Join host Edouard Tahmizian for a fifty-minute interview with long-time biblical scholar and Jesus mythicist Robert M. Price on whether the concept of predestination or determinism can be found in the Book of Acts, whether open theism is plausible, and whether some of the more miraculous events depicted in the Qur'an are credible. Tahmizian proposes a number of questions about these topics to Price. For example, given that a word sometimes translated as "predetermined" crops up in a discussion of events to come, did the author of Acts believe that God causally determined/necessitated Jesus' murder, or that those who brought about his death had the freedom to have done other than what they did do? What do open theists think about the possibility that God doesn't know the future exactly, but just knows about what might happen? Is the open theist position on this question biblically plausible? Tahmizian also asks Price about the origin of the story of Muhammad splitting the Moon in the Qu'ran, whether or not there was a historical Muhammad, and how and when the texts of the Qu'ran came to be put together. Tune in for a wide-ranging discussion about these and other intriguing issues with a noted biblical scholar!
Tune in for about an hour for a return interview with Los Angeles constitutional lawyer Edward Tabash by Freethinker Podcast host Edouard Tahmizian about the future of equal rights for nonbelievers and adjacent threats to the US Constitution. Ahead of general election, Tabash argues, we stand on the threshold of two possible futures. One is an expansion of the Enlightenment values of the equality of believers and nonbelievers before the law and of the passage or upholding of evidence-based laws and regulations unhindered by ideological hostility to modernity and commitment to theocracy. The other is an onslaught of oppressive laws passed by the US Congress, various state legislatures, and other local branches of government that overtly favor religious belief over nonbelief and ignore science to appease special interest groups. Back in 1987 (in Edwards v. Aguillard) a Louisiana law requiring that creationism be taught in the public schools alongside evolution was overturned by the US Supreme Court in a 7-2 vote. Now we have a 6-3 supermajority on the Court and a quarter of all federal judges sympathetic to the aims of the Religious Right. Anti-science decisions, like Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo (2020) and South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom (2021), have seen the Court strike down health regulations designed to limit the spread of COVID. In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022), the Court ruled that the EPA does not have the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. And contrary to the promise of limited government intervention into the personal lives of citizens, the Court has made a number of decisions undermining abortions rights since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. That year the Heritage Foundation also took up restructuring the executive branch to undermine the federal government's authority over public education and allow more religious proselytization in the K-12 classroom. The Project 2025 plan to defund Planned Parenthood and repeal existing LGBTQ protections centering around marriage equality and workplace anti-discrimination laws is just the tip of the iceberg. Quiet efforts to replace the US Constitution by invoking Article 5, such that two-thirds of States can call for a Constitutional Convention, have continued unabated. To date 19 state legislatures have fully passed a resolution calling for such a convention, and in 7 other states at least one state house has passed it; if successful, such a convention could easily establish a new Constitution that declares the United States a Christian nation and revokes the civil rights of atheists, among other things. Tabash urges every American citizen to treat every presidential and US Senate election as a referendum on the Court: whether future justices to the Court will uphold the separation of church and state and advocate for science depends on who the US president is and who is in the Senate when a Court vacancy arises.
For various freethought musical compositions, check out Edouard Tahmizian’s musical works for piano or guitar: The Infidel Cha Cha Free Sheet Music by Edouard Tahmizian for Guitar | Noteflight. The Infidel Cha Cha, composed by our most excellent Vice President & Freethinker Podcast Creator Edouard Tahmizian, has now become the official theme track for Internet […]
Check out Freethinker Podcast as host Edouard Tahmizian is joined by freethinking historian Richard C. Carrier for a little under an hour to discuss the reliability of the canonical Gospels, including Luke's gospel and the Book of Acts, and whether Papias can tell us anything about New Testament authors that isn't ahistorical. After speaking to the "genre" of the Gospels and to which historical period he would date them, Carrier addresses the historical reliability (or lack thereof) of the Gospel of Luke and how we know that the Book of Acts is "fake history." The discussion then turns to whether a historical Papias existed and, regardless of the answer to that question, whether we can believe that anything in the writings attributed to Papias provide us with any credible information about a historical Jesus. A lengthy discussion about why some gospels include a story about Jesus transfiguring into a shining, radiant being ensues, followed by a final discussion on John Dominic Crossan's comment that N. T. Wright's reconstruction of a historical Jesus makes for good reading, but is entirely fiction. Tune in for a casual discussion with our returning historian on some particularly problematic conundrums for taking New Testament accounts to be more than ahistorical!
Join host Edouard Tahmizian for a nearly ninety-minute interview with Jesus mythicist and biblical scholar Robert M. Price on the Book of Revelation, the Gospel of Luke, and the Qur'an. Price fields a number of novel questions from Tahmizian, including whether Christian apologetic rebuttals to the idea that the book of Revelation falsely predicted that the Second Coming of Christ would occur within the lifetimes of Jesus' disciples have any credibility at all, such as the rebuttal that John's relevant Greek wording doesn't necessary translate to "soon" in duration, but can simply mean something more like "without delay," or perhaps "soon in God's time" even if far off on human timescales. The discussion then turns to whether Luke can be profitably read as a historian, and if so, how well or poorly Luke investigated the historical validity of early Christian claims. Finally, the discussion wraps up with a consideration of whether Papias had any knowledge of the teachings of a historical Jesus at all before turning to whether Muslim scholars have any legitimate claim to perfect textual transmission as seen through the absence of variations in translations of the Qur'an, far superior to that of the Old and New Testaments. Check out this wide-ranging interview shedding light on parallels between Christian and Islamic apologetics!
Join host Edouard Tahmizian for this just over thirty-minute interview with return interviewee and former Jesus Seminar member John Dominic Crossan as they review why critical scholars believe that only seven of the thirteen letters attributed to Paul are written by him, with the remaining six letters being anti-Pauline revisions that deradicalize and de-Romanize Paul on issues like slavery and patriarchy. The discussion then turns to the reasons for thinking that Paul—like the Q source, Mark, and John in the Book of Revelation—believed that Christ's second coming would happen in the disciples' lifetimes (i.e., no later than 100 CE), as well as critical scholars' reasons for thinking that references to the Antichrist were clearly references to Emperor Nero for first-century readers. Crossan then turns to why conservative Christian attempts to explain away the obvious—that New Testament proclamations that the end was "soon" were simply wrong—are less pressing than the fact the human exploitation of planetary resources today is threatening life on Earth and could result in the dissolution of our world in a more important sense of "soon." Tune in for this wide-ranging interview with an eminent New Testament scholar whose great storytelling really brings these issues to life for modern readers!
Check out the third Freethinker Podcast—and first-time one-on-one—interview between host Edouard Tahmizian and accomplished New Testament scholar Robyn Faith Walsh. For over half-an-hour Walsh and Tahmizian consider whether the Greek Gospel of Luke looks anything like the work of a true Roman historian like Suetonius, the intent of the author of Luke and the time period in which it was written, whether the empty tomb narratives relay a historical event (or whether William Lane Craig's arguments to that effect give us any reason to think that they are historical), differences between Walsh's take on the New Testament use of mimesis and that of Dennis R. MacDonald, facts that undermine the historicity of accounts of the trial of Jesus, and whether the "the time is near" comment in Revelation 1:3 was meant to convey that the second coming of Jesus would occur in his disciples lifetimes. The discussion ends with a recommendation for listeners to check out Walsh's recent book The Origins of Early Christian Literature and forthcoming work in the Harvard Theological Review that will be available in the near future at academia.edu. Tune in for a one-of-a-kind interview with a top-notch expert on how the New Testament sits within ancient Greco-Roman literary tradition!
Join Freethinker Podcast host Edouard Tahmizian and, for the second time, long-time Secular Web author Richard Schoenig for about half an hour on Schoenig's (just published!) accessible yet wide-ranging
Where Christianity Errs: A Fair and Clear Philosophical Assessment. The interlocutors canvass Schoenig's research in the philosophy of religion, his deconversion from Catholicism, and the wide variety of topics covered in his new book, such as original sin, petitionary prayer, faith in the absence of evidence, how a loving God could send people to Hell, a secular take on the meaning of life, the relationship between Christianity and atheism, and even the relationship between Christianity and politics. Schoenig then outlines his argument that the denial of opportunities for salvation to large numbers of human beings amounts to compelling evidence against the existence of such a God before Tahmizian turns to his argument that if biblical hard determinism is true, God would be the efficient cause of the sin that all humans supposedly inherited from Adam and Eve, and that if biblical hard determinism is not true, God would still be the final cause of that sin,
making God the ultimate source of all evil. Next Schoenig outlines his Heaven World argument that he has previously defended
in more detail on the Secular Web. Tune in for just a small taste of the inconsistencies that arise when merely combining indispensable Christian doctrines!
Join Freethinker Podcast host Edouard Tahmizian and first-time Kiosk author (hot off the press!) Adam Taylor for a 20-minute interview on the anti-abortion apologetics of long-renowned Christian apologists like Norman Geisler and Paul Copan. Taylor shares what motivated him to take on this topic, whether the Bible actually describes the unborn as persons protected under the sixth commandment, and whether—imagining that the Bible does consider the unborn as persons with a right to life—nevertheless abortion might be biblically permitted as one of many exceptions to the 'Thou Shalt not Kill' commandment. After chewing on the free will-determinism debate for a bit, the interlocutors turn to reconciling the belief that life begins at conception with the high miscarriage rate within the first trimester and Taylor's willingness to engage with criticisms of his critique. Check out this quick overview of the key issues that come up in Christian anti-abortion apologetics!
Join Freethinker Podcast host Edouard Tahmizian, Rational Science podcaster and ex-Cuban-spy Bill Gaede, and Cypress College philosophy professor Jason Thibodeau for over an hour as they debate the scientific tenability of Gaede’s rope hypothesis. Many multifaceted issues come up in the discussion, such as the special circumstances under which the atoms that are usually connected by the electromagnetic threads (according to the hypothesis) pass through each other, the failure of standard mathematical physics to provide any mechanism through which a magnet or gravity acts, what the concepts of black holes, dark matter, and dark energy actually refer to in physical reality, what happens to anything that enters a black hole, what the hypothesis’ electromagnetic threads and ropes are composed of, how magnetic attraction actually works, and many other technical details of the hypothesis. Tune in for a far-ranging interview on a number of core, fundamental issues with contemporary physics!
Check out Edouard Tahmizian's latest just over an hour interview with long-time biblical scholar Robert M. Price on Price's reasons for thinking that St. Paul was actually Simon Magnus and why Price does not believe that Paul wrote any of the thirteen letters attributed to him, among other things. After Price outlines his grounds for these conclusions, the interlocutors turn the discussion to how far back Price dates the Pre-Pauline Creed in 1 Corinthians 15, how he interprets 1 Kings 22's apparent reference to God working with evil spirits, why God allows demonic possession to occur at all if he wants to eliminate sin, which account provides the clearest example of New Testament mimesis, whether we should date 2 Peter to the 2nd century CE, whether it makes any sense to think that Jesus would've "abolished" the 650 laws of the Jewish Torah, and much more. Tune in for an in-depth discussion of Price's insights into what contemporary biblical scholarship tells us about these fascinating issues!
Tune in to Freethinker Podcast as host Edouard Tahmizian is joined by Internet Infidels President John MacDonald in this 45-minute interview with historian and freethinker Richard C. Carrier. Carrier fields several questions from his interlocutors concerning how he harmonizes certain New Testament passages with his Christ myth theory, whether there's textual evidence that the Book of Mark predates that of Matthew (and, if so, how that sits with the resurrection appearance accounts), whether the Q source existed (and if so, whether Mark used it), whether seemingly anti-Jewish interpolations might really be references to another instance where God's chosen people fail to meet God's expectations, whether there was a grave site 'disappearing bodies' problem spurring the Nazareth inscription, and much more! Check out this gripping interview with our returning historian on facts that some suggest don't sit well with the nonexistence of a historical Jesus.
Join Freethinker Podcast host Edouard Tahmizian for under an hour in an interview with Cypress College philosophy professor Jason Thibodeau about whether Rational Science podcaster Bill Gaede's rope hypothesis and critique of contemporary mathematical physics constitutes a fair and rational critique of mainstream physics. In particular, Ed and Jason canvass how lay audiences should approach scientific questions requiring specialized training to understand, Gaede's knowledge of biology and attitude toward mainstream science, how Gaede's rope hypothesis appears to be more metaphysical than scientific in a way that mirrors the metaphysical status of Philip Goff's panpsychism, what it means for a theory to count as a scientific explanation, elements of Gaede's hypothesis that are in tension with each other, how "spooky action at a distance" differs from Gaede's characterization of it as "black magic," and more! Tune in for a critical analysis of Gaede's more emphatic claims, as well as some of those almost made in passing.
Check out Edouard Tahmizian's about roughly hour-long interview with Christ myth biblical scholar Robert M. Price on Old Testament prophecy, variations in Qur'anic translations, I Clement, and early historical accounts of miraculous events. In this twelfth interview the interlocutors discuss whether Psalm 22:16 is genuinely prophetic of a coming messiah, why Muslims believe that the Devil acted as if Jesus was resurrected while simultaneously believing that Jesus never prophesized that he would rise from the dead, how textual variance in the Qur'an compares to that in the canonical Gospels, when the letter to the Corinthians in the First Epistle of Clement was written and whether we have any clue as to its authorship, and naturalistic explanations for Flavius Josephus' accounts of miraculous events. Tune in for a far-reaching interview with a noted biblical scholar!
Join Freethinker Podcast host Edouard Tahmizian in this just over one-hour interview with Rational Science podcaster and Why God Doesn’t Exist author Bill Gaede and Internet Infidels Executive Director Keith Augustine. The participants canvass Gaede’s account of magnetic attraction and repulsion, why the “ropes” and “threads” of Gaede’s rope hypothesis don’t get tangled with each other, how his rope hypothesis differs from string theory, why he thinks that relativistic effects like time dilation are not evidence for either general or special relativity, his take on “black magic” accounts of quantum entanglement or “spooky action at a distance,” and what happens when you turn on a flashlight under his rope hypothesis. Tune in for an alternative take to the received wisdom of mathematical physics!
Tune in to Edouard Tahmizian's over half-an-hour interview with returning biblical scholar Robert M. Price about Christian and Islamic apologetics. In this interview the interlocutors canvass the Christian apologetic claim that St. Paul would have been dismissed by his contemporaries had he made up the existence of 500 witnesses to the resurrected Jesus, how Christian apologists square Gospel claims that Jesus wanted to be baptized by John the Baptist with Jesus' status as the sinless son of God, whether the alleged reference to John the Baptist by Josephus is genuine, why Jesus would curse a fig tree when it was not in season for bearing figs, whether the appearance of the angel Gabriel to Muhammad was a genuine historical event, and why the Hebrews in the first five books of the Old Testament referred to the Abrahamic God as Yahweh rather than Allah if Allah was the true name of God. Check out the rapid fire discussion in just over 30 minutes!
Check out Edouard Tahmizian's roughly hour-and-fifteen-minute interview with legendary biblical scholar Robert M. Price about Price's ongoing participation in Bishop Ray Taylor's Wise as a Serpent! podcast and his forthcoming The Heresy of Paraphrase and Houses of the Holy: A Higher-Critical Survey of World Religions before the interlocutors turn to Price's view on how much (or how little) we can know about what Old Testament books would have been considered part of the Old Testament canon to Jews living during the period in which Jesus would've lived, how the apocrypha were never intended to be understood as disavowed books, the non-Old-Testament origin of the exorcism tradition from contemporaneous faith healers and magicians, whether Jesus was asked to perform miracles (provide signs from God) on demand by nonbelievers to embarrass him in an instance of nonbelievers' confirmation bias, whether there was really a hypothesized oral tradition connecting the time of Jesus to the much later time when the Gospels were written, and more! Tune in for an enlightening discussion of the bewildering relationship between sacred texts and the "history" that is supposed to ground them!
Tune in for about an hour as host Edouard Tahmizian queries biblical scholar and Jesus mythicist Robert M. Price about topics ranging from how the Trinity doctrine's identification of Jesus and the Holy Spirit with God sits with the New Testament corpus, to whether or not Erasmus' Textus Receptus—or the 1611 King James Version of the Bible based on it—comes closest to the original biblical writings in light of subsequent historical discoveries. The discussion canvasses a number of different issues, such as Price's take on whether the story of Samson in the Book of Judges merely copies and recontextualizes the myth of Hercules for a Jewish audience, why the Gospel of Mark has four different endings (and whether any of these are faithful to the original Mark), the reasons for the contradictions in the different accounts of the death of Judas, why Matthew says that no one (apart from God) knows the day or hour of Jesus' second coming, and whether the author of Acts intentionally made a memetic parallel between a demon and the spirit of divination within the ancient Greek oracle at Delphi. Check out this wide-ranging interview with an long-time synthesizer of biblical scholarship!
Check out this about an hour return interview between host Edouard Tahmizian and Los Angeles constitutional lawyer Edward Tabash about two US Supreme Court cases decided at the end of June 2023 impacting the separation of church and state. In Groff v. DeJoy, the Court decided that a federal civil rights law requires employers to make substantial accommodations to federal workers’ religious views, forcing nonreligious workers to work on otherwise off days to cover religious workers observing the Sabbath. In 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, the Court decided that a Christian graphic designer has a special right to avoid complying with Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws by refusing requests to design websites for the weddings of same-sex couples. The new Court has developed a two-pronged strategy in dealing with First Amendment religious exercise cases, with Groff v. DeJoy exemplifying openly allowing government promotion of religious ideals, and 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis allowing religious exemptions to laws (such as anti-discrimination laws) that apply to institutions that serve purposes that are not religious. But as Tabash conclusively shows, the Founding Fathers clearly intended that nonbelievers be treated equal under the law to believers, undermining Religious Right claims that either the United States is a Christian Nation, or else that the First Amendment permits legal favoritism for religious belief generally over nonbelief. Tabash then turns to upcoming free exercise cases on their way to the Supreme Court and more pressing threats to nonbelievers’ constitutional rights.
Particularly disturbing are signs that the Religious Right is attempting to replace the existing US Constitution with a version that would undermine First Amendment rights by invoking Article 5, in which two-thirds of States (all Houses of 38 legislatures) can call for a Constitutional Convention. 19 States have already fully voted on this in all their legislative Houses, and 7 additional States already have one legislative House that has voted for this convention. The former include Nebraska, Georgia, Alaska, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arizona, North Dakota, Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, Utah, Nebraska, Wisconsin, West Virginia, and South Carolina, and the latter include New Mexico, Iowa, South Dakota, Virginia, North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Wyoming. Tabash believes that those in Nebraska or States where both houses have passed the Convention should contact their legislatures in both Houses (or the one House in Nebraska) asking them reverse the decision and repeal the convention call, while those in the latter should contact their representatives in the one legislature that has already voted for it and ask them to consider reversing their decision, and contact the representatives in the other, yet-to-ratify House and urge them not to ratify it. Those in remaining states, Tabash urges, should call members of both Houses of their state legislatures and urge them to vote against the resolution or decline to consider it.
Tune in to this roughly hour-long discussion between host Edouard Tahmizian and biblical scholar Robert M. Price as they discuss Robyn Faith Walsh's suggestion that the Gospels were written by elite cultural producers working within a dynamic cadre of literate specialists, specialists who may not even have been Christians, in light of Richard Carrier's response that the Gospel authors were clearly concerned missionaries. The discussion then turns to why the Gospel authors would do mimesis (mythologizing Jesus) if a significant proportion of their non-literary audience would not pick up on what they were doing, whether Price finds it plausible that early Christians believed (as Carrier maintains) that Jesus was crucified by sky demons in other realms (or that Jesus was a celestial mythical being that was eventually historicized for polemical purposes, as perhaps suggested in the Book of Revelation), whether Church Father Irenaeus was correct that the Book of Revelation was written circa 90-100 CE, whether Papias' account can be trusted as a historically accurate account of the early Gospel authors, whether first-century Israelites would've needed permission from Roman authorities to kill a suspected false prophet (typically by stoning, not Roman crucifixion), and why Gospel miracle accounts would be done in private among people who knew Jesus rather than out in public for everyone to see. Check out this novel overview of some of these debates with a seasoned biblical scholar!
Check out the second Freethinker Podcast interview between host Edouard Tahmizian and New Testament scholars Robyn Faith Walsh and Dennis R. MacDonald for about an hour as they review reactions to MacDonald's recent Synopses of Epic, Tragedy, and the Gospels from academics and Christian apologists, particularly on his account of mimesis (literary imitation mythologizing Jesus) and his alternative Q (the Logoi of Jesus), and then preview MacDonald's forthcoming Homer and the Quest for the Earliest Gospel on understanding the Gospels as mimetic projects that are contesting the canonical past of the Greeks, which in turn helps us understand how early Christians contested the canonical past of the Hebrew Bible (and brings us closer to understanding the world in which Jesus lived). The discussion then turns to why MacDonald dates the Q document back to the early 60s CE (such that no part of Q dates to the post-Temple period), the narrative differences that suggest to him that Papias predates Luke, how scholars reconstruct lost books from antiquity, where the attribution of names like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to the canonical Gospels came from (given that the early Q was simply anonymous sayings of Jesus), how promoting sacred texts as anonymous gives them more authority as revelations from God rather than simply the perspectives of particular people, how MacDonald applies social identity theory from sociology to generate a kind of social identity literary criticism to identify and stereotype the villain and the insider/protagonist in literature from antiquity, and much more. MacDonald ultimately explains why he doesn't feel comfortable attributing any sayings attributed to Jesus, in either the canonical Gospels or the earlier Q document, to the historical Jesus, though he does think that New Testament scholars can understand the alternative Jewish voice that the historical Jesus represented, which had an alternative understanding of Jewish laws than the predominant one at the time. The discussion ends on areas where MacDonald partially agrees, and partially disagrees, with Walsh. Tune in for a wide-ranging interview on a number of topics of great interest within biblical scholarship between top-notch experts in the field!
Check out the latest Freethinker Podcast interview with host Edouard Tahmizian for his roughly hour-long discussion with philosopher Stephen J. Sullivan
about whether the position
that God made us—and therefore he owns us—is a viable response to objections to classic (Plato-inspired) divine command theory, whether atheists can ground 'ought' statements (or at least moral duties) in the power of moral reasoning without need for a divine moral lawgiver, the role on biblical inconsistencies in countering ad hoc responses to objections to classic divine command theory, existentialist atheists like Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, how fundamentalist Christians deal with the free will vs. determinism (or predestination) issue, and whether less conservative Christians are able to
concede that the Bible is not inerrant without generating logical inconsistencies. Tune in for some deep insights from a moral philosopher who has thought about these topics for decades!
Tune in to Freethinker Podcast with host Edouard Tahmizian for an about an hour-and-fifteen-minute interview with panpsychist philosopher of mind Philip Goff as Tahmizian, Keith Augustine, and Jason Thibodeau query Goff about his reasons for embracing panpsychism, the view that all matter has some degree of a conscious or experiential element to it. Goff expertly fields questions from all three interlocuters about how his panpsychist views differ from those of other philosophers of mind and his rationale for taking this position. He suggests that "physicalist" Galen Strawson holds substantially the same view that he does, their differences largely being semantic ones about the meaning of the term physicalism (or materialism). Goff also responds to criticisms (like those of Massimo Pigliucci) that his picture of the mind is unscientific. He canvasses the hard problem of consciousness, structuralism about physics, why he favors taking the Russellian monist theory of mind in a specifically panpsychist direction, and what it might even mean to say that something like an electron has experiences. Goff also discusses whether arguing from a "top down" cosmopsychism (i.e., that the universe as a whole has experiential aspects, and divides down into our individual consciousnesses) is less problematic than arguing from the "bottom up" that the most fundamental constituents of matter have simple experiential aspects that somehow combine into our more complex, but unified, individual consciousnesses. The discussion then turns to Goff's take on the (classic, Plato-inspired) divine command theory of ethics, fine-tuning arguments, whether there's a middle way between traditional omni-God theism and traditional atheism that may be more attractive than either of those binary choices, whether libertarian free will exists given the possibility of determinism, and how his broader philosophical views impact the question of life's meaning. Check out this wide-ranging interview with a renowned philosopher of mind who has become increasingly prominent in public debates about these issues over the last several years!
Join host Edouard Tahmizian in this roughly 40-minute return interview with skeptical Catholic Vincent Torley, opening with his critique of recent defenses of long-popular Christian apologetics, such as his recent Skeptical Zone post on
Gavin Ortlund's (unsuccessful) defense of C. S. Lewis' liar, lunatic, or lord trilemma on Cameron Bertuzzi's Capturing Christianity podcast in August 2022, an argument that actually goes back to its first formulation in the late 19th century by Scots preacher John Duncan ("Christ either deceived mankind by conscious fraud, or He was Himself deluded and self-deceived, or He was Divine"). Torley notes that there are, in fact, seven or so alternatives, including that Jesus' divine status was merely a legend, that Jesus was mistaken without being insane, that Jesus was simply a mystic, or that Jesus never even existed as a historical figure at all, among other possibilities. Torley summarizes Ortlund's responses to these alternatives, which claim that they are not genuine possibilities for Jesus, and Ortlund's reasons for maintaining that Jesus was neither a "liar" nor a "lunatic," either. Torley then outlines the unintelligibility of the theological concepts of incarnation or the Trinity, despite recent attempts to make sense of them, before returning to the point that neither the traditional "lord, liar, or lunatic" nor modified "cosmic judge, liar, or lunatic" trilemma will be convincing in light of scriptural sources. Tahmizian then turns the discussion back to the unintelligibility of the incarnation and the Trinity, and how the human disposition to sin could possibly fit into such concepts, before closing on lighter topics like what life is like for Torley in Japan. Tune in for this fascinating discussion of an often-repeated but not particularly compelling apologetic argument!
Tune in to a short video clip where Internet Infidels Vice President Edouard Tahmizian talks about his unique diet plan, as well as some of his achievements for Internet Infidels. He believes that some diet plans fail to mention what is actually the central concern that keeps people from being successful, and plans to share information on those tips once he loses weight. He is currently 202.6 lbs and plans to reach 140 lbs by September at latest.
Join host Edouard Tahmizian in this over half-an-hour interview with Keith Augustine, Executive Director & Editor-in-Chief of Internet Infidels, as they discuss what parapsychologists or psychical researchers have presented as the "best" parapsychological evidence for life after death, the largely neuroscientific evidence against life after death, and problematic religious or spiritual conceptions of the purpose of earthly life. The interlocutors then canvass how those who research life after death from an ostensibly scientific starting-point often mirror the same sorts of fallacious reasoning found in Christian apologetics. Check out this quick interview for such a wide range of topics with a long-time afterlife skeptic (and Digital Millennium Copyright Act Agent)!
Tune in to Freethinker Podcast with host Edouard Tahmizian in this roughly 20-minute interview with Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) co-director Dan Barker about his recent trip to India and the Atheist Centre there, FFRF's legal victory to display a secular nativity scene with a manger holding a copy of the Bill of Rights in Texas' state capitol, the FFRF's involvement in the formation of the Thomas Paine Memorial Association to establish a permanent Thomas Paine memorial statue in Washington, DC, and Barker's latest books, including the (Richard-Dawkins-inspired) title
God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction (available in paperback in May 2023). In Dawkins'
The God Delusion, the first sentence of chapter two characterized the biblical God as "the most unpleasant character in all fiction; jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving, control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." In Barker's forthcoming (and expanded) paperback edition of
God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction, each of the 19 chapters in part 1 ("Dawkins was Right") lays out the biblical verses (especially those in the Old Testament) backing up each of Dawkins' characterizations of Yahweh. In part 2 ("Dawkins was Too Kind"), Barker adds eight additional chapters on the personality flaws of the biblical God that Dawkins could have mentioned: pyromaniacal, angry, merciless, curse-hurling, vaccicidal, aborticidal, cannibalistic, and slavemongering. On an FFRF
companion website to the book, Barker lists a sampling of verses on all of these characteristics, adding three more still: homicidal, evil, and terrorist. Barker also dives into what to expect from his longer-term book project (slated for 2024),
The End of Worship, which in part 1 ("What is Worship?") just allows religious believers to speak for themselves long enough to incriminate themselves (so that Barker can't be accused of straw manning them). In part 2 ("Why Do We Worship?"), Barker lays out his hypothesis that some human beings voluntarily subjugate themselves to a "master" or king-like higher power for biological reasons instilled in us over the generations by those in power. In part 3 ("Should We Worship?"), Barker adds his personal take on whether worship is a desirable behavior for us to engage in. Check out this quick overview of the shape and direction to look forward to in Barker's future projects!
Join Freethinker Podcast host Edouard Tahmizian in this hour-and-a-quarter interview with Rational Science podcaster and ex-Cuban-spy Bill Gaede and Cypress College philosophy professor Jason Thibodeau on the future of humankind. First they canvas the possibility that all mass extinctions on Earth have been the result of an ecological pyramid overturning (the population pyramid overturning for plants and the ecological pyramid overturning for animals), and the extrapolation from this pattern that human beings are unable to stop this overturning in their own case. Human beings were put on track in 1963 for zero population growth by mid-21st-century, Gaede argues, and rely on an artificial construct of money to secure the food that we need to survive, but that construct is divorced from the actual growth of resources necessary for the sort of economic system that human civilization has developed. A critical discussion ensues about the so-called "Alvarez hypothesis" that an asteroid impact wiped out the dinosaurs, if unprecedented economic collapse leading to the arrest of food production entails full-blown human extinction rather than simply a precipitous drop in population, the upper bounds of when human extinction might take place, and much more. Tune in for a fascinating—if sobering—discussion about the future of our own species!
Check out this nearly 90-minute debate preparation between host Edouard Tahmizian and Cypress College philosophy professor Jason Thibodeau about the ways in which some apologists might argue that belief in God is necessary for morality, and how opponents might respond to those arguments. Thibodeau proposes that they first break down the issue into smaller, more digestible slices on central concerns, starting with the meaning of should/ought in the sense raised in David Hume's is/ought distinction (i.e., that one ought to do what one is morally obligated to do). Moral philosophers widely agree that its meaning has something to do with at least having reasons for acting, and more importantly for morality, having an all-things-considered reason for acting in particular instances. Thibodeau proposes starting with a simple version of a moral argument for the existence of God: that moral obligation could only exist if God existed, it does, and therefore so does God. If the argument were reasonable, then there would have to be some specific aspect of moral obligation that's difficult to account for on the assumption that God doesn't exist—but then what aspect could be proffered that has that feature? There would also have to be some way in which positing God's existence would clearly account for the existence of this feature. After recounting a list of features that Christian apologist Matt Flanagan has said are central to the concept of moral obligation (like reasons for acting being authoritative and categorical, or failing to act in a certain way being blameworthy), Thibodeau goes on to consider how any of them could be problematic on the assumption that God not exist, or how positing God's existence could even possibly explain their existence. To get a feel for the angles that a Christian apologist might try to exploit to force some sort of necessary connection between morality and religion, look no further than this multiperspectival discussion!
