Limits of science part 1

I.                 A Global approach to knowledge enables us to understand the inadequacy of the scientifically based view that writes God out of the picture.

II.               Understanding the need for the global approach to knowledge gives us the understanding of the link between ground of being and the divine.

III.             Understanding these two points gives us the basic realization of the reality of God that frees us from the need to prove.

            Since Laplace uttered those fateful words, “I have no need of that [God] hypothesis” God has been disassociated from science. Just why he uttered them is another matter but the upshot seems to be that those who find their hobby if not their profession in doubting the reality of the divine do so on the grounds that its not “officially backed” by science. The constant refrain of atheists heard around the net every single day “there’s no proof for YOUR God” echoes the call for scientific evidence as the only form of knowledge. The success of the “Back to God movement” in philosophy, stunning though it has been, nevertheless is tainted with the dismissal on the part of atheists, skeptics, and some agnostics that God arguments are not “scientific.” The God argument as a species is broadly criticized for not being science and for being philosophy. The point of this work is to demonstrate the notion that belief in God is rationally warranted, but that it need not be demonstrated with scientific rational. The purpose here is to forge a new apologetics.

This new apologetics focuses upon knowing in a deep personal way that can’t be denied by the one who comes to know, rather than wasting one’s time trying to prove things to those who do not wish to know. What we need to do is to make the proper tools availed to the seeker, to do that we have to disabuse seekers of the benighted notion that the only way to know something is through scientific data. The aim here is to demonstrate the basis for a phenomenological and existential realization of the reality of God and how to put oneself in a position where that realization becomes real to the experincer and can be validated by logic, reason, and other sources in a global understanding of all our knowledge.

            As the alternative to the atheistic view of scientism I will propose a theological approach centering upon phenomenology, and culminating in theological method. The point is to produce an apologetical approach that makes the process of God realization transparent to the seeker. The way to do this is to understand the connection between an understanding of human being and it’s relation to being itself. I will defend a notion similar to that of Paul Tillich’s idea that God is being itself, or the ground of being; that I equate with the super essential godhead of Dionysus the areopagite.  Tillich said that if you know being has depth you can’t be an atheist. He equates the depth of being with the realization that God is the ground of being.[i] Thus, if he’s right, all one need to do is to understand what that means, then observe the depth of being. Understanding the relationship between the ground of being and the question of the divine, from the outset, is crucial because how we understand the concept of “God” will make all the difference in what we seek and what we  find, and what we reject. If we are looking to prove the existence of a big man in the sky and we don’t understand the concept of God as the ground of being, or being itself, we are going to miss the whole point of belief and write God off because there’s no big man in the sky. Being is all around us and we are in it, so we tend to take it for granted and we are going to miss what being is and how that relates to God if we don’t understand Tillich’s concept. A silly little analogy that I use to illustrate this notion is about a fish scientist who was hired by the high council of Tuna to find the strange substance humans believe in called “water.” The fish had never seen any water so they wanted to know what it is. The fish scientist examined every puddle and depression he could find but found no water. He eventually concluded that humans are deluded about water because he could find no examples of it. Of course that’s because it never dawned on him that this state of normality in which he is submerged and is surrounded by all the time could be illusive substances humans’ thrive on, water. As a fish empiricist our scale clad investigator was certain that what he was looking for had to be an object that he could see, he forgot to look at the substance he was always looking through. So it is with being, we write it off as “just what is” and go on looking for this “God” who can’t be found because we don’t understand he’s nearer than our inmost being. Such is the pitfall of scientific empiricism.

            In my dealings with atheists in debate and dialogue I find that they are often very committed to an empiricist view point. Over and over again I hear the refrain "you can't show one single unequivocal demonstration of scientific data that proves a God exists." This is not a criticism. It's perfectly understandable; science has become the umpire of reality. It is to scientific demonstration that we appeal for most of our questions concerning the nature of reality. The problem is that the reliance upon empiricism has led to forgetfulness about the basis of other types of questions, other view points, and other forms of knowledge. We have forgotten that essentially science is metaphysics; as such it is just one of many approaches that can be derived from analytical reasoning, empiricism, rationalism, phenomenology and other view points.  The attitudes of various atheists from all walks demonstrate the power of the view that science is the only valid way of thinking. Consider the popular level:

The question of God’s existence is incredibly loaded because, if God doesn’t exist, the majority of people in the world derive meaning in their lives from a lie.  For this reason, the capacity for natural science to explain why things happen without appeal to the supernatural is threatening to religion and to religious believers.  After all, if we can explain everything without appeal to God’s intervention, why introduce Him into the equation at all?[ii]

Again from the popular level, a website called God is Imaginary:

There is no scientific evidence indicating that God exists. We all know that. For example:

• God has never left any physical      evidence of his existence on earth.
• None of Jesus'      "miracles" left any physical evidence either. (see this page)
• God has never spoken to modern      man, for example by taking over all the television stations and      broadcasting a rational message to everyone.
• The resurrected Jesus has never      appeared to anyone. (see this      page)
• The Bible we have is provably      incorrect and is obviously the work of primitive men rather than God. (see      this page)
• When we analyze prayer with      statistics, we find no evidence that God is "answering prayers."      (see this page)
• Huge, amazing atrocities like      the Holocaust and AIDS occur without any response from God.
• And so on…

Let's agree that there is no empirical evidence showing that God exists.

If you think about it as a rational person, this lack of evidence is startling. There is not one bit of empirical evidence indicating that today's "God", nor any other contemporary god, nor any god of the past, exists. In addition we know that:

1. If we had scientific proof of      God's existence, we would talk about the "science of God" rather      than "faith in God".
2. If we had scientific proof of      God's existence, the study of God would be a scientific endeavor rather      than a theological one.
3. If we had scientific proof of      God's existence, all religious people would be aligning on the God that      had been scientifically proven to exist. Instead there are thousands of gods and      religions.

The reason for this lack of evidence is easy for any unbiased observer to see. The reason why there is no empirical evidence for God is because God is imaginary.[iii]

Of course these attitudes are backed by the more academically inclined leaders of the New Atheist movement such as Dennett and Dawkins and Hitchens. These sorts of attitudes have always been around since the enlightenment, but since the dawning of this century they have been strident and associated with a complete sceintism.

The New Atheists subscribe to some version or other of scientism as their criterion for rational belief.  According to scientism, empirical science is the only source of our knowledge of the world (strong scientism) or, more moderately, the best source of rational belief about the way things are (weak scientism). Harris and Dawkins are quite explicit about this. Harris equates a genuinely rational approach to spiritual and ethical questions with a scientific approach to these sorts of questions. Dawkins insists that the presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is a scientific question. The New Atheists also affirm evidentialism, the claim that a belief can be epistemically justified only if it is based on adequate evidence. The conjunction of scientism and evidentialism entails that a belief can be justified only if it is based on adequate scientific evidence. The New Atheists’ conclusion that belief in God is unjustified follows, then, from their addition of the claim that there is inadequate scientific evidence for God’s existence (and even adequate scientific evidence for God’s non-existence).  Dawkins argues that the “God Hypothesis” the claim that there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe, is “founded on local traditions of private revelation rather than evidence” (2006, pp. 31-32). Given these New Atheist epistemological assumptions (and their consequences for religious epistemology), it is not surprising that some criticism of their views has included questions about whether there is adequate scientific support for scientism and whether there is adequate evidence for evidentialism.[iv]

Take the view point of Richard Dawkins in his most celebrated work The God Delusion. [v]

The argument from improbability is the big one. In the traditional guise of the argument from design, it is easily today’s most popular argument offered in favor of the existence of God, and it is  seen, by an amazingly large number of theists, as completely and utterly convincing. It is indeed a very strong, and, I suspect, unanswerable argument—but in precisely the opposite direction form the theist’s intension. The argument from improbability, properly deployed, comes close to proving that God does not exist…[vi]

This quotation tells us several very important things about the major leader of the new atheist movement thinks. The first thing this quotation tells us is that Dawkins views evolution as an atheist territory, he doesn’t think of evolution as a theistic possibility, he can only conceive of belief in God being the domain of people who can’t understand evolution. He thinks of God belief as strictly creationist territory. He basically says as much in following up this quotation above he talks about the analogy of a 747 being assembled by random chance from a junk yard. “This in a nutshell is the creationist favorite argument.”[vii] He doesn’t say there are other theological views and he doesn’t deal with them, as though they don’t exist. One might forgive this tendency if he thinks liberal theology is just out of the main stream and thus beyond the focus of the popular audience. Nevertheless he goes even further, “It turns out to be the God hypothesis that tries to get the free lunch…however statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by evoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the ultimate 747.”[viii]

            He is doing more than just reversing the design argument he’s trying to apply the logic of the design argument to a critique of belief in God. This led to the often repeated refrain on message boards and blogs, “who designed the designer?” That’s not exactly what he’s saying either. He’s establishing the idea that God has to meet the same requirements of probability that nature has to meet as an alternative to God. The point here, however, is the thing that enables him to make this argument is the badly misconstrued nature of theology in the evangelical camp that allows for an application of the same principle to God that we take to examining nature. He is treating God like a big man in the sky. God is subject to the laws of probability? Since when is God a “thing” in creation to be discussed in the same manner one discusses planetary formation? Since fundamentalists and evangelicals began thinking of God as a big man in the sky rather than the foundation of all that is. When we think of God as “creator” and “designer” rather than “ground of being” we put God in the category to be analyzed by the laws of probability. There is no logical reason why the ground of being could be analyzed as though it is just another thing in creation alongside flush toilets and swizzle sticks. God is not probable at all, but not because “the divine” is too complex, but because there’s no way to compare complexity when the word itself is made meaningless by trying to compare the basis of all reality to things in reality.  This is like trying to apply up and down, north, south, east, and west in outer space. Which way is up when there’s no down? Which way is west when there’s no horizon? The creationists really put all of this in motion by thinking of God a “designer” rather than preserving the truth of God that the church fathers taught us, that God is beyond our understanding. In their haste to produce an argument that modern science could relate to and prove these apologists, such as William Paley (really Newton and Boyle before), tried to ground proof in empirical data and succeeded only in creating the impression, perhaps even against their own beliefs, that God can be thought of analogously to a big man in the sky. Dawkins is not going to work very hard at correcting the impression. When we do correct we can see that there is a way offered by the basic concepts of God as the ground of being to realize the reality of God in such a way that we don’t have to rely upon data or empirical scientific observations to know that God is real.

            The common denominator lurking behind all of these viewpoints is the assertion that science is the only form of knowledge, one may only believe that which is “officially” proved by science. Lurking behind that is an ideology that picks and chooses what is and what is not “officially scientific,” according to what enables the atheist’s case and what enables the theistic case. The problem with all of this is the scientism lurking behind the ideology that lurks behind the “commitment” to scientific thought. Here I don’t mean all commitment to scientific thought of course, but that that has been pressed into service of the strident atheism. That ideology says that science is the only form of knowledge. The only way to know the nature of the world and the reality of any hypothetical creator is through scientific means. The reason this ideology has been fostered is because it is set up to yield poor results for God proof. Thus it’s a means of dismissing religious thinking without really considering what it has to say. We should not expect to find God directly through scientific means. God is beyond sense data. Most of the major world religions posit that “God,” or “the divine,” or transcendental signified or however they construe the top of the metaphysical hierarchy, is beyond human understanding. God is usually understood as transcendent. Being transcendent, beyond human knowledge, not given in sense data, we should not expect to find any direct proof of God in a scientific vein. That means any scientific evidence that points to God can only do so in an indirect way. To that extent then it’s totally fallacious to point to the dearth of scientific proofs as a weakness in religious belief. Logically this has to be that the place to look is on other grounds. From a stand point of pure knowledge scientific tools are inadequate to find God. If there is a God if there is not a God, science is totally inadequate to answer the question about the divine. Philosophy, logic, reason, personal experience are all discounted by the atheist on the grounds that they are “subjective” and not “scientific.” What they are really saying is “that’s not the method that backs my ideology so I can’t accept it as a source of knowledge.” If science is not the valid way to understand God then obviously we have to use other means. If we do use those proper tools, and God appears to be a more valid option then it did, atheists will refuse the proper tools because they don’t privilege their position. While not all atheists think this way, one runs into this attitude all the time. The best thing to do is use the proper tools.

           

 my proposals

(1) Scientific reductionism loses phenomena by re-defining the nature of sense data and quailia.

(2)There are other ways of Knowing than scientific induction

(3) Religious truth is apprehended phenomenoloigcally, thus religion is not a scientific issue and cannot be subjected to a materialist critique

(4) Religion is not derived from other disciplines or endeavors but is an approach to understanding in its own right

Therefore, religious belief is justified on its own terms and not according to the dictates or other disciplines

---

[i] Paul Tilllich, The Shaking of the Foundations. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948, 152-55.

[ii] “Liza” public opinion expressed by commenter on blog “Apple Eaters,” no date given. UTL: http://theappleeaters.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/philosophers-scientists-and-the-new-atheism/  visited 8/26/2010

[iii] Website God is Imaginary . URL http://godisimaginary.com/i11.htm visited 8/26/2010

[iv] James E Tylor, Internet encyclopedia of Philosophy: A peer Reviewed Academic Resource. Last updated January 26,2010, URL: http://www.iep.utm.edu/n-atheis/   visited 8/26/2010. James E. Taylor is associated with Westmont  College.

[v] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion. New York: First Marionor books, Houton Mifflin Company, 2008 first published in Great   Britain by Bantam, 2006. On line version  Google Books URL:  http://books.google.com/books?id=Ayt0bUwN5v4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Dawkins+from+the+God+Delusion&source=bl&ots=6M_E5W8-Uo&sig=j5bAGhDSY6MGYxYeQpv_q8T3l_A&hl=en&ei=gPKATLvvHsHflgeNgKHnDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CDkQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=true

[vi]  Ibid. online page number 138 all quotations from this source are from the Google books online version.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] Ibid.

An Exampel of Atheism hitch hiking on scinece

 Atheism is has a very precarious relationship to scinece. A good many people who love scinece are atheists, and more than that, people who don't know much about scinece but become atheists cling to scinece as the proof (the protection against the angry God). The problem is while atheists think of scinece as an extension of atheism scinece is actually neutral. Science is not atheist and it's only function is to learn about the workings of physical world. Science is not in the business disproving God that is totally outside it's domain. Atheists, however, have basically come to rely on science to take the place of God in their world view. They think of scinece as an extension of atheism and they psychologically depend upon it to guarantee that their hatred of religion and religious people wont blow up in thier faces when they die. These ideas are evident very clearly in the following dialogue that I had on T web.

near the bottom of the thread "Atheism, the adventure of faith."  Opponent is "Tassman" his post to me is no 103, my answer, which is below is 104.

his orignal statment that p-ed me off was:

You, with your advocacy of fringe science, feel yourself to be in a position to argue with Hawking do you?

Originally posted by Tassman

You, with your advocacy of fringe science,

Meta:translation: science that the atheist ideology does not approve because it doesn't support the ideology. To these guys Alan Sandage is fringe scinece.

feel yourself to be in a position to argue with Hawking do you?

No. Me with my Ph.D. (ABD) in history of ideas I sure as hell am prepared to argue with Hawking on matters concerning God and religion. He as a scientists steps outside his domain every time he uses the word "God." Nevertheless I don't see him around anywhere. I'm arguing with you aren't I, Dr. Hawking?

Who cares about the “god of the bible and how this is relevant to M Theory? Or anything else if it comes to that!

so you admit your view point is based upon begging the question, emotional dislikes for God, and poisoning the well hu?

Certainly M-Theory is not yet complete, but the underlying structure of the mathematics has been established and is in agreement with not only all the string theories, but with all scientific observations of the universe. As well, it has passed tests of internal mathematical consistency which many other attempts to combine quantum mechanics and gravity had failed.

that's not what the guy form Columbia University says.* Now you can call him names all you want, dismiss him as "fringe scinece (meaning he doesn't back your ideological world view) but you really think you can call a major physicists who is respected and teaching at Columbia "fringe?"

this is an example of the fallacy of guilt by association.

*some fringe thinkers disagree with atheist ideology
*this guys disagrees with one important approbation of atheist ideology
*therefore, this guy is a fringe thinker.
guilt by association

To date 'M' theory looks highly promising and is of great interest to those who care about truth and knowledge more than protecting a besieged deity from even further irrelevance.

those who care about truth. well I don't care about truth do I? that's because your definition of caring about truth is "agree with my ideology." that's how we know atheists is an ideology, becuase they always talk like that. They laud scinece like it's a holy sacred endeavor when you disagree with their views (even if you back it up with major scientists) you are transgressing on the holy sacred ground of science, the great god scinece! Guys in white lab coat vestments giving the benedictions with Eucharist in petri dish and the wine in a test tube.

break it down

"M theory looks highly promising" that translates to "proven fact" in his world view. But the major science from Columbia says it's not prmosing. [b]the real issue that you are forgetting is the quote form HAWKING himself! says he's given up on fining the grand theory.


"more than protecting a besieged deity from even further irrelevance."

who is defending the besieged? Anytime anyone brings out evdience against the scientific backing for atheistic arguments they immediately resort ot the labeling trick "he's on the fringe, he's not a real scientist he's a radical." That's evidence of besieged man. read Kuhn. that's a totally defensive circle the wagons kind of strategy.

I am just asking questions, my questions with panic, paranoid, defensive insults.

he practically said "the only people who care about truth are on my side. That is not the sort of thing a confident person says.

And all of us emerged from our mother’s womb as helpless infants, so what do the humble origins of mature adults or a mature discipline like modern science have to do with anything at all?

Now he's trying to write poetry.

Your broad-brush pontifications over atheism are nonsense. Atheism is merely the belief that god’s don’t exist. It has nothing to do with ‘cause and effect’ and everything to do with the lack of evidence.

who the heck is pontificating? The truth seeker speaks. All others are evil subservient or truth.

How ridiculous you and your presuppositions are.

well now that we are on the subject I think you are genius. you must be the greatest thinker scinece Hawking himself. No one ever thought to lump their opponents in with fringe groups or call their view points names, what a stroke of genius! But that's what I would expect from the only man in the world who loves the truth! ROTFLOL

How does adding an unverified and unverifiable god into the ‘mix’ benefit, in any way at all, our understanding of ‘gravity’ or any other law of nature?

If it's unverified (and I'm sure it is unverified) how does speaking of it at all add to our knowledge of scinece? if it is the case that speaking of is not scientific and it's not the scientists job to say unscientific things then: WHY THE HELL IS HAWKING SPEAKING OF IT??? He's the one that brought up God? If it's true that god is not verified and that prohibits him from existing and means that we can just rub the memory of every believing in God form the human mind, why does Hawking need to make this amazing revelatory observation about Gravity in order to say we don't need God? He should be able to just "God is unverified" and that's the end of it.

It's pretty bleeding obvious you don't know what's going on because the publisher uses this as a big selling device and all the atheist are getting happy about it (such rational creatures) but if it's true that talk of God is unscientific then Hawking is speaking not as as a scientist hu?

If he's speaking unscientifically do we have to pay attention? I mean if he said "Corn flakes are great!" does that mean its an official scientific fact that corn flakes are great? The great scientist said it and everything he says becomes a scientific fact right?


On the other hand if God is not a scientific question in the first place, why do you need scientific validation? science is not capable of ruling God out because God is beyond the ability of humans to understand. Thus God is amenable to science. That means we should not expect to find scientific evidence about God--at least not directly

How can invoking an imaginary deity to make to make the natural laws work by divine fiat be anything more than a god-of-the-gaps concept?

OH OH OH I know this, I know this, pick me! Let's see hu...could it be...duh...that's the point? Could it be because the real point is Hawking is begging the question? why is he bring up a non scientific issue and claiming to be able to decide it with scinece?

If it's not a scientific question then scinece is not the tool. Of course calling it "imaginary" to begin with that's not more of begging the question it? That's the great genius telling those of us who love the truth what truth is.

Why is belief in God automatically God of the gaps? Because atheists can on ly thing by their little scientific shield that protected them from having to do real thought. so they can't think in non scientific ways (they can't think scientifically well because that would require being less biased but whatever). Thus they expect that all believers have to have God of the gaps arguments. Of course that' just a function of not bothering to read theology so they don't really know what believers think.

Gravity is, along with ALL the natural laws and constants, based on the ‘principle of uniformity’ which is is a hypothesis based on observation and experience which makes predictions and can be tested.

But that doesn't us why it works does it? NO. Those observations are based upon observing the universe. They are not based upon observing things that makes the laws work. They are not based upon observing the origin of the universe, so they give us no clue as to how laws can exist, weather they are prescriptive or merely descriptive, if they the latter how do the laws make a universe happen that is not around to describe yet?

Nothing in scinece can tell us how there happen to be physical laws or why they work.

what we really need is a global approach not the phony ideological motivated pseudo science of reductionism.

E.g. the constancy of the speed of light is falsifiable, but so far has been verified and the same is true of all constants and laws so far discovered in nature - and most likely always will be. They have been highly productive and gods are not necessary- as Hawking says re the origins of the universe.

All you are saying is "my ideology works because it's based upon something that works." You are, however, extrapolating from the bit that works to the ideological bit that doesn't explain anything. IN fact you can afford to even try and answer my questions seriously because that would be admitting that the ideology is not scinece it's just a sham hitching on the back of scinece.

Non of that answers the questions I asked. None of it rules God out. If we assume that God is the perceiver that makes the universe work what you just described is perfectly explained by that; God is the universal mind the physical laws are the workings of that mind in its' act of engagement with the world, which is its thought.

We need global knowledge to answer these questions. Global knowledge means philosophy, logic, experiential epistemic judgements, phenomenology, and science. We should not ever try to decide the question of God through scinece because it wont work.


*Guy from Columbia University, Peter Woit an established physicist who  is conducting a war against M theory on the premise that it has no proof. M theory = multiverse and is tied in with theory of everything.

Stephen Hawking and Peter Woit, bouth statements on Woit’s blog, “Not Even Wrong” 9/7/2010 URL: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/ visited 9/13/2010.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Peter Woit, Interview, “Is Sting Theory Stringing us Along?” Big Think Electronic magazine. (Jan 18) 2010. URL: http://bigthink.com/ideas/18234 visited 9/18/2010

Atheist Stupidity at All Time High: New Site "set free"

Atheists just keep the stupidity coming. Here's a new stie I found called "set free" by someone named Smith whose thought processes are abysmal. After going to a lot of trouble to prove that Christians believe God is omnipotent, I'm the whole page is devoted to it, he says this:

Well, how did God create the universe from nothing, when we aren't able to do something like that? How does God raise the dead, if we can't? How is it that God has infinite power, while we don't? Because God is God. The Almighty is capable of doing anything that He wants to do - things that we are not able to do or understand - yet.  http://www.execulink.com/~wblank/longday.htm 

The Christian website "Christian Teen Corner" make this humble claim for their Biblegod:

wow let's think, how could it be that God has infinite power and we don't. wow. that's a tought one. I'm going to take a wild guess here, could it be, I don't mean to just throw out wild foolish ideas, but...I mean never mind Bigfoot, this is a really crazy hunch but could it be becasue WE ARE NOT GOD????

It's a wild one uh? what the hell is this guy  thinking?

why the hell would we have

His big enemy that he's fighting is a site called teen corner. He's really going after the top thinkers.He does throw out some petty garabage agisnt Craig but they all do that. All the atheists ridicule Craig so much most of them have never actually read anything by him so they have no respect for him at all even though he could flay any of them in a real debate. Dawkins wont go near a debate with him.

The Set free site is typical of the proliferation. I've explained already about how they get social strokes for doing the thing. What he gets out of this site is Kudos for having it and that makes him feel special and ten he get's stroked for his ridiculing of religious people he doesn't have to have good arguments or think or study. all he has to do is insult Christianity in any way and he's gets the necessary social acceptance he craves. This is how he atheist brain washing conditioned them to accept any dumb ass argument they throw out.

All an atheist has to do is vomit on the side walk as long as he hurls in the direction of a chruch all his comrades will be patting him on the back.

If, as Augustine supposed, god has infinite power and knowledge of every sort, then god can cause me to act in particular ways simply by willing that I do so.  http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/3b.htm 

It should be clear by now that the doctrine of omnipotence is common among Christians, and that Christians understand it thusly: Biblegod is not a deity of limited power or energy; rather, he has infinite power, infinite energy.

Maybe he is. Something must account for how stupid they all are.  I suppose God wants to test seminary students by raising up atheists with really dumb arguments to see how can answer them.

His real argument is that E=mc2 disproves (I know I didn't super text I don't know how to on this blog) God's omnipotence because supposed it proves that there can't be infinite energy. This is the kind of dumb do do argument that anyone with any sort of education could eat for breakfast.

But is infinite energy even possible in our universe? According to Albert Einstein, no. One thing that Albert showed, and science has confirmed time and time again since then, is that anything that exists in the universe is either mass and/or energy. So, when a theologian claims his Biblegod "is a spirit" he is ruling out that Biblegod contains mass- that which you can see and feel, and they will tell you such if you ask. So having ruled out mass, all that is left is energy. How much energy do they claim? Infinite energy. But that does not exist, for two obvious reasons. First, if there were infinite energy, there would be no mass, for the existence of any mass whatsoever would mean there could be even more energy were that mass converted into such, per E=MC². The fact that mass exists- any mass- proves beyond a doubt that the amount of energy in the universe has not yet become infinite. Secondly, if infinite, "without boundaries or limitations" energy did exist, we would not, for the entire universe would be like the insides of a microwave oven on high, to use a poor analogy. The amount of energy anywhere and everywhere in the universe would be so high that life, and even mass itself, would cease to exist. The entire universe would be vaporized in less than a millisecond. The very fact that you and I do exist proves that the amount of energy in the universe is not infinite, but has limitations.

He has this really stupid chart that uses  a rebus with Einstein's picture, and equal sign and atomic gomb to show that there can't be infinite power.

What is it with the these guys that they can't use imagination worth spit?I can name five appraoaches off the top of with no research anyone of them will beat this travesty of an argument like a drum.

(1) Obviously God can have infinite power (if we assume power = actual energy in the known phsyical sense) if he drains off most of it into antoher dimensions so it's not all released in this one. That would be possible in the multiverse that atheists are so hopeful about.

(2) God need not have infinite power in the conventional sense of actual energy to be omnipotant

(3) God doesn't have to be omnipotent (it's not really biblical concept it's Aristotle). This is especially funny because the site keeps saying "Bible God" evil mean old Bible God so that's the main this it hurt Christians feelings, but actually the God of the never uses the term "omnipotent" of himself.

(4) The universe could be a thought in the mind of God So God is complete control of all possible outcomes and can alter the laws of physics by thinking about it.

(5)  He doesn't need infinite energy because he controls the unified field.


These guys will jus spi out any garbage. But the new trend we see taking shape here is To put God on a level with us. To treat God as a big man in the sky and measure his limits by our standards. The people they are appareling to couldn't care less because All they really is social acceptance and the rush of bulling people they don't like. They couldn't care less how bad their arguments are. I've seen them say things like I don't care if your argument is true I still refuse to believe. A movement based upon being stupid can't win.

Another example of the atheist argument from incredulity: From CARM by M.Ph.D

I recently challenged the CARM atheists to show anything "convoluted" about my logic. They say that all the time when I challenge them they usually demonstrate that they have no concept of logic at all. What they really mean by logic is "this challenges my likes and dislikes." Logic is supposed to be a self contained set of objective rules that are always true and having nothing to do with personal likes and dislikes.
A guy on calling himself "Michigan Ph.D."
leaves this as a parting shot:

You believe in an unbelievable being for which there is no empirical evidence. Just because your arguments appear reasonable, they are nothing more than a fancy version of the "I told you, therefore it is so," argument that is so prevelant among theists.

As I say above, this is about his likes and dislikes, not about logic. His statement is invalid and violates logic in many ways, but it demonstrates that he thinks of logic as a set of likes and dislikes. Saying in answer to "what's wrong with  my logic?" "you believe in God" like if a capitalist economist was challenged by a Marxist to prove the superiority of free market economy and his only argument was "free market economy is the best because its' free market economy." He's saying "the logic of God argument is wrong becuase it supports belief in God." That's a circular reasoning. Argument from incredulity is a form of circular reasoning. It says "this is what I believe so it must be true becasue I believe it; therefore, whatever violate my beliefs must be wrong becasue I don't believe it." That's what he's doing here and in fact it's most atheists do most of the time. Of course there exceptions, there are smart atheists who argue intelligently. Most atheists on message boards, however, argue from incredulity and thinly disguise their assumptions.

Of cousre this statement above he basically admits my arguments are logical he says they "sound reasonable." Yet he refuses to believe them and his flimsy reasoning is "they are nothing more than fancy versions of 'I told you so.'" that's ludicrous. I have no arguments that based upon anything like "I told yous so." I am constantly harping upon 200 empirical studies on religoius experience. He thinks 200 studies in peer reviewed psychology journals is the same as saying "I told you so." Of course the atheits have heard this for about five years now not one of them has ever read any of the studies, or if one or two have looked up one or two studies they didn't actually read the studies but tried to base arguments upon the first few lines. There is actually a great deal of empirical evidence. See my God Argument List.

In spite of all of this I wish M.Ph.D the best.

Cracking the Jesus Myth Phony Scholarship Code

Richard Carrier has a couple of articles on his blog about a big conference for the Jesus Project
held at Amherst last December. O it sounds very scholarly. It presents the image of a group of major scholars meeting to mull over the lattes scientific findings that proving that Jesus never existed. This creates the idea that there is a climiate of opinion in the acadmeic world to expose the lies about Jesus as fiction and show that he never existed. But if you follow the trail to see where his lie originated, and the trail is clearly marked, one can see clearly that there's nothing scholarly about it. It's nothing more than a put up job, but it's no accident that the Jesus Myth stupidity though expossed time after time as bancrupt lives on and continues to draw in a group suckers who are hood winked into believing that they are on the cutting edge of scientific search for truth.

The tail begins with the first major clue, the website of an organization called "The Jesus Project." Carrier links to this site on his blog: http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2008/12/jesus-project.html. The site preports to be focual point for cutting edge academic research which suppossedly takes up where the Jesus Seminar left off:

The Jesus Seminar, founded in 1985 by the late Robert Funk of the University of Montana, was famous for all the wrong reasons—its voting method (marbles), the grandstanding of some of its members, the public style of its meetings, even its openly defiant stance against the claims of miracles in the Gospels—including the resurrection of Jesus. Except for the marbles, none of this was new. The use of additional sources, such as Gnostic and apocryphal gospels, to create a fuller picture of the Jesus-tradition and the focus on context as though it provided content were at least innovative. But the Jesus who emerged from these scholarly travails was so diminished that—as I wrote in a FREE INQUIRY article in 1993—he could not exist apart from his makers: “The Jesus of the [Jesus Seminar] is a talking doll with a questionable repertoire of thirty-one sayings. Pull a string and he blesses the poor.”

What the Seminar had tacitly acknowledged without acknowledging the corollary is that over 80 percent of “Jesus” had been fictionalized by the Gospel writers. That is to say that, if we are to judge a man’s life by his sayings, the greater portion of the literary artifacts known as the Gospels is fictional. If we are to judge by actions, then what actions survived historical criticism? Not the virgin birth, or the Transfiguration, or the healing of the sick, or the purely magical feats such as Cana, or the multiplication of loaves and fishes. The Resurrection had quietly been sent to the attic by theologians in the nineteenth century. The deeds—except, perhaps, the attack on the Temple (Mark 11:15–19)—had preceded the words to the dustbin years before, yet scholars insisted the historical figure was untouched. Only faith could explain this invulnerability to harm....

...

Of course buying into this assumes that the Jesus seminar did it's work well, which almost no scholars outside of the Jesus seminar agree with. The Jesus Porject, of course, aims to do better. They are off to a smashing start wtih the selection of a highly original name. But find some telling things in the recounting of their mission:

....On a pleasant day in January 2007, at the University of California, Davis, the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER) asked the question that had been looking for a serious answer for over a hundred years: Did Jesus exist? The CSER fellows, invited guests, present and former members of the Jesus Seminar, and a wide variety of interested and engaged attendees applauded roundly after three days of lectures and discussions on the subject—appropriately—“Scripture and Skepticism.” The Jesus Project, as CSER has named the new effort, is the first methodologically agnostic approach to the question of Jesus’ historical existence. But we are not neutral, let alone willfully ambiguous, about the objectives of the project itself. We believe in assessing the quality of the evidence available for looking at this question before seeing what the evidence has to tell us. We do not believe the task is to produce a “plausible” portrait of Jesus prior to considering the motives and goals of the Gospel writers in telling his story. We think the history and culture of the times provide many significant clues about the character of figures similar to Jesus. We believe the mixing of theological motives and historical inquiry is impermissible. We regard previous attempts to rule the question out of court as vestiges of a time when the Church controlled the boundaries of permissible inquiry into its sacred books. More directly, we regard the question of the historical Jesus as a testable hypothesis, and we are committed to no prior conclusions about the outcome of our inquiry. This is a statement of our principles, and we intend to stick to them.

This sounds like a fair and scholary statment. But consider the words in blue. What that really says is "we support the Jesus myth theory." What tells me that, aside from everything coming out of their work that is (see Carrier's blog linked above). That they aim not to understand the Gospel writers as thoguh that would be some kind fo big error. Secondly, the line about "figures similar to Jesus," in other words, they are going to try to argue that they prove the dying/rising savior God bit. Mixing theology and history is inexcusable, but of course doing history as a cover for destruction of a religious belief they despize is fine and dandy. They are not biased they just have the answers before they ask the questions.

All of this is trivial, I'm getting to the point...

At the end of its lease, the Jesus Project will publish its findings. Those findings will not be construed as sensational or alarming; like all good history, the project is aiming at a probable reconstruction of the events that explain the beginning of Christianity—a man named Jesus from the province of Galilee whose life served as the basis for the beginning of a movement, or a sequence of events that led to the Jesus story being propagated throughout the Mediterranean. We find both conclusions worthy of contemplation, but as we live in the real world—of real causes and outcomes—only one can be true. Our aim, like Pilate’s (John 18:38), is to find the truth.

Who wants to bet his house against my assumption they they will find that Jesus didn't exist and that the Bible is totally wrong? Anyone willing to bet his house on that? Of course to be what they call "probable" they would have to conclude that the bible is a lie and Jesus never existed, because they are totally to religion and ideas connected with religion. One hint that this may be the case is who is publishing the results of the seminar:

In general the conference revealed some cutting edge stuff in the works. Later this year or the next, Prometheus Books will publish the conference papers (or rather, improved and lengthened versions of them, e.g. my chapter in that book will be rather different from my actual talk, which was largely off-the-cuff, but most of the content will be the same)

Prometheus books only does atheist books.




But none of this is the point. That just sets up a clear look at their true motives. They are not the least bit interested in scholarship. But what's really interesting is what it says at the top of the page on "introduction:" Jesus Project, "a product of Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion"

So now Jesus Project is a project of this Committee. Who are these committee people? what is this organization? Trying to answer that question led me to another website:CSER "center for Inquiry"

Here's what they say about themselves:

The Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER) is a research division of the Center for Inquiry. Since its 1983 founding in Washington, DC, the Committee has worked to encourage humanistic, critical and non-parochial approaches to the study of religious traditions and institutions and to develop programs that promote the public understanding of religion in an international context.

CSER is an international research and educational consultation comprised of members (appointed fellows) who are nominated by an executive board. The current chair of CSER is Dr. R. Joseph Hoffmann, who succeeded Dr. Gerald Larue in January 2004.

The Jesus Project i not the world of scholars who organized their project as a group of truth seeking academics doing scholarly research, they were recruited by an organiztion whose praimry purpose and goal is to destroy christianity. Their statement above says they just to contribute to understanding of religion. But to understand it in what way? We already see they are not satisfied with the 2000 years of scholarship on Jesus becasue they consider that dominated by the chruch. Does that mean their "schoalrship" will be free and unecumbared? yet they recruted as the special as the special project of this organization, does that seem real open and fair. Let's look further and see who else is inoloved in this group.

The Head quarters of the group is in Amherst where the conference was held. So the conference is not related to the university, just held in the town. The same town where the organization that sponsors the project is.

P.O. Box 741
Amherst, NY 14226

This is under the tab on the website marked "advocacy." A group that does advocacy is not a scholarly group. They are not interested in truth, they are interested in selling their idea of the way things are, they want to dominate thinking. This is why they put up a big web of deception to create an imporession of impartical scholarship and truth seeking when in reality what they have is a put up job the purpsoe of which is to destory bellief. How do I know this, because look at the other wings of their organization. First of all this is their mission:

The Center for Inquiry is an active agent for social and cultural change in the courts, in the U.S. capital, at the United Nations, and at the grassroots level. Its advocacy work centers on three broad areas.

Fringe science and extraordinary claims

Through its Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and other initiatives, CFI advocates responsible, evidence-based treatment of extraordinary claims and fringe science, such as psychic phenomena, intelligent design creationism, and conspiracy theories. Council for Media Integrity presses for fair representation of naturalistic outlook in mass media.

In other words they are out to destroy faith and the concept of miracles. That means they are not going to allow scholars in the Jesus project who have any sort of religious belief. Its' going to be totally duobting, atheistic unbelieving and out to disprove any notion that gives religion even a slight benifit of the facts. Another wing of their group is dealing mental and medical health. Now does that include findings that religious belief is mental illness?

Medical and mental health

In age of alternative and complimentary medicine and New Age therapies, CFI advocates evidence-based medicine and mental health through its Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health Practice (CSMMH), publisher of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine and the Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, as well as in Skeptical Inquirer and its “Healthy Skeptic” online column.

Do New Agers typically push mental health alternatives? We know form the past that KGB played with the idea of mental health. Dissenters in the USSR were seen as mentally ill. Will these people allow alternative views of medicine and mental health? Are they trying to frame administrative medical people as mentally ill?

The organization is totally committed to a world without religion and a world in which religion is no longer vital force of any kind:

Religion, ethics and society

CFI is a leader in the struggle for a more rational, secular world. CFI’s Council for Secular Humanism (CSH) and Free Inquiry magazine promotes secular perspectives on contemporary issues; African Americans for Humanism assists humanist groups in America and Africa; the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion stimulates critical scholarship; and the Institute of the Secularization of Islamic Society stands up for the right to apostacy and blasphemy and the separation of mosque and state.

They are so concerned about the right to blaspheme, do they give a damn about the vast majority of humanity that thinks they are nuts and believes in God? This is just a nother look gorup of tin pot dictators who are convienced they they are special and they need to lead the ignorant masses, like Stalin, Like Hitler, like Pol Pot. One example of their work is this:

Amicus Brief Submitted in Americans United for Separation of Church and State v. Prison Fellowship Ministries (U. S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit)

Question Presented: Whether a state-funded program that seeks to rehabilitate inmates through religious conversion violates the Establishment Clause and whether the organization that operates the program can be required to return to the state the funds that it has received.

So even though the most remarkable success in American history for prision rehab has been religious conversion (Quaker ran jails of the nineteenth century) they want to disallow it because it's somehow violating them even though they are not in prsion and it does not effect them. But they can't stand the idea that others are being saved and led to God. Now would they force a voluntary program to shut? Are people beign forced into prision ministry? I don't think so.


Here's therir example of safe guarding religious liberty:

Safeguarding Religious Liberty in Charitable Choice and Faith-Based Initiatives

The Obama administration recently announced an expansion of government funding for so-called "faith-based initiatives," in which taxpayer dollars are doled out to sectarian religious organizations for the performance of social service programs. This government funding raises legal and constitutional concerns that the administration has yet to address directly. In February, the Center for Inquiry produced a position paper that called for an end to government funding of faith-based programs. Because government funding is scheduled to continue, the Center for Inquiry further recommended the adoption and vigorous enforcement of specific minimum safeguards to protect church-state separation and religious liberty.

CFI performed a detailed historical study of federal funding for faith-based programs, extending from the rise of "charitable choice" legislation during the Clinton administration through the explosion of taxpayer funding for religious programs under George W. Bush's Faith Based and Community Initiative. The position paper that resulted from this study expresses deep misgivings about government funding of sectarian religious programs. CFI cited concerns that these programs may use taxpayer dollars to support or favor religious activities and beliefs; that government may give preference to particular religious organizations in doling out funds; and that under current standards, recipients of taxpayer funding for faith-based programs are allowed to engage in employment discrimination on the basis of religion.

CFI's position paper recommends that government funding of faith-based programs be eliminated entirely. CFI's paper endorses a limited exception for truly secular social services programs, such as Catholic Charities, that have some affiliation with a religious institution but are provided by independent 501(c)(3) charities. CFI maintains that such charities must conduct social service programs without religious content or materials and without engaging in religious discrimination. (Catholic Charities is a non-profit corporation separate and distinct from the Catholic Church.)

Their example of safeguarding religious liberty is to close it down because it's somehow hurting them that religious groups are allowed to help people.

O but let's back up and look at the frienge scinece bit. The organization that put up the Jesus Porject also sponsers Skeptical Inquirer magazine, as their special mission of "advocacy." It's clear what they are advocating is the destruction of Christianity. This means the secular web and all the major force of internet atheists are just their little army of brown shirts running around persecuting Christians.

Its' the crystal night.

I'm sure I'm being alarmist. I'm just building a conspiracy theory out of think air. Do you really foresee the Jesus project not coming out with findings about Jesus not existing and the Bible being untrue? They will hood wink people into thinking that this is a scholarly mission and that it's fair and honest scholarship when the results are pre determined because it's professional wrestling. This is the work of real scholarship like Firts Von Erich was really an athelete and not an entertainier.


Look at it honestly, the Jesus Project is sponsorded the same organization that runs the Skeptical Inquirer magazine

Answering the DC Crowd On the Nature of Christiainty

Here I go lecturing again. It's really funny to me how these atheists will make arguments that just absolutely turn upon not knowing something because they refuse to read theology. Then they use their lack of knowledge as a means of arguing against Christianity. When you point out to them that they would understand more about the issue if they read some theology, they soud like kids who skipped school and forged a note form mom, "I don't have to do this I have my note." Except in this case "I don't have to read theology because Dawkins (mom) says it's stupid." But if you read theology you would know better.


The issue this time is an argument going around over there that there is no clear cut means of understanding what Christianity is or how to be a Christian, or what it means to be one. Therefore, they conclude, Christianity must be stupid and wrong and this us just a dandy reason not to believe n it.. Here I go again, "If you read some theology you would know how to define Christianity and what it means to be a Christians and so froth. Of course they would rather have their excuse not to know than to actually find out. This is just another excellent illustration of the intellectual bankruptcy of atheism.


Here's one of the posts:


By Harry McCall at 10/20/2008


With respect to some of the comments I’ve read to my posts that as a former Christians John and I are often told we never knew what Christianity was. In light of this claim, would some Christians care to give the posters here at DC a working definition of Christianity? Or is there really no standard definition believers can agree on?


Statements like “It’s a belief in God” or “It’s a belief in Jesus” are so vague that the character Satan could be a Christian too. And again, statements like “It’s trusting Jesus Christ for salvation.” fails too in that hundreds of denominations who believe this attack one another as false religions (some weird oxymoron isn‘t it?).


A case in point:

A so called “Christian” commenter here at DC who goes by the name Jason tells me there are no righteous dead in Heaven be they Enoch, Elijah, or Moses, neither are there any wicked / unsaved dead in Hell, nor is there any Great White Throne Judgment where the lost or cast into a Lake of Fire.


If Jason can deny clear orthodox Biblical teachings and still be a Christian, exactly how much of the Bible can one deny and still be “saved” or salvation just a subjective term that can have over 20,000 sectarian or denominational meanings which make it basically meaningless?


Jason has stressed in comments to my posts that the “saved” or “righteous” dead or just like the “lost” or “unsaved” dead; in their graves. So be you Christian or atheist, your fate at death is the grave.


By rejecting historical orthodox dogma as traditional historical Christianity has always felt the Bible clearly teaches, is Jason a Christian while John and I never were?


In short:


A. What makes one a Christian?


B. How much of the Bible can one deny and still be a Christian?


C. What is the difference between historical orthodox doctrinal denial and Biblical denial?


All comments welcomed.




Let's take this step by step:


With respect to some of the comments I’ve read to my posts that as a former Christians John and I are often told we never knew what Christianity was. In light of this claim, would some Christians care to give the posters here at DC a working definition of Christianity? Or is there really no standard definition believers can agree on?



I would not say John never knew what Christianity is.I can't speak for Harry because he don't know enough of his posting. But anyone who says that about Lofuts probably hasn't bothered to choose his words carefully.


Statements like “It’s a belief in God” or “It’s a belief in Jesus” are so vague that the character Satan could be a Christian too. And again, statements like “It’s trusting Jesus Christ for salvation.” fails too in that hundreds of denominations who believe this attack one another as false religions (some weird oxymoron isn‘t it?).


A case in point:

A so called “Christian” commenter here at DC who goes by the name Jason tells me there are no righteous dead in Heaven be they Enoch, Elijah, or Moses, neither are there any wicked / unsaved dead in Hell, nor is there any Great White Throne Judgment where the lost or cast into a Lake of Fire.



If that is the Jason I think it is he's a universalist so he doesn't' have conventional interpretation. But this Harry person equates Christian identity with acceptance of an inerrant bible and literal interpretation. That would be a good reason to suspect he doesn't' know anything about Christianity. Now that's not to say that a hell of a lot of Christians don't know anything about it either. That's not a bad surmise. Many Christians don't know beans about their own faith tradition and just going to church is no guarantee you will know anything. We are not saved by our own righteousness, the bible does say no one is righteous "no not one." This Harry seems to lack basic instruction in the faith.


If Jason can deny clear orthodox Biblical teachings and still be a Christian, exactly how much of the Bible can one deny and still be “saved” or salvation just a subjective term that can have over 20,000 sectarian or denominational meanings which make it basically meaningless?



Another point of ignorance. Belief in judgment and hell is only understood as "sound orthodox teaching" by certain groups, it is not understood as such by major denominations such as Episcopal, Anglican, United Methodist, and is different in Eastern Orthodox terms, (although they do have judgment and hell but they would think most of the fundamentalists will be there). If he knew something about theology he would know this.


By rejecting historical orthodox dogma as traditional historical Christianity has always felt the Bible clearly teaches, is Jason a Christian while John and I never were?




This highlights one of the major weaknesses of his alleged "orthodox" understanding: no creed, no council, not the bible, not any gatekeeper of Christian id anywhere in any ways makes acceptance of hell a prerequisite for salvation. The Catholic church does not say "unless you believe in hell, you are going there." No they do not say that. Many fundies believe that, but no official magisteria of the church ever says that. That is not the nature of of it means to be a Christina. Christian identity is not defined by belief in hell. Nor does the Bible teach that hell is eternal conscious torment for the soul. The only thing it does teach and can be understood as a literal teaching about hell is that it is "destruction of the soul." That is the only literal statement and everything else is metaphor.


The same with the Bible. No magisteria of the church teach that belief in the Bible is the limit on salvation. No one in the Bible ever makes a statement connecting belief in the Bible to salvation. Come to that, there is no mention of a "Bible" in the Bible. There is mention of something called "scripture" but no "Bible."If scripture is synonymous with the canon of the two testaments (ie "The Bible" as we know it) no one ever says. No Creed, no council, no pope, no saint no theologians has eve made any official statement on the theses matters that could be construed as definitive for the church as a whole.


So we can answer Harry's questions like so:


A. What makes one a Christian?



An expressed faith based statement links one's ends and the goals of one's life, the purposes of one's living in connection with a belief in Jesus of Nazareth, his death and his resurrection, as redemptive and soteriological.




B. How much of the Bible can one deny and still be a Christian?



all of it. everything and the binding. Nothing in Christian magisteria connects belief in the bible to salvation. There were Christians before there was a canon of the Bible. Christians lived and died before any books of the New Testament were written, how do you suppose they were saved?


C. What is the difference between historical orthodox doctrinal denial and Biblical denial?



What you are calling "historical Orthodox doctrine" is largely a matter of what community one wishes to belong to. Its' as different for an Anglican as is for a Baptist or an Eastern Orthodox person. No official doctrine of the statements that belief in the bible is the basis of salvation. Luther did not say that. Knox did not say it, no pope every said it. No creed ever said "I believe in the bible."


The fact that you think so shows us how deeply the fundies have let down the Gospel faith they pretend to guard.


The basic doctrines of the church are historically set out in the creeds. That's what the creeds were for. Protestant Churches that have abandoned the creeds have set themselves apart from historical Christianity. Fudnies who think the Bible is the basis of salvation have separated themselves from historical Christianity even twice over; once as abandoning the creeds, again as setting up the Bible as a standard of salvation that it never was in Church history.


Harry, how can you go about try to debunk something you refuse to learn about? You should know this. Every Christian should know this, but unfortunately you have to go to seminary to learn it. Loftus should know it.

God is Imaginary site is a good exampe of atheist brain washing

 Atheist Brain washing


Atheism is a hate group and a cult, they definitely brain wash. They can't brain wash the way they Moonies do because they can't kid nap people or take them to the farm or whatever. The reason atheist brain washing works is because it's voluntary, they are not forcing people into a process of socialization, they are finding people who want to be socialized then giving it to them. Why do I say "socialization?" Because I once studied in a class with a professor on the sociology of religion. The professor is a world famous sociologist in the field. His theory is that there is no such thing as barin washing per se, it's really a means of socialization.

Like the Moonies atheists cruse the net looking for lonely outcast types who want to belong to a group and feel alienated from mainstream. At that rate the brain washing is really just a process of socializing, teaching the new requite the right way to maintain his own set of verbal ques that will initiate acceptance in the group, and that's really all the brain washing one needs. We can see this process working in the website "God is imaginary--50 simple arguments (50 idiotic arguemnts).

What we are about to see is the author of that site imitating newbies into thinking like atheist, and keeping the attitude long enough to be accepted. When the new one is accepted he get's positive strokes form the group and he learns, "mocking religion = acceptance." If I say this I'll be accepted.

The is obvious becuase the process is not a set of arguments designed to encourage a person to think about the truth but a step by step process destined to set up expectations,show they are not fulfilled  by religion, then supply positive reinforcement when the recruit learns to mock.

this is from the God is imaginary site:

It is easy to prove to yourself that God is imaginary. The evidence is all around you. Here are 50 simple proofs:

Watch the video

1. Try praying
2. Statistically analyze prayer
3. Look at all historical gods
4. Think about science
5. Read the Bible

Look at the little sign on the left, proving the Bible is repulsive. it's not just wrong it's "repulsive." Of course that's hate. only a moron would be unable to see that it's hate, or someone who has been through the process and learned to turn off his critical faculties because mocking and ridicule have come to be seen as normal to him.

Look at the steps. Try praying. Why? Because we are going to look at what they say about that is "set up some expectations, see that God doesn't fulfill them, (of course they are going to be really stupid things that of cousre God do like "give me a million follows materialized out of thin air right now). So that will set up the sense that prayer doesn't work, but roe importantly i am reconfigured for saying it doesn't work. So this is not an analytical discussion about the possibility of prayer working it's a rank stupid insistence to have one's impulsive desires met so that when they are not met one will have a sense of "yes, God isn't real because he didn't do that."

his page on "try praying"

What would happen if we get down on our knees and pray to God in this way:

Dear God, almighty, all-powerful, all-loving creator of the universe, we pray to you to cure every case of cancer on this planet tonight. We pray in faith, knowing you will bless us as you describe in Matthew 7:7, Matthew 17:20, Matthew 21:21, Mark 11:24, John 14:12-14, Matthew 18:19 and James 5:15-16. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.

We pray sincerely, knowing that when God answers this completely heartfelt, unselfish, non-materialistic prayer, it will glorify God and help millions of people in remarkable ways. Will anything happen? No. Of course not.

Here he did exactly what I said he would do. He set up a ridiculous expectation that anyone should know God wont do--and Christians have discussed plenty of times why this is not valid-- the real point is not that he really thinks someone is going to be convince. The point is two fold. (1) it leavens in the mind of the imitate a very slight sense that "yes he's right God didn't come through, it builds doubt with the idea "why don't God fix everything?" But the more important one (2) When they go to be with other atheists and they say "I did this and it didn't work of cousre" then they will be given positive reinforcement because they tried it. That will make them feel like part of the group and what they have learned from it is not only the socialization process "I am accepted for my doubt" but also the sense that mocking and ridicule is the natural way to deal with religion because it leads to acceptance by the group.

For an answer on why this method of interpretation scripture is simple minded and this is not a good representation of prayer see my essay. See also my essay on Metacrock's Blog "why doesn't God heal Stupidity?" The answer to why God doesn't heal all problems at once is the theodicy problem. That is a major issue. While I don't blame anyone for find it hard to have faith in the face of pain in life, that was one of my major reasons for being an atheist, there are good answers if you look for them.

Of course the issue prayer is totally misrepresented here. There is a lot that can be said on the atrocious exegesis, but for empirical studies about prayer that suggest it is effective see my orphan pages. There are about 14 studies that show prayer works. Also there are many more kinds of empirical evidence that prove God works miracles.

Of cousre the bottom line is prayer usually doesn't get us what we want exactly, when we want it and we are usually not patient enough to see the difference between our immediate desires and our true long terms desires. This simple minded approach capitalizes upon and prays upon the simplistic need to have what we want when we want it and psychological depends of the alienated upon accepted by the group. The I examine atheism the more I find this is the case, Atheism plays upon simple minded fallacy and immediate desires.