Debunking Christianity: Has Christianity Passed the Outsider Test for Faith?

John Loftus has posted the following post on his blog. My comments are in red.

It is said that Christianity has been passing the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) from the very beginning, and is still doing so as the gospel penetrates non-Christian cultures. Let me respond briefly.




This ought to be good.

There is a big difference between what takes place in cross-cultural mission work and how reasonable people should evaluate the extraordinary claims of Christianity. I have documented how very superstitious people were in the days when Christianity sprung into existence from the Bible itself, in chapter 7 of Why I Became an Atheist. So I don't see that people reasonably assessed the probability of Christianity in order to accept the claim that they were rationally converted to it.

I think Loftus makes that claim because when he was a "believer" he had not reasonably addressed the validity of Christianity. Therefore assuming that everyone is as gullible as he is really shoddy reasoning.

When it comes to the growth of Christianity in the Southern Hemisphere and in Asia right now, Phillip Jenkins has documented in his book, The New Faces of Christianity, that the people being converted actually share much of the same superstitious outlook. Superstitious people who share the same outlook can hardly be considered to reasonably assess the extraordinary claims of another superstitious outlook. So these so-called cross-cultural conversions are irrelevant to whether Christianity passes or has passed the OTF.

So because Loftus traded one fantasy (that he was born-again)  for another (the there is no God), no one can be born again? I don't think so. He is arguing that people from the Southern Hemisphere or in Asia are not sophisticated enough to correctly evaluate Christianity and determine it to be correct. Better examples of Hubris are scant.

Additionally how one person evaluates a religious set of extraordinary claims means nothing to another person, otherwise Islam is passing the OTF since it is the fastest growing religion in the world right now. If Christianity is passing the OTF then so is Islam, which would lead us to conclude they are both probably true, even in their fundamentalist forms. But that cannot be the case given their essential differences. If the successful growth of a religion into other cultures means that a particular religion passes the OTF then many religions have done so, rendering growth as a factor null and void.

I agree that this isn't about growth but if its truly irrelevant how people evaluates a religion's truth claims then  the OTF is also irrelevant because then there is no good ways to determent if a religion is true or not.

The only thing that is relevant is how a person assess the religion he or she was enculturated to believe. How others assess the case should mean little or nothing. The OTF simply asks believers who were raised to believe in their particular religion, or sect within it, to adopt a non-double standard approach to assessing it. Approach your own inherited religious faith with the same level of skepticism you use when assessing other religious faiths.

If the OTF is only relevant to access the religion he or she was "encultured to believe", then the OTF looses relevance and credibility. Besides, you can't be be a born-again Christian and believe only because that's what you were raised in. Being born-again means knowing God on a relational level and not just going on what you have been taught. It verifies what you have been taught if you have been taught correctly. It does not seem like Loftus ever truly knew God only what other said of God and sometime he does even get that much right.

I have seen nothing that has disabused me of this approach to religion. It's the only consistent and fair way to do so.

Consistent? Maybe. Fair? Not even close. Load with presuppositions that don't line up with reality? Yup.  Surprise? No.

⁹ The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. ¹⁰ He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. ¹¹ He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. ¹² Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— ¹³ children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.- John 1: 9-13

Debunking Christianity: Has Christianity Passed the Outsider Test for Faith?

FacePalm of the Day #98 - Debunking Christianity: More Straw Man Arguments, This Time by David Marshall

Well, John Loftus is at it again.  This time he turns his attention to David Marshall and accuses him of using straw men to argue against the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF). Let's just see who is using straw men arguments.

Christianity can only be defended by blind ignorance involving so many informal fallacies it can make one's head spin. Case in point today is David Marshall, a nice guy and budding scholar who has written a few books. I guess he was feeling left out since I have been highlighting these things with other Christian scholars. Now it's time to turn my attention to him. ;-)

Funny, how Loftus starts a post against using straw men arguments with a straw man argument.  No where in the post does he explain how Marshall or anyone else  is blindly ignorant or even what Marshall is blindly ignorant about. Maybe this will get better,


When Christian apologists argue against us they are so blinded by their delusion they must argue against Straw Man versions of our arguments. You would think that someone who has read a lot of what I've written about the OTF wouldn't misread it so badly, but he did, when he said:

But the OTF asks us to adopt a perspective outside of Western culture.

Guess not. I wonder if this means that Loftus is backing off of his often asserted and blindly ignorant concept that where you are born determines your religious belief - even in the face of many counter examples! I have heard Loftus in debate and on this blog say that the only reason one is a christian if because one is raised up in it and if anyone of us were raised Muslims we would be Muslims. Also a citation for when and where Marshall said this would be nice.

Based on this false understanding he goes one to say

But all outside perspectives are also biased in different ways. It's a useful suggestion on John's part, but one shouldn't talk about an "outsider" perspective in the abstract, and then just ignore what's actually out there. For instance, John talks about the fact that almost everyone in Saudi Arabia is a Muslim. Yeah, well, if you convert, you might get drowned in your uncles swimming pool! Or tortured by the police! So generally, John can debunk Christianity all he likes; but when the talks about outside tests, we need to look outside.

He still doesn't get it and it cannot be my fault. The OTF is not asking a believer to step outside of his or her particular culture. This should be quite obvious unless he actually thinks that those of us who are no longer believers have entered into a different culture. We are still westerners because we were raised as westerners. The only thing we rejected were our culturally inherited religious beliefs. I submit to you that one can stay a westerner with the same values other westerners share, like using the English language, the love of family, a materialistic mentality, the importance of democracy, embracing the due process of a secular law, and so forth, and leave his or her faith behind. Ex-Christians who leave their faith are doing this on a daily basis.

I don't think that Marshall is making that argument at all. If he was, then Loftus should have picked a better citation. I don't think Marshall is trying to say that Westerners who give up being Christians  give up being Westerners. But I guess that means that Loftus no longer thinks that religious affiliation is always determined by culture. I would argue that without Christianity, a Westerner has no basis or grounding for the values and morals we like to associate with Western culture, but that they can still inconsistently hold them. I also find it interesting that Loftus chose to list "using the English language, the love of family, a materialistic mentality, the importance of democracy, embracing the due process of a secular law, and so forth,"  as values that define Western morality as if no one from non-western traditions would hold these. 

The OTF merely asks believers to examine their own religious faith with the same standard used when examining the other faiths they reject.

Sure would actually like to see Loftus demonstrate this. He hasn't. One of those standards is to accurately examine what a Christian believes and not something made up. Just look at what he thinks faith is for an example. Definitive straw man argumentation.

So it is false, utterly false, to suggest that Muslims inside a totalitarian state with a thought police that punishes thought crimes is a relevant criticism of the OTF. Just because it is politically impossible to declare oneself a non-believer in one of these cultures does not render the OTF false or minimize the need for it. He's surely right that it would make it very difficult, but he's merely pointing to political realities as if they have a bearing on epistemological ones. They don't, not at all, not a chance.

Considering how badly John Loftus butchers what the Bible says, I don't trust his reading of what Marshall has said or what Marsahll meant. References and citations go a long way to understand what Loftus is talking about. I think one problem with Loftus' approach is again that you can't evaluate a religion from outside of it if you don't know what the religion holds.

Debunking Christianity: More Straw Man Arguments, This Time by David Marshall

Debunking Christianity: Dr. Flannagan Just Does Not Get it, The OTF Again and Again and Again...

Dr Flannagan must have really struck a nerve!  Sheesh!! He was way more kinder and open-minded the Loftus himself. Look at his original review and compare it to Loftus' "rebuttal"

Christian philosopher Matthew Flannagan wrote a review of The Christian Delusion for Philosophia Christi, the journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. He offers nothing but canards against the OTF. Was he not paying attention?

Matt, first, the OTF does not undergird all the articles in the book. How can you come to that conclusion? Please explain this delusion of yours.

Second, the OTF uses the exact same standard that YOU use when rejecting other religions. If there is any inconsistency at all it is how YOU assess truth claims.

Third, the first three chapters show us from anthropological and psychological data how we come to our beliefs, all of us. That is indeed something you must wrestle with since YOU are the one claiming one particular religious faith is true out of all the others.

Fourth, the OTF is an argument I can only make in our day and age. It would have little or no force during the Catholic Middle Ages where everyone was a Catholic

Fifth, without the present anthropological and psychological data that we all accept the OTF would have less force than it does too. Unless I could have come up with this data on my own I could not make this argument, so in that sense I was lucky to be born when and where I was born in order to make it.

Sixth, doubt is the adult attitude given the facts that form the basis of the OTF. One cannot subject this doubt to further testing. It is what makes testing our ideas possible in the first place. It is a filter that strains out the wheat of what's true from the chaff of what's false.

Seventh, we human beings are in the same boat, epistemologically speaking. We are not all that rational. We believe what we prefer to believe and we defend that which we were raised to believe. We seek to confirm what we believe rather than disconfirm it. Even contrary evidence or the lack of evidence is seen as evidence that we are right. See this.

Therefore doubt is the adult attitude. This should be simple and non-controversial. Because we are not all that rational we should all be skeptics, demanding hard cold impartial evidence for that which we believe. That's how you approach all other religions.

Why the double standard?

Now remember how Flannagan ended his review

This review has been fairly negative; however, despite the problems inherent in this book, which are substantive, The Christian Delusion is still worth reading. The book is a comprehensive and representative expression of contemporary skeptical thought from some leading free thinkers in a single volume. Given the pervasiveness in our culture of the line of argument advanced in this book, anyone who wants to understand the position of contemporary free thinkers could not do much better than to read it.

In my opinion, Flannagan was way more charitable although he fundamentally disagreed.  The only double standard I see is Loftus'.

Debunking Christianity: Dr. Flannagan Just Does Not Get it, The OTF Again and Again and Again...

FacePalm of the Day #93 - Debunking Christianity: The Outsider Test: Pretend You're Hearing the Gospel for the First Time

John Loftus hss called attention to the following video because it supposedly gives a good example of how his methodology for evaluating Religion is practiced. He coins the approach as "The Outsider Test of Faith" (OTF). It boils down to evaluating a religions claims from the point of view of an outsider - pretending you are hearing it for the first time. I don't have any problem with the method per se because it's actually not a bad idea if you can truly objective weigh the claims a religion is making and don't mischaracterize what those beliefs are and are not. I agree with Loftus that this video is indeed instructive. It perfectly demonstrates how you should not performed an OTF of Christianity. In this we can see that an awful misunderstanding of theology leads to a conflicted and confused mess.




Look at how the Gospel is presented there are terrible presuppositions such as:

1. Jesus' resurrection has no value to anyone before Christ.
2. God has condemned most of humanity.
3. People are Christians because of the culture they are.
4. No one is a sinner
5. God realized that sin keeps souls coming from going to heaven.
6. God had to appeal to someone else for the need of a sacrifice for sin.
7. There is something wrong with the way the messages has been sent
8. It took a long time for the message to spread beyond a small geographic area.

Why are these failed presuppositions? Simple. Christians don't believe this. The Bible does not support these presuppositions. If you are going to evaluate Christianity then you should at least use theology and arguments Christians actually use and the Bible teaches.

1. Christians believe that all of those who were born and lived before us, since Adam will share in the same inheritance as us. Jesus said

31 But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.” - Matthew 22:31-32

God would not just abandon folks He chose just because they didn't understand all of the plan of salvation in it's fullness. Jesus' sacrifice covers you, me, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Isaac, Moses, Joshua, David, Josiah, Daniel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Paul, Jude, Peter, and everyone in between who put their faith in Christ.

 ³² And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, ³³ who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, ³⁴ quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. ³⁵ Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. ³⁶ Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. ³⁷ They were put to death by stoning;^[e] they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— ³⁸ the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.
 ³⁹ These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, ⁴⁰ since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. - Hebrews 11:32-40

2. No, hell is the default. destination for all of us. God knows what He is doing and has chosen to save those who believe in the provisions He has given us. No one has an excuse because God has given each one of us enough evidence and information for us to make an informed decision about Jesus. God only expects us to respond to what He has revealed to us. Abraham did not know about crucifixions or what the name of Messiah would be, yet he was justified by his faith in what he did know of the promises of God.

  ¹ What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, discovered in this matter? ² If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about—but not before God. ³ What does Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” - Romans 4:1-3

Don't make the mistake of missing the fact that if you know of the details of that plan, and yet reject that revelation the standard God will hold you to are higher than for those who lived under the Old Covenant because you had more revealed to you than they.

²² But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. ²³ And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades. For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. ²⁴ But I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.” - Matthew 11:22-24

3. It's not true that the only people who are Christians are people who are born into a "Christian" culture. It cracks me up when atheist make such a charge and then out of the other side of their mouths deny that Christianity had anything to do with the founding of America.. I make a difference between being truly born-again and just being a nominal Christian because you were raised in Church. If the Holy Spirit is not in you, you can't be a Christian in the way the Bible means it. Also if they were right than no would convert to religions outside of the one they grew up in. And people would not be able to become atheists either. This point is also tied to the previous one about condemning the majority of humanity. If you believe the Bible then you must immediately drop point 2 and 3 because the Bible contradicts them. God puts all of in the best possible place we can find Him. For some of us that means being raised in atheist homes. Sometimes it means growing up Buddhist, or Mormon, or Muslim, or only God knows what else.

²⁴ “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. ²⁵ And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. ²⁶ From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. ²⁷ God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ²⁸ ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ - Acts 17:24-28

4. We are so hopelessly enslaved to sin, it makes no sense to argue that just because we try to do right and be kind that it even kind of balances out the evil that we do. In the sermon on the mount in Matthew 6, Jesus spelled out what Christians believe about this point. If you entertain thought of lusts, it is no different to God than if you fornicated or committed adultery. If you covet, you might as well steal. If you hate someone, you might as well murdered them. According to this standard every single one of us stands condemned before a holy God.

All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.- Isaiah 64:6

We have so totally missed the mark we can't even see or understand it without God's intervention.

⁵ Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. ⁶ The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷ The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. ⁸ Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.- Romans :5-8

So do you need a savior because of your sins? Yup.

5. God did not just look at Adam eating the fruit and rebelling against Him and say "Oh Crap!!! What am I going to do now?" Jesus' redemption of God's chosen people and the death, burial, and Resurrection of Jesus were already set before the universe was brought into existence.

⁸ All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world. - Revelations 13:8

 ⁶ You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. - Romans 5:6


  ²² “Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. ²³ This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. ²⁴ But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. - Acts 2:22-24

6. To whom is it that Christians believe that the debt of sin is owed? If you were going to pay for your own sin who collects? The Bible teaches us that it is God who we owe.

⁴Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.- Ezekiel 18:4

The wages of sin is death. It the logical consequence of sin. It's what we have earned because we sin in thought, word, and deed. Because of our sin, we deserve to be eternally separated from God in Hell. The debt is to God. Jesus sacrifice is propitiatory. A propitiation means that the debt we owed was satisfied because Jesus took our place on the cross and stood in our place. He took the wrath of God on Himself so we wouldn't have to. A fundamental aspect of God's character that is loss on someone who would make point 6 a contention is that God' characteristic  holiness and justness demands that sin be paid for and punished.

7. It's always amazing to me when someone walks up to something and decides critique it's design and not have a clue as to what the spec were. Does it make sense to pick up John Loftus'  books and start complaining about his punctuation? This is what we do when we complain about the design choices that God has chosen to implement in the world around us. We can't possibly know all things and reasons that went into those decisions. All we got is an opinion and no idea what we are talking about. As Christians, we accept the methods that God has chosen to spread the Gospel (which whoever made the video doesn't understand what the Gospel is).

 ⁵ Moses writes this about the righteousness that is by the law: “The person who does these things will live by them.” ⁶ But the righteousness that is by faith says: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’”⁷ “or ‘Who will descend into the deep?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). ⁸ But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the message concerning faith that we proclaim: ⁹ If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰ For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. ¹¹ As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.” ¹² For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, ¹³ for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”  ¹⁴ How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? ¹⁵ And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” - Romans 10:5-15

I can't argue with the results it worked on me and on many, many others for centuries.

8. The point that Christianity began in a small geographic area around the Mediterranean sea is misleading. The church began in the very city  Jesus was crucified about 50 days later with many of the same people who was present for all the events leading up to it. It is incomprehensible that a movement would get started around a man executed as shameful criminal in the same city he was executed without something miraculous happening - the Resurrection. Let's also not forget the fact that this movement spread so quickly that we are not just talking about a small geographical area. By the 60's AD around just 30 years after the crucifixion there were Christians in the farthest reaches of the Roman empire and in Rome itself! I'd call that phenomenal growth that continues even today! Nothing wrong with the way God does things.

The OTF is a good idea, but this video fails because it doesn't correctly represent what Christians believe And if you were going to apply OTF, it would not be a  monologue of hashing ideas and concepts Christians do not hold. It would be back and forth - questions and answers - and facts outside of the Bible from Archaeology, History, science, and whatever else we can test.

²⁰ Don't treat prophecies as if they amount to nothing. ²¹ Put everything to the test. Hold on to what is good. ²² Stay away from every kind of evil.- 1 Thessalonians 5:20-22

This video fails the test of objective truth. Even if you don't agree with what the Bible says you still have to take into account what it says and what it doesn't say if you are really interested in fairly using OTF.

Debunking Christianity: The Outsider Test: Pretend You're Hearing the Gospel for the First Time

FacePalm Quote of the Day #4: Debunking Christianity: The Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) Again *Sigh*

On the face of it, John Loftus' Outsider Test for Faith is a good idea. It's true that many people don't examine their worldviews and presuppositions critically and something that we must do. The problem with the way that John Loftus employs the test ignores his own presuppositions while decrying others'. Take this quote....please. [Begin Quote]

A trial is a good example of an outsider looking in. No thumbs should be on the scales of justice. If there is a conflict of interest a judge or a lawyer should recuse themselves. The jury represents people who are uninvolved peers. None of this describes believers who examine their own faith. The OTF demands the impartiality of agnostic, which is worse on one's own religion but better on the religious faiths one rejects.
In a jury trial not everyone agrees. But that's a jury trial about an event that strictly speaking is "on the boards," that is, it's about an ordinary event rather than a supposed extraordinary miraculous event. The whole reason Christians object to the OTF is because they know their faith will not pass the OTF.
Regardless, someone on a jury should at least be able to justify his decision afterward based on the skepticism of an outsider. One cannot punt to faith when judging the case before him like believers do an every juncture. That is ONLY being fair.
SteveK asks: Why does Loftus think it a problem when rational 'outsiders' conclude that, given the evidence, Atheism is false and Christianity is true?
Those are not our only options! The options are myriad and every bit in between! Besides, a person who rejects Hinduism in India is considered an an atheist, while someone in Saudi Arabia who rejects Islam is considered an atheist, etc. That makes YOU an atheist in the same way since the definition of an atheist is a non-believer. I am simply a non-believer by virtue of the fact that your religion doesn't pass the OTF. I am an atheist just as you are a non-believer in Hinduism or Islam in other countries.
So the choice becomes one between belief and non-belief. There are billions of people on the planet on my side who do not believe in your particular Christian sect. Seems like the jury of impartial peers has spoken.

[End Quote]
This quote gets a "Face Palm" because Loftus still mischaracterizes what "faith" means. He also I think mischaracterizes the historical definition of an "atheism". It' all or nothing. There is no such thing as a relative atheist. Historically, no one has tried to argue "I"m an atheist to all gods but mine". "Atheism" means belief that there is no god. Therefore if you believe in at least one god you cannot be an atheist. Otherwise it's like being a "little" pregnant. You are or you are not.
As for the Outsider's Test of faith...does Christianity pass it? According to Lofus' definition of "faith", Christianity does not pass. According to the Biblical definition of faith Christianity passes with flying colors. Loftus denies the evidence that the Bible presents viable evidence as well as evidence from history, science, and just our five senses. He out right believes that science is the only viable way for people to gain worthwhile knowledge. If that isn't a presupposition that begs proof, then neither is asserting that the Bible is infalliably true. We have plenty of evidence explaining why the Bible is reliable. Yet people who want to take science as the only infallible source of fact about reliable have no way of satisfyingly proving that position is reasonable. Definitely, arguing in a circle.

Debunking Christianity: The Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) Again *Sigh*