Over at his blog, biblical scholar Bart Ehrman addressed a question asked of him by a parent wondering why he should send his son to the university where Ehrman teaches to take his class on the Bible if Ehrman doesn't actually believe in the book about which he is teaching. As Ehrman points out, going... Continue Reading →
Last month, blogger @AlchemistNon wrote a piece entitled "Is Yahweh a Perfect Being?" in which he argues that the god of conservative Christianity does not exist. The deductive argument he puts forward (based on an argument offered by Christian apologist Randal Rauser in a devil's-advocate debate) is as follows: If God exists, he is perfectly... Continue Reading →
It seems like social media these days is little more than memes, and if you’re getting your Bible from memes, well, you should expect problems. Here is a recent one that appeared on Twitter. I first came across this meme after it had been shared by a few atheists. Its aim is perfectly simple: to... Continue Reading →
I am an atheist. This means that I do not believe there are any gods in existence. Am I 100% certain about this? No. But on balance I find it more likely than not that the god of the so-called Abrahamic religions, the various deities of Greco-Roman lore, and any other supernatural divine beings simply... Continue Reading →
Bart D. Ehrman, Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020), 106-107. It [i.e. suffering] would make sense if there were no God. Or if there were many gods, some of whom were nasty. But how can it make sense if there is only one God who is truly... Continue Reading →
As is so often the case with atheistic readings of biblical texts, the annotations of Steve Wells in his Skeptic’s Annotated Bible are bewildering. At times, SAB gets things precisely correct, like when it decries what amounts to divinely sanctioned marital rape in Deuteronomy 21:10-14. Wells summarizes the passage by writing, “If you see a pretty woman among the... Continue Reading →
Happy Valentine's Day! To both of my readers, I love you! Over at Is That in the Bible? readers can find a lengthy post on the story of Joseph entitled "From Robes to Riches: The Fairytale of Joseph." In this piece, Paul Davidson discusses issues related to genre, sources, redaction, and more. This is not... Continue Reading →
To see more posts in this series, please go to the series’ page. In the summer of 2004, I ventured down to Texas to be with a young woman (we’ll call her Mary) with whom I had fallen in love, having met her the year before when she and her family were on a family vacation... Continue Reading →
I became an atheist in 2013 after a yearlong battle staving off doubt and unbelief through prayerful meditation over the Bible and by reengaging apologetic literature that had helped me in the past. When my journey to atheism first began, I read Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and was thoroughly turned off. Still feeling apprehension about... Continue Reading →
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