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In almost record time, A. S. A. Jones has posted "A Response To Farrell Till's Criticism of an Autobiographical Account of an Ex-Atheist" on her website. The haste with which she obviously wrote it no doubt accounts for its superficiality, but since she has posted it, I will accommodate her with a reply to point out that she again said exactly nothing that would give nonbelievers any logical reasons to follow her example and convert to Christianity. On the ii_errancy internet lists, we have had many Christians tell of their personal experiences with Jesus, but none of them was ever able to give any logical reasons why we should believe that those experiences were real. Jones has proven to be no different, and the reply that she wrote to my article was another maze of illogical nonsense that once again proved nothing. I wouldn't even consider her "reply" worth answering, except that she made an attempt to point out errors in the Qur'an. This section of her reply will give me the opportunity to show that any alleged contradiction in the Qur'an, the Book of Mormon, or any other holy book can easily be explained by using the same apologetics that biblical inerrantists use to resolve discrepancies in the Bible.

With 3 children under the age of 7, 2 cats who are constantly barfing up hairballs all over my carpet, a full time job, a school board position, a church committee membership, an apologetics ministry at my church and poker straight hair that I have to curl every morning in order to transform myself into the paradigm of womanly beauty that I am, I don’t even have time to wipe. If lack of time is to be my excuse for superficiality, what is yours? You must have spent days writing all of this, yet, as I will demonstrate, you are in ineffective in arguing your point and managed to totally miss the points being argued. Your response to my response proves one thing – the gainfully employed cannot hope to compete with the retired in matters of verbosity.

I thought that you were cruel and coldhearted, but a truly sadistic person, who knows that his opponent is usually pressed for time, wouldn’t post a counterargument on a three day weekend. He would post it on the Tuesday after. Farrell, you old softie! I love you, too!

I’m looking forward to your response on Quranic ‘errors’. Read carefully what I wrote and pay attention to the specific type of contradiction that I have listed. Hopefully, this hint will help you to avoid aiming at a turkey when you are out to bag a buck.

Those who have seen her "reply" know that she color coded it, to help readers follow who has said what, but I will use the headers Till(1) to tag my original comments, Jones to tag her reply, and Till to tag my replies to her reply. Jones's part will also be italicized; mine will be in ordinary print.

I’ll stick with black and red because it matches the décor of my website. That type of thing counts with us gals.

Till(1):
In the Word is a quarterly journal published by Mark McFall, a former biblical inerrantist, who, despite having seen the folly of trying to defend the inerrancy doctrine, continues to believe that the Bible is in some sense "the word of God." McFall has been a long-term member of the ii_errancy internet list, but during his tenure there, he has resisted requests to explain (1) what the purpose of divine inspiration was if it was not to so guide writers that whatever they recorded would be true information and (2) how one can tell truth from error in the Bible when the information involves matters that cannot be verified by science, logic, or extrabiblical records.

Jones:
Allow me to answer the questions that you put forth to Mark McFall.

1) The purpose of divine inspiration is to make the truth about God’s nature and man’s nature known to man. The narrative vehicles, used to accomplish this, may or may not contain literal truths. A chemistry professor may be teaching his class the truth about PH while misidentifying the type of leaf that he is using in his demonstration. He may be using an oak leaf, when in fact it is a maple leaf. Does this error negate the truth about the principles of PH? No, it does not. Hence, irrelevant error can occur without compromising the greater truth involved.

Till:
Well, I honestly can't understand how the professor could be "using an oak leaf, when in fact it is a maple leaf." I suspect that Jones meant that the professor may have told his students that it was an oak leaf when in fact it was a maple leaf, but it would have been logically impossible for him to have been using in his experiment an oak leaf that was in fact a maple leaf. Whatever she may have meant, we can excuse Jones's ambiguity because she obviously wrote her "reply" in haste.

I do apologize for the grammatical error. My proofreading takes place in direct proportion to the amount of respect that I have for my opponent. For example, I’ve no doubt that Brian Holtz thinks that I am a gap-toothed illiterate. Several members of your errancy list actually tempted me to dangle my participles on purpose, so undeserving of proper grammar were they. (wink)

Be that as it may, her analogous "explanation" for why there may be errors in the Bible is typical of the kind of superficial thinking that we see in those who take the errant-but-still-the-inspired-word-of-God view of the Bible.

I disagree with your use of the adjective ‘superficial’ in the above. Which requires more depth in thought? To say that there is a higher, profound truth present in the literature, or to dismiss a higher truth, based on the presence of perceived errors? If you assigned ‘Animal Farm’ to be read by your students, wouldn’t you accuse a student who described it as ‘a bunch of nonsense because everyone knows that animals can’t talk’ of superficial thinking?

If, for example, the chemistry professor were omnisicient and omnipotent, would he have made the mistake of telling his students that he was using an oak leaf when in fact it was a maple leaf? In other words, we simply want Jones or Mark McFall or Matthew Bell or anyone else with their view of the Bible to give a logical reason why books that were inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity would have errors of any kind in them.

You know, I think that an omniscient, omnipotent deity would do exactly that. I can picture a self-righteous, cocky kid ridiculing the teacher for making such a mistake and following it to your conclusion:

“Don’t listen to the stupid fool! He can’t tell a maple leaf from an oak leaf. He’s a phony! A fraud! He knows nothing about PH and I’ll dip my hand in this beaker of acid to prove it!”

So in your OPINION, a divinely inspired text would have to be inerrant. In my OPINION, it does not. We both have our opinionated reasons for believing what we believe.

In my opinion, the errors are irrelevant.

Allow me to quote myself. Not all of the paradoxes found in the Bible are relevant, but serve as arrows to direct the reader toward higher meaning. The accounts of the death of Judas and many other alleged discrepancies are irrelevant to the truth of God, yet they serve as stumbling blocks to those who are shallow or legalistic in their thought. In this way, the Word of God becomes a sieve, separating its readers through a series of screens. Paul describes this sieve in 1 Cor: 1. Those who have made themselves too big, too self-righteous, get trapped in the holes, while those who have allowed themselves to be made small, pass through to see the hidden truth. Jesus Christ makes reference to his own device of conveying God's truth in parables (Luke 8:10) so that "...though hearing, they may not understand."

I would like to take this opportunity to point out to you that Friedrich Nietzsche, poster boy for existentialism, was very fond of intentionally using words that would be misinterpreted by careless, superficial readers. Walter Kaufmann, who edited Nietzsche's 'Ecce Homo', included this in his introduction:

"Nietzsche had an almost pathological weakness for one particular kind of ambiguity, which, to be sure, is not irremediable: he loved words and phrases that mean one thing out of context and almost the opposite in the context he gives them... The former is bound to lead astray hasty readers, browsers and...nonreaders."

When a man does this type of thing, it is considered a matter of genius. When similar devices are employed in the bible, there is no reason to discount them as foolishness. Of course, it is not the 'hasty' reader that is being sifted out in the Bible, but the spiritual Pharisee who is being left in the dark.”

GOD: And your reason for not paying any honor to the one who was said to have died for your sins?

SKEPTIC: Well! But! One account said two angels and the other said three and then there was this donkey mother and her foal, and, and, everyone knows that snakes can’t talk!

In "Traditional Biblical Inerrancy (3)," I showed that logic will require those who claim that the Bible is the inspired word of God to claim also that it is inerrant in everything that it says, because it is inconceivable that a deity who knows everything there is to know and who can do anything that is logically possible to do and who is omnibenevolent in his relationship to mankind would inspire a revealed guide to heaven that contained errors. Traditional inerrantists realize this, but somehow people like Jones, McFall, and Bell just can't see it, so they talk about an errant Bible that is still in some sense "the inspired word of God."

The reason for introducing these apparent errors, or allowing irrelevant errors, can be found in the Zen philosophy. The Masters of Zen don't seek to enlighten their students with the truth; they seek to confound them in order that they discover the truth for themselves. Herein lies the difference between knowing how to do multiplication and merely memorizing and regurgitating multiplication tables. If the truth about God could be told, we could know ABOUT Him, but in seeking and finding Him for ourselves, we can KNOW Him.

I have yet to find an advocate of the errant-but-still-the-inspired-word-of-God view who can satisfactorily show that errors in a book inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omni-everything deity could contain mistakes.

This is pretty atrocious grammar coming from an English professor. Look at what you wrote. I usually focus only on what my opponent says, but since you felt the need to beat your chest over a few of my mistakes, I don’t feel the need to be above pointing out a few of yours. Yep, you’re as fallible as I am, imagine that.

 Having read Jones's article about her discovery that the Bible revealed to mankind who Jesus was, i. e., the savior of the world, we can now see that she is no more able than others who share her view to give a logical reason for the presence of errors in a book that was so inspired.

The logic in the errors is thus: The errors expose our non-spiritual, Pharisaical, self-righteous way of thinking. We will deny the spiritual need of repentance because bats are mammals, not birds. We will scoff at and make fun of a man dying on a cross because a whale is anatomically incapable of swallowing a man, who subsequently survives the ingestion. We will continue on in our self-righteous glory, because Moses was a murderer, David was an adulterer and murderer and because Lot played hanky panky with his daughters. In other words, God gives us enough rope to hang ourselves.

Jones shot herself in the foot in the very first sentence of her attempt to explain why there are mistakes in the "inspired word of God." She said, "The purpose of divine inspiration is to make the truth about God’s nature and man’s nature known to man," but if this is so, wouldn't the omniscient, omnipotent, omni-everything deity who undertook to make these truths known to man understand that mixing the truths in with errors would be self-defeating? Why would an omnibenevolent deity, who cannot lie (Titus 1:2) and who wants all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:3), mix truth with error in his revealed plan of salvation and thereby run the risk of so confusing some people that they would fail to understand that plan? These are questions that we have unsuccessfully begged Mark McFall and Matthew Bell to answer, and now it seems that A. S. A. Jones is not going to be able to answer them either.

I repeat:

The reason for introducing these apparent errors, or allowing irrelevant errors, can be found in the Zen philosophy. The Masters of Zen don't seek to enlighten their students with the truth; they seek to confound them in order that they discover the truth for themselves. Herein lies the difference between knowing how to do multiplication and merely memorizing and regurgitating multiplication tables. If the truth about God could be told, we could know ABOUT Him, but in seeking and finding Him for ourselves, we can KNOW Him.

Jones:
2) How can one tell that any unverifiable issue is true?

Till:
We can't, and that is precisely the point that Jones either can't see or doesn't want to see. Since so much information in the Bible is unverifiable, any omniscient, omnipotent deity should have known to produce a book that was so unified, so harmonious, so clear in its message that only divine inspiration could account for it. That kind of harmony and unity would have been its own evidence of divine origin. Instead, we have a Bible that is so riddled with confusion, ambiguity, inconsistencies, and such like that it has created warring sects among those who believe that it is "the word of God" and forced even some of its believers to admit that it contains mistakes.

I’m no longer confused by the Bible because I’m no longer self-righteous enough to believe that there is only one way to interpret it, that being my way, and I no longer believe that those who disagree with my interpretation are the ignoramuses that I thought them to be.

All that aside, Jones apparently didn't realize that her question was an admission that much of the information in the Bible is unverifiable, so I will ask her the question that Mark McFall and Matthew Bell have evaded for years on the ii_errancy forum. How can one determine truth from error in an errant Bible? Needless to say, I don't expect any kind of direct answer from her.

Zen Masters don’t give direct answers. Get used to the sound of one hand clapping; Judaism and Christianity are rooted in Eastern philosophy. How can one determine truth from error in the errant writings of men? What is truth? Give me a direct answer. What is the truth about abortion? The truth about morality? What is the truth about opinion and what is the truth about fact?

Jones:
We confront many such unverifiable matters in life. When a person tells you that which cannot be verified, what causes you to believe, or disbelieve, what they have to say? Chances are that you take into consideration the character of the person who is saying it. If the person is a known liar, you will be less inclined to believe him. If the person has a reputation for being honest, you will be more inclined to believe him. A person’s character can make itself known through that person’s actions and words. Christians consider Christ’s character as trustworthy, and therefore, even though we can’t verify that what he says is true, we do trust that he is telling us the truth about God.

Till:
I basically agree with what Jones said here. The only problem is that what she said is applicable only to those whose character can actually be known and to situations that are within the scope of one's empirical understanding of the world. If, for example, I personally know Jones to be someone of integrity and she tells me that she had a flat tire on her car while she was driving in the countryside yesterday morning, I would see no reason to doubt this, because flat tires are common occurrences that comform to our empirical knowledge of the world. If, on the other hand, Jones told me that an alien spaceship landed on the road in front of her while she was driving in the countryside and that lizardlike hominids exited the craft, abducted her, and flew her to their planet, where she saw amazing technological advances before she was returned home, I wouldn't believe her no matter how honest I knew her personal character to be. I would understand that hallucinations or psychological problems would be far more reasonable explanations for her experiences.

I can’t say that I would blame you for not believing me, Farrell.  However, it isn’t just me saying it. In fact, the greater percentage of every culture known to man has been saying it since the dawn of history. I’m not offering you an ad populum fallacy. But if one views God, any god, as a perception, then the atheist is like a blind man running around telling the rest of the world that vision is a deceptive hallucination.

The same would apply to her analogous attempt to prove the inspiration of the Bible. In the first place, I don't know anything at all about the personal integrity and character of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Peter, Paul, and Mary {pun intended), so I have no reason at all to believe what the Bible says about them. How can I know whether they were really people of high integrity or that those who wrote about them or what they wrote about themselves was merely crafted to present them as such? How do I know that some of them even existed at all? For the sake of argument, let's just assume that biblical characters like those named above were real and that their personal integrity was every bit as depicted in the Bible. Why would that be a reason to believe tales that they told about an axehead floating in water, men walking unharmed through the flames of a fiery furnace, a snake and a donkey talking with human voices, the water of a sea parting to let millions of people cross it on dry land, a man walking on water, men and women rising from the dead, etc., etc., etc.? Rational people simply do not believe fantastic tales like these, no matter how much they may personally know the tellers of the tales to be honest and dependable. Jones knows as well as I that if a friend whose integrity is personally known to her should tell her that she saw many people rise from their graves in a cemetery and go into town where they were seen by many other people, she would not believe this, yet she will believe that a similar event claimed in Matthew 27:52-53 actually happened, even though she knows nothing at all about the character and honesty of the person who wrote this yarn. It's in the book, and that is enough for her. That is not critical thinking; it is gullibility.

How gullible were those men of science, who, after having proven mathematically that heavier than air flight was utterly impossible, continued to accuse the Wright brothers of trickery and deception, despite scores of public affidavits and demonstrations testifying to their ability to fly? (www.alternativescience.com) To hear you talk, their year long dismissal of the Wright’s first flight was totally justified by their ‘critical’ thinking. Take this as evidence that skepticism can carry with it its own gullibility.

I don’t believe Biblical claims simply because they are ‘in the book’. The ‘higher truths’ of the Bible revealed to me the truth about myself, something that no other person, and no other book, had been able to do. These higher truths then revealed to me the nature of man, the nature of morality, and the nature of our justice system. No amount of higher education managed to show me the truth about these things. I have found no other book to contain as much truth as does the Bible, and to the discomfort of many skeptics, I am well read. Now what is truth? Can truth be ‘proven’? I realize that we all have our own opinions of what truth is and I don’t expect you to have the same opinion regarding truth as I do. However, in MY opinion, my perception of truth, concerning the aforementioned, matches up with the Biblical presentation of truth, and so you will have to forgive me for having the OPINION that the Bible is trustworthy when it comes to these truths.

Did a whale literally swallow Jonah? I sincerely doubt it, but the story of Jonah is not about the anatomical structural anomalies present in aquatic mammals. It is a story that demonstrates that one who is called by God cannot hide from God. I wouldn’t expect you to know of this truth, since, in your mind, God doesn’t exist. But many Christians who will read this will know exactly what I am saying, and frankly, they are my concern, not you, and not your following.

There is an axiom that says that what proves too much proves nothing at all, and that axiom strikes at the core of Jones's analogy. On the ii_errancy internet list, I often reply to those who post their personal experiences with God or Jesus by simply taking their posts and rewriting them with nothing changed except to substitute Allah, Muhammad, and the Qur'an for references to God, Jesus, and the Bible. If this were done to Jones's analogy above and presented as the personal testimony of a fictional Muslim named Yusef Amasaali, Jones would have no difficulty at all seeing that the analogy proves nothing. The rewitten version below should be read with the understanding that Yusef Amasaali is presenting "evidence" that the Qur'an is the inspired word of Allah.

How can one tell that any unverifiable issue is true? We confront many such unverifiable matters in life. When a person tells you that which cannot be verified, what causes you to believe, or disbelieve, what he has to say? Chances are that you take into consideration the character of the person who is saying it. If the person is a known liar, you will be less inclined to believe him. If the person has a reputation for being honest, you will be more inclined to believe him. A person’s character can make itself known through that person’s actions and words. Muslims consider Muhammad's character as trustworthy, and therefore, even though we can’t verify that what he says is true, we do trust that he is telling us the truth about Allah.

How impressed with the realiability of the Qur'an would Jones be if she received this kind of testimony from a Muslim? If she will answer that question, she will understand just how unimpressed rational people are with her analagous attempts to prove the Bible trustworthy.

Here’s the difference.

The Bible revealed to me the truth about myself and human nature and other verifiable truths.

The Quran revealed to me the truth about myself and human nature and other verifiable truths.

The truths are dependent upon the reality of god as described in both texts. This is what makes religious scripture different from fables and morality plays. So far, two individuals, one reading the Bible and one reading the Quran, have arrived at the same conclusion; that the texts have revealed verifiable truths, which indicate that perhaps God is more than just a concept. These scriptures are allegedly produced when a prophet experiences a first hand perception of God.

What conclusions can we draw from this when we apply the reasoning to other sacred texts? We can argue that the majority of religions contain truths that lead to the conceptual reality of god(s). Once this has been realized, it is no longer a question of does God exist, but which description of God is more plausible.

How do we know which prophet we can trust?

Would you trust the words of a man who claimed that God absolved him from keeping his promises? Because this is exactly what Mohammed did when he broke his promise to his wife. Would you trust a warrior who murdered a sleeping, old man, only for the fact that the old man composed a witty jingle that ridiculed him? Mohammed silenced those who made fun of him by having them murdered while they slept. What did Christ answer when his apostles asked if he should throw down fire upon a village because of its unwelcoming attitude toward them? He said, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of, for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." 

Do you really think that the prophet of Islam is more trustworthy than the prophet of Christianity? Who would you rather have watch over you as you sleep? A man who will prove to die for you, or a man who will prove to slaughter those who lay helpless in their slumber?

What Jones's analogous argumentation shows is that she had the cart before the horse. She first believed the Bible and then used this belief as an argument for converting to Christianity. That she did this is obvious from her analagy above. How, for example, could she have used the character of Jesus and other biblical characters as a basis for trusting that they were "telling us the truth about God" unless she had first believed that these characters were trustworthy, but how could she have believed that they were trustworthy unless she had first believed that what the Bible said about them was true? She is arguing in a circle and apparently can't see it, despite her exceptionally high IQ that she brags about.

You are missing my point entirely.

In reading the Bible as one would Aesop’s Fables, I saw the truth above the ‘error’, above the ‘improbable’, and above the ‘supernatural’.

1)      Since this truth concerned my own nature, I recognized it when I saw it.  (Verifiable Truth#1)

2)      In admitting to the truth about my own nature, I discovered the truth about human nature in general. (Verifiable Truth#2)

3)      In seeing the truth about human nature, I was able to distinguish between human nature and the Bible’s alleged divine nature. In other words, once we know what human nature is, we know, also, what it is not.

4)      The Bible also revealed to me the truth about the legislation of morality (Verifiable Truth#3),and the objective nature of purpose (Verifiable Truth#4), and the inherent value of persons (Verifiable Truth #5).

5)      The philosophy of Christianity encompassed these truths. In other words, the verifiable truths were embraced by doctrine.

Thusly, these characters were proven to be trustworthy by the content of their very words because their words contained verifiable truths, not about themselves, but about me and about people in general.

In summary: The majority of sacred texts contain enough verifiable truths that are dependent upon the reality of god(s) to allow one believe in the reality of god(s). In trying to discern which description of god(s) is the most accurate and trustworthy, we have to examine the trustworthiness and the integrity of the prophet(s) attempting to define the god(s), and we have to weigh this information against the cohesiveness of the entire philosophy.

You say that we have no proof that the gospel writers didn’t lie. We have proof that Mohammed did lie. To say that we have no reason to take the words of the gospel writers over Mohammed’s is illogical.

My article continues....

Till(1):
In issue number 20 of McFall's journal, he published "From Atheism to Christianity," an article by A. S. A. Jones, which as I am writing this has not yet been posted on McFall's website linked to above. When the article is posted, I will revise this reply to it to include a link so that readers can see for themselves that I am not exaggerating when I say that Jones gave no verifiable evidence to support her claim of having found Jesus.

Jones:
My autobiographical account should not be mistaken as an effort to supply an objective, verifiable reason for my conversion. I give my reasons for believing what I believe, not reasons for others to believe what I believe.

Till:
This may have indeed been her purpose in writing the article, but I am reasonably sure that Mark McFall had something else in mind when he published it in his paper. Articles like these are usually published with the hope of influencing readers by example. It is an editor's way of saying, "See how this atheist came to see the truth of Christianity? Why can't you do the same?" I suspect that Jones also had something like this in mind when she wrote the article.

As I said in my first reply to Jones, skeptics also publish articles written by ex-Christians and especially ex-preachers, but I have noticed that the authors of articles like these usually give reasons for having abandoned their faith. Dan Barker's Losing Faith in Faith and Robert Price's Beyond Born Again would be examples of books written by ex-preachers who gave reasons for abandoning their former belief that the Bible is the "word of God." I have also wrtten articles about my deconversion, but in them I tried to give reasons that justified what I had done. In one of them, "Long Day's Journey into Light," I emphasized, among other things, that discovering inconsistencies, contradictions, and other discrepancies in the Bible was sufficient reason to destroy my confidence in the Bible.

Back when I was still a preacher, I knew that if I was going to be a good one, I would need to be familiar with the Bible, so I was determined to learn as much about it as I could. I didn't want to "know" the Bible; I wanted to know it inside out.

This determination led me to put many hours into biblical studies. One method of study that I used was to sit at a desk with several different versions of the Bible opened to what I was going to study during that session. I would read a passage in one version and then the same passage in another version and so on through several versions in both English and French. If on that day I was studying something from the life of Jesus, I would go through this process in Matthew's account and then repeat it for Mark's, Luke's, and John's versions of the same story. Sometimes I would apply the same method to parallel accounts in the Old Testament. I would read from several versions a part of, say, David's life as told in the books of Samuel and then read the same account, if there was one, in 1 Chronicles.

When I was doing these parallel studies, I couldn't help noticing inconsistencies and even outright contradictions in the way the same stories were related. This made me wonder about the marvelous unity and harmony of the scriptures that I had heard so much about in sermons and Bible classes both when I was growing up and attending college. However, one doesn't grow up in a fundamentalist environment and then throw his belief in Bible inerrancy away the very first time he encounters problems that don't quite agree with what he has been taught all of his life. I sincerely believed that there were explanations and solutions to be found. All I had to do was look for them. When I looked and couldn't find them, I experienced deep feelings of guilt and shame. The problem had to be with me. It just couldn't be that the Bible was not what I had been taught to believe.

Once the seeds of doubt had been planted in my mind, I began to see that the Bible wasn't a book with just a few problems; it was riddled with inconsistencies, discrepancies, contradictions, and absurdities. As long as I believed that the Bible was inerrant, for example, I was able to rationalize the barbaric nature of God as presented in the Old Testament. I accepted the premise that God was not immoral in ordering the massacre of children and babies (Num. 31:17; 1 Sam. 15:3), for if he could create life, he had the right to take life; if he killed children and babies in the heathen nations around Israel, he was actually doing them a favor, because they would go to heaven rather than grow up to be like their wicked parents. To my embarrassment and discredit, I have to admit that I actually preached this kind of stuff when I was a fundamentalist minister. Once my faith in inerrancy was shaken, however, I was able to see the folly of stupid attempts like these to justify the despicable conduct of the Hebrew god. When I crossed that line, I had gone too far ever to turn back again.

I’m sure that you see your reasons as completely logical. However, just as you see my reasons as completely illogical, I see yours in the same light. You accuse me of the warm fuzzies, but look at yourself:

God is sew mean, I mean like, duh! Oh, he is harsh and brutal and therefore He doesn’t exist!”

 You call God immoral for waging a war that took the lives of infants and women. Do you also consider the U.S. to be immoral for taking the lives of infants and women in wartime? Messy thing, war is. Is it never a necessity? Maybe war is too impolite and uncivilized. The gentlemanly thing to do would be to just open borders to the enemy and commit suicide. Oh wait! That would be messy, too! Make that physician assisted suicide. Much more tidy.

Is this sinking in, friend? Morality is a matter of OPINION, outside of appealing to a moral authority higher than that of the two humans having the opinion in question. One of your primary reasons for giving up your ‘faith’ is that in your OPINION, God induced warfare is morally wrong. What are your logical reasons for believing that warfare is morally wrong? You criticize me for my opinions, but at least I know the limits of logic and deductive reasoning. You seem to think that your opinions are the same as facts.

I was clearly giving reasons here for why I came to reject the traditional view of the Bible, but in her article Jones gave no reasons why she came to accept that traditional view beyond saying that a reading of Matthew 16:15-16 had brought her a sudden enlightenment that had somehow inexplicably eluded her during her years of "atheism." Despite saying now that she didn't intend her article in any missionary sense, I am sure that in the back of her mind at least, Jones had hoped to teach by example when she wrote and posted the article. Otherwise, why would she have written it?

I wrote it because people kept asking me to give my testimony. I’m not into fuzzy wuzzy, sentimental junk. I feel that there are enough intellectual reasons to validate Christianity as a philosophy without all of the emotional hype. Unfortunately, my testimony receives 3 times the fan mail and twice the hate mail as do the other logic based essays and debates that are featured on ex-atheist.com.

If, however, someone intends to teach by example that Christianity should be espoused, why would she not try to give at least a few sensible reasons why others should follow her example? I think I saw a few attempts to do this, but, as I said in my first reply, those attempts were all anecdotal and therefore gave no logical reasons why her example should be emulated.

You’re welcome to your opinion. Everyone’s a critic.

Therefore, if she is being truthful and her intention really wasn't to influence by example, her article was pretty much a waste of the time that it took to write it, because no skeptic or atheist is going to convert to Christianity on nothing better than the claim that a former atheist found fulfillment by becoming a Bible-believer.

I’m not out on a mission to convert atheists or skeptics. If you think that God belief is all nonsense, then so be it. I’m on the web to encourage those whom I once tried to destroy.

If the truth could be known, I suspect it would show that Jones thought that she was giving logical reasons why skeptics and atheists should convert to Christianity.

You tried to prove your point earlier by substituting ‘Christianity’ with ‘Islam’.  Let’s expose your entire paragraph for the piece of propabaloney that it really is:

 If the truth could be known, I suspect it would show that Till thought that he was giving logical reasons why Christians should deconvert.

 I base this suspicion on, well, empirical knowledge of having had numerous experiences with Christians who have tried to proselytize by just relating their "personal experiences" with Jesus.

I base this suspicion on, well, empirical knowledge of having had numerous experiences with atheists who have tried to influence Christians by emotionally stating their opinions that God is a meanie.

 I invariably found that people who do this would become quite irritated when skeptics would point out to them that their personal experiences prove no more than what the personal experiences of Muslims, Mormons, and Hindus prove.

I invariably found that atheists who do this would become quite irritated when Christians would point out to them that their personal, subjective opinions concerning morality could not be proven as a fact, and that Christians were entitled to their own subjective opinions.

 "You can't tell me that what I know happened to me didn't happen," they would respond angrily, but soon they would fade into the woodwork and go away when they continued to be pressed for evidence more substantial than their unverifiable personal experiences.

“You can’t tell me that my opinion that God is immoral isn’t a fact!” they would respond angrily, but soon they would fade into the woodwork and go away when they continued to be pressed for objective arguments that would prove that their opinions were not mere opinion, but moral absolutes.

I really suspect that Jones wrote her article thinking that readers would see in it logical reasons for converting to Christianity. I don't doubt that some did see it this way, but these would have been people who were already converted and needed nothing to convince them. Critical thinkers, however, could see through her anecdotal evidence as easily as one can see through cellophane.

I really suspect that Till wrote his article thinking that readers would see in it logical reasons for deconverting. I don’t doubt that some did see it this way, but these would have been people who were already deconverted, and needed nothing to convince them. Critical thinkers, however, could see through his emotional appeal as easily as one can see through Brittney Spear’s shirt.

Jones:
Throughout the rest of the site, I place a great deal of emphasis on how and why people base reasonable conclusions on matters that go above and beyond logic, but not against logic.

Till:
I took the time to go through the index in Jones's website and read some of the articles whose titles suggested that logic was discussed in them. Readers will have to go to her site and see for themselves just how laughable her attempts at logic were, because there is too much there for me to review in a single article. I think that those who take the time to read some of these articles will see that "go[ing] above and beyond logic" is Jones's way of trying to dance around the logical consequences of some of her attitudes and religious beliefs. In "A Message to Any Christian Entering Debate or College," she openly downplayed the importance of intelligence and logic.

Yes, readers.  Read on, and see which of us is making the laughable attempts at logic:

Intelligence, logic, and academic accomplishment used to be the criteria by which I judged another's worth. When I grew up, I found that these were no longer the details of people that impressed me. A doctorate is no substitute for integrity and intelligence cannot replace kindness. If belief in Jesus Christ assists us in being better persons, logic should tell us to retain this belief. If Christianity is a crutch that enables us to be better, kinder people, what does it say about a person who would willingly attempt to kick it out from under us?

I don't disagree with what she said in her opening sentences, because I learned in my academic career that integrity and intelligence aren't necessarily character traits of those who have advanced degrees. However, I can't understand why someone with even average intelligence--much less the superior IQ that she brags about--can't see that she went on to use a line of argumentation that would justify just about any personal belief.

Whoa, Nellie! Back it up, back it up. Where in the above do I make an argument for the validity of my Christian belief over the beliefs of any other religion?

This can be shown again by taking her statement quoted above and applying it to any religious belief. Read the rewritten version below as if it had been written by a Muslim.

Intelligence, logic, and academic accomplishment used to be the criteria by which I judged another's worth. When I grew up, I found that these were no longer the details of people that impressed me. A doctorate is no substitute for integrity and intelligence cannot replace kindness. If belief that Muhammad was Allah's blessed prophet assists us in being better persons, logic should tell us to retain this belief. If Islam is a crutch that enables us to be better, kinder people, what does it say about a person who would willingly attempt to kick it out from under us?

This brings us right back to the axiom that I mentioned above: What proves too much proves nothing at all. We could take Jones's statement and adapt it to Mormonism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, or any other -ism, so is she willing to say that Islam is truth just because acceptance of it can make its converts better, kinder people? The problem with her writing, then, is that she paints with a brush that's too wide, because what she says would make truth of anything that anyone chooses to believe.

Straw Man: You are taking my words out of context and trying to apply them to issues to which they were never intended to be applied. The passage that you quote was never intended to reveal the truth of a belief. It was intended to reveal the truth about those who would destroy a belief that assisted us in being better persons. I am not an ecumenicist, however, if Islamic belief assists people in being better, then my point remains; What does it say about a person who would try to destroy the belief?

What does it say Farrell? I can give my reasons as to why I think that Christianity is closer to the truth than Islam without trying to destroy another’s faith in Islam. I can give my reasons as to why I think that Christianity is closer to the truth than atheism, without declaring an all out assault on atheists. But what about you? What are you out to do? I don’t see anything ‘defensive’ about your ‘mission’. It’s an assault, plain and simple. You are out to destroy faith in God and you couldn’t care less if the belief assists us in being better people. So what does this say about you?

I wrote a website to encourage Christians in their faith, not to slam others for their beliefs or non-beliefs, for that matter. I went to great lengths to define the type of rabid skeptic, such as yourself, who attempts to intellectually bully Christians out of their faith in God. I don’t fault atheists for not believing in God, because I am well aware of how preposterous the notion appears. I don’t fault Baptists, Catholics, Methodists, Salvationists, etc., for having their own doctrinal beliefs. I don’t fault Hindus, Buddhists or Muslims for believing what they believe, although I disagree with what they believe. However, I do find fault with mean-spirited blowhards who, because of their own egotism, patronizingly believe that they know what is best for the world and everyone in it.

I can't discuss the "logic" in all of her articles, so I will quote just one more example. In "Analyze This," which can be accessed at the index column on her home page, she made an attempt at a "logical" response to the argument that the widespread suffering around us indicates that there is no "loving God" looking after us.

We make an analogy between God, the loving Father, and human parents. The attribute that we are comparing is the ability of each to love his ‘children’/’creation’. [sic]

Right away her analogy is in trouble, because she is comparing the actions of an omniscient, omnipotent deity with the conduct of "human parents." Such an analogy is bound to be false, and the fact is that many biblical inerrantists will defend the Yahwistic massacres in the Old Testament on the grounds that what ordinary humans find to be morally repugnant wouldn't necessarily be repugnant to a deity whose ways are much higher than those of ordinary men. I am sure that Jones herself would immediately point this out if someone attempted to argue that morally upright humans would never commit or command genocide, so a deity who would commit or command such atrocities would not be a morally upright deity. Anyway, let's look at her rebuttal argument.

No Farrell. I would argue that people whom we consider to be upright and moral can and do commit or command genocide. Once again, your own ego has slid off the top of your head and is covering your eyes.  Many think that Bush is morally repugnant for waging war against the Iraq. However, many think that he did what was morally right. I’m sure that this will become evident in the next election. So who decides that a leader, who wages a bloody war, is moral or immoral?

1) We consider parents to be loving when they permit their child to suffer insignificantly for a greater good.

2) Our greater good is salvation.

3) Our earthly suffering is insignificant when examined in the scope of eternity.

4) Therefore, we can experience suffering and still believe in the existence of a loving God.

If we assumed that it would be logically appropriate to compare the conduct of an omniscient, omnipotent, omni-everything deity with the conduct of ordinary, fallible human beings, we would still see problems in Jones's argument. First of all, an argument is only as sound as the premises on which it is based, and Jones's premises assume the existence of "salvation" and "eternity," meaning, of course, eternal life, but there is no way at all to verify the actual existence of either salvation or eternal life.

The best evidence we could find for it would be the testimony of those who wrote about it in the Bible, but how can we know that those who wrote about it are trustworthy? We discussed this problem above, and now it resurfaces to show the weakness of Jones's argument. Unless she can produce some hard, verifiable evidence that these things she calls "salvation" and "eternity," i. e., eternal life, actually exist, she has nothing at all to support her argument. Like the anecdotal evidence in her original article, her evidence is completely unverifiable.

Once again, you are missing the argument. I am not saying that the God of the Bible exists BECAUSE salvation and an afterlife are true. God’s existence is not the issue here.  In fact, God’s existence has to be considered a reality in order for the argument to take place.

This argument attempts to provide a logical reason that explains how the Biblical God could allow suffering and still be seen as loving. For the purposes of this argument, salvation and an afterlife need only be established within the context of Christian theology in order for me to make my point.

That Jones's argument suffers from a severe case of false analogy is evident from the fact that "God," as he is depicted in the Bible, doesn't act toward his children the same way that human parents act toward theirs. If, for example, a child suffered from some disease or disability, any human parent would cure the child if he/she had the ability to do so. We could hardly conceive of a human parent who would let a child go through life suffering from blindness or paralysis if it were in the parent's power to effect a cure. "God," on the other hand, can presumably do anything, yet he does nothing to alleviate the suffering of his earthly children. Indeed, if we are to believe the Bible, he even intervened at times to inflict suffering and even death on his earthly children for what were rather minor offenses. Two of Aaron's sons, for example, were consumed with fire that came forth from Yahweh (Lev. 10:2). Their offense? Well, it seems that they lit their censers with "strange fire," which would have been fire from some source other than the sacrificial altar. Uzza was struck dead (2 Sam. 6:6-8) for touching the ark of the covenant during its transportation to Jerusalem when the oxen pulling the cart stumbled. It is certainly hard to see any "greater good" that Yahweh accomplished by killing men for "offenses" no worse than these. Indeed, it is difficult to see any offense at all in what these victims of Yahweh's wrath did, so if Jones hopes to find a satisfactory solution to the problem of human suffering, she is going to have to do better than the false analogy in her "argument."

Don’t you read over my entire argument before you start making comments? I address this all rather well.

I notice that Farrell didn’t quote the entire argument, which I feel speaks for itself. Here it is, in its entirety for those readers who are too lazy or disinterested to find the link:

FEATURE ARGUMENT:  How Can A Loving God Allow Suffering?

The answers given to the question below are not meant to be exhaustive but are intended to teach you how to argue your point using logic. No matter what that point may be, arguing it successfully will depend on your ability to: 

1: Recognize the precision of language in what is being said and in what you are saying.

EXAMPLE 1

Questions concerning Christianity may be passively or aggressively stated:

If there is a loving God, why does He permit us to suffer? – passive

A loving God would not permit us to suffer, therefore, there is no loving God. - aggressive

2: Recognize the argument.

Formalizing this issue into a proper argument allows for greater clarity of thought and would look like this:

A loving God would not permit us to suffer.
Some people suffer horribly.
Therefore, a loving God does not exist.

3: Question a faulty premise

There isn't anything wrong with the process of inference in the above argument; However, our criticism lies with the legitimacy of the first premise.

Since 'loving' is a characteristic that is applied to both humans and God, we make note of the comparison and make an analogy:

A loving parent would not permit his child to suffer.

·** In order to declare this comparison to be a false analogy, your opponent would have to give reasons as to why the analogy would not hold. Some skeptics will accuse you of making a false analogy every time you make an analogy. While every analogy, by definition, falls short of being 100% representative of the concept it attempts to simplify, it is insufficient to claim an analogy to be weak or false without justifying that claim. Analogies can be very useful and are considered to be an appropriate tool in inductive reasoning.

Or would he? A parent who would not permit his child to suffer would never deprive his offspring of any want, nor would he discipline the child. What then, do we mean by 'suffer'? If we limit the definition of suffering to physical pain, then we have to acknowledge that loving parents permit their children to suffer pain, at least to some degree, when they allow them to have immunization shots, or undergo chemotherapy or teach them how to ride a bike, knowing that the chances of them falling and getting hurt are probable. Therefore, a loving parent does permit his child to suffer physically, if he considers the suffering to be insignificant and for a greater good. 

But would a loving parent permit his child to suffer significant pain for a greater good? As humans, we have a corporeal concern; no matter how strong our faith in God, this material and physical world is the only world of which we are aware. Therefore, we consider any significantly painful infliction as harmful to our bodies and our existence. 

The difference between man and God is that God is fully aware of man's spiritual reality in addition to his physical reality. God knows that physical suffering cannot harm our eternal souls. God knows that our physical destruction is not an end to our existence. Of what significance is an hour of physical suffering compared to eternity? Of what significance is a lifetime of suffering compared to eternity? We can conclude that from God's perspective, our physical suffering is relatively insignificant. This is not to say that He is unsympathetic or oblivious to our pain; loving parents feel empathy when their child receives a shot, knowing full well that the pain is inconsequential. 

But what greater good can be derived from our suffering? Is there a greater good involved? What would justify God sending us to live in a physical world with physical dangers? Why didn't God let us stay in the Garden of Eden? 

According to the Bible, man was removed from the Garden of Eden in order to be born again so that one day, he could eat of the Tree of Life and be forever in God's company as a holy people. If men were made to live forever in their natural, sinful state, they would be eternally hellish creatures. God sees the greater good being accomplished in the transformation that will allow us to live eternally in heaven, a transformation that can only take place in the physical world. Spiritual lessons can’t take place in the garden; they have to take place in a desert. 

It isn't that God wills us to experience misfortune, but that these misfortunes are merely the consequence of living in a physical world within our physical bodies. Every day, loving people make the decision to bring children into this world, knowing that it is a world filled with risk and injury. God is no less loving for having created the world in which we all live. But one may ask, "Why doesn't God do what He can to prevent these injuries, as any good parent would?

The argument quickly reduces itself into absurdity. At what point should God cease to prevent suffering? Should He suspend gravity for every trip of the foot? Should He suspend the properties of heat for every finger that touches a lit stove? In short, we would be asking God to suspend the physical laws that allow our very existence. We are saying, "Surely, God, there had to be a better way than all of this!" But until we can create a better planet that contains no risk to physical life, I shouldn't think that we would be in a position to criticize. For all we know, the existence that we are experiencing now may well be the only logical possibility of existence.

4.State your position in the affirmative.

In summary, the initial argument against God's existence was:

A loving God would not permit us to suffer.
Some people suffer horribly.
Therefore, a loving God does not exist.

We make the following rebuttal:

We make an analogy between God, the loving Father, and human parents. The attribute that we are comparing is the ability of each to love his ‘children’/’creation’.

1) We consider parents to be loving when they permit their child to suffer insignificantly for a greater good.
2) Our greater good is salvation.
3) Our earthly suffering is insignificant when examined in the scope of eternity.
4) Therefore, we can experience suffering and still believe in the existence of a loving God.

In my opinion, Farrell, you have failed to give a good reason as to why omniscience and other Godly attributes negate the attribute of ‘loving’. Also, you apparently don’t recognize the context of the argument; I am arguing from a Christian perspective and salvation, eternal afterlife, and God are given realities and are assumed to be true for the sake of argument. In other words, you can’t condemn the ‘morality’ of the Christian God outside of the Christian context. If there was no afterlife and no salvation, I would agree that God would be a monster. However, this only proves that the hands-off god of deism, or the god of pantheism, is a monster, not the Biblical God.

Another problem in her argument is the term insignificant, because if she can't verify the existence of "salvation" and "eternal life," then any suffering at all in this life, which may be all that we have or will ever have, becomes very significant. If the suffering is something permanent, such as blindness, paralysis, and amputation, or terminal like cancer or AIDS, then that would be more than just "significant"; it would be catastrophically humongous, because those afflicted with such handicaps and diseases must live out the only known life they will ever have enduring hardships and deprivation on a daily basis. That is hardly "insignificant."

As I have said, this is fine if you want to use that line of reasoning against those religions that make no provision for salvation or an afterlife. However, your criticism of my argument amounts to denying the suppositions that allow the argument to take place.

 I would be curious to know if Jones suffers from any handicap or disease like those mentioned above. I suspect that she doesn't, because I doubt that anyone who has to endure pain and a severe handicap on a daily basis would say that suffering is insignificant.

I suffered from back pain every day for over a decade. I’d rather go through labor because labor is bound to end after 24 hours. I’ve crawled into emergency rooms and doctor’s offices, and crawled out, too. I’ve spent weeks having to urinate in the bathtub because I couldn’t squat on a toilet. My husband has had to hold me over a toilet to take a dump because I couldn’t sit down. There are times when I am unable to get out of my bed for 3 or 4 days. There are times when I can’t bend and there are times when I can’t straighten up. There are times when I can’t pick up my foot to go over a curb. I can’t run, even if my life depended on it. Don’t tell me about pain. It is never far from me and I have the prescriptions and doctor visits to prove it.

Being married to someone who works professionally with the severely handicap, I am aware of just how much some people suffer through no fault of their own. Just maybe, then, Jones will understand my cynicism when I say that it is so facile for someone with good health and a high IQ to say that having to suffer in life is insignificant. Quite frankly, people who say that suffering in life is no big deal because everything will be hunky-dory in the sweet bye and bye give me a pain in a part of my anatomy that I won't mention.

I work with a lady who has MS and who comes to work every day in her wheel chair. She is always in a cheerful mood and she credits her attitude to faith in God and her loving husband. I know another man who is wheel chair bound, and who is on the school board with me. It takes him a good 20 minutes to get out of his car and into the building. His faith in God is strong and his suffering is bearable because of the hope that he has in Jesus Christ. Surely, the masses of the faithful who suffer have not escaped you? Surely you see these people, who, even though in the most hopeless of circumstances, remain hopeful and who credit that hope to God? Claims that intense suffering pales in comparison to the promise of an afterlife, are more often than not made by those who suffer!

Jones:
My autobiographical account describes the events that led up to my conversion. It is not an argument for or against Christianity, although I do provide those types of arguments in other areas of the ex-atheist.com site.

Till:
I wonder why Jones put "ex-atheist" into the name of her website. Why didn't she just call it www.devoutchristian.com or some such? I am sure she used ex-atheist in the name in an attempt to influence those who are attracted to the site. If she denies that she wanted this part of her URL to make her readers think that there must be something to Christianity if a former atheist was converted to it, I will really wonder about her integrity. I don't really fault her for using this device to attract readers; it is a smart advertising tactic. After attracting them, however, she should give them something rational to consider as she tries to persuade them to convert too. That is where she is falling down on the job.

I have my fans, Farrell, just as you have yours. In your opinion, I fail. In their opinion, I succeed.

Till(1):
Jones is no stranger to members of the ii_errancy debate list. She came to this forum touting how she had finally seen the light and converted to Christianity after having been an atheist for 20 years, but she was never able to give us any kind of logical reasons for her conversion, which other skeptics could use as templates to help them see the light too. She would, in fact, get rather miffed at inquiries about this and have some rather sarcastic things to say about those who questioned her along these lines.

Jones:
My most sincere apologies for having been so sarcastic. The members of the errancy list were so polite, so kind and well mannered, and so evenly tempered. They were above taking cheap shots at their opponents. Patronization, condescension, and smug self-righteousness were never a part of their repertoire of criticism. They knew not the attraction of ad-hominem, nor did they employ it. They were full of a humanist love that was beyond my comprehension! They deserved nothing but my mutual respect. I dare say, I don’t know what got into me, Farrell! I feel…I feel so dirty for having been such a viper. Really. (Yes, I am being sarcastic once again!)

Till:
Oh, really? I would never have known had Jones not told me, because sarcasm is so unlike her. She speaks of "humanist love" in a way that reminds me of an internet signature that I have seen in the ii_errancy forum: There is no hatred like Christian love. I would never try to deny that skeptics can be brutally sarcastic at times, and I can be as guilty as any of them. However, skeptics do not embrace a religion that requires them to turn the other cheek and go the second mile, a religion that commands a much higher standard of conduct than what we see in the general, run-of-the-mill Christian population. Consider these quotations from Jones's guidebook to heaven.

Titus 3:1 Remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, 2 to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show every courtesy to everyone.

1 Peter 2:19 For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. 20 If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God's approval. 21 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. 22 "He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth." 23 When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.

Colossians 4:5 Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. 6 Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone.

Jones used the tu quoque fallacy to try to justify her anger and sarcasm toward skeptics, but I can find no basis at all for a Christian to argue that she is entitled to engage in questionable conduct because nonbelievers do the same thing.

Now, now.  Sarcasm need not go hand in hand with anger. I find you all a funny lot, not particularly anger-inducing. Don’t get me wrong! I can become angry, but it’s mostly at my cats. I never claimed to be sinless and without fault.

 If nonbelievers use profanity, would Jones consider this justification for her to do the same? If nonbelievers drink, carouse, and engage in premarital sex, would Jones consider this reason enough for her to so live? I can honestly say that when I really believed that the Bible was the "word of God," I made a sincere effort to practice what it required of those who professed to be Christians, and I certainly didn't engage in conduct condemned by the Bible and then try to justify it by saying, "Well, nonbelievers do these things too." How qualified is Jones to speak about why one should become a Christian if she doesn't even know that the New Testament requires Christians to rise above the conduct of unbelievers?

Does the Bible really require Christians to rise above the conduct of unbelievers? What does that mean? Are you saying that the Bible actually gives a higher standard for us to strive for, morally speaking, a higher standard than that provided by atheism? How can this be, considering the immoral conduct of its God? Are you saying, that as a current non-believer, you are no longer held to this standard of morality, but Christians are? Gosh. That’s really…interesting. So, I guess its true. Non-believers really do have lower standards of morality than Christians.

Yes, I do use sarcasm when I am contending with "Christians" who have demonstrated that they are never going to listen to evidence that disputes their claim that the Bible is the "word of God," but if I were a believer, as Jones claims to be, I would make an effort to respect what the New Testament says about the attitude that Christians should have toward those who aren't believers. Furthermore, if Jones's thinks that what atheists and skeptics do should be the standard by which she lives her life as a Christian, then she is sorely in need of a crash course in Christian Ethics 101.

Oh wow! No, Farrell, I would never think that in a million years! I still believe in having sex only with the person to whom I am married, and only on Fridays! I believe that divorce is wrong. Bestiality, too. No, Farrell, I would never live by the standards of unbelievers.  What about you, Farrell? You being an unbeliever and all, what standard do you live by? You have indicated that the Christian standard is higher than yours. How low does your standard drift from the Christian standard? Atheism is a comfortable philosophy for those who find discomfort in admitting their shortcomings. I declare no contest for myself; the Bible is right and I am wrong. I have no excuses for my behaviour. I’m not the one dropping the standard for the sake of declaring my self righteous.

Till(1):
She wound up in the e-mail filters of many members who tired of her incessant abstract attempts to explain how she had managed to find Jesus, because we suspected that her 20 years of atheism had really been nothing more than 20 years of being "unchurched."

Jones:
1) My ‘incessant... attempts to explain’ how I had managed to find Jesus were directly proportional to the members’ incessant questions asking me to explain how I had managed to find Jesus.

Till:
When a Bible believer joins an internet forum whose membership is primarily skeptics and atheists, she should expect to be questioned extensively about her beliefs, especially if she joins with the boast that she was once an atheist. If she wasn't prepared for that kind of scrutiny, she should never have joined the list, and she should take down her apologetic shingle.

Hey now.  I wasn’t the one complaining.  You complained about my incessant attempts to explain my faith. If you weren’t prepared for that type of thing, you should have never started errancy. Surely you aren’t so naïve as to think that it wouldn’t attract the proselytizers.

My complaint about Jones's performance on ii_errancy was not that she wrote about her conversion, but that she always wrote about it in abstract, anecdotal terms that gave no specific, concrete answers to questions about her reasons for converting to Christianity.

Tell me why murder is wrong. Logically. Tangibly. Morality can’t be explained in concrete terms; to say that it can would mean that you have discovered a moral absolute. Perhaps God, who has defined himself so closely with morality, also cannot be explained in concrete terms.

Jones:
2)You also suspected me of being John Powell, Joe Alt (I can’t recall his last name), and a myriad of other people. Your members also suspected that I was a man, not a woman. So much for your suspicions.

Till:
Jones is thinking about Joe Alward, an atheist troll, who has assumed different identities in the forum for no apparent reason except to divert attention from what the list was set up to do. For a time, I did think that Jones was John Powell, because he had joined the list with apparent trolling intentions too, which I am glad to see that he has finally abandoned. At the time Jones joined the forum, Powell had been filtered by several list members, and he had tried to circumvent their filters by subscribing with multiple addresses, and Alward had done the same. It was therefore entirely reasonable to think that Jones was just another Powell or Alward identity. As for the "myriad of other people" whom Jones referred to, I really don't remember thinking she was anyone else. I make no apologies for having thought at first that she was a troll, because ii_errancy has been bothered by "Christians" who have tried to disrupt the operation of the list, so I consider my suspicion justified. If Jones can't understand this, I really don't care.

Jones:
3) Also, if we were to apply the same logic that allowed you to conclude that I was nothing more than ‘unchurched’, [sic] others can likewise conclude that you, despite holding a ministerial position, never really were a Christian.

Till:
I mentioned Dan Barker and Robert Price above, so I will use them as examples to expose a huge hole in Jones's logic. If I point out enough illogical examples in her writing, maybe even she will come to see that despite her exceptionally high IQ, she needs to work at honing her critical thinking skills.

Translation for the skimming reader: If I say that Jones is illogical enough times, hopefully, the people reading this will believe it.

Dan Barker spent time in Mexico as a missionary, and Robert Price was a Baptist preacher. These positions that they held can be seen as reasonable evidence that they were at one time sincere Christians.

I know a lot of preachers who never had a born again experience, and who never really believed in God. They feel that God is a necessary social construct and they think that they are doing the world a favor by declaring themselves fit for ministry. They see Christian morality as a worthy goal and don’t care if they promote it within a lie. I’m not saying that you fit this category, but it if you think that every preacher on the mission field is legit, then you are naïve. There are also the spongers, the ones who realize early on that they can’t hack it in the secular world.  They put up with the low income because they won’t get fired if they don’t show up every day at 8:00.

 I spent almost five years working as a missionary in France, and I conducted one oral debate in Portageville, Missiouri, in which I defended a New Testament doctrine. I have always been inclined to write, and during the time that I was a preacher and missionary, I contributed articles to the Church-of-Christ publications Firm Foundation, Gospel Advocate, and The Christian Chronicle, which Jones can verify by checking bound volumes of these publications from around 1955 to 1961. Since I received no payment for writing these articles, I obviously didn't write them for money.

Money isn’t everything.

I wonder if my point is sinking in. In case it isn't, I will try to draw Jones a picture. Before her conversion to Christianity, what articles did she write in support of her atheistic position? Did she conduct any debates or give any lectures in which she defended/advocated atheism or biblical skepticism? If she didn't, then she can point to nothing that we can take as evidence that she was indeed once an atheist. That leaves us with only her word, so why should we accept her word?

The only evidences I have for my past atheism are the testimonies of those co-workers, family members and friends who had to put up with my anti-Christian comments. Of course, I could have been a closet deist, or a militant Buddhist. Other than that, my essays from college only reflect a liberal point of view – pro abortion, pro physician assisted suicide, and a very interesting paper on the Satanic Church, one that a Christian probably wouldn’t have had the insight to write. But you are correct. A liberal, anti-Christian stance does not prove that one is an atheist.

However, my point was that opinions had formed about the validity of my past atheism before any attempt at further inquiry had been made, speaking volumes about bias and dishonesty.

I will try to explain my skepticism of her claim that she was once an atheist. Josh McDowell claimed that he was an atheist before he was converted while he was a university student. When I read this, I wrote him a letter and asked if he could cite any substantial work that he had done on behalf of atheism, possibly articles that he had written or some such, but I never received a reply to the letter. This, however, may not mean much, because I learned from debate challenges that I also sent to McDowell that he doesn't answer mail that takes him to task. Nevertheless, I have had other experiences that told me that the claims of prior atheism that some Christians make are probably not true. I recall an incident that happened during Dan Barker's debate with Michael Horner at the University of Northern Iowa. During the question-and-answer period, a young man stood up and instead of asking a question made a rambling comment about his former life as an atheist, after which he said something like, "I don't really have a question; I just wanted you to know that I was once like you until I learned better." He then stormed out of the auditorium. Since I was sitting by an exit, I went into the lobby, found him, and engaged him in conversation. When I asked him about his former atheism, he told me that he had never been an atheist and that he wasn't even a practicing Christian. He explained that he was just angry at hearing the Bible attacked. In his case, then, the young man was obviously just "unchurched," but having grown up in a society in which people are expected to believe that the Bible is the "word of God," he was lashing back at someone who dared to question that tradition.

You do know that you are using specific examples and applying them to populations as a whole? Do you know what this makes you?

The more I hear from Jones, the more I suspect that this was the case with her. I have never seen her give any kind of tangible evidence in support of her claim that she was once an atheist. We have only her word, and, well, her word just isn't good enough, because she claims now to be a Christian but acts in a very un-Christian way toward those who aren't Christians.

Lets examine your logic: My word that I used to be an atheist just isn’t good enough because:

1)Jones claims to now be a Christian

2)Jones acts in an unchristian manner toward non-Christians

3)Therefore, Jones was never an atheist.

If you ask me, you have come closer to proving that I never was, and still am not, a Christian. (chuckle)

 All of this, however, is irrelevant, because the conversion of an atheist to Christianity would no more prove that Christianity is true than would the deconversion of a Christian to atheism prove that Christianity is untrue. In both cases, logical argumentation would be what was needed to score any points, and we are not seeing any logical arguments in support of Jones's personal experiences.

How do I prove my atheistic thoughts? I can’t present to you a note from my mom. Would you like to contact my husband? My sister? Most people don’t go out and join the American Atheists when they don’t believe in God. Unlike those professing Christianity, where church membership can be taken as some form of proof, those professing atheism rarely join clubs announcing it. Not many people have the opportunity to speak in front of large groups of people, especially when the society isn’t interested in hearing what they have to say. In short, I doubt that many persons, claiming to have been atheists, could objectively prove their past beliefs to your satisfaction. While that may give you a cozy feeling, it really doesn’t speak for the truth of the matter.

Jones:
Case in point: Surely, a minister would have known about the mass murder instigated by God in the OT. Why would this knowledge, years later, cause you to re-examine your Christianity?

Till:
Well, I must say that I am glad to see that Jones recognizes that the Old Testament claims that mass murder was instigated by God.

I don’t have any qualms about interchanging the terms ‘warfare’ and ‘mass murder’. Is all warfare immoral?

As for whether I had known about this when I was a preacher, I addressed this matter above in the section that I quoted from my article "Long Day's Journey into Light," so I need to make only a few comments here. Jones's problem is that she doesn't understand what cognitive dissonance is. This is the ability to hold to beliefs that are internally inconsistent. Everyone who has changed from Bible-believer to Bible-skeptic has experienced cognitive dissonance. When one who was reared to believe that the Bible is the "inspired word of God" begins to see internal evidence that clearly disputes this claim, he will wrestle with cognitive dissonance and try to reach some kind of mental accommodation that will enable him to cling to his old belief even after he has come face to face with inconsistencies in it. As I explained above in the quotation from my article, I knew about Old Testament atrocities, such as the Amalekite massacre, but I rationalized them with those absurdly ridiculous "explanations" that God created life, so he has the right to take life, and that he was actually doing the massacred children and babies a favor by killing them at an innocent stage in their lives so that they could go to heaven. All along, I had been grappling with cognitive dissonance but didn't realize it until my belief in biblical inerrancy finally collapsed under the weight of all the inconsistencies, discrepancies, contradictions, atrocities, and such like that I had come to see when my personal studies were no longer being orchestrated by Bible professors.

I see. No such thing as examining the parts within the context of the whole. Any argument, no matter how valid, that offers explanation for that which you don’t want to believe is double-think - an exercise in intellectual dishonesty.  Doesn’t that form of reasoning become unfalsifiable?

The fact that Jones converted to Christianity so suddenly upon reading Matthew 16:15-16 speaks volumes about the lack of depth in her atheism (if she ever really was an atheist), because if she had had any strong convictions about atheism, she wouldn't have turned so easily to Christianity.

She too would have wrestled with cognitive dissonance before making the change.

Cognitive dissonance describes nothing more than a belief that is in a period of transition. The truth of the matter is that intellectually, I am still an atheist every other second, and a Christian in between.  But in my heart, I have made the decision to follow Jesus Christ and to acknowledge Him as God.

I’ll tell you how deep my atheism ran. There was no compelling, objective evidence for God and that was good enough for me. Period. Before I attached my non-belief to a political agenda, I didn’t run around feeling pressured to convince people that there wasn’t a god, no more than I would feel compelled to grab them by the shoulders and try to convince them that Santa Claus was a farce. Guess what? There still isn’t any compelling objective evidence for God’s existence! It’s not one of those things that lends itself to obejctive proof, Farrell. Most Christians never realize this. As an atheist, realizing this was the only way that I could have possibly found faith in God.

As far as what you call cognitive dissonance, I don’t see paradoxical reconciliation as double-think. In fact, I see your explanation of God having the right to do what men cannot as perfectly logical. Of course, I didn’t believe that until I realized that God was not my equal, but my superior.

Jones:
Surely, there are enough contradictions within one translation of the Bible to cause doubt, yet you claim that you needed to sit down with 5 different translations in order to realize this.

Till:
Ah, so Jones had read "Long Day's Journey into Light" before she wrote her reply. I wonder why she didn't notice that I had explained in that article how I had been able to ignore biblical massacres for so long.

As for her comment about my study methods in which I read the same passages from different translations, I can only say that if she doesn't understand that one translation can shed light on meaning that another translation fails to bring out, she needs more help than I can give her. I would suggest that she try this method sometime to see if it doesn't help her understanding of what the intended meanings of the biblical writers probably were.

Yes, translations are so different that X% of those who read the King James version don’t believe that Christ is Lord and that salvation comes through faith in Him, while Y% of Christians who read the leading brand of Bible think that Homosexuals should be worshipped and that President’s Day is a Satanic Holiday.

Jones:
Your deconversion is about as logical as one who says, “I was a devout Christian my entire life, until one day I read the Bible”!

Till:
As usual, Jones has oversimplified.

I have ‘oversimplified’? I hope it isn’t fatal!

As usual? I had to, Farrell. Big complex intangibles seem to be beyond your comprehension. (ha ha, sorry, I couldn’t resist. And by the way, readers, Farrell is right. Debate without theatrics and sarcasm is really dull, so don’t think that I hate Farrell. He can’t help it!)

 In the first place, no one could read the Bible in one day, and I don't believe that she could ever find an atheist who would claim that he became a non-Christian after reading the Bible "one day."

I find it humorous that you prove your nit-picky, Pharisaical mindset every time you feel the irresistible urge to feign confusion when the meaning of the sentence is evident.

However, she is certainly on the right track. I do everything I can to urge Christians to read the Bible and especially the Old Testament. Too many people who say that they are Christians have a very superficial knowledge of the Bible. If they would just read it and really learn what is in this book, I suspect that many more of them would eventually reject their traditional beliefs about it.

I support anything, including hostile debate, that causes people to pick up that book and read it because there will always be a chance that they will see the riddle in it as I did.

Jones:
In other words, Farrell, you claim to have been a Christian, not knowing that which you professed to have believed.

Till:
There is a difference in knowing what the Bible says and in mentally grasping what it says. Jones has bragged about her high IQ,

Boy oh boy, Farrell. You can’t seem to get over this IQ thing, can you?

so I am going to brag about what I knew about the Bible even when I was a college student. We used to play a one-on-one game in college in which one party would read a verse from the Bible, and the other would guess where it could be found. One point was given if the correct book were named, five points were given if the book and chapter were named, and ten points were given if the book, chapter, and verse could be correctly named. I almost always won this game. I still have yearbooks from my college days in which students, as students at that age will do, wrote their comments, and several of them expressed appreciation for my knowledge of the Bible. I recall a summer between my sophomore and junior year when I went to Wisconsin to work with a preacher in what was considered a Church-of-Christ mission field. I introduced to him the game just mentioned, and he would try and try to beat me, but he never could. If Jones would like to know the name of this preacher, I will be glad to tell her. The last I heard, he was still alive and teaching in a Bible school in Texas.

When I preached, I never read scriptures; I always quoted them. At one time, I was able to quote from memory the ASV of the entire book of John. At that time, my goal was to commit the entire New Testament to memory, but I came to realize, as I explained in "Long Day's Journey into Light," that I was studying the Bible in the wrong way. I was trying, for example, to memorize a book that was no more the inspired word of God than was the Iliad. I stopped this kind of "biblical study," and turned instead to a concentration on trying to understand what this book was saying, and that has been my focus ever since. I really don't care if Jones believes me or not, but I knew the Bible much, much better at that age than most professing Christians did, or rather I should say that I knew what words were in it without always understanding what the words were saying.

I’m sorry that you spent so much time conquering a hypothetical argument. All I was saying was that beliefs and actions can be  two separate things. I knew more scripture than the Christians that I debated. Memorizing scripture does not validate a belief in Christianity.

Till(1):
However, we could see nothing in her anecdotal posts about her personal experiences with God that could give us any logical reasons to think that she had discovered much of anything except that religious epiphanies give some people "warm fuzzy feelings," but the problem with warm fuzzy feelings is that they always seem to vary from person to person. They give no logical reasons at all for why others should follow in the steps of those who have found personal comfort in finding Jesus or Allah or Vishnu or whatever deity may have been involved in the epiphany. We could never get Jones and those like her in the forum to see that it makes no sense that person A's warm fuzzy feeling would turn her to Christianity, whereas the warm fuzzy feelings experienced by B, C, and D would lead them to accept Mormonism, Islam, and Buddhism respectively. There's no logic to it, and it is strange indeed that personal experiences with deities almost always convert people to whatever religion is prevalent where the personal experiences happened. If these personal experiences always resulted in conversions to the same religion, say, Eastern Orthodox Catholicism, that would be a compelling reason to think that the experiences are real encounters with God, but as long as such experiences lead one person to become a Baptist, another a Pentecostal, another a Mormon, another a Muslim, and so on, that will be equally compelling evidence that the experiences are nothing more than emotional reactions to encounters with local religious influences.

That depends on how one chooses to look at it. You can concentrate on the differences and say that the perception has no validation, or you can concentrate on the similarities and make a case for validation. Personally, I always found the similarities to be a bit unnerving. Usually a creator god, usually an afterlife, obedience determining the state of one’s afterlife. Moral associations, etc.. The God Experience causes a belief in God; societal, cultural and familial pressures cause a belief in a particular God. Logic, philosophy and reason serve as a way to intellectually determine the best definition of God.

Jones:
My point in arguing from a perspective of experiential perception was that reality is first perceived through our senses.

Till:
That is certainly true, but Jones surely realizes that the senses can play tricks with perception. People often think that they perceive things that they really aren't experiencing. The mind is playing tricks on them, and so they hear, see, smell, taste, and feel things that aren't really real. The more emotional a person is, the more likely he/she will be to "perceive" through hallucinations. I recall a "personal-experience" advocate on the old alt.bible.errancy forum who related an experience he had had when he was "filled with the spirit" and through a kind of out-of-body experience saw the Holy Spirit leaving his body by coming out of the top of his head. He became quite irritated when other members of the forum would not believe that this was a real experience that he had had. He left the forum after angrily telling us something like what I related above: "You can't tell me that I didn't experience what I know that I experienced."

I’m sure that all of the local yokels who witnessed KittyHawk felt the same way when egghead scientists told them airplanes can’t fly.

Now Jones may want to believe that this person did perceive reality through an experiential perception, but a person would have to be hopelessly gullible to believe that all mystical experiences like this that people relate were real, actual experiences. This is why her "point" argued from "a perspective of experiential perception" was completely wasted on people who critically examine claims before accepting them. She gave us nothing to critically examine, and so we rejected her claim. She may not like that, but that is just the way it is. If she wants to be another Robert Turkel who preaches to his choir, that is a decision she will have to make. She may succeed in receiving the praise of the already-converted, but she won't have much success at bringing outsiders into the fold.

I prefer the choir, but not for the reasons that you would think. As for the critical examination of claims of experiential perception, I’m sure that you are aware of the studies performed by Allen Newberg, and others, about humans being ‘hardwired’ for God belief. Isn’t this a bit like having an organ of detection for which there is no known input? What would be the evolutionary purpose of a nose if there was no such thing as odor and no such thing as air? What would be the purpose of the eye, if we lived in a reality that did not lend itself to visual perception? Why then the reality of this ‘God’ Detector when there is no God?

Jones:
We then go about attempting to intellectually analyze what our perceptions tell us.

Till:
She may have done this, but she certainly didn't give any indication of it in her article. What criteria did she use, for example, to tell her that she should read the Bible with a view to interpreting every passage two ways?

For example:

Lot had sex with his daughters.

View 1: Bad God! Immoral God! Bible Bad. Bible pornographic! Bible condones incest!

View 2: A statement of an alleged fact. An observation. God makes no comment. Should I condemn Lot and his daughters? Is there anything intrinsically wrong about incest? The British royals have practiced it for generations. Morality is relative. How can I condemn that which is relative and subjective?

Mind you, these are my thoughts as an atheist. I doubt that many Christians think in these terms or in this manner.

 The double-entendre certainly occurs in written documents, but most often the authors will write a passage with just one meaning in mind. Readers should therefore exegete texts with a view to deriving the authors' intended meanings and not meanings that would remove inconsistencies in what the different authors said.

So in your thinking, nothing is reconcilable? If I tell you that my uncle died from a heart attack and then tell you that he died in a car accident, I am a complete idiot and have not told you the truth about anything, correct? You can dismiss my entire story, throw up your hands in exasperation and decide that you will never know the truth about my uncle’s death. Or perhaps you will be able to accept the fact that my uncle had a heart attack at the wheel of his car, which caused an accident. Be a Pharisee. Pretend that such inconsistencies contain no reconcilable truths.  Pretend that every detail in question carries the weight that can destroy the entire presentation of truth.

The former is intellectual honesty; the latter is simply rationalization done to justifiy untenable beliefs.

The former can be simply denial; the latter can be a legitimate attempt at piecing together bits of evidence in order to understand the whole truth.

Jones:
As you state, religious experiences (although I would disagree that my experience could be described as your condescending ‘warm and fuzzy’ definition) vary and people naturally drift toward the religion that is presented by their culture.

Till:
So Jones still doesn't get it. If all of these "personal experiences with God" that we hear so much about in emotional testimonies were real experiences, they would lead all of those who experience them in the same direction, i. e., to the same religion, but this doesn't happen.

I certainly hope that Farrell ‘gets it’ because I’m getting tired of repeating it. You know, Farrell, most people who write well, learn to be concise and they’re not all over the board like a bunny playing hop scotch. One more time: Personal experiences lead to belief in God, if one has any amount of confidence in their perceptions. The refining of the definition of what this God is and isn’t, doesn’t come about through perception; it comes about due to societal influences or intellectual endeavors.

In a Christian culture, the personal experiences of one will lead her to be a Baptist, whereas the personal experiences of others will lead them to become Baptists or Ca