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Over at Debunking Christianity , John Loftus has declared that religious people are closed-minded, and therefore they cannot accept the evidence that would otherwise overturn their faith: "There are two problems we face in order to cultivate the intellectual virtue of open-mindedness. The first is to learn what constitutes evidence, since most people are unreasonably persuaded because of anecdotal evidence, or fallacious arguments substituting for the lack of evidence, or even peer-pressure or the accidents of birth into a particular family or a different culture. The second is to learn to avoid confirmation bias as much as possible, which Michael Shermer calls "the mother of all biases." [In The Believing Brain, p. 259].Once we learn about these problems and recognize them as the serious ones they really are, and that they stand in the way of a clear-headed investigation of the truth, we can proceed to be honest investigators of the truth. We would know what kind o...

http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-true-christian-concept-of.html please give it a read

In the previous post I commented on Sean Carroll, astro-physicist and atheist soldier who wave the banner of scientism. He writes an article: Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists   [1] Actually, he offers no data on the views of cosmologists. I offered reasons in the previous post as to why I think the title here is hyperballe. Good data shows that the majority of scientists believe in God  [2]   While it may not be true of cosmologists I have no reason to believe it is not. But this is not the real issue. he real issue is that Carroll's arguments are merely ideological/ all he's doing is imposing a naturalistic ideology upon epistemology and then insisting that he has the mystique of science to back  it up. In other word it's just propaganda. Let's start with his conclusion: The question we have addressed is, ”Thinking as good scientists and observing the world in which we live, is it more reasonable to conclude that a materialist or theist picture is m...

On Metacrock's blog today: True Christian concept of the supernatural   We are unable to bring you a real post today but I have a good one on my blog.     http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-true-christian-concept-of-super.html The New atheists constantly mock the SN as though they know what it is. When the discuss it they include anything not naturalistic. The modern conception is that SN is everything from Bigfoot to the resurrection, include g ghosts, UFOs and Psychic Powers. It never occurs to them Christians were using the term before the modern concept of naturalism so it can't just mean everything that[s not naturalistic. Jerry Coyne is an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago. He is also an apologist for atheism. Coyne says something more interesting than than Dawkins does, however, he says that SN could be studied by science.[1] Although, I'm sure Dawkins probably agrees with his reasoning. If SN could not be so studied it woul...

Yesterday I posted a piece about the atheist propaganda machine know as Center for Inquiry, and particular their attempt to create a Jesus project to dispute the existence of Jesus in history. The  plug was pulled on the project by R.l Joseph Hoffmann who started the project. His reason was that the Jesus mythers were taking over and using it as a platform for their propaganda rather than doing real scholarly work. They only went two of their five years. Yet they have been so totally effective the Jesus myth thing has just exploded. It's everywhere where atheist talk. There are some instructive lessons in looking at the Jesus Project. It's a lesson in Propaganda. from the website of the project , one would think it's still going. The thing was canceled in 2011 and yet not a  hint on the website that it is not still going. TJP scholars--among the finest on the world-stage--recognize the status and influence of the New Testament as a resource for Christian ...

These are the voyages of Jesus myther propaganda... (part 1) It's five year mission, to seek out new lies and new propaganda slogans, to boldly go where no historians have gone before...    Years ago, way back in 2009 I did a post on Atheistwatch about the Jesus project , not seminar but project . They really did have a five year mission. Last week I did a post on the parent organization , the centerpiece of atheist propaganda machine, the center for inquiry (they do skeptical inquiry magazine). What came of that Jesus project? It's five years  were up in 2013. I said that the time: " Cracking The Jesus Myth Phony Scholarship Code ." Richard Carrier has a couple of articles on his blog about a big conference for the Jesus Project held at Amherst last December. O it sounds very scholarly. It presents the image of a group of major scholars meeting to mull over the lattes scientific findings that proving that Jesus never existed. This create...

Well, PZ Myers has yet again expended his time and energy , not on conducting scientific research, or educating his students, but instead trashing anyone – intelligent design proponents especially – with the temerity to doubt his own blinkered metaphysical interpretation of natural history. Intelligent design theorists, he says this time around, are "flailing about trying to emphasize their pretense of scholarliness," whose ideas "haven't worked so well" and whose arguments "fall flat." So if intelligent design proponents are really just a bunch of dolts whose arguments are hopelessly ineffectual, why does Myers not move on to more important things and simply let their ideas die a natural death? Why devote endless hours combating them, as if they represented a genuine threat?   That's just it. He can't afford to ignore intelligent design, because with no one like him standing in the way some observers might actually (and often do in fact) f...

 Jeff Lowder at Secular Outpost, argues against William Lane Craig's fine tuning argument. His objective is to show that even if the argument is valid it doesn't establish probability for God. Lowdwer's syllogism of the argument: 1. The life-permitting nature of the universe’s initial conditions is either the result of chance, necessity or design. (Premise) 2. It is not the result of chance or necessity. (Premise) 3. Therefore, it is the result of design. (From 1 and 2) This argument is clearly valid, i.e., the conclusion follows from the premises. We want to know the probability of (3). The probability of (3) will depend upon the probability of (2). If we have a very weak degree of belief that (2) is true, say we think Pr(2)=0.25, then, by itself, this argument only warrants the belief Pr(3)=0.25. N.B. I’m not claiming that (2) has an exact numerical probability equal to 0.25; that value is simply an example to illustrate the point. Excluding it as a result ...

[This is a slightly reworked version of something I posted at Transcending Proof not long ago]   Christian apologists like me have sometimes been accused of "denialism" regarding certain truth claims that seem dreadfully important to atheists. Among these are the truth claims of metaphysical naturalism, the virtually limitless creative power of natural selection, and the self-evident superiority of the scientific method to every other traditional means of ascertaining truth: philosophical reflection, religious faith, even historical research and deductive logic. Evidently taking their cue from Richard Dawkins, our accusers assert that we are guilty of mindless "personal incredulity" in refusing to acknowledge the overwhelming, indeed mountainous , evidence in support of those claims, and more importantly, their atheistic implications. Now let's park that thought for a moment while we consider another. Scientists nowadays for the mo...