Debunking Christianity: Dr. Peter Boghossian on "How to Talk Others Out of Their Faith"

John Loftus posted a link to an interview with Dr Peter Boghossan. Dr Boghossan emphatically claims that his goal is to make people "loose their faith".  He says he translates "faith" to mean "pretending to believe something that you don't know". He considers religion to be a pathological disorder.  He believes that believers are smug and not humble. He thinks that "theology" is just making stuff up. I found it amazing that he was using the same tactics to try to break people's Faith that many Christians use in trying to help others find it. I think it's important to hear such things so we know how people think....or in this case refuse to think. Dr Boghossan's answer to Christian challenges to his definition of "faith" is that we are redefining what faith is. I disagree. How can he accuse that there has been a redefinition of faith if we are using the same definition of faith that the Bible uses? He can't. He is the one re-defining "Faith". I also find it amazing that he will not debate David Marshall. I think one of the problem is that the truth is that no one can argue you into or out of  faith. True faith, as defined in the Bible, is a gift of God. You can't buy it. We all reject it as a default, and it takes the power of God to not just accept it but to maintain it.
Follow the link to listen to the interview. It's NSFW due to the profanity being used during the conversation.

Debunking Christianity: Dr. Peter Boghossian on "How to Talk Others Out of Their Faith"

Debating the Authority of Scripture | Reflections

Here is a golden oldie from Dr Kenneth Samples!

In 1997, I participated in a debate on the topic of the Scripture’s authority with Jesuit priest Mitchell Pacwa at Southern Methodist University. I explained and defended the Protestant view and Father Pacwa represented the Catholic position.

Follow the link to his blog to listen to the debate

Debating the Authority of Scripture | Reflections

Really Bad Argument of the Day - Debunking Christianity: God May Own the Cattle on a Thousand Hills, But What He Really Wants is that Dollar In Your Wallet

I'm simply amazed that Harry McCall can simply post such irrational argument on Debunking Christianity. I mean is he just dishonest or ignorant? He needs to think more carefully. I don't know. But what I do know is that his thesis to totally wrong and he does a poor job in defending it. He is arguing that the Bible supports people who call themselves "Christians" in abusing others in the pursuit of money. There is no denying that there are people who do that, but it is against the Christian and Jewish scriptures to do so.

("For every beast of the forest is Mine, The cattle on a thousand hills.” Psalms 50: 10)

Ironically, there are far more verses in the Bible about giving God your money than giving God your soul!

Now that is just dumb. And there is is no way to substantiate that. He tried, but let's look at what complete failure looks like.

Here a just a few:

Let's really looks at each passage and see if McCall even remotely makes a point.

"Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this," says the LORD of hosts, "if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows.” Malachi 3: 10 (The Original Seed Faith Commercial)

So does this passage tells you  that  God needs all your money and you should give to it hurts? Nope. I wonder if McCall even knows what a "whole tithe" is. It means only 10% of your income that serves as a vehicle to teach people how to give. We don't give a tithe because God needs it...we do.

“Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury.” Mark 12: 41

I wonder if McCall even bothered to read the rest of the account. You know about the Widow giving all she had and Jesus commending her for her faith and not  for the amount she gave. Jesus was concerned about her attitude and intentions not the monetary amount.

““For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away. “Throw out the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Jesus on the Parable of the Talents; Matthew 25: 29 -30) Televangelists love this verse especially when taking welfare checks!

And like such televangelist McCall misses the whole point of the parable: using the gifts (including but not exclusively money) God gives us responsibly because we are accountable to our master.

“But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the price of the land? // And as he heard these words, Ananias fell down and breathed his last; //And great fear came over the whole church, and over all who heard of these things.” (The Fate of Ananias and Sapphira; Acts 5: 1 – 16)

So was Ananias and Sapphira's sin that they didn't give all their money? No. They lied and said that they gave all of it when they hadn't because they wanted to be given the same status as Barnabas.  McCall really messed up on this one.  I can prove it. 

³ Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? ⁴ Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.” - Acts 5:3-4

“The material of the wall was jasper; and the city was pure gold.” (The New Jerusalem; Revelation 21: 18)

And who supplies the gold? Not us. The gold is God's just like the cattle from Psalms 50:10. So I wonder if McCall has more examples because these 5 are no good examples.

Whether it’s the infomercials, The Door-to-Door Salesperson or the Christian Evangelist, the final goal is to sell you either a product / belief system that will remove dollars from your wallet. Thus, Christian Evangelism works just like any other sales pitch used to generate income by convincing the customer their life would be so much better if he or she accepted the truth claims made by the product peddler.

McCall is incorrect that the point of Christianity is to get money. There are some people who claim to be Christians who have that goal but that does not mean that God condones them. He does not. I wonder why McCall did not point out any of those examples, We should charge for what was given to us - the Gospel. 

Believer - you want your car to move - put fuel in it. If you want your God to function, open up your wallet!

Nope. You want God to do something for you - Obey Him.  And God is not begging for your money - that He gave you.

Without money (which is a prime reason for conversion of souls) the concept of God is nothing more than a non-functioning idea. (Sure, God needs your soul, but this theology goes without saying: No saved soul; no believer’s money!)

Really?  Sad assertion because that is all it is. 

It’s little wonder today that the richest organizations in the world are religious and here in the United States, some of the wealthiest freeloading people are religious leaders, especially televangelists.

More assertion and no back up.

Finally, if God was a piñata hanging from Heaven on a cord; after a solid strike with a stick, he would burst open and money would pour out.

Money: The power of God: The real God!

Huh? Is that really how McCall wants to sum up his "article"? Let's look at what Jesus told us about material possessions.

¹⁵ Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” - Luke 12:15

Debunking Christianity: God May Own the Cattle on a Thousand Hills, But What He Really Wants is that Dollar In Your Wallet

Star Trek Universal Translators On Their Way

Just when I think that Microsoft has lagged behind other giants like Google, Apple, and Sony, they come up with something truly impressive that blows my socks off. Microsoft has announced voice recognition technology employing “novel neural networking”. The interesting thing is that not only will it improve a computer's accuracy in recognizing human speech but also allow language translation in the speakers own voice!!!


I'm speechless!

Star Trek Universal Translators On Their Way

Secret Service Investigates Woman’s Racist anti-Obama Facebook Post

Is Denise Helms is not a racist!


I'd say that she doesn't speak for every single white American, but I do think she only posted what some of them are really thinking.

Secret Service Investigates Woman’s Racist anti-Obama Facebook Post

Gamers Do Find Love

Created by: OnlineUniversity.net

Rachel Held Evans - Year of Biblical Womanhood

Rachel Held Evans (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Last week I was listening to Dr James White's Dividing Line web cast and for the first time I heard of Rachel Held Evans  and her experiment for living out all the Biblical verses that deal with prescriptions for women for a year.  She has written a book based on her experience. That book has recently been publish and she has been making the round promoting the book.  She was a guest on ABC's shows The View and Good Morning America. She appeared with her husband and both shows had video clips of her while she was living out the most wooden literal interpretations of the Bible imaginable. I was intrigued to learn more. Both of her network television appearances are available online and I think that they do a disservice. There is no attempt to apply a sound hermeneutic to Scripture. To secular television, the Bible is a joke and they do not think that there is anything of value in it. Evans does not seem to want to go that far but instead wants to cherry pick the parts of it that make her feel like she is closer to God. She has no problem with that because in her view that is what everyone does any way. She does not think that there is a consistent detailed message in the Bible about what it means to be a man or a woman or what does God desire for us. I totally disagree with that. She also seems to think that the Bible's prescriptions doesn't leave room for a woman to be herself. She's wrong about that. Here are some videos that I was able to dig up. Easy to find. The first one is her announcement for the project.


The second is from her appearance on the Techology webcast. She has thirty minutes to talk about herself and the project without the limitations she had on secular network television. I really recommend this one.



The third is another  summary of the project by Evans herself.



Here is the Good Morning America clip

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

  And on the View

One of the biggest problem is that  in her appearances she really seems to get a lot in the Bible wrong for example, there is video of her sitting on the roof of her home because she understands a passage in Proverbs 21 meaning that contentious wives should be punished by being forced to be in "time-out" on the roof of the home. But look at what the passage says:




 Better to live on a corner of the roof    than share a house with a quarrelsome wife. - Proverbs 21:9

It's not saying that putting your wife on time-out on the roof when she is contentious is the thing to do! Instead it is talking about how horrible it is to live with a quarrelsome wife. It's so bad that the man feels like he would rather live on the corner of  his roof than live in the same house! This is but one example and not having read the book, I sure hope there are better hermeneutics and exegesis employed than what I have seen so far but I'm not real optimistic.

Also notice that she said that treated Proverbs 31 as a to-do list but she told the Techology webcast that in researching how Jews read Proverbs 31 and saw that they do not read it that way. I wonder why. Think she answers that question in her book?

There have been a few response materials released to answer some of these challenges.Some Response Articles

A Response to Rachel Held Evans on the Today Show
Mutuality 2012: Responding to Rachel Held Evans
What Biblical Womanhood is not

Why Al Mohler Doesn't Get Rachel Held Evans 

James White's Webcast

Rachel Held Evans' website

The Bottom line is that man and woman are ontologically equal - neither inferior nor superior to the other. But God has given men and women different roles. Both are needed and important.

Here is a link to Rachel Held Evans' book

A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband "Master"

Related articles

• Rachel Held Evans' "Biblical Womanhood" book (achristianthing.wordpress.com)
• A Year of Rachel Held Evans Womanhood (thecynicalchristian.blogspot.com)

'Terminator' arm is world's most advanced prosthetic limb - YouTube

Here is a demonstration of the most advanced prosthetic arm/hand I have ever seen.

'Terminator' arm is world's most advanced prosthetic limb - YouTube

Related articles

• 'Terminator' arm is world's most advanced prosthetic limb (gabrielcatalano.com)
• 'Terminator' arm is world's most advanced prosthetic limb (adafruit.com)
• Terminator Arm Called "Bebionic3" Unveiled, is the Most Advanced Prosthetic Limb Yet (techeblog.com)
• Beautiful Prosthetic Limbs (neatorama.com)

Is the Internet rewiring our brains?

Is the Internet rewiring our brains?

Four African Teenage Girls Create a Pee-Powered Generator | Living on GOOD

 Necessity is truly the Mother of invention!

 During the Maker Faire Africa, in Lagos, Nigeria on November 5 and 6, 14-year-olds Duro-Aina Adebola, Akindele Abiola, Faleke Oluwatoyin, and 15-year-old Bello Eniola presented their unique proposal. According to The Next Web, here's how it works:

• Urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which cracks the urea into nitrogen, water, and hydrogen.
• The hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification, which then gets pushed into the gas cylinder.
• The gas cylinder pushes hydrogen into a cylinder of liquid borax, which is used to remove the moisture from the hydrogen gas.
• This purified hydrogen gas is pushed into the generator.
• 1 Liter of urine gives you 6 hours of electricity.

Six hours of electricity for a couple quick trips to the bathroom sounds like innovation to me.

 This is such a good idea, I think they deserve scholarships and more recognition!

Four African Teenage Girls Create a Pee-Powered Generator | Living on GOOD

Dealing with Common Questions and Objections - Vintage

James White posted some answers to some common question and objections to Christianity. These are real common and seem to come up no matter how many times it gets answered. 





Dealing with Common Questions and Objections - Vintage

Answering Common Questions and Objections Part 1 - Vintage

Answering Common Questions and Objections Part 2 - Vintage

Results of 2012 Presidential Election

Here is President Obama's victory speech


Here is Governor Romney's concession speech

Political Kombat: Main Menu - YouTube

Someone has made a parody of the Mortal Kombat starring the biggest political figures of 2012. Here is the main menu below. It's an interactive menu, just click on the match you want to watch and hold on because it is funny!


Political Kombat: Main Menu - YouTube

Can a Compulsive Thinker Also Be a Believer? | Reflections

Here is a lecture by Kenneth Sampleson how you can be a Christian and not give up intellectual honesty.


Can a Compulsive Thinker Also Be a Believer? | Reflections

321 Fight: Obama Vs. Romney - YouTube

Death Battle! Ok, so not quite to the death...and not the real candidates but 8-Bit simulations of them...but still humorous! Well done, College Humor, well done.


321 Fight: Obama Vs. Romney - YouTube

Answering Muslims: Robert Spencer on ABN: The Bible and the Qur'an

Answering Muslims: Robert Spencer on ABN: The Bible and the Qur'an

Answering Muslims: Why Did Muhammad Wear Women's Clothing?

Answering Muslims: Why Did Muhammad Wear Women's Clothing?

Apologist Interview: Mary Jo Sharp - Apologetics 315

Brian Auten posted his interview with Mary Jo Sharp. She is an awesome scholar. Follow the link to hear it.


Apologist Interview: Mary Jo Sharp - Apologetics 315

The 60th Anniversary of the Barcode [Infographic]

The 60th Anniversary of the Barcode [Infographic]

J. Gresham Machen on Faith and Knowledge - Apologetics 315

I am really glad Brian Auten has posted the following quote. Today the world truly does not what the word "faith" means let alone how it relates to human intellect and knowledge. J. Gresham Machen's words are indeed timely!

"Faith is indeed intellectual; It involves an apprehension of certain things as facts; and vain is the modern effort to divorce faith from knowledge. But although faith is intellectual, it is not only intellectual. You cannot have faith without having knowledge; but you will not have faith if you only have knowledge."



- J. Gresham Machen,

What is Faith? (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1991), p. 203.



J. Gresham Machen on Faith and Knowledge - Apologetics 315