Some Things of Interest on the Internet
You might want to take a look at Dr. Matt McCormick's post, Putting Odds on Jesus. Really, what are the odds? [BTW He's using my book in his class on atheism]. Ed Babinski sent me a link to the 7 Most Horrifying Parasites On the Planet. God is perfectly good, right? That site has many other interesting things on it you could spend a lot of time reading. William Lobdell's book, Losing My Religion was just recently given a rave review in the NY Times. Congratulations William! My own book will be reviewed by the overseas equivalent, The Literary Times Supplement. Bruce Droppings recently reviewed an interview of Pastor Dave Schmelzer and me where he says he was disappointed. Check it out to see why. Then don't forget to look over my friend James McGrath's hosting of the Biblical Studies Carnival 41. It's interesting to see what people are saying. Lastly I've received notice that some fine folks on Facebook are getting up a petition calling for a debate between my former professor William Lane Craig, and me.
Cheers.
Cheers.
10 comments:
Hey, I posted that parasites link first:
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2009/04/dinesh-dsouza-on-why-we-need.html
Is this what you guys do here all day - crib off of others? ;-)
Great link ismellarat, I'm going to steal it too. Credits given though :)
Thanks for the link, JL. Here's the short version of the argument: The reports from early believers that Jesus was resurrected are very likely to be unreliable. Why? We have very little information from them. Their stories conflict on every major detail. Decades passed between the alleged events and the first written record. But more importantly, we know from cases like Lourdes, France that humans' testimony about miraculous events are very unreliable. Assigning some rough values to the important variables, I get a probability for the resurrection at about 1 in 5 million. And that's actually being very charitable to the Christian on several important points. Therefore, you shouldn't believe it.
Also, to be accurate: I'm not teaching the atheism course now. And the next time I do teach it, I think I'll use an excerpt of JL's work.
Matt McCormick
www.atheismblog.blogspot.com
where's the facebook group? I can't find it...
jbierly, As far as I know it isn't up yet but this is what they told me they'll do. If and when they do so I'll link to it.
I remember debating with the Christian apologist Rachel on exactly where parasites came from in the Genesis creation story. That is, did God create them? Why were they created? And is God good in the creation of these parasites?
She, as an apologist, claimed that these parasites were mutations that God did not create, but were the result of the Fallen world of sin outside the Garden of Eden and yet she denied evolution!
So dogs have Heart Worms because they too sinned? And what about the fish and grasshopper in this website? Are they sinners too?
Fact is, the Biblical writers had no idea of what a parasite was! (For those who think the dietary laws were Gods knowledge of parasites, please read my post on this issue.)
The question is, how many parasites did Jesus have in his holy gut? If Jesus had parasites, then by Rachel’s theology, he was afflicted by Original Sin. If Jesus had no parasites, then he was not really truly man!
"The question is, how many parasites did Jesus have in his holy gut? "I saw a video on the net a few days ago (a TED talk, I think) which claimed that 90% of the cells on and in the human body is parasitic as is 99% of the DNA. Physically speaking, we are not much more than a scaffolding for the benefit of extremely primitive life forms without whose presence we could not survive more than a few days.
So the question is, when I eventually convert to Christianity and in due course obtain my glorified body, will my microbial parasites also become glorified? Indeed, will the forming stool in my gut comprised mostly of dead microbial matter also become glorified - or should I fast for a few days before the rapture to avoid this alimentary problem?
If in 1 Cor 15 Paul was speaking of the physical body rather than a spiritual one as many christians would hold, one only has to ask such ludicrous questions to see how ridiculous his musings appear to the modern, materialist mind. However, if Paul was referring to a spiritual body, such difficulties melt away and Craig's arguments for the necessary historicity of the physical resurrection go with them.
If the Great Debate ever happens perhaps John could throw these unwholesome ideas into the discussion to muddy the waters as I doubt Craig will have any rational response to such ridicule.
Also, while on the subject of the debate, there is an interesting article by Anil Ananthaswamy in the New Scientist of 2nd May concerning string theory and multiverses which goes a long way if not all the way to making Craig’s Kalam Cosmological and fine tuning arguments irrelevant.
Samphire,
I have not read the New Scientist article. Could anyone provide a link? Is it easily accessible?
One potential issue which occurs to me is that the person skeptical of Craig's argument may raise the spectre of multiverses and perform a "retreat to the possible", without actually producing a substantive address of Craig's argument. This is what I believe many apologists when defending their beliefs from the arguments of skeptics. I hope that a "retreat to the possible" could be avoided, as much as possible. Unless we can demonstrate something substantive that challenges Craig's argument, let's not pretend that it is defeated because we have uncovered a possible objection which has not been fully substantiated.
Hey John,
I like posts like this one. These are very informative and are good summaries of the current state of things. Would you mind doing these types of posts more often?
Kyle, I plan on doing this more often, yes, and posting a bit less frequently. Glad you liked it.
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