Christians and dirty pictures on John's book

Those Christians couldn't refute any of the airtight arguments in John's book- so they resorted to posting scare tactics and dirty pictures of themselves on Amazon.This was posted by someone called dan under the images in Amazon. See how Dan is clutching his bible huddling in fear of John Loftus' intellectual superiority?
Dan caused the sales on John's book to drop to 220000th after that picture made its way in.
He also shows he has no arguments when he says

"Are you sure you want to go down the path John chose? Eternity is a very long time, you do understand. Your choice, the religion of atheism or follow the Creator of all called Christianity."

His grammar isn't even right. Dan clearly is scared of our irrefutable arguments.
Our attitude is summed up in one of those posts by Michael at amazon.

KC James says author John W. Loftus is abrasive for calling William Lane Craig 'delusional' and believers 'fools'. But what else would you call believers in the Flat Earth theory? For the arguments against Christianity are as strong as those against the delusional Flat Earth theory, believers in which most Christians would also call fools (although the bible writers with their 'four corners of the Earth' reveal themselves as Flat Earthers!), so Mr Loftus is not insulting believers, but merely stating a fact about them and their mental state.
-Michael

Farrell Till Diagnosed with Terminal Brain Damage

Extranational News report that Farrell Till's brain collapsed according to a Canton General Hospital nurse of 30 years. Family and friends have noticed Farrell Till had been acting weird for the past few years, waking up in the middle of the night soaked in a pool of his own sweat screaming "Holding" at the top of his lungs. The past few months in particular have been especially nightmarish as Farrell Till's "Holding" phantasm appered more and more often. Despite the total and complete loss of his brain, doctors expect Mr. Till to make a full and complete recovery.

"Mr. Till's brain was merely a vestigial organ, and removing it was much like removing one's appendix" said Canton General's oldest brain surgeon, the philosopher king Richard Carrier.

"I have full confidence in Mr. Carrier's abilites" said an exhausted but cheerful Mr. Till. "Any man who puts Aristotle to shame with his interdisciplinary insights is welcome to do with my brain as he wishes".

Mr. Till will be released this Thursday. The absence of a brain is not expected to impair his work in the realms of religion, philosophy and history in any way.

Atheist Critics

Okay, so this may be a bit of really old news by now, but my latest entrance onto the YouTube platform seems to have received some negative reviews from fellow YouTuber atheists on the horizon:

fritleyfrisp May 25, 2008
I think you're parodying ex Christians but I can't be quite sure. Your writing is shockingly bad and you can't argue for bunk. I'm not usually this forward with people but I'm putting you alongside Mike Wright and other parody websites. I could be wrong though and if I am...so what?

You can find all of this at my official YouTube channel: http://youtube.com/user/Johnwloftus

Something I have learned to acknowledge over the years is the fact that all great authors and philosophers will always have their dissenters (that is how you spell it, right?) and hard core critics. Socrates had his critics, Jesus had his critics, Ghandi had his critics, and even to this day Mother Teresa is being criticized for her apparent lack of faith or belief in God (I happen to be one of those critics but that's a different point altogether for now).

The point is, we know that the messages of these major figureheads carried were profoundly sound (except for the religion aspect to it, i.e., Jesus, Ghandi, and Mother Teresa). Jesus himself was even criticized by members of his own family as described in the New Testament. Now, a question I have for all of you readers out there is this: Just because a fellow atheist criticizes the methods and style of another unbeliever, does that mean that there is something to "fix" or something wrong with the person being criticized and his arguments? The utlimate answer, to put it bluntly, is NO. In which case I have no reason to think otherwise when it applies to my case. As far as I can tell, my arguments are withholding and I have not heard a single good refutation of them which has set my record straight. I'd say I'm on a pretty balanced diet of sound logic and philosophical principles. After all, logic is my trade, so when I suspect that someone is criticising me because of that, I simply assume that they are ignorant of philosophy and need to be educated in it before finding the gall to spout off nonsense that would only come from an ignoramus.

And I truly believe that most of the audiences here which subscribe to this blog are without judgmental biases and could tell you in a straightforward manner that I have presented a good solid case to doubt the central tenents of Christianity and theism in general (God belief). Theism leads to dangerous thinking, even to the point where you can use it as a justification for anything. So, I believe I am not only justified on the reasoning of my sound arguments, I am also doing this world a favor by presenting those sound arguments in hopes of deconverting Christians and pulling the wool covering the eyes hence blinding them from reality and ultimate truth.

WARNING: Impostering impersonators on the prowl!

As of lately it seems that I've been getting some forms of cheeky mockery from the Holdingnites over at TheologyWeb. As childish as they may be, I can't stand and allow for such conduct to be permissable as I continue to have complete and full administration of this blog and the content within its comments from warm-hearted opengly welcome guests and daily commentators.

Some people apparently can't get over their own insecurities when someone has the nerve to put them up for questioning and ridicule. Way in the beginning of when my relations with Holding as a new member of TheologyWeb had taken place, and our acquaintances had become familiarized with passing time, I had a much higher standard of respect for the likes of Holding. But as you can see, Holding is a hyena bent on breeding his own cult-following just to get more hyenas like himself to form a sort of mob-mentality complex, completely and willfully ignoring the very words of Christ himself: "Those without sin may cast the first stone."

I'll be blunt here, as this here blog's administrator and head author, I'm fed up with dealing with the crap. Those who don't know better are going to fall under the impression that this is some sort of parody blog based on a much older blog that existed a couple of years before this one was even spawned into its own existence. We don't need to get technical here, because it should be obvious to anyone that's beside the point here. What is the point here is that Holding and his groupies are up to no good, and further confirmation of this comes from a comment left by an 'Anonymous' user. Now, unlike the other "DC" blog, I allow for anonymous commentators to leave their food for thought in this little diary of mine and my fellow colleagues/former fundamental devout religionists. But some of the comments are going to leave deceptive impressions of what this blog is all about and its functioning relevance to modern day cultural society. I have no doubts Holding and comrades have something to do with these types of comments (as seen below), but my guess is that such comments come from a motivation to divert our actively-reading audiences in some sort of childish game of sandbox. For someone that is "Holier than art thou", I am beginning to suspect a rat, a very insecure and emotionally disturbed rat:

Anonymous said...

Hi Mike. The book you're after can be found here although there has been a slight delay in publishing it but don't worry as it'll be worth the wait. The previous book was recommended by Norman Geisler amongst others so you can always get that whilst you're waiting. Just ignore the J P Holding groupies here.

May 1, 2008 9:40 AM

Let this post serve as an indication to the audience that from here on out if you come across these types of comments under the alias of 'Anonymous' or anything that may arise suspicision, that these comments are more than likely coming from a propagandist jackle who needs serious dire fufillment in his life.

Another Retarded Review of My Book

I have said that if you want to debate me then get my book and review it, and I will enage you. Otherwise, you're just an ignoramus who wouldn't know philosophy even if it stared you straight in the face. A young disabled cripple named Nick decided to do that. He's not only plauged with physical disabilities, but that's precisely why he's been given moderator priveleges over at TheologyWeb. Anyways he's been reviewing it my book chapter by chapter and I've been making some comments about it from time to time. But today he decided to review my chapter on the atonement and I am speechless. I don't know where to begin with such ignorance. I'm so speechless in fact I don't even offer any responses or rebuttals to his review! See what you think:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why I Rejected Christianity Review: Why Did Jesus Suffer?

Our review of Loftus’s book continues with a look at
the atonement. Why did it happen? The theory he chooses to address and I will defend as it’s the one I hold is the penal substitution view. It is the view that Christ took our place on the cross and he received our punishment and we in turn receive his righteousness. There is a brief history of various atonement theories before this (With some left out), but that is not relevant to the point at hand.

He starts out with asking about why this is? If the claim of Christianity is true, then Loftus does admit that he goes to Hell because of his sins. However, what has anyone ever done to deserve that? He states “All through my entire life I have never met, nor even heard of one person, who deserved such a punishment. Never.

I guess that settles it. Judge Loftus has spoken.

I beg to differ of course. First off, let me state my view of Hell. My view is not a fiery torture chamber. It is a place of darkness and isolation. In effect, it is eternal quarantine. God lets people go there and he leaves them alone. The worst suffering will be internal. People in Hell will know for all eternity that they have blown it.

Now who deserves eternal separation from God? I see someone every morning when I get up and look in the mirror who does. And I think this is shocking to some because we’ve lost what sin is.

To begin with, it’s not breaking an abstract rule. It’s violating the person of God. Consider God as the most awesome, holy, good, loving, powerful, intelligent being that there is. As Anselm would say, you can’t conceive of anyone greater than he is.

Sin is telling that one that he is not what he says he is. In fact, every sin is ultimately the sin of Satan. Every sin is choosing your own good over the good of God. In effect, it is you telling yourself that you will be God instead of him. It is divine treason and it cuts one off from the source of goodness and life. God simply cannot allow that sin in his presence.

Now Loftus says that in our modern society we are humane in our punishments. Perhaps we are, and perhaps that is the problem. C.S. Lewis wrote on how we seek to cure criminals rather than punish them long ago. http://www.angelfire.com/pro/lewiscs/humanitarian.html

The question is, is it just?Loftus mentions the death penalty. I support it. I know I probably lost some readers for that, but I do. I believe man is in the image of God and to murder a man is an attack on that image of God. I believe the murderer is to pay the price by having his own life be forfeit. Of course, this is when it’s shown beyond theshadow of a doubt that the accused did commit the crime. I have this strange belief that crime should be punished.

Loftus goes on to ask if it’s fair that he suffer eternally for one little white lie.

I’d like to meet the person whose only sin is one little white lie.

Loftus’s sins are at the beginning of his book. I have no need to go into them. My stance has been that they really don’t matter as long as one doesn’t live in them. I think they need to be confessed and repented of and the blame squarely accepted, but after that, I do believe in divine forgiveness. I know my sins and they’re not just little white lies either. We have all lived in constant rebellion against the Almighty and what we get is what we deserve.

Loftus says that we see in Scripture that God is willing to forgive if people will confess.

Yes. Absolutely. Getting out of Hell is quite simple. Just trust Christ. God does desire mercy and not sacrifice, but God is also just. He gives mercy to those who want it.

Loftus also wants to know since he became like us, why he can’t see sin from our perspective.

Let’s not consider that we shouldn’t want God to see it
from our perspective. I don’t want him to. I want him to see it from his perspective. Why? It’s the true one. How do I want to view something like myself even? Do I want to see me as I see me or do I want to see me as God sees me? It would obviously be the latter because that would be the true view.

Now we may intend God no wrong in sinning, but it does not matter. We have sinned and it cannot be ignored. Even Levitical Law had a sacrifice for unintentional sins. Death was still the price. (And frankly, I know I’ve committed sins in the past knowing they were sins and I seriously doubt anyone reading my blog is in a different position.)

For the third one, did Jesus pay an infinite price?
First off, Jesus did pay the price. Hebrews tells us that. The Son went and offered up his blood in the holiest sanctuary of all and God was pleased. What was the one who offered the sacrifice allowed to do with what was offered to him? Whatever he wanted. God restored the sacrifice he was given of the Son and
glorified him.

How does this work? I can only imagine that on some
level, there is an eternal reality in God of what happened on the cross. The Son is spoken of as the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world. Do I understand this entirely? Of course not. I doubt anyone does. It doesn’t mean though that I throw out the whole thing as nonsensical. (Makes you wonder if
since there’s no understood theory of naturalistic evolution out there why that isn’t thrown out as well.)

The next point is that supposedly, forgiveness doesn’t
require punishment.

On a human court, that’s true, however, there are still
consequences. If someone hits my car for instance, I can forgive them and tell them not to worry, but that car will still be damaged and someone will still have to fix it. On a divine level, we are violating justice itself and the price for being cut off from life is death. Someone has to die. God can’t put his holiness on a secondary level. He must treat himself as the greatest good of all.
So what happens at the cross? His justice is satisfied
and his mercy is offered to all.

The fifth objection is really along the same lines.

He then asks if we die outside of the faith, what reason does God have to punish us?

Ooooooh. Let me guess. We’re sinners? Sounds like a good reason to me.

And yes, God does understand us perfectly and he does
know about the moral law on our hearts. If there were any circumstances that put the sin in a lesser degree, God would know them better than we would. In the end, there is no one biblically who will be able to say “It was not fair.” Creation shows us that God exists plainly and the moral law on our hearts tells us that some things are right and some are wrong.

Loftus also asks where sin abides in us. This is one of
those things that just makes me wonder what kind of theology was being taught. Sin is an action. Actions do not abide in us. They affect our character though and our souls. The same happens with good actions. It is those of us that do not choose to live to be what we were meant to be who get eternity apart from God.

Another theory is commented on later, but it is not the atonement theory I hold, thus I will stick to what has been said thus far. I do not find anything here that really gives me pause. I look and see “Did Jesus die on the cross? Did he rise from the dead?” Then even if I don’t understand it all, I understand that it does work, for God has told us so himself.

Ancient People Was Stupid, Part Duh!

One of the tenets of skepticism is that the ancients were idiots. It really helps us bolster our faith in atheism to believe that we're the cream of the evolutionary crop and so much more enlightened than those knuckle-dragging sheepherders that lived several thousand years ago. Then something like the Antikythera mechanism comes along and rocks our world:

When it came to making cogs and gears, the ancient Greeks got there more than a millennium before anyone else, scientists say.

Using advanced new imaging techniques, scientists have reconstructed the gear structure of the mysterious Antikythera mechanism—one of the world's oldest computers.

. . .

The device employs an elaborate arrangement of more than 30 gears for its calculations. The level of miniaturization and complexity is remarkable, with some parts resembling those used by 18th-century clockmakers.

"It is extraordinarily sophisticated," said Stephen Johnston, an expert on astronomical calculators from the Museum of the History of Science at the University of Oxford in England.

"In its complexity it exceeds medieval cathedral clocks, which were developed over a thousand years later."

-National Geographic News

Wow! What do we say about that? Obviously the ancients weren't quite as stupid as some of us would like! Well, don't worry. A genius by the name of Harry McCall addressed this point so eloquently that I have to quote his words in full:

the ancient Greek were MUCH more intelligent than the dumb Biblical writers. Classical Greeks such as Plato, Socrates, Aristotle were the exceptions. I web noted that this gadget was Greaco-Roman and not Biblical.

It reads like poetry, doesn't it? So now we can safely conclude that not all ancient people was stupid, just the ones we need to be.

How I Make Sure I’ll NEVER Believe the Resurrection Happened!

There are two chief reasons I do not believe that the resurrection happened in history. First of all, God never got me a girlfriend. Second, because I set the bar so high that supernatural/miraculous claims require what I call supernatural/miraculous forms of evidence to support them. (Actually, that may just be one reason if you think about it; if you knew what a jerk I was, you’d know why I never had a girlfriend!) If you think this is too demanding criteria, well, let me just put it this way, I don’t care what you think, quite honestly!

First, I have to explain what I mean by natural and the "supernatural" as well as the logical axiom that I made up out of thin air, that "supernatural" claims require "supernatural" forms of evidence. (Actually, Carl Sagan made it up, but who cares?)

The Natural and the Supernatural

I believe that the only honest way of conducting investigations for any historian is deny miracles can ever happen and to make up as many rules for accepting something as historical as we can – especially if we don’t like what happened. I’d kill myself if anyone ever proved that Jesus rose from the dead, so I have a bunch of rules I’ve made up to ensure that no one can ever prove to me it happened.

The critical-historical method (the one I like most) must be based on what I call the "Principle of Uniformity". This principle states that only things we have personally seen and experienced ourselves, or only things like those sorts of things, can be historical. This makes it easy to dismiss the resurrection, since I have never seen one. In fact, even if I do see one, I can dismiss Jesus’ resurrection because I might see a resurrection happen, say, in a Corvette; but Jesus’ resurrection happened in a tomb, so seeing a resurrection in a Corvette doesn’t help prove Jesus rose. As you can see, using your own personal experience as a gauge for what is historical makes it convenient and easy to not believe what you don’t want to believe!

Anyway, if I go to read the Histories of Herodotus or any of the works of Livy, I assume that my experience governs what they say happened, and that if they report something I’ve never experienced (like a resurrection, or a healing, or a date where the girl didn’t walk out within 5 minutes after the guy burped in her face) then I assume that they’re either lying or stupid. This axiom, that my limited sphere of experience is the ultimate test of historicity, is what I use when I study history, science, or philosophy. This principle of uniformity is to me a necessary axiom that underlies all my scientific, historical, and philosophical study. It underlies all rationality and anyone who doesn’t use these same rules is an idiot. This axiom, the principle of uniformity, is one that I assume a priori in my approach to studying history, and if you don’t like it, you can go &^%$# yourself.

Anyway, the founding of the United States of America, to me is an event that I attribute solely to the actions of mere men acting collectively as I do the founding of the Roman Republic, Egyptian dynasties, the victories of certain battles fought in war. None of this do I attribute to the actions of any divine, angelic, or spiritual beings. I should point out that I do not rule out the possibility of the “supernatural” or the “miraculous,” I just make up so many rules before I’ll believe in it that it’s the same thing as ruling it out. That’s the essence of being a freethinker: You come up with the best ways you can to obscure your a priori assumptions from ignorant Christians. (That means all of them, of course.) I don't see the logical necessity of the principle of uniformity of ruling out the existence of anything regarded as “supernatural.” I just don’t like it, and have never seen any personally, and since the world revolves around me, I automatically dismiss it.

However, I do operate on a further axiom: that the standard rules of evidence used in places like courtrooms ought to be discarded when it comes to supernatural stuff, and we should instead use the rule made up by Carl Sagan that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” What this means is, if I decide an event is extraordinary – using my limited experiential horizon as a gauge – then I can demand more evidence that any standard rules would require to believe it is true. If I was told by a friend of mine that my friend saw a being coming out of the sky and claiming that it was “Ahura-Mazda” (the Zoroastrian god of Japanese vehicles) and that it had a warning that a nuclear war was going to happen in the year 2015 between the United States and Iran and that it could be averted if all Americans in the state of California prayed to Ahura-Mazda asking that it be averted, I would be skeptical of my friend telling me this. The reason I would be skeptical is that I am a social misfit who doesn’t have any friends, and anyone claiming to be my friend is obviously a loony toon.

But the point is, Christians are obviously all stupid people who believed stuff like the Resurrection based on no evidence. I’m a smart freethinker who checks these things. I’d ask questions like, Is my friend under the influence of some intoxicating substance? Is my friend going insane, perhaps the sad victim of a hallucinatory mental disease? Is my friend's mind being affected somehow by an external cause such as radiation, poison, or some substance that is causing my friend to hallucinate and seriously believe that a Persian deity visited him with this apocalyptic message? Perhaps my friend saw a vision of what appeared to be “Ahura-Mazda” but was fooled by some kind of very advanced holographic projection system. Perhaps my friend's drink was drugged or my friend was hypnotized by someone or multiple people acting in concert. Maybe someone is trying to convince my friend that s/he is going crazy and these people are working to have my friend committed- what better way than to have my friend convinced that s/he was the recipient of a divine message? But if I was to rule out the possibility of delusion whether by natural or human means, I'd then have to consider the possibility that my friend is suffering a delusion that is paranormal in origin. If the cause is not natural or human, then perhaps it is superhuman in some sense. Perhaps my friend is being subjected to testing by alien visitors who are doing experiments on human brains for their scientific curiosity, or perhaps it is a mean or amusing prank being carried out by alien visitors who are infatuated with the idea of making human beings think that they're crazy.

Ruling out natural causes of these sorts would buy me so much time that I’d never have to come to the conclusion that a miracle actually happened, if I play my cards right. The bottom line is, I would have to have this same deity reveal himself/herself/itself to me and persuade me that s/he/it revealed him/her/itself to my friend. I would, of course, demand that I be supplied evidence of some sort that I wasn't, myself, hallucinating in some way or that I wasn't the victim of a prank or scientific experiment. But if I was to receive such a “revelation”, I would look for more ways to put off a decision. I would write up the event as I believe I experienced it and I would submit it to scientists, historians, philosophers, to Skeptics and skeptical organizations and scientific organizations. I would submit such a report to the Scientific Community for the Investigation of the Paranormal and I would ask that any such supernatural being reveal him/her/itself to these scientific and skeptical organizations and be willing to provide any such proofs that they request of him/her/it that I would. I would demand that the Scientific Community for the Investigation of the Paranormal prove that they are not aliens, a hallucination, or didn’t drug my drink, or covert Christians. I would ask that any such being be willing to provide adequate proofs of some sort that I and others are, indeed, the subjects of any supernatural revelation. I’d go through every name in the New York City phone book, asking for their opinion. This is what I mean by raising the bar as high as I can to avoid believing something.

This is one of the chief reasons I disbelieve that miracles have occurred in history. If I read in the New Testament that Jesus rose from the dead, that he was transfigured on a mountain in front of his disciples, that he walked on water, that he raised Jairus' daughter or that he healed folks who were blind, I see no reason to believe that such events occurred because they are supernatural events and to claim such events occurred requires all the evidence I demand in order to validate them. If Yahweh really did appear to Moses, then for me to believe that this happened, I would require that Yahweh appear to me as well and provide me with supernatural evidence that he really does exist and really did appear to Moses. If he doesn’t appear, he can go %^$# himself.

I don't see any miracles happening today. I asked God for a girlfriend and He never gave me one. I prayed for a new sports car once and nothing happened. God is obviously a selfish jerk if He even exists. So ^%$ Him. I want more. That bastard owes me big time. I have never seen a miracle happen all of my life and so I will conclude with a uniform degree of probability that such, in all likelihood has never happened, and probably will never happen, because the universe revolves around me. So there.

I’ll be back later to explain why else you Christians are so stupid for believing in the Resurrection.

Kissing Hank's WHOOP!

This is a great piece by James Booger, and citing it is much easier than answering arguments!

This morning as I was picking the wings off of flies to see if I could get evolution moving a little faster, there was a knock at my door. When I answered the door I found a well groomed, nicely dressed couple. The man spoke first:

Fred: "Hi! I'm Fred, and this is Wilma."

Wilma: "Hi! We're here to invite you to come express loyalty to Hank with us."

Me: "Pardon me?! What are you talking about? Who's Hank, and why would I want to express my loyalty to him?"

Fred: "If you are loyal to Hank, He'll give you the natural reward for loyalty; just like if you work for a company for long time and do well, they rightly reward you. And if you aren't, He won’t give you any rewards, but He will just leave you on your own to your own shame.”

Me: "What? Is this some sort of bizarre mob shake-down?"

Fred: "Hank is a billionaire philanthropist. Hank built this town. Hank owns this town. He can do whatever He wants, and what He wants is to give you a reward for loyalty, but He can't until you are loyal to him."

Me: "That doesn't make any sense. Why..."

Wilma: "What do you mean, ‘that doesn’t make any sense’? Do you think these houses built themselves? Don’t you think you should be thankful to the person who built it and let you live here?”

Me: "Well no, I think these houses just sort of flew together in a storm one day."

Fred: "I can see why this doesn’t make sense to you then."

Me: "Do you show loyalty to this ‘Hank’ often?"

Wilma: "Oh yes, all the time..."

Me: "And has He given you a million dollars?"

Fred: "Well no. We don’t serve Hank for the reward. We serve Hank because He has earned our trust and loyalty.”

Me: "Huh? But I wanted money."

Wilma: "I suppose if you think these houses came out of nowhere, that’s to be expected."

Me: "Well gosh. It sounds like there’s really nothing in it for me. Do you know anyone who was loyal to Hank, left town, and got the rewards?"

Fred: "Does it really matter? The rewards are not the issue; it is that Hank is a real person who did real things like build your house.”

Me: "Yeah, but I want money, man. Have you seen the price of beer lately?”

Fred: "I’m sorry, but your priorities seem a bit skewed. Remember, if you don't follow Hank he’ll leave you alone…but you won’t be able to achieve your fullest potential that Hank intends. He’ll leave to spend the rest of your existence in boredom and disgrace.”

Me: "Maybe if I could see Hank, talk to Him, get the details straight from Him..."

Wilma: “What makes you think you’d hear any different? Aren’t you just fudging to create a problem?"

Me: "Then how do you show loyalty to Hank if you don’t see him?"

Fred: "We serve Him and His interests. Don’t tell me you need to see and talk to a person to work for them. Have you ever seen the President of this country?”

Me: "Well, no, but --"

Wilma: "We learned about Hank by the record of what He did in history. The records taught us all about Hank and why we should be loyal to Him – because of all that He did, and because He is who He is."

Me: "Huh. And you just took these records at their word when they said there was a Hank, that Hank wanted you to be loyal to him, and that Hank did all this stuff?"

Fred: "No, we checked out the validity of the record and what it said, and compared it to other records. One of Hank’s officers, Karl, wrote down some of it; there were others, too, but here's a copy of what Karl wrote; see for yourself."

From the Desk of Karl
Be loyal to Hank for He has earned your loyalty by providing you with life and all you have.
Use alcohol in moderation.
Pursue righteousness. Don’t misuse this as an excuse to define “righteousness” in your own image.
Eat right.
Hank dictated this list Himself.
The moon is white and shining.
Everything Hank says is right.
Wash your hands after going to the bathroom.
Don't use alcohol if it becomes too strong.
Eat your wieners on buns, no condiments.
Be loyal to Hank or He'll leave you to your own devices.

Me: "This appears to be written on Karl's letterhead."

Wilma: "What’s your point?"

Me: "I have a hunch that if we checked we'd find this is Karl's handwriting."

Fred: "So what? When Karl wrote this 95% of people in this town couldn’t read anyway. Most communication was by dictation. Do you have a problem with that? Why not just address the epistemic validity of what is written?"

Me: "I thought you said no one gets to see Hank?"

Wilma: "Not now, but years ago He would talk to some people."

Me: "I thought you said He was a philanthropist. What sort of philanthropist hurts of people just because they're different?"

Wilma: "So you think that Hank ought to give rewards to ungrateful people?"

Me: "Maybe your friend Karl just made the whole thing up."

Fred: "So prove it. We did our research and we found that all that Karl wrote is sound.”

Me: "But 9 says 'Don't use alcohol.' which doesn't quite go with item 2, and 6 says 'The moon is white and shining,' which is just plain wrong."

Fred: "See, you haven’t done your homework at all. 2 and 9 were both written before alcohol was strong enough to knock your socks off. As far as 6 goes, I suppose you don’t use the word ‘sunset’ in your vocabulary.”

Me: "Scientists have pretty firmly established that the moon reflects light, not that it shines..."

Wilma: "They’ve also established that the sun doesn’t ‘set’. So what is the problem, exactly? Do you have a problem with phenomenological language?"

Me: "I'm not really an expert. I don’t even know what that word means."

Fred: "Obviously not.”

Me: "Item 7 is a real trip, though.”

Wilma: "Why?”

Me: "You can use it to say Hank's always right because the list says so, the list is right because Hank dictated it, and we know that Hank dictated it because the list says so. That's circular logic, no different than saying 'Hank's right because He says He's right.'"

Fred: "Well, sorry to disappoint you, but we did check out the claims and as far as we have found, item 7 is valid. If you think it isn’t you need to explain why.”

Me: "Maybe later. I need a beer. What's the deal with wieners?"

Wilma: She rolls her eyes.

Fred: "Oh, yes., Wieners, in buns, no condiments. It was written at a time when there were serious problems with condiments being poisoned by poor processing methods, so Hank included a ban on condiments. Buns are required because when this was written, there were no napkins, and people got the grease from the wieners on their fingers and it caused a lot of accidents. These days since we have napkins and better sanitation, we don’t worry about that law.”

Me: "What if I didn't have a bun?"

Fred: "What kind of silly question is that? I told you why the bun was needed. Are you so selfish that you’d risk hurting people just so you don’t have to put up with a bun?"

Me: "No relish? No Mustard?"

Wilma: “Didn’t you hear a word he said? Relish and mustard at the time this was written was deadly.”

Me: (I stick my fingers in her ears.)"I am not listening to this. La la la, la la, la la la."

Fred: "I can see we’re wasting our time with someone who lives in his own little world.”

With this, Fred escorted Wilma to their waiting car, and sped off. I went back inside for a beer.

I Hope JP Holding DIES! Several times!

That did it! I'm so mad now! That J. P . Holding and his buddies are making fun of my kiss kiss hero John Locust again (see last lovable blog entry by my dear sweet buddy)! And he called my other kiss kiss hero Dr. Hectoring Avalost a name -- "Dr. Stupid"! What an intellectual crook!

Hey, look! I see no problem in apologizing for errors, whether slight or serious, and I am open-minded to accepting legitimate criticisms from people should I make an error as long as people are civil in their criticisms. By that I mean, I won't accept correction until you agree to let me roll down my pants so you can plant some lip gloss! You better be super nice to me when I make a mistake, or I'll kill you!

I don’t claim to be an intellectual nor do I try to pass myself off a serious scholar. I try to make people think I am one in more subtle ways than that. It's how I got away with stuff as a kid. Sometimes.

Aw heck, I'm getting off topic! Let me get to the main point. Holding's slip-up. I mean,

Holding’s Slip-Up

That's better! There was a time on TWeb when I asked Holding to explain what he meant by something, and Holding explained it, and even changed his article to make it clear in case someone else had the same question I did. Well, you see the slip-up? Come on, it's right there! Holding was so stupid he didn't anticipate my problem with comprehension before I explained it to him!

I am so sorry that I pointed this out to him! If I had never pointed this out to him, I could use this as deadly ammunition to destroy his apologetic argument for the resurrection. The atheist community has one less club to beat Holding with no thanks to me!

But here's the real point! I am confident that this will not be the last time that Mr. Holding slips up! There will come a time in the future where Mr. Holding will slip-up and make such a damaging error that it will completely destroy a big argument of his for the Christian faith. It may not be on the topic of the resurrection but it will be sufficient to damage, irreparably, his apologetics for the Christian faith. I am predicting that he will slip-up big time again! I'm going to check his stupid Tekton website 100 times a day waiting for that to happen! I am quite confident that this will happen! When it happens, I will e-mail Hectoring Avalosost and show him it! Perhaps with a confident declaration of scholarly expertise, Dr. Avalos will judge Mr. Holding to be not just an amateur but an “intellectual crook”. When Mr. Holding makes his slip-up, I will be right here waiting to rub his nose in it. I'll take out ads in the New York Times! I'll tattoo a description of the slip-up on my rear end and take photographs and post them all over the world! I'll tell John Locust! I'll tell my mommy! I'll dance in the street and scream about it! Wheeeeeeee!

Huh? Where was I?

Oh. Never mind. See you next time.

The Uncritical Thinking of TWeb!

As some of you may already know, TWeb (an abbreviation for "TheologyWeb") is a pro right-win Christian conservative website that is hostile to almost every type of skeptic or non-Holding supporter you can think of. Every time I go onto those forums, I get ganged up on, asked tough questions that are hard to understand, and my arguments get treated as if they were idiotic.

I'll tell you what's idiotic! Holding and his supporters, THAT'S WHO! Holding likes idiots. He caters to them. He feeds off of them. They think he's something else. Well he is; he lives in the sewer.

Recently I decided to entertain their lusts for insults against me, being that I myself, am a skeptic of Christianity and an opposer of JP Holding (the filthy scum that runs Tektonics.org). If anyone wants to know why I don't link to TWeb where Holding squats, check out the thinking skills they exhibit. Here is a thread where Holding asked people to come up with mock slogans about DC. He's fixated on us. I'm Doubting John. You can pick up the debate that ensued on this page, and read though the next few pages by successively clicking on the next numbered one.

As you can plainly see, TWeb is not a place for civil discussion. Most if not all who are skeptical of their beliefs and in disagreement with them will not be tolerated, especially if you disagree with Holding. TWeb is perhaps the only Christian website I can think of where believers will gain up on you and try to intimidate you to conform to their mores and behaviors. TWeb is a catalyst for the cult following of Tektonics.org. Christians like ApologiaPhoenix, Mountain Man, JB, lilpixieofterror (all moderators of TWeb, respectively but not in any respective order), JonLanceBarker, Teluog, and especially one particular user known as "Truth be Told" (a loving and altruistic Christian that created an anti-Acharya S website filled with nothing but vinegar and vitroilic comments) are nothing more than Holdingnite jackels. It's sad to know that so many of them are duped into following someone who worships dead animals (a prohibited act as commanded in the Bible!).

If anyone takes the time read further they will see that the moderators deleted some of my comments because I accused Holding of lying. The sad thing is I don't have any evidence to prove it. But he did. I consider him to be a liar. Then they deleted another coment because I argued against deleting my prior comment. There's no fairness there. They are a pack of hyenas; idiots. Is there something truly wrong with accusing someone of lying and not being capable of providing evidence? Well, apparently on TWeb, it certaintly is. That's a problem. Holding is crafty like a fox, he is able to shake your hand in the darkness, and somehow withdrawing that handshake in the brightness of light.

And if you read further you'll see where Holding supports one of his ignorant followers when he argued that in order for me to criticize God for creating this universe I must be able to create a better one...in one week! Is that not ridiculous? I can criticize a contractor for his work without being able to build a house! But rather than telling this stupid supporter of his that he was wrong, which is the decent educational thing to do, Holding thought his argued was a good one!

Nevertheless, would I get them back for their childishness. This time, I was not going to stand by and play the role of innocence and humility, and I would get them good this time. I entered the fray one page earlier than I linked to where I provided my own slogan for DC:

Give us the guilt ridden, the brow beaten, the outcasts, the wounded soldiers, and we shall heal thee. Give us the religiously wicked, the victimizers, and the defenders of Biblical atrocities, and we shall beat thee down. Give us the brainwashed, the superstitious, the ignorant, and we shall teach thee. Give us the masters of gerrymandering who are exhausted from intellectual feats like spinning several plates up on several sticks, and we shall give thee rest.

The way things are going at this point, I may start considering putting this slogan into effect. This will demonstrate the digusting acts of Holding and his supporters, and will thus further my case in debunking Christianity.

Almost every time I go there I say to myself "never again." And then I somehow find the forgiveness to humble myself before them giving them their crave for attention returning to the boards typically around little more or just around a week when I'll say "I'm outta here" or "I'm leaving you all."

That's all I got to say, but hopefully this post will speak out to anyone with a clear thinking mind and a good moral conciousness. Regardless of whether you are a believer or skeptic.

God and smiting

It finally took pinching myself and a bit of a self-arm-twisting, but I finally visited my local DVD store and picked up a copy of the Steve Corall's latest DVD release, Evan Almighty. This film is obviously a sequel to those who know about the first film, Bruce Almighty starring Jim Carrey (whom also plays a character role in the film Dumb & Dumber, just to give people notice).

Okay, so if you're not familiar with the first film it goes something like this: God (played by Morgan Freeman) finally answers "Bruce" and his prayers for a better life. To make a long story short, God gives Bruce his powers to see what it might be like having unlimited domain in the universe for a temporary amount of time until Bruce comes to the "moral" of the story that human beings can't do God's job as well as God can. Yeah, I know, it's pretty stupid stuff and I know just exactly what you might be thinking at this point: Well, why the hell not? After all, doesn't it say in the Bible that God made man a "perfect" creation? Is God so smug that he puts us to a limitation scale and boasts of his universally sovereign power? If that's the case, God is a real smug cornhole, and that's that.

Alright, so the second film focuses more on a character from the first film known as Evan Backster whom becomes the main character of the second film running into contact with God, blah, blah, blah. In the movie, Evan is elected Congressman and hopes that his campaign will "change the world." Then, God comes into the scene to tell Evan to build an ark. Yep, this takes after the mythical story of Noah's Ark as found within Genesis (if you take a look at some of the "Special Features" on the DVD rom you'll hear an interesting bit where the director wanted the ark used in the film to match "historical records" which tells you allot about who is behind the production of this film and how they are planning to continually push Creationist propaganda into the media and elsewhere just for a little profit for their Jesus-camps and pedophile priests). And this is where it gets interesting. Now, maybe the director didn't take a good enough look at the book of Genesis when he sought out writing the script to this movie, but according to the Bible it says that God promised Noah via a rainbow that he would never send such a destructive flood to mankind ever again:

Genesis 9:14-15

14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.

Despite what the Bible says however, and being that the film's director is most likely a fundamentalist Christian, the producers of the film wanted to have God create a second global flood. What makes this even worse is that God describes the Noah myth as "a story of love" not of His wrath upon the sinful. That's how it goes throughout the rest of the movie: God is showing "love" by destroying the Earth with a great quantity of water. If you're a Christian and this somehow doesn't register well with you, perhaps you should be reading more of your Bible.

That's right folks. The Bible contains all of the same wishy washy garbage as does the movie itself. Somehow, God demonstrated his "love" to Abraham when he commands him to kill his own son and then to have that backfire as a sort of brutal strip tease (I know how those are, and believe me, they ain't pretty), and most importantly for Christianity, God shows "love" by sending himself in human form only to be nailed to a cross just to please his own deviance. Talk about a ridiculous fairy tale. Sheesh.

As an atheist I willingly choose to reject such doctrines. But, more importatingly aside from my own personal affairs, you have to wonder why there are such things as "Christian apologists". These type of people know what the Bible says inside and out, letter for letter, word for word, page by page. Yet, they continue to defend the notions that love comes about through torture, genocide, and crucifixion. If the Christian God does exist, he is the type of being that psychopathic freaks like Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka Kansas and Michael Jackson talk about when they use the word "God."

And besides all of the nasty theological implications in the film, the directing and scripting is just godawful. For one, the director picks a black man to portray the role of God? The director of course did this in the first film, but I mean, for sheesh's sake. A black man? Isn't God supposed to be the god of the Jews? How many Jews do you know that are black? Seriously....

My second issue with the moviescripting is the flood scene: There was no "global flood". In fact, the only flood in that film was one that destroyed the city dam and the city's urban areas. Then the water just literally dried up. What a waste of money! They didn't even have the nerve to create a global flood effect! Those cheapskakes, sheesh!

What I set out to do in this article was to explore pre-Christian theology. Christians are always hung up on the idea of their God being "merciful", "forgiving" and "all loving." It's almost as if they completely ignore the Old Testament. Why? I thought the entire Bible was the inerrant divinely inspired Word of God? And the Christians that do acknowledge the OT's content dismiss it as being of a "different time period." Well, I'll tell you what I think: I'm disturbed by it all, each and every part of it. The fact that we still live in a society where most people do not accept evolutionary biology is frightening in itself. I fear we may at some point regress back to Old Testament times, and I can only hope I will be long dead before then.

Like, the most devastating argument ever, Man!

Like... during an acid trip I got to thinkin'...

-Jesus was a dude and so were the 12 Apostles
-You can't have that many dudes in one area at once without having a fart joke cracked
-Christians believe that Fart Jokes are Immoral
-Therefore, Jesus was an Immoral Hypocrite and Christianity is False

You can't get much more devastating than that, man!

Like, now if you'll excuse me, I have some two-bit drug dealer to pummel for selling me bum drugs, man. He gave me Splenda instead of Coke...

The Sugary Foods Argument

I recall the moments of my childhood in which I was forced to consume healthy foods such as squash, beans, and liver before ever leaving the dinner table and or getting any desert afterwards. Despite the fact that our parents are usually well-meaning in their efforts to get children to eat food that is healthy to their growing bodies, we all agree as children that the particular food of healthy choice does not make for an exciting eat, nor is it usually expected to have a satisfactory taste. Here is where I will now begin to present my philosophical argument and how it has relations with the Christian God of the Bible.

So, here it goes: If the God of the Bible was a loving god of omnibolevence, then why on Earth did he create foods that are of good health to be in such BAD TASTE? If you are a parent with kids you know what it is I'm talking about. When you ask you're kids about what they think about chopped chicken liver or fried beans, chances are the response you are going to get go along the lines of this: "EWWW! Yuck! No way!"

Surely if God existed he would have provided us with foods that are healthy that are of good taste, instead of bad. He would also create the bad foods to taste bad instead of good. Get where I am going with this? There seems to be a problem as evidenced by realistic perception and one in which God's all-powerful will has once again seemed to have fallen short. "Why?" I ask. Why would God do this? Surely an omnipotent god had the power to modify and perfect our tastebuds before he even put us together in his "Grand Scheme of Life."

Today the United States is one of the leading countries in the world with some of the highest ratings in obesity contrasted with the general population. America's addiction for sweets and candy products has reached such a peak that it has begun to interfere with the health of our younger generation, i.e., the future leaders and workers of our future. I suspect that if "God Bless America" was a true statement, God might have actually designed us in such a way where healthy foods were more appealing to the taste buds, and not things that lead to higher rates of obesity and high blood pressure. Because of these events having currently taking place in our present time period, there are three possibilities to why this is so:

• 1) God is not omnibolevelent and does not care for humans. In other words, God is actually the god of deism, an impersonal god.
• 2) God is a liar.
• 3) God does not exist outside the realm of our imaginations.

If the first two are correct and the Christian God does in fact exist, then I want nothing to do with Christianity. Jesus and the Holy Spirit can have their sick fun watching people getting fatter and lazy while they sit back and do nothing. I would rather go to Hell with the Devil than to Heaven with a malovelent, lying, bully. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a wrap.

Preterism is an Admission That Jesus Was an Idiot!

More than a year ago my kiss kiss buddy John Locust commented on the Christian eschatology of Preterism by arguing such a view is an admission that Jesus failed to return. Earlier than that John (kiss kiss) had posted the same thing on a forum and was told this by the owner: "that has to be one of the most ignorant critiques of preterism I have seen."

Well, my buddy John says he got a Christian over at the Preterist Heresy blog to say that his critiques of preterism were BRILLIANT! This proves that this Christian is knowledgeable and that the forum owner is an idiot!

As we say here all the time, no one needs to be an expert on anything we talk about here, one only needs to decide that special pleading for religions sake doesn't cut it, and look for reasonable answers to reasonable questions! Being a freethinker automatically makes us smarter -- so THERE!

I Argue from Ignorance!

I’m sure all of my fans (all 3 of them) have heard of the stupid "Argument From Reason," which attempts to show God exists, and the absolutely brilliant (especially as framed by my good buddy kiss kiss John Locust) "Argument From Evil," which absolutely shows that God does not exist. I hereby advance for the first time, on behalf of my brilliant buddy John Locust, the "Argument From Ignorance," which I feel that I can specialize in because if anyone knows anything about ignorance, it’s me! I will attempt to show that religious skepticism is justified based upon the fact that human beings are ignorant, and we are ignorant because we are profoundly limited and immature as human beings. [This might take a few posts to do so. I mean, explain; I can obviously show how ignorant and immature I am in only one post].

So here’s the argument. First of all, there is available evidence that is neglected and/or inaccessible to us. There is unrecognized evidence that is undiscovered and undiscoverable by all of us. Obviously, anyone claiming to have not neglected some information, or to have found enough to make a decision, is ignorant. I know they are because I know they have not discovered it all, because I know what they don’t and know they haven’t discovered it. See?

Then there’s the past. The human past is too brief, ("only a few thousand years old") and we have been occupied by other things for us to conclude we have arrived at a final understanding. For example, I watch a lot of TV, so you surely can’t say I’ve arrived at a final understanding. No one else could have either because although I am ignorant, they are certainly more ignorant than I am.

Then there’s a lot of other problems. There has been hubris (or self-importance) and greed, jealously and envy, which taken together led to dogmatism, hostility and rivalry among people of different understandings. Obviously, as a freethinker, though, I stand above all of that and can see these flaws in everyone else and arrive at smarter conclusions than they can. Things like, "the more attached one becomes to one's beliefs, the more difficult it is to remain open to their falsity and to engage in investigations that might show them to be false" don’t apply to me or my kiss kiss buddy John John.

These days, we have stuff like computers and iPods that are a lot better at storing information. That means its only a matter of time before all religions (except atheism) are proven false.

Therefore, since everyone (except me and other freethinkers) are profoundly limited and profoundly immature, religious skepticism is positively justified. So there!

My Book Sales Great Success!

Well everyone I have more great news pertaining to my book sales on Amazon: Just recently it was ranked 878th in over-all books on Amazon.com, 4th in Apologetic books, 6th in Atheism books, and 7th in Biographies & Memoirs > Leaders & Notable People > Isn't it exciting!

As you can see, my book is becoming increasingly popular with both skeptics and Christians alike! The more sales made, the more I have been able to make a difference in the world. So buy today! (You can pre-order it here and help the cause.)

BE WARNED THOUGH: It may cause you to lose your faith for good.

John Locust Will Be Sneaking Onto the Campus at the University of Wisconsin-Catawba

Chris Honkquist and his secular student organization invited my dear sweet kissy kissy buddy John Locust to speak on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Catawba about why he rejected Christianity. He'll be doing that February 12th at about 7 ish in the Shlago-Wahoo Phillips Memorial Sleep Research Lab. This will take place in room 2650 of that building (the broom closet). If you're near the area he would like to meet ya and sell ya a book. Please tell anyone you know who lives near there about it as well and make sure they buy a book too.

God Made Atheism Stupid

Here's a sure fire way to win any debate with a theist:

Whenever they accuse you of making illogical points, or having a flawed view of their beliefs, or saying something that's just plain stupid, you look them eye and say, "Blame it on your imaginary God for making me this way."

It works every time.

The Size of the Universe: Why It Is Just Too Big for God!

If you held a dime at arms length this is a picture of that amount of space. Most of what we see here are galaxies each containing a billion stars. There are an estimated 100 trillion of these galaxies in a universe that is about 13.5 billion years old.

Christians think humans are so valuable to God that he created it all just for us. Then God visited us, died for our sins, and accepts the saints into heaven and casts sinners into hell.

When I look at pictures of the universe I conclude that human beings live on a mere small pale blue dot that will last a short while and then cease to exist.Basically, the whole line of reasoning follows that the universe is too big for a personal God to have created it. Nicholas Everitt puts the question this way:

"Is the universe as it is revealed to us by modern science roughly the sort of universe which we would antecedently expect a God of traditional theism to create? The short answer to this is 'No'. In almost every respect, the universe as it is revealed to us by modern science is hugely unlike the sort of universe which the traditional thesis would lead us to expect." (p. 216)

If God existed we should suspect that he would make a small and convenient sized universe instead of a large vast universe too complex for condensed comprehension.Everitt writes:

"Traditional theism would lead you to expect human beings to appear fairly soon after the start of the universe. For, given the central role of humanity, what would be the point of a universe which came into existence and then existed for unimaginable aeons without the presence of the very species that supplied its rationale? You would expect humans to appear after a great many animals, since the animals are subordinate species available for human utilisation, and there would be no point in having humans arrive on the scene needing animals (e.g. as a source of food, or clothing, or companionship) only for them to
discover that animals had not yet been created. But equally, you would not expect humans to arrive very long after the animals, for what would be the point of a universe existing for aeons full of animals created for humanity's delectation, in the absence of any humans? Further, you would expect the earth to be fairly near the centre of the universe if it had one, or at some similarly
significant location if it did not have an actual centre. You would expect the total universe to be not many orders of magnitude greater than the size of the earth. The universe would be on a human scale. You would expect that even if there are regions of the created world which are hostile to human life, and which perhaps are incompatible with it, the greater part of the universe would be accessible to human exploration. If this were not so, what would the point be of God creating it? These expectations are largely what we find in the Genesis story (or strictly, stories) of creation. There is, then, a logic to the picture of the universe with which the Genesis story presents us: given the initial
assumptions about God, his nature, and his intentions, the Genesis universe is pretty much how it would be reasonable for God to proceed. Given the hypothesis of theism and no scientific knowledge, and then asked to construct a picture of
the universe and its creation, it is not surprising that the author(s) of Genesis came up with the account which they did. (pp. 215-216)

(1) If the God of classical theism existed, with the purposes traditionally ascribed to him, then he would create a universe on a human scale, i.e. one that is not unimaginably large, unimaginably old, and in which human beings form an
unimaginably tiny part of it, temporally and spatially.(2) The world does not display a human scale. So: (3) There is evidence against the hypothesis that the God of classical theism exists with the purposes traditionally ascribed to him.
(p. 225).

In summary of these great fantastic arguments against the God-hypothesis, we can speculate that if a personal God did/does exist, then he should have made the universe accordingly: 1) small and simple (easy to navigate; easy to explore and hang out in heaven), 2) God should have created the universe and its entirety immediately, instead of waiting around for billions and billions of years (why would God want to limit himself when he could have made it in two seconds?) and 3) humans, being the only sentient and self-concious animals with a sense of common-sense morality, should be the only creatures in existance and within the realm of God's creation. Thus we find that the universe does not meet any of these criteria, and we can only come to one conclusion as of the present timing:

God simply does not exist.

The Bible is So Darned Stupid!

I just love my good buddy John Locust! Let me share with you some of his latest words of wisdom:

Hey you stupid Christians! Here's a set of questions to help us determine whether the Bible has been a greater source of evil than good in history:

1) Christian, name me one important moral truth we humans first learned in the Bible, that we still value today, which has not been taught outside of Christian cultures, and which we do not recognize apart from the Bible. After all, the Bible’s morality should always be completely new and different as well as superior to all other morality! We would never expect it to promote the same old values if God was really behind it!

2) Christian, name me as many examples and commands as you can think of that are found in the Bible, which, because they are in the Bible, have caused a great deal of human and animal suffering. I sure know that the command against adultery gave me a lot of heartburn! So did the one against bearing false witness! Why did those have to be in there anyway???

3) Christian, name me as many examples and commands that you can think of that are not found in the Bible, which, if they were in the Bible, would keep people who believe the Bible from committing atrocities. I mean, good grief, why should I have to figure out what “do not commit adultery” means? Why doesn’t God name me personally in that command if he doesn’t want me to commit adultery in particular? Why didn’t he maybe include some pictures of people committing adultery so I could drool over – er, I mean, so I could know what it was? Doesn’t God care about the illiterate, for that matter?

When we compare the lists generated from these requests it should be obvious that the Bible has been a greater source of evil than good in human history. I mean, it sure kept me from having a lot of fun when I was a Christian!

The Problem of Evil

This last July I had the honors of a live videotaped debate between myself and atheist-turned Christian apologist David Wood on "The Problem of Evil". So, you probably have the gist of all of this already. Here, I present the problem of evil as an objection to the existence of God; or, at least, that if God does in fact exist, why evil is even permitted in the first place:

Introduction

David Wood's Rebuttal

Rebuttal Exchange

Conclusion

Now I don't mean to be egocentric here, but the fact of the matter is that I had Wood absolutely speechless inevitably winning the debate. I don't want to give out all of the arguments that I used against his case, but I will leave you with a brief summary just to get the general idea. Once again, I am not inclined to SHOW ANYTHING, but I am willing to for information's sake.

Predation argument - Anyone who seriously thinks on the 'Creator' concept has to question at some point why "God" allows predation to exist. Think about it for just a minute: Wouldn't the world be better if we were all vegetarians? As I present in the debate, if the world were comprised of vegetarians and herbivores, there would be more peace and stability between each and every one of us. So if Christians are going to make the stand that an omnibolevelent god created the universe and our planet Earth, then they'll need to come forth with an argument that successfully rebuts mine. I'll be sitting by and waiting for the chance to come, if it ever does.

Hypothetical argument - Overall what about the general creation of God's supposed "handiwork"? If God created a paradise such as the Garden of Eden, clearly he wanted to have a heavenly oasis on Earth. And if God's creation was intenteded to be of the "perfect" stature, then why did God even waste his time creating all of the diverse species and living organisms that we now see today? Why did God create all of those plants, animals, and insects? Why not just leave it with Adam and Eve by themselves? Why did God create hunger and a digestive system (talk about gross)?

Now I know that some Christians will object by saying "Well, we need animals for compassion!" But that's just it! If God wanted to create a perfect heavenly oasis on Earth, it would be redundant and unneccessary for him to create animals or to create us humans with needs like social dependency. If I were God, I would have the world completely and 100% fool-proof. Everything that was designed would be in top working order: Humans would be the sole dominance of the Earth not needing to depend on others for comfort, there would be no need for the digestive system or obesity. If my humanly finite brain can come up with better hypothetical circumstances than what God supposeldy created (being our reality), then what does that say about God's intelligence? If God is all-knowing, then he's a moron for creating such an imperfect reality.

History/Titanic - Let's consider all of the genocide and major natural disasters that have occured within our historical timeline. Why would a god of omnibolevelence permit the suffering and death of all of those disasters and occurances? Maybe we should be asking ourselves, "Why did God allow the Titanic to sink?" Well, why did God allow the Titanic to sink? Does anybody know or have any knowledge as to what reason a omnibolevelent god might have for allowing the world's largest ship in recorded history to sink in the middle of the freezing Atlantic killing all of those Irish peasants? Well, hmmm?

Obviously to anyone who watches the debate with both of their eyes wide open, would see my opponent David Wood had a difficult time answering these arguments, which suggests that there are no successful rebuttals or refutations of what I have brought to the table. I do not seek to try to put pressure and difficulty on the Christian's capacity to rebut my arguments using logical reasoning. In fact, I present simple arguments so that it should be very possible if not indeed simple to answer my arguments. Yet there are still many of my arguments that have been left unanswered by Christians. I guess in the long-run Christianity just can't be intellectually defended. Good thing I'm an apostate. ;)

In other news, it seems that I have a YouTube imposter of me trying to sell something on "eBay". Chances are this is the doing of Frank Walton, as not only has he impersonated me before on multiple occasions, I don't even have a connection with the eBay Corporation. Better luck next time, Frank, and when you decide to hire a professional impersonator of me, make sure that you get my first name right: It's "John" not "Josh", idiot. Sheesh.

Like, God chose a Poor Medium, man!

Like, I don't see why God chose to reveal himself in Ancient times, which of course is, like, where people were nothing more than Ignoramuses who couldn't build a perfect pyramid if their life depended on it, man. They, like, didn't even know how to roll a joint or make beer back then...

If God was, like, truly all-knowing and all-powerful and all that other shit, he would have revealed himself in the here and now, where people have proper record-keeping methods like the internet and shit, man...

I, like, bet your saying "So what? No matter how many Times he reveals himself, it will still be history"

Like, my response: Get Laid, man. It's not my fault you can't, like, comprehend a smart argument like mine, man.

Now, like, if you'll excuse me, I have to go Get my Blow-up Doll Back from Mattchu What's-his-name. He took it on a date a while ago and I need it back. The mannequin is getting kind of boring...

Atheism and morality: do they conflict?

I have just about had it with all of the tired and wornout arguments Christians use against atheism on 'morals.' Let me tell you a little something about morality: Christianity is bankrupt when it comes to morals. As a credentialed Ethicist with a PhD equivalent in Religious Philosophy, I know this stuff practically inside and out. I myself went through some radical experiences in my past as a very devout minister and erudite student of the highly exalted Dr. William Lane Craig to a logically deductive infidel. I've got experience under my belt like you wouldn't believe, and being that the defunct argument of morality is a part of my expertise, I shall now demonstrate why it is faulty to ask the atheist on behalf of his part to provide a basic foundation for his moral descisions. In the meantime we will also show that Christianity is a delusion peddled by bigotry and intolerance. So, here it goes....

Time: First of all, morality in essence has no basic foundation. It doesn't need one. Throughout history people have had different conceptions of what is "right" and "wrong". Fundamental morals are just "common sense", you don't need to derive them from stone tablets. So just where is God in the midst of this? Hmm?

Majority: Simply put, the maority standard decides what is morally "right" and "wrong". Therefore, the atheist is justified in abiding by social laws. And atheists can do a pretty good job of this, unlike Muslims in the Middle East who steal all the time from each other! Look how good they are doing, they still live in the desert!

Relativity: Being that morality is common sense, we as social animals all have the potential within us to be loving, caring beings in an unloving careless universe. Functional sociologists see that a society functions together as a unit whole from seperate components, and so when we apply our natural animal instincts and our psychology, our relative moral sense becomes the backbone of societal and cultural norms. This has already been explained throughly by the likes of Herbert Spencer.

So there you go. These arguments now present a challenge to the Christian that wishes to call the atheist out on these arguments, and have now given atheists the upper hand.

Great Expectations

Applying a sound principle to God, if you take your car to an expert and the work doesn't meet your expectations, then you have doubts about the expert don't you? That's normal.

As I've said before, I expect God to do all kinds of things for me if he really loves me and exists. If I expect him to show His trustworthiness by giving me a new Ferrari, I expect him to give me a new Ferrari. Since we are rational animals and he knows that and he knows what that entails, then it is incumbent on him to act in a way that doesn't betray those labels and give me a stinkin' Ferrari, because he can reasonably expect to create doubt in us. This doubt would be a result of reasoning about him with the only facilities we have at our disposal which he provided. Therefore, if he's going to refer to himself in that way and expect us to believe him, then a reasonable expectation can be made that he would act that way. So where's my Ferrari? Huh?

If god acts in a way that causes us to doubt, he has no one to blame but himself because he supposedly made the architecture that makes up the 3 pounds of meat in our heads. I was made to expect a Ferrari. Now where is it?

Is it too much to ask for someone to do what they say? Is it too much to ask that someone walk the walk instead of talk the talk? What Would Jesus Do? What did Jesus say he would do? He said ask ANYTHING in his name and you'll get it. That obviously means I get my Ferrari. So where is it?

Good luck getting a prayer answered when its crunch time. I have a date tonight and still no Ferrari. Crap.

Religious Diversity: It's Easier This Way!

Y'know, there's this problem about probabilities based upon contradictory historical testimonies that really makes things easy on us atheists.

Here's my argument:

1) There are 45,000 different historical witnesses to mutually exclusive religious truth claims.

2) I don't know jack dip about nearly all of them, and only a little about the rest.

3) Therefore it is easier to just be an atheist.

Now Christians could show me the evidence that defeats 2, but for pity's sake, I have television shows on I want to watch. God could have made things so much clearer by giving me my own personal revelation. I mean, history is a poor medium to reveal anything of importance, because it means I have to actually think. And who has time for that? I sure don't.

Like, why it's our duties as moral subjectivists to, like, point out the flaws of the Christian God, man!

Like, I always get asked this question, man:

If Moral Subjectivists like yourself honestly believe what they preach, then why do they insist upon pointing out the 'immorality' of the Christian God?

I reply somewhat like this, man:

I, like, always reply that we do that shit, like, because it's our job as moral subjectivists to point out the immorality of the Christian God... Like, how he ordered his 'cronies' to kill everyone in those wars and shit man....

They, like, often reply like this:

But Snortin' Blow... why don't you just leave them alone? After all, if morality is subjective like you claim, then you have no legitimate way of saying that their morality is wrong.

I often, like, reply like this man...

Like, I don't leave them alone because their morality is wrong, man. Like, how many times do I have to reiterate that phrase to, like, get it through your head, man!

Then they, like, say this, man:

But HOW is their morality wrong?! You have not provided any evidence that their morality is wrong, other than a reference to killing their enemies [who were very malicious, by the way] and the fact that you've based this conclusion upon your own subjective morality which is fallible.

My response is, like, more or less:
Like, Get Laid, Man!!!!!!!!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get laid... and, like, hopefully I don't have to pay this one in Blow...

The dirt on "J.P. Holding!!"

Hehe, I'm a genius. I discovered the address and actual name of so-called James Patrick Holding, along with the workplace of his wife! I believe I'll post it here for all the world to see. . .

REAL name: Believe it or not, his initials are actually J. H. P. for Jiminy H. Pickett. The H. is just an H. Don't ask me why; God must have been too lazy to think up a middle name!

Address: 295 Carpenter's square, Qaanaaq, Greenland! That's right; he's Danish! Probably the cheese-filled kind. . .

Workplace: Santa's Worshop, North Pole. I always knew he was an elf!

And his wife works at the South Pole with National Geographic, documenting penguins for movies!

Enjoy this treasure trove of information on Mr. Jiminy and his wife; I've got go take my viagra.

Don't I Sound Cockamamie To You?

My pal John Locust composed this awesome bit of free verse I wanna share with you! Woo hoo!

********

I say I reject all Gods.
They say one God exists.

I ask, which God?
They say the Biblical God.

I say there are several Gods represented in the Bible.
They instruct me on the nature of Jewish monolatry and explain that “elohim” does not mean “gods” in the modern sense.

I say what the hell is that all about?
They explain it to me. Several times. I never get it.

I say I’m sincere in my skepticism.
They ask about that fake Holding blog.

I get mad and call them idiots.
They laugh and say I’m hopeless.

I get mad and leave and say I’m never coming back.
I return ten minutes later.

Two worldviews locked in struggle, one with plenty of evidence, the other shot through with ignorance and emotional diatribes.

If I lie enough, I can get the real weak people to change their minds, so the effort is worth it.

Tell ya what, quit botherin’ me. I’d be happy to be left alone.

Christians, can we all agree that Islam, Judaism, and the various branches of them are delusionary, along with all of the dead religions and the other ones presently adhered to around the globe?

Okay so far?

Upon what basis do you reject those other religions?

You...studied them and their truth claims and found out they were false?

Oh.

Um...

Huh.

What’s that?

Yes, I say that where the existence of all of these religions make any affirmative religious claim less probable. So?

What do you mean “atheism involves affirmative religious claims”?

It does not!

Hey, kiss off! Atheists don’t affirm anything!

What do you mean that’s a semantic trick?

Are you calling me a liar?

I’ve done it before? What kind of answer is that?

Idiot.

I don’t care what you think.

Christian, do you realize how cockamamie your set of beliefs is and how large of a claim it is to believe all the things you do?

Huh? What do you mean you never ran into any problems you couldn’t solve?

Baloney! I ran into a lot of problems! You must have messed up.

No, I won’t debate you. That’s all minutiae.

Stupid hyenas.

Here’s a comparison. Learn what the Mormons believe. Talk to them. Read up on it. See how they defend it.

You...did?

There’s no comparison to serious Christian apologetics?

But wait. When you as an outsider try to examine the evidence for their set of beliefs don’t you just shake you head in utter amazement that anyone could ever believe it?

You do?

And you do it when you look as an outsider at MY beliefs too?

Uh....

Idiot.

The Argument From Time Travel

As we all know, the unassailable maxim for distinguishing the likely true from the likely false is "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", or to put it another way, "If I can't see it, I won't believe!" Now surely, any omniscient God would recognize the truth of this, so why would he cordon off all the evidence for himself into the unobservable past? And this being the case, why doesn't he give everybody on earth their very own time machine so that we can travel back in time and see all those wonderful things the Bible reports for ourselves? He's omnipotent, right? So giving everybody their own time machine should be a piece of cake.

In summary:

If God was real and he really loved me, then he'd give me a time machine so that I can see the evidence for myself.

I don't have a time machine.

Therefore, God does not exist.

The logic is inescapable.

Holding Gets Whipped by Saliva!

Recently that moron goofball idiot apologist wannabee James Pee Holding had the indecency to take on one of my all time favorite enlightened atheist authors. No, I don't mean John Loftus, though he IS the greatest of all time! This time Holding had the nerve to insult my idol Dr. Heckler Saliva. As a service to Dr. Saliva I have asked him to write answers to about 3% of what Holding dared to write about him. I will post his responses over the next few days. Rip that moron apologist a new one, Dr. Saliva!

Now hear this! I have descended and will speak. I, Dr. Heckler Saliva, the greatest Biblical scholar in the world!

Your flatulent hero Holding will now feel my wrath, by the power of Rusty and Skippy! I have spoken! I shall now address his major bloviations.

Bloviation 1: Saliva is not a textual scholar.

HA! I will show you who is a textual scholar! There are two reasons this is a bad argument:

1. I am too a textual scholar! So there!

2. Holding is not one either! So there too!

I may not be the most prominent textual scholar in biblical studies, but that does not mean that I am not one at all! I'll prove it! My credentials are as follows:

1. Two of my professors at college mentioned "textual criticism" in their classes as least five times each!

2. I wrote articles which used the words "textual criticism" in them!

3. One time when I was walking down the street I actually saw Bruce Metzger and said hello to him!

4. I copied arguments off of sixteen pages of Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus in my book, Biblical Studies Sucks!

In contrast, Mr. Holding is an idiot and he actually quotes some guy who does church training at his church!.

So there!

Whoa! Dr. Saliva sure put that moron Holding in his place! More to come soon!

Christians think all animals can talk!

I was just recently looking through the forums at TheologyWeb.com and stumbled across something very interesting. Apparently, JP Holding's dog died recently, and so he got a new one which he decided to introduce to the morons who read his stuff. Well, get this: He posted it like his new dog was actually talking! Check this out:

Hi everyone! I thought I'd introduce myself -- I'm JP's new mascot, muse, and special little buddy.

. . .

You can ask me more questions if you want to! I'll be here all day!

Reading the responses that follow, it seems not one single Christian even so much as batted an eye over the fact that a dog was leaving messages on a web forum. It's like it was all in a day's work for them or something. Even worse, some of them actually had their pets respond!

Now of course you and I, being the rational and intelligent atheists that we are, know that these Christians actually typed the messages themselves and only attributed them to their pets. Yes, you and I know this, but I'm not so sure they know that. After all, they're the ones who also believe in a mythical story book called the Bible which relates such fantastical things as talking snakes, and talking donkeys, and a loving God who paid the ultimate sacrifice so that we could be reconciled with him!

That these Christians genuinely believe that all animals can talk is more than a little disturbing.

Holding and his Magical Sky Fairy

I've been tracking "J.P. Holding" on the internet for a while and I came across a debate thread of his on TWeb facing off against a deist that goes by the name of John Armstrong on whether or not Jesus' historical existence can be verified. As of the moment, I've come to like Armstrong and see that his arguments are well strung together. I may even get around to sponsoring his great website "God VS. the Bible", which is also the title of his self-published book. I'd advertise it, but I'm afraid it would divert too much traffic away from the content of my scholarly work over to his site, and seeing as this is my blog, we will be strictly about advertising my publications and those of my colleagues.

I'm going to be very straightforward here, I admire Armstrong's precept: if God does exist, then his very own natural laws clearly contradict the setences of his so-called "Holy Book." I think despite the fact that I am an atheist I myself can certaintly love to appreciate a deistic worldview. And even if something doesn't make a whole lot of sense or is just blatantly inaccurate and downright false, it is important to give those things mindful consideration and intellectual courtesy.

Anyways, about Holding and the "debate." While reading the posts within this thread, I found that Armstrong presented his case in a formal manner. Holding had nothing more than deragotary remarks to spew and insisted on insulting Armstrong's intelligence. More just to show you of how much of a pompous ass "Holding" really is.

Perhaps Holding is just bottled up with emotional insecurities knowing perfectly well of just how defunct the intellectualism is on his side of the fence. I personally had my own share with Holding, which started off on the right foot to begin with, but as we got deeper into discussion, Holding turned into a snarling, rabid wolverine. And to be entirely honest, it just keeps affirming my descisions for deconverting from Christianity. Although I was emotional insecure from the secular attacks, I don't think I ever had a personal grudge against someone else to the point where I called them "morons" and "idiots" just for disagreeing with my personal beliefs. But then again, TWeb smothers Holding in praises. They just can't get enough. Holding and his website "ministry" are at top of the prime for the Christianity community as far as the internet goes. The sad reality of it all folks is that if Holding could convince them that he was Jesus Christ in the flesh, he would do a successful job of it. It's Jim Jones all over again.

Just to prove that Holding is really a pseudo-intellectual, I went skimming through those thread posts just to see if there was any good dirt I could dig up. And to my surprise, woe and behold! Holding says a mouthful right here:

Armstrong: Please answer the challenge and submit evidence that Jesus existed.

Holding: Well, I can hear him laughing at you right now.

That says it all folks: Holding hears voices in his head. It's truly no wonder why Holding acts like a complete psychopathic infant. I wish I could feel sorry for him, but it's really no use when someone like Holding is so convinced in the existence of their Magical Sky Fairy. I honeslty don't think Holding can be cured from his delusions. Then again, you can't really help someone who doesn't want to be helped.