stubborn credulity

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Stubborn Credulity Refuting Theistic Arguments

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This file is meant to supplant "Removing the Yoke". There are some additions to the body as well as an appendix which focuses on the best arguments from Christian apologists.

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Page 1: Stubborn Credulity

Stubborn Credulity

Refuting Theistic Arguments

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Table of Contents

Introduction

I'm Not Credulous Enough to Believe Geisler and Turek

The Case against the Kalam

Beyond A Reasonable Doubt?

An Old Argument for Theism

Unconcealing Prophecies

Socrates' Question

Learning Science from Creationists

You Are Without Excuse!

"Well Lied!"

Infinity Redux

Boycott Hilbert's Hotel

How to Prove the Existence of Santa Claus

Infinity Redux Reloaded

The Fool Hath Said in His Heart, There is No Ontological Argument

The Curious Case of Tristam Shandy

Dr. Craig's Library

Bibliography

Appendix: Notes on Christian Apologetics

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Introduction

Victor Stenger closed his book "Physics and Psychics" with the remark "The supernatural has been a yoke on the neck of humanity since we first began to think and dream."1 Stenger, whether he realized it or not, addressed the opportunity cost of theistic belief. Opportunity cost is the most valued forsaken alternative opportunity. If one has a choice one has a cost. Once a choice is made the alternative opportunity is forever forgone. George H. Smith understood this when he pointed out that "the major precept of the biblical Jesus is … conformity" and insisted that "[o]ne can be committed to conformity or one can be committed to truth, but not to both." The cost of being a Christian, in Smith's eyes, is commitment to truth.2 Stenger reinforced Smith when he wrote, "Religious authority … deeply conflicts with the message of science, which admits only the authority of observation and reason. Despite attempts to paper over these differences, science and religion are inherently incompatible."3 To borrow a phrase, a man cannot serve two masters. He must choose. This book is written with the purpose of helping others make the decision between theism and naturalism.

According to Nietzsche, "when faith is … exalted above everything else, it necessarily follows that reason, knowledge and patient inquiry have to be discredited: the road to the truth becomes a forbidden road … 'Faith,' as an imperative, vetoes science."4 If he is right then the price of believing is high. We would be both forbidden from discovering the truth and, if we discovered it, forbidden from believing it if it contradicted beliefs. It is no surprise, then, that theists have regularly thought of science as being, at best, a waste of time. St. Augustine, according to Carl Sagan, "withdrew from the world of sense and intellect and advised others to do likewise."5 The Church Father Tertullian declared that after Jesus Christ "we have no need of speculation, after the Gospel no need of research." Martin Luther, founder of Protestant Christianity was vitriolic in his attacks on science.

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According to him, "Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense and understanding, and whatever it sees it must put out of sight, and wish to know nothing but the word of God."6 Reason "is the Devil's harlot, who can do nought but slander and harm whatever God says and does."7 It is understandable why believers would be dismissive of science. According to Stenger, even if science seemed to favor supernaturalism, believers should be hesitant to rely on it; he wrote, "Faith based on science will quickly turn to nonfaith when the science becomes better understood."8 It is less clear why Christians would be hostile to reason. 1 Peter 3:15 commands, "[B]e ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear." As Antony Flew once taught, there are reasons for believing and there are reasons to believe. Christian apologists offer both types of reasons. They defend their faith with arguments. These arguments are what inspired the present work.

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I'm Not Credulous Enough to Believe Geisler and Turek

According to Geisler and Turek, "believing error can have deadly consequences…"9 If we concede this then it follows that we should make a special effort to avoid erroneous beliefs. We should be skeptical of extraordinary claims and scrutinize all arguments. It's the prudent thing to do, after all.

Geisler and Turek claimed that "everyone knows there are absolute moral obligations." If this is so, why? They continued, "An absolute moral obligation is something that is binding on all people, at all times, in all places. An absolute Moral Law implies an absolute Moral Law Giver."10 According to them, "there's an unchanging standard of justice written on our hearts."11 Who did the writing? Their answer: God.12 Long ago, J. H. Newman pointed to conscience as a proof of God; he said that "the phenomena of conscience are a good reason for theistic beliefs."13 There can't be absolute moral prescriptions without an absolute moral Presciber: "[T]he Moral Law exists. If the Moral Law exists, then so does the Moral Law Giver."14 Quite true. Must this Law Giver be God just because Geisler and Turek use capital letters? The philosopher J. L. Mackie didn't think so. According to him,

[I]f we seek critically to understand how conscience has come into existence and has come to work as it does, then we do indeed find persons in the background, but human persons, not a divine one. If we stand back from the experience of conscience and try to understand it, it is overwhelmingly plausible to see it as an introjection into each individual of demands that come from other people; in the first place, perhaps, from his parents and immediate associates, but ultimately from the traditions and institutions of the society in which he has grown up … In thus understanding conscience we do, admittedly, look beyond conscience itself and beyond the agent himself, but we look to natural, human, sources, not to a god.15

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If a plausible natural explanation for the scenario is available why resort to a supernatural one?

In their effort to defend the Christian faith, Geisler and Turek argue that

Human thoughts and transcendent moral laws are not material things any more than the laws of logic and mathematics are material things. They are immaterial entities that cannot be weighed or physically measured. As a result, they can't be explained in material terms by natural selection or any other atheistic means.16

Again, all of these immaterial things that they've mentioned were supplied by a human source. Whether or not humans were the ultimate source is a question that science cannot answer definitively. Science doesn't prove anything. Neither does science ever claim to have the real explanation. Scientists merely offer plausible natural explanations. Are Geisler and Turek really saying that there are no plausible natural explanations for any immaterial thing? If there are then immaterial things can be explained in material terms by scientists employing methodological materialism. Transcendent morality is transmitted by human beings. Did they get it from their "hearts" as Geisler and Turek claimed? Certainly. How did it get to be "written on their hearts"? Some say other people indoctrinated them. Where did those other people get the Moral Law? If we could rewind the tape we would eventually come to the first human person who said either "Thou shalt" or "Thou shalt not". If the apologists are saying that the ultimate source of these rules of conduct couldn't be neurological, one must ask "Why not?"

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The Case against the Kalam17

According to the apologist William Lane Craig, the early Christian and Muslim scholars "pointed out that absurdities would result if you were to have an actually infinite number of things … Since an infinite past would involve an actually infinite number of events, then the past simply can't be infinite." Craig is equivocating here. While an event may be a thing in the conceptual sense, it's not a thing in the physical sense. For example, he said, "Substitute 'past events' for 'marbles,' and you can see the absurdity that would result."18 He's assuming that it's legitimate to substitute events for marbles. Is it? Things have properties that events don't have. As one philosopher explained,

[P]ast events are not movable. Unlike the guests in a hotel, who can leave their rooms, past events are absolutely inseparable from their respective temporal locations. Once an event has occurred at a particular time, it can't be "moved" to some other time.19

Craig talked about adding and subtracting using infinity ("infinity minus infinity"20) but this is doesn't make sense. As Paul Davies pointed out, "infinity itself is clearly not a number, or anything like it."21 If it's not number, how can we use it for addition and subtraction?

In his classic book "Anti-Duhring," Friedrich Engels answered a writer who claimed that "an infinite past series of worlds is impossible…" As he rebutted, he made some important observations about infinity. He noticed that infinity is a series of numbers and that "the one from which we begin to count the series, the point from which we proceed to measure the line - that this this is any one within the series, that it is any one of the points within the line, so that where we place the starting point does not make any difference to the line or to the series." You can't add to or subtract from infinity; you're just moving the starting point and the starting point is arbitrary.

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Engels brought up the issue of "the infinite series which has been counted. He wrote,

We shall be in a position to examine this more closely as soon as Herr Dühring has performed for us the clever trick of counting the series. When he has completed the task of counting from - ∞ (minus infinity) to 0, then let him come again. It is certainly obvious that, at whatever point he begins to count, he will leave behind him an infinite series and with it, the task which he was to fulfil.

Or, Engels could've argued that you can't count from minus infinity to any number because, again, infinity isn't a number. He followed this by commenting that "the infinity which has an end but no beginning is neither more nor less infinite than that which has a beginning but no end."22 If the latter is possible why isn't the former? According to Victor Stenger, "if we use the realist physicist's operational definition of time as the number of ticks on a clock, then we can have a denumerable infinity of time in the past as well as the future. That is, we can think of time as a counting process that can continue indefinitely into the future or the past."23

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Beyond a Reasonable Doubt?

J. L. Mackie summed up the fine-tuning argument as follows:

With the various basic materials and physical constants as they contingently are, life and evolution and consciousness are naturally possible; but things might so easily have been different. Is it not remarkable and intrinsically surprising that things happen to be just right for the possibility of these developments?

In other words, the constants are fine-tuned and fine-tuning implies a Fine Tuner. Arguably, this is not even an argument for God. As Kant argued, "the most that an argument for design could show is that there is an architect of the world, working on pre-existing material."24 However, even the atheist philosopher George H. Smith conceded, "If it can be shown that nature exhibits design, we must conclude that nature had a designer with intelligence and immense power. And this seems to be an excellent candidate for a god."25 For the sake of argument, let's assume that fine-tuning is proof of God. Is there fine-tuning?

The likelihood of our universe appearing by chance is negligible but a negligible likelihood is not an impossible likelihood. Chance could be the correct answer. Even those who argue the case for fine-tuning admit this. They argue that "if a universe were created with random values for its physical constants, a universe with no life would have almost certainly been the result." It wouldn't certainly be the result. A universe with life could have occurred by chance. Furthermore, if a universe without life had emerged from the random toss "no one would then be around to talk about it…" The fact is, however, that "we are here and talking about it." This means that "the probability for the universe we live in existing as it does, having the values of the fundamental constants that it has, is not one in (10^1023). It is 100 percent!"26

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Given all this, the apologist will try to dismiss chance as an explanation. They'll use analogies to show why the design explanation is true beyond a reasonable doubt. For example, the odds of us existing have been compared to the odds of us continuing to exist after being faced by a firing squad that didn't all conspire. "[T]he alleged improbability of the cosmic 'coincidences'," according to one author, "is often illustrated by comparing it to extremely improbable mundane situations - such as every gun jamming at once in a firing squad."27 Certainly, if you were scheduled to be executed and you somehow didn't get executed you could infer beyond a reasonable doubt that the executioners conspired to let you continue living. However, in this scenario, we have direct experience of what we are inferring. We have seen or participated in a conspiracy involving human persons; we, on the other hand, have no direct experience of an extra-terrestrial nob turner/universe designer, much less a Divine one. Furthermore, in the conspiracy analogy the conspirers achieve their objective immediately. If the universe was, in fact, designed for the sake of bringing intelligent life into existence the desire effect would not be achieved immediately; it would not be achieved until at least 10 billion years had passed.

Consider another analogy. It comes to us from philosopher Robin Collins:

Let's say I was hiking in the mountains and came across rocks arranged in a pattern that spelled out, WELCOME TO THE MOUNTAINS ROBIN COLLINS. One hypothesis would be that the rocks just happened to be arranged in that configuration, maybe as the result of an earthquake or rockslide. You can't totally rule that out. But an alternative hypothesis would be that my brother, who was visiting the mountains before me, arranged the rocks that way.28

In this scenario we could rule out chance beyond a reasonable doubt. However, this analogy like the previous one involves intelligent actors that we have direct evidence for as well objectives that are achieved

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immediately. We have no direct evidence for extra-terrestrials or gods and in the Intelligent Design scenario the Great Climax isn't accomplished in a (by our standards) reasonable time period.

In general, apologists try to compare the universe to phenomena that couldn't have happened by chance so you will conclude that the universe didn't happen by chance. For an extreme example of this, consider what Rice Broocks referred to as a "popular analogy":

Imagine you arrive at a hotel room and all your favorite things are there already: your clothes, your favorite foods, pictures of your family. It would be safe to say that someone knew you were coming to that room and prepared it for you.29

Certainly, a tailor-made room isn't the result of chance. The question one should be asking is, Isn't this a complete disanalogy?

It will be objected that the previous analogy was intended to explain the "anthropic principle". This is only half-true. In a book roughly titled "The Anthropic Principle," the authors claimed that the universe "is adapted to man" but that's an odd way of putting it considering that the universe came first and we came second.30 The "strong" anthropic principle does indeed say that the universe was in some sense designed by an intelligent force. However, there is also a "weak" anthropic principle that claims only that "the existence of humans provides evidence that the universe must be fine-tuned the way it is."31

If you bought the creationist lie that random chance is not sufficient to explain the anthropic "coincidences," consider this analogy: Suppose a multi-billionaire said that he would divide up all his money among the population of your city but only if you guessed correctly a ten digit number that he has written on a piece of paper in his pocket. You know that it's possible, though extremely unlikely, that you could guess the number. Let's say you did. The Intelligent Design position is essentially someone saying the whole thing was rigged.

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An Old Argument for Theism

According to Bakunin, believers in his day claimed that "all peoples, past and present, have believed and still believe in the existence of God … Thus, then, the antiquity and universality of a belief should be regarded, contrary to all science and all logic, as sufficient and unimpeachable proof of its truth."32 This is actually an easy argument to rebut because it's simply untrue. According to Charles Darwin,

There is no evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence of an Omnipotent God. On the contrary there is ample evidence, derived not from hasty travelers, but from men who have long resided with savages, that numerous races have existed, and still exist, who have no idea of one or more gods, and who have no words in their languages to express such an idea … The ennobling belief in God is not universal with man.33

If you'd prefer a more recent source consider this excerpt from Victor Stenger's "Phyics and Psychics":

Early in the first volume of his monumental work, The Story of Civilization, Will Durant notes that some people have no religion. For Example, Vedah tribesmen in Ceylon, when asked about God, answer: "Is he on a rock? On a white-ant hill, on a tree? I never saw a god!" A Zulu is asked: "When you see the sun rising and setting, and the trees growing, do you know who made them and governs them?" The answer: "No, we see them but cannot tell how they came; we suppose that they came by themselves."34

Bakunin apparently didn't know any of this yet still was unsatisfied with the theistic argument. He responded, "Until the days of Copernicus and Galileo everybody believed that the sun revolved about the earth. Was not everybody mistaken?"35 Belief in God may

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have been selected by a process known as cultural evolution. As F. A. Hayek explained the process,

The individual may have no idea what this overall order is that results from his observing such rules as those concerning kinship and intermarriage, or the succession to property, or which function this overall order serves. Yet all the individuals of the species which exist will behave in that manner because groups of individuals which have thus behaved have displaced those which did not do so … [W]e are bound to explain the fact that the elements behave in a certain way by the circumstance that this sort of conduct is most likely to preserve the whole - on the preservation of which depends the preservation of the individuals, which would therefore not exist if they did not behave in this manner.36

If a trait is necessary it will be ubiquitous. Particularly relevant to this discussion is Hayek's observation that belief in God and more importantly his sanctions incentivized people to follow rules of conduct. If obeying certain rules made a group more efficient and belief in Divine punishment made individuals more likely to follow these rules then such beliefs would be selected by cultural evolution. Stenger has speculated that religion had survival value. According to him, religion "may be a cultural idea that evolved by natural selection because it provided a survival benefit, sort of the way the idea of traffic lights evolved."37

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Unconcealing Prophecies

According to Christian apologists, dozens or more biblical prophecies have been fulfilled. Two apologists have claimed that "[n]o unconditional prophecy of the Bible about events to the present day has gone unfulfilled." For example, they insist that the "nature … of Christ's birth (was) foretold in the Old Testament."38 It is astonishing that apologists emphasize this because with this example we have evidence that gospel writers mined the Old Testament for verses that they could claim were prophecies. There was, in fact, no prophecy in the original book of Isaiah. Thus, the gospel writer is asserting that Jesus' biography conforms to a prophecy that didn't even exist in the original book; a prophecy that appeared due to a mistranslation. As Professor Randel Helms explained,

The Septuagint, from which Matthew quotes, uses, at Isaiah 7:14, parthenos (physical virgin) for the Hebrew almah (young woman) as well as the future tense, "will conceive," though Hebrew has no future tense as such; modern English translations are probably more accurate in reading … "A young woman is with child."39

When it comes to vague predictions, it isn't difficult to say that an event fulfilled the prediction after the event happened. For example, Norman Geisler and William Nix claimed that the prophet Daniel predicted when Jesus would be born. Daniel had predicted "that there would be a period of seventy weeks of years from the end of the Babylonian exile until the coming of the messiah."40 Yes, you read that correctly. (What is a "week of years"?) Commenting on this "prophecy," Geisler wrote, "While it wasn't recognized until after the fact, one of the most precise predictions in Scripture gives the very week in which Christ would die."41 Needless to say, it isn't difficult to recognize cryptic predictions after the fact. Adding to the difficulties is the fact that the prophecy (Daniel 9:25) speaks of building Jerusalem while Nehemiah 2:17 refers only to building the wall of Jerusalem. Writing in the nineteen-seventies, Geisler and Nix commented, "Other

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prophecies, such as the education and communication explosion (Dan 12:4), the repatriation of Israel, and the rebuilding of Palestine (Is 61:4) are being fulfilled today."42 Concerning the first prediction, you're probably expecting a prediction that is vague but at least mentions infrastructure, perhaps even a mention of near universal literacy. The verse, in fact reads "…even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." If anyone walks or goes to class then the prediction is true. That's how vague this prophecy is. Hal Lindsey was so determined to find a genuine prophecy here that he interpreted it to mean "knowledge about prophecy will be widespread."43 Daniel, however, doesn't claim this as should be apparent from rereading the Bible verse.

Perhaps the other prediction will be more awe-inspiring. Hopefully, it will at least say something about Jews returning to their former home. This is the verse in its entirety: "And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations." Who is "they" identifying? How does Geisler and Nix know what cities the verse is referring to? This prediction isn't exactly risky; it doesn't give a time period. It doesn't even say that a city would be rebuilt; it doesn't say all the desolations and "repair" could mean replacing a window. Furthermore, it wouldn't be impossible for mortal humans to behave in accordance with the prophecy intentionally, especially when they have over two thousand years to do so and the feats described are not exactly beyond human capacity.

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Socrates' Question

We hear it all the time - God is good. This, however, leads to a question first asked by Socrates: Is something good because God approves of it, or does God approve of it because it is good? Apologists have given a couple answers to this question. Some of them have responded yes to the first question and hold that what God "wills to be right is right."44 The famous Christian philosopher John Calvin believed this, holding that "justice does not exist as a standard independent of God but rather is defined or created by God's actions."45 Another group of apologists, the essentialists, responds to the second question affirmatively. Their position is that "God's will is subject to what is essentially good, but this Good is his own unchangeable nature."46 This amounts to "God approves of it because it is what he approves of" or "God approves of it because it reflects God and God is good." We're right back where we started.

The essentialist position should make one wonder: If God's nature is unchangeable why did the God that most Christians believe in change so much? God's unchangeable nature led him to proscribe death by stoning for offenses that either aren't even illegal today or, if illegal, don't merit the death penalty. (See Leviticus 20 & 24:16.) If his nature is unchangeable, he should still be proscribing that. Yet, most Christians don't seem to think that he does. I say most because there are those called radical Christian Reconstructionists who advocate a Christian theocracy and insist that "God's laws … must be man's laws."47

Paul Copan claimed that the theist "easily evades this false dilemma (Socrate's question)." He wrote that "goodness is non arbitrarily rooted in God's necessarily good personhood (or character), not in divine commands."48 I fail to see to see how this doesn't mean "goodness is rooted in good." In other words, God approves of the good because the good reflects God. This raises the question - Who is God? Is he the one who said "…the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth the father: she

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shall be burnt with fire"? (Leviticus 21:9) Paul Copan wrote that "God naturally does what is good because his character is good, loving, and just."49 Is he referring to the God of the Old Testament? According to Numbers 15:35 God said, "The man shall surely be put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones…" His offense: gathering sticks on the Sabbath. (Numbers 15:32) Even if a Christian apologist could explain these Old Testament passages away, he or she can't deny that Jesus is God. Unfortunately, Jesus is reported to have said something as bloodthirsty as "…those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me." (Luke 19:27)

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Learning Science from Creationists

According to Norman Geisler, creationists "can offer evidence that the universe is not eternal…" For example, the second law of thermodynamics. Geisler states it in various ways:

1. The amount of usable energy in the universe is decreasing

2. In a closed, isolated system, the amount of usable energy is decreasing.

3. Left to themselves, things tend to disorder.

He concluded, "No matter which way it is stated, this law shows that an eternal universe would have run out of usable energy or reached a state of total disorder. Since it has not, it must have had a beginning."50 Earlier, Geisler stated his case in much the same way: "[I]f the universe is 'running down' then it must have had a beginning."51

Physicists now understand that the universe is not in a state of total disorder because it is expanding. As Stenger explained, "An expanding volume has continually increasing room for disorder, that is, entropy. So it becomes possible for local pockets of order to form at the expense of disorder elsewhere." Creationists can no longer point out the fact that the universe is not in state of total chaos and then conclude that the universe had a beginning. The universe is not the firmament it was believed to be in the nineteenth century. If it was then the "heat death" would have taken place by now unless it was created a finite time ago.

As for what caused or preceded the expansion, we can't know. According to Stenger, we "can never know what went on before the Planck time … The universe may have been created supernaturally, but I think I have shown that those who believe this cannot call upon the first and second laws of thermodynamics to bolster their belief. Supernatural creation is not suggested, much less required by any basic physical principles."52 Long before Geisler drew his conclusions,

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C. S. Lewis used the second law of thermodynamics to argue that the universe was designed:

Disorganization and chance is continually increasing. There will come a time, not infinitely remote, when (the universe) will be wholly run down or wholly disorganized, and science knows of no possible return from that state. There must have been a time, not infinitely remote, in the past when it was wound up, though science knows of no winding-up process.53

Lewis compared the universe to Humpty Dumpty, an orderly being, therefore presupposing his conclusion that the universe started out orderly. Stenger disagreed. He wrote,

At the Planck Time, the entropy of the universe was maximum. As the universe expanded, its maximum allowable entropy, given by the entropy of a black hole of the same size, grew far faster than that of its main components … The universe can become more disorderly as a whole while it develops order in its various parts … [T]he Second Law of Thermodynamics is nothing more than the statement that events happen on average in the direction of their most likely occurrences; so the order that resulted after the Big Bang is not some highly improbable miracle but just the way the dice fell.54

According to Heinz Pagels, the "law of entropy increase may apply to the universe as a whole because the universe may be a closed system. Eventually it too may fall into ruin, a 'heat death' in which the stars burn out and matter is scattered over the endless reaches of space - a mess with no one to straighten it out." It needs to be emphasized that the second law says that for any closed system "the entropy always increases. A system will always change from a less probable configuration to a more probable configuration."55 That's all. The second law doesn't tell you what the universe would look like if it wasn't created supernaturally. E. A. Milne cast doubt on the validity of the apologist's argument when he pointed out that "we have no means for assessing change of entropy for the whole universe … [W]e

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can calculate such a change for 'closed systems' with something outside them but the universe ex hypothesi has nothing (physical) outside it."56

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You Are Without Excuse!

According to Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, God "has demonstrated both His existence and faithfulness by His dealing with national Israel as an objective sign to the world, testifying to his existence and verifying His promises." One of the greatest miracles in history, according to these apologists, is the current existence of Jews. (Yes, they used the "m" word.)57 Geisler uses this same argument: "No other nation in history has managed so successfully to keep a culture, identity, and language intact over hundreds of years, let alone against the genocidal hatred repeatedly encountered by the Jews."58 Even if the Jews were the only nation to perform such a feat it wouldn't matter. What matters is, Is this humanly impossible? If it is then there would be evidence for something superhuman. Surprisingly, this argument for God's existence is quite old. According to Christopher Hitchens, Benjamin Disraeli believed that "the survival of the Jewish people, and their admirably stubborn adherence to their ancient rituals and narratives, showed the invisible hand at work."59 Last I checked, no natural law is violated or falsified when humans stubbornly adhere to something.

Perhaps a natural explanation for the Jewish people can be found in the analysis of the phenomenon known as "self-fulfilling prophecy". Ernest Nagel defines these as "predictions that are false to the actual facts at the time the predictions are made, but that nevertheless turn out to be true because of the actions taken as a consequence of belief in the predictions."60 This is mere speculation but it's plausible that believing you're the Chosen People might give you a competitive edge.

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"Well Lied!"

In "The Antichrist" Nietzsche quotes Mark 9:1 and comments rather bluntly that this prophecy was false.61 Geisler, on the other hand, insists that "there is no reason to assume that Jesus made the obviously false assertion that the world would come to an end within the lifetime of his contemporaries."62 Preceding this comment, Geisler explains away Matthew 24:34 ("Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.") Presumably, Jesus is saying that before all his immediate hearers die the end of the world will come. Certainly the Son of Man didn't come "in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" prior to the third century. (Matthew 24:30) Geisler, of course, knows this and tries to reinterpret "generation"; it can mean "race" like the Jewish race. Fortunately for readers , E. P. Sanders has pointed out that there is a similar verse in Matthew that doesn't say anything about a generation. Matthew 16:28 reads "Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."63 Jesus is clearly saying that the Son of Man will come in the second century or before. Adding to the apologists' troubles are Paul's letters. In 1 Thessolonians 4:15 Paul refers to a "word of the Lord" that is consistent with the previously mentioned ones in Matthew. Notice how Paul says "We who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord." Here, Paul is implying that some of them will be left until the coming of the Lord. It would have been easy enough for Paul to talk about those who are left if he wasn’t convinced that one or more of the authors of the letter and/or one or more of the Thessalonians would be left. Indeed, Paul was convinced that Jesus would return either during his lifetime or during the lifetimes of more than one of his (Paul’s) contemporaries. In another letter, Paul writes "we shall not all sleep." (1 Corinthians 15:51) By "sleep", he evidently means "die" because in the same chapter he wrote that after Jesus rose again, "he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present but some are fallen asleep." (1 Cor. 15:6) Falling asleep is the opposite of remaining or being alive. So in verse 15:51, Paul is saying that they would not all die. He adds that in an

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event in the future they "shall all be changed…the dead shall be raised incorruptible and we shall all be changed." (1 Cor. 15:51 & 52) What’s interesting about this verse is that Paul gives no indication that he expects to be dead when this event takes place. He doesn’t say "I will be raised incorruptible" or "We will be raised incorruptible." On the contrary, he talks about the dead in the third person as if he doesn’t expect to be one of them. Also in 1 Corinthians, Paul preaches "it remaineth that they that have wives be as though they had none." (7:29) Why? Because "the time is short". Where would he have gotten this idea? Apparently, he got the idea from Jesus.

It's pretty obvious that Jesus said that some of the people who were alive at the same time as him (Jesus) would see the Son of Man coming with his angels before they died. In fact, I could make the case without using any of the above data. This excerpt from G. A. Wells' book "The Historical Evidence for Jesus" is sufficient:

Luke has entirely dropped the early-Christian expectation of a speedy end to the world … [T]he way he rewrote Jesus' words (as given in Mark) to the high priest makes it quite clear that he did not expect Jesus to return to earth soon. According to Mk. 14:62, these words were "You will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven."

Luke rewrote this so as to exclude the suggestion that some contemporaries would witness his second coming … Luke's version reads: "From now on the Son of Man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God" (Lk. 22:69).

Concerning what "this generation" means Wells pointed out that "at Mk. 9:1 Jesus says that only some of his contemporaries will experience the end … Mark assimilated it, and that he did so suggests that he wished the saying of 13:30 … to be interpreted in a like sense."64 (Mark 13:30 is the Markean parallel of Matthew 24:34.)

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Infinity Redux

Engels quoted Dühring as saying that "an infinite number of causes which must already have succeeded one another is inconceivable, just because it presupposes that the uncountable has been counted."65 It is impossible, according to some philosophers, to traverse the infinite; the infinite is by definition untraversable. J. P. Moreland is of this opinion. He said, "If (the past) were infinite, then to come to the present moment, one would have had to have traversed an actual infinite to get here, which is impossible."66 Using the same reasoning, William Lane Craig claimed that "if the series of past events were beginningless, the present event could not have occurred, which is absurd."67 Engels gave us the beginning of a rebuttal. He noted,

Eternity in time, infinity in space, mean from the start, and in the simple meaning of the words, that there is no end in any direction, neither forwards nor backwards, upwards or downwards, to the right or to the left. This infinity is something quite different from that of an infinite series, for the latter always starts out from one, with one first term.

An infinite series, as Engels defined it is, indeed, untraversable. However, if the past is beginningless then the "infinity of a series" has been completed.

Recall what Stenger explained about time; it is "the count of ticks on a clock."68 When we forget this we fall into error. As Engels explained,

As applied to time, the infinite line or series of units in both directions has a certain figurative meaning. But if we think of time as something counted from one forward, or as a line starting from a definite point, we imply in advance that time has a beginning; we put forward as a presupposition precisely what we are to prove.69

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It's impossible to traverse the infinite only if time has a beginning. If an apologist says it's impossible to traverse the infinite then he is assuming that time has a beginning. As Wallace Matson put it, "it is only impossible to run through an infinite series in a finite time."70

Dühring wrote, "The infinity of a series … never can be completed by means of a successive synthesis." If time has no beginning, however, an "infinity of a series" has been completed. Why couldn't it be completed by successive addition? Unwittingly, J. P. Moreland supplied us with a hint. He wrote that if there were no beginning, then "reaching the present would be like counting to zero from negative infinity." Notice that Moreland never argued that if God was beginningless then God reaching the present would be like counting from negative infinity to zero. If we understand that infinity is not a number then the sophistry is apparent. We can't start with negative infinity and then add one to get a larger number. You can't add a number to a non-number. To say we can't get to infinity by successive addition just means we can't start with negative infinity and add one to it. William Lane Craig pointed out that counting to zero from negative infinity "is like trying to jump out of a bottomless pit."71 All Craig did here was point out that one impossible task is like another impossible task.

The present is just a point on the timeline. According to George H. Smith,

There is no reason why a succession of changes cannot proceed infinitely into the past. As long as we remember that existence had no beginning in time, there is no problem in grasping that change, a natural corollary of existence, had no beginning as well … From the fact that causal series extend infinitely into the past, it follows that we cannot assign sequential numbers to each causal process. But it does not follow from this that causality cannot occur. The issue of numerical designations is irrelevant to causality.72

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Of course, the theologians could rebut that it is not causality that they are concerned with but change. Change, according to some, had a beginning. Prior to this, nothing but a changeless, quiescent God existed; this God being an unembodied mind who is determined from eternity past to create the universe from nothing using will alone. I mention this not to refute it but so that the reader will understand that this is, according to my understanding, what you will have to resort to if you accept the conclusions of theologians like Craig and Moreland. According to Moreland, "if there was no beginning, the past could have never been exhaustively traversed to reach the present."73 Using Moreland's "logic", the past could never have been exhaustively traversed by God to reach the Big Bang. The con man trick here is that when Moreland wrote "no beginning" he meant "a beginning infinitely long ago."

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Boycott Hilbert's Hotel

A student remarked to William Lane Craig that if Hilbert's Hotel existed then "it would have to have a sign posted outside: No Vacancy - Guests Welcome." As we'll see, Craig uses Hilbert's Hotel to prove that "[a]n actual infinite number of things cannot exist." As he tells the story,

[L]et us imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms and suppose … that all the rooms are occupied. There is not a single vacant room throughout the entire infinite hotel. Now suppose a new guest shows up, asking for a room. "But of course!" says the proprietor, and he immediately shifts the person in room #1 into room #2, the person in room #2 into room #3, the person in room #3 into room #4, and so on, out to infinity. As a result of these room changes, room #1 now becomes vacant and the new guest gratefully checks in.

According to Craig, "[i]f an actually infinite number of things could exist, this would spawn all sorts of absurdities." Certainly, a hotel like the one in the story is absurd but is it absurd because it has an infinite number of rooms or is it absurd because it is run in an unconventional way? A hotel that requires all the guests to change rooms because a new guest wants to check in is ridiculous. A hotel with a finite number of rooms could also have a sign like "No Vacancy - Guest Welcome" if it was (mis)managed in a certain way. Let's consider what I'll call Giardina's Hotel. This hotel has five rooms and all of them are occupied by passive automatons. If another passive automaton wants to check in then I, the proprietor, eject a passive automaton from his room and the automaton who just arrived occupies it. While Hilbert's Hotel inconveniences an infinite number of guests, Giardina's Hotel only leaves one automaton out on the street.

Craig gives another example that merits our attention. He wrote,

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Suppose the guests in rooms #1, #3, #5…. check out. In this case an infinite number of people has left the hotel, and half the rooms are now empty … Suppose that the persons in rooms #4, #5, #6… checked out. At a single stroke the hotel would be virtually emptied … [Y]et it would remain true that same number of guests checked out this time as when the guests in rooms #1, #3, #5… checked out! In both cases we subtracted the identical number of guests from the identical number guests and yet did not arrive at an identical result. 74

It needs to be recognized that in this example we are talking about a number of guests. Really, we're dealing with a number of numbers since each guest can be represented by his room number. While Craig uses the word "subtraction," it should be clear that there is no subtraction taking place. We're not subtracting an infinite number from an infinite number; in both cases we're removing an infinite number of numbers from the set. There is more than one way to skin a cat and there's more than one way to remove an infinite number of numbers from the set. If you do it one way you get results different from when you do it another way. So what?

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How to Prove the Existence of Santa Claus

My revision of the moral argument contains two premises and a conclusion. Here it is:

1. If Santa Claus does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.

2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.

3. Therefore, Santa Claus exists.75

C. S. Lewis once quipped, "Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later."76 Undoubtedly, denying premise #2 could put you in an uncomfortable situation. If we concede premise #2 then the conclusion will depend on premise #1. The hidden assumption in premise #1 is that objective moral values could only come from God, I mean, Santa Claus. Once this is understood, it is clear how false this assumption is. Objectives moral values could come from any semi-literate human; he just needs to codify a list of them. If the apologist counters that these values aren't really objective the skeptic could rebut that God's values are not really objective. If the apologist is appalled by this go on the offensive and demand that he define God. This is important because, as Carl Sagan observed, if you say God is love, clearly love exists.77 God, according to a relatively minimal definition, is "a personal Creator of the universe … who is uncaused, beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and unimaginably powerful."78 If you want to designate this being's values as objective that's your prerogative. You don't have to. As one philosopher stated it, "it is we, and we alone, who are responsible for adopting or rejecting some suggested moral laws; it is we who must distinguish between the true prophets and the false prophets."79

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Infinity Redux Reloaded

Philoponus, a Christian theologian who lived in the sixth century, argued that the eternity of the universe "would imply an infinite number of past motions that is continually being increased. But an infinite cannot be added to."80 It must be emphasized at the outset that "when the sets are infinitely extended intuition misleads us."81 Once again, Engels provides us with indispensable analysis:

[I]f the end is left out, the beginning just becomes the end - the one end which the series has; and vice versa … Because in mathematics it is necessary to start from definite, finite terms in order to reach the indefinite, the infinite, all mathematical series, positive or negative, must start from I…82

If the beginning is left out, the end becomes the beginning. It is logically invalid to add to infinity. "Adding to infinity" would really be just moving the starting point and the starting point is arbitrary. Also, adding to infinity would mean adding a number to a non-number which is clearly absurd. Infinity might not lead to absurdities as long as we realize that it's a series of numbers and that the starting point is arbitrary. Starting an infinite series at a different point doesn't make it longer. An endless series will be endless whether we start today, tomorrow or a billion years from now. If we turn a timeline 180°, it's clear that a beginningless series is beginningless no matter when we end it. If an endless series is an infinite one then a beginningless series is also infinite. If one can exist, why can't the other?

Another argument that stems from Philoponus is "[t]he argument from the finitude of motion, time, and temporal objects: motion cannot be from eternity, for an infinite temporal regress of motions is impossible, since finite parts can never add up to an infinite whole…"83 It should be noted that finite parts is a redundancy. An infinite whole is an infinite series of finite units. As Engels observed, "it is a contradiction that an infinity is composed of nothing but finites, and yet this is the case."84 Infinite finite parts don't add up to a finite whole. Infinite finite parts must add up to an infinite whole.

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Al-Ghazali, an Islamic theologian, thought that he had found insurmountable problems with the position that the past had no beginning. He taught that "the series of temporal phenomena cannot regress infinitely." His arguments involved "the problem of having an infinite composed of finite particulars."85 To paraphrase, he taught that the number of events must be either odd or even. This, however, is invalid because an "infinite number" is not an actual number. Ghazali would rebut, supposedly, that the infinite is a totality made of units. I see no problem with this. Conceding that the infinite has something in common with a finite number doesn't mean that operations (division, subtraction, addition, etc.) that can be performed on a finite number can be performed on the infinite. For example, one couldn't divide infinity by two. To do so would imply that there is a halfway point and clearly this makes no sense. As James A. Lindsay explained, "Anywhere we choose to pick (a halfway point) has finitely many numbers below and infinitely many above."86 Since the infinite is not a number it makes no sense to ask whether it is odd or even. Similarly, if there are infinitely many x's it makes no sense to talk about the number of x's.

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The Fool Hath Said in His Heart, There is No Ontological Argument

Compared to Philoponus' arguments, the ontological argument is relatively recent; it's only one thousand years old. Like Philoponus' arguments the ontological argument was featured in a bestseller in the twenty-first century:

Anselm defines God as "that than which no greater can be thought." Presumably, this is a reasonable and widely held definition. Even an atheist should have no problem with it … But if this is true … then God exists … The reason is that to exist in reality is, according to Anselm, "greater" than to exist merely in the mind. What is possible and actual is obviously greater than what is merely possible.87

The first problem with this argument is that the "widely held" definition is not held by any atheist I'm aware of. The most common definition of God is "supernatural being". Even if the definition was correct it raises the question, "Is it obvious that perfection is augmented by existence?"88 Even if we concede this, what exactly does the argument prove? Ask yourself, What can be candidates for Greatest Thing Ever Conceived? Obviously, only things that exist89 can be candidates for Greatest Thing Ever Conceived. Out of all the things that exist at least one of these must be God. Just as if I were to say that blurg exists then out of the things that exist at least one of these must be blurg. The reasoning is simple: If the president must be 45 or older then only those 45 or older can be candidates for president. A 43 year old cannot be a candidate. Likewise, if the Greatest Thing Ever Conceived must be actual then only actual things can be candidates for Greatest Thing Ever Conceived. If I say that The Greatest Thing Ever Conceived exists in my hand then only things in my hand can potentially be The Greatest Thing Ever Conceived. The main problem with Anselm's argument is that he defined God in such a way that Godness "explicitly or implicitly (includes) existence."90

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The Curious Case of Tristam Shandy

Tristam Shandy "has been writing (his autobiography) from eternity past at the rate of one day per year." (It takes him a year to record the events of a day.) William Lane Craig asked, "[I]f the series of past events is an actual infinite … why did Tristam Shandy not finish his autobiography yesterday - or the day before, since by then an infinite series of events had already elapsed?" It's puzzling why he asked this because in the preceding paragraph he wrote that Shandy "could not yet have written today's events down." He didn't finish his autobiography yesterday because he's still alive today and has at least one more year of work ahead of him. Craig claimed, "No matter how far along the series of past events one regresses, Tristam Shandy would have already completed his autobiography." According to Craig, this is because "at any point an actual infinite sequence of events would have transpired and the book would have already been completed." How could he finish the book? On the previous page Craig observed that Shandy "could never finish (the book), for every day of writing generates another year of work."91 If he stopped writing, the autobiography wouldn't be complete because he has yet to write about the moment he stopped writing. Craig just ignores that no one can complete his autobiography even if he existed from eternity past if the autobiography has to include every event in the person's life. If the person dies, the final moments won't be included. If the person is immortal then the work can't be completed. If time is "what you measure on a clock"92 it's difficult to see what bearing any of these stories has on whether time had a beginning. According to Craig, "the (Shandy) story … tells us … that an actually infinite temporal regress is absurd."93 Like the Hilbert's Hotel story, the absurdity comes from the characters acting in an unconventional manner. In the real world, people end their autobiographies at some arbitrary point; the stories need not include everything. Furthermore, people don't ever take a year's time to write about one day.

J. P. Moreland reproduced the Shandy story. He wrote,

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If he lives an actually infinite number of days, he will allegedly be able to complete his autobiography. This is because the set of all the days in his life can be put into one-to-one correspondence with the set of all his years. But does this really make sense?94

Of course, it doesn't. Shandy, presumably, can't write about his future. If he could write about his future then on day -365 he could start writing about day -1, on day -730 he could start writing about day -2 and so on. This is all academic, however, because people who write autobiographies don't know the future before it happens. Furthermore, if time had no beginning then there is no non-arbitrary way to determine which day is day -1. Even if it was conceded that the Tristram Shandy scenario led to absurdities, it would, at best, demonstrate that an actual infinite involving a beginningless, immortal and clairvoyant human can't exist. If the apologists were able to show that one conceivable actual infinite couldn't exist this doesn't prove their case. They have to prove that any couldn't exist.

Mr. Shandy doesn't make an appearance in Craig's magnum opus. Instead we find this question: "Suppose we meet a man who claims to have been counting down from infinity and who is now finishing: …, -3, -2, -1, 0. We could ask, why didn't he finish counting yesterday or the day before or the year before?"95 I wouldn't even get that far. I would cry "Shenanigans!" No one can count down from infinity because there is no number infinity like there is a number one. As one mathematician pointed out, the "Craigian use of infinity … commits some of the errors typical of people who conflate the idea of infinity with actually being a number."96

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Dr. Craig's Library

In order to demonstrate why an actual infinite cannot exist, Craig asks us to imagine a library with an infinite number of books:

Suppose … that each book in the library has a number printed on its spine so as to create a one-to-one correspondence with the natural numbers. Because the collection is actually infinite, this means that every possible natural number is printed on some book. Therefore, it would be impossible to add another book to its library. For what would be the number of the new book?

An infinite number of books presupposes an infinite amount of space in at least one direction (South, for example). If there is space in some other direction (North, West, East) then build another shelf and give the book the number B1. The absurdity derives from the fact that Craig's librarian can't seem to figure this out.

In a last-ditch effort to prove his point Craig wrote,

Even the expression 'temporal regress' can be misleading, for the events themselves are not regressing in time; our thoughts regress in time as we mentally survey past events. But the series of events is itself progressing in time, that is to say, the collection of all past events grows progressively larger with each passing day.

Prior to this, he conceded that "the collection of all past events prior to any given point is not a collection whose members all co-exist."97 If this is true then it's false that the collection is growing larger; events aren't things that accumulate in some pile. If time has no beginning then there is an infinity of prior moments. The events are literally countless. If you add the present moment to prior moments it would be like adding one to "countless". The sum, supposedly, is one which would make sense because only one event presently exists - the present one.

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What about the paradox of being able to add to an infinity of prior moments? As Engels pointed out, the same paradox appears if time has no end. If time has no end but a beginning, "[w]e give the infinity of time a one-sided, halved character; but a one-sided, a halved infinity is also a contradiction…"98 As mentioned in the first chapter on the Kalam, Engels resolved the paradox by noticing that it doesn't matter where one starts the series (or, in this case, where one ends it). As should be clear by now, "infinity is not a real number"99 so even if events were physical things it would be incoherent to say that the present event is being added to an infinity of prior ones. One can always think of a "larger" infinity but what we really have is a different infinity.

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Bibliography

Bakunin, Mikhail "God and the State"

Barrow, John D. & Tipler, Frank (1988) "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle"

Broocks, Rice (2013) "God's Not Dead"

Buzzard, Lynn & Campbell, Paula (1984) "Holy Disobedience"

Caldwell, Bruce, ed. & Hayek, F. A. (2014) "The Market and Other Orders"

Craig, William Lane ([1979] 2000) "The Kalam Cosmological Argument"

Craig, William Lane ([1980] 2001) "The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz"

Craig, William Lane (2008) "Reasonable Faith" Third Edition

Copan, Paul "Ethics Needs God"

Darwin, Charles ([1874] 1998) "The Descent of Man"

Davies, Paul (1981) "The Edge of Infinity"

Druyan, Ann, ed. & Sagan, Carl ([2006] 2007) "The Varieties of Scientific Experience"

D'Souza, Dinesh ([2007] 2008) "What's So Great About Christianity"

Engels, Frederick (1939) "Anti-Duhring"

Geisler, Norman L. (1984) "The Collapse of Modern Atheism"

Geisler, Norman ([1999] 2012) "The Big Book of Christian Apologetics"

Geisler, Norman L. & Nix, William E. (1974) "From God to Us"

Geisler, Norman & Turek, Frank (2004) "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist"

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Giere, Ronald N. "Scientists and Religious Faith"

Hayek, F. A. (1967) "Notes on the Evolution of Systems of Rules of Conduct"

Helms, Randel (1988) "Gospel Fictions"

Hitchens, Christopher ([2007] 2009) "God is not Great"

Hooper, Walter, ed. & Lewis, C. S. (1970) "God in the Dock"

Lewis, C. S. (1942) "Miracles"

Lewis, C. S. ([1952] 2001) "Mere Christianity"

Lindsay, James A. (2013) "Dot Dot Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly"

Lindsey, Hal ([1973] 1975) "There's a New World Coming"

Mackie, J. L. (1982) "The Miracle of Theism"

Matson, Wallace I. (1965) "The Existence of God"

McDowell, Josh & Stewart, Don (1980) "Answers"

Moreland, J. P. (1987) "Scaling the Secular City"

Moreland, J. P. ([1990] 1993) "Yes! A Defense of Christianity"

Moreland, J. P. & Nielsen, Kai ([1990] 1993) "Does God Exist?"

Moreland, J. P. et al, eds. (2013) "Debating Christian Theism"

Morriston, Wes (2013) "Doubts About the Kalam Argument"

Nagel, Ernest (1979) "The Structure of Science" Second Edition

Nietzsche, Friedrich ([1918] 1923) "The Antichrist"

Nozick, Robert (1981) "Philosophical Explanations"

Pagels, Heinz (1982) "The Cosmic Code"

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Parsons, Keith ([1990] 1993) "Is There a Case for Christian Theism?"

Popper, Karl R. ([1966] 1971) "The Open Society and Its Enemies" Volume 1 Fifth Edition (revised)

Sagan, Carl ([1977] 1978) "The Dragons of Eden"

Sagan, Carl ([1979] 1980) "Broca's Brain"

Sagan, Carl (1985) Gifford lectures selected Q & A

Sanders, E. P. ([1993] 1995) "The Historical Figure of Jesus"

Shermer, Michael ([2006] 2007) "Why Darwin Matters"

Smith, George H. (1979) "Athesim: The Case Against God"

Stenger, Victor (1988) "Not By Design"

Stenger, Victor (1990) "Physics and Psychics"

Stenger, Victor (1995) "The Unconscious Quantum"

Stenger, Victor (2000) "Timeless Reality"

Stenger, Victor (2003) "Has Science Found God?"

Stenger, Victor (2007) "God: The Failed Hypothesis"

Stenger, Victor (2014) "God and the Multiverse"

Strobel, Lee (2004) "The Case For a Creator"

Varghese, Roy Abraham, ed. (1984) "The Intellectuals Speak Out About God"

Wells, G. A. (1982) "The Historical Evidence for Jesus"

Whitrow, G. J. ([1961] 1963) "The Natural Philosophy of Time"

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Periodicals

Free Inquiry December 2010/January 2011 Vol. 31 No. 1

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Appendix: Notes on Christian Apologetics

Empty Tomb

Pro: "After the Crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin …, sought and obtained permission from Pilate to grant the body a private burial … This story is likely to be true since the absence … of any participation by Jesus' followers was too unfortunate, indeed disgraceful, to have been voluntarily invented by the evangelists at a later date."100

Con: "I consider Joseph of Arimathea to be a total Markan creation in name, in place, and in function. Mark's problem is clear: those with power were against Jesus; those for him had no power. No power: not power to do, not power to request, not power to beg, not even power to bribe. What is needed is an in-between character, one somehow on the side of power and somehow on the side of Jesus. What is need, in fact, is a never-never person."101

Pro: "[T]he early Church would never have concocted, on its own account, the statement that this most solemn and fateful of all discoveries was made by women, including a woman with an immoral record at that."102

Con: "[J]ust as Peter, James, and John are singled out among the Twelve for special roles and failures, so Mary of Magdala, (etc.) are singled out among the women for a special role and a special failure … [W]hat about the anointing? Why not leave it more simply as coming to visit the tomb? Why create that special problem (?) … Think about women and anointings for burial. In Mark's story Jesus had told the disciples three times and very clearly that he would be executed in Jerusalem and that he would rise after three days. If one believed those prophecies, to come with ointments is certainly an act of love but hardly an act of faith. It is, for Mark, a failure in belief. But before he tells of that failure by named women in 16:1 - 8, he tells the above story of stunning faith. This unnamed woman believes Jesus and

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knows that, if she does not anoint him for burial now, she will never be able to do it later."103

An "obsessive theme" in Mark is the "inadequacy of the disciples to their task."104

"All it takes is for one section of earliest Christianity to have had an interest in the prominence of women for this story to have been generated. But despite all this, we might be reading too much into the story because, in narrative terms, the first known witness is the man dressed in white who, for all we know, may have provided all the authority Mark's audience required."105

"Perhaps John simply wanted to signal that Mary Magdelene occupied a special role in the Jesus movement."106

Pro: "'Even the enemies cannot deny the fact of the empty tomb': the Jews maintained that someone stole the body; the Christians believed in the resurrection."

Con: "The Jewish polemic could just as well have been a reaction to the Christian affirmation that the tomb was empty as to the empty tomb itself."107 Even if the tomb was empty, "we should not suppose that this narrative … suggested that Jesus had miraculously risen from the grave. It would make much more sense to think that the young man and his friends had decided to move the body to Galilee for burial."108

Pro: "Although (John) is … of later date than the synoptics, there is little in it to suggest that the author was acquainted with them, or even with the traditions on which they are based."109

Con: John "had probably read Mark."110 John "has been shown to have reworked source material that resembled (that of the other three gospel writers in the New Testament)."111

Although the tradition in John appears primitive it is probably a revision of the one that is captured in Mark. The woman with the alabaster box of ointment that, according to Crossan, explained the

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woman at the tomb legend is anonymous in Mark. (14:3) In John, she is given a name. (12:3) If John contains the original version then we are left with no explanation why Mary Magdalene even went to the tomb in the first place. John evidently took a story that looked like the one in Mark and transferred the responsibility of anointing the body of Jesus from the women to Nicodemus who reportedly brought an absurd amount of "myrrh and aloes". (John 19:39) Although this is speculative, the story of Mary Magdalene discovering the empty tomb could have been concocted to cover up an even more inconvenient fact. As John Shelby Spong explained, "Since the Gospels make it clear that following Jesus' arrest the disciples forsook him, no one was around to know what transpired in either his death or his burial. Mary Magdalene went, I would suggest, after the Sabbath, to locate the place of his burial. She discovered not the empty tomb but the reality of his common grave. No one could identify the place. The plaintive cry, 'They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him' (John 20:13), has the ring of authenticity. In that bit of history, I believe the tradition of the women at the tomb was originally located."112

Resurrection

Pro: "One of the most striking features of the eyewitness testimony, as stated previously, is that the first witnesses to Jesus' resurrection were women. The early church never would have made this up because, during that time, the testimony of women was not considered valid or admissible as evidence."113

Con: "(The) argument that women were not considered credible witnesses does not hold water. Even if women were not acceptable witnesses in the legal sense, it is clear that the people in the Gospels believed the women; for example, the Samaritans 'believed in him because of the women's testimony' (John 4:39; Revised Standard Version)."114

Pro: "According to accounts in the Gospels, Jesus' "brothers seem not to have believed in Jesus during his lifetime. (Mk 3:21, 31 - 35; 6:3;

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John 7:1 - 10) … (The remarkable transformation of Jesus' brothers) cannot be explained unless, as Paul says, 'then he appeared to James'."

Con: None of these passages indicate that Jesus's brethren were skeptical of resurrections. None of them are said to be Sadducees who believed that there was no resurrection. (Acts 23:8) The passages either say that his family was offended (Mark 6:3) or that they didn't "believe in him" (John 7) or that they thought he was crazy. (Mark 3) John W. Loftus disputed even this: "I cannot grant (James) was a nonbeliever prior to this appearance Paul speaks of, since the only place he is described as a nonbeliever is in John 7:5, which is a late and unreliable Gospel."115 Tim Callahan went further, commenting, "As to James being the family skeptic … his dramatic conversion, written in gospels decades after any historical Jesus would have lived, is utterly unverifiable."116 If one was a skeptic of resurrections it might take a real resurrection to get that person to change his mind. Not believing in Jesus doesn't necessarily mean not believing in resurrections.

Pro: "Had Jesus' brothers been loyal believers in him all along, the early Christian fellowship in which they served would hardly have invented such stories about their unbelief as appear in the Gospels. It would appear, however, that they became fervent believers after his death. How can this be explained?"117

Con: "Many specialists say that no gospel author in the early church would write disparaging things unless he had to admit it was true. Nonsense. Mark purposely depicted the disciples and all those close to Jesus progressively worse as his narrative unfolds." John Dart speculated that Mark and John were reacting to "the brothers' tradition". According to Dart, "we have grounds to say that Mark's story is in part a reaction to earlier postresurrection dialogues." He explained, "Two of the best manuscripts show that Mark ends at 16:8 and that 'longer endings' were added later. At this point, a young man at the empty tomb tells the three women that Jesus is risen and the disciples are to meet Jesus in Galilee. However, the women are frightened and tell no one. The original gospel ends here. This means

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Mark declared that any claims that the disciples and the women had seen the risen Jesus and received secret teachings had to be false … Mark writes James and Judas out of the picture. To anyone who claimed to follow the teachings of Jesus according to James, the Lord's brother, a reader of Mark's gospel would say, 'I don't see him among the Twelve, but only James the son of Zebedee … Brother Judas was dealt the same blow as brother James. The only Judas in the Gospel of Mark is Judas Iscariot, the traitor." Another Interesting detail involves the apostle Peter. Dart mentioned that "Paul (in his letters) did not use the name 'Simon'" in contrast to the gospels which refer to Simon Peter.118 Isn't it suspicious that three of the four brothers named in Mark 6:3 (RSV) share names with three of the twelve disciples?

"Mark has those closest to Jesus fail him dismally" because "he is opposing certain viewpoints advocated in the name of (disciples) within Christian communities he wishes to criticize or oppose … You cannot argue that no Christian would ever make up (Judas). Mark might."119

"'Derogatory myth,' in fact, is quite a normal phenomenon."120

"The point of the passage (Mark 6) is not the nature of Jesus' family relationships, however. It is his rejection by his own people. Incredible though it may be, it is surely intended by Mark to foreshadow the ultimate fate Jesus will experience at the hands of 'his own people' - i.e., disciples, Jews, indeed, all humanity."121 So, a Christian would have had a reason to make it up.

"Though we sometimes hear that James was a skeptic until his dead brother Jesus appeared to him, in fact only the Gospels suggest James had ever doubted, and only early in his brother's ministry―there is no evidence he was not already a loyal believer by the time Jesus died."122

"[T]he rejection of Jesus in his hometown is paradigmatic for Mark's understanding of mission. Jesus' experience shapes expectations about the kinds of experience which his followers will share."123 The story

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could have been included to shape expectations. Or was it invented for that purpose?

In Mark's gospel, as mentioned, the insiders, including Jesus's family, are all deficient while the outsiders are role models: "Mark uses outsiders to show that some people recognized Jesus' destiny―the woman who pours a symbolic ointment on Jesus (stirring a misplaced furor by the disciples in 14:3-8), the centurion at the cross who utters, 'Truly this man was the Son of God" (15:39), and Joseph of Arimathea who volunteers to take care of Jesus' burial (15:43-46)."124 The named insiders are depicted as terrible while the unnamed outsiders are the heroes of the story. This appears to be on purpose. In the gospel of Mark, "[t]he hope is in the unnamed woman and the unnamed centurion and especially in the gospel whose author is likewise unnamed."125

Pro: Paul converted to Christianity.

Con: "Paul's psychic experience (was) perhaps due to an epileptic seizure."126

Pro: "The disciples had experiences that they believed were literal appearances of the risen Jesus."127

Con: "If Jesus was alive who could tell how or when he would appear, what he would look like? On the testimony of Jesus himself, had not Elijah been revealed in the guise of John the Baptist? They were highly superstitious countrymen, to whom the doctrine of the transmigration of souls was not alien."128 They assumed that someone was Jesus: "[T]he undercurrent that Jesus appears and is not recognized even after he is known to be prowling, is striking … It is at least plausible that they met someone else and later convinced themselves that it had been Jesus."129

In the Gospels we enter "the superstitious world of a Herod (Antipas) where reports of mighty works can bring fear that the Baptist has come back from the dead."130

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Pro: "[I]n 1 Corinthians 15 Paul quotes an old Christian saying."131

Con: "Conservative critics identify Paul's human informants, implied in the passage I have quoted from 1 Cor. 15, as the Jerusalem Christians … and point to Semitisms in the passage for support. These could at most prove that the formula arose in a Palestinian community."132

"We know that early Christians modified and invented stories about Jesus. There is no one who disputes this: otherwise we would have to think that Jesus really did make clay sparrows come to life when he was a five-year-old, and zap his young playmates when they irritated him."133

"Not only is Paul apparently unaware of the resurrection narratives recorded in the Gospels, but his own list of appearances is irreconcilable with those of the evangelists written later … In other words, different centers of early Christianity produced their own collections of evidence for Jesus' resurrection; these grew up independently and had, in the cases considered so far, almost nothing to do with each other."134

"This is curious, because according to the gospels, Judas Iscariot was dead by this time, so Jesus could only have appeared to the 11. And none of the gospels speak of Jesus appearing to "hundreds" of people. Once again, we have to acknowledge we are at a loss to know what to believe."135

Pro: "[S]tudies of oral traditions indicate that the similarities and differences between the Gospels match what would be expected if the core information were true."136

Con: "The followers of Jesus were sure that he was raised from the dead, but they did not agree on who had seen him."137 There is no single appearance that is reported by all of the New Testament sources.

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Pro: "[T]he 1 Corinthians 15 report comes so soon after the resurrection that historians say there wasn't anywhere near enough time for legend to grow up and wipe out a solid core of truth."138

Con: None of the 1 Corinthians appearances are reported in the earliest gospels. Only Luke says that Jesus appeared to Peter when, presumably, no one else was around. (24:34) 1 Corinthians was written well over twenty years after Jesus's death.139 Even if Paul received the list of appearances from James and/or Peter just three years after Jesus's death, this just leads to more questions: "[D]oes the fact that some people claimed to have seen Jesus alive mean that he really did come back from the dead? Is that the most probable occurrence? It can't be ― by definition it is the least probable."140 Radical critics dispute the dating of Jesus's death. According to G. A. Wells, "If … the view that (Jesus) died under Pilate originated only about the very end of the (first) century, few who had been alive in AD 30 were still alive to come forward and contradict it."141 An early twentieth-century critic called 1 Cor. 15:1 - 11 "an evident interpolation"142 but this is an extreme minority view. Extreme skeptics Freke and Gandy more timidly wrote that the passage "could well be a later addition to Paul's letter."143 An equally controversial author insisted that "we cannot be sure about the authenticity of all Paul’s letters within the New Testament … since the earliest copies we have date from the early third century. In the letters written in A.D. 115 by Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, on his way to Rome, he quotes from various letters of Paul, so we know that some were in existence by this time, but we do not know whether they might have been edited, before or after."144 The critic who believed it was an interpolation observed that even if the mention of "the Twelve" was genuine, "it would create an insoluble problem, for according to Gospels and Acts it ought to have been 'the eleven'."145

Pro: "If he had not already heard the saying (recorded in 1 Corinthians 15) in Damascus, Paul probably received it from Peter and James during (his visit to Jerusalem in A.D. 36)."146

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Con: "[I]n his letter to the Galatians Paul denies he ever received his Gospel from anyone else, for he says, 'The gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ' (Gal. 1:11 - 12). So either he received his Gospel from earlier church tradition or from private revelation. Which is it?"147 Paul "does … expressly deny … that the 'gospel' which he 'preached' reached him (via human sources) … In the passage … he does not say whence he 'received' his gospel, and so the assumption must be that he means to reaffirm what he said … in (Galatians) …, namely that he received it directly 'from the Lord'."148 "That Paul should have delivered the following tradition poses little problem; but that he had first been the recipient of it from earlier tradents creates, I judge, a problem insurmountable for Pauline authorship. Let us not seek to avoid facing the force of the contradiction between the notion of Paul's receiving the gospel he preached from earlier tradents and the protestation in Gal. 1:1, 11 - 12 that 'I did not receive it from man.' If the historical Paul is speaking in either passage, he is not speaking in both."149 Even if Paul received the list from people, the report is "late (c. 55?) and secondhand."150 Galatians 1 says that Paul stayed with Cephas 15 days. (RSV) The only other apostle he even saw was James so at most he got eyewitness testimony from only two people "just three years after the event."151 (1:18 & 19) Paul didn't get testimony from all the apostles during his Jerusalem trip yet 1 Cor. 15 tells us that Jesus was seen by "all of the apostles. (v. 7)" All we can really know is that the apostles saw a man and Paul's source believed that the man was "the Master." Reginald Fuller argued that "the apostles" simply meant a group of missionaries.152 If the tradition about the 500 is really as ancient as the apologists think it is why is it not reported in any other New Testament document? The other appearances in 1 Cor. 15 are similar to the ones in the Gospels and can be explained in the same manner that Hugh Schonfield explained those appearances: "(a man) was … assumed to be Jesus."153 As John Shelby Spong, commenting of the final chapter of John, observed, "None of (the disciples) dared to ask who he was, because 'they knew it was the Lord.'"154 According to Schonfield, "this

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was just what they did not know. The essence of the matter is that the apostles who knew Jesus so well entirely failed to recognize him in the man they saw." The other Galilean tradition (captured at the end of Matthew) that informs us that "some doubted" would also be explained by the fact that the man was "unidentifiable as Jesus".155 They identified a man, who was not Jesus, as Jesus. In several gospel stories, Jesus's followers don't recognize him: "As in the story of Mary Magdalen's encounter with Jesus near the garden tomb; and as in Luke's story of the journey to Emmaus, the Disciples do not recognize Jesus." A. N. Wilson, commenting on the Emmaus story, argued, "We could point out the extreme oddness of the Disciples not recognizing Jesus until after he had departed from them; this could rationally be explained by the fact that it was not Jesus at all, but a man who resembled him … [I]t is hard to see why someone who had known Jesus quite well should have been so slow to recognize him."156 It should be noted that "Paul does not link Jesus with any historical time and place, including the recent past."157 (The Pastorals - 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus - are "deutero-Pauline," which is a nice way of saying that they are forgeries written long after Paul was dead.158) Arguing that the saying in 1 Cor. 15 "reaches all the way back to within the first five years after Jesus' death"159 presupposes that the Gospel accounts give accurate information about when Jesus died. Another important question to ask is "Did (the authors), in their time, really mean what we, in our time, understand them to be saying?"160 According to John Dominic Crossan, "(Paul) always uses that same expression, appeared or was revealed to (a literal and better translation of the Greek expression) for all instances." If Crossan is right, Paul was saying that "Jesus was revealed to all of them."161 Hans Küng wrote that Paul's list informs us of the people "to whom the risen Christ 'made himself visible,' 'appeared,' 'revealed himself'." These "appearances," according to Küng, were "probably objective or subjective visions or hearings."162 If we interpret 1 Corinthians using Paul's other letters instead of the gospels, the meaning becomes ambiguous. Commenting on Galatians 1:16 (KJV), Freke and Gandy stressed, "When Paul describes his famous vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus it is

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significant that he doesn't say 'God revealed his Son to me,' as we would expect from a Literalist Christian. Rather, he writes, 'God revealed his Son in me.'"163 "In his Letter to the Colossians Paul describes himself as having been assigned by God the task of delivering his message 'in full'; of announcing 'the secret hidden for long ages and through many generations' which is now being disclosed to those chosen by God. And what is this great secret? Is it, as we might expect from an orthodox apostle, the 'good news' that Jesus had literally come and walked the Earth, worked miracles, died for our sins and returned from the dead? No. Paul writes: 'The secret is this: Christ in you.' Colossians 1:25-8"164

Pro: "[T]he gospels were written soon after the events and in the same place where the events had happened, so that if they were lies, too many people would have known the truth of the matter."165

Con: This claim is completely unsupported. According to A. N. Wilson, "One of the most curious features of the whole of New Testament scholarship is the fact that, though learned men have pored over (the Gospels) for centuries, they have never managed to establish beyond doubt such simple questions as where the Gospels were written, or when they were written, still less, by whom they were written."166

Infallibility

Pro: "Talking of His Second Coming in His glory, then Jesus gave (Matthew Chapter 16) verse 28. It has puzzled many people, but it need not. Did some of the disciples standing there see the Son of man coming in His kingdom before their death? Not literally but symbolically they did."167

Con: "[T]he predicted event did not actually happen."168

In the Markean parallel, Mark 9:1, Jesus says that some of his contemporaries will experience "the end."169 This was Matthew's source so even if Matthew did intend for it to be interpreted the way

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Rice does, this raises the question: Why did Matthew alter his source? Commenting on Mark 9:1, Nietzsche quipped, "Well lied!"170

Non-arguments

"[W]hen a person refuses to come to Christ, it is never just because of lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties: at root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God's Spirit on his heart. No one in the final analysis fails to become a Christian because of lack of arguments; he fails to become a Christian because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with God."171

"Beliefs are not wrong because the believer has a poor reason for believing them or because the believer is in some way reprehensible. That is, the origin of a belief gives no information about its truth or falsity."172

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1References Stenger, Victor (1990) "Physics and Psychics" Kindle Edition location 39912 Smith, George H. (1979) "Athesim: The Case Against God" p. 3213 Stenger, Victor "Physics and Psychics" location 37494 Nietzsche, Friedrich ([1918] 1923) "The Antichrist" p. 76 & 1355 Sagan, Carl ([1977] 1978) "The Dragons of Eden" p. 2466 Smith, George H. "Atheism: The Case Against God" p. 1007 Hitchens, Christopher ([2007] 2009) "God is not Great" p. 638 Stenger, Victor (2003) "Has Science Found God?" Kindle Edition location 1949 Geisler, Norman & Turek, Frank (2004) "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist" p. 5310 Geisler and Turek "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist" p. 17111 Ibid, 17712 "Objective moral laws require a transcendent Law-Giver…" Ibid, 19113 Mackie, J. L. (1982) "The Miracle of Theism" p. 10414 "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist" p. 18515 Mackie, J. L. "The Miracle of Theism" p. 10416 "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist" p. 18717 short for the Kalam Cosmological Argument18 Strobel, Lee (2004) "The Case For a Creator" p. 102 - 10319 Morriston, Wes (2013) "Doubts About the Kalam Argument" in Moreland, J. P. et al, eds. (2013) "Debating Christian Theism" p. 2320 Strobel, Lee "The Case for a Creator" p. 10321 Davies, Paul (1981) "The Edge of Infinity" p. 2422 Engels, Frederick (1939) "Anti-Duhring" p. 56 - 5923 Stenger, Victor "Has Science Found God?" Kindle Edition location 179124 "The Miracle of Theism" p. 14125 "Atheism: The Case Against God" p. 25726 Stenger, Victor (1995) "The Unconscious Quantum" p. 234 & 235, emphasis added27 Parsons, Keith ([1990] 1993) "Is There a Case for Christian Theism?" in Moreland, J. P. & Nielsen, Kai ([1990] 1993) "Does God Exist?" p. 182 28 "The Case For a Creator" p. 13629 Broocks, Rice (2013) "God's Not Dead" p. 8130 Barrow, John D. & Tipler, Frank (1988) "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle" p. vii quoted in Shermer, Michael ([2006] 2007) "Why Darwin Matters" p. 5531 Giere, Ronald N. "Scientists and Religious Faith" published in Free Inquiry December 2010/January 2011 Vol. 31 No. 1 p. 2832 Bakunin, Mikhail "God and the State" Kindle Edition location 20933 Darwin, Charles ([1874] 1998) "The Descent of Man" p. 97 & 13134 "Physics and Psychics" chapter 435 Bakunin, Mikhail "God and the State" Kindle Edition location 21036 Hayek, F. A. (1967) "Notes on the Evolution of Systems of Rules of Conduct" in Caldwell, Bruce, ed. (2014) "The Market and Other Orders" Kindle Edition location 4915 & 504537 Stenger, Victor (2007) "God: The Failed Hypothesis" p. 24538 Geisler, Norman L. & Nix, William E. (1974) "From God to Us" p. 5939 Helms, Randel (1988) "Gospel Fictions" p. 4940 Ibid, p. 4541 Geisler, Norman ([1999] 2012) "The Big Book of Christian Apologetics" p. 458, emphasis added42 Geisler, Norman L. & Nix, William E. "From God to Us" p. 5943 Lindsey, Hal ([1973] 1975) "There's a New World Coming" p. 444 Geisler, Norman ([1999] 2012) "The Big Book of Christian Apologetics" p. 20845 Nozick, Robert (1981) "Philosophical Explanations" p. 55246 Geisler, Norman "The Big Book of Christian Apologetics" p. 20847 Buzzard, Lynn & Campbell, Paula (1984) "Holy Disobedience" p. 15048 Copan, Paul "Ethics Needs God" in Moreland, J. P. et al, eds. (2013) "Debating Christian Theism" (2013) in p. 9249 Ibid, 9250 Geisler, Norman "The Big Book of Christian Apologetics" p. 15251 Geisler, Norman L. (1984) "The Collapse of Modern Atheism" in Varghese, Roy Abraham (1984) "The Intellectuals Speak Out About God" p. 13752 Stenger, Victor (1995) "The Unconscious Quantum" p. 226 - 230

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53 Lewis, C. S. (1942) "Miracles" in Hooper, Walter, ed. (1970) "God in the Dock" p. 3354 Stenger, Victor (1988) "Not By Design" p. 15955 Pagels, Heinz (1982) "The Cosmic Code" 123 & 124, emphasis added56 Whitrow, G. J. ([1961] 1963) "The Natural Philosophy of Time" p. 757 McDowell, Josh & Stewart, Don (1980) "Answers" p. 41 - 4358 "The Big Book of Christian Apologetics" p. 45959 Hitchens, Christopher ([2007] 2009) "God is not Great" p. 27260 Nagel, Ernest (1979) "The Structure of Science" Second Edition p. 46961 Nietzsche, Friedrich "The Antichrist" p. 12962 "The Big Book of Christian Apologetics" p. 46363 Sanders, E. P. ([1993] 1995) "The Historical Figure of Jesus" p. 18164 Wells, G. A. (1982) "The Historical Evidence for Jesus" p. 113, 117 & 11865 Engels, Frederick "Anti-Duhring" p. 5566 Moreland, J. P. ([1990] 1993) "Yes! A Defense of Christianity" in Moreland, J. P. & Nielsen, Kai "Does God Exist?" p. 3767 Craig, William Lane (2008) "Reasonable Faith" Third Edition p. 12268 Stenger, Victor "God: The Failed Hypothesis" p. 12369 "Anti-Duhring" p. 57 & 5870 Matson, Wallace I. (1965) "The Existence of God" p. 6071 Moreland, J. P. (1987) "Scaling the Secular City" p. 3172 "Atheism: The Case Against God" p. 24273 Moreland, J. P. (1987) "Scaling the Secular City" p. 2974 Craig, William Lane "Reasonable Faith" Third Edition p. 116 - 11875 Ibid, 17276 Lewis, C. S. ([1952] 2001) "Mere Christianity" p. 677 Sagan, Carl (1985) Gifford lectures selected Q & A in Druyan, Ann, ed. ([2006] 2007) "The Varieties of Scientific Experience" p. 23678 "Reasonable Faith" p. 15479 Popper, Karl R. ([1966] 1971) "The Open Society and Its Enemies" Volume 1 Fifth Edition (revised) p. 6680 Craig, William Lane ([1979] 2000) "The Kalam Cosmological Argument" p. 981 Davies, Paul "The Edge of Infinity" p. 2682 "Anti-Duhring" p. 5983 Craig, William Lane "The Kalam Cosmological Argument" p. 884 "Anti-Duhring" p. 5985 Craig, William Lane ([1980] 2001) "The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz" p. 10286 Lindsay, James A. (2013) "Dot Dot Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly" Kindle Edition location 125687 D'Souza, Dinesh ([2007] 2008) "What's So Great About Christianity" p. 8988 Sagan, Carl ([1979] 1980) "Broca's Brain" p. 15289 If it's actual it's possible.90 "The Miracle of Theism" p. 5391 "The Kalam Cosmological Argument" p. 98 & 9992 Stenger, Victor (2000) "Timeless Reality" Kindle Edition Location 92693 "The Kalam Cosmological Argument" p. 9994 Moreland, J. P. "Scaling the Secular City" p. 2395 "Reasonable Faith" p. 12496 Lindsay, James A. (2013) "Dot Dot Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly" Kindle Edition location 91397 Ibid, 84 & 10398 "Anti-Duhring" p. 5999 Stenger, Victor (2014) "God and the Multiverse" Kindle Edition location 4300100 Michael Grant (1977) "Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels" p. 175101 John Dominic Crossan (1995) "Who Killed Jesus?" p. 172102 Grant "Jesus" p. 176103 Crossan "Who Killed Jesus?" p. 184 & 185104 Randel Helms ([1988] 1989) "Gospel Fictions" p. 109105 James G. Crossley "The Resurrection Probably Did Not Happen" in J. P. Moreland et al., eds. (2013) "Debating Christian Theism" p. 489106 John Shelby Spong ([1994] 1995) "Resurrection: Myth or Reality?" p. 226107 Werner Harenberg (1970) "Der Spiegel On the New Testament" p. 152108 A. N. Wilson (1992) "Jesus: A Life" p. 242

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109 G. A. Wells ([1975] 1986) "Did Jesus Exist?" Revised Edition p. 91110 Grant "Jesus" p. 188111 G. A. Wells "The Historicity of Jesus" in R. Joseph Hoffmann & Gerald A. Larue, eds. (1986) "Jesus: In History and Myth" p. 28112 Spong "Resurrection: Myth or Reality?" p. 229113 Rice Broocks (2013) "God's Not Dead" p. 155114 Matt Young (2001) "No Sense of Obligation" p. 140115 John W. Loftus (2012) "Why I Became an Atheist" Revised and Expanded p. 426116 Tim Callahan (2014) "Did Jesus Exist?" published in Skeptic Vol. 19 No. 1 2014 p. 11117 William L. Craig (1988) "Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection" p. 91 & 92118 John Dart "Jesus and His Brothers" in R. Joseph Hoffmann & Gerald A. Larue, eds. (1986) "Jesus: In History and Myth" p. 184, 186 - 188119 Crossan "Who Killed Jesus?" p. 18 & 71120 Edward Greenly (1927) "The Historical Reality of Jesus" in Gordon Stein, ed. (1980) "An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism" p. 189121 Paul J. Achtemeier (1978) "Invitation To Mark" p. 90122 Richard Carrier "Why the Resurrection is Unbelievable" in John W. Loftus, ed. (2010) "The Christian Delusion" p. 307123 Stephen C. Barton ([1994] 2005) "Discipleship and Family Ties in Mark and Matthew" p. 92124 Dart "Jesus and His Brothers" in R. Joseph Hoffmann & Gerald A. Larue, eds. "Jesus: In History and Myth" p. 186125 Crossan "Who Killed Jesus?" p. 185126 Hugh Schonfield (1968) "Those Incredible Christians" p. 61127 Gary Habermas "Historical Facts (Most Critical Scholars Believe These 12 Items)" in Tim Callahan (2014) "Did Jesus Exist?" published in Skeptic Vol. 19 No. 1 2014 p. 10128 Hugh Schonfield ([1965] 1967) "The Passover Plot" p. 170129 Matt Young "No Sense of Obligation" p. 141130 C. F. Evans in Grant "Jesus" p. 31131 Craig "Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection" p. 87132 Wells "Did Jesus Exist?" p. 31133 Bart Ehrman (1999) "Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millenium" p. 91 & 92134 Helms "Gospel Fictions" p. 130 & 131135 Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy ([1999] 2001) "The Jesus Mysteries" p. 154136 Rice Broocks "God's Not Dead" p. 177137 E. P. Sanders ([1993] 1995) "The Historical Figure of Jesus" p. 279138 Lee Strobel (2001) "The Case For Christ" Student Edition p. 104139 Ehrman "Jesus" p. 229140 Bart Ehrman (2009) "Jesus, Interrupted" p. 178141 Wells "Did Jesus Exist?" p. 57142 Greenly "The Historical Reality of Jesus" in Stein, ed. "An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism" p. 190143 Freke and Gandy "Jesus Mysteries" p. 154144 Michael Baigent (2006) "The Jesus Papers" p. 73145 Greenly in Stein, ed. p. 190146 Craig "Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection" p. 41147 Loftus "Why I Became an Atheist" Revised and Expanded p. 417 & 418148 Wells "Did Jesus Exist?" p. 30149 Robert M. Price (1995) "Apocryphal Apparitions" in Robert M. Price & Jeffrey Jay Lowder, eds. (2005) "The Empty Tomb" p. 74150 Paula Frediksen (2000) "From Jesus to Christ" Second Edition p. 133151 Ehrman "Jesus, Interrupted" p. 177152 Spong "Resurrection: Myth or Reality?" p. 53153 Schonfield "Passover Plot" p. 172154 Spong "Resurrection: Myth or Reality?" p. 197155 Schonfield "Passover Plot" p. 171 & 172156 A. N. Wilson "Jesus: A Life" p. 243 - 245157 Freke and Gandy "Jesus Mysteries" p. 151158 Elaine Pagels ([1975] 1992) "The Gnostic Paul" p. 163159 Craig "Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection" p. 41 160 Richard Dawkins ([2006] 2008) "The God Delusion" p. 118161 Crossan "Who Killed Jesus?" p. 204162 Hans Küng "Eternal Life?" p. 103 & 104

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163 Freke and Gandy "Jesus Mysteries" p. 167164 Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy (2001) "Jesus and the Lost Goddess" p. 217 endnote 69165Craig "Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection" p. 21166 Wilson "Jesus" p. 48167 John R. Rice (1955) "The King of the Jews" p. 251 & 252168 E. P. Sanders "The Historical Figure of Jesus" p. 182169 G. A. Wells (1982) "The Historical Evidence For Jesus" p. 113170 F. W. Nietzsche ([1918] 1923) "The Antichrist" p. 129171 William Lane Craig (2008) "Reasonable Faith" Third Edition p. 46172 Young "No Sense of Obligation" p. 96