Review of Robin Le Poidevin’s Arguing for Atheism (1997) Finngeir Hiorth   Robin Le Poidevin: Arguing for Atheism, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion Routledge, 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE, UK and 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001, USA, 1996, 159 pp., glossary, bibliography, index, paperback.   As in so […]

A Fond Farewell to Jeffery Jay Lowder By James Still On January 15, after five years of building the Secular Web from the ground up, Internet Infidels President Jeffery Jay Lowder will retire. Jeff has decided it is time to move on and is interested in going back to school to study philosophy. He also […]

Disclaimer: Bill Schultz is Secretary of The Internet Infidels and a long-time activist in the third party movement. Since 1982, he has been looking for a viable third party to emerge which is compatible with his views. This year, he is supporting Ralph Nader for President, but not necessarily the whole agenda of the Green […]

If you are looking for an answer to the nagging question of why religion persists, you can find it hanging on the walls in the homes of countless believers. It is the sappy Christian anecdote, “Footprints,” about a troubled soul who fears that God has left him when he looks back after a trying journey […]

onday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in a Texas case that public schools cannot allow student-led prayer before high school football games. Reaction to this ruling among believers has been mixed.  While some believers (especially those who belong to minority faiths) welcomed the ruling as a reinforcement in the wall of separation of state […]

Scrutinizing Propaganda By J. E. Hill Many of us are familiar with fallacies in logic. Even if you are not an active debater, it is good to know some of the more popular fallacies so you can identify them when they come up in everyday conversations. Among the most common is the circular argument, which […]

FAQ The Supreme Court and Prayer at Football Games  The U.S. Supreme Court has heard a major case involving school prayer. The legal controversy, Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, was argued before the high court on March 29, 2000, and a decision is expected by early July. This is an important case that […]

Christian Coalition Grills Judicial Candidates The Idaho Christian Coalition’s religiously based survey of judicial candidates is an "outrageous stunt that smacks of the Inquisition," according to Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The Coalition, the state affiliate of TV preacher Pat Robertson’s political group, has distributed a 31-question survey that asks candidates for […]

Wilson-Till Debate Presuppositional Apologetics [NOTE: The following article originally appeared in Credenda/Agenda, a Christian journal which emphasizes the presuppositional approach to apologetics. Reproduced with permission.]     Disputatio     Justifying Non-Christian Objections Douglas Wilson & Farrell Till     Whenever we object to something, we always assume some standard or rule that the thing […]

<<< Part 3 Part 4     TURKEL > rather than cite verses here we will call >upon the explication of Coogan [Coog.2K, 114], who >cites an example of an Akkadian concept of "friend of the >king" - a person who paid a tax for this designated >status and was able to pass it on […]

<<< Part 2 Part 3   Part 4 >>>   TURKEL > We will find that even then, Till's exegetical >construct is a highly substandard one. We will analyze, >in the following order (according to their length), >Till's responses to the remaining three items from >Miller: > >2. The killing of Ahaziah. > >7. The […]

<<< Part 1 Part 2   Part 3 >>>   TURKEL > 1) He asks how it is that this nuance I have >pointed out managed to "escape the hundreds of linguistic >scholars who were involved" in the translations he >quotes. We will give some reasons for this shortly; TILL Just out of curiosity, I […]

  Part 1   Part 2 >>>   Reply to Robert Turkel Farrell Till TILL James Patrick Holding is the pseudonym used by a would-be apologist whose real name is Robert Turkel. Perhaps I should say that Holding has SAID that his real name is Robert Turkel, but I have no way to confirm this. […]

Reply to Robert Turkel (1998) Farrell Till   [Editor’s Note: We publish here in its entirety Farrell Till’s series of replies to Robert Turkel, the anonymous apologist of Tekton Apologetics Ministries also known as James Patrick Holding. Although the Internet Infidels have known Mr. Turkel’s real name for over a year now, he requested that […]

PROPHECIES: IMAGINARY AND UNFULFILLED Farrell Till Prophecy fulfillment is a popular argument that bibliolaters rely on in trying to prove the divine inspiration of the Bible. They claim that the Bible is filled with recorded events that prophets foretold years and even centuries before they happened. They argue that there is no way to explain […]

Reply to Robert Turkel: Concluding Postscript Farrell Till I must say that I am flattered. After assuring his readers that I was not worth any further comment from him, Turkel has posted a 240K article in reply to my rebuttal of his attempt to reconcile the approval of Jehu’s massacre at Jezreel (2 Kings 10:30) […]

Articles: Journeys to the Twilight Zone "Journeys to the Twilight Zone" was the name of a regular column authored by Farrell Till for The Secular Humanist Bulletin from 1995?-1997. Given that some articles refer to the previous article, articles are listed in chronological order. Pioneers of Loophole Religion (1995/1996) (Off Site) Even in the heyday […]

Five minutes isn’t very long, and certainly that’s not long enough for me to make much of an argument, but I’m going to try to. I had a reason for asking Mr. Horner if the body of Jesus had experienced rigor mortis, or if it experienced decay. Remember when Jesus was at the tomb of […]

I brought with me a book that somebody inquired about, who came up to my desk to talk to me. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It’s the Book of Mormon. Every version of the Book of Mormon that I have ever seen has, in the front of it, the "Testimony of the Three Witnesses." […]

This could very rapidly deteriorate [in]to a contest of his scholars and my scholars. At the end of his speech, he put a transparency on the screen where someone said something to the effect — and I won’t ask you to put it back on — but someone said something to the effect that it’s […]

Time is always an enemy of the debater, so I’m going to be just as brief as I can in the preliminaries so that I can say as much as I can possibly say in the twenty-five minutes that I have. I assume everybody understands that I’m happy to be here. I always consider it […]

[Taken from the program handed out at the debate] I.) The claim of a literal resurrection from the dead is so extraordinary that it requires extraordinary proof. A.) The evidence offered as proof of the resurrection of Jesus is very ordinary. 1.) No apostles or disciples or non-disciples of Jesus ever claimed to have actually […]

Questioner #1: My first question is to Mr. Horner. Mr. Till says that Christianity is so much like a lot of other, I’ll call them pagan religions, that were developing around the same time. My question to you is, why would you think that if this is so, why did Christianity flourish so much and […]

Introductory Remarks (Jeff Lowder, Debate organizer) Our moderator for this evening is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of California at Davis, where he double-majored in both Greek and Latin. Although his journalism career started in broadcast news at KQED-TV in San Francisco, he quickly found his niche with newspaper journalism, and he […]

Readers wanting additional information on the resurrection controversy or other biblical issues may contact the participants in this debate at the following addresses:   Michael Horner Farrell Till Campus Crusade for Christ of Canada Skepticism, Inc. P.O. Box 529 P.O. Box 717 Suma, WA 98295-0529 Canton, IL 61520-0717 Email: michaelh Email: JF Till Phone: (604) […]

Well, tonight I made two main claims. One, there are good reasons to affirm the resurrection, and two, there are no good reasons to deny the Resurrection. I argued that the tomb was empty, Jesus physically appeared to many witnesses, and that the origin of the Christian religion is inexplicable apart from a real resurrection. […]

Well, this may seem to you like a long, drawn-out event, but I guarantee that to us we’re thinking more time, I need more time. I want to use my outline as my outline for what we’re going to do here. I said I’m going to make two main points: there are good reasons to […]

Okay., this concept of extraordinary proof that’s required here is critical, and so I’m going to touch on that first. This statement, "extraordinary events require extraordinary evidence," creates a phantom standard that virtually nothing could meet. It amounts, as Dr. Till… [Turning to Till] Dr. Till, I just gave you an honorary doctorate. As Mr. […]

Thank you very much. I would like to begin by thanking the local ASSP and, in particular, Jeff Lowder, and the Seattle Bible Science Association for sponsoring the debate and inviting me to participate. I consider it a real privilege to be here at Seattle Pacific University and to be debating Mr. Till on such […]