This is the strange theory advanced by John Loftus in chapter 4 of God or Godless?.
I call it ‘strange’ because I had not come across it before. I hastily looked up the passage he cites (Exodus 22:29-30) to see what I had been missing all these years. We read:
…‘You shall not delay to offer from the fulness of your harvest and from the outflow of your presses. The first-born of your sons you shall give to me.
This is the topic of debate in chapter 3 of God or Godless?
Randal Rouser opens by imagining the mind-set of someone who tortures and kills people for fun. He imagines the character denying that what he does is evil, because (on the assumption that there is no God) morality is a purely subjective concept, with no objective basis for deciding whose morality is right and whose is wrong.
John Loftus, in his opener, says that the title of the chapter assumes that there is one God, whereas there are multiple concepts of God, with their own moralities. …
In chapter 2 of God or Godless? John Loftus asserts that the biblical concept of God evolved over time from polytheism to monotheism. He infers from this that there is no unified teaching about God in the Bible, and that the choice of one (Yahweh rather than Baal, say) is more or less a historical accident.
John’s argument is full of sweeping statements, right from the start. When he says, “biblical scholars long ago acknowledged…”, he should have said, “Some biblical scholars think…”.…
This is the first topic debated by Randal Rauser (a Christian) and John W. Loftus (an atheist) in their book God or Godless?
John Loftus concedes that if there is no God, then life has no intrinsic purpose and we have to either (a) muddle along in a purposeless existence, or (b) construct some kind of purpose for ourselves.
Yes, I agree with that. If it were proven to me that God did not exist, life would either become meaningless for me, or I would have to construct some kind of meaning.…
This is the title of a recent (2013) book of written debates by John W. Loftus (an atheist) and Randal Rauser (a Christian).
Twenty topics are covered in all, half chosen by one protagonist and half by the other. For each topic there is an opening statement of about 800 words from each person, rebuttals of about 150 words, and closing statements of 50 words.
It’s an interesting approach, although not without its weaknesses and limitations:-
When we read the Old Testament,
Summarising this article by David Murray…
Roger E. Olsen has been been asked by a friend who is a youth pastor to speak with the boys of his Christian youth group.
Here, in outline, is what he plans to say:-
My heart goes out to Dr Muhammad Taufiq Al Sattar, whose wife and three teenage children were killed when their Leicester home was set alight two weeks ago. As a father myself, I can only begin to imagine the grief he must be experiencing at the moment.
I also admire Dr Taufiq’s attitude at this most difficult time. He has paid tribute to the Leicestershire Police, for their thorough investigation of the tragedy, and has expressed his ‘delight’ that community relations in Leicester have remained peaceful.…
For many of today’s sceptics, David Hume clinched it: miracles don’t happen. Miracles (if they occurred) would be violations of the laws of nature, and we know from experience that the laws of natures are not violated.
There are a number of problems with this argument, popular though it is. For one thing, Hume was himself inconsistent regarding the ‘laws of nature’. He argues elsewhere that even though we have observed the sun to rise every morning for thousands of years, we cannot infer that it will rise again tomorrow morning.…
Fifty years ago today (28th August, 1963) Martin Luther King, a Christian minister committed to non-discrimination and non-violence, led a march of 250,000 people, three-quarters of whom were African-American, to Washington DC. There he shared his dream:-
…I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice and sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
