The End of Innovation

It's a sheer disappointment John can't present a work that doesn't:

A. Piggy-back the publications of other, more well known celebrity figures.
B. Start from a point of reference that isn't initially reactionary or an attempt to strongarm the opposing side.

Let's face it though, this is what we have gotten in the past and this is what we are going to receive from John. His whole purpose here is to go out on a limb against Christianity (at least, that's the tentative purpose and it works on the assumption that his blog truly deals with such). Make no mistake my readers, this will be an ongoing pattern to come. Here's another promo for his third upcoming release in what seems to be in a line for his second series of sorts:

This book has taken a year and a half from conception to find its way into your homes. It's been a lot of work but worthwhile nonetheless. It went to press and will be available mid-July. Tell others about it. It's a pretty damn good book, named after Sam Harris' The End of Faith.

Expect the smear campaign to start soon afterward on Amazon, as it happened (and continues to happen) to my other two books. It's a war over there from deluded believers who think what I'm doing is a much more serious threat to their faith than most others, whether that's true or not (hey, they're deluded so why should we think they know who best to target?).

John, I know I've spoken about this thousands of times before but, this is actually very counter-productive to what you are hoping to accomplish through all of your efforts. You have to accept and come to terms with "smear campaigns". Do you know anybody that has published anything that has gone uncriticized?

And with that said, by utilizing the "deluded" categorization, you are being excessively forceful with your message, and the means by which your package is presented only confirms this and even seems to reveal your desperation for getting others to take you seriously.

I would contend that a true artist and visionary does not go out of his way to promote their works, they let the works speak for themselves. They are not vicious and adamant or invested into getting "into the fight", and doing whatever it takes to win. This seems ridiculous to New Atheists because they perceive their circumstances as likened to a civil rights movement, and civil rights movements are not typically won by being passive. But think about the case of Gandhi, who did not advocate physical retaliation against the oppressive forces of his time.

Tactics can only be successfully counteracted by tactics, and the tactics used in counteraction should be chosen wisely. It is almost never in the case that using the same tactics as the enemy will bring you victory, you must devise a means of circumventing the traps and expectations the enemy has planned for you to bring you to your defeat, and this is still an issue of tactics, except that they are not drawn up in a sloppy fashion.

It is unwise for instance, to stoop to the anticipations of the enemy by playing out your counteraction strategy by going with full head on force, this should be a contingency of sorts you rely on as a last resort. Therefore John, your campaign must be one that innovates, and you have yet to do anything of the sort.

Perhaps you will come to terms with your flawed approach and learn this lesson for the next installment. I would actually be interested if you do start becoming more creative and original. But seeing as you would currently rather mock and choose to ignore your critics suggestions and takes, this could only be considered a pipe dream.

"Evidence"???

Nick (ApologiaPhoenix) a somewhat contributor here and frequent moderator over at TheologyWeb, brought this to my attention as I was skimming the March 2011 Screwballs thread:

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2011/03/devastating-tsunami-hits-japan-you-want.html#disqus_thread

If you've kept up on any recent news lately, you'd know perfectly well that John is talking about the tsunami mass earthquake which hit Japan sometime mid to late evening yesterday.

Now it's not so much that I disagree with John's viewpoint on the nature and extent of these disaster and their implications for theological beliefs. It's just, well...

Check out the title: Devastating Tsunami Hits Japan. You Want Evidence There Isn't a Good Omnipotent God? Here it is.

*Sigh*....does this sound like anything new from Debunking Christianity? If you answered no, then you would most certainly be correct. Anything bad that happens in the world on a major scale is likely to get pinned down by John and like-minded folk as evidence that there is no good omnipotent God.

Except when these arguments turn into a formulated pattern, and become a franchise just like the majority of John's other arguments and propositions, then where does there effectiveness lie? Where is the substantial content? Where is this "evidence" that John speaks of. At some point it becomes an "argument" which relies on your emotional suggestiveness. Does it actually address anything on a cerebral level? Does it provide anything of coherent structure? NO. It's really quite similar to the tactics used by one of my favorite and often mentioned domestic terrorist groups, PETA. I have compared John to people who endorse PETA (even though I cannot state as a matter of fact that John would be amongst those who do) because he relies mostly on the power of suggestion rather than the power of reason. What does PETA do to convince people that eating meat is wrong and abhorrent? They compare eating chicken McNuggets to the Concentration Camps, they prey on children with videos of the horrific and illegal torture of endangered species. Do they at all attempt to explain such statements as why eating meat is "wrong" for humans to do? Never.

In the same sense, does John provide anything of content beside videos and soundbites, news clips, and rehashed arguments? We await the day that John could commit to actual substance. That is a hope and anticipation of ours here on this blog. And if somehow John could explain in this particular instance, how its implied significance is different or moreso than in other previously mentioned cases, then we will afford John that merit.

John writes just above the embedded video:

"Here it is. Try explaining this rather than explaining it away."

And in conjunction with a comment made this very morning:

johnwloftus Today 09:10 AM in reply to Mike B.

"Mike, I written about tragedies before and every time I do some people say I'm insensitive. But if I wrote about a distant event in the past it would not be fresh on people's minds."

Well John, maybe you could look at this way: You do make a fuss about just any type of calamity that comes to your attention. You have a tendency like that of the media to skew these events to fit your perspective, just like the media's allegations that Jared Loughner was a right-wing conspirator, not a registered Independent with severe psychological problems not related to religious affiliations or even politics.

And something else you fail to touch upon is what I've already brought up in this post: You fail to explain how the recency of an event makes it much more signficant than those of the past. What does this earthquake prove about anything? What could it possibly indicate? You leave these questions hanging in the air for the individual to decide. That's employing the same reasoning used by Creationists, John. What does this prove that couldn't somehow be proven from the distant past?

Keep in mind that because calamities have always been a fact of life, such instances were happening even during the time the Bible was being written. Does this make the Bible true? No, not by necessity. But it does show that it is a very small probability that ancient people were ignorant and oblivious to natural disasters. The key is to pinpoint what the ancients were conveying about their world at the time that they wrote this material which is now affecting our contemporary society. John makes no effort really to address any of these topics. This is why his arguments fall flat on their face.

Are There Really Atheist/Skeptic Apologetics?

Guest commentator Morrison recently wrote that we have become inactive here with our posts and updates while John Loftus of Debunking Christianity ups his level of "aggressiveness." While this means very little in terms of significance to myself and JP Holding (because what we are usually faced with is what John has discussed plenty in detail before and it can only become irritatingly repetitive), I figure what the heck as usual. This blog exists for a reason. Keep in mind, however, the reasons for such sporadic intervals in updates is simply based on two major factors: 1) This blog is not our lives and neither is John Loftus, believe it or not, and 2) There are, admittely, more important priorities at stake other than debating on the internet. I'm sure even our detracting critics can agree with these sentiments, even if they don't believe for a second they apply to us the staff. This blog is somewhat fun to manage and it also gives us a medium for calling out John's material in a way he despises and would preferably censor [except when he attempts to do so here, he gets bitch-slapped, not us ;)], it's not a career job for us and this blog has made very little in terms of profit and income. After all this is Debunking Loftus, not Debunking Christianity (:P), and our approach to these subjects of discussions stems from an entirely different even if somewhat similar rationale.

The title of this post was prompted by John's self-defense against a skeptic's critique of his infamous but ineffective and shortcoming OTF (otherwise spelled out as "Outsider Test for Faith" for you noobs). To those of you that have kept up with this blog since the exact date of inception, what you are about to skim over is probably not something that will keep you too terribly interested or will really stick out in your mind as intriguing or intellectually stimulating, but we'll take a jab at it anyway.

John Loftus: I will offer a brief response to Thrasymachus who claims that the Outsider Test is a failure.

I'll place his words in blockquotes:

I’m not a believer, but I’m also not convinced that the OTF is the rhetorical silver bullet it is made out to be. I hope to clarify and augment the OTF to avoid some of the more common criticisms, and hopefully cut through some of the confusion between Loftus and his detractors. In the final reckoning, though, I will show the OTF isn’t a significantly persuasive force for Atheism.

The OTF is no silver bullet. There are no silver bullets. If that is the standard then all counter Christian apologetics fail.

Our commentary: There are no "silver bullets" lurking around that you might be able to spot John? None at all? If there are no "silver bullets" than by what term or labeling reference do we ascribe to the intent of bolstering confidence in your arguments, your colleagues' arguments, or even the arguments of New Atheists in general? If there are no arguments out there that stand out from the rest, then isn't it a rehashing of old and limited materials to defend a worldview/cause not worth defending?

As I penned back in 2010 in one of the entries to my logic series concerning John's favorite forms of argument, I specifically listed the fallacy of equivocation (i.e., double meaning for a single, specific word) as one argumentative pattern trait we can attribute to this line of reasoning. To what exactly am I referring too? John's strung together sentence of "counter Christian apologetics."

Now I may appear to be a pain in the ass for going here, but why should a "counter Christian" worldview (more specifically in this case, atheism/agnosticism/skepticism) need apologetics at all? Again, atheism according to many belonging to the New Atheist movement and related groups state with fervor that atheism is merely the disbelief in the existence of God or a god. What exactly is there to defend here?

And of course, without having self-recognition or introspection in mind, John has argued this too. So, it would seem quite strange that one would be an apologist for a worldview that espouses nothing more than a disbelief in deities, wouldn't it?

There's an interesting trip wire that never seems to get answered/resolved by John and the like. Instead, it usually boils down to dealing justice against Christians because they are running the spinwheel like a high speed car chase, and someone needs to put them in their place.

And let's just take away atheism from the picture for a second. Now what are we left with exactly? "Counter Christian apologetics" conveys unspecified and undefined meanings. It fails for explaining things. Are we rooting for pagans? Muslims? Jews? Buddhists? Hindus? Oh, none of the above?

So what is it really? It's the defense of a negative, a position not swayed or determined by the tenents of any faith or doctrine. It's just intended to counteract the nonsense of religion and its grip on society.

What’s the test?

What exactly is the outsider test? “to test their own adopted religious faith from the perspective of an outsider with the same level of skepticism they use to evaluate other religious faiths” isn’t entirely clear. This lack of clarity – both from Loftus and his critics – makes the argument very hard to dissect indeed.

John Loftus: I'm sorry, what isn’t clear about it? I first proposed it on a blog post and have refined it since then. What matters is how I articulate it now.

Our commentary: Yes and no, John. If you are going to put forth a faith-shattering argument, it should account for any potential loopholes. Even if you are a human being and therefore incapable of constructing the perfect argument, your goal is to bring a religion down to its needs and then sever its head from the rest of the body. And Thrascymachus did specify what wasn't clear about your argument. You boldy propose that the primary mechanism for getting your argument off the ground is to create more doubt in one's religious beliefs by cross-examination. However, this falls flat on its face because you are making an erroneous assumption about individuals based on groups. You are defying categorical logic.

John Loftus: I have defined the outsider as the consistent skeptic, a person who uses the same level of skepticism to evaluate all religious faiths.

Our commentary: Again, you spell your defiance and reluctance to embrace categorical logic in spades with this statement. Your argument is improbable by its very first premise, and by this it cannot lead and follow into subsequent premises and is deprived of a valid conclusion. You tread into deep territory with this one, because consistency once again varies from individual to individual, and furthermore because humans are fallible and without a constant system of checks and balances of the self, you run short on ammunition as to what a "consistent skeptic" is (think 9/11 truthers, many of whom may and do have valid political points about the government, yet are relunctant and unwilling to see the reality of September 11, 2001: That is to say, it was not plotted by the United States government, it was a successful terrorist attack employed by Al Qaeda).

Now it's time to go back to the drawing board. I'm sure many of you will enjoy ripping this to shreds, but I need to do more important things now. Until my next post...

The Debunking Loftus Challenge

Many people come onto this site with a sympathetic view of John Loftus, the founder and manager of Debunking Christianity. Some individuals, like Sarah Boylen, have admitted to their own ignorance of the issues between the ongoing Holding/Loftus fueds despite the fact that she automatically assumes with Loftus and immediately classifies Holding and myself as antagonists:

"I don't know much about Loftus or Holding.

...From what I can tell Holding has been at this for more than ten years and yet he's still less than a small fry. He appears to be an unrepentant internet bully and cheap insult artist

...Your left handed "Loftus is worse" defense is pretty darned shallow. Especially for a self-important anointed man of God.

...Maybe his piddly little ad hominems and backdoor character assassinations are keeping him right where he belongs. Dancing to the same old worn out children's song.

Again, I'm not very familiar with either of them but unlike Holding, Loftus seems to have learned a lesson. He's getting some positive attention. That must get Holding's ample panties in big old bunch."

Linky: http://debunkingloftus.blogspot.com/2010/08/james-mcgraths-clouded-moral.html?showComment=1281401592161#c1800474317537251355

Doing only the slightest of research and objective measuring of the issues doesn't seem to serve very many people all that well these days. So instead of reciting the same old collected evidence point for point, I am now issuing a challenge to all of those who would rather take Loftus' side than ours, and would rather trust in his judgment rather than actual rationality.

So now it's time to issue our own "challenge" to those of you (and you know who you are) in the audience that are inclined to such a backwards perception. Apparently you guys take the time of day to post on this blog with your comments, surely it must be important enough for you guys to prove to yourselves whether or not Loftus is the lesser of the two "evils."

Put aside your viewpoints, philosophies, and biases for a moment and actually try striking up a challenge to how John runs the show. It's that simple. You owe it to yourself and would be doing a disjustice if you didn't do so. You might want to ask John exactly what he means when he says he isn't insulting the disabled, when he does in fact bring up derogatory references to disabled people not once, but in fact, twice.

Fundamentally speaking, however, only those who are not completely swayed by Loftus' rhetoric will be capable of successfully partaking in the challenge. This is especially geared towards those who choose to sit on the fence and must decide for themselves. The issuance of this challenge is not meant to garner endorsements from participants. It is to hear what your experiences are afterwards. If it can be substantiated that John Loftus is a morally good and sane person, then feel free to show us, then you may lather us all you want with accusations of character assasination and the like.

Until then, as it is often said in these here parts, "put up or shut up."

Oh, and, here are some resources you can use to guide you along in the process:

Procedures of Moral Justification

The Will Theory Approach

KNOWLEDGE, JUSTIFICATION, AND TRUTH

Is John Truly Ignorant of His Ignorance?

*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.

Loftus Logic (Part 2)

I haven't been regularly updating the site for a couple of months now and decided to get back into a slight trend of things once more. So, in checking up on updates over at Debunking Christianity, I found another recent example of which to write another addition to my series here on logic. See for yourself:

Fallacy #3 - Appeal to Unreliable Authority

Definition: This would apply to someone who is actually a biologist pretending to be an expert in physics and so on. However, the fallacy itself also extends to those who rely on themselves to be an authority on things not objectively measurable.

Example: Case in point:

http://www.amazon.com/Christian-Delusion-Why-Faith-Fails/product-reviews/1616141689/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

As with John's last work, Why I Became an Atheist, he offers a review of his own book for the second time in a row:

I really like this book. Dan Barker recently described it as a "powerhouse of a book" in an interview he did with me. It is. And not just because I compiled it and wrote four chapters for it. Let me explain why.

Notice, that much of the remaining review contains little to no substance about the book's actual content. Observe:

The book was made to have eye appeal. It just has a good look and feel to it. When holding it in your hands at 422 pages, it makes you see that there is a lot of information in it for the price.

Nothing could be more explicit to how pathetic the book itself probably is. This is like giving unalienable authority to the KJV Bible because of the elaborate designs on the front cover.

The authors are experts in the areas they write about. Let me give you a few examples. Who is better to write a chapter arguing that Christianity is a cultural phenomenon than cultural anthropologist David Eller? Who is better than psychologist Valerie Tarico to write on Christian belief and cognitive science? Who is better to write a chapter on Biblical cosmology than Ed Babinski, who has spent years studying this topic? Who is better than Biblical scholar Hector Avalos to write a chapter on the barbaric tribal God of the Old Testament? Who is better than Robert Price to write a chapter on what we can know about Jesus? Who is better than Richard Carrier to write a chapter on the resurrection of Jesus? The three last chapters in the book on morality by Eller, Hitler by Avalos, and the origins of science by Carrier, are each by themselves probably worth the price of the book.

These are all subjective statements about the quality of content in John's book. They make no critical analysis or assessment as to why we should believe the contributors offer more than their own slanted bias when coming into the framework of things. This is also a perfect example of another fallacy: Begging the Question - "X is true because X says so." Circular reasoning, as it is more commonly identified. The conclusion is the same as the assumption, and there are no other reasons to suggest or think otherwise. We have no other standard in this review to assess the credibility of any of these contributions other than John's heresay and those already convinced by the writings of these individuals. It does nothing for the individual interested in gaining a fresh new perspective.

And the flow of the book is good too. Most skeptical books dive right in on the arguments. But not this one. In the first part of the book we show how believers first adopt and defend their beliefs. We show that believers are not rational to accept what they first learned in this Christian culture on their mama's knees. Jason Long shows in his chapter how believers cannot reasonably think they have truly examined their adopted faith. And I close that part out with the Outsider Test for Faith, in what I consider my most mature defense of it ever.

We've examined the Outsider Test for Faith on here before, and have pointed out its anadequacies. Mainly, the problem with the "test" itself is that it leads us to the inference that someone can separate themselves from their culture to the point where beliefs are non-existent. Otherwise, if this is not Loftus' intent by crafting such a "test", then it remains that because someone happens to be Muslim because they were raised that way, it is irrelevant because of several different possibilities and explanations:

1) Not everyone raised in a particular culture is destined to believe in their cultural ideals and childhood background for life. Indeed, such cases arise where a Muslim may convert to Christianity, and vice versa.

2) Differences in cultural beliefs do not automatically lead to the conclusion that anyone who might have a belief based on their cultural background is necessarily wrong in their belief, just as they are not necessarily right by appealing to their culture.


Then there are the many glowing blurbs from Christian as well as atheist/agnostic scholars to be found on the back cover and inside pages. Here are three of them:

From Dr. Michael Martin, professor of philosophy emeritus and author of The Case Against Christianity and Atheism: A Philosophical Justification:

"John Loftus and his distinguished colleagues have certainly produced one of the best and arguably the best critique of the Christian faith the world has ever known. Using sociological, biblical, scientific, historical, philosophical, theological and ethical criticisms, this book completely destroys Christianity. All but the most fanatical believers who read it should be moved to have profound doubts."

From Dr. Dale C. Allison, Jr., author of Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters:

"Forget Dawkins. If you are looking for a truly substantial, well-informed criticism of the Christian religion, this is your book. Defenders of the faith will do believer and unbeliever alike a disservice if they do not rise to the challenge and wrestle with the thought-provoking arguments of Loftus and company."

From Dr. Keith Parsons, Professor of Philosophy, University of Houston, Clear Lake, and author of the book, God and the Burden of Proof:

"For nearly two thousand years apologists have striven mightily to show that the dogmas of Christianity are rationally defensible. For much of the Christian era critics have sought to debunk those apologetic claims. In that long tradition of criticism, there can have been few works as effective as The Christian Delusion. The essays are incisive, rigorous, and original, shedding new light on old issues and boldly exploring new paths of argument. The selection of topics is outstanding--at once both comprehensive and innovative. For fresh insights into an old debate, The Christian Delusion is strongly recommended."

Much more credibility is afforded to the review based on these excerpts. However, John closes with:

I think every skeptic who wants to understand Christianity and/or who argues with Christians should get it. I think every Christian apologist worthy of the name should get it. I think every believer who is having questions about his or her faith should get it. And I can only hope every devout believer will get it too.

"Worthy of the name"? To what John may be referring too, we cannot be certain. This could be constured in terms of how popular and well-liked someone is, but it says nothing about the truth value of their arguments or if in fact they tell the truth.

That's enough for a while now. Hope you've all enjoyed this so far. But alas, I have more important matters to attend too.

Loftus Logic (Part 1)

This is the beginning of a new series of tactics I'll be using to analyze the strength and validity of Loftus' arguments. John, our title subject, thinks nothing less of himself than a philosopher. Not only that, John considers his writings and ideas to be major contributions to the field of religious philosophy.

John's credentials amount to three master's degrees (an impressive feat, no doubt), but they are nonetheless irrelevant to whether or not John actually qualifies for having a doctorate-level understanding of his subject matter, which John seems to claim he has on the basis of these master degrees.

In giving John the benefit of the doubt, we'll suppose that John is a philosopher who can hold his own. Yes, on many on the many instances we've cited before it has been shown not to be the case. But we will temporarily assume that no such instances exist, or have been taken out of context. In this series, we will employ a set of methodologies using the tools and resources John least expects of us, most of which come out of a very important philosophical discipline.

Logic.

There is no more of an effective manner to demonstrate John's grasp of a field in which he either professes to apply quite extensively in his arguments than to test his materials against the basic and bare minimum principles of logic. For the sake of categorization, I may decide to make other "series" evaluating the depth of Loftus' arguments when they apply to other philosophical disciplines such as ethics. For now, we will just cover a few examples of where John fails to live up to a logical and reasoned mindset. Some minor but important issues we will need to clarify before we get going:

Statements: "There is a purple whale in my backyard that eats chickens."

- This can either be true or false.

Arguments: Collections of statements. Hence:

- Arguments are not of true or false value because the statements which make up arguments are either true or false in and of themselves. The coherency of the statements and their relation to each other either lead to validity or invalidity. A completely valid argument (one in which all statements are true and guarantee the conclusion that follows) becomes a sound argument.

We will begin this series with some brief information on the informal fallacies often committed when trying to make arguments. I'll start by using a fairly recent example and how perfect it is in showing how invalid and non-sequitir John's argumentation really is. For the second time on this blog, we'll use John's article God, Sex, and the Orgasm as a "case study":

Logical Fallacy #1 - Equivocation

Definition: Equivocation is a fallacy because it creates ambiguity. It refers the "double-meaning""of a particular word even when that second meaning does not apply directly to the word itself, or the context in which the word is being used.

Example(s): "The power of the orgasm is so strong it motivates some married people into infidelity; some men to rape women; some Catholic priests to direct these urges toward molesting children..."

Being a Catholic priest does not by necessity mean that you go out and molest children. In fact, why can't this example be used in regards to other religions? That's only because Catholic priests have been the ones most commonly identified in our culture for gaining notoriety for child molestation. But in this case it is inappropriate and unwarranted, because John could just as well have said "The power of the orgasm is so strong it motivates...some (child molesters/rapists, etc.) to direct these urges toward molesting children..." which would have been more to the point and indeed, supportable. Neither Catholic priests nor child rapists are motivated solely through orgasm, and it may be based entirely a control factor, such as deriving pleasure from a moment in time in which they are dominating someone or something that lacks basic autonomy and a willpower to resist their advances.

"So why did God make our sex drive so strong? Why didn't he make the the orgasm less pleasurable? The pleasure of the orgasm is just too strong as it is. We all know this. With an evolutionary hypothesis this is what we'd expect to find, for our sex drive is good for the survival of our species. But under a theistic hypothesis it makes no sense."

Here is a perfect example of where John should know better. Had something been used by a creationist and it went along the lines of comparing evolution with theism, John would have ridiculed it for confusing matters of dichotomy. Theism and evolution are completely different categories and trains of thought. Evolution by itself does not imply atheism, and many atheists (including John) would argue this. Comparing the two does not provide for a consistent logical formula.

Fallacy # 2 - False Dilemma

Definition: The positing of a premise that sweeps away any other possible alternatives. Considers the situation at hand to be a matter of "either X or Y, but nothing in between." Basically the foundation for all extremist and black-and-white thinking.

Example: "If the pleasure of the orgasm was reduced there would be fewer sex crimes, and less infidelity. Or, the orgasm could've been created so as not to be pleasurable at all. God could've made the sex drive to be something of an instinct where we only want to do it when we want children, and then also created our desire to have children periodically. If this is what God had done instead, then with divine commands to populate the world, heterosexual people would only have sex for the purpose of bearing children in fulfillment of his commands, and that's it."

Sadly enough, this is highly inadequate reasoning.

1) First, John infamously assumes that "Without X, there would be less Y" without taking into consideration various other variables which may contribute to sex-related crimes.

2)Also consider that if the orgasm drives many to commit sex crimes, wouldn't the orgasm be some sort of instinctual drive towards sex-fulfillment? Sex crimes are often a means of gaining control based on psychological studies of many serial rapists. Having sex is not the main motive for going out and raping another individual.

3) If the orgasm was made to have no pleasurable incentive, then why create the "orgasm" to begin with? Even in such an implausible hypothetical world, without some sort of incentive the "drive" itself would be totally useless and hence, not a drive of any sort. Certainly not one which could be used for procreation.

4) John also argues that God could have created a world in which heterosexuals would only have sex for breeding purposes. But why stop there? Why would God allow the existence of homosexuals if orgasm and sexual desire only led to reproduction? Homosexuals would never have the desire for sex, thus homosexuals would be non-existent (therefore, the use of the prefix "hetero" would be unnecessary).

That's all for today folks. Stay tuned for more additions. ;)

Hypocricy About Haiti???

Anyone who bothers telling you that atheists and "skeptics" are not subject to group think is clearly lying through their own teeth. With the recent Haiti earthquake being a hot-button issue, Richard Dawkins made a few commentary points on the controversial remarks of Pat Robertson, who noted that the earthquake in Haiti was due largely in part because of Haiti's "pact with the devil". And in another one of his efforts to show that modern day Christians don't have the slightest clue of their religion's beginnings (which is only for the mostpart true, as even Holding would argue), John uses Dawkins' article to lend credibility to his site. But what else is new, even if we are in a new decade?

I was thinking of doing my own post on this topic. I have heard Christians say Pat Robertson is a moron for suggesting the Haitian disaster was a divine judgment for too long now. No, they are the morons. Pat Robertson represents Christian tradition, not them, as Dawkins said in a Washington Post column:

Haiti and the hypocrisy of Christian theology By Richard Dawkins

We know what caused the catastrophe in Haiti. It was the bumping and grinding of the Caribbean Plate rubbing up against the North American Plate: a force of nature, sin-free and indifferent to sin, un-premeditated, unmotivated, supremely unconcerned with human affairs or human misery.

The religious mind, however, restlessly seeks human meaning in the blind happenings of nature. As with the Indonesian tsunami, which was blamed on loose sexual morals in tourist bars; as with Hurricane Katrina, which was attributed to divine revenge on the entire city of New Orleans for harboring a lesbian comedian, and as with other disasters going back to the famous Lisbon earthquake and beyond, so Haiti's tragedy must be payback for human sin. The Rev. Pat Robertson sees the hand of God in the earthquake, wreaking terrible retribution for a pact that the long-dead ancestors of today's Haitians made with the devil, to help rid them of their French masters.

Needless to say, milder-mannered faith-heads are falling over themselves to disown Pat Robertson, just as they disowned those other pastors, evangelists, missionaries and mullahs at the time of the earlier disasters.

What hypocrisy.

Loathsome as Robertson's views undoubtedly are, he is the Christian who stands squarely in the Christian tradition. The agonized theodiceans who see suffering as an intractable 'mystery', or who 'see God' in the help, money and goodwill that is now flooding into Haiti , or (most nauseating of all) who claim to see God 'suffering on the cross' in the ruins of Port-au-Prince, those faux-anguished hypocrites are denying the centrepiece of their own theology. It is the obnoxious Pat Robertson who is the true Christian here.

Where was God in Noah's flood? He was systematically drowning the entire world, animal as well as human, as punishment for 'sin'. Where was God when Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed with fire and brimstone? He was deliberately barbecuing the citizenry, lock stock and barrel, as punishment for 'sin'. Dear modern, enlightened, theologically sophisticated Christian, your entire religion is founded on an obsession with 'sin', with punishment and with atonement. Where do you find the effrontery to condemn Pat Robertson, you who have signed up to the obnoxious doctrine that the central purpose of Jesus' incarnation was to have himself tortured as a scapegoat for the 'sins' of all mankind, past, present and future, beginning with the 'sin' of Adam, who (as any modern theologian well knows) never even existed? To quote the President of one theological seminary, writing in these very pages:

"The earthquake in Haiti, like every other earthly disaster, reminds us that creation groans under the weight of sin and the judgment of God. This is true for every cell in our bodies, even as it is for the crust of the earth at every point on the globe."

You nice, middle-of-the-road theologians and clergymen, be-frocked and bleating in your pulpits, you disclaim Pat Robertson's suggestion that the Haitians are paying for a pact with the devil. But you worship a god-man who - as you tell your congregations even if you don't believe it yourself - 'cast out devils'. You even believe (or you don't disabuse your flock when they believe) that Jesus cured a madman by causing the 'devils' in him to fly into a herd of pigs and stampede them over a cliff. Charming story, well calculated to uplift and inspire the Sunday School and the Infant Bible Class. Pat Robertson may spout evil nonsense, but he is a mere amateur at that game. Just read your own Bible. Pat Robertson is true to it. But you?

Educated apologist, how dare you weep Christian tears, when your entire theology is one long celebration of suffering: suffering as payback for 'sin' - or suffering as 'atonement' for it? You may weep for Haiti where Pat Robertson does not, but at least, in his hick, sub-Palinesque ignorance, he holds up an honest mirror to the ugliness of Christian theology. You are nothing but a whited sepulchre.

The entirety of John's post can be found here: http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2010/01/richard-dawkins-on-haitian-disaster-pat.html

What I'm about to follow through with will address the views of Loftus and Dawkins directly. The issue of "hypocricy" might seem convenient given that most Christians today have little vested interest in the laws of the Old Testament. But in order to sift through the context in which Pat Robertson made his remark, we shall have to look at the picture as a whole:



If you listen to Pat's words closely enough, you will notice that he deliberately makes a comparison between Haiti and its neighboring islands. He blames Haiti's misfortunes on its voodoo practices. Unfortunately for Robertson's logic, most if not all of the Carribean islands and their neighbors are guilty of practicing some remnant form of voodooism. In light of this, you have only two options:

1) Pat Robertson speaks out on a topic he knows very little about (as always).

2) Pat Robertson is trivializing the tragedy in order to make his movement more widespread.

All theology aside, there is no hypocricy on behalf of Christians for pointing out Pat Robertson's misconduct here.

The Younger Generation: The Clueless Future

My first semester of college is nearing its end and it's always a good thing when you have free time on your hands to spend it checking up on things that don't really affect you personally, except that they may highlight the overwhelming stupidity of the human race and the majority of this previous election's voters. John just so happens to be an embodiment of the overwhelming stupidity. His work and online establishment are a disgraceful insult to the university system of awarding degrees and certificates based on competence, merit, and true understanding, none of which apply to John at all. In fact, despite having three masters, John forms arguments like these:

The Power of the Internet on the Younger Generation

By John W. Loftus at 12/03/2009

Parents beware! The younger generation is rejecting the faith of their fathers and the rise of the internet is making a great impact on them. Today's music, movies, and video games are also making an impact.

My goodness. Three masters and yet as stupid as one of today's preteens. But let's see, what valid points does John make here?

The Internet: Oops, no, sorry...John is as wrong as a fish without a fishbowl. Unless you interpret this "great impact" of the net as dumbing down the communication skills of preteens and Jonas Brother fans into texting abbreviations and slang.

Music: Yes, it has changed but not for the better. Today's music is overrun with rap (crap) and when it just couldn't get any worse it does: with the magic of auto-tune! So not only do you have music which is predominantly materalistic in an already overwhelmingly materialistic culture, but you also have that same music transformed into an atrocious noise which sounds like a suppository is being rammed up a robot's ass.

Movies: Today's movies are either all action no plot, all gore but no point, and all the same recycled, redone, remade version of a classical movie which contained the two former.

Video games: No big changes here. Video games are still as violent as before but with better graphical details.

Just yesterday a young friend told me that in a newly released very popular video game players are shocked to find on the last level they must kill the Pope! ;-) Hint: This game! Is that not the hoot? Also, the movie The Invention of Lying contains an atheist message. Robert Price has even argued that the changing morals of the younger generation will be the undoing of evangelicalism, seen here.

And popular films such as The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia have Christian messages to them because they were both written by Christian authors.

And let's just quickly examine recent events concerning the "changing morals of the younger generation":

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/13/florida.teen.burned/index.html

That is to say, if they have really changed (which I'm not saying they haven't).

What other signs have you detected? There are plenty others.

One sign of detection concerning you John is that you have clearly confused correlation with causation.

Once more from the words of George Carlin (3:01)



Good day to you sir.

Taking the Turkey to Town

John wanted to start off the Thanksgiving month by demanding that his readers start giving him thanks for his "services" by asking for donations to help fund his trip to a convention held by the Society of Biblical Literature (details below):

As previously announced I've been invited to participate as a respondent on a panel for the prestigious Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) in New Orleans, which meets November 21-24. As you'd guess I'm very honored. They will show the movie Religulous by Bill Maher Sunday evening and then the panel will discuss it the next day at 1 PM. The participants include professors Hector Avalos, Dennis MacDonald, Carol Exum, Randall Reed and yours truly. I am to respond to the other four papers. Here is the link. While we're there several of us including Hector Avalos, Jim Linville, and Ken Pulliam will be having a meeting to discuss a non-religious group within the Society of Biblical Literature, which should be interesting and exciting.

Most institutions of learning pay for these scholars to attend the SBL by covering their expenses. Since no institution will pay my way I'm conducting a fund drive to help my wife and I travel there so I can participate. I calculate that we'll need $1,000 to cover the costs of gas, food, and six nights stay in hotels (four while there and one both coming and going). It might be more, but $1,000 should be good enough. To answer your question in advance, yes, we will go regardless of whether or not we raise the needed money. But it is needed nonetheless, lest we go deeper in the hole than we already are financially.

More donations, John? There seems to be a donation for everything these days over at Debunking Christianity. There's a 'Donate' button located on the newly designed homepage, and that usually goes towards funding John's housing expenses, because, according to John, he only makes 75 cents for every one of his books sold.

If John is the honorary guest to this banquet I would suspect that those who had sent him the invitation would have been voluntarily payed his way, albeit to exclude his wife's additional expenses. Furthermore, John clearly displays a Rook Hawkins ignorance when he classifies the SBL in his own words as "prestigious." It has been said before (not on this blog) that the SBL is not a high-end membership club. Just about anyone can get in if they're willing to pay or give some contribution back to the organization. Here is the page that SBL uses to outline their membership criteria: http://www.sbl-site.org/membership/joinnow.aspx

Membership rates are:

Full Membership: $65.00
Student Membership: $25.00
Associate Membership: $45.00

What are the benefits? Vendor and online retailer discounts.

How does one join? By providing their first and last name/e-mail address and creating a password for their SBL account.

Therefore membership with AAA (I do indeed fit into this category) would make one a certified auto mechanic. It's sixty or seventy bucks annually, you know. But you get benefits on basically everything. It's got to be for something merit-based.

OR John thinks that spending a few bucks to join a club is what gives his life meaning. He "belongs" to a community, and he has to, as it would be impossible for him to do otherwise and not get the recognition he believes he so deserves.

Maybe in John's world, money really can buy everything.

Could it be?

Tit for Tattle

Boy oh boy has John been up to no good lately. But hey, what else is new? We've tried to be reasonable in our approach, sometimes we'll admittely get a little cheeky and facetious, but it's all in good fun, right?

Not for John it isn't. He'll crucify you just for pointing out the error of his ways. But we are now at a point in time where John's reactionary status is only good for "entertainment value" as Holding once put it. And what could possibly be the latest you ask? Well...

Turns out John has been "reporting" some of our pages and posts here to make a point to all Christians apologists that JPH should simply be "ignored" and is not to be taken seriously. Within the past month or more, Loftus wanted to garner support for his anti-Holding rantings. He just doesn't insist on ever quiting, does he? Now when he knows that his control of this blog is at a minimum to non-existant degree, he tries other methods to throw us out of the sandbox for good. I truly and sincerely believe he's out to crush our morale. Tisk, tisk, I say. John's lack of warfare tactics will leave him crippled and disabled and helpless in the end. Just watch and see what we do. We dare you, John.

If you have followed the countless times we've been on John's trail, you already know that if you smell a strange scent abrewing, it's probably because John is a complete skunk. Not the cute Loony Tunes type either, although he may be loony.

Being that that's the case and in the event that you agree wholeheartedly, then we don't need to mention or cite examples of where this is the case. Therefore, you probably have also acknowledged that John's moral radar is badly damaged. Here's just a brief list of the absurdities John has tried to rationalize and justify:

1) The creation of a false blog account, and soliciting it to his readers who were not made aware of its falsehood, in order to rally forces against Holding (Response: "Technically I didn't lie. Prove to me that I did.")

2) Making a posting at the time of his 55th birthday making light of an individual's possible mental defect, and thinking nothing of it except that the person in question, who was taped signing in front of his congregation, was a poor-quality singer.

3) Publicly expressing himself in an insubordinate manner to theme-park employees who were simply doing their job, AND must abide by guidelines established by the park's owners and managers. This was more than likely a juvenile publicity stunt that would later give John bragging rights, but in reality demonstrate how simple minded he just really is.

4) Having the notoriety of making outlandish blog entries, whether out of pure anger or mindnumbing stupidity, and when called out on those, chooses to get rid of their proof of existence FOREVER (however, Dumbass John clearly can't see that many of these deleted pages are quickly 'Cached' and can be viewed by the public even after they've been removed).

5) Taking advantage of his fellow contributing authors, respecting them only in the sense that they help put ink on the pages to his books.

John is the Good Samaritan, now isn't he? So let's experiment. How about we get into contact with John's official publisher, Prometheus Books?

http://www.prometheusbooks.com/?main_page=contact_us

There's the link to their contact form. Be sure to give them your full name and e-mail address so that they can respond and it will eventually get to you. Don't worry about providing your P.O. box number or your physical home address, that won't be neccessary, and these people have allot of time on their hands producing the materials that go into making copies of John's books. Let John know we care by letting them in on his credibility and revered social reputation. He'll thank you for it.

And John, we thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak on your behalf. :D

The World's Smallest Violin?

The lesson to be learned on both sides of the fence is that you never know who you might piss off. They pissed off the wrong guy. - John W. Loftus (8:03 AM, 10/23/09)

As always, John makes the fundamental error that our like are concerned with ceasing his production of books and the modification of his arguments. It goes without saying he clearly has missed the point. Our concern is getting to the meat of the issues he discusses, his honest integrity, and how he deals with other individuals in the online world. I could give a rat's ass on how many books John has authored or intends to author. This only becomes relevant if he is trying to downplay others to make himself look good, like in the example of *cough* William Lane Craig.

John has a new upcoming book entitled The Christian Delusion which will be released sometime in April of 2010. We may of course take the trouble in pointing out that the title for the book is probably based off of Richard Dawkins' bestseller The God Delusion, but that contention is another matter entirely. What needs to be recognized is how strange it is that prior to The Christian Delusion having been released, John is already in the mood for another book. And...why?

I'm Editing Another Book

By John W. Loftus at 10/22/2009

There are a few unnamed Christian wannabe apologists out there who viciously attacked me when I first came online before starting this Blog. I was repeatedly told I was stupid, ignorant, and even brain-dead in so many ways it took me by surprise. I was lied about and verbally maligned with everything I said. The treatment I received from them was absolutely appalling. In fact, they still do that to me. But all I just wanted to do originally was to reasonably discuss the issues that separate us. I did not set out to debunk Christianity. I merely wanted to find a place to discuss the issues in a respectful atmosphere.

Oh...that's right. John is upset. Again. *Yawn.*

For reference purposes, I will continually point readers in the direction of the chapter I wrote for The Cowboy Who Wasn't There just so people know the truth about John's B.S.

Had they done this I'm almost certain I would not have started this Blog and I would not have become so passionate about debunking the very faith they use to justify their treatment of me. If you want to motivate me call me stupid. I told them that doing so was like pouring gas on the fires of my passion but they laughed some more. Even now they still laugh. I dare say that they would've lit the fires that burned me at the stake in a previous generation. So I got to thinking about the people who died so that I have the freedom to speak out, and I dedicated my life to making sure I did not trample on their blood by not doing so. I also realized that since I had the means to effectively argue against the Christian faith I could not simply walk away from what I've learned without also sharing it with others who can benefit from it. So there is no turning back.

Although I'm not particularly impressed by these statements, I think I might be becoming a little worried over them. John's bursts of anger are almost comparable to the anger held by Eric Harris and Dylan Kebloid of Columbine High and the Asian man that had killed 32 students at Virginia Tech back in 2007. I'm serious. Who else but a psychologically deranged man would use figurative language in the context of gasoline building upon a flaming heap of rage?

It would be ludicrous to imply that John wants to go out and kill random and innocent people. But what exactly does he want to accomplish, and how does he plan on going about it to accomplish what he wants? Seung Hui Cho, the 23 year old who was responsible for the Virginia Tech murders, wrote a paper for an English class which described a fictional teenager attempting to shove a banana bar through the throat of his sexually abusive stepfather.

Clearly these murderers were about as whacked out as you can possibly get. Survivors of the Virginia Tech massacre have revealed that Hui Cho was not bullied or intimidated in the slightest. Yet he killed. He did what he had threatened to do. Would you be convinced of the sincerity in this man's face when he videotaped himself making these threats (?):



Notice how similar the language is: "I didn't have to do this. I could have left. I could have fled. But no. I will no longer run." (1:27-1:35). Would you take this person seriously? But he was very serious, mind you. He meant every word. He was so self-absorbed he saw himself as a victim. He made himself a victim. And in the end, he made others victims. Everyone else was the enemy. There were aggressive factors involved which didn't exist. Could the same, to a lesser extent, be true in John's case?

I'm not done yet. I'm editing another book.

Given that you're motive is so incredibly simplistic, I don't expect that the topic content will vary that much or differentiate itself from your previous works. We can only imagine what the next book could possibly be about.

Arguing With Online Apologists: Responses to the Criticisms of the Outsider's Test for Faith and Debunking Christianity

While I am just now in the beginning stages and even though some things might change, several authors have agreed to write chapters for it, for which I am honored and excited, including: Richard Carrier, David Eller, Taner Edis, Ken Pulliam, Keith Parsons, Matt McCormick, Valerie Tarico, Jim Linville, and still others. It'll be good, I promise.

I'm happy that they have so much important things to do like help you mass produce books, John! I think we could probably name about most of these guys as authors to your previous upcoming book, yes?

But in the midst of this all, does John not go against his principle of ignoring "sewer rats" and "trolls"? Does he not end up giving us more popularity and recognition when he does not set out to do this? Wouldn't this be in the same exact sense as John thanking us for creating a blog that uses his name?

It's a shame that there isn't a psychiatric test which measures hypocrisy.

The Results Are In

Is John an egoist? You decide:

My Point About JP Holding is That He Can Safely Be Ignored.

By John W. Loftus at 10/16/2009

I'm probably not going to leave this post up for long since I don't want to give him any more attention than I must do in order to make my point. My point can be found in the percentages in the poll I conducted in the sidebar for two weeks, not the actual number of votes themselves (most visitors to DC by far didn't even vote). For if I left the poll up for another two weeks or months the percentages of votes among people who are interested in the God-hypothesis on the web would probably be the same, except that he would run out of ignorant Christian friends who voted as they did (he cultivates them). Look at the poll and the percentages with me:

What Do You Think of JP Holding?

1) One of the best apologists around (I’m an ignorant Christian) 47 (10%)

2) An average dime-a-dozen wannabe apologist 59 (13%)

3) An obnoxious hack who is an embarrassment to Christianity 137 (30%)

4) I don’t know of him 207 (46%)

Sure I slanted the poll by how I phrased the questions, but I did give people the option to vote positively if they wanted to. Of the people who know him 81% don't think he's important enough to engage (from 1-3), while 56% of this same grouping think he's a total embarrassment to the faith he seeks to defend. Still an additional 46% of the people who voted don't even know he exists (from 4). Add them together and that means nearly 90% of the people interested in the God-hypothesis don't know him or care to hear about him (from 1-4). That's why I usually ignore him, because if we subtract the 25-30 votes from his ignorant Christian friends who cannot think for themselves who voted for him (from 1, and come on, that is the only reasonable explanation for many of these votes since only ignorant Christian friends who do not know of Swinburne, Plantinga, Craig, Copan, Moreland, and others, would vote that way), then he can be safely ignored. He is no threat to skepticism. My goal is to marginalize him, and I will.

That is, until he becomes better educated and also comes up to the adult world of respectful discourse.

Consider this: John admits to slanting the questions in order to produce presupposed answers, and based on this fact now argues that the voting participants deliberately and purposefully voted against JP. We ask you rational people, is this an honest inquiry or is it meant to personally attack and demean?

"It's Not Personal, Really!"

I don't know what it is about a man that just can't keep to his own word. What's even more of a shocker is that people actually listen to such a person and actually take his claims and assertions seriously. This alone is enough to compel someone to lose faith in all of humanity, a boat that has long sailed as far as I'm concerned.

Readers: Is there anything peculiar about this(???):

What do you think of JP Holding?

	One of the best apologists around (I’m an ignorant Christian)
	An average dime-a-dozen wannabe apologist
	An obnoxious hack who is an embarrasment to Christianity
	I don’t know of him

This poll literally came out of nowhere. The last post prior to the poll was this.

In fact, it was only a couple of days ago this week where John added a little intro tidbit into one of his latest here. That particular tidbit reads:

I have usually ignored JP Holding for the most part this past year or so and I was just wondering what people thought of him. Check out the following redated post and the poll to the right in the sidebar. Until he comes out of the sewer and up to the adult civilized world of discourse my plan is to ignore him. I call on both Christians and skeptics to do likewise.

Hmm...that's....odd, to say the least. What did Holding do this time to upset John?

Is it this post right here? http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?t=132208

Funny that post is a result of John's own stupidity. JP is only guilty of posting the thread documenting his idiocy. It's not JP's fault that John is a total asshat.

In response to the poll, Holding posted a parody comeback on TWeb here: http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?t=132677

And so it is in these regards John thinks it's appropriate to bring up Holding's name, for the millionth time.

John's followers seem to be too stupid to figure it out for themselves: Why would Loftus make a spontaneous poll about JPH and then argue that if Holding somehow doesn't change his ways, he's going to be put on "ignore" (something Loftus has said countless times)? Furthermore, why would we CARE??? John isn't and has never been that important. Anyone who thinks that Holding does it just to get Loftus' "attention" is just about as deranged and deluded as Loftus is himself.

What's clear is that John suffers from delusions of grandeur, or delusions of an exceedingly high and undeserved status of significance and worth. But his followers keep lapping it up. They are oblivious to the patterns of behavior. There is simply no good reason that Loftus should have posted the poll in the first place other than Loftus' inability to deal with his own shortcomings when they are made explicit by someone else.

What's the difference between what us TWebbers say and do to what John says and does? The answer: We don't claim to ignore anything John has said or continually says. This blog wouldn't be here if our main objective was to ignore him. It's here to point out what should be obvious to the general public, but the gene pool has determined otherwise. The only claim ever made by this site which even remotely reflects what John has said is in offering civil discussion and debunking the claims coming from the other side. But everything else is a matter of words and actions, and how well the two line up with each other.

John complains about the superstitiousness of modern-day people, and yet his followers don't know or even want to willingly consider the lies and half-truths that John has thrown out to the world under the guise of free speech and civility. He really is just as bad as the Pat Robertson types, and about as intelligent. I would suspect that these claims would eventually end their cycles of repetitiveness and redundancy, but it's best to realize that John is a broken record. We should expect more of these instances to come in the future and we should also expect that John will blame his own faults on what Holding has to say or what he has done in the past. This is just standard Loftus-protocol.

Recently Mike Huckabee (trust me when I say that I would not normally quote this man) said the following on his show:

"You know it's foolish for us to act as though our point of view makes us always right and the other guy always wrong. Having different views is a good thing. But having different standards is not. If something is right, it's right. And if it's wrong, it's just wrong. Diversity is a good thing, but duplicity is not."

The primary error in John's thinking is that this blog is going to disappear and vanish long before Debunking Christianity actually "closes shop" for real. But the truth is is that even after Debunking Christianity goes bye bye for good, we will still be here.

So John, it's time for you to accept the fact that you're not that special. Deal with it.

John Loftus on "Enlightenment"

John posted a new video today featuring his second interview with Andy Diekroger on The Enlightenment Show. To count, there have been many "problems" John has brought up that somehow need immediate reconciliation with Christian orthodoxy and belief in a benevolent God, ranging from the "problem" of evil, why every living thing on the planet should have been created a vegetarian (because vegetarianism doesn't consume living life forms), how the God of the Bible condones animal abuse (???) and encourages that those made in "His image" should take advantage of the environment. And now, John strikes at another angle using the same premise: "The Problem of Pain":

The Enlightenment Show: John Loftus and the Problem of Pain from FreeThought Fort Wayne on Vimeo.

As always, John makes extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence:

1:28 "Even bad people don't need to suffer as much as they do." Why? And what specifically here are we defining as "suffering"? If good people suffer too much, why should bad people suffer less???

One such example of a "bad person" that comes to mind would be in the case of serial killer and well-known cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer. During his killing spree, Dahmer is known to have lured young homosexual men into his apartment complex, drug them, mutiliate them, and then dump their limbs into a tub of acid or refrigerate them for later consumption. In the year of 1994, while Dahmer was in prison, he was murdered by one of his fellow inmates as he took a swing at Dahmer's temple with a large freeweight. The man who killed Dahmer claimed it was God who had been giving him direct and specific orders. But that's beside the point. What really matters here is how you go about comparing the fact that Dahmer cannibalized his unsuspecting victims to his own murder at the hand of a dumbbell. Did Dahmer suffer too much, Mr. Loftus?

5:59 John Loftus on The Passion of The Christ: "The film itself was...uh...brutal...uh...I could not reconcile how any person would deserve that kind of punishment for ANYTHING that they did. Even my worst enemy (and I had one at the time). I would NEVER wish that upon her [presumably Linda the stripper]. I would never wish that upon anybody which was so gruesome. I thought to myself 'That's ignorance.'" Ignorance? Maybe I'm ignorant for failing to understand why this is the case. Or is John ignorant for failing to understand the purpose and function of Roman crucifixion? Indeed by modern standards, crucifixion and flagellation are primitive standards of punishment and carrying out justice, based on primitive standards of criminal criteria. But this is also a somewhat ethnocentric projection of Western society and values. The standards held by other distant and foreign nations of the past are what was simply acknowledged and understood by the general populace at the time. Usually a "normal" individual doesn't go out and commit third-degree murder for the same reasons that a citizen in a predominantly Muslim nation does not go out and steal bread or publicly criticize Islam in a derogatory manner. Ignorance applies only in the sense that Loftus doesn't understand or fathom the what and why for the topic he is discussing, therefore no one else does or can, either...

7:17 John on his book, Why I Became an Atheist: "If Barbara Walters can write a 'tell-all' book where she tells about having sex with so and so, and doing this with so and so, why can't I? This is a book of 'tell-all'. This is a 'tell-all' era. So, I tell all, you know [laughs].?" The first chapter "My Christian Conversion and Deconversion" is something I have commented on in my chapter contribution to The Cowboy Who Wasn't There. See if you think that John wrote the book for tell-all purposes.

9:36 Returning to The Passion of the Christ: "I had already decided that such a view was ignorant. But when I saw how well the movie did, when I saw the numbers, when I saw people flocking too it, when I saw churches literally buying blocks of seats just so everyone could go see it...that was just too much for me. What I did was decide to come out." Oh?...



11:36 On Criminal Punishment: "What is the relationship between punishment and forgiveness? We all know of people who have been punished for their crimes where the victim still doesn't forgive him. And likewise, we know of people who have never been punished for their crimes, where a victim has forgiven him, even though he has never been punished. There is no logical relationship between forgiveness and punishment. There is no reason that you have to be punished that I can forgive you. I should be able to forgive you even if you have never been punished." A valid point to be made for modern society. However, as stated before, this is being argued for modern society and not taking antiquity into account. It is also disingenuous to state that the Bible argues that forgiveness and compassion are achieved only through bloodshed. Biblical narratives and analogies today would be considered simplistic as Western modernism would seek out more practical resolutions and not resort to barbaric depictions or violent alternatives. But again, this was the spirit and passion of the age by which people made their cases clear. This was their means of communication and language, and therefore, this is what society operated on as it was best in tune with cultural traditions and responses to the environment. Language evolves like everything else. Therefore it might be said that the violence and barbarism in the Old Testament exists because it was reflective of the environmental conditions of the age, not because people were deranged in their mentalities. Two examples from the Old Testament include:

1 Kings 3:16-28

Genesis 22:1-12

22:44 John's Reiteration of his Outsider's Test for Faith: "The number one place we get our biases from are our parents and our culture. We grow up adopting them. That's why when you are grown up in a Muslim culture, you will see things from a Muslim perspective. Just like a pair of glasses. And the same thing with a Christian culture or a Hindu culture or any other culture. In fact, if you grew up in some places in America you'd grow up in a snake-handling culture." In fact, religion isn't exclusive in this sense and there is no good reason for John to treat it like it somehow is. This might not be his goal in mind exactly, but consider that cultural academics are more likely to view things holistically (as in wholly) rather than by a culture's individual components. So someone growing up in a Muslim culture not only has a "bias" in showing favoritism to Islam, they probably are also in favor of the economic and political systems of that particular culture as well. Everything from how you eat, dress, speak, walk, and bathe are all a part of one's relative cultural background.The Outsider's Test for Faith tries to break up culture into different segments where they simply cannot be neatly segregated into sections. They are intertwined to some degree or another, but never entirely independent.

44:03 Historical Validity of the Old Testament: "Even evangelicals like Peter Ins, Kenton Sparks, and John Walton, three bona fide evangelical Christians, are now saying that the Old Testament mythology is borrowed from Mesopotamia...They're admitting that these stories were borrowed myths from their day and age. So Adam and Eve never existed." Gasp! John implies this is some sort of problem. It isn't. The evidence of this issue clearly points to the Jews refining the story of Gilgamesh to make their own unique point clear. John apparently also isn't aware that there is evidence of a flood which occured prior to Gilgamesh being transcribed. Of course, he probably isn't arguing against this as a "possibility." But the point being made is that the story was taken from Mesopotamia to build on the original authorship of Gilgamesh with some intentional reformations in mind. The original myths themselves are considered by historians to be based on somewhat factually historical information but exaggerated for the simple purpose of creating a captivating narrative for the masses. It is to depict them in a positively symbolic painting. The Jews took this and used it to convey their own philosophical beliefs. The only problem with this argument of John's is if you do in fact choose to believe it as a literal historical account.

The rest of the video consists of philosophical and theological arguments against God, which I try to distance myself from as it does not pertain to my subject area of study.

John W. Loftus, Friend of the Disabled

I'll start with an admission of bias: I'm someone who has been around people with disabilities for a long time. My stepfather and grandfather were totally blind. My mother was a teacher of students with disabilities for many years. I married a wonderful woman who is legally blind and has other minor health issues.

That's why John Loftus is about to get his can kicked again by me here, for his birthday post titled, "At 55 Today I'm Wondering If I Can Book This Guy in Advance to Sing at My Funeral! LOL"

In case he takes it down....John links to a YouTube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1ZU3YpLM18 in which a man in church with some sort of speech impediment works his way through Amazing Grace. The video title (and whoever posted it this way deserves as much scorn as John does) implies that the man is a former crackhead, though it's far from clear that he is. He may have some type of disability; a speech impediment like this one could have any number of causes. But regardless of the cause, to post such a thing in mockery is a disgrace, and for John to make fun of it this way is triply disgraceful.

Let's be reminded that John has a record for mocking people with disabilities. As Truth be Told, our host here, noted in his chapter for The Cowboy Who Wasn't There:

***

Perhaps one of the most shameful moments for Loftus came after a time after he debated TWeb member "ApologiaPhoenix" (Nick Peters) on the problem of evil. The consensus of TWeb members was that Nick handily defeated Loftus in debate. To set this up, it should be noted that Nick has a disability (Asperger's Syndrome, with some autism). After realizing that he was not the recognized winner of the debate, Loftus wrote:

No one but the ignorant would claim that I am ignorant.

To me Nick is just like a very bad Karaoke singer but doesn't know he is one, so he continues to badly sing out his song of arguments

Because he's handicapped, Christians here won't tell him otherwise. He's going to study to be an apologist, but he will fall flat on his face. There are a great many people in ministry who will fall flat on their faces because no one told them the truth that they should not pursue such goals. Nick is one of them. But since Christians believe God can make clay into gold they encourage him in faith, even though deep down inside they really don't believe it.

Tell him the truth! Save him from pursuing what will be a dead end career for him.

Nick, when you realize you don't have the brain power for being an apologist and your hopes and dreams are dashed, and possibly even you faith, remember who told you the truth. It was me.

Do something else with your life, and I'm serious.

For the record, it should be noted that even at this early stage in his career, several notable names have recognized Nick's talent in this area, notably Norman Geisler.

***

Although John's arm was twisted to the point that he issued a half-hearted apology for this commentary, it is obvious from this last post of his that he hasn't learned his lesson. I often say that fundy atheists like John retain a certain amount of bigotry from the fundy past, and this is a classic example.

And of course, typical of John, he can't even own up and makes excuses when called down. "Rob R" gave John a good lashing for this that deserves to be noted:

Do we know that this guy actually damaged his mind on drugs? He could've been born with mental retardation.Careful John. You know what scripture says about those who mock the poor (and it would seem the same logic of that consideration applies to the poor of mind).So just what human dignity and worth can we say that he has in a materialistic picture?

Loftus' reply speaks for itself in terms of his arrogance and ignorant bigotry:

You're a killjoy Rob. It's my birffday and I can have fun if I want to. So there.

You're absolutely right, John. It's your birthday. Go out and have some fun. Why don't you celebrate some more by pulling crutches away from people with polio, giving blind people the wrong bill back for change, and kicking Stepen Hawking's wheelchair down a steep incline? How about you start a show titled America's Funniest Disabilities? You'd be the perfect host since you obviously have a very serious one. Unfortunately, there's no cure or medication for the one you have, which is outright bigotry combined with magnified stupidity.


Happy Birthday, John, you jackass.

Our Gift to John

As was expected, John had been venturing around TWeb anonymously scanning traces of his name to and fro to find something good he can pick at and inflate his ego to newer and more lengthier heights.

Earlier today John added a music app titled "Godless songs" fashioned after the music app I put up on your right, which contains the featured song "Sad, Sad Doubting John" written by JPH and sung by TWebber "Andius" a new favorite of mine. What made this suspect was that the app John had uploaded was from the same exact site mine is: http://www.mixpod.com There would be no reason to be alarmed over this if it weren't for the fact that only after a couple of days of embedding it here, John proceeded sometime either this late morning or mid-afternoon to follow suit. That's just one of many reasons, at least, to suspect that watching eyes are upon our community, even if John claims otherwise.

Now to be truthful here, I did personally send John an e-mail notifying him of the YouTube video version of the song to your right. And was it done in the manner of "sticking it to him"? Almost so. I just happen to know that the outcomes and reactions coming from Team Loftus are almost always of predictability, and I want Loftus to know that he can't just waltz through arenas without first being challenged by a gladiator or two.

Contrary to the first impression you might have from this newest post, John has known for at least a week now of our upcoming plans for him. This isn't necessarily news. And another thing, if John really had so much disdain for TheologyWeb, why does he go through its threads? (Case in point):

JP Holding promises to write a rebuttal to my work. He (or someone with his approval) wrote:

"John W. Loftus continues to be one of the most well-known internet celebrities of atheism ever since the publication of his collective biography entitled Why I Became an Atheist. In it, he argues that he was once a champion of Christian moral values but was later ostracized by his local faith community for committing adultery and was subsequently overwhelmed by intellectual arguments in which he advocates that by these arguments alone Christianity hangs by a very thin rope. For these past years since the publication of his book, Loftus' writings have remained unchallenged, or at least, have been challenged inadequately."

Thanks JP. Is there anyone saying the same kind of things about you and your arguments?

;-)

Loftus doesn't even provide a link of where he got that. But the answer is right here: http://thecowboywhowasntthere.yolasite.com That's the companion website, (similar to what Richard Carrier had created for John's new book, The Christian Delusion) to our little "project", by the way. Funny that it had only been created yesterday, while the e-mail I sent out to John is nearly a week old. Loooooks like somebody hasn't been true to their word lately. ;)

Two other points:

A) John expresses his paranoia by supposing that the site was created by Holding, as always. NEWS FLASH FOR THE DAFT: Most of the new Loftus sites that have or are coming out these days (including this one) have been or are created by ME. And another thing, I don't need or require Holding's "approval", Johnboy. Usually what happens in these circumstances is that a website is created first, and I consult JP second. Projecting yourself onto others does the world no good, Johnny...

B) The fact that the paragraph being quoted is only a fragment of what is on the site just makes John out to be a snake in the grass. If that was all that was written, it certaintly would compliment him in such a way as to warrant a boosted ego and sense of self. But here's what John left out for his own convenience:

But like most things with humanity, there is always another side of the story. The upcoming e-book "The Cowboy Who Wasn't There" is a substantial rebuttal (and in some respects, a refutation) to the writings of John W. Loftus and his philosophical arguments against "religion." The Cowboy Who Wasn't There will not only analyze the primary arguments set forth by Loftus, but in doing so will demonstrate how the "New Atheist" movement and their arguments are based on stereotypes and oversimplifications. With a jab of humor mixed in with direct confrontation, the book sets out to convince the reader that emotional stakes can and do run high on both sides of the God debate. This book is not arguing mainly against atheism in favor of Christianity, it also advocates for a middle ground in which both atheists and Christians can have intellectual dialogue safely and respectively. It advocates for the integrity of scholars and the ultimate search for truth despite what may be considered popular and appealing to a specific demographic.

If John had included the rest of that paragraph, there is no way he would have been able to make it look like it was being complimentary, as it was never even intended to be interpreted in such a way. Just because one might describe a person as "well known" doesn't really say that they are of admirable character. Barack Obama won the presidency because he was a popular icon of appeal, not because he was actually a straightforward candidate or the best man for the job. John teaches what again?

At least we now have proof that John just can't let things go. He is always watching for opportunities.