Month: August 2010

This year Adolf Hitler is receiving a posthumous birthday present. Today, Adolf Hitler’s birthday, a new book is being released which is entitled, “Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible” by Joe Keysor.

The book seeks to analyze anti-Semitism, National Socialism and the churches in Nazi Germany. Joe Keysor’s background includes being an English teacher in various private schools, a college and a Chinese University. He holds a BA in Russian and East European Studies and a Masters Degree in adult ed.

Some authors function as rifles: yes, indeed they hit their target with perfect accuracy. However, we end up noting that the target equated to a very narrow focus. Indeed the target was hit but we are left asking why the author did not delve into this or that relevant aspect of the topic.Other authors function as shotguns: they go in one hundred directions at once and certainly cover a lot of ground. Yet, after smoke clears we note that while shooting that sawed-off-twelve-gauge certainly was fun (and/or informative) we are left wondering whether there was a main point-what, or where, was the target?

Joe Keysor has managed to manufacture a new weapon that combines the multidirectional spray of a shotgun with the on target focus of a rifle.

As it occurred I had working on an essay which will serve as a response to Richard Dawkins’ claims (in “The God Delusion”) about Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Nazism and Communism when the publisher of “Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible” (“Athanatos Publishing Group“) contacted me to ask if I would be willing to review the book. Well, my head was swimming in Nazism and as it is said, “‘coincidence’ is not a kosher word.” Thus, I am posting this review and will follow it by posting my parsed essay.

The issue of “Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible” is very important to me for very many reasons two of which are: 1) some of my relatives were murdered in Nazi concentration camps and 2) the claim that Christianity was to blame for Nazism either exclusively or in large part.

Part history, part logic, part polemic, part critical and all common sense; Joe Keysor’s book takes us on a circuitous ride into the very heart, soul and mind of Adolf Hitler and Nazism in general which makes various stops along the way in order to pick up the various related issues.

As, alluded to above Joe Keysor’s scope is wide and yet focused as he considers:In part I “Christianity and National Socialism”;

The New Testament and the JewsMedieval Christian Anti-SemitismAdolf Hitler’s Secular and Ungodly Ideas

The Christians in Nazi Germany

In part II “The Origins of National Socialism”;

The Historical BackgroundWagnerChamberlinHaeckel

Nietzsche

One useful feature of the book is that it is part bibliographical criticism in that along the way he notes various books and even websites that relate to his subject matter and notes their strengths and weaknesses.

An example regarding books states, “A more academic attempt to directly link Christianity to Naziism is Richard Steigmann-Galls’ The Holy Reich” which, “asserts that Adolf Hitler ‘regarded Christ’s struggle as direct inspiration for his own’ and claims ‘Adolf Hitler insists that Christianity is at the center of Nazi social thought’ and ‘regards the teachings of Christ as direct inspiration for the ‘German’ socialism advanced by the party.'”
Then, in a refreshingly straight forward and commonsensical manner, Joe Keysor writes, “This explains why Adolf Hitler cared nothing for political power, was a pacifist, and commanded his followers not to fight on his behalf” (p. 3)

Another example regarding websites is Jim Walker who will have some major s’planing to do form both the, now, discredited website which he runs and the fact that he refused to correspond with Joe Keysor,

Walker claims that Hitler believed in the God of the Bible, and then attempts to substantiate it with words from Hitler’s speeches and from Mein Kampf that show Hitler to have had many ideas directly contrary to the Bible’s teachings. That is a peculiar sort of logic, to strongly assert a point, and then offer evidence to the contrary in support of it [p. 116]_To prove Hitler’s Christianity Walker gives a quote showing that Hitler had a purely secular and humanist concept of it [p. 117].

These are mere examples of the dissection that Joe Keysor performs on Jim Walker’s propaganda.

Joe Keysor also tackles various attempts to read anti-Semitism into the New Testament (note that of the 27 New Testament books/epistles 25 were written by Jews). For instance, the fallacious claim that the New Testament condemns “the Jews” for Jesus’ death while excusing the Gentile Romans as exampled by Pontius Pilate literally and figuratively washing his hands of the judgment he handed down to have Jesus crucified (by Gentile Romans).Joe Keysor comments thusly, “What sort of commentators think that a judge can knowingly sentence an innocent man [which Pilate admits] to be tortured to death and then clear himself by a simple theatrical gesture?” (p. 30). To further this point and evidence non-anti-Semitic Christian attitudes in post-Medieval Christianity reference is made to Matthew Henry’s 1706 commentary on this text (his Bible commentary is still very popular today) which states,

By saying; in which, First, He clears himself; I am innocent of the blood of this just person. What nonsense was this, to condemn him, and yet protest that he was innocent of his blood! For men to protest against a thing, and yet to practice it, is only to proclaim that they sin against their consciences. Though Pilate professed his innocency, God charges him with guilt, Acts iv. 27.

Since “Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible” tackles, in part, the question of whether Christianity logically, and/or theologically, leads to Nazi-like concepts and actions part one begins with an elucidation of what C.S. Lewis termed “mere Christianity.” A basic overview of what, biblically, is a Christian and therefore, what is Christianity?
It will be fascinating to see what sorts of opinions will arise as to Joe Keysor’s book because those interested in the subject range widely, and wildly, from the scholarly works of careful researchers to those who are satisfied with claiming that since the Wehrmacht wore belt buckles that read “Gott mit uns” the matter is settled. Little do such pseudo-skeptics stop to ask who is this Gott, what are its attributes, whence comes such a theology. And this is not even to mention (ok, mentioning) that the “Gott mit uns” motto dates to Otto von Bismarck’s 1870 imperial standard and that the SS’s motto was “Meine Ehre hei²t Treue.” (my honor is loyalty).
If we could judge a person’s entire worldview by their belt buckles I would imagine that there are literally millions of professional rodeo bull riders.

Thus, in another commonsensical note; Joe Keysor writes,

there are people today who have faith in Adolf Hitler’s honesty (or pretend to) and claim that he was an upright and truthful man who expressed his religious views with candor and sincerity. These people say “We know Adolf Hitler was a Christian because he said so himself!” (p. 74)

This goes to the point that was made by Moishe Rosen,

The phrase “2,000 years of history leading up to the Holocaust” is more than a reference to past prejudice and persecution. It is an indictment against Christianity that misinterprets Christ’s message and intent. Anyone who gives credence to such an accusation bestows upon Adolf Hitler the power to change theology.1

Otherwise, this sentiment “well describes German ‘Christians’ like Hans Kerrl, the Nazi Minister for Church Affairs, Kerrl stated ‘A new authority has arisen as to what Christ and Christianity really are-Adolf Adolf Hitler'” (p. 21).In counter distinction,

it bears repeating that the total percentage of ‘Christians’ who have actively persecuted Jews in nearly 2,000 years of Christianity is a small one. Random mobs in the Middle Ages or in eastern Europe, a cruel Inquisition in only a small handful of countries out of the many in which Christianity has flourished-these denials of Christianity were nothing but sin an devil, directly contrary to the New Testament’s calling for the Christian (p. 28).

Yet, this is no mere assertion on the part of Joe Keysor but it contextualized by references to the Bible, on the one hand, and references to history, on the other. As for those who fallaciously attempt to justify their malicious actions by appealing to the Jesus or biblical Christianity “That they practice evil in the name of Christ does not justify them, but rather intensifies their guilt” (p. 29).

It is also elucidating to note that as for those who are satisfied by myopically condemning Christianity and Christians for the actions done by those who violate Christianity ethics, “a blood libel has been attached to the teachings of Christ, often by the very same people who hypocritically object to a blood libel being applied to themselves” (p. 37).

I must admit that upon reading Joe Keysor’s review of the Crusades I thought it utterly inadequate as he thought to accomplish this in half of one page (p. 53). Yet, studying the Bible has attuned me to think in terms of context-both immediate and greater. Thus, so as to not take a text out of context to make a pretext of a prooftext I recalled that what I was reading was not “The Pope, the Crusades, and the Bible” but “Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible.” The context in which the Crusades are mentioned is not everything you ever wanted to know about the Crusades but where to apathetic to research but was to consider whether the Crusades could logically, and/or theologically, applied to the account of Jesus or biblical Christianity.

With reference to the Inquisition Joe Keysor notes, in part:

The vicious and devilish brutality of the Inquisition was of course directed from above [meaning the “church and political authority”], but it not only persecuted Moslems and Protestants as well as Jews-it also never had the aim of simply massacring Jews. It was the result of a false concept of the church that was entirely divorced from the New Testament and had nothing to do with biblical Christianity (p. 52).

While his point, again, is to ascertain whether the Inquisition’s actions were truly Christian and thus his consideration is succinct, not as succinct as the Crusades section, he does not mention that the Inquisition was premised upon political intrigues. As The Jewish Encyclopedia notes (1906 ed. Vol. XI, p. 485), “It remains a fact that the Jews, either directly or through their correligionists in Africa, encouraged the Mohammedans to conquer Spain.”
Indeed, directly prior to the commencement of the Inquisition Turks attacked Otranto where the choice was offered to convert to Islam or, as was done to the 800 Christians who refused, beheading on The Hill of the Martyrs. Overall, 20,000 were slaughtered along with the archbishop and a bishop. Thereafter, the Turks attacked Vieste, Lecce, Taranto and Brindisi.

Joe Keysor’s book deserves serious consideration and while I am afraid that he is up against difficulties, hopefully it will be encountered by honest scholarly reviewers.
The difficulty is that the combination of the New Atheist movement and the Internet have turned far too many people, let us speak of those atheists who correlate Christianity with Nazism, into pseudo-skeptics who would consider a satisfying response to an entire and carefully researched book to be something to the likes of typing, “Adolf Hitler was a Christian” into a search engine, copying the first hyperlink that shows up, pasting into the comments section of a website/blog and saying, as it were, “Answer that!”

These are the sorts of thinkers, if they may be referred to as such, who think that pointing out the “Gott mit uns” belt buckles is sufficient refutation. There is a stunningly lack of skepticism within the ranks of they who argue that Adolf Hitler was a Christian because he made reference to “God,” “Jesus,” “the Bible,” “the Church,” etc. Little do they consider vast and various other references that Adolf Hitler made.

To solidify what Joe Keysor is up against when confronted by this crowd: attempt to imagine claiming that Adolf Hitler was a Christian. What would this mean? What would it look like in the real world outside of easy answers and polemics? It would mean that the world’s most infamous and notorious anti-Semite worshipped a Jew as his Lord, God and Savior. Indeed, it is with such as realization that we begin to imagine that perhaps when Adolf Hitler, and the Nazis in general, made reference to, and this is key, the terms, the words “God,” “Jesus,” “the Bible,” etc. they meant something quite different by them. They used the same words as does the Bible and Christianity but they defined them very differently. This, Joe Keysor, makes very clear via multitudinous examples. In this regard it is of the utmost importance to note that Adolf Hitler and Nazism believed that Christianity was a Jewish invention who manufactured it as a puppeteer manufactures the puppet who will act while he is in control from behind the scenes.

Likewise with so many fallacious claims such as that Adolf Hitler praised Martin Luther. Are we to believe that Adolf Hitler the good, practicing, devout Roman Catholic would praise the world’s most infamous and notorious anti-Roman Catholic? Indeed, praising Martin Luther would mean praising Protestant Christianity but why would Adolf Hitler the good, practicing, devout Roman Catholic praise Protestant Christianity? Hint: Martin Luther was a German and “The Nazis weren’t similarly interested in Calvin or the English reformers” (p. 234).

Furthermore, along these lines there are pseudo-skeptics who liken eugenics-as mentioned within the context of Nazism-to breeding cattle, dogs or attempting to breed a black Koi with an orange spot. One can only guess as to whether this denotes a shocking level of ignorance or else a self refuting failed attempt at polemics, or rather, propaganda.

One of Joe Keysor’s “Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible” monumental tasks is to take us on a, troubling, journey through the history of thought or philosophy (or as he terms it “misosophy”).
One very important point that Joe Keysor brings up particularly in part II is that in their fervor to tie Christianity to Nazism many seek to leap tall buildings in a single bound from their misreading of the New Testament as being anti-Semitic, to the Crusades, to the Inquisition, throw in a little “persecution” of Galileo Galilei, add a little Martin Luther as “proto-Nazi” for good measure and viola!-thus ariseth Adolf Hitler.Joe Keyson, lamentably, notes,

I wish some people would study the writings of 19th-century German writers looking for every single scrap or clue linking their ideas to Adolf Hitler as diligently as they study the New Testament. (p. 36)

He notes,

Luther also got angry with the Jews, and he lashed out when he should have spoken softly and reasonably. His attacks have been of great service to those who wish to discredit Christianity…It is too bad that so many think the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century is more important for an understanding of National Socialism than the German secular and sometimes overtly anti-religious philosophical tradition of the 19th century. (p. 70)

Indeed, the philosophy of the 19th century and prior? What of Descartes, the French Revolution and Napoleon, the German “enlightenment,” Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau, what of the Flokish movement’s founders Paul Lagarde and Julius Langbehn, what of Voltaire, Richard Wagner, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Charles Darwin, Ernst Haeckel, Friedrich Nietzsche, et al? As Joe Keysor notes, “What is central is the fact that ideas basic to National Socialism developed outside of the Christian tradition” (p. 270).For instance,

when we look at the lifeblood of German culture in the 19th and early 20th centuries and consider the poets, philosophers, novelists, scientists, and painters that made German culture renowned throughout the world, do we find that even one of them was a serious Bible-believing Christian?Beethoven, Schiller, Goethe, Schopenhauer-Christians?…And what shall we say of Stefan George, Bert Brecht, Fritz Lang, Lotte Lenya, George Grosz and Marlene Dietrich-Christians?Then of course there are Thomas Mann, Oswald Spengler, the German expressionist painters, Wagner, Nietzsche, Haeckel, physicists like Heisenberg and Planck-Christians?Is there one major figure in the 130-odd years of German cultural history from 1800 to 1933 that was a dedicated biblical Christian?Looking at any general secular history of Weimar Germany, we do not get the impression of a deeply Christian culture_

People who say “Germany was a Christian country” reveal their ignorance not only of the teachings of Christ, but also of the profound influence of Darwinism, Freudianism. (pp. 141-142, 143)

But what of German theologians such as Friedrich Schleiermacher, F.C. Bauer, Albrecht Ritschl, Julius Wellhausen, Adolf von Harnack, et al? “Theologian” means orthodox-biblical-conservative-Christian, right?

these and other theologians diligently undermined the Bible and the historic Christian faith and had a great responsibility for the Protestant churches’ collapse before National Socialism. (p. 172)

That some will surely merely respond by stating, “But, but, but-the belt buckles!” makes “Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible” all the more important.

Upon considering that still, today, over half a century later Nazi propaganda is still alive and well in working its accursed magic I was in awe at the skills of the propagandists. It is not only alive and well in the backwoods of neo-Nazism but in the thoughts of anti-Christians world wide and on the world-wide-web. Yet, on second thought; the effectiveness of Nazi propaganda is not in its brilliance but in that there are actually many people who want to fall for it. It serves their purpose and justified, in their own minds, their prejudices and so they want to accept it even though doing so discredits them while leaves Christianity unscathed.

Joe Keysor’s journey through the history of thought is very well handled as each subject/person upon whom he touches would require a book of its own to consider in detail. Yet, at various points along the way he reminds us that we must remain focused upon our destination: the relevance of each subject/person to Adolf Hitler/Nazism.

One thing that will become exceedingly clear upon reading this history of thought, particularly secular-anti-Judeo-Christian aspects, is that the so called, “New Atheists” (and the older as well) are absolutely nothing “New.” Their instant fame and wealth, their celebrity status, may be “New” but they have made careers by merely plagiarizing the secular-anti-Judeo-Christians upon whose feeble shoulders they stand.

It is also very noteworthy that another refreshing aspect of “Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible” is that throughout, and particularly whilst considering the history of thought, Joe Keysor notes the objections to the very point that he is making and offers responses.

Lastly, I wish to note a very unique aspect of Joe Keysor’s book: his various words of warning of which I will name two aspects very briefly as these are best considered and understood where they were made, well within the context of “Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible.”

One is that he notes particular cultural and governmental events that lead up to, and which occurred within, Nazism. He takes such occasions to peppers correlations between these historical realities and events occurring, or unfolding, in the world today, including in America.

The other is the warning to be vigilant of such trends and points this warning particularly to American Christians. How is that? In a majority Christian nation, what is there to worry about? Exactly.It is question such as “what is there to worry about?” and the implied ridicule of anyone who would dare make, much less entertain and promulgate, such paranoid delusions which make the point. Joe Keysor makes his own points to this effect yet, I will offer my own examples:

What is the big deal about store clerks are saying “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas”? And why should “In God We Trust” and “One Nation Under God” be on public display? After all, the Declaration of Independence only makes reference to our “Creator_nature’s God.”

That we are moving from a country founded upon the premise of freedom of religion expression to one which calls for freedom from religion may not even be noticeable to some while it is certainly encouraged and celebrated by others.What I will say is this: when my relatives, or even when unrelated and non-Jewish human beings, found themselves in ghettos, in trains, in concentration camps, in gas chambers I wonder, I wonder if they ever thought, “How could we have not noticed the little incremental steps that lead to this? How and why is it that even when we did notice we did nothing?” How? Why? How and why indeed?

The fact that some already ridicule American Christians for their, apparent, concern for the slightest offense (as in defense vs. offense) is indicative of the point and a red flag that any and every slight offense must, within legal and moral bounds, be objected.

Overall, Joe Keysor’s “Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible” is a great read which combines the excitement of a thriller, the intellectual satisfaction of carefully considered historical information and logic, the dichotomous nature of polemics, along with an emotional roller coaster.
This is a very serious book on one of world history’s most serious subjects and yet, I have never laughed so often whilst reading such seriousness as Joe Keysor’s commonsensical approach exposed the sheer nakedness of the pseudo-skeptic propagandists time and time, and time and time again with a touch of gentle “irreverent” whit with an occasional touch of sarcasm.

Surely, an important contribution to the historical study of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, the discernment of polemics and propaganda, the sensitive nature of multi-cultural relationships, and the essential importance of treating the Bible and Christianity in a fair and hermeneutically appropriate manner.

I have witnessed it time and time again; the deleterious effect of the New Atheist movement. This movement has popularized a particular polemical tactic whereby being vociferous, emotive, belittling, making assertions, and concocting arguments from outrage and arguments for embarrassment and for ridicule replace reasoned discourse.

They have been contaminated by the DHDH Meme (for Dennett-Harris-Dawkins-Hitchens).

Such was the case when Christopher Hitchens debated Jay Richards. Christopher Hitchens attempted a clever strategy, or so he and his adherents thought, that only served to demonstrate his lack of basic reasoning skills. This is further evidenced tenfold when we consider his adherents in another typically sad New Atheist tactic: utter lack of skepticism, lack of critical thinking, merely rooting for my guy; he must be right.Thus, part 1 will deal with Christopher Hitchens and part 2 with Aidan Maconachy, one of his defenders.

The following quotations are taken from the Stanford University article by Shelby Martin, Hitchens Knocks Intelligent Design.

From the get go, Christopher Hitchens stated,

I can’t imagine it’ll take me 14 minutes to demolish intelligent design, as I refuse to call it.

Unfortunately, he thought that an argument against design was to assert his unfounded presuppositions as to what a thing was designed for. For example, he oft cites the extinction of 98% of all species which have ever existed. Yet, the issue is to ask why he presupposes that a designer would intend each of its designs to last forever. Perhaps, the designer meant one design to give rise to the next. Perhaps, the designs were meant to wear out. Perhaps, __________ (fill in the blank).

Presuppositions about a design’s purpose or utility are about as convincing an argument against design as was Stephen Jay Gould’s panda’s thumb argument. He criticizes the design of the panda’s thumb at the very same time that the pandas are happily stripping bamboo leaves from branches with it (why he even calls it a “thumb” is questionable).

Thus, after making an argument from outrage which made reference to “barbarism, misery, ignorance, slavery and early death” he stated, “What kind of design? What kind of caprice, what kind of incompetence, what kind of cruelty?” Christopher Hitchens declared “Whose design?” and there came the obligatory hoorahs and standing ovations “from many audience members, including a dozen wearing ‘Atheists of Silicon Valley’ T-shirts”-the pseudo-claques.Jay Richards, quite rightly retorted that “A sneer is not an argument.” This alone discredits a vast number of atheist arguments.

Following, Jay Richards “encouraged the audience to see atheism and theism as two competing hypotheses” and presented the following arguments: “simple moral truths,” “that nature seems to be organized rationally and mathematically,” the “fine-tuning principle,” “Anything that begins to exist must have a cause for its beginning,” “irreducible complexity,” “Processes that require foresight are inaccessible to natural selection.”

How did Christopher Hitchens respond to each of these, et al, and then to the cumulative case which they build?He asked Jay Richards “Do you believe Jesus Christ was born of a virgin?” and “Do you believe he was resurrected from the dead?” to which Jay Richards answered in the affirmative.But how is this a response and what is the point? Christopher Hitchens then stated,

I rest my case. This is an honest guy, who has just made it very clear science has nothing to do with his world view.

Yet, the cumulative case was meant to see if we could come to certain supernatural conclusions. Christopher Hitchens should have actually counter-argued and attempted to conclude that such supernatural conclusions are unviable. But he chose to disregard the argumentation that Jay Richards believes leads to a supernatural conclusion.Thus, science does have to do with his worldview.

You may ask how inferring a designer from nature could imply a virgin birth and resurrection but you would be putting, as Christopher Hitchens did, the shotgun before the horse. The argument was not to the point of specifying particular doctrines but only at the point of inferring a designer. Christopher Hitchens extricated himself from the steps which the debate was taking and instead, moved far beyond the parameters of the debate (for how to infer a creator see here).

At this point the moderator, Ben Stein posed a question of his own to Christopher Hitchens,

Many people are deeply religious. Are they just stupider than you?

To which Christopher Hitchens replied, “I think I am smarter than most people.” Most is a word that is fascinating to me because it is so very generic: most could mean 99% but it could also mean 51% yet, 51% is awfully close to half.
At any rate, this is another deleterious effect of the New Atheist movement: the self-assurance of proclaiming oneself to be more erudite than thou. Of course, “smart” is very generic as well. I have known some very book smart people who would not know common sense or real world smarts if their lives depended on it. But for all I know, Christopher Hitchens could very well be smarter than 99% of people-what of it? Does smart make his particular worldview true?

I would imagine, and imagine because I do not know, that the reason he chose to abscond from the logical steps of the debate and attempted to make a point is that he was simply incapable of handling a science based debate. In fact, he has stated that he bases his scientific believes upon the proclamations of atheist activists in the guise of scientists. To Richard Dawkins he stated,

I’ll take things you and Richard say on the human and natural sciences, not without wanting to check, but I’m often unable to but knowing that you are the sort of gentlemen who would have checked. If you say, “the bishop told me it so I believe it” you make a fool of yourself it seems to me, and one is entitled to say so. [see here]

Yes, you understood it correctly: if you say “the bishop told me it so I believe it” you make a fool of yourself and one is entitled to say so. But if you say “the gentlemen scientists told me it so I believe it” you are intelligent and well informed without having to lift one finger.

Christopher Hitchens concluded by asserting another presupposition and another argument for embarrassment,

The world as we know it works as the world might be expected to work if it did not have a designer_We can finally grow up if we resign ourselves to this increasingly inescapable truth.

But how does he know what a world would be like without having been designed?
This is tantamount to a fish who, having lived its entire life in water, surrounded by water, claims that whatever this “water” is that people are going on and on about is unnecessary to it because it has lived its whole life without it. It simply does not realize that without water there is no fish. Without water it does not live, survive, or thrive. Yet, it is blind to this fact because water is a part of its being. The very same water that makes life possible for it is the very same water that it does not recognize because it knows nothing but water- water is all around it.

If the universe is designed the atheist is living within the design and cannot see beyond it because the designer designed the material realm in which time makes cause and effect relationships possible. The atheist notices the material causes for material effects and concludes that there is an infinite regress of material causes for the material effects.
They cannot see that there is something outside of the water, something that placed the water in the tank, something that PH balanced the water, something that maintains the water at a certain temperature, something that cleans the tank and something that provides the sustenance, etc.

Lastly, if you were as smart as Christopher Hitchens, if such a thing were possible, you too will “finally grow up” or else, be thou embarrassed.

However, the most fallacious statement is that we are simply to “resign ourselves” to atheism because it is the “increasingly inescapable truth.” Yet, the exact opposite represents the fats of the matter, modern science has uncovered more evidence for a creator than has ever been known before-it is no wonder that Christopher Hitchens decided to bypass the actual topic of the debate, “Atheism vs Theism and the Scientific Evidence of Intelligent Design,” and made the usual very, very popular but very, very fallacious pseudo-counter-arguments.

Such are the deleterious effects of the New Atheist sect of atheism

This, unfortunately, comes to us from the “Nice try but no cigar” and or “Aw shucks, what about me guys?” files.

Back in 2007 AD Michael Shermer, pseudo-skeptic extraordinaire, made an obviously failed attempt to reason with the four celebrity New Atheists. In Scientific American Magazine of all places, yeah I know you thought that Scientific American Magazine was about science (apparently their online version is not exactly a peer-reviewed science journal), Michael Shermer wrote an article entitled, “Rational Atheism – An open letter to Messrs. Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens.”

Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are the celebrity New Atheists, the so called “Four Horsemen,” who are really more akin to “My Little Ponies.” Sure, when you first get a toy you are really excited and your purchase all of the accessories but after a while you grow up.
In the case of the big four et al, at first they are exciting they are vociferous, they play the part of the underdog, they make emotionally charged statements, the make arguments from outrage, arguments form embarrassment, they take on Christianity, they encourage and insight reactions of ridicule, and elbowing your buddy in the ribs to the point that atheists think that laughing at someone is tantamount to the discrediting of their argument.

Michael Shermer quotes and comments on Prof. Richard Dawkins’s “always poignant prose, ‘raise consciousness to the fact that to be an atheist is a realistic aspiration, and a brave and splendid one. You can be an atheist who is happy, balanced, moral and intellectually fulfilled.’ Amen, brother” (religious reference in original).
Who would argue that it is not a good thing to raise consciousnesses, be brave, happy, balanced, moral and intellectually fulfilled?

But how do these things play out in the lives of atheist, particularly the New Atheists, specifically the celeb-four? What is having your consciousness raised realizing that you are one of the most intelligent people in the history of the planet? Is being brave becoming the most recent in a 2,000 yr old line of people who besmirch Christianity? Is being happy, balanced and moral making a living by expressing personal prejudice and inspiring others to do likewise? Is being intellectually fulfilled inventing quaint tall tales about how things just happen to happen?

Ultimately, atheism is consoling delusion, which manifest themselves in various ways such as:The consoling delusion of lack of ultimate accountability.The consoling delusion of absolute autonomy.The consoling delusion of considering yourself to be the highest being in creation.

The consoling delusion of erudite elitism.

In any case, Michael Shermer made an obviously failed attempt to reason with the supposed champions of reason.

Some of the obviously ignored advice went as follows:

we should be cautious about irrational exuberance_

Anti-something movements by themselves will fail. Atheists cannot simply define themselves by what they do not believe_

Positive assertions are necessary. Champion science and reason_

It is irrational to take a hostile or condescending attitude toward religion because by doing so we virtually guarantee that religious people will respond in kind_

As Carl Sagan cautioned_’You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don’t see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it’_

In the words of_Mart­in Luther King, Jr_’_Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred_

If atheists do not want theists to prejudge them in a negative light, then they must not do unto theists the same_

As long as religion does not threaten science and freedom, we should be respectful and tolerant_

One may be tempted to state that at least the four follow the advise about champion science and reason. However, gone are the days when scientists in a lab coat were virtually considered infallible in their pronouncements. Modern day people are too well informed and can readily parse a scientist’s statements into actual observation on the one side and pure worldview biased interpretation on the other.
As far as reason, this is also an area in which the top four fail miserably having had their attempts at reason exposed for the emotive assertions that they really are.

Adolf Hitler / Nazism / Communism

Da Vinci Code / Angels and Demons / Templars, etc.

Find it Fast – Fast Facts

Judaism (Rabbinic, Messianic, etc.)

Recommendations for the Moment

Visuals – Illustrations and Photos

Some atheists cannot seem to make up their mind as to whether Judeo-Christianity is to be besmirched because it reduces humanity to lowly, wretched sinners or because it exalts humanity to made in God’s image unique creatures.

Either way, Judeo-Christianity is to be besmirched; on this atheists agree, but why remains a subject for atheism’s cognitive dissonance.

On October 11, 2007 AD at 5:30 pm “A debate, dialogue, and discussion” took place between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath which was entitled “Poison or Cure? Religious Belief in the Modern World” (find the transcript here, find the video here).

I wanted to consider a few statements made by Christopher Hitchens:

Well they don’t in and of themselves, but I just would submit the likelihood that what Edwin Hubble saw through that telescope, the red light escaping at speeds that none of us here are really capable of imagining towards the ultimate expansion and collapse of the universe-that all that happened so we could be sitting here is to me in the very, very highest degree, improbable.

That a process of evolution by natural selection just on our own tiny little planet which in its own tiny little solar system is the only one on which life can be supported, everywhere else just in our little system, all the other rocks are either much too hot or much too cold to support life as is much of our planet which we know has for a long time been, not recently either, on a climatic knife edge and which is still cooling, only one, and on this planet, 99.8 percent of every species that ever evolved died out. This is an extraordinary way I think to make sure that Homo sapians come to Georgetown.

It is the, only the most extraordinarily self-centered species, could imagine that all this was going on for our sake, that’s why I don’t like people saying that their religious faith is modest or humble. It’s the reverse, it’s unbelievably soliphistic and that’s why you get people apparently abject, much too abject for my taste like Mother Teresa. Oh, I’m so humbled I can hardly bother to feed myself, but out of my way because I’m on a mission from God. No, this is arrogance, as a matter of fact, and it claims to know what it cannot know.

I could say that Einstein was right when he said the miracle is, of the natural order, the miracle is there are no miracles. Understand this paradox: the natural order doesn’t interrupt itself. The sun doesn’t stand still at midday. God doesn’t catch a child as a kid falls out of a window or heal lepers around him and none of that ever happens.

There are some points worth dissecting however, since Christopher Hitchens plays one tune compulsively I will make reference to posts which already cover the topic at hand.

I believe that this qualifies for the label of an argument from personal incredulity: he finds it incredulous, peppers it with emotive and disjoined assertions and concludes that we are just here and that’s all and the proof is that here we are and that’s all-which is the very pinnacle of atheistic philosophy.
Whether we are incapable of imagining the speeds at which the red shift occurs and that Christopher Hitchens decided that it is “very, very highest degree, improbable” that this has any anthropic meaning is subjective.

His reference to “our own tiny little planet which in its own tiny little solar system is the only one on which life can be supported_” was the premise of my essay post Atheism and the Cosmic Insignificance of Humanity and Everything. He fails to note that the Bible beat him to that punch millennia ago. Yet, he comes to one conclusion while the Bible comes to another-his conclusion does not necessarily follow from his premise.

Furthermore, the point of humanity’s insignificance when compared to the cosmic scale is quite the coincidence because that it exactly what one protein, in one DNA strand, in one cell, in the nail of my left pinky toe said about the rest of my body.

The statement that “99.8 percent of every species that ever evolved died out” I have dealt with in the essay New Atheism – Further Evidence of Its Deleterious Effects. Extinction rate has nothing to do with asserting either creation via intelligent design nor it-just-happened-to-happen-ism. Engineers know all about parts that are designed to wear out; why could not the intelligent designer also employ this design feature? Because to Christopher Hitchens it is extraordinary? But this is merely another argument from personal incredulity.

The statement about creation occurring “for our sake” and that it is a fallacy to correlate religious faith with modesty or humility was dealt with in my essay The Quadripartite Equine Riders. This, again, is an argument from personal incredulity because it would not be immodest or not humble to believe that the universe is going on for our sake if it is going on for our sake-it would be a mere statement of unbiased fact.
However, even according to the anthropic principle the purpose of the universe is not restricted to our sake since we do not know what other purposes the creator may have. In fact, the anthropic principle is about life in general and not just human life in particular.

FYI: astronomer Hugh Ross, Ph.D. has provided a PDF file with some of the fine tuning in the universe at this link.

Note that Christopher Hitchens and those who share his anti-supposed-hyper-anthropocentrism outlook have not escaped that which they condemn (activist atheists rarely do) as they also hold to concept of the hyper exaltation of humanity as being the pinnacle of evolution.

Certainly, Christopher Hitchens replaces the concept of miracle with luck, guidance with chance, design with happenstance, etc. Yet, his view holds that human beings are the pinnacle and even though there is no purpose towards design still; the universe, the Solar System, the Earth and all of the minutia related to them-from the natural laws, to orbits, positioning, etc.-all happenstantially came to produces us.

Note also that this is not so much a statement about the human nature or that of, let us say, the truly born again (rather than referencing generic “religious” people) as it is a psychologically revealing statement about Christopher Hitchens’ own nature, apparently. There is no logical and not necessarily an emotional relation between exaltation and lack of humility. In fact, biblically speaking; humility follows from exaltation.
From Moses asking God, “Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11 – I detailed Moses’ scientist like reactions to this event here) to Isaiah stating, “I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple_Woe is me! For I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:1, 5) and John the Baptist stating of Jesus, “There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose” (Mark 1:7). Humility is evidence in true believers and is commensurate with the very concept of meekness.

Now, Christopher Hitchens has certainly thoroughly criticized Mother Teresa but is he really asserting that she was full of herself, immodest or not humble?
Furthermore, I do not recall that there is any Darwinian constraint against lack of humility or modesty. Are Christopher Hitchens’ condemnation based on some atheistic morality? Is it a pet peeve? Who knows; he is simply behaving in a typical atheist fashion; he deals out condemnation without a premise and considers his own outrage as justification.

Question: how do Christopher Hitchens and Albert Einstein know that “there are no miracles”?
Answer: they do not.

Note, however, that he stacks the deck of his argument; he qualifies it thusly, “the natural order doesn’t interrupt itself.”Firstly, we should ask “How do you know”? Perhaps there are as of yet undiscovered natural laws or rare and unexpected combinations of known laws interacting in manners that would cause nature to interrupt itself.

Secondly, no one claims that the natural order does interrupt itself but rather claim that it is logically sound that God, who invented the natural order, can and does interrupt it at will. This was one of the points I made in the post On Natural Laws and Miracles ; just as an engineer can fine tune and turn an engine on and off, or change the RPMs God can do likewise with His creation because He is outside of the engine.

That “none of that ever happens” is clearly a worldview-adherence-well-within-the-box-atheist-groupthink-assertion. For, how does, or how could, he know that none of that ever happens?
He could investigate each and every miracle claim and conclude that a miracle did not occur. He can somehow gain knowledge of each and every time that, for instance, a child did not fall out of a window and determine that God did not stop the child from falling.

Clearly, such research is impossible to accomplish. Thus, he must rely on his chosen worldview which tells him, a priori, that none of that ever happens. He possesses a defeater for any and every miracle claim and it is a view that is forced upon him by his atheism: miracles do not happen.

How does he know that miracles do not happen? Because there is no evidence for miracles happening. And why is there no evidence for miracles happening? Because miracles do not happen. But can nothing count as evidence of a miracle? No, because since miracles do not happen evidence for the occurrence of a miracle is impossible.
You see the problem? This anti-freethought view would cause one to deny the evidence even if they personally witnessed a miracle.

As one time atheist C. S. Lewis stated in his response to David Hume’s arguments against miracles:

Now of course we must agree with Hume that if there is absolutely “uniform experience” against miracles, if in other words they have never happened, why then they never have.

Unfortunately we know the experience against them to be uniform only if we know that all the reports of them are false. And we can know all the reports to be false only if we know already that miracles have never occurred. In fact, we are arguing in a circle.1

As usual, Christopher Hitchens, as a debater, is clever, charming, funny, emotive, condemnatory, exiting, and assertive but as usual piled fallacy upon fallacy until he builds a tel of phantasmagoric proportions.

This being March 23, 2009 AD we are marking the second anniversary of Bill Maher’s, hopefully, all time low.

Bill Maher is well known for his political views, which will not be discussed here. He is also known for his condemnation of Christianity and the Bible, which will also not be discussed here. What I do wish to discuss is Episode #506 of “Real Time With Bill Maher” which aired on March 23, 2007 AD.

When the show originally aired I gave it two hearings in order to ensure that I was really hearing what I thought I was hearing. Furthermore, I read the transcript in order to be triply certain and in order to treat the topic fairly and accurately. Below I provide the transcript of the portion of the show that I wish to address here.

I copied the transcript directly from Bill Maher’s website (trans. found here). The transcript even includes “[laughter]” and “[applause]” notations which are interesting as they assist us in gauging audience reaction.

An audience who are typically of such quality that they even managed to get on Christopher Hitchens’ nerves.

The “[expletive removed]” notations are my own.

I could think of many emotionally charge terms to describe what I am referring to as Bill Maher’s, hopefully, all time low. I say “hopefully” since I sincerely hope that he will not sink any lower, despite his infamous ability for doing so. Yet, the best course of action is to present the transcript, let Bill Maher speak for himself, let you come to your own conclusion and then make my comments.

To set the stage: he is making a male chauvinistic remark that pictures the American troops in Iraq as being male and states that “There’s 150,000 horny GI’s in a country with no_” here he refers to women by a one word vulgar term that reduces them to a particular part of their anatomy, this is followed by “[laughter].”

MAHER: _I was reading in the news this week, this story about Christians in this country, Baptist people, who are sponsoring something called “purity balls.”Now, when I hear about religion – religious people holding balls, I usually think of Catholics. [laughter] [applause] But – but this is the creepiest thing I’ve ever heard.

And I’ve heard some creepy things from the Christian right.

A “purity ball” is like a prom for a dad and his daughter, where dad gets in a tuxedo and the daughter gets in a gown, and they go to this ball, and he puts a ring on her finger and feeds her wedding cake, and she pledges to stay a virgin until she gets married.
And then dad has sex with her in the car. [laughter] [applause] No, no, it doesn’t – it’s not that bad.

[Mayor Shirley] FRANKLIN: It’s not that bad.

MAHER: But, what century are we living in-

[John] LEGEND: That’s just weird. That’s just completely weird. [laughter]

FRANKLIN: It’s all over, though.

MAHER: It’s – it’s in 48 states they are doing this.

LEGEND: Why-

FRANKLIN: It’s all over.

MAHER: And – and, I mean, what era are we living in where the man passes the daughter from dad to the husband? You know, that’s what they used to – that’s what the Taliban does.

LEGEND: Where dad plays husband to the daughter at the prom.

MAHER: Well, you know, they – we went online for their website-[laughter] [he produces a pile of t-shirts] I’m not kidding, these are t-shirts that are available on these “purity ball” websites.Look at this. This is not a joke. [he reads the slogan on each shirt] “Abstinence Avenue – Exit When Married.”[laughter] Look at this one: “Notice: No Trespassing on This Property – My Father is Watching.” [laughter mixed with “ewws”] Look, here’s one on panties!

Now, if you’re close enough to read this.[laughter] I’m guessing the game is up. [laughter] So, we found some others.[laughter] I’m not going to lie; these are the bull[expletive removed] ones we made up that are even funnier. [laughter] “World’s Greatest [expletive removed] tease!” [laughter] [applause]

LEGEND: Oh, no.

MAHER: “I’m With Horny!” [laughter] Oh, I love this one. [laughter] “What Happens in Vegas, Happens to Someone Else.” [laughter] “My Father Went to Third Base and All I Got was this Lousy T-Shirt.” [laughter] [applause] And my favorite.[laughter] [he holds up t-shirt which reads, “My (picture of ‘pussy’cat) Belongs to Daddy.” [laughter] [groans] [applause]

MAHER: All right. So, anyone want to weigh in on this before I talk about the U.S.-

LEGEND: Well, it’s nice that, you know, that dads, you know, want to keep their daughters pure. That’s nice. But this is just weird. [laughter] And, and, and why don’t you want your sons to be virgins, too?

MAHER: If you’re slipping a ring on your daughter’s finger and eating wedding cake, trust me, you’re plotting to [expletive removed] the babysitter. [laughter]

David Frum finally breaks in with a voice of reason:

[DAVID] FRUM: But, here’s something that does need to be said. There is a lot of social science research – and the mayor will know it well – that shows that the relationship that – the close relationship between fathers and children, sons and daughters, has an enormously powerful impact on how those kids turn out in life.In fact, you can cut – if the father is present – you cut the kids’ rate of succumbing to all kinds of problems, from dropping out of school and getting into trouble with the law, from getting pregnant when she’s a teenager, by – by two-thirds. And it is a dramatic thing.

So this – this sounds kind of gross. But there is – but, there is a good thought here that people need to hear, which is, fathers – fathers really matter.

LEGEND: I think fathers need to be realistic with their kids, too. [applause] And I think part of the problem with this same movement of people is they won’t teach about safe sex; they won’t prevent pregnancy that way, by teaching about safe sex.
And I think it’s the same kind of movement that is unrealistic about sex and teenagers that creates more problems than it fixes sometimes.

FRANKLIN: And responsibility of young men.

LEGEND: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Apparently unable to stand a mere few seconds of adult conversation, Bill Maher once again opens up the sewers of his mind:

MAHER: And the statistics show that the kids who do this kind of stuff and take abstinence pledges wind up having a lot more sex than the other kids do.
It’s in the mouth and in the nasty place-[laughter]-but, you know, they keep the-

FRANKLIN: Well, that’s the evidence, yeah. That is – that is the evidence.

MAHER: That’s the evidence. Right.

LEGEND: It doesn’t work. It’s not-

MAHER: That’s right. Look – I mean, look, I’m not the one to talk. A lot of women in the United States have called me “Daddy,” but.[laughter].
I’m not really their “Daddy” is all I’m saying. [laughter]

I understand that the show is a platform for Bill Maher to express himself. I also understand that he is Pavlov and that the audience is there to behave as his trained canines. As you can see above, they laugh and applaud at the drop of a hat, which is the very point of having a live studio audience.

Yet, is anyone actually listening to what he is saying? Was anyone in the audience able to wipe the stars off of their eyes and notice what it was that they thought was so hilarious? I certainly do not know. What I do know is that Bill Maher reached a new low on that day, as did his audience.

Sure, he celebrated when Jerry Falwell passed away (as did Christopher Hitchens). But making fun of, laughing at, and applauding children that are raped by their own parents is a level of malicious perversion that I simply cannot fathom. I actually do not comprehend how any reasonably moral, rational and sane person could reach such depths of darkness. How could anyone derive joy from one of the most predatorily malicious acts which only the most twisted pervert could conceive?

That one would be twisted enough by prejudice to even conceive such thoughts is one thing.That someone would dare to repeat such perversion to anyone else is quite another.That his producers would agree to air it is another thing still.

And that his audience would reward him with encouragement and approval is simply beyond my comprehension.

As it was pointed out to Bill Maher, there is a direct correspondence between adult women who are moral and mentally and emotionally healthy and girls who had healthy, close and strong relationships with their fathers. To what lengths some fathers are forced to go today may be “weird” but it is clearly a sign of desperation when living in what Laura Ingraham has well termed the “pornification of America.” The new scarlet letter is “A” for “abstinence.” Large segments of our population believe that the best thing for children is that all that the world contains should be shoved down their throats as early as humanly possible. Yet, as a parent my job is not only to protect my children but to protect my children’s childhood. There will be plenty of time for them to be chewed up and spit out by the world.

It is interesting that they note that the statistics show that “It doesn’t work.” It is interesting and quite sad. Interesting because it is at this particular place and time that “It doesn’t work.” Imagine a young girl with parents who are concerned for her emotional and physical well being-particularly regarding sexual purity, or let us say: sexual control. On the one hand she has her parent’s advice but on the other she has hordes of people from young to old that believe that she should be corrupted, used, abused, misused, chewed up and spit out as early in life as humanly possible.

Incidentally,

“_a study showing that abstinence-pledged virgin teens were more likely to engage in oral and anal sex in an attempt to create the impression that those teens were more likely to contract an STD_while the study showed that 4.6 percent of the abstinence-pledged teens contracted an STD, this was 35 percent less than the 7 percent of non-pledged teens who also acquired one.”1

Bill Maher’s sentiments are often spurred on by the “They’re gonna do it anyway” crowd. Perhaps this crowd could make a list of the things which our kids are going to do anyway so that we can introduce our kids to whatever it is and provide a safe atmosphere right here at home: condoms, sterile needles, pornography, rolling papers, ecstasy, guns, explosives; whatever they want.

Her parents tell her to have fun and be safe and she sets off into a world saturated with people functioning within pop-culture, Hollywood, the internet, magazines, television, etc., etc., etc. all clamoring for her attention and all urging her to “Just do it.”

What? She got pregnant at 13 years of age? No problem: murder the baby, or raise it without a stable family, have the grandparents raise it, see the child between school and work, shuffle the child between feuding parents, so what?
What? She contracted a sexually transmitted disease? No problem: curse God and die.

Have you ever tried telling someone that you will not allow your child to watch this or that? Take a lozenge because the very same people who one second are telling you that if you do not like it just turn it off will be jumping down your throat accusing you of brainwashing-child abuse.
“You can’t protect your children forever” they say. No, but can I please have a few years at least before you place the weight of the ills, worries and filth of the world right on their little tiny fragile shoulders? What we have today is precisely what we have when we let the “It doesn’t work,” “They’re gonna do it anyway” and “You can’t protect your children forever” crowd rule the day.

No, I do not believe in keeping kids locked in the house with a naivety about life “out there.” But the fact is that when the majority of people believe in letting children be children, that once they grow up they can get married and engage in copulation, that only then can they have children, and then stay married until death do them part- guess what? It did work. It worked for generation, it worked for millennia and it can work again. The point being that when this view is the norm the lifestyle that follow logically from it were the norm.

The bottom line is that if Christian principles were followed we would not have the amount of sexuality related problems we have today: adultery, abortion, abandonment of children, children being forced to live out of a suitcase, shuffled between un-cohabitating parents, sexually transmitted diseases, single parents, teen pregnancy, to name a few.
A teenager with an STD would be an oddity. As it stands today, an abstinent teenager is an oddity and something to be mocked. I certainly understand that not everyone will follow Christian (or good old fashioned common sense) principles related to sexuality. Of course, neither will everyone follow the do what thou wilt principles that have brought us where we are today.
Thus, real and logical question is: towards what shall we strive? Because it is that towards which we strive that will determine our general direction.

Ultimately, the issue that we took on here is Bill Maher’s subjective worldview-which has brought him to the most troublesome point of laughing at children that are raped by their own fathers-is what it says about Bill Maher (and his producers, audience, supporters, defenders, etc.).Note that, quite often, when someone expresses such opinions they are not really expressing their opinions on the subject at hand but expressing what is deep within the recesses of their hearts, souls and minds, “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34). Unless Bill Maher is prepared to offer the name of even one single father who took his daughter to such an event and raped her we have to assume that their motivation is pure. It is Bill Maher who filters a beautiful, innocent and pure act through the sewer of his heart and mind and demonstrates what is to be found therein.

He is quite obviously a very, very troubled person and is in desperate need of love and prayer. Think back, or read back, through what he said and you will find just how twisted his thoughts are. He sees a father’s love for his little girl and imagines him raping her. What about the t-shirts that were “even funnier”? He not only had to conceive of such twisted perversion but share it with others to the point of having someone actually manufacture the t-shirts.

Please pardon my tone, I do not mean to simply shoot off emotionally charged statements as much as this is a very emotional issue for me. The fact is that parents have tremendous influence over their children. Particularly, fathers have tremendous influence over their daughters. They should not be ashamed of this, embarrassed by this, nor dissuaded from being the most loving, caring and faithful male role models in their daughter’s lives. It is out of sheer desperation that father’s feel forced to go to such lengths as purity balls.

Another interesting correlation between fathers and children was studied and reported on by Prof. Paul C. Vitz. He surveyed the home lives of the world’s most influential secularists/atheists. Playing off of Sigmund Freud’s speculation about belief in God being derived from a desire to have a father figure Prof. Paul Vitz demonstrates that many of these people rejected God due to having poor relationships with their fathers, or due to their father’s absence, or due to their rebellion against their fathers. They rejected God (the father figure) because they rejected their own fathers. Prof. Paul Vitz wrote a book on this subject entitled, “Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism.” A lecture on the subject is available online. But this is probably just opening up another can of worms_

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gluttons for punishment may further read about Bill Maher in the following posts:

Bill Maher’s Cinematic Endeavor

BOBA Digest, part 3: Atheism’s Chihuahua

Expelled from Religulous

A fishing hook is a tiny piece of metal by which a whole fish may be veered off its course and captured. The Hook is a tactic used by false Christian teachers and various cults. It is a way for a deceiver to Hook the attention of a person, veer them off course and finally capture them.
One examples of The Hook is syncretistic 1 religions, which when in the West will use mostly out of context Biblical quotes to make their point and back up their beliefs. They have a list as long as your arm of the super prophets sent by God through the ages and they are kind enough to include Christ in there somewhere, for the sake of appeal.
Why is it that people who say Christ is a good teacher, or a prophet, don’t do what Christ said to do? When a non-Christian says that Christ is a prophet or good teacher it should send up a big red flag, watch out for The Hook.
Godet wrote, “Either Jesus is in reality a perfect saint, as his consciousness testifies, or else he is the blindest and most hardened of mankind, since his consciousness has not made him aware of the elementary fact of moral life-the fact of which every child is already inwardly aware, even before attention is drawn to it-the presence of sin in him.”2
To a Christian, Jesus Christ is a good teacher, in fact the best. He is a prophet, in fact the greatest prophet ever sent from God and is Himself God in the flesh, He is Immanuel-God with us. Imagine if someone said that there was a great teacher at a certain school and you went to listen to the teacher, you walk in and the teacher is claiming to be God and accepting worship. He is forgiving sins and preaching about hell more than any other prophet. He is rubbing mud and spit in a blind man’s eyes and correcting the top religious leaders of the day.
He is claiming to be the one and only way to God and claims that he will return from the grave. Would you really leave there thinking, “Now there is a good teacher”? No, in fact you would run away as fast as possible. However, if that teacher has fulfilled numerous prophecies concerning the coming of the Messiah and has risen from the dead, etc., then he is more than a good teacher or prophet. “If Jesus is the Messiah at all, then He is the Messiah for all.”3However, we should understand why non-Christians say that Jesus is merely a good teacher or even a prophet. It is because syncretistic religions don’t know where to draw the line, also they don’t want to leave anybody out and they therefore try to include a little piece of every belief in their list of acceptables.Moreover, they pick and choose the things that Jesus said that agree with them, they accept the sugarcoated things to be the little bit of truth that is left in the Bible. At the same time they will reject everything else He said as corruption of the Scriptures by man.

Jesus said, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not put into practice what I teach you?” (Luke 6:46). Likewise, He may say, “Why do you call me ‘God’s prophet’ and not put into practice what I teach you?” or “Why do you call me a ‘good moral teacher’ and not put into practice what I teach you?”

Because Jesus also said, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.'” (Matthew 7:21-23).
Former atheist turned Christian, C. S. Lewis, wrote:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him; ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.
He would either be a lunatic on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”4

Moreover, the syncretistic religions will use the Bible as a Hook by peeking the interest of those who were raised Christian yet are not living the Christian life, or because it is more usual and comfortable in the West. They will quote the Bible so that your ears perk up (The Hook is in place). Then they will throw in New-Age or some such ideas that somehow seem to relate to Biblical ideas (The Hook is now veering you off course).Soon you see and accept that all religions teach the same basic things and that all of them are ways to God (you have now been captured). All roads do indeed lead to God, but one leads to the loving embrace of forgiveness and eternal communion with God and all others lead to a just judgment and eternal separation from God (and this by your own choice).

Do all religions teach the same things? Before I actually studied various religions for myself my answer was yes. However, even a surface study of a few religions will make it obvious that the similarities are not enough glue to hold them together, the differences are numerous and irreconcilable.

In the case of the many prophets, of many cultures throughout time theory, a syncretistic approach is nonsensical, it would mean that God is either very confused or a liar. Through one prophet God says that we are reincarnated over and over, next He says you are born once and you die once. Through one prophet God says that all roads lead to heaven and that your goodness is enough to buy you eternal life, next He says that there is only one way to heaven and that our own righteousness is as filthy rags.Through one prophet God says that the material world the universe and everything in it is an illusion, next He claims to have created the heavens and the earth. Through one prophet God says that we are divine or can attain god-hood, next He says that there is one God and that we are His creation and will always be under His direction. Through one prophet God says that there is one or a few specific representatives of His on earth and they will interpret His will for us, next He says that we all have the ability to communicate with Him personally.Through one prophet God reveals itself to be polytheistic, pantheistic, or henotheistic next He says that there is only one God, etc. etc. etc. this could go on and on, we are just barely scratching the surface.

What about the similarities? As much as we have a sin nature, God has placed within us basic moral ideals. By our free will we can, and often do, try to ignore or reprogram this internal guidepost yet, it is there nonetheless. We know that satan and his angels can disguise themselves as angels of light, (see 2nd Corinthians 11:13-14) that is The Hook.

If they appeared as hideous creatures not many people would accept them yet, they look beautiful and make people feel warm and fuzzy inside and they use these subjective emotions to capture them. After that kind of experience it is hard to get the person to accept that they have been deceived because it most likely was the most spiritual, holy and wonderful experience of their lives.
Francis Beckwith has written,

“All roads lead to God, I’ve heard so many people say. But when they get to Jonestown. They beg to look the other way.”5

English journalist, Steve Turner has sarcastically written,

“We believe that all religions are basically the same-at least the one that we read was. They all believe in love and goodness. They only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.”6

The fact that love, peace and a certain amount of tolerance are a part of most religious teachings is that these things are from God and He does not leave people without guidance, whether they know Him or not. Secondly, these things make sense to the common man for whom getting along is better than fighting.The religions and cults of the world appeal because their Hook is to expose a morsel of truth that appeals to the morals standard within and then they veer you off into the deception capturing you with a sugarcoated lie. The best lie has some truth to it in order to make it appear reasonable. This is the idea behind the concept of misinformation, a whopper of a lie is wrapped around a little bit of truth and it comes across as reliable while the truth or falsehood within is mixed together and indecipherable.In order to combine so many beliefs one must either concoct the most convoluted combination of mutually exclusive ideas and practices. Or else, one must subjectively invent their own religion by sifting through all beliefs to come up with an assumed tie that binds. In reality this means gutting all those beliefs by rejecting the majority of their teachings and holding to the little morsels that agree with our preconceived notions. Which in reality renders all those beliefs null and void because they are being ripped from the context that gives them their meaning in the first place.Religious syncretism attempts to mix religions like oil and water, when oil and water are shaken and stirred hard enough they create the illusion of cohesion. However, when we let the mixture sit for a moment, we take a step back and look again we soon see that the cohesion is indeed an illusion and it begins to unravel immediately.

Consider the encouragement of the Unitarian Church:

“All individuals should be encouraged to develop their own personal theology.”7 And this one from Unitarian Universalists, “We believe that personal experience, conscience, and reason should be the final authorities in religion. In the end religious authority lies not in a book, person, or institution, but in ourselves.”8

Basing our concept of truth, our worldview, on subjective emotions is sort of like being addicted to placebos. A placebo may be a good short or even long-term fix, but to rely on them solely is foolish and very dangerous. Recently a Mormon missionary encouraged me to pray as to whether Mormonism was or was not of God.I explained that I have to test the spirit (that would bring the answer) to see whether it is from God. I would have to have some physical evidence by which to test it, i.e. the evidence of the reliability of the Bible. The response was “Don’t rely on the evidence.”If, God forbid, someone did something terrible to our family would we dare go to court and tell the judge to ignore all the evidence and pass a ruling based solely on his feelings?

Vernon C. Grounds points out:

“To argue that any religion is good enough provided its
followers are sincere is to make sincerity the final test of truth. But the ordinary experience of life continually prove that a man may be sincerely wrong, and if so, all his sincerity does not avert pain and sorrow and disaster….Unless a religion squares with the facts of history and human experience; and unless it agrees with the truth of God which is the underlying reality of all things, that religion, however sincere its followers may be, is not good enough. Truth, after all, is truth.”9

Another big Hook is the results of self-realization when we look deep within ourselves all of us basically see the same things yet, this self-realization produces very different results. When some see what is really deep down inside, the filth, the sin, the wrong, the evil, they tell themselves that this cannot possibly be the real me, they are sure that deep down inside they truly are a good person, though all evidence is to the contrary.
Some consider themselves divine, therefore seeing their true selves they are assured that they have been corrupted by this world from their lofty position as higher beings. In these cases a person seeks further and deeper within to find their true selves, this often involves all kinds of esoteric and occult beliefs and practices.10
Moreover, because they believe that deep down they are good, divine beings they place themselves in the position of ultimate authority. They are the ones who decide right from wrong, good from evil, truth from falsehood, even the nature and actions of God, if, they choose to believe in a higher power beyond themselves. They decide between all things by their emotions, by pure subjectivity, they are the judge and jury. This is especially true of the New-Age beliefs of the enlightened.
Yet, the fact is that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). The Hook in this case is to see the truth of who we are and yet, to be veered of by accepting the idea that we can ultimately help, fix, or save ourselves.Others have the very same experience of looking within and find the very same things yet they will see the truth which is that deep down there is nothing more than more filth.

In this case they are honest enough to admit that they do not belong in the place of ultimate authority, that they are not at all divine, and that there is no salvation to come from the Self but is to come from the Lord God Almighty Jesus Christ.

The Hook is a well hidden trap, which we must be careful to avoid. We do this by prayer, by study, by discernment, by being as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves. …we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting…

—Ephesians 4:14

John Lennon’s atheist anthem “Imagine” has gotten so much airplay by the New Atheists.1 Thus, it seems apropos to mention Bob Dylan’s song “Gotta Serve Somebody” in which he sings:

You’re gonna have to serve some body,Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

My title makes reference to totalitarian, dictatorial and tyrannical due to the fact that Christopher Hitchens has employed each of these terms in referring to his view of what Judeo-Christian theology proposes.

Christopher Hitchens is an adherent of the sect of atheism that does not positively affirm God’s non-existence. Yet, he describes himself as an “anti-theist.” He has purposefully set himself up as an opponent to God.

If God is totalitarian, dictatorial and tyrannical why reject Him and Him alone for being so? After all, let us assume that God does not exist and we live in a strictly materialistic universe. Christopher Hitchens is now subject to the totalitarian, dictatorial and tyrannical rule of entropy, hunger and thirst, evolution, death, gravity, genetics and countless other things which demand upon him.
I did not ask to be born and do not ask to be annihilated at death. Christopher Hitchens appears to be particularly taken with smoking, consuming adult beverages and copulation.

But why reject God alone for a presumed totalitarian/dictatorial/tyranny?

This is the heart of anti-theism.

This is man in rebellion.

This is God in the hands of an angry sinner.

God stated, “You shall have no other gods before me,” the atheist states, “I shall have not other gods before me.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Tomorrow we will consider the life of our thoughts.

John Piper (here) and Frank Turek (here) have also considered Christopher Hitchens comments on totalitarian-dictatorial-tyranny.

On October 11, 2007 AD at 5:30 pm a “A debate, dialogue, and discussion” took place between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath which was entitled “Poison or Cure? Religious Belief in the Modern World.”

Part I: Isaac and Jesus as Sacrifices Part II: Optional or Imposed Soter?

Part III: We Don’t Want it and God Does Not Either

Isaac and Jesus as Sacrifices:
What I wish to address in this essay is something that is typical of the New Atheists and particularly common to Christopher Hitchens. What I am referencing are emotionally charged arguments from outrage that are peppered with fallacious assumptions and inaccuracies.

When I heard, and then read, the statements by Christopher Hitchens that I will here reproduce I empathized with him, I felt a little shot of adrenalin and understood the emotional appeal. However, I could not help but notice that his statement is jam-packed with error. It is at times such as these that we must slow down, take a deep breath, separate the emotional excitement from the determination of accuracy and thusly, dissect the argument.

This is the statement to which I am referring and to which I will respond in a three part essay:

“Yes, of course I’ve emancipated myself from all that nonsense and I wish you would do so, too. I’m saying when you say it’s voluntary, it’s up to you, it’s entirely optional, I don’t think it’s any more optional than Abraham saying to his son do you want to come for a long and gloomy walk, because God seems to be telling me to do something that had better be moral. Otherwise, it would have to be said that God had taken a perfectly normal person and asked him to commit an atrocity. Now where else could that have come from?

Millions of people every year celebrate this act of sadomasochism as if it proved that God loved us so much that he’d make us kill our own children and then he decides to love us so much he’ll kill one of his own.

You [Dr. McGrath] said in a debate with Richard Dawkins that the great thing about God is he knows what it’s like to lose a son.

Now I want you ladies and gentlemen to ponder that expression for just a moment. First, it’s self-evident of, if the story is true, which I don’t think it is, it’s self-evidently not the case, even in the narrative. He doesn’t lose a son, he lends one.

He doesn’t offer one because no one’s demanded it. There’s no problem that has so far been identified in the human species that demands a human sacrifice. For what problem, for what ill is this a cure? There’s no argument, it’s imposed upon you — I’m doing this because the prophets said I would and I’m going to have the boy tortured to death in public to fulfill ancient screeds of bronze age Judaism. But wait, I don’t want it. I don’t need it. I don’t feel better for it. I feel very uneasy about it. Well that’s a pity, because then you’re going to be cast into eternal fire.

This is no way to talk. I don’t like to be addressed in that tone of voice. I don’t want torture, don’t want human sacrifice, don’t want authoritarian blood lettings, smoking temples and altars, incantations of priests around, don’t want it, can’t think of a single thing it will make better about our veil of tears.”

Let us parse the statement and attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff.

For whatever it is worth, let us begin by noting that, as an atheist (actually, self-professed “antitheist”), Christopher Hitchens stands head and shoulders above the overwhelming majority of the billions of human who have ever existed in the history of the world. He, yes he, has emancipated himself from all that nonsense and he can only wish that you would become likewise enlightened, “I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will live as one”-John Lennon, Imagine.

We will come to the issue of “optional” in part II. It may happened some day and I patiently away for the day when one, even one single, New Atheist demonstrates the least bit of understanding about Abraham being asked to sacrifice Isaac. I am not stating that I expect them to elucidate esoteric minutia but to simply read the text in order to ascertain what it actually states, perhaps have the slightest bit of knowledge of the historical context and, and this is key, accurately represent what the text states.

Succinctly stated: Abraham is told by the God whom he is just getting to know that he should sacrifice Isaac. Abraham does not question it because according to the worship systems de jour this was standard operating procedure. Abraham sets out to carry out the sacrifice (even while indicating that he understood that Isaac would not die1). God ends up telling Abraham to not sacrifice Isaac. Thus, God, the God of the Bible, proves from the outset in His dealings with the Father of Judaism (and by extension, Christianity and by further extension, Islam) that He is not like the other gods and does not accept human sacrifice. It is also very noteworthy that the whole episode is saturated with symbolism which I have drawn out in the Some Jewish Comments and Symbolism section of this essay.

I have dealt with this issue in a few essays already and if you are interested you will get a fuller understanding of the issues involved by reading my response to Prof. Richard Dawkins’ mishandling on this text in my essay, Planting God More Firmly on His Throne.
Also see the “Child Sacrifice: Sanctioned and ‘the right thing to do’?” section of my essay, Dan Barker’s Scriptural Misinterpretations and Misapplications.
Also, in Dan Barker – On His Agnosis.
Also, the “Children: Beatings, Stubbornness, Mockers and Sacrifice” section of my essay, Positive Atheism – Cliff Walker : Weak Bible Week Poster.
Lastly, the “Atrocious Human Sacrifice” section of my essay, Positive Atheism – Cliff Walker : Relative Ethics and Absolute Condemnations.

Moloch

While the Bible does describe Jesus as a sacrifice for our sins it is contrived to consider Jesus “a human sacrifice” because human beings did not offer Jesus as a human sacrifice to God, upon an altar, in a temple or any such thing. Jesus was a God sacrifice. Christopher Hitchens states that, “He doesn’t lose a son, he lends one,” apparently playing off of the concept of eternal life according to which death does not end life but only ends life on earth. Of course, the Bible does not use “lose” or “lend” but “gave”-“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

One of life’s greatest mysteries is why Dan Barker is considered an apt representative of atheism and an able debater. During his debate with Kyle Butt that was entitled “Does the God of the Bible Exist?” (hear it here) and which took place on Charles Darwin’s birthday he, yet again, premised his credentials upon being not only an ex-Christian, mind you, but an ex-pastor.

I must say that the more Dan Barker boasts of being an ex-pastor the more there occurs within the inner recesses of my brain an exponential increase in my shock as his stunning lack of knowledge of even the most basic concepts and contents of the Bible.

As for Kyle Butt, one thing that comes through very clearly in the debate is that he is a careful researcher and has given Dan Barker enough credit to carefully consider his positions and statements; he knows where Dan Barker made certain statements and cities Dan Barker’s books and even the page number, he has also double checked references that Dan Barker has provided in his books and is able to elucidate these by giving a greater scope than that which Dan Baker chose to provide by self-serving selective allusions.

Dan Barker employs two favorite cheap debater’s tricks:

1) In appealing to the “problem of evil” he pulls on the heartstrings of the audience by referencing, you guessed it, the children. It is not that the subject is taboo or, in and of itself, fallacious but that he makes it a habit of attempting to bypass his audience’s intellect and getting them to focus on their emotional responses.
The advantage of this tactic is that it establishes an emotional, empathetic, sympathetic connection with the speaker. Once the audience is busy experiencing emotions what has intellect to say? How do you argue against an emotion? Any rational counter argument will likely come across as being heartless and utterly ineffective because emotions are tangible while arguments are ethereal abstract concepts.

2) The other tactic is also a favorite of Christopher Hitchens (as I pointed out here) and it is akin to the fallacy of elephant hurling. In his opening remarks Dan Barker claims that we can know that the God of the Bible does not exist because there are contradictions in the Bible with regards to His nature.
First of all, it should be noted that he is appealing to the Judeo-Christian worldview as a premise for his argument. No, not by referencing the Bible but by appealing to the laws of logic (find an argument for God’s existence from the laws of logic here). If atheistic evolution is a fact then, just like everything else, the laws of logic evolved or are still evolving. Thus, in order to argue against God’s existence by appealing to the laws of logic Dan Barker would have present evidence that when the Bible was written the law of non-contradiction was in affect and/or evidence the evolution of the law.What Dan Barker does is to, in rapid fire succession, shoot off 14 alleged contradictions (plus 6 other alleged reasons why we can know that God does not exist). Kyle Butt mentions this as he pointed out that when a debater shoots off 20 assertions they are doing two things:

1) They are not allowing the audience to digest but are attempting to overwhelm them.
2) They know very well that their opponent simply will not have enough time to respond to each one or perhaps not even half nor a third, etc. Kyle Butt does respond to a few during the course of the debate.

During his first rebuttal period Dan Barker actually manages to sink below merely demonstrating his stunning lack of knowledge of even the most basic concepts and contents of the Bible and poses an argument from Atheist Sunday School: who made God?
In posing an argument from contingency the theist stops at God-a finite regress. Yet, Dan Barker asks, “Why stop there?”-an infinite regress. This argument’s terminology has been updated as “Who designed the designer?” by, as far as I know, Richard Dawkins who made this the very central argument of his book “The God Delusion.”1Succinctly stated the response is that since God is eternal God required no cause therefore, nothing/no one made God/ nothing/no one designed the designer.

But why, it has been asked, as far as I know, since David Hume, could not matter be eternal? Primarily because the very best scientific knowledge at our disposal shows evidence that matter is not eternal (see my correction of a misconception on this matter, pun intended, by the Rational Response Squad‘s Brian Sapient here).

Indeed, it is my contention that God is eternal and required no cause. But why?
Premised upon the cosmological argument which makes clear that everything that begins to exist has a cause it follows logically that since time began to exist time had a cause. Since time began to exist whatever caused time is timeless (infinite or eternal). It is the linear time that makes cause and effect relationships possible: a cause is followed in time by an effect.Yet, since God exists outside of, or without, time; cause and effect relationships are impossible and thus, God is the uncausable first cause: it was God’s first action of creation that brought the space time continuum into being and set cause and effect relationships into motion.

Therefore, in God’s timeless realm there is no such question as “Who made God?” since this is a time space domain based question which simply does not apply.

Yet, there is a lot to be learned from the Atheist Sunday School argument; it asserts that:

It is ignorant and superstitious to believe that God made everything out of nothing.
It is rational and scientific to believe that nothing made everything out of nothing.

It is ignorant and superstitious to believe that God is eternal.
It is rational and scientific to believe that matter is eternal.

God is an effect and must have had a cause.
Matter is the uncaused first cause.

If God made everything, then who made God?
Matter made everything and nothing made matter.

Next we come to a discussion of ethics and morals as Dan Barker states:

There are no objective moral values in the universe, there are not. We make values in our brain, a value is a function of a brain_We make values based upon what we need to survive, what we need to enhance our lives, what we need to avoid pain in our lives and we can make, we make comparisons of those values_a value is relative to an organism_
values can be objectively justified. They’re not objective values because to be a, a value is a function of a brain of a mind right? But to be objective means to exist independently of a mind. So how can you have something in the mind that exists independently of the mind that’s an oxymoron. You cannot have an objective value, you can have values that you can objectively justify_we’re all basically situational ethicists in our daily lives and so is the Bible.

Upon this I can agree, “a value is a function of a brain of a mind right”-indeed, the mind of God.

As to the oxymoron: objectivity is more than just existing independently of a mind, it is free of bias, based on facts, observable, etc. For example, it is objective that the Earth is spherical. This is indeed a reality existing outside of our minds and yet, we can commandeer this objective fact into our minds where the fact resides as it accurately reflects objective reality. Thus, we can have something in the mind that exists independently of the mind because having it in the mind that not automatically transform the objective into the subjective-not if it continues to reflect reality once it takes residence in our minds.

Next, Dan Barker then falls back on his absolutist assertion that morals are to be premised upon “how much harm does this cause” which is, of course, a mere authoritarian argument form personalized dogma-thou shall base morals upon this and this alone; thus saith the Barkerian ethic.

Are we all basically situational ethicists, even the Bible? Not exactly. He is making a category mistake: granting that “we’re all basically situational ethicists” we must understand that these are two vast different sorts of “situational ethics” if they both may indeed be referred to as such.

These two sorts of “situational ethics” are the atheistic or Barkerian and the biblical:
According to the Barkerian; the premise is “how much harm does this cause” or as Dan Barker alternately categorizes it does it cause the least amount of harm to the least amount of people. Now, of course, he presupposes that we ought not to cause harm.

Let us apply this concept, perhaps to the extreme but as a logical outcome: Hitler was acting in a morally Barkerian manner since he asked himself “how much harm does this cause and does it cause the least amount of harm to the least amount of people” and his answer was basically that murdering 12,000,000 people caused the least amount of harm considering the great number of people in the various countries which he had under his power. He sought to benefit the majority Germans by eliminating the minority Jews and others-this would provide much needed resources and territory for the majority Germans.

“Going too far,” you say? This is what Hitler wrote in his Last Will and Testament, “In these three decades I have been actuated solely by love and loyalty to my people in all my thoughts, acts, and life. They gave me the strength to make the most difficult decisions which have ever confronted mortal man.”
Moreover, referencing his alien rape voyeur argument, during the debate Dan Barker proclaims that if it would save humanity he would rape 2,000 women (he would not like it and would consider suicide afterwards but he would do it).

As for biblical “situational ethics” Dan Barker fails to note something which places it and the Barkerian in separate categories: the biblical may be situational but it is premised upon an absolute and ontological foundation while the Barkerian is strictly situational being premised upon Dan Barker’s baseless assertions which amount to nothing but an ethereal concept.

A little later in the debate he attempts to disregard the Ten Commandments as irrelevant because,

only three of which are relevant to modern American law, the other seven are totally irrelevant. The first four have nothing to do with ethics_the atheistic way is actually a superior intellectual and moral way of thinking.

Stating that only three are relevant to modern American law is making modern American law the standard by which to judge the Ten Commandments. Yet, when when he states that the first four Ten Commandments have nothing to do with ethics he fails to note, or notice, that it is the first commandment upon which all true ethics, in fact the ethos itself, are premised, “You shall have no other gods before me.”

Furthermore, in relation to Hitler; Dan Barker asks Kyle Butt if he had heard him correctly, had he stated that Hitler was an atheistic Communist? Kyle Butt responds in the affirmative to which Dan Barker correctly responds that Hitler was not a Communist but a National Socialist and states that Hitler was a Chrisitan. Kyle Butt states that referring to Hitler as a Communist was a simple misstatement and goes on to demonstrate that Hitler, whatever he was, was certainly no Christian by quoting Hitler.

Dan Barker further stated,

Hitler believed in a God, was not atheistic, he talked about the creator all the time, he was a creationist, he credited Jesus as an inspiration for exterminating the Jews, they wore Gott mit uns – God with us on their belt buckles. Those Nazis where Lutherans and Catholics_he was a lousy Christian, I have to admit he was really a weird Christian but he was not an atheist.

These assertions are fallacious in many levels:Primarily that it presupposes that Hitler was honest-he said it so it must be true.Since Hitler was a Christian he defines what is and what is not Christianity.What Hitler claimed or whom he credited does not necessarily reflect reality.

Stating that they wore Gott mit uns fails to ask who this Gott was and it fails to note that Gott mit uns dates to Otto von Bismarck’s 1870 imperial standard and that the SS’s motto was “Meine Ehre hei²t Treue” (my honor is loyalty).

To state that Nazis where Lutherans and Catholics, again, leaves it to them to subjectively define what is and what is not Christianity. Moreover, it proves, by application of the same “logic,” that Communist regime leaders where atheists (because they said so) proves that Communism is atheistic (because the claimed atheism to be its premise) and proves the crimes of Communist citizens, soldiers and Gulag torturers may be blamed on atheism since they were atheists.

As to the statements “he was a creationist_he was not an atheist” let us ask Hitler to describe his view of creation, not when he is merely seeking politically expedient brownie points but when he is actually elucidating his views:

The first step which visibly brought mankind away from the animal world was that which led to the first invention_the struggle with other creatures for his existence and often to provide him with the only means he could adopt to achieve success in the struggle_His first skilled tactics in the struggle with the rest of the animals undoubtedly originated in his management of creatures which possessed special capabilities_all these inventions help man to raise himself higher and higher above the animal world and to separate himself from that world in an absolutely definite way. Hence they serve to elevate the human species and continually to promote its progress_.

Without human beings there is no human idea in this world, therefore the idea as such is always conditioned by the presence of human beings and hence of all the laws which created the precondition for their existence_ideas, which have nothing to do with cold logic as such, but represent only pure expressions of feeling, ethical conceptions, etc., are chained to the existence of men, to whose intellectual imagination and creative power they owe their existence_

This planet once moved through the ether for millions of years without human beings and it can do so again some day if men forget that they owe their higher existence, not to the ideas of a few crazy ideologists, but to the knowledge and ruthless application of Nature’s stern and rigid laws.2

These are not “creationist” views but “atheistic” views. So, he held “atheistic” views but was he an atheist? I will conditionally say “No” but could also argue for his being a pantheistic-atheist. There is a lot more that I could say on this whole issue of Hitler, Christianity and atheism (and on what a “pantheistic-atheist” is) but will withhold until around mid April when I will provide some very detailed essays on this topic.

In referencing the point, agreed upon by both debaters, that truth is not established by majority opinion, Dan Barker references the USA’s founding fathers and states,

women should not vote, women should stay home, women should not go to college, women should not own their own property, this all comes out of the Bible, by the way.

Unfortunately, he does not provide citations so you either have to ignore this statement, take his word for it on authority (the authority of an ex-pastor mind you, he must know what he is talking about), or practice the skepticism which the Bible enjoins upon us (Acts 17:11; 1st Thessalonians 5:21, etc.) and take the time, energy, and trouble to double check his statements.
This was more elephant hurling-like tactics as Dan Barker builds a virtual tel of elephantine fossils. While Kyle Butt could also not respond to each in turn, I can and will. As I have previously elucidated in a post on Biblical Women; in the Bible we find that there women had the right to own land, they were prophetesses (in both testaments), judges, disciples, deaconesses, teachers, worked/owned their own businesses, two OT books are named after women and women were the first at the empty tomb while the male apostles were hiding in fear (see Exodus 15:20; Numbers ch. 27; 2nd Kings 22:14; 2nd Chronicles 34:22; Proverbs 31:16; Isaiah 8:3; Judges 4:4; Luke 2:36; Romans 16:1-2; Acts 16:14, 21:7-9, 9:36, 18:26; Titus 2:3-4).

Moreover, while Pliny the Younger (Plinius Secundus) was Governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor in 112 AD he wrote to Emperor Tarjan in Epistles 10.96-referring to Christians he writes of “two female slaves, who were styled deaconesses.” This again demonstrates a continued Christian practice of having women in leadership and teaching roles.

As it often occurs with various atheists, and Dan Barker in particular, there comes a point when the veneer, the facade, of intellect, rationale and erudition are worn away and expose what is truly fueling the fires of their unbelief: pure rejection of God, open and proud rebellion against God, emotional reactions to various things such as their unwillingness to accept that there is something, someone, up above and beyond them and adherence to the atheist motto, “I shall have no other gods before me”-before the one in their mirror.

Thus, Dan Barker can contain himself no longer and gives vent to a litany of emotive, childlike, capricious rants to the likes of,

if he [God] wants to prove what a big macho man he is by sending someone like me to hell then let him do it. Fine, I’ll go to hell gladly, proudly, knowing that I resisted somebody like, a dictator like that who would create a hell in the first place_.I would say to that God, “You created hell, you go to hell, if you wanna torture me forever fine, prove what a big macho man you are, you do not have my respect!”

Yes, I can feel the adrenaline the emotionally charged excitement but I am also considering whether he is correct. Kyle Butt rights points out that Dan Barker is engaging in an argument from outrage.
And yes, Dan Barker does manage to mention children in promulgating his misunderstanding of what hell is, how children are terrified by the concept, etc. something I have discussed here. He then appeals to the very, very popular but utterly fallacious argument about reward/punishment morality which I have posted about here and here.
I might as well also mention that earlier in the debate he had also demonstrated further lack of knowledge with regards to Abraham being asked to sacrifice Isaac which I have written about here. And also that he does not seem to understand that the human eye is meant to see through the atmosphere while the eyes of ocean dwelling creatures are meant to see though water.

Three points are to be made about Dan Barker’s rage against the God who created hell:

1) God did not created hell for humans.2) In this case, Dan Barker actually elucidates theology accurately.

3) Unbeknownst to him, Dan Barker has solved the “problem of evil.”

1) Matthew 25:41 refers to, “everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” This means that hell was specifically created for beings for whom God’s existence was not an issue, it was not a question. In counter distinction, note that the Qur’an states that hell was created for sinners (Surah 3:131). Thus, God created a place where those who rebelled against Him could get what they wanted-eternal separation from Him.

2) Since hell was created for fallen angelic beings, humans can go there is they want to-if they choose to go there. In his rage against God we see the whole purpose for hell. As it has been said; there are two sort of people, those who say to God “Thy will be done” and those to whom God says, “Thy will be done.” Dan Barker is so very angry at God that he basically challenges Him to send him to hell.Let us imagine that, may God forbid one thousand times, Dan Barker ends up in hell we may imagine that he will be quite happy having done away with God forever yet, note that Dan Barker is in a rage and this is his attitude towards God. Eternity is about experiencing, living, the lives we have ultimately chosen: those who choose acceptance of God accept God eternally and enjoy an eternal relationship with Him while those who choose rejection of God reject God eternally and rage against Him eternally.

Thus, it would seem that being in hell would not endear God to Dan Barker and so he will be eternally enraged with God-eternally rejecting God. Hell is eternal because the sin of those in hell is eternal-they have chosen eternal sin, “I’ll go to hell gladly, proudly.”

Let us also take a moment to carefully note that another emotive tactic was employed by Dan Barker repeatedly during the debate as he referred to hell as a place of “torture.” While it is true that some translations employ the term “torture” this is a misnomer as the implications of the word torture denote something unknown to the Bible.
Torture denotes the infliction of physical pain, while torment denotes mental anguish. Thus, let us be absolutely clear in understanding that nowhere in the whole Bible is it even hinted at that hell is to be pictured as a Gulag-like torture chamber. Neither is it even hinted at that there will be people or demons whose job is to inflict physical pain. Neither is the devil ever pictured as the king of hell but rather, he is pictured as one who suffers like the rest, and indeed more so. With regards to torment; Alfred Edersheim comments thusly with regards to “weeping and the gnashing of teeth”; “In Rabbinic thought the former was connected with sorrow,3 the latter almost always anger4 – not, as generally supposed, with anguish.” 5

3) Dan Barker claims that evil disproves God via the “problem of evil.” Of course, this conclusion is reached by his relying on theology of his own making. It is the God he imagines that is disproved by the existence of evil.
Now, note very carefully that in arguing that, for example, rape is not absolutely immoral Dan Barker stated, “You cannot name an action that is always, absolutely right or wrong, I can think of an exception in any case.” There you have it Dan Barker has solved the problem of evil. This is because, as philosophers commonly affirm, if God has even one reason for “allowing” evil or momentarily allowing it to exist-even one single reason, even a reason of which we are not aware-then the problem of evil is solved. If God be charged with negligence by allowing any evil whatsoever but can says, “I can think of an exception in any case”-problem solved.

Dan Barker mentions that many of what are claimed to be Old Testament messianic prophecies are,

Christian reinterpretations of Old Testament verses they thought where prophecies; especially Matthew. Matthew was fond of digging through the Old Testament and saying, “Oh, there’s a child mentioned here, let’s connect that with the child Jesus,” he was a very sloppy scholar.

Here I must admit that I get very frustrated with Goyim who are, as Dan Barker proves himself to be, very sloppy scholars who do not consider the traditional Midrashic method of Rabbinic interpretation. They do not consider, if they are even aware of them, the various concepts of Jewish interpretation such as remez, peshat and derash.
He also does not understand the traditional Jewish view of dual fulfillment of prophecy whereby a prophecy points to a contemporaneous event and also to a future event. Later this year I will be posting the results of my studies of Rabbinic literature in relation to Jesus, Christianity and prophecy at my apologetics blog and so will merely assert, at the moment, that Dan Barker is simply not considering historical/cultural context with relation to the manner in which Jews, like Matthew and the other Jews who wrote 25 of the 27 New Testament books/epistles, elucidated layers of interpretation.

Lastly, let us consider one shining example of both Dan Barker’s logical capabilities as well as biblical knowledge as he states,

Paul wrote in the Bible, ‘God is not the author of confusion’ but can you think of a single that’s caused more confusion than the Bible?

Excellent point actually, let us consider it slowly and carefully: since God is not the author of confusion it follows logically that whatever confusion is caused by the Bible, or by people’s misunderstandings of it, was not authored by, was not caused by, God. This is not even to mention that the context of the half a verse is that of how to maintain order when the church gathers to worship (1st Corinthians 14:33 and surrounding).

Overall, this was a very informative debate in that Dan Barker presented a litany of atheist bumper sticker slogans while Kyle Butt was not only able to respond aptly but presented clear and concise arguments and refutations.