the warfare is mental

On Evidence & Proof, Pt. II: Questions From Lifeguard

In Pt. 1, we discussed SI's version of the oft-repeated "no evidence for God" argument. In the thread, Lifeguard asked a few good questions:

Can an ironclad case for God’s existence can be made? Absent an ironclad case, regardless of why such a case cannot be made, then what is a believer left with besides the naked decision to believe? If even an IRONCLAD CASE does NOTHING without having ALREADY made the decision to believe, then what does that say about the warrant for belief in the absence of an ironclad case? Doesn’t this amount to saying that evidence for the existence of God only becomes evident when you’ve already made up your mind to believe? Isn’t that putting the cart in front of the horse?

I believe answering these questions as clearly as possible is mandatory in making myself understood here, so let's tackle the necessary definitions first.

On Evidence & Proof, Pt. I

If you've spent more than a passing moment listening to contemporary debates between atheists and believers, you're likely to have heard the claim that there is no evidence for God. I've heard this claim countless times, and I believe that many, most or possibly all who make the claim conflate the two related but distinct concepts of evidence and proof.

I also believe that attempts to resolve the matter are futile without firmly cementing the goalposts before beginning. Whether the responses are single or list, I've not once had an atheist accept anything I've ever suggested or heard suggested as evidence for God, and IMO there's nothing more annoying than, "Here is good evidence," followed by some variant of, "No it's not you douche," only to be repeated ad nauseum.

Personally, the most ground I've made in any of these ill-guided discussions was SI's recent concession to evidence of a miracle, albeit shortcoming. I'm okay with that, because like I said, my goal isn't to convert SI or other atheists, and I currently don't believe that a successful ontological argument exists. What they do with what I say remains on them. Anyways, I bring it up at all only because we locked horns over whether or not evidence for God exists again, and the following summarizes my response to SI. Lifeguard asked some good questions as usual, and Ubiquitous Che made himself clear and contrasted SI's stubbornness by confronting my challenge to firmly establish goalposts head-on.

Hat tip to the both of you; we'll get to those in Parts II & III.

The Masoretic-Greek Hypothesis: Strategy

First, in light of yesterday's definition of the MGH, I submit that the following describes DD's GH's problem summarized: It includes just enough baseline doctrine for DD to make his case, but not enough baseline doctrine that his Myth Hypothesis constitutes a reasonable basis for rejecting the truth claims of Christianity. In short, DD's disproved DDanity - and among others who've said the same - I don't care.

"...by demonizing those he seeks to refute and ignoring their valid criticisms, DD's authoritarian approach begins with and proceeds by disagreement in a spirit of hopeless futility that agreement will somehow ensue."

The Masoretic-Greek Hypothesis: An Introduction

In a recent comment to John Morales, I applauded DD's approach to go as far back as possible in constructing the Myth Hypothesis' competitor, for the very same reasons that apparently motivated DD to do so in the first place: who wants to get bogged down trying to harmonize all the differing opinions of mainline religions and lesser sects, each of whom claim to be eating from the same salad bar called the Bible? Certainly not me.

Although I think it's an intellectual cop-out, to a certain extent I can sympathize with atheists and unbelieving skeptics when they accuse believers of trotting out Courtier's Replies - because as Hunt said and I'll elaborate on - the Christianity that many believers argue is indeed a moving target. I do not wish to present a moving target in opposition to the Myth Hypothesis. Such would prevent me from being able to win the argument and expose DD's exercise for the rhetorical farce I believe it is.

Dominic accurately described the god of DD's GH as a sort of 'proto-god' intended to falsify the rudimentary undercurrent of all Christian interpretations. Lifeguard aptly noted that stopping the heart kills all humans. Again, DD is a smart man. This is a wise and noble approach. I've never expressed a single objection to DD's methodology and I've said as much since my very first comments in the discussion; it's that DD's cherry-picked his GH with only the baseline Christianity he needs in order to superficially make his case. Like a growing number of others, my primary response to DD's so-called Evidence Against Christianity is that he's not presented a case against Christianity. And like I also said to John Morales, I'd like to slowly strip the words Christian and Christianity from this discussion entirely - that is, until DD can concede that he's not yet presented a case against Christianity.

The intention behind my Masoretic-Greek Hypothesis (hereafter MGH) is both to avoid the pitfalls of doctrinal quibbling and to cover all the ground DD has missed, which should finally prove my case that DD's Evidence Against Christianity relates only peripherally to Christianity. M is the work of the Masoretes, Jewish scribes and scripture scholars living roughly 3,000 years ago in what today would probably be Jerusalem, Tiberius or even what would be considered Iraq (then Babylon, Babylonia). M is the Hebrew rendition of the Tanakh, and many if not most Protestant and Catholic Bibles sample from M, as does the Septuagint (39 books of the OT + select Apocrypha) from which the New Testament writers sampled. G is the New Testament derived as described. This way, we arguably start as close to the actual events and oral traditions as possible, then apply our collective powers of reason to ascertain the set of reasonably permissible predictions - thus hopefully avoiding doctrinal pitfalls like DD intended - but with the added bonus of a positive hypothesis we can have the balls to call Christianity.

This means we'll inevitably discuss Old Testament Hebrew and New Testament Greek, lexicon that may be foreign, unwelcome or intimidating for some. We're bound for some rough spots for sure, as many a discussion between atheists and believers derails around this point, but I have faith in our combined powers of reason, and I refuse to proceed until my jury of believers and atheists can agree that my MGH accurately represents the God of the Bible, whereas DD's GH does not. When and if this agreement is reached - that is the day I falsify DD's so-called Evidence Against Christianity beyond all reasonable doubt.

If anyone has a problem with anything so far, now is the time to speak up. 

Is This Conducive To The Pursuit Of Truth?

I was still waiting for the last Power Commenter to respond to Pt. 3 in my response to DD's so-called Evidence Against Christianity when, after a most exuberant and joyous night out enjoying life with my friends (yes, some people actually like me, no I don't pay them, no I don't mean MySpace friends and no, I'm not referring to prostitutes) I hopped online to find 631 very flattering words titled The Heckler's Defense which - like The Loser's Compromise - I fully expect DD to deny are about personalities.

I decided not to respond on DD's blog for a few reasons. Although I disagree that I'm a troll, and I feel that my arguments at EvangelicalRealism are both well-reasoned and made in good-faith, some who disagree are likely to see anything I say as further evidence that I'm indeed a troll. Like a shark to blood, I can sense that DD's just about to his breaking point, and although getting banned from atheist blogs is always flattering, it's also always annoying because it's honestly never my goal - my real goal is the pursuit of truth which entails either emendation or procuring agreement from reasonable individuals that my opponent's argument is not cogent as formed. I hope our new Power Commenting experiment can offer something standard threads seem to have difficulty delivering. At the very least, I can proceed with confidence my Power Commenters won't call each other "mealy-mouthed pricks" or "intellectual cowards," and that they're committed to issues as opposed to personalities. That can't be a bad place to start, right?

Even though my response to The Heckler's Defense is well-reasoned and not trolling, I feel that if I were to leave it in the original thread, such would simply knock the focus further off the issues and reinforce the negative stigmas I earnestly desire to overcome. So, I'm responding here and I'm going to chill off DD's blog in general for a while. 

This is not a concession of defeat for those who like to jump the gun. I will still be very much in this discussion. What better way to disable your accuser than to steal his bullets? Refusing to comment there should swiftly undermine DD's concerns about me being an "infiltrator", "troll", "heckler", "loser", etc. Once his emotions return to equilibrium, once he's exhausted and done contradicting himself by addressing his perception of my personality, I'm hoping DD will return to the issues. Trust me, the last thing I want to do is get banned from his blog before that happens.

I'd like to bring DD's following claim to everyone's attention:

Hopefully we’re pretty much done with the Loser’s Compromise series. I think it’s gone pretty well, and a big part of the reason for that is that this series focuses entirely on the issues, rather than on personalities. I think that’s a good strategy, for a number of reasons. (June 11, 2009)

To me, that translates to saying the Loser's Compromise series focuses on issues vs. personalities, and that such is a good strategy. Presuming DD considers focusing on issues vs. personalities a good strategy outside the Loser's Compromise series, am I the only one who finds that statement odd or perhaps even contradicted in light of The Heckler's Defense, which focuses entirely on personalities and not issues?

You Can Lead Atheists To Water, But You Can't Make Them Think

*Comments are closed on this post because it was moved here.

For the past weeks, I've foregone Rebutting Atheist Universe to debate Deacon Duncan (DD) from EvangelicalRealism over his series, which for some still-undisclosed reason he's titled Evidence Against Christianity.

It was bad enough when DD gave Dominic Saltarelli (not arguing as a believer) credit for making the exact same argument three people (all arguing as believers, incidentally) made in the first two weeks of the discussion.

It was bad enough when DD denied that his GH was Christianity, yet absolutely refuses to this date to explain why it consists of distinctly Christian pre-conceptions about God.

It was bad enough when DD claimed that all people who apply the tools of reason consistently and without bias in biblical exegesis are skeptics.

It's bad enough that many of DD's commenters are so on the man's nuts that they can't see clearly and end up focusing near-exclusively on me.

It was bad enough when DD eschewed my invitation to one-on-one, real-time debate.

It was bad enough when DD crafted an entire sub-series titled The Loser's Compromise in direct response to his perceptions of my arguments, then denied that the posts were aimed at me.

Now, folks - as if it wasn't bad enough already, as if it could get any worse - DD's latest "argument" has left me truly baffled.

Obligatory Osmosis, Or, My Response To DD's Evidence Against Christianity, Pt. 2

So, I saw an opportunity to combine a response to DD's Loser's Compromise into the ongoing post-by-post dissection of his series Evidence Against Christianity.

According to DD,

There’s a particular approach to the truth that I call the Loser’s Compromise, and it goes like this: “We can’t know the truth about X, so let’s just agree that different people are equally justified in believing whatever they like about it.” Considered superficially, it sounds open-minded and fair, because it appeals to a certain live-and-let-live quality that avoids putting anyone in the wrong. In reality, though, it’s a deceptive rationalization, and an excuse for avoiding the truth instead of embracing it.

First, I've never once stated or implied that if we can't know the truth about something, people are equally justified in believing whatever they like about it. What I have said and what I still say is that when two or more hypotheses are equally consistent with all of the available data, although provisional belief in either would be rationally justified, truth claims remain unsustainable until further evidence favors one hypothesis over another. 

Truth claims are entirely different philosophical beasts than rationally justified beliefs!

Utterly Disappointed, Or, My Response To DD's Evidence Against Christianity, Pt. 1

Beginning here, Deacon Duncan of Evangelical Realism (DD) offers a series titled Evidence Against Christianity which compares the predicted consequences of two hypotheses against real-world evidence to determine which hypothesis seems more likely to be correct. The first hypothesis represents how the world should look if God existed and is called the Gospel Hypothesis (GH). The second represents how the world should look if God did not exist, and is accordingly called the Myth Hypothesis (MH).

I see absolutely nothing wrong with DD's approach, and no believer I'm aware of has voiced a problem with DD's methodology. For example, DD says,

One advantage of comparing two hypotheses by measuring their consequences against real-world fact is that this approach allows us to make a clear, functional distinction between honest, unbiased inquiry and mere rationalization. (DD)

I agree. That's all fine and dandy - but there's a catch: When they assume pre-existing premises, hypotheses must be accurate, and I'm not the only one to claim that DD's so-called Gospel Hypothesis is no gospel hypothesis at all.

Hence, my first and primary claim is that DD attacks a strawman, piecemeal god of his own making - and I submit that I'm not the only one making that claim. I also submit that I've read DD's concerns over criticisms of inaccuracy and found them wanting: I agree that concerns of accuracy are irrelevant when we're creating an hypothesis from scratch, because when we're starting from scratch, there is no standard to inaccurately represent. That DD's positive hypothesis is titled the Gospel Hypothesis entails commitment to specific presuppositions. Further, if DD feels accuracy is irrelevant, why would DD defend the predictions of his so-called Gospel Hypothesis as accurate?

For the past three weeks, I've been methodically undertaking the laborious task of pouring through each of DD's 20+ posts in the series and their according threads. The latter is not nearly as impressive a feat as it seems, as roughly 70% of the comments in DD's threads focus on personal attacks and irrelevant side issues like why it was taking so long for me to respond to a complex post series during finals week.

To those who persevered, I offer my week-by-week, post-by-post analysis of Deacon Duncan's Evidence Against Christianity.

On Atheists & Blind Faith, Or, False Arguments 27, 28 & 29: Why Prayer Studies Are Not Credible

NOTE: In no way complimentary towards myself, John Evo has since changed his opinion, agreeing with me and challenging PhillyChief to take a more reasoned look at the evidence. "Ask yourself if you did any research at all when cl challenged us... You will find, as you continue your learning and growth, that the advice I gave in this message was well worth considering as it is said to you by someone who thinks highly of you. But take it as you will." John Evo to PhillyChief, May 16, 2009 6:07pm.

---

So I locked horns with PhillyChief and John Evo, again. Big surprise, right? This time it was over the following comment from PhillyChief - who if I remember correctly - claims to be a scientifically-minded rationalist atheist:

Prayer helps no one but the one praying, providing a euphoria and calming effect, which could be comparable to ejaculating.
-PhillyChief

I felt that was an odd statement for a scientifically-minded rationalist to make, but was not surprised that it came from a sarcastic atheist who claims to be "almost always right", and so I replied,

How would you know? Where is that "demonstrable evidence" you're so fond of? Aside from being grossly unscientific, statements like the above appear contradictory alongside appeals to soft atheism as you've recently made on my site.
-cl

At this point John Evo chimed in, submitting some link that was presumably to some prayer study that he felt somehow qualified as the evidence I asked for, but some silly form asking for private information had to be completed in order to read it - and I don't want to join some organization just to refute what is really basic and obvious scientific misunderstanding. As I said multiple times in the thread, John Evo and PhillyChief are more than welcomed to cite any pertinent facts themselves.

To make a long story short, in our discussion I essentially challenged the scientific credibility of all prayer studies. Now I'm not normally a fan of absolute quantifiers, but in this case I will justify my use of the word all. In fact, if I were still screenwriting and had extra money sitting around, I would gladly offer a Randi-esque incentive of at least $10,000 to anyone who can prove the following arguments wrong: Philly's aforementioned comment is inherently unfalsifiable, and sans invocation of counterfactuals no scientifically reliable prayer study is possible.

A Chat With The Chaplain?

On a thread at DA, I remarked that,

..improving the condition of the human species and doing things for the benefit of our fellow living beings is what true religion is all about,

to which the Chaplain from An Apostate's Chapel replied,

What is the basis of this proposition?

The following post intends to perfunctorily answer her question. Let's refer to the idea that true religion entails improving the condition of the human species and doing things for the benefit of our fellow living beings as the Good Will Hypothesis (GWH).

Another Question For DD

I don't know if it's the full moon or last night's aforementioned adult beverages or what, but I simply cannot seem to stop thoughts of logic from forcibly invading my mind today. You implied that it's reasonable to want to be with those we love forever, and I agree, but assuming you accept stock claims of theism's irrationality, have you thought of the disadvantage this puts you at?

If loving others is at least a partial motivation for theism, are not the subset of theists who share said motivation at least partially sustained by a rational and reasonable proposition?

An Impromptu Post Especially For Commenter PhillyChief That Also Happens To Double As A Legitimate Response To His Claim

Don't worry, I'm not still drunk at 11:48 am on a beautiful Friday morning or anything, I'm simply trying to break my own personal verbosity record while ironically attempting to change things up with shorter posts here and there, and such is not a concession that those who complain of verbosity are in any way sustained.

With a question I find at least as amusing as talking to Boston Dan last night - if I'm such an idiot, don't you find your sustained interest in dialoging with idiots at least somewhere between "worthy of pscyhoanalytical address" and equally idiotic? And let me be clear, I do not think you're an idiot. Contrary, you make me laugh more than anyone I've encountered online so far save for possibly Modusoperandi or Ex. Though by no means do I agree when you boast to be "almost always nearly right," you are a clever and good writer with a decent dose of excruciatingly sharp wit - and I'd be willing to bet if you showed me your local watering holes that we'd have a great time - as long as we promised to discuss miracle tit and not this instance of flawed logic.

On the other hand, if you're dry, perhaps you were never a real drunkard in the first place. Then again, I wouldn't want to be accused of making a "No True Drunkard" argument!

Response To DD's Interpreting Scripture

I decided to create this impromptu post in the event anyone from the original thread wishes to continue rational discourse (Keyword: rational).

MiracleQuest Continues: My Response To The Ultimate Superstition

In X-Files Friday: The Ultimate Superstition, DD cites Geisler and Turek,

David Hume argued that miracles cannot affirm any one religion because miracles are based on poor testimony and all religions have them. In other words, miracle claims are self canceling. Unfortunately for Hume, his objection does not describe the actual state of affairs. First, Hume makes a hasty generalization by saying that alleged miracles from all religions are alike. As we’ve seen since chapter 9, the miracles associated with Christianity are not based on poor testimony. They are based on early, eyewitness, multiple-source testimony that is unrivaled in any other world religion. That is, no other world religion has verified miracles like those in the New Testament. (G&T)

...then says,

What we have in the New Testament is a well-documented, well-preserved record of people making claims. This does not constitute a body of verified miracles. (DD)

I agree. I've certainly not been afraid to criticize some of G&T's strategies elsewhere, and I agree that in this citation, G&T conflate claims with verification - and that's wrong. To me, it appears G&T simply presume the correctness of that which they are trying to prove, by alluding to it as verified. However, G&T's criticisms of Hume happen to be spot-on, and quite pertinent to our ongoing miracle discussion. That being said, I've also complimented DD's logical prowess elsewhere, but this time he did not address G&T's citation squarely at all - just flanked them with Benny Hinn before proceeding on to their "One Solitary Man" ideas. 

Rebutting Atheist Universe: An Introduction

I've decided to do a book review post series, and should you choose to follow along with me, the first book we'll be taking a look at is David Mills' Atheist Universe (Ulysses Press, 2006, 978-1-56975-567-9).

From the backcover: "Using simple, straighforward logic, this book rebuts every argument that claims to 'prove' God's existence."

Really? Every argument? I already smell an inflated claim and we haven't even peeked inside, but I suppose if we are to call ourselves rationalists, we'll have to suspend judgment until further evidence appears.

In the Forward by Dorion Sagan, we get a small taste of what Atheist Universe might be about. Sagan begins with some blanket statements about creationists - always fun to shoot fish in a barrel - then moves swiftly into personal views of the biblical God as a, "2,000-year-old petty Middle Eastern tyrant." Sagan concludes, assuring us that Mills' work represents, "impeccable logic, intellectual bravery and professional clarity," and these will be part of the criteria by which I judge the book.

MiracleQuest Continues: On Post Hoc Reasoning & The Re-Captitated Man

So it appears Deacon Duncan has accused me of post hoc reasoning regarding an objection I made to his elaboration on my re-capitation example. I'd like to take a moment to discuss why I feel his complaints are based on an overly-charitable interpretation of my objection, and I'm curious to hear what you think. The linked post is part of a lengthy ongoing discussion, so a little backstory might be helpful.

For the past month or so at EvangelicalRealism, we've been discussing the amount of credibility we can reasonably assign to miracle stories. Now, everyone has different definitions of a miracle and different thresholds of skepticism through which they filter observed events. Phenomena like the Marian apparitions at Zeitoun are obviously sufficient to convince some people, yet others remain skeptical. So how might we define a miracle objectively, in a manner that anyone can apply to any observed event?

I entered the discussion attempting to establish a rigorous set of criteria one could apply to determine whether or not any event might be considered a miracle. That didn't work out very well, so in further attempts to determine the 'miracle switch' in everybody's brains, I introduced the re-capitated man as a hypothetical example, asking skeptics how they would parse such an event. That is, if we observed a man get decapitated, then an hour later we observe the man's head re-attach after which he goes into the bar for a drink, would we have grounds to say something "miraculous" had occurred? 

MiracleQuest Continues: On Deacon Duncan's "Unapologetic"

So I was about to hit "post" when I took a break, and found myself randomly staring at a TV that was on. It was that History Channel show called MonsterQuest and now you probably see the significance of the title. The show begins with narration on the nature of different sorts of monsters, you know, Big Foot, the New Jersey Devil, Werewolves, et cetera: "Monsters. Are they real? Or imaginary? Join us as science tries to find out."

That's exactly what's been going on at EvangelicalRealism for the past few weeks now: we've been on a MiracleQuest. Except that MonsterQuest can at least define exactly or near-exactly what it is they're looking for. Despite my stodginess on the issue and the naysayers, I think we'll soon solve these problems of definition and criteria. The more we talk about it, the more ideas get tossed out, the bigger the pile of potentially good ideas grows, and sooner or later we're there.

DD recently posted this article describing the three-tiered core of what he calls his "unapologetic against Christianity." My first thought was to post my responses to the thread as usual, but as of late I've started to really lose patience with comment threads. It can be more than unsatisfying to put hours of work into a line of reasoning only to have that reasoning effectively obfuscated by personal attacks or short-minded oversights, and I don't really feel like dealing with a few of the commenters at ER right now. Plus, if you develop your own post, you're likely to spend more time thinking things out. So, we can discuss DD's unapologetic here if anyone happens to be interested, and I'll just post the link over at his spot.

DD begins his "unapologetic" thusly:

There are three ideas at the core of my unapologetic against Christianity. The first is the principle that truth is consistent with itself. The second and third are what I call the Undeniable Fact and its Inescapable Consequence: God does not show up in real life, and consequently men have no option but to put their faith in their own Fantasies, Intuitions, Superstitions and Hearsay (FISH). To the extent that salvation depends on true faith in God, therefore, salvation is impossible, since God is not here to give us something real to put our faith in, and since mere gullible trust in men’s words is not really the same as having genuine faith. (DD, caps, paren. mine)

To reiterate, DD's unapologetic is three-tiered: Truth is consistent with itself, God does not show up in real life, and people have no option but to put their faith in fantasies, intuitions, superstitions and hearsay (FISH). Do these ideas hold up under closer scrutiny?

Authority Effectively Undermined

I was cruising around the blogosphere this morning when I found this post at DaylightAtheism. Although I don't necessarily share all of Haught's conclusions as expressed in the source material, I felt Ebonmuse's response was fraught with inconsistencies.

First on the list is the following peculiarity:

...Haught presumes for himself the right to judge which atheists are or are not sufficiently "serious"

Why should that be any sort of problem? After all, Ebonmuse certainly presumes which theists are sufficiently serious, for example, he says all that believe in demons are ignorant regardless of actual intelligence and should be unilaterally mocked. This makes Occam's razor look more like a guillotine! As my heart goes out to the closet GLBT kid with a sternly homophobic and closed-minded dad, similar for the otherwise rational person who's had experiences reasonably interpretable as psychic ('psychic' as in the Jungian sense of archetypal), spiritual or biblical in their ultimate nature. Such hasty generalization and harsh criticism in this regard can only effect cognitive dissonance, which is of little use in uncovering the truth.

Trilobytes Don't Deny Evolution Because Humans Weren't Around In The Cambrian

The title will make sense later and this post has nothing to do with evolution.

Last month I got involved in a thread which has turned out to be quite productive in my opinion. Although I can't speak for the others involved, I've gained considerable insights into a variety of epistemological arguments and ideas. Miracles have been the topic that have underscored our debate, and we've bantered about the amount of credibility one can reasonably assign to episodes like Zeitoun and Bernadette McKenzie for example. The blog's host, Deacon Duncan (DD), also made a claim he calls the Undeniable Fact, and commenters both here and there have agreed and disagreed with that.

DD devotes considerable thought to the comments which keeps the discussion going and for that he gets good mention. It also helps that he's a good writer. If you have good logic, you don't get good writing for free, so people that have both are fortunate. This related post of DD's is among the better I've read in terms of writing that succinctly and persuasively portrays the inherent dilemmas in miracle claims and the amount of credibility we can assign to them.

I've objected since the beginning of our discourse on the idea that we should define our discussion on miracles with pre-agreed criteria and interpretations of terms, whose discernment must be reasonable and precisely quantifiable. I realize those are subjective terms as much as any others, but the point is that we need something more than, "It's gotta be unambiguous!"

At any rate, the discussion's been good and although there have been a couple small flare-ups along the way, for the most part everything has been reasonable, rational, progressive discussion. But don't take my word for it - read on and make up your own mind. Remember this is part of an ongoing thread, as you can see by all the links above, so there's considerable backstory that is definitely liable to cause obfuscation if unaccounted for. If something doesn't make sense, give us the benefit of the doubt. We're likely just omitting something that we of course take for granted because it was stated previously, and such underscores the difficulty of accurately articulating online debates about nuanced topics.

Lyell Claims Earth Is 6,000 Years Old! or, False Argument #21: Bible Teaches Interfaith Love Is Sin

Alright, so I had stayed up until the morning yesterday writing and backlogging what I feel are three interesting and different posts for the upcoming week, on the decision that I was going to take a 10-day break from posting and blogging.

So what happened?

Well, I woke up this morning and after getting into the swing of things, popped over to DA where what I read in the first few sentences just happened to comprise perhaps the biggest example to date of an exegetical post of Ebonmuse's that completely misses the mark. So I was overcome with an irresistable force to write, and barfed out the following.

All for the better, I suppose. It didn't take long, and I had been wondering what I would stumble across for #21 in the series. Although admittedly skewering a fish in a barrel, this fits the bill perfectly.

More Lee-ky Responses To Strobel & Co.

For the past few days, I've been evaluating various responses to Lee Strobel's questions that were posted on FriendlyAtheist. My latest stop was at a blog whose title I liked, Life Before Death, and is hosted by "biology student, secular humanist, beekeeper and Swede," Felicia Gilljam.

Now, in all honesty, those of you expecting something new here might be let down, and that's where perhaps most people on all sides can agree on Strobel's questions. Many are admittedly the same old washed-up ontological arguments one has already heard, especially if they've been even remotely following philosophy, religion and/or science for the past few years.

But what also discourages me is how overconfident many on the atheist & skeptic side seem to be in the perceived validity of some responses. Most every skeptical response I've seen to these questions contains some degree of logic-leak from drip to wave, yet in threads, too many skeptic backpatters rally around their dead fish like Piggy and the archetypal boys on Goldman's Lord of the Flies, proud and gleeful that they've pulled such beauts out of the barrel and aptly skewered them!

But how skewered are they? Let's take a look at three more and find out.

And We're Back At Square Oneor, My Response To "The Big Guns"

So atheist-turned-believer Lee Strobel apparently offered to answer questions from the thread over at FriendlyAtheist, and I think Hemant (the site owner) has a really cool thing going by having this little dialog.

However, if you want to stump atheists with tough questions, the first thing you don't do is dust off the same batch of washed-up ontological arguments and let them go extra rounds. Although we can agree on lots of other issues, Greta wrote a recent post whose subtitle was Greta Answers Some Theologians. I gotta admit, when I first saw the title in her email notice, I immediately wondered with awe and even a bit of fear: Uh-Oh! Who'd she talk to? I imagined her giving Ted Haggard or somebody similar a proper railing! At the very least I'd envisioned an actual dialog with a theologian, much like what Hemant and Strobel have done.

Qualifiers Are Important, Aren't They? or, My Response To, "What's So Bad About Religion?"

I was recently debating with the chaplain about the importance of qualifiers in logic and debate, when she decided to bring up some old stuff. About a year ago, I made my first visit to the chaplain's blog, pointed there from another blogger who suggested that I read chaplain's essay titled, What's So Bad About Religion?

So what's so bad about religion? Of course, different people are certainly going to answer this question differently, and any attempts to create hard-and-fast rules seem counterproductive to say the least. At any rate, let's take an in-depth look at some of the chaplain's answers to this question.

On Inerrancy: An Open Response To mikespeir

The following is my latest response to commenter mikespeir at DaylightAtheism regarding a post titled On Inerrancy. I was unable to post it because the host, Ebonmuse, decided the thread was "going nowhere" and closed comments. I disagree, and the discussion need not be limited to myself and mikespeir. As always on my blog, anyone with anything to say is more than welcomed to get in there and speak up. I've no fear of dissenting opinion and feel the way to reach common ground is often to allow both sides to exhaust themselves.