*Sigh*....here we go again. John doesn't have anything new to say and goes on with another defense of his "knowledge" of the topics on which he speaks: http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2010/06/am-i-truly-ignorant-about-christianity.html
Without going through the painstaking yet unbearable simplicity of quoting John word for word and then providing commentary, I'll just paraphrase here. It's not like much of anything we haven't heard before, but John is once again rambling about how Christians say he is ignorant because of his atheism and because he broke away from the faith and believers just can't accept that. Well...
A fundamental error in this calculation is that John neglects there are non-Christians who will call him on his ignorance, like myself. So if there are criticisms of John's ignorance coming from non-Christians, then John is in trouble.
It's not even as though John proves that he isn't ignorant, so what reason do we have to believe him when he says he is not? If John makes a statement generalizing about world religions such as "there isn't a single religion that I know of that has a nebulous god" that is an example of IGNORANCE. Hinduism is one religion that comes to mind where Brahma is a very nebulous deity force.
So the conclusion then is that John is simply ignorant of his own ignorance. And we could beat it in his head that his blog doesn't really offer anything different from a Joel Osteen type church: It relies on personal testimonies, pleads for money donations, and literally rants in circles with little to no new material. Just like your typical cash cow church.
Will John ever realize this reality? Chances are probably not, because if John were to realize his own ignorance, the existence of Debunking Christianity might be never more.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
3 comments:
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I've learned that when engaging some of the atheists on the issues It's good for me to take my meds. I've been diagnosed as schizo-affective disorder and when I'm off my meds it's very easy for me to be led astray by the personal attacks and name calling that was done to me. I'm back on my meds and I'm stronger than ever. I can see how deluded I was in following the atheists reasoning.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that John wants to have his cake and eat it. John makes much of the fact he had a masters in theology and was a minister for over a decade – he is very eager to make his reader aware that he not only was once a Christian but a very knowledgeable one. Then he tries to claim that it was reading books by atheists, being asked questions about Genesis and science and other arguments that caused him to abandon his faith. I’m not an experienced apologist and I had come across virtual all of the arguments in John’s book before reading it. I struggle with the idea that somebody did a masters in theology without ever reading a book by an atheist! So which is it? Was John a minister for all that time and yet unaware of the difficult passages in the Bible etc or do the arguments in his book, contrary to what the title suggests, have nothing to do with why he became an atheist?
ReplyDeleteAlso what is a true Christian? Just as you find out who your friends are when you most need them, you realise whose a true Christian when times get tough. If somebody committed adultery, fell out with their church over it and leaped on a bunch of arguments post hoc to justify it then I feel perfectly entitled to suggest that they weren’t a true Christian!
The basic problem is that Loftus can not be trusted; by his own admission he lied to his family, and his congregation. Indeed, he complains that his own cousing did not trust him.
ReplyDeleteThus, when he gives the reason for his "deconversion" that you refer to, we can not know if they are the true reasons. In fact, careful examination his chronological representation of the reasons for his deconversion in the Three Versions of his book indicates that they are not.
This is not to say, however, that, in his own mind, Loftus does not believe he is giving the true reasons; this is why I think that a strong case can be made that HE has now reached a delusional state...indeed, one of the characteristics of such a state is to freguently claim that others are delusional, as he does incessantly, even going to the length of titling a book with that characterization.
He plainly states that his own family was suspicious of his motives, so when he claims he has applied the "Outsider Test" to himself, we have no reason to believe him this any more than the so called "reasons" for his deconverison.