Tuesday, April 10, 2012 at 12:19PM | by Otter You can only evade for so long the importance of a direct command to kill civilians, even if it was the done thing back in the day. It’s generally agreed, with good reason, that this is not the best humans can be, and if Yahweh thinks differently, if he even thinks that’s good hyperbole (exaggeration for effect), there’s no room for him in our counsels.
Friday, April 6, 2012 at 9:55AM | by Otter A friend writes, curious about my response to an atheist on Facebook who has made the following claims in a status update:
The Bible (and for that matter Christianity) depends upon 4 basic concepts: Creation, Original Sin, The Exodus and Mosaic Law, and the Resurrection of Jesus. Science has debunked all 4 of these pillars, leaving the religious house of cards in a pile on the floor.
A few cursory responses…
Wednesday, March 7, 2012 at 9:44AM | by Otter 
Carl Sagan: The Spokesmodel For The Scientific MethodCarl Sagan is sometimes credited with coining the term. He certainly deserves the credit for putting it on television and making it part of the American conversation about religion, aliens, Resurrections, Nostradamus, elves, and so on.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” saith the prophet. ECREE, for short, in Internet debate.
Briefly, the idea here is that the way we sort out what is “real” and “true” is by experience. Our experience (codified formally by science, but also privately in each human brain) arranges the world so that we know what is possible and probable and unlikely and impossible based on experience.
It is surely the case that we can make mistakes in determining the likelihood of a truth-claim.
But in the human community, there are things that we agree upon: the habits of gravity and the properties of hydrogen, for instance, and the inadvisability of putting your cat in the microwave.
When someone makes a truth-claim that’s out of the ordinary, naturally, you can adapt it without critical comment. The farther outside of the fields of what seems possible a thing is, the more difficult it is to reprogram our mental conceptions of the world.
A man who lives forever, or Fairy Giraffes With Butterly Wings, might well exist. But it would take a considerable readjustment of what we mean by “reality” and “normal.” And to adapt belief in such a thing represents therefore a tremendous intellectual commitment.
The concept has tremendous importance for Christian apologetics as well as other attempts to persuade people of things that leave slender or no traces in the material world.
Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 9:25AM | by Otter 
If apologetics is sport, then John Patrick Holding (also known as Robert Turkel… long story) is the World Wrestling Federation: loud, proud, draws a crowd…. and kind of hollow at its core. Or to change the metaphor, if Christian thought is sex, Holding is an internet pornographer.
Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 8:00AM | by Otter I took an hour or two today to watch Lee Strobel’s “The Case For Faith.”
The Amazon reviews are typically full-throated exultations of the video’s power.
I found it weirdly lacking in substance.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012 at 7:00AM | by Otter Undeception, a blog worth tucking into your biblical study bookmarks no matter what your spiritual inclinations, contains this gem from C. S. Lewis that actually makes a terrific point that Touchstone, myself, and others are constantly at pains to make to Christians: that God is either not worth worshiping or that he is good, and where the Bible says he is not good, we mustn't hesitate to identify the conflict for what it is: a serious problem for views of inerrancy (or at least the inerrancy of a simplistic historical reading of those texts).
The Undeception blog entry is specifically in reference to the Canaanite genocides described in the Bible's Deuteronomistic history, passages where the God of Israel demands the obliteration of ethnic communities.
That's not to say that subtleties are not possible. But they are not endlessly possible or even desirable to any great extent.
Lewis:
On my view one must apply something of the same sort of explanation to, say, the atrocities (and treacheries) of Joshua. I see the grave danger we run by doing so; but the dangers of believing in a God whom we cannot but regard as evil, and then, in mere terrified flattery calling Him ‘good’ and worshiping Him, is still greater danger. The ultimate question is whether the doctrine of the goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of Scriptures is to prevail when they conflict. I think the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more certain of the two. Indeed, only that doctrine renders this worship of Him obligatory or even permissible.
Saturday, December 17, 2011 at 10:11AM | by Otter
Updated on Wednesday, April 11, 2012 at 4:25PM by
Otter
Doug Wilson and Christianity Today see this as a pastoral occasion in which they reinforce the group’s orthooxy about hell and redemption. Everything is. Everything has to be, as Hitchens would probably be the first to admit: if you’re right about hell, you should say so. But the flock needs to know what its own intellectuals make of this stuff so it can feel secure about what to say.
Sunday, July 17, 2011 at 7:58AM | by Otter Maybe I'm what scripture calls a "scoffer," or maybe I'm just too good a teacher to let these things go. But whatever the reason, I know when I hear certain religious phrases that a tiresome discussion is coming, and I have to either ignore it or challenge it. But for some reason I just have the hardest time ignoring it.
Friday, July 15, 2011 at 4:36PM | by Otter 
The rest of scripture you can take metaphorically, historically, literarily, or any other way that you like, if the facts don't contradict you. But the two critical things that really apologize for the Christian faith, the ones that make it differ from any other major religion or philosophy, are the Resurrection and the life of God.
Sunday, January 9, 2011 at 8:41AM | by Otter As it happens, I have seen miracles, some more persuasive, others a lot less: we could go on at length about the position that puts us in, but it's getting late.
