Kiosk

The components of written narratives of the life of Jesus were preceded by oral traditions that go back as far as one can imagine. These stories were undoubtedly embellished before their canonical versions were fixed, but we can find traces of such embellishments in the contradictions between the individual gospels. Later gospels add more detail than is provided in earlier ones, and sometimes the fallout is a confused mess of contradiction. In this essay Stephen Van Eck documents both embellishments within the canonical Gospels and those that postdate them, such as those found in Catholic hagiographies that went viral before and after the rise of Protestantism. Most telling are the Catholic saints whose ahistoricity is betrayed by the fact that the stories naming them give them names whose meaning pertains to the story itself.

Inspired to respond to some half-a-dozen common misconceptions about atheism, Thomas Bear outlines his own views—and those of the atheists that he knows personally—about the true nature of atheism. In doing so Bear clarifies who holds the burden of proof concerning claims about God, the place of hope, meaning, and purpose in a world without God, the significance of life's transience to that place for hope, meaning, and purpose, how we all create our own meaning anyway, the role of religion in the public sphere, and the rights and freedoms of nonbelievers as well as everyone else. While each of these topics could inspire an entire essay in its own right, it's useful for novices to have them already addressed in one article to which they can refer whenever these well-worn religious objections rear their ugly heads.

The Jewish Tanakh (or Christian Old Testament) includes a creation myth in Genesis Chapters 2 and 3. The story describes Adam and Eve's famous sojourn in the Garden of Eden, which ended abruptly after they disobeyed God. Though only a handful of verses, Christians consider this narrative an essential truth of the faith and call it the Fall of Man story. In "Truth, the Fall, and Hominins," G. P. Denken questions whether there can be any historical truth to the Fall in light of human evolution. He focuses on the Catholic Church's current accommodationist approach to the subject, seeing the Fall story as symbolic and allowing scholarly speculation on how evolution fits into the narrative. He concludes that the Church has failed to extract the Fall’s historical truth from our hominin history, and its speculations on evolution raise more problems for its complicated theology than they resolve. Once the Church recognizes that it can accept either human evolution or the Fall story, but not both, Denken predicts that it will abandon evolution and return to an irrational, literalist reading of the Fall.

In this satirical article Vern Loomis breaks down the prescribed paths to Heaven or Hell laid out by the three Abrahamic religions currently dominating the Western world, as well those laid out by the Baha'i faith. In order to clarify the contradictions between these religions on such a crucial matter for humankind, Loomis speculates that perhaps one day God will directly and miraculously set the record straight himself. Until that day, Loomis hopes that God's supposed emissaries will find peace among themselves while maintaining that the others are deeply mistaken about an issue for which no one can afford to be in error.

In "God and Horrendous Suffering" John W. Loftus argued that horrendous suffering renders traditional theism untenable. In reply to Loftus, Don McIntosh argued that, unlike Christian theism, naturalism precludes the existence of evil, and that Christian theism actually best explains horrendous suffering compared to other forms of theism. In this final reply to McIntosh, Loftus evaluates the reasoning underlying each of these two points, as well as McIntosh's contention that we have good reason for maintaining hope even in the face of horrendous evils because, McIntosh avers, God's work of creation is not yet complete.

In his recent article, "God and Horrendous Suffering," John W. Loftus argues that what he calls horrendous suffering is incompatible with traditional theism. The extent of horrendous suffering in the world, he says, "means that either God does not care enough to eliminate it, or God is not smart enough to eliminate it, or God is not powerful enough to eliminate it." For Loftus, however, the problem is not simply evil, but horrendous suffering, a particularly acute form of evil which renders theism completely untenable. Here I will argue in reply, first, that because horrendous suffering is itself a form of evil, it cannot be easily reconciled with naturalism, since naturalism actually precludes the existence of evil. Then I will argue that horrendous suffering is not only compatible with theism, but is best explained in the context of Christian theism in particular. Finally I will suggest that because God's work of creation is not yet complete, we have good reason for maintaining hope even in the face of horrendous evils.

In the summer of 2023 retired lawyer Robert G. Miller invited legal apologist John Warwick Montgomery, then-editor of the Global Journal of Classical Theology, to participate in a truly legal assessment the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, but Montgomery declined citing time constraints. So Miller turned to systematically inviting as many other legal apologists as he could think of to demonstrate the resurrection of Jesus. Unfortunately, he could not find a single lawyer who would even discuss the possibility of facing an actual opponent in a procedure closer to a real adversarial process in court. Miller therefore took the initiative by drafting an unopposed brief providing three independent reasons why apologists cannot prove Jesus' resurrection by legal principles, in addition to critiquing standard legal apologetic arguments for the resurrection of Jesus. In this follow-up open letter, Miller invites the incoming editor of the Journal to respond to his unopposed brief, either directly or by slating editorial board members to do so, or to at least issue a call for papers responding to the brief. Will legal apologist continue to skirt their 1 Peter 3:15-16 mandate to answer the call to anyone who requests it?

Is abortion morally wrong from a theological standpoint? Christians of the pro-life persuasion certainly believe so, arguing that it constitutes the murder of an innocent human life. In this essay, Adam Taylor examines the various arguments leveled against abortion by prominent Christian apologetics like Normal Geisler and Paul Copan, showing that their arguments fail to justify their apologetic conclusions. Taylor goes on to explore how the very Bible that they appeal to for justification of their opposition may in fact provide any number of reasons why abortion cannot, from a Christian standpoint, be reasonably opposed.

The evidential problem of horrendous suffering is one of the most powerful refutations of the theistic God as can be found: if there's an omni-everything God, one who is omnibenevolent (or perfectly good), omniscient (or all-knowing), and omnipotent (or all-powerful), then the issue of why there is horrendous suffering in the world requires an explanation. The reason why is that a perfectly good God would want to eliminate it, an all-knowing God would know how to eliminate it, and an all-powerful God would be able to eliminate it. So the extent of horrendous suffering means that either God does not care enough to eliminate it, or God is not smart enough to eliminate it, or God is not powerful enough to eliminate it. The stubborn fact of horrendous suffering means something is wrong with God’s goodness, his knowledge, or his ability. In this paper John Loftus argues that horrendous suffering renders this omni-everything God unbelievable.

Does horrendous suffering refute the existence of the theistic God?

In "Trivial by Nature: A Critique of Hugh Harris' Weak Naturalism," Gary Robertson claims that there are major flaws in Harris' case for "weak naturalism" that render it either trivially true or internally inconsistent. In this three-part response Harris defends his concept of weak naturalism as a coherent, nontrivial position, and further reflects on how his argument could be strengthened. Harris outlines his initial argument to provide some context before addressing Robertson's specific objections to his thesis. At the same time, Harris also identifies several flaws in Robertson's initial critique that muddy the waters concerning what actually constitutes Harris' argument for weak naturalism.

Christian apologists often claim to have "strong" evidence for Jesus' resurrection—but compared to what? The arguments of legal apologists are a far cry from those found in actual courtrooms, for a court will compare the case at hand against previous cases (or precedent) to determine the strength of the evidence for a claim. But in case law the physical facts rule prevents the consideration of claims of supernatural events, so no such precedent exists. In this essay Robert Miller nevertheless compares the kind of evidence that apologists offer for the resurrection of Jesus against the evidence appealed to by Spiritualists and Mormons for their claims, as well as against the sort of "corroborating" evidence used to prop up urban legends. Miller concludes that when it comes to evidentiary factors like public demonstration, hearsay, multiple attestation, and early recordation, the evidence appealed to by Spiritualists—as poor as it is—is still far superior to that appealed to for Jesus' resurrection.

In this response to Hugh Harris' earlier Secular Web Kiosk piece "Proposing Weak Naturalism," Gary Robertson reviews some major flaws in Harris' case for what he calls "weak naturalism," which Harris by Harris' definition renders it either trivially true or internally inconsistent. In addition, the scientism, evidentialism, and arguments from ignorance undergirding Harris' arguments are incommensurable and, in the case of scientism, discredited. Furthermore, Harris applies a double standard in requiring scientifically verifiable evidence of his opponents' positions, but not of his own position. Finally, Harris' appeal to a perceived lack of decisive evidence to the contrary amounts to an appeal to ignorance.

Jim Davis' and Michael Graham's The Great Dechurching: Who's Leaving, Why are They Going, and What Will it Take to Bring Them Back? is an insider's look at why so many people in the United States—40 million in the last 25 years—have stopped attending church. In this article, Vern Loomis argues that, much to the chagrin of religious pollsters, declining belief in religious doctrines is at least one of the major factors driving this exodus. Loomis raises a lot of important questions that, when one reads between the lines, suggest this alternative perspective of what might be compelling the exodus.

A month prior, retired lawyer Robert G. Miller challenged the Dean of the Regent University School of Law, or any legal apologist willing to take his place, to participate in a genuine adversarial debate with him emulating typical legal procedures, to be facilitated by Internet Infidels online. Since legal apologists regularly claim to be able to demonstrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead using legal argumentation, Miller's aim was to put this assertion to the test. Sadly, however, despite efforts to reach out to various legal professionals directly, to date no legal apologist has agreed to Miller's challenge. In this update, Miller informs readers of the next steps that he is mulling over in light of legal apologists' failure to show up.

Within evangelical circles, legal apologetics denotes attempts to defend the Christian faith using legal arguments that would ostensibly "prove" certain central tenets of Christianity by the standards of the American legal system. Like other forms of apologetics, however, it is rife with buzzwords and relies on no identifiable criteria by which these tenets might be "proven" by established legal standards. Legal apologists also tend to respond to the arguments of fictional opponents to their "cases" for core Christian doctrines rather than engage real-world legal opponents. Since this has a more propagandistic than truth-seeking function, in this essay retired lawyer Robert G. Miller challenges the Dean of the Regent University School of Law—or any legal apologist for that matter—to accept his invitation to agree to initiate a real online debate with him by September 29, 2023 using long-standing legal standards to "prove" the central Christian doctrine that Jesus rose from the dead.

The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States forbids any law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” and yet conservatives have spent centuries trying to do exactly that. Freedom of speech or of the press refer to the same thing—the ability voice beliefs or ideas, however unpopular, without fear of punishment for speaking up. As a governmental right, it was a slowly-won one that lies at the heart of democracy. The right to speak up is no more and no less than the right to think freely without arrest or prosecution. Haught surveys the history of censorship from suppressing heterodoxy and nonconfirmity to sexual censorship up through our present day era of religion-driven murder for saying or doing the "wrong" things.

The famous parables of Jesus cursing a fig tree and chasing moneychangers from the Temple, widely touted by both believers and nonbelievers as morally warranted, illustrate a kind of unreasonable entitlement that reveals an unflattering side of the character of the New Testament Jesus. In this essay Stephen Van Eck tackles the tendency by believers and doctrinally influenced nonbelievers to hold to a pre-existing conception of a morally perfect Jesus that leads them to overlook otherwise blatant character flaws revealed through such parables. Van Eck also provides grounds for understanding the approval of abusive treatment portrayed at the hands of the New Testament Jesus as one historical root of anti-Semitism.

In "Courtroom Apologetics: You Call Them Eyewitnesses?" G. P. Denken critiques a genre of popular evangelical apologetics that he labels "courtroom" apologetics. Courtroom apologists are recognizable by the way that they season their arguments with courtroom jargon and analogies. Denken highlights three apologists who make their cases by relying heavily on the four "eyewitness" accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Though the apologetic authors seek verdicts from their jury of readers in favor of Christianity, Denken offers a rebuttal case in their imaginary trial. He discusses how these apologists have not only misidentified the Gospel authors, but ignored how their proposed authors could not have been eyewitnesses to many famous scenes in the canonical Gospels.

Atheist philosophers of religion try to disprove the existence of the Christian God by arguing against the philosophical proofs put forth for it. This is okay as it goes, but it overlooks the fact that Christians will just come up with different conceptions of "God" in response, despite the fact that these new conceptions are foreign to the gods we find in the Bible.

In this essay atheist John Loftus argues that there is a better approach, one that changed his own mind back when he was a Christian apologist himself. This (shockingly novel) approach involves simply taking the Bible seriously. When we take the Bible at its word, we find that the Judeo-Christian God had a complex evolution over the centuries from Elohim, to Yahweh, to Jesus, and then finally to the god of the philosophers, without the original gods having been credited with any merit.

At a time when brutal leaders ruled according to the divine right of kings and serfs approximated slaves, intolerance fostered by the union of church and state led to the execution or jailing of heretics representing a threat to state power. But more than three centuries ago, chiefly in England and France, an epoch now known as the Enlightenment broke forth, spawning ideas that later grew into what we now call modern liberalism. The Enlightenment roused a new way of thinking: a sense that all people should have some control over their lives, a voice in their own destiny. Absolute power of authorities—either on the throne or in the cathedral—was challenged. Reformers sought to improve society and benefit nearly everyone using human reason and the scientific method. It is from this Enlightment spirit that the freedoms enjoyed across modern liberal democracies today sprouted, projecting a model for humane, safe, and fair treatment.

What we call religions were once called cults until they grew into a system of beliefs and superstitions with a significant number of adherents. Given the origins of religion in cults, it makes sense that we can apply the same criteria and categories when investigating and evaluating religions that we use when doing such for cults. In this article John MacDonald looks at religion through the lens of undue unfluence, a concept developed in the legal system to assess brainwashing-type phenomena. MacDonald shows readers strategies to approach religious belief from the point of view of religious people being indoctrinated rather than educated, and considers some strategies for uncovering and countering the unconscious superstitious narratives upon which religious people base their faith.

In this paper John W. Loftus shares ten helpful tips on trying to change the minds of Christian believers based on his nearly 20 years of experience engaging in it. He reviews the most common cognitive biases that one bumps against in the attempt to plant seeds of doubt, and notes some of the most pointed questions that one can ask to really get to the heart of the matter. This includes highlighting particular facts about the world that simply cannot be reasonably squared with traditional Christian beliefs. Even if your attempts result in a low rate of success, Loftus argues, every mind changed amounts to less religious harm in the world than there would have been otherwise, and the results of an attempt can reveal rather eye-opening truths even when it is not successful.

Christian psychologists and psychiatrists have taken Christianity by storm with a seemingly unending supply of therapy, seminars, and books offering a variety of cures for those that suffer from low self-esteem. These healers set out to heal that damaged sense of self-worth, yet they seem not to acknowledge that biblical Christian doctrine, itself, is likely a contributing factor to the very problem which they set out to cure. In this article, Hertzler looks at what both humanism and Christianity have to offer in terms of self-esteem.

Earlier this year Jeremy Shaughnessy was invited to attend a "How the Bible Changed the World" seminar in Poona, India, organized by Sakshi Apologetics Network of India. Many prominent Christian speakers in India participated in the event, including Christopher Singh, Ashish John, Asher John, Narendra Sahoo, and Chandrakant Wakankar. More often than not, these speakers either made historically, scientifically, and logically fallacious statements or drew from correct statements conclusions that were laughably mistaken. Although a Christian himself, in this essay Shaughnessy reviews many of the themes of this Christian apologetics seminar and how they regularly consisted of a string of non sequiturs.

In this paper John Loftus aims to expose the special pleading inherent in William Lane Craig's psychic (or spirit-guided) epistemology. After questioning the need for apologetics and warning about the monumental challenges to it, Loftus urges Christian apologists to become honest life-long seekers of the truth, to get a good education in a good field of study, to accept nothing less than sufficient objective evidence, and especially to determine how to know which religion to defend. He then goes on to sharply contrast these recommendations with the modus operandi of today's Christian apologists.

René Descartes searched for certain knowledge, a goal that was long ago abandoned by most philosophers. But a lack of certainty does little to undercut the need for sufficient evidence before accepting a proposition about the nature of our experience in this world. All we need to do is think inductively rather than deductively, think exclusively in terms of probabilities, and understand that when speaking of sufficient evidence what is meant is evidence plus reasoning based on that evidence. I know as sure as I can know anything that there is a material world and that I can reasonably trust my senses. I conclude that the scientific method is our only sure way for assessing truth claims.

In this article, Justin Ykema argues that psychology fails to meet the criteria necessary to qualify as an empirical science. Particularly problematic is how psychology could ever fulfill those criteria centered around the concepts of testability and reproducibility. However, this controversial conclusion should not be taken to imply that psychology has nothing to offer that is worthy of study. On the contrary, Ykema argues, psychology can thrive as a discipline centered on the statistical analysis of the data collected by psychologists, but as more of a mathematical pursuit than a scientific one.

The resurrection of Jesus is a fundamental belief to Christians. But nonbelievers have to reconcile the fact that any resurrection occurrence would break the laws of biology with the fact that very early Christians had unshakeable beliefs that Jesus had risen from the dead. Two possibilities exist for those with a naturalistic worldview. Was the Resurrection a hoax to which they all subscribed, or did they genuinely believe in its reality? In this essay, Robert Shaw addresses this question with his characteristic sagacity.

A probable idea of the "historical" Jesus is that he was a working man who propounded traditional Jewish values, adapted to his belief that the end of the world was near. Jesus left no writings, so those who regarded themselves as his followers were able to modify his supposed precepts, and their ideas about his nature and significance, to suit their needs and circumstances. The question arises: if Jesus-as-he-really-was could in fact be reconstituted now and were shown the character, effects, and history of the religion that regards him as its founder, what would be his reaction? In this essay, Michael D. Reynolds demonstrates why Jesus would be horrified, disgusted, despairing, and angry.