“Secular” Does Not Mean “Atheistic” Jeffery Jay Lowder June 20, 2000   Yesterday 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 […]

‘Evidence’ That Demands a Refund (2001) Jeffery Jay Lowder   The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, by Josh McDowell, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1999, ISBN 0785242198), pp. xvi+760. According to the cover of New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, volumes I and II of Evidence That Demands a Verdict have been “fully updated in one […]

Media & Reviews Publishers & Booksellers American Atheist Press Carries books, booklets, bumper stickers, and videos on Atheist and freethought topics. Their catalog is available on their web page; a free hard copy is also available via snail-mail. Their books include critiques of the Bible, lists of Biblical contradictions, and so on. One such book […]

Media & Reviews Nonfiction Books The following are selected works for further study. While space constraints prevent listing every possible book under each category, this bibliography attempts to list what the editor considers the best contemporary books for each topic. While this bibliography is slanted in favor of atheism, the editor has selected one or […]

Luke and Quirinius An examination of Luke 2:1-3, and what McDowell says about it, and his sources. Other apologists mentioned. Answers from The Anchor Bible.   ETDAV 4A5B3C3D1E p.71 The Reliability and Trustworthiness of Scripture Evidence from Archaeology Luke 2:1-3 — archaeological support — the Roman Census under Quirinius (Cyrenius) McDowell states that, “It was […]

Feedback on Jury Several years ago, I idly picked up a copy of _Evidence that Demands a Verdict_. Even upon casual reading, I found McDowell’s scholarship inane to the point of nausea. It seems obvious to me that Biblical Inerrancy is an obvious fraud, and those who attempt to demonstrate it are not attempting to […]

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Is ETDAV an Apologetic? Jeffery Jay Lowder James Patrick Holding maintains that, despite my introduction to The Jury Is In,[1] “Jury‘s ultimate thrust is misguided.”[2] Holding argues that the Jury authors have misunderstood McDowell’s stated purpose for his book, Evidence That Demands a Verdict (hereafter ETDAV).[3] Jury authors treat ETDAV as if it were a […]

The Jury Is In The Ruling on McDowell’s “Evidence” Jeffery Jay Lowder (editor) Introduction (1997) by Jeffery Jay Lowder Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands a Verdict (hereafter, “ETDAV“) is arguably one of the most influential Christian apologetic books today. The purpose of Jury shall be to evaluate how well it does. Chapter 1. The Uniqueness […]

Conclusion I think there are three distinctive characteristics about the contemporary debate between Christians and secularists over the resurrections. First, both sides tacitly assume that the material understanding of the resurrection is the proper understanding of the issues involved. Second, both sides fail to discuss the background probability of the resurrection from their critic’s point […]

The Contemporary Debate on the Resurrection Having now discussed the importance and meaning of the resurrection, as well as its background probability, I’d now like to briefly survey the contemporary debate and outline the major arguments by both sides, at both the popular and scholarly levels. Christian authors who address the resurrection are obviously very […]

The Miracle of the Resurrection Before we can even examine the evidence to determine whether the resurrection is a historical event, we must first deal with the problem of whether such an event is possible in the first place. We need to confront the problem of miracles. More skeptics reject the resurrection because of its […]

The Importance and Nature of the Resurrection Christians universally agree that the resurrection of Jesus is central to their faith. Popular apologist Josh McDowell wrote, "The resurrection of Jesus Christ and Christianity stand or fall together" (1982, p. 179). Terry Miethe, a Christian professor of philosophy at Oxford, has maintained that "`Did Jesus rise from […]

Introduction I am an agnostic at a Christian university. Since enrolling at Seattle Pacific University, I have been challenged by several of my Christian friends to investigate the historical evidence for Christianity. In particular, they challenged me to investigate the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, as a historical event. Although I was […]

Works Cited Anderson, J.N.D. The Evidence for the Resurrection. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 1966. Barker, Dan. Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist. Madison, WI: Freedom From Religion Foundation, 1992. Borg, Marcus J. "Thinking About Easter" Bible Review. April 1994, p. 15 and 49. Bostock, Revd Dr Gerald Boldock. "Do We Need an Empty […]

The Historicity of Jesus’ Resurrection The Debate between Christians and Skeptics Jeffery Jay Lowder (1995) Related documents: “Historical Evidence and the Empty Tomb Story: A Reply to William Lane Craig” (2001) Lowder provides a point-by-point rebuttal to Craig’s case for the empty tomb. Along the way, Lowder defends a naturalistic explanation of the empty tomb. […]

Notes* Jeffery Jay Lowder In this column, I want to consider two distinct but closely related questions: (1) can a theist be a freethinker?; and (2) are all nontheists freethinkers? I shall argue that the answer to (1) is “yes” and the answer to (2) is “no.” I shall then argue that nontheists should stop […]

Empty Defense of an Empty Tomb: A Reply to Anne A. Kim’s Misunderstandings (2012) Jeffery Jay Lowder 1. Kim’s Misunderstanding of My Thesis      1.1 The Application of Bayes’ Theorem to Empirical Hypotheses     1.2 The Relocation Hypothesis 2. Kim’s Defense of Craig’s Empty Tomb Evidence      2.1 The Burial Account             2.1.1 First Stage: Is the Burial Story Historically […]

[Note: the following article was originally published in the Journal of Higher Criticism 8:2 (Fall 2001), pp. 251-93. A substantially revised version of this essay appears as a chapter with the same title in The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave, ed. Robert M. Price and Jeffery Jay Lowder (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus, 2005).] ________________________________________ […]

The Mental Discomfort of “Why?” James Still * I do not believe in dead things and cannot distinguish between being no more and never having been.  -André Gide. Abbreviations 1. Preliminaries 2. Wittgenstein and God 3. The Expression of "Why?" and the Problem of Life 4. “Why?” in Religious Practice 5. "Why?" in the Cosmological […]

Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: Obeying a Rule On Only One Occasion in §199 James Still Wittgenstein argues that meaning and use should not be conflated; the whole use of the meaning of a word (the steps to be taken) cannot be understood in a flash nor can the use fit the meaning simultaneously in that flash […]

Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: The Muddle of Understanding as a Mental Process James Still Wittgenstein writes that "perhaps you will say . . . understanding itself is a [mental] state" (PI, 146). Wittgenstein presents this supposition–that the demonstration or viable accompaniments to understanding are symptomatic of an underlying mental state–in order to reduce the notion to […]

Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: The Grammatical Fiction of PI §307 James Still In §307 Wittgenstein is accused of denying that mental processes are an essential element within the individual who experiences a sensation S; only the expressions of S exist while S itself if a fiction. Wittgenstein counters that the only fiction involved in the discussion […]