The Loftus Delusion

Believe it or not ladies and gentlemen, but a new book titled "The Loftus Delusion" was not written by any of us here at DL. Sure enough as always however, John was tempted to comment on how "respectfully" well written it was:

I’m honored that some college professors use my book Why I Became an Atheist (WIBA) in their college classes, like Dan Lambert, at John Brown University, and Richard Knopp, at Lincoln Christian University, as I mentioned earlier. I’m also honored that David Reuben Stone has decided to write a book against WIBA, called The Loftus Delusion. While I do not like the title of the book, which is misleading for a few reasons, including the fact that Stone does not deal at all with my most recent book, The Christian Delusion (TCD), Stone's book is a respectfully written one.

Would John like to tell his audience what is misleading about the book's title? I mean John, aren't you delusional?

To reiterate, isn't someone who denies evidence contrary to their claims in delusion? Like this, for example?

http://theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?p=1973384#post1973384

Now I do actually agree that the book is a little misleading. Take a look at it briefly and you'll see that the book, at least from the subtitle on the cover, addresses issues pertaining to Messianic Zionism vs. the New Atheists. That is perhaps misleading. But it is not misleading to rebut John on his assertion of possessing whatever special knowledge and insight is required into debunking the Christian faith.

Because John is far from qualified from debunking or arguing anything worth serious consideration. Instead, John offers arguments about a hypothetical world in which every living being was a vegetarian and we were all created to be pacificistic flower-frollicking hippies which is somehow to be automatically assumed as a perfect universe that only a perfect sovereign creator would spawn into existence.

Yep, that's about it as far as John's intellectual depth goes.

The question we ought to be asking here is not if the book actually backs up the meaning of its title. What we ought to ask is whether or not Loftus is delusional and if this can be verified outside of any published materials. And we certaintly think it has and can be verified and always will be verifiable.

Stone considers his book “the definitive critique of the anti-Biblical atheism of John W. Loftus” (seen on the back cover of his self-published book). [And to think, people don’t like my self-promotion ;-) ] Is he right? Not even close. He asks me for a response to his critique in the interests of a “charitable dialogue” that “could benefit us both in our search for truth" (p. 162). Okay. Here goes, very briefly.

And look, it didn't take long for us to spot something. John clearly seems to think people like myself have a problem with John because he promotes his own works. WRONG. The more accurate response is that we anti-Loftuscites don't approve of dirty political tactics in order to promote one's book. We don't appreciate an obsessiveness with oneself and trying to make themselves sound like an objective third-party source. And so on.

So John, its time you learned how to grasp that concept and actually come up with something real and supportive. Instead of trying to oversimplify the issue, you could say "People don't approve of my methods" and you might actually have a leg to stand on.

But then again...

Stone begins his book with a “newly discovered mathematical proof” of a critical component of the intelligent design (ID) thesis in chapter one (which can be seen on Amazon). Don’t get me wrong here. I can do the math. It’s just that it takes time to work through it; time that I must think is worthwhile if I’m going to want to do so. It’s just that I have lots of reasons for thinking it’s not worth it, so I didn’t. This chapter is the kingpin of his whole book. It’s Stone’s natural theology. If he’s right about it then he seems to indicate the rest of his case follows. If he’s wrong then his whole case fails. It’s that simple.

John is in the right here but can he apply this argument introspectively? John's book Why I Became an Atheist would rely entirely on John's personal testimony of his experiences managing churches and related groups. So, if John at first states that his reasons for leaving the faith are unconventional and did not rely on reason, John cannot state the exact opposite ahead of time:

"...Some former believers rejected their faith based upon the evidence itself. My initial arguments for rejecting the Christian faith are not the same ones that others have had..."

Later on...

"Nearly two years later, I came to deny the Christian faith. It required too much intellectual gerrymandering to believe.."

So, does John's case rely on his personal experiences or on his ability to interpret evidence? If John can't make up his mind, does he even have a case?

He criticizes my “Outsider Test for Faith” (OTF) and proposes an alternative called “Stone’s Test Of Neutral Evidence” (STONE). He criticizes the OTF for arguing for on behalf of skeptical agnosticism rather than for neutral agnosticism. He thinks we should be neutral agnostics rather than skeptical agnostics. Rather than starting our examination of the evidence “from above” with the assumption of God, or in starting “from below,” with the world, STONE argues we should start “from the middle,” even though he grants with me that “utterly pure and complete neutrality may be impossible to attain with respect to all belief systems.” (p. 73) Now this is all high sounding rhetoric, but rhetoric it is. It’s the democratization of extraordinary miracle claims that Bob Price criticizes so effectively in TCD. Stone, just like Boyd and Eddy in The Jesus Legend, wants us to take seriously all claims no matter how bizarre or outlandish so they can smuggle in their own extraordinary Christian claims. This so-called middle position of theirs is a strange land to stand on. They never started on this piece of ground in the first place. No, they were born into a Christian culture and accepted what they were taught to believe in this culture. There is no middle position. Human beings are not Spockian type creatures. We are given our religious worldviews. They are inherited; caught, not taught. The question the OTF asks us is how can we properly test the ones we were given. Given the fact that we are born into them, and given the fact that the odds are that ours is wrong from the geographical distribution of religious faiths, we should test our handed down faith with skepticism.

This is what John would call a "case study in cognitive dissonance reduction" because he seems to be incapable of answering the mounting criticisms there are against the OTF and why its limitations are perhaps its greatest weakness. If high-profile institutions such as the CIA relied on John's material for guidance instead of intelligence research, we might all be dead by now:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/13/american.qaeda.message/index.html

Saying that religions are merely by-products of enculteration is narrow-minded and ignorant. Sociologically speaking, we can view religions as various different items within a collective marketplace. Individual "consumers" pick and choose what religion or religious ritual best fits into their own lifestyle. Predominantly religious countries such as India are starting to make economic progressions and are realizing their place in the world despite having been affected by the detrimental caste system for many thousands of years. If John were correct in his thesis, then we would suspect that nations which are predominantly religious have little to no hope of ever improving their status on a worldwide scale. And yet they do, and will continue to do so. The notion that even theocracies are permanently static in their progress is a cariacture itself. The Islamic world can be credited with many advances in practical fields such as algebra, and yet the Islamic world has been dominated by a strict adherence to ritual and and a constant reverence for Allah since its inception. In fact, Islam is the only religion, according to comparative religion scholars, that delibrately fuses politics and theology with each other.

Oh and, in deductive logic, theism and atheism are both positions rooted in what is known as the Appeal to Ignorance Fallacy.

The most amazing thing about Stone’s book though, is that after he argues against my skeptical control beliefs he dismisses the second part of my book in ten pages (139-149). He says so. “Loftus’ unjustified Biblical perspectives may be dismissed due to their logical grounding in those unjustified controls beliefs.” (p. 139). The second part of WIBA criticizes the Bible and its foundational miracle claims and doctrines. For instance, since he thinks he’s undermined my skeptical control beliefs then without so much as trying to answer my arguments with regard to the atonement he basically says that since my control beliefs have been shown wrong I am unjustified in rejecting the doctrine of the atonement.

Ahhhhhh.....now I get it. Materials exist which finally do get at addressing what you bring up in your book, but they're obviously not good enough because they never got to "part 2"!

John, John, John, you are no logician. You use equivocation, appeals to ignorance, red herrings, straw men, and amphibolies to make your points about 98% of the time you make an "argument." If you were to specify what you meant by certain terms in the context that they get used, or if you were to elaborate on what it is you are actually trying to say, people would take you less seriously than they already do now. And of course, you and I both know this. Which is why you rely on logical fallacies rather than on true sound reasoning.

Wait just a minute, Stone. I was once an insider. The second half of the book describes why I could not remain a Christian GIVEN a believing set of control beliefs. It’s the considerations of the second half of WIBA that caused me to reject the Christian faith and led me to my skeptical control beliefs in the first place. So until or unless you actually deal with the arguments in the second half of my book, you have done nothing to support your natural theology project. And until you actually flesh out for us what it means to treat all religious truth claims “neutrally,” as you claim to do, then you must examine in detail the arguments in the second half of my book. You cannot merely say that with your neutral stance you would accept these biblical doctrines and claims. That’s NOT being neutral, you see, or very critical as a thinker. You need to show us from a neutral starting point why you would accept the claims of an incarnation, the atonement, or the resurrection, and you did no such thing.

Again, its time to place the microscope back on yourself, Lofty. No one else can or should have to do that for you. When it comes to actually coming up with something tentative, your primary tactic is to beat around the bush.

So John, from what I can tell, you do not acknowledge the evidence that is out there contrary to your assertions. You make no real attempts to address the criticisms of what you believe to be your most well constructed and hard-hitting arguments. When you've been backed into a corner, rather than man up to your flaws, shortcomings, and wrongdoings, you will divert the attention onto someone else, something else, or change the subject entirely. You are an individual that prefers to plug his ears when he is removed from any hint of the shadow that is their comfort zone. You are, quite evidentially, delusional.