Victor Reppert and John Loftus’ Outsider Test for Faith

Update: There seems to have been a little mix-up and I was reading the wrong article, but I've since found the correct piece that Mr. Reppert was discussing and have written a new critique. It can be viewed here. Because of this, this post is pretty much obsolete but I'll keep it here to avoid any dead links and to point people to the correct post. Sorry about the mix-up!


Over at Victor Reppert's blog, dangerous idea, he had written a post critiquing John Loftus' argument he calls the Outsider Test for Faith, which is “simply a challenge to test one's own religious faith with the presumption of skepticism, as an outsider.” (Why I Became An Atheist, Loftus, 2008; 66)

I tried to comment on the post several times but my comment never showed up for some reason (I'm guessing it's a Blogger glitch) so I decided to write my thoughts as a blog post and see if Mr. Reppert would mind commenting.

I don't believe his criticism of Loftus' argument is an example of someone truly taking the OTF and for the following reason. The examples given in the post and comments were not truly acts of skeptical inquiry as Loftus' test requires.

Here is the first half of Mr. Reppert's post:

Acknowledging points on the other side doesn't even require granting legitimacy to theism or to Christianity. You made the argument that Christian apologetics in response to other religions either appeals to biblical authority (which is NOT question-begging to the extent that the other religion in question accepts biblical authority), or appeals to methodological naturalism in a way that would undercut Christian apologetics if applied to Christianity. I pointed out, using a fairly pedestrian Christian anti-Islamic website, that this appears to be demonstratably false. There were no appeals to biblical authority, there was no appeal to Humean views on miracles, there was no appeal to the principle that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. No, there was just the argument that, using three evidential tests, the Bible stands on far firmer historical ground than does the Qu'ran. This was a conclusion that an atheist could easily draw and remain an atheist. This was a reason you were giving for why Christianity couldn't possibly pass the outsider test, and it look fairly obvious to me that it flew in the face of the evidence. The website looked clearly to applying the same standard of evidence to each religion. It would hardly be the end of atheism for you to just acknowledge the point. You didn't. In fact you said my claim was laughable. But yet you want to set yourself up as my "guide" in viewing my religious beliefs from an outside perspective, someone who can be truly impartial because he isn't religiously committed? It's like saying Rush Limbaugh can be objective about the Democratic Party because he's an outsider.

Here is my original comment:

If I may I’d like to add my thoughts...

If I understand correctly, the OTF is a method whereby a person looks at all views as if they are an outsider; consider all of the evidence against their beliefs. Well, I can understand how some call this the “Atheist” TF since it seems to lead to atheism. However, what I believe is missing in this discussion is the fact that, despite these people appearing to do some research (I’m unaware of the comparative historical reliability of both books so I’ll just assume it’s true for the sake of argument), the bible is still a horribly flawed retelling of history, even though it may be better than other religions’ books. I agree that at first glance it seems to satisfy the OTF but does it really?

Mr. Reppert made the following claim in his post:

“There were no appeals to biblical authority, there was no appeal to Humean views on miracles, there was no appeal to the principle that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. No, there was just the argument that, using three evidential tests, the Bible stands on far firmer historical ground than does the Qu'ran.” (emphasis mine)

How much time did those Christians put into their research, because the bible is on shaky ground historically. Sure, it contains several verifiable historical accounts but overall it’s flawed. People who are said to have existed in the bible we can find no traces of, such as Moses. All the gospel writers are anonymous. Several events, such as the Exodus, seem to not have happened due to no evidence being found of half a million people wandering in the Sinai. And of course, the central story of Christianity, the resurrection. Again, there is no evidence outside of the bible that any of the things that are purported to have happened. The bible is surely on shaky historical ground, so even though it may be better than another religion’s book the Christians are obviously not looking at their bible with the same skepticism as the Qu'ran and therefore, in reality, their beliefs about their own bible I’d think also fail the test if they looked at it objectively.

A commentator named Fishermage’s made the following statement,

“If that's the case, [Josh McDowell] is punting so something he considers proven, not faith.” (emphasis mine)

Again, how much research did McDowell actually do? With the examples given, neither person/group truly looked deeply into the issue. They had a belief system they wanted to uphold and so they found “evidence” supporting it. But when looked at more closely what would they really find? A very historically inaccurate book ( er... books) with many stories that have no evidential support for them.

So, to end this long comment (my apologies...) I’d say those examples are not representative of the OTF and Loftus’ test still stands.

Update – 10-29-10

Well, Mr. Reppert has responded here and in the following update I shall place the entirety of his post in blockquotes with my comments after in bold. The website under discussion can currently be found here.

During the recent discussion of the Outsider Test for Faith, I had trouble, or at least so I thought, in getting my critique of the Test argument actually addressed. Arizona Atheist has attempted a defense of Loftus' argument which I think really does address the points I was making, and so deserves a response.

Let me review what, as I see it, has been going on in this debate so far. First, I am willing to grant that there is something appealing out the Test, in we would like, certainly, not to be guilty of applying double standards to our own beliefs and those of others.

I very much agree with the second paragraph about not applying double standards and that is one area that the OTF succeeds at, unfortunately for Mr. Reppert this very concept refutes his entire argument regarding the supposed example of a christian fact-checking the Qur’an. As I said in my first response the christian author is applying a double standard.

So, on one level, the OTF serves as a kind of intellectual "fairness doctrine." On the other hand, I argued in an earlier set of discussions, that at the very least we ought to be careful not to apply a standard to religious beliefs that we don't apply to beliefs in general. It would be a mistake to be, for example, a classical foundationalist about religious beliefs but a coherentist about other beliefs. The epistemology I learned in grad school, mostly from unbelieving professors, was skeptical of the legitimacy of throwing one's prior probabilities and beliefs away and moving to a neutral corner to begin investigation. Nevertheless, when I was an undergrad, I did ask myself if I had believed in Christianity only because I happened to be taken to a Christian church when I was a child, and I did worry about whether I was believing because of my wishes, and not because I had reason to believe. So I am willing to agree that the OTF appeals to some legitimate epistemic concerns, and can be a useful thought experiment.

Further, Loftus points to psychological evidence of our intellectual frailties. It's extremely difficult to be objective. But here, I think Loftus draws the wrong moral. If we have such frailties, those frailties are not curable by virtue of taking an "outsider test" or by becoming a nonbeliever. Surely, human proclivity towards confirmation bias continues for those who leave the fold. When I go on Debunking Christianity and see pretty much an echo chamber there, I get the feeling that the whole site is one huge monument to confirmation bias on the atheist side.

I agree that the OTF fails to stop humans' natural inclination to be biased, however, one can remain very neutral and unbiased if one really tries. I did it in my investigation and I'm sure others have as well.

But what I then objected to was the confident assertions Loftus was making that no one could remain a Christian if they truly took the OTF. What I find objectionable is not so much the outsider test, which is OK as a heuristic within limits, but what I called the Answer Key or the Outsider Test for Faith Test, the confident assertion that the OTF, properly taken, must be fatal to Christian belief.

The Test, presumably, requires that one have the same level of skepticism of one's own religion that one has for other religions. In other words, if I began being as skeptical of Christianity as I am of, say, Islam, would I be a believer now?

It was my contention that someone could decide that Christianity is true and Islam false, if one were to accept the arguments of this site, which applies three tests to the Bible and the Qur'an, the Manuscript Evidence Test, the Documentary Evidence Test, and the Archaeological Evidence test. The Bible, according to these tests, stands on firmer ground than stands the Qur'an, so if the bar were set at the same level for each religion, Christianity could clear the bar, while Islam would fail to clear the bar. Although I am not sure about some of the supporting arguments the site uses in the area of archaeology, I am inclined to think that the overall comparison of these two sacred books is correct. The Bible is in far better shape than the Qur'an in all three areas.

I pointed to a passage in Loftus' OTF contribution to The Christian Delusion in which he argues that Christian critics of other religions either naively assume that those religions are false because they contradict the Bible, or they investigate the rival religion using a kind of methodological naturalism which, if applied to Christianity, would result in the rejection of Christianity. I believe that the website I referenced refutes this claim by Loftus, and I hoped at the very least that Loftus would acknowledge this much. The site contains no Humean appeals to methodological naturalism, no claim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Instead, for all intents and purposes it test the two religions by exactly the same three standards, and says Christianity is in far better shape.

I'm confused about Mr. Reppert's claim that this site is an example of a christian not assuming his bible is true.

Right in the article the author writes:

In fact, the evidences for the authority of God’s revelation, which the Bible emphatically produces are completely absent in the Qur’an, namely, that the revelation of God must speak in the name of God, Yahweh, that the message must conform to revelation which has gone before, that it must makepredictions which are verifiable, and that the revelation must be accompanied by signs and wonders in order to give it authority as having come from God. Because these are missing in the case of the prophet Muhammad and of the Qur’an, for those of us who are Christians, it seems indeed that it is the Qur’an and not the Bible which turns out to be the most human of documents.

Right here the author is clearly favoring his bible over the Qur’an and arguing that his bible is god-breathed and the Qur’an is simply a man-made book. And why does he think this? Because, he says, god supposedly gave us signs but here he is assuming his bible is true, and the Qur’an false. However, with the countless manuscript evidence we have, we know the bible is indeed a man-made document, with each writer who had their own agendas and viewpoints. This is why the bible contradicts itself. The many different writers of all the various books often argued amongst themselves and this is seen within the bible. But does the author even consider this? No.

Arizona Atheist makes the case even if the Bible stands on better evidential grounds than the Qur'an, deeper investigation would surely lead us to the conclusion that the evidence for the Bible is insufficient. He writes.

“If I understand correctly, the OTF is a method whereby a person looks at all views as if they are an outsider; consider all of the evidence against their beliefs. Well, I can understand how some call this the “Atheist” TF since it seems to lead to atheism. However, what I believe is missing in this discussion is the fact that, despite these people appearing to do some research (I’m unaware of the comparative historical reliability of both books so I’ll just assume it’s true for the sake of argument), the bible is still a horribly flawed retelling of history, even though it may be better than other religions’ books. I agree that at first glance it seems to satisfy the OTF but does it really?”

OK, so the Bible might be better off than the Qur'an but nevertheless not be believable. The evidence might be better, but still not sufficient. Sure, though I think different rational persons can look at the evidence with different set of intellectual predispositions without anybody being open to irrationality charges.

But isn't the entire point of the OTF is to try to set down any and all predispositions and consider all the evidence at hand or and against some belief? By not doing so, you're not following the guidelines of the test.

Arizona Atheist goes on:

“How much time did those Christians put into their research, because the bible is on shaky ground historically. Sure, it contains several verifiable historical accounts but overall it’s flawed. People who are said to have existed in the bible we can find no traces of, such as Moses. All the gospel writers are anonymous. Several events, such as the Exodus, seem to not have happened due to no evidence being found of half a million people wandering in the Sinai. And of course, the central story of Christianity, the resurrection. Again, there is no evidence outside of the bible that any of the things that are purported to have happened. The bible is surely on shaky historical ground, so even though it may be better than another religion’s book the Christians are obviously not looking at their bible with the same skepticism as the Qu'ran and therefore, in reality, their beliefs about their own bible I’d think also fail the test if they looked at it objectively.”

Well, here is the center of the argument. Arizona Atheist is presenting these points as what any objective investigator will run into if they investigate the Bible "objectively," and these are the telling points which ought to decide the question against Christianity. Anyone who rejects these conclusions just isn't being objective. Surely you can't be looking at the Bible with the same skepticism with which you look at the Qu'ran if you don't draw these conclusions.

Now I can understand coming to this conclusion, but you have to realize that there are a lot of experts out there who don't draw these sorts of negative conclusions about the Bible. Yes, you have your Robert Prices Bart Ehrmans, and Gerd Ludemanns out there, but you also have people like Craig Blomberg, Richard Bauckham, and Joachim Jeremias on the other side. Saying that these guys didn't study the issue very deeply seems implausible to me. (The idea that people who sign inerrancy statements to teach where they do means that they all have their thumb on the scale is not as telling as it might seem at first, and of course Bauckham and many other believing scholars sign no such statements). I personally think that the archaeological and historical confirmation of the latter part of the book of Acts, which I have emphasized on this site, is a far more telling fact than the fact that, strictly speaking, Luke and the other gospel writers didn't put their names on their books. To some extent, in this area, we are reliant on experts, but there is a decided lack of consensus amongst the experts. There's a wide range of presuppositional issues that have to be teased out, and some of these are not matters of Bible scholarship, but rather are philosophical matters. So I would be reluctant to make the argument that anyone who made a serious effort to be objective would perforce come to the same conclusions that I have come to, and I think I would say this whether I were a skeptic or a believer.

In one comment Tim McGrew wrote:

“I'm just trying to sort through the variety of ways that the phrase "outsider test" gets used. I tried, in my question here (which no one has directly answered) to find out whether its primary sense is as a heuristic ("Here, try thinking about things this way, it may help to correct for some hard-to-spot biases") or as a diagnostic ("Once you've taken this test, tell me where you wind up -- and if it isn't where I wound up, you fail").

So far, the answers have strongly suggested that it's the latter. And I think that's a problem, because the attraction and intuitiveness of an outsider test is, I think, largely a function of it's being conceived of in the former way, as a heuristic. The diagonstic use, applied the way that John seems intent on applying it, really does collapse into the Insider Test for Infidels.”

Even if you think your outcome is inevitable, I don't think you can make the outcome part of the test, or use your outcome as a basis for claiming that they other guy didn't REALLY take the test. That, to my mind, is question-begging. And that seems to be what is going on in the OTF debate.

I'm not simply assuming the author of the webpage cited didn't take the test. I read a large chunk of the paper myself and it's clear he did not take the OTF. Why? Because for one, the author assumed his bible was not man-made and did not consider contrary evidence and two, the author on several occasions makes hugely hypocritical statements about the bible and Qur’an. For example, the author states right in his intro.,

”Suffice it to say, that the only real source we have for the Qur’an is the book itself, and what Muslim Traditions tell us concerning how that book came to be created. Because of their late compilations (200-300 years after the event), and the contradicting documentation which we now possess prior to 750 C.E., I find it difficult to consider either of them as valid or authentic
as source material.”

Right out of the gate in his introduction you can clearly see the author is not conducting his search as an outsider since his own book contains many of the same problems, but he rejects the authority of the Qur’an on that basis alone, all the while accepting his book despite similar problems. This is just the introduction and he’s already proven himself to be biased towards his own book. This one example is all I really need to show where the author's intentions are but there is more.

”As Christians, this question is important. The Bible, by contrast is not simply a book of rigid rules and regulations which takes a particular historical context and absolutizes it for all ages and all peoples. Instead, we find in the Bible broad principles with which we can apply to each age and each culture (such as worship styles, music, dress, all of which can and are being contextualized in the variety of cultures which the church finds itself today).

As a result the Bible is much more adaptable and constructive for our societies. Since we do not have a concept of Nazil revelation, we have no fear of delving into and trying to understand the context of what the author was trying to say (the process of historical analysis). But one would expect such from a revelation provided by a personal God who intended to be actively involved in the transmission of His revelation.”

So, his bible is able to be applied to today's world while the Qur’an can't? Hmm... alright, let's see here. I guess we should begin taking disobedient children and stoning them to death (Deuteronomy 21:18-21); slavery is legal and regulated (1 Peter 2:18, among several others); wives should submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22), and the list goes on. So, how many people would like to begin to include these “laws” into modern society? Anyone?

Obviously, the author is not considering his own book's cruel and unjust laws that would not go over well in today's world. In both books there are the good and bad verses but the author doesn't seem to realize those in his book.

Two other forms of hypocrisy, which are by no means the only other ones, is this comment:

”It is understandable, then, why so many people in the West see Islam as an archaic and barbaric religion, which forces people back into the mentality of the middle ages, where women had no rights or freedoms to create their own destiny, and where men could do with their wives as they pleased.”

His own bible also has several verses that ban women from speaking in church, commanding her to obey her husband, etc. Even throughout history laws have been passed mirroring those laws in christian societies:

In 1632 an English law, influenced by christian teachings, summarized the role of a woman and this mindset also carried over to the early colonists in what would become america. It said,

"In this consolidation which we call wedlock is a locking together. It is true, that man and wife are one person, but understand in what manner. What a small brooke or little river incorporateth with Rhodanus, Humber, or the Thames, the poor rivulet looseth her name...A woman as soon as she is married, is called covert...that is 'veiled''; as it were, clouded and overshadowed; she hath lost her streame. I may more truly, farre away, say to a married woman, Her new self is her superior; her companion, her master..."

Under the heading titled, “On Errors Which Contradict Secular and Scientific Data” the author writes,

”In sura 18:86 it states, “Until, when he reached the setting of the sun, he found it set in a spring of murky water: Near it he found a people: We said: O Dhu al Qarnayn! Either punish them,or treat them with kindness.” It is well known that only the superstitious in the age of Muhammad believed that
the sun would set in a muddy spring.”

The author could easily say the same thing about those who lived in the 'superstitious in the age of Moses' because there are several unscientific claims in the bible. A few examples,

1 Chronicles 16:30 makes the statement that the world is immovable and is stuck in place. We all know this is untrue.

Leviticus 11:6 claims that rabbits chew the cud, when that is not accurate. They do not regurgitate their food and eat it.

In Matthew 12:22 it appears to state that deafness and blindness was due to demon possession, when obviously this is untrue.

Throughout the author's entire paper were his own biases upon display and claims and criticisms about the Qu'ran that could easily be said about his own bible. The author failed to compare the two books as an outsider and his “research” was nothing but one-sided. My statement wasn't question-begging in the least. As I've shown the author ignored the same issues in his own book that he criticized the Qu'ran for and thus this is not an example of the Outsider Test for Faith.

Update - 10-30-10

Mr. Reppert has responded to my latest reply here.

I will once again copy Mr Reppert’s entire reply and place them in blockquotes with my comments after.

Thank you for your response. First of all, while I think the OTF, used as a heuristic, can help us try to escape our biases, I have serious doubts, based on my training in epistemology, that real, genuine, freedom from bias is really possible. In the real world, we have to chip away at our biases, as opposed to performing some miraculous operation that will eliminate them entirely. As Steven Jay Gould once said, "We don't know what our biases are, because if we did, we'd eliminate them." Interesting enough, in the Christian Delusion Loftus emphasizes all the sources of bias that we fall prey to, which suggests to me that we aren't going to achieve intellectual liberation with one simple test, or just by "being careful." Intellectual sainthood is about as rare as moral sainthood, as I see it. And, I really don't believe in the existence of "neutral ground."

I largely agree with what you’ve said here about how human beings are naturally biased and how it’s not possible to get rid of all bias, though I do believe that it’s possible to reduce any bias you may have as much as possible and to keep it in check by forcing yourself to double check this claim and that claim, and remain aware of any emotions you may have as you read something that you either agree with or not. I believe emotions can be clues telling you that you’re not being completely rational about something you’ve been told if you feel anger or fear, etc. Take for example, some christians’ revulsion at the thought of evolution being true. They argue all these horrible outcomes will take place if it is indeed true, but these are purely emotional reactions, not rational ones. I hope I’m making myself clear, and I’m trying to think back to any emotions I may have had during my search. The only one I can recall is wondering, if god is real, would he forgive me for being so angry at him when I was a teenager? But I worked through these feelings and pressed on with my search looking at the evidence in front of me with no emotional attachment to either idea.

I also suppose with my lack of religious upbringing and the fact that I was completely new to all things related to science, religion, etc. I truly was an outsider and had that working for me since I essentially had a blank slate to work from and no real bias one way or the other.

I don’t think we can fully wipe our biases away but I think it’s possible (not to mention intellectually honest) to keep them in check as best we can and look at all the evidence for and especially against one’s position.

I do not believe the christian who wrote the article did this by any means. Most of his article was about the alleged contradictions of the Qur’an; the “absurdities”; scientific errors, etc., all of which can be pointed out in his own bible as well.

Second, there may have been passages in the site which I referenced which indicate a Christian bias. Unfortunately, the link to the page is now broken, so I couldn't check the passages to see if, in full context, your reading of them was correct.

Hmm... odd. I just checked it this afternoon and it worked just fine. If it still doesn’t work for you I saved a copy of it and I can send it to you if you’d like to check it out. Just ask and I’ll email it to you.

But, even if they fell into question-begging at certain points doesn't mean that the central argument of the site begs the question. The site, as I saw it, was primarily concerned with comparing the manuscript evidence, the documentary evidence, and the archaeological evidence for the Bible and the Qur'an. Suppose they had stuck to just those comparisons. It looks to me as if those comparisons can be made, and that, in fact, the Bible does come out better if you compare on those grounds. I don't expect any investigator to be perfectly unbiased, but this site did set of a format which, if they stuck to the format, would show a legitimate difference between the Bible and the Qur'an. Thus, so far as I can see, evidence does exist that gives us better reason to believe that the Bible is revelatory than to believe that believe that the Qur'an is. So at least some of their content falls into neither category that Loftus mentioned: either assuming methodological naturalism on the one hand, or assuming the truth of the Bible on the other. And my claim is that it looks perfectly possible to find reasons to believe in Christianity that one cannot find for Islam.

Despite the author trying to compare both books, which he did and I’m not disputing that, it’s just that he failed to do so as an outsider, while at the same time trying to limit his biases. I did see a few attempts at this, but mostly saw the author make arguments that could easily apply to his own book, which is why I argue he wasn’t taking the test as an outsider and allowed his personal beliefs about his own book to give him tunnel vision. He could see all the errors in the qur'an but not the bible. These facts I pointed out in my last reply with a few examples.

I do not understand your comment here,

Thus, so far as I can see, evidence does exist that gives us better reason to believe that the Bible is revelatory than to believe that believe that the Qur'an is

The author is clearly assuming that what his god did and said in the bible is true, but discounts all that the qur'an says. Here is a quote from the section discussion the “revelation of the Qur'an”:

Left unsaid is the glaring irony that the claim for nazil revelation of the Qur’an, comes from one source alone, the man to which it was supposedly revealed, Muhammad. There are no outside witnesses before or at the time who can corroborate Muhammad’s testimony; nor are miracles provided to substantiate his claims.

In fact, the evidences for the authority of God’s revelation, which the Bible emphatically produces are completely absent in the Qur’an, namely, that the revelation of God must speak in the name of God, Yahweh, that the message must conform to revelation which has gone before, that it must make predictions which are verifiable, and that the revelation must be accompanied by signs and wonders in order to give it authority as having come from God. Because these are missing in the case of the prophet Muhammad and of the Qur’an, for those of us who are Christians, it seems indeed that it is the Qur’an and not the Bible which turns out to be the most human of documents.

As a true outsider looking in on the comparison between the supposed revelations, the christian author is assuming the signs that are told in the bible are true. I’m not sure what signs he was referring to specifically but some christians argue the following are ways god has revealed himself to man:

1. Nature God has revealed certain truths about Himself through nature or the created order. Psalm 19:1-6 states, “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.” Nature tells everyone about God’s glory and that everything is made by Him. Romans 1:18-21 declares, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” According to this text, nature reveals that God exists and that He is powerful. This testimony is so powerful that no person can claim that he or she knows nothing about God.

2. Providence God reveals Himself through His moment-by-moment control of the world. This is often referred to as “providence.” God’s providence can be seen in His gracious giving of sunshine and rain to everyone (Matt. 5:45), His providing of food, rain, and gladness for people (Acts 14:15-17), and His installation and removal of world rulers (Daniel 2:21). Providence is one of the ‘quiet’ ways in which God manifests himself. But as we look at history we can see the hand of God if we take the time to notice. The survival of the nation Israel is one such example of God’s providence in action.

3. Conscience God has revealed Himself to everyone through an internal sense of right and wrong. Romans 2:14-15 states that every person has the Law of God “written in their hearts.” This internal compass that alerts us to what is right and wrong points to the Ultimate Lawgiver who determines right and wrong.

4. The Lot The casting of lots, at times, communicated God’s will to man (Prov. 16:33). How was the replacement for Judas determined? You guessed it. The disciples cast lots and Matthias was chosen as the new “twelfth” apostle (Acts 1:21-26).

5. The Urim and Thummim The Urim and Thummim were those two precious and mysterious stones on the breastplate of the high priest. They were sometimes used to determine the will of God (Ex. 28:30; Num. 27:21; Deut. 33:8; 1 Sam. 28:6).

6. Dreams Dreams were often used by God to communicate information (Gen. 20:3; 31:11-13, 24; 40-41). God sent Jacob the dream of the ascending and descending angels on the latter (Gen. 28:10-15). God also gave King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon important dreams about the coming empires of human history. Daniel interpreted the dreams and the rest is—well, history (see Dan. 2).

7. Visions God often used visions to communicate important truths. Isaiah saw a vision of the Lord “sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted.” Ezekiel saw various visions (Ezek. 1:3). The apostle John saw glorious visions of the end-times while in exile on the island of Patmos (see Rev. 4–22). The recipients of visions were often overwhelmed by the glorious sights they were seeing.

8. Audible voice Sometimes when God wanted to get His messages across, He did so Himself by speaking audibly. When God wanted Samuel to be His prophet, He simply spoke to Samuel out loud (1 Sam. 3). No, it wasn’t what Samuel ate that night—it was really God. When God wanted Peter, James, and John to know that Jesus was truly God’s Son and that they should listen to Him, He simply told them in an audible voice (see Luke 9:35).

9. Theophanies A theophany is a manifestation of God. God, for example appeared before Moses in the form of the burning bush (Exod. 3:2-6). Before the incarnation of Christ, God sometimes manifested Himself as the Angel of the Lord to communicate His divine message to the people (Gen. 16:7-14; Ex. 3:2; 2 Sam. 24:16; Zech. 1:12).

10. Angels Angels, at times, were God’s special messengers. Remember when Joseph was getting ready to leave Mary after he found out she was pregnant? That’s right. An angel communicated to Joseph in a dream that Mary was with child through the power of the Holy Spirit. Angels proclaimed the birth of Jesus (Luke 2:10-11). Gabriel, in particular, appeared to be the special angelic messenger of God. He was the one who relayed important truths to Daniel (Dan. 9:20-21). He also told Mary that she would be the earthly mother of Jesus (Luke 1:26–38).

11. The Prophets The prophets of the Bible, who acted under direct inspiration from God, were a primary means through which God revealed His messages. Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel, Joel, Zechariah, and others played a major role in revealing truths about God and His plans in the Old Testament. They focused particularly on warning the nation Israel and detailing the coming kingdom that would be established by God’s Messiah. The New Testament prophets played a foundational role in the establishment of the church (Eph. 2:20). They also revealed previously undisclosed truths about the “mystery of Christ” (Eph. 3:5).

12. Miracles and Supernatural Events God sometimes used miracles and supernatural events to reveal Himself. The Ten Plagues of Egypt showed Pharaoh and the Egyptians that the God of the Hebrews was truly God and that the ‘gods of Egypt’ were no match for Him (Exod. 7–11). Jesus did many ‘sign miracles’ to point the way to Him and His message.

13. Jesus Christ As great as the previous twelve forms of revelation were, the greatest form of revelation took place with the person of Jesus Christ. As Heb. 11:1–2 states, “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last
days has spoken to us in His Son” (Heb. 11:1-2). Jesus Christ, the primary manifestation of God, reveals many things:

a. John 1:1 He is the “Word” because He is the complete revelation of the Father.

b. John 1:18 He reveals what the Father is like.

c. John 5:36-37 He reveals the Father’s compassion.

d. John 6:63; 14:10 He reveals that the Father gives eternal life through the Son.

e. Matthew 11:27 He reveals who will know the Father.

14. The Bible The Bible is God’s written revelation to humankind. Complied by various men under the guidance of the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:21), the Bible is the very Word of God. Most of what we know about God, including the person and work of Jesus, is found in the Bible. It reveals all the doctrine, rebuke, correction and guidance that is needed for godly living (see 2 Tim. 3:16-17).

Most of these arguments make use of the bible and assume the bible is true and make the assumption, thus begging the question, that the supernatural is real. It seems to me that the christian’s entire paper was begging the question since he assumed so many things about his own bible (and ignored much) while discounting the qur’an for much the same things.

Mr. Reppert, it seems to me that you are begging the question yourself since you are assuming revelations are even possible without even giving any hint as to why you believe in them. And I imagine you believe because (and please correct me if I’m wrong) of your belief that god is real and the supernatural is real, but these things are not proven facts by far. At least from my perspective as an “outsider.” Of course, I can give you my reasons why I disbelieve in the supernatural so you know I’m not simply dismissing them out of hand.

May I ask for what reasons you believe in god/ the supernatural, Mr. Reppert? I haven’t read much of your blog so if you’ve addressed this before I apologize.

Update #2 - 10-30-10

Mr. Reppert, thanks for responding.

First, it looks as if the author is presuming that the Muslim and the Christian both presuppose that God spoke through the prophets of Israel, and hence if one religion fits with those prophecies, and the other does not, then we have better reason to believe the Christian revelation as opposed to the Muslim revelation. So I think the authors thought that they were appealing to something that Christians and Muslims believe in common. This isn't exactly question-begging; however, the the authors should have recognized that Muslims hold that the written text of the OT suffers from distortion, and so the straightforward application of Old Testament criteria for revelation can be circumvented from an Islamic perspective. So I don't read this as an assumption that the Bible is revelatory, I take it as an appeal to what the author thought was a common belief between the two religions that the Old Testament is revelatory.

The site on the ways God reveals himself looks to me like a theology site rather than an apologetics site. So that site assumes Christianity but is not arguing for it. Rather, it is addressed to an audience of evangelical Christians.

I'm starting to wonder if you and I are looking at the same site. Could you include a link in your next post?

Sure, the website is right here. It sounds like the same one. It just seems that you and I are examining the same arguments in different ways. I’ll try to clarify my position below.

Yes, the author is arguing from the standpoint that both books claim to be revelations from god, but that’s not my point. My point - as it’s always been - is that the christian analyzing these two belief systems is not doing so as an outsider, as the OTF requires. He is assuming his own bible speaks of true revelation, when these things have not been proven. Because the author assumes the supernatural (not to mention the author’s assumption the bible is even giving him an accurate portrayal of his belief system and how it came about) is real he is making assumptions about his own book. He is stacking on assumptions about his belief system and basing those judgments on those assumptions. Therefore he’s not attempting to examine his belief system as an outsider; without bias or predispositions.

Hopefully I was more clear this time around. Discussing these complex issues over the internet I’ve found just invites miscommunication and misunderstanding.

As for why I consider revelation possible, I do think there are some good reasons to believe in God, and I have defended one of them, the argument from reason, in print. However, I think this is independent of the issue in the outsider test. All the outsider test requires is that you approach each religion with the same level of skepticism. It doesn't tell you how high or low to set the bar, it just says you have to set it at the same level for every religion.

Do you really think that the Qur'an has the same level of support from archaeology that the New Testament does? Does the Book of Mormon?

I didn’t realize you had written a book on the issue. What is it called? Perhaps I’ll even write a review/ attempted refutation of it sometime ;- ) [I am known for writing long, detailed rebuttals to various christian apologists, etc.] But seriously, I am curious to learn of your reasons and am very interested in taking a look at your book. Even though I firmly believe what I do I still look at books by those of the opposite point of view to see if there might be anything that could change my mind. Speaking of books, are there any you’d recommend? The biblical scholars you mentioned in a previous post I’ve already got some of their books on my very long list of books to buy.

As for archaeological support, I’ve read that a vast majority of the bible has been shown to be unhistorical, or the events - if historical at all - are embellished. There are several archaeologists, such as Ronald Hendel, who are unlike many christian scholars, admits that “[a]rchaeological research has -- against the intentions of most of its practitioners -- secured the non-historicity of much of the Bible before the era of Kings.”

I don’t consider the book of mormon to be anything but the work of a known fraud. It’s been proven that he was a fraud and made everything up. The only difference between the many unbelievable stories in the bible and those of Joseph Smith is the fact that Smith wrote at a much later date (1840's) so we have more evidence for the unfactual nature of the book of mormon than the christian bible since two centuries have lapsed since the founding of christianity.

But, to answer your question, I think the christian bible would be more ‘historical’ than the book of mormon simply because Smith is a known fraud who made up a religion for who knows why...perhaps a need to feel important and have power. At least in the bible there is some verifiable historical events, even though some of them are obviously embellished. As for the qur'an I don't know hardly anything about it so I wouldn't know one way or the other.

Victor Reppert and John Loftus’ Outsider Test for Faith

The Truth Behind the New Atheism: A Review: The First Draft with Commentary

Introduction

Earlier today I had posted a post marking the three-year anniversary of my review of The Truth Behind the New Atheism and exposing a few of the lies that have been spread about me because of Marshall's immaturity and delusion regarding the first draft of the review I had written about his book.

Having said that, to continue with the three year anniversary for my review I wanted to follow up the last post with something some might find very interesting: my very first draft of the book review (something I'm sure David Marshall has been wanting to see again for a long time...). However, I thought others might also be curious to see what Marshall's fuss has always been about regarding my original draft so I've put this post together for anyone who might be interested.

In late September of 2007 I ordered David Marshall's recently published book The Truth Behind the New Atheism: Responding to the Emerging Challenges to God and Christianity and in October of 2007 I finished an attempt to rebut the book, which was originally placed on my blog, Arizona Atheist, on October 22, 2007.

The original review, as it turned out, had several unintentional errors where I had misread a handful of things Marshall had said. When these errors were pointed out to me I went to correct them (along with a few other errors I happened to find when I reread the book) and later finished a second draft in 2008. Finally, in 2009 I decided to rewrite the entire review to ensure I corrected all errors and to improve upon my rebuttals and concentrate more on the main argument in each chapter. With the third edition, I created a PDF document out of it, in which I added and tweaked a few arguments here and there, took out the (much deserved) foul language directed at Marshall, reworded parts of the review, added the two addendums I had written, and added footnotes.

As far as why I made the errors I did there is not one factor, and I explain a few throughout my commentary on the review. However, looking back, the errors were due to my personal lack of education on some issues as they related to the bible, science, and history; the fact that the computer I was working on was located in a dining room in a small condo where the person I was living with at the time would watch TV near by and try to talk to me while I worked, causing periods of distraction; Marshall's sometimes ambiguous language when discussing a subject; and my belief at the time that all apologetics was like what Ray Comfort spread in his books and Way of the Master television show, because for quite some time he was the only apologist I had paid much attention to, and that caused me to wrongly interpret one or two things Marshall had written.

I'm not trying to make excuses, I made the mistakes I made and I fully accept all responsibility. I should have written my review during times I was alone; should have done a lot more research and taken my time. Then I'm sure I could've written a review that was as well-argued as the final draft and could've avoided (maybe...one can hope) most of Marshall's condescending behavior and put-downs. Then maybe he would've actually sat down, treated me with some respect and dignity, and debated me like a man, and not acted like some immature, condescending, and egotistical little shit.

After I acknowledged said errors and fixed them and despite all the work I've done on this review Marshall still refuses to admit any errors of his – even when they're as plain as the bald spot on his head, and still claims that I have failed to understand his book, let alone refute it. Well, the fact of the matter is, I do understand Marshall's arguments and have rebutted them despite his desperate denials to the contrary.

Just for fun I've thought about posting the original draft of the review for quite some time, though have always decided against it. I figured, why, when I have corrected all errors and have written a much better review than my first draft? It's completely obsolete. But I decided to post it to prove that despite what Marshall says about my first review (how it was just horrible and I didn't understand anything he had written) what he's been saying about it these last few years is plain false. I did understand most of what he wrote, though I freely admit I did make some errors and in hindsight should have been more careful. Marshall's book, to be honest, was just fairly poorly written and argued and it was difficult to get through, which is one of the reasons I rushed through the review. But the point is that I was honest and fixed the errors, though Marshall neglects to acknowledge that I've succeeded in doing so.

I also wanted to post it because I've sometimes wondered if anyone might find the first draft on the internet since I happened to post the review itself (and not just links to my blog) on a variety of online forums and I felt a response would be necessary should anyone come across this very early and obsolete review, which is why I've added commentary to put it all in context.

In order to illustrate Marshall's dishonest claims about my allegedly not understanding anything in his book is this example of Marshall making such sweeping, dishonest statements about me:



As I've tried to show over and over again, Marshall has not been honest on this point – ever. It seems to me (and I said as much to him during our earliest discussions) that he didn't pay very good attention to my review before he decided to get rude with me.

Throughout the following first draft I will place the original review in blockquotes and place my comments in bold font to point out and explain any errors I may have made, what I got correct, and comment on why I made the mistake I did.

Finally, due to the fact that this review is obsolete I will not answer any critiques made against it. Please refer to the updated version. The link is at the end of this post.

So, here it is. The review that started it all...the insults...the contempt...and and the lies...

The Truth Behind the New Atheism: The First Draft, with Commentary

I recently got this new book by David Marshall called The Truth Behind the New Atheism: Responding to the Emerging Challenges to god and Christianity (Harvest House Publishers, 2007).

While flipping through the book, and reading bits and pieces of it, I must say that I am very disappointed by Marshall's book. His arguments are illogical and are, from what I've read, flat out wrong. From the sounds of the reviews I had read, and the description of the book, it sounded like a well-argued book, but like all the other apologist books, they always fall flat on their face, when it comes to fulfilling the hype about how it will destroy the atheists' position. I will detail my objections, in the following review.

One last note. I found his title, The New Atheism, to be an interesting choice, though one that is misunderstood. These theological claims have been debated for many years, some of them even a few hundred years, so to call this "new" is ridiculous. Now, the current rise of atheists speaking out is new, but there is nothing "new" about what atheists have been saying for hundreds of years.

Chapter 1: Have Christians Lost their Minds?

In this chapter Marshall attempts to respond to the claims that the faith of believers is "blind" and how "we've been bamboozled into accepting (in the name of science, though not always from scientists) a lie about truth and how to find it, an untruth that narrows life and hands truth to tunnel-visioned specialists (page 16)."

He also tries to cite bible verses (pages 17-18) to try and prove that faith doesn't mean "without evidence," but I think he failed miserably. He tries to claim that Thomas the doubter, when wanting evidence for christ, didn't receive it, as is claimed by many. He tries to counter those assertions, and says that Thomas did get proof, because according to the bible, jesus gave more then enough evidence for the disciples. Evidence "that they were willing to die for him." And that the miracles that jesus did was a second sign of proof and also claims that even "skeptical historians" accept these miracles as "strong evidence for historicity."

I don't see what is so narrow minded about science. What is wrong with accepting things only when there is evidence? Now, not every aspect of life can be lived in that way, or else it wouldn't be very fun. You must accept many things without a lot of evidence, like trusting a mate, or if a roller coaster is safe. However, even in those situations, there is some evidence which one can examine. Is your lover staying out late at night a lot more lately, if so, you can ask him or her about it; you can even follow them. You can look at safety reports on a park's rides, which can give you some assurance about what you want to know.

But, despite what Marshall says, faith is believing things without evidence - or at least bad evidence, like those who try and prove the story of the resurrection, as being historically accurate. Would you trust a group of people who told a story, but told four different versions of it? I don't think so. I've detailed the problems with those claims as well in other writings on my blog. This line of illogic (I won't even bother to call it logic) is pathetic. Would you trust someone who is known to have lied a lot, or to contradict themselves a lot? No. Then why do it with the bible? I've covered the many problems with the bible, but according the Marshall, we can trust every word.

He then asks if it is rational to believe things on the basis of another person's testimony, and says that everything we know is based on learning from, and trusting other people. He is saying that we should trust what is written in the gospels, because people wrote them, and we're supposed to trust other people.

His claim that many historians accept the miracles as proof is absurd. I must ask...which historians? I don't doubt that people like William Lane Craig, and other apologists, would agree that miracles are good proof, but I don't know of any unbiased historian who would think that way. There are many historians who study the bible, and see clear evidence of its messy past, and how it was not written with one purpose in mind, and changed throughout time, by many different writers, each with their own viewpoint.

On pages 19-20, Marshall attacks Dawkins on his comment in his book, The god Delusion, about Richard Swinburne's comment that too much evidence "might not be good for us," when it comes to proof of god, etc. Marshall tries to present Dawkins in a bad light by quoting Dawkins on a TV show, which Swinburne and Dawkins appeared on, as saying, "May you rot in hell," to Swinburne for trying to "justify" the holocaust. Marshall explains that Dawkins responded with hostility needlessly, because Swinburne wasn't trying to "justify" the holocaust, but only why god let it happen. I have not seen this debate, but Marshall goes on and says that Dawkins "hasn't shown the patience to read and understand" the philosophical arguments about god. Yet, the fact is the Dawkins does indeed know these arguments. Dawkins knows- just as well as every other atheist - that these are nothing but rationalizations about why god didn't stop such a horrible event, because they can't reconcile their idea of a loving and caring god, with one that kills, and allows so much horror in the world.

But the really absurd comment by Marshall is this, about having too much evidence: "Can there be a thing as too much evidence? From the point of view of a relationship, there can be. An honest husband may feel dejected if his wife insists on 24-hour streaming webcasts from his hotel room when he's on business trips."

First of all, we are not talking about relationships here; we are talking about evidence for the existence of god, which there better be very good evidence if someone should make such a bold claim. As Carl Sagan used to say, "Extrodinary claims require extrodinary evidence."

Second, if I told Marshall that he was going to die of cancer within the next six months (yet another great example of our wonderful "design" by god), I'm sure he would want some damn good evidence for that claim.

In the next section, Marshall discusses the differences of opinion between Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath, when McGrath wrote a book called Dawkins God : Genes Memes And The Meaning Of Life , in which he argued that Dawkins' definition of faith is wrong, in that faith does use evidence, and is not "blind." Marshall quotes a couple other theologians such as Thomas Aquinas, Justin Martyr, and Griffith Thomas, who has said that "faith begins 'with the conviction of the mind based on adequate evidence' (page 20)."

It seems to me that theologians are in a bit of a word game because faith, to my knowledge, has always meant "belief without logical proof." Even as far back as 1906, faith has been defined as "Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - Ambrose Bierce (from The Devil's Dictionary).

Even if they claim that the age old "designer" reasons are their "proof", these claims have been put to rest ever since Darwin, which is why the religious have fought the discovery of evolution since the beginning.

On pages 22 to 23 Marshall attacks Dawkins again, about not doing his research into what faith really means according to christians, and that "one is responsible to do one's best to see if those ideas are true. (page 23)" How ironic. I think christians ought to pay attention to one of their own, and actually do research about the claims of science, before trying to dismiss them with absurd claims of "irreducible complexity", design, etc.

For those who claim that faith is believing something with proof, tell that to the many writers of dictionaries, or the online encyclopedia, wikipedia.org. All of them use that standard definition of faith, which is belief without proof. Theologians are the only ones using that definition of faith, so who are we to believe? The answer is clear.

More evidence as to this false definition of faith is the following. Why is it that every religious person I have debated, when I've shown their "reasons" to be illogical and incorrect (as far as scientific knowledge), do they retreat into the corner and play the "faith" card? I believe it, and that's that, is their response, in a nutshell. That is not having any reason, to believe. That's just belief for the sake of belief. Those aren't reasons of any kind.

So it would seem that christians' use of faith matches the common definition, and not the one which christians want to use.

In the next section he quotes some studies which showed that just under 50% of the people who were asked why they believed in god, said because of design. Well, as I said before, that reason has been destroyed by science and logic ( see my post Design in the Universe...There's No god Behind It! for more information).

At the end of the chapter, Marshall ties everything up by talking about the different kinds of faith, and bashing Dawkins again. He claims that Dawkins is making assumptions, yet that is an accusation which Marshall himself is guilty of. He says that "if [Dawkins] were to find evidence that seemed to contradict [evolution] tomorrow, I don't believe for a moment he would quickly drop his theory (page 32)."

It's funny hearing a christian say that, because given the mountain of evidence against god, he still is content to believe. And any scientist (or atheist) who was honest with himself, and others, would admit they were wrong if any evidence contradicted evolution. But of course, that hasn't happened in over 150 years, yet theologians are still claiming god exists. Who is the one being close minded and hypocritical now?

This was the very first book I'd read by a more slick christian apologist. Before this, I had only read arguments against evolution and those by Ray Comfort and other creationists. I honestly was not prepared to argue against such sophisticated apologetic arguments, though with further learning I found that even these arguments of Marshall's were horribly wrong and just as bad as Ray Comfort's. The only difference was that I needed to gain more knowledge of these different subjects and had to try harder to see past his rhetoric.

While, to be honest, I cringe when I read my thoughts on the first chapter it can be easily seen that I did understand Marshall's argument, unlike what he argues. It's clear I understood that Marshall objected to Dawkins' view of faith and tried to cite the bible and other christians to prove his point. Looking at how I responded I see where I went wrong and my lack of knowledge at the time of just how to answer his argument was problematic. However, my goal was to try to show that, in reality, christians didn't actually have evidence for their beliefs, therefore how can we say faith is synonymous with evidence when christians don't have any evidence to begin with? And even in my most recent review I stick with a similar line of argumentation, though also make use of other arguments, like citing theologians who agree that christians must use faith.

When I said, ”I don't see what is so narrow minded about science. What is wrong with accepting things only when there is evidence?” I was critiquing Marshall's complaint about how science is done and why it doesn't accept the supernatural into its conclusions and countering Marshall's absurd claim that scientists are “tunnel-visioned.” I actually brought up this complaint to Marshall on Amazon.com and here is where his confirmation bias and his own “tunnel vision” became apparent. I had paraphrased him when discussing his argument and he claimed I didn't understand the argument because he did not say “narrow-minded” as I did, and I tried to reason with him and explain that the terms can pretty much be exchanged. The overall meaning of Marshall's argument is not changed by that switch, but he got all bent out of shape and accused me of not understanding his argument. As a matter of fact this early discussion can still be found on my blog.

I also missed Marshall's sleight of hand at seemingly distorting what Dawkins said as it related to the television show with Richard Swinburne and Peter Atkins. I go into this in the updated review and clarify the situation that Marshall muddled in his book. For some reason I thought Marshall was referring to a television show he watched and had forgotten that Dawkins commented on this show himself in his book The God Delusion and that's where Marshall got his information from.

All in all, my rebuttal wasn't the best but I did understand what he was arguing and due to the time span between reading Marshall's book and Dawkins' I had completely forgotten about that television show, though it was only a side note in Dawkins' book, but I should have looked at Marshall's footnotes. But, this was only the third review I'd ever written and I wasn't that experienced or as knowledgeable as I am now.

Chapter 2: Are Scientists Too "Bright" to Believe in god?

In this chapter, Marshall tries to help the reader figure out why so many scientists are atheists, and lack belief in god. He also makes the claim that christianity has done much to help science along. I bet to differ. No doubt, the men who were scientists, were believers before Darwin. They were naturalists; they deeply studied what they believed god had made. But after Darwin, it shed new light on how the natural world, and it's creatures, formed, and filled in yet another piece of the puzzle about the world, that science continues to fill. But, the time in Europe wasn't called the "dark ages" for nothing, when religion became dominant, and the inquisition was formed, and murdered many people who contradicted the scriptures. Religion has done (and is!) doing much to stifle scientific thought.

Marshall brings up some well educated scientists of present day, such as Alister McGrath, who was educated at Oxford, who are believers in god, and tries to show that more scientists believe then many of the statistics which atheists parade around, show. But, regardless of what scientists think, that does not make it true. That is a logical fallacy by claiming you're right because some authority holds the same opinion. If the facts are legit, then it doesn't matter who says them. Since I'm on this subject about smart people believing in religion, maybe Marshall should take a look at Michael Shermer's book Why People Believe in Weird Things, and read the chapter titled "Why Smart People Believe Weird Things."

But, regardless, he goes over seven reasons he feels why so many scientists do not believe:

The first reason he claims is "hostility to religion", and cites an example of when Stephen Meyer (an intelligent design advocate) tried to publish a paper in the scientific literature about why the Cambrian Explosion disproves evolution. For those who don't know the Cambrian Explosion is a period of time, about 530 million years ago, when an abundance of life forms "suddenly" appeared, and Meyer felt that was evidence for the "creation" by god, when he made all the lifeforms at once. But the word "sudden" is very much misunderstood by people - either because they simply don't understand the geologic column, or they don't care to understand. But "sudden" does not mean instantaneous, but this event happened over a period of several million years, which in geological time, is " instantaneous".

He says that the editor who allowed the article by Meyer was "shunned" by the scientific community, and uses that as one of his examples of the scientific communities' hostility toward religion. Yet, that is very confusing because, Mayer's paper was an outright lie, based on misunderstanding, and false information. So why should he be regarded by scientists? That's like someone trying to write a paper for a scientific journal on why the earth is flat, when there is so much data which already contradicts his false conclusion!

Scientists are not hostile to religion; many of them see science and religion as two completely separate subjects and should not be mixed, while others see science as defeating religion (as do I) because science has discovered evidence which contradicts the claims of religion. But, the fact is there are many scientists who do believe in god, and they have good careers. One that I can name off the top of my head is Kenneth Miller. No doubt many scientists disagree with his belief in a god, but he doesn't try to make false scientific claims, as some so called scientists do, just to make them feel better about their beliefs.

Reasons two and three kind of go together. The second is "self-imposed limitations" and the third is "bias against miracles".

These claims are so silly because so many claim that science is biased against the supernatural, when that is not the case. Science has done studies on prayer (a supernatural claim), and studies on psychic ability, and other phenomenon. All the results come back the same: there is no evidence of the supernatural. Scientists are not limiting themselves by only studying "natural" phenomenon because that's all that has been observed. Give hard evidence of the supernatural, and I'm sure every scientist would be trying to be the first to understand this new supernatural finding. There can be no bias when there isn't anything to be biased about. Science can't be biased when there is no evidence of the supernatural in the first place.

His fourth reason is "doubt instead of discernment". He claims that miracles are provable, and are nothing like "magic". He claims that a miracle is verifiable, which is true to some degree. Many claim a miracle when they see someone with cancer all of a sudden become healed, or something of this nature. The problem is that, diseases have been known to just disappear for unknown reasons. Even myself, an atheist, almost died as a baby as it was supposed to be a miracle because everyone thought I was going to die, but I all of a sudden turned the corner. Was that a miracle? No. I was just strong enough, and if god knew I was going to be an atheist (he knows all remember?) then why help me, if he hates atheists?

It's not so much about not wanting to understand...science has many hard to understand concepts especially in physics, and cosmology, but why waste your time with something which doesn't have any evidence for it?

The fifth one is due to "faulty information". This I find very ironic since it is his flock which has been spreading false information about the findings of science for many years. Once again, Marshall is being a hypocrite.

But he claims that "some churches set young people up to lose their faith by teaching bad science (page 46)". He tells the story about Sir Paul Nurse, a 2001 Nobel Prize laureate in physiology, who because of the conflicts between what he learned in church about genesis and life history, gave up his religious beliefs.

I may be wrong about what he is trying to say here, but my feeling is that Marshall is saying that because of the "false" findings of science, many people doubt their faith. That couldn't be further from the truth. The scientific findings of science have plenty of evidence to back them up.

His sixth argument is that of " presumption". He says that because people are highly educated in one field, that doesn't make them qualified to speak in another field. I somewhat agree with this, but as long as one does the research on the topic that one wants to write about, I see no problem with this. I'm not an expert on god, or science, but I write about these subjects a lot. I did not just jump into this first; I read, and studied a great deal to learn both sides of the argument, and am still reading about both sides, which is why I bought this book. And, as I've seen dozens of times, the theologian hasn't advanced his arguments in the last several hundred years.

The seventh reason is "ignorance", and just restates his sixth reason about someone being unable to properly comment on a subject without first doing much research.

On page 48, at the end of chapter two, he talks about Dawkins' quote on the trinity, and then claims how he (Marshall) understands it so very well, and that it's not hard to understand. He says that the trinity just means what it says. That there are three gods in one, yet that doesn't answer the question! For centuries theologians smarter then Marshall have been trying to square away the meaning of the trinity, and haven't been able to, so what makes Marshall feel that he has such an amazing understanding of it? The trinity is a contradiction, I believe, because the monotheists (belief in one god) are still attempting to hold on to their polytheistic (belief in more then one god) roots, and their theology hasn't been squared away to get rid of all of the influence of the past, and other religions.

Once again, I clearly did understand his main argument and his “non logical” reasons scientists disbelieve in god and I have pretty much the same responses in the first draft that I have in the final one, just with some better arguments. Though, here is where I made a few mistakes in reading Marshall's book. Regarding science, I just plain had no detailed knowledge of the relationship between science and religion that I have now. To help me answer this claim by Marshall for my final edition of the review I contacted Richard Carrier, a Ph.D. in the history of science, and he gave me a list of books to read which helped me understand what I needed to know.

I also blundered and for some reason thought it was Stephen Meyer who was allegedly persecuted, but no, it was actually Richard Sternberg and this was one of the first errors I caught when I went to write my second draft. I had brought up this error to Marshall in a few of our earliest discussions on Amazon.com in 2008 and he simply ignored it. No doubt because he saw that the evidence I had against him was overwhelming (I brought up this error after I had realized and fixed my mistake).

I also misread what Marshall said about his fifth reason scientists don't believe. This was one error that Marshall pointed out to me and I quickly corrected it. He was actually criticizing religious people who spread "faulty information" about science and its relationship to religion. But I go on to show in my newest review that he is being a hypocrite when he says this due to his own reliance on “faulty information,” like intelligent design.

All of the other reasons I understood and I still feel my rebuttals were, for the most part, effective.

Chapter 3: Does Evolution Make god Redundant?

Marshall starts off this chapter talking about the book by Jonathan Wells called, Icons of Evolution, which is a book by an anti-evolutionist, which tries to dismiss the evidence for evolution, by making claims about Darwin's finches, the peppered moths, and Haeckel's embryos, in which all of his claims were false, and Marshall points to the bad reviews on the internet as proof that anti-evolutionists are bad mouthed, and claims that anyone who challenges evolution is "persecuted" by the scientific community.

The fact is that the conclusions which Wells comes to, are in a word: false. There is evidence which contradicts his book, which is why so many people disliked his book, and labeled him as a creationist.

Next, Marshall talks about the role that evolution has in regards to faith. He makes a claim that many christians also do. They state that perhaps god might have used evolution to create all we see, yet that severely contradicts the bible, where it says everything was made in a matter of days, and it all happened instantaneously, when god spoke. If the bible is at the core of christianity, then why isn't the bible correct? Some people (like the biologist Kenneth Miller) claims that the bible says that we were made from "dirt", which is very close to the truth, since the basic chemicals that make everything on earth are found in the stars, so many people say we are made of "star dust". But, given the many other errors in the bible, as far as scientific observations go, I don't see how that one verse lets anyone claim the bible was inspired. If it were, it wouldn't have any mistakes in it. I see the "dirt" claim, as just a coinincidence.

On page 55 Marshall has an odd statement about the fact that, according to Francis Collins, the head of the Human Genome Project, all humans -whatever their race- share 99.9 percent of their DNA, and that this is unusual because most animals are much more diverse. Seems to me as if Marshall is trying to claim that the Noah's ark story might be true, since their belief that all humans came from that one lineage. Though, how do they explain the different races then, if all the people in the world are supposedly descended from white people (Noah's family)?

But the simple answer to this is, of course we share very similar DNA, all humans are of the same species! The different races are due to different living environments.

Near the end of the chapter, Marshall seems to agree that the "big picture" of evolution "may be true," and cites the fossil record as being, for the most part, consistent with what we should find if evolution were true, and that the geologic column is also consistent, in that "no rabbits show up in the pre-Cambrian rocks," and that "the bodies of man and ape do share many common structures." I applaud Marshall for at the very least admitting these facts, even though most of this book is pure nonsense.

He comments how Michael Shermer asked why the designer put "junk DNA" in our DNA, which is useless bits of DNA which seem to do nothing. Marshall quotes Francis Collins as saying that it is wrong for anyone to say that is nothing but "junk" due to our "level of ignorance." I agree with Collins, however, not with his conclusion. It's true that this "junk DNA" may do something, but that doesn't necessarily point to any creator. Again, the god of the gaps argument is used often, even by very intelligent men, in order to justify their beliefs.

In this chapter Marshall discussed evolution and a few other subjects. He also looks to try his hand at showing how the bible predicted many of the findings of modern science, though with my lack of knowledge of many of these subjects at the time I missed that, such as on page 55. Marshall is actually making an argument about how the bible allegedly got it correct that all humans are alike and sprang from the same source and citing the genome project as confirming this biblical “truth.”

Regarding my comment about Noah's ark, I unfortunately misread what Marshall had meant here and read more into it than I should have. I don't recall exactly why I believed Marshall was arguing something about Noah. I think it was because of my previous dealings with christians who made such arguments and I interpreted the text wrong. Of course, now I read the passage and see exactly what he's saying, but that's because I now have the required knowledge to properly understand Marshall's position. At that time I didn't.

I don't have much else to say about this chapter. Due to my lack of knowledge of these issues at the time I don't feel I did very good at understanding what Marshall was getting at, though I fixed that in the updated review. I also more throughly refute Marshall's propaganda about Johnathan Wells' book.

Chapter 4: Some Riddles of Evolution

In this chapter, Marshall says that evolution has described quite a few things about the life on this planet, but that it cannot solve them all, and that there very could be some designer which helped out the process. He points to the following "problems" of evolution.

He pulls the old "irreducible complexity" idea and claims that science hasn't totally debunked this claim, yet Kenneth Miller has debunked this claim many times. Each of the systems that Michael Behe has claimed cannot function without all of it's parts, has been shown to be wrong.

Marshall then quotes Richard Dawkins again, from his book The god Delusion, as claiming that even if an irreducible structure was found it would be "unscientific" to say that it had to have been designed.

This is a bit misleading of Marshall, because the title of the section where Dawkins is quoted is called, "The Worship of Gaps", and Dawkins says that if something that was "irreducibly complex" were found, it doesn't automatically mean a god designed it, and that science must investigate further, if this could have been done naturally, before evoking god in a "god of the gaps" argument.

Yet, the way Marshall presents Dawkins' quote, is a bit misleading, almost implying that Dawkins' is steadfast in holding to evolutionary theory, even if the evidence contradicted it. Seems to me, Marshall, and many other intelligent design advocates, like to paint scientists as being just as stubborn as they are in accepting evidence against their beliefs. This tactic reminds me of the ploy which many religious people use, by saying that atheism is a religion too, which it isn't. But to me, that almost sounds as it the religious are saying, "Look! You're just as silly as us! You are just as religious and fundamentalist as us!" Sorry, but this isn't the case at all.

In pages 64-65, Marshall again makes claims that scientists are simply bashing anyone who disagrees with evolution, and simply calling anyone who does names. He cites the same example of scientists not allowing any anti-evolutionists' papers into scientific journals, with his earlier example of the paper by the intelligent design proponent Stephen Meyer. Looks like Marshall doesn't have as many examples of scientific predjuce as he claims, or else why repeat the same claim again?

Another one of Marshall's claims is that another scientist, Dr. Sternberg, was subtlety told that he should quit after making statements about his doubts about "darwinism", by "forcing him to out via numerous cuts and inconveniences: taking keys away, demanding extra paperwork, circulating rumors...(page 64)".

Marshall doesn't detail what each of these men's objections to evolution were, so I'm not sure if they had legitimate scientific objections, or not, so I'm not sure if these people were needlessly harassed. But the fact is, that if anyone presents false evidence in an attempt to knock down an argument for evolution, they should rightly be put in their place.

In the next section of the chapter, Marshall says how no one knows how life could have gotten started in the first place. He neglects to mention the Miller-Urey experiment, in which a simple combination of ingredients formed amino acids, the building blocks of life.

As Marshall says, it is unknown how DNA evolved to it's present state, but again, just because something is unknown at this time, doesn't mean it had to have some supernatural helping hand.

Though, I have to admit that Marshall did say that no one knows how life arose at this time, but, he also claims that he is not offering this as an excuse to bring god into the picture. On this, I beg to differ, because he wants to at the very least put a tiny bit of doubt in his readers' mind about the origin of life itself. That is the same as claiming some supernatural event for the occurrence of something, when there has never been any evidence of any supernatural events.

In Marshall's next section, he makes the claim that "creative mutations are hard to find". He quotes Daniel Dennett in his book Breaking the Spell, as saying that mutations in DNA don't happen once in a "trillion copyings". This makes Marshall wonder how if evolution thrives on these mutations, and there are so few, how could the variety of life we see come about, without many more mutations?

He also claims that even with mutations happening even in present day in different organisms, why don't we see them change forms? He also makes an absurd statement in page 73, "Evolution doesn't know its work is done. It doesn't know it shouldn't turn us into whales, teach us to eat grass like cows..."

From this sentence, it's clear that Marshall doesn't have a clue about evolution. It reminds me about an objection a friend of mine said to me about evolution. He said if it were true, why haven't humans evolved into "space aliens" and flown off into space already? Absolutely absurd.

Each species has evolved on its own branch on the tree of life. There are some similarities between many of the species, but due to different environments, food, and predators, each species evolves differently.

On his earlier statement about not seeing drastic changes, the answer is simple. Life on this planet has been around for several million years. Just because us humans, with our short life spans, cannot actively see changes in form of different animals, doesn't mean it didn't happen. Plus, we do have fossil evidence for the changes in the forms of various species. Why is it that the fossil Tiktaalik roseae is a fish which has the same bone structure as the modern human shoulder, forearm, and hand? This is a clear adaptation in form from fish to land dwelling animals.

Marshall tries to give an added twist to the "irreducible complexity" concept by claiming that the answer of Dawkins' that half an eye is better then no eye at all, "answers the wrong" riddle. Marshall says "the question isn't what happens when half the complete structure is missing. The question is what happens when half its parts are missing. What good is an eye without an optic nerve? (page 74) "

Well first I must ask, what is the difference between "structure" and "parts"? I see no difference here, and I feel that Marshall is simply playing word games, just as he did with the definition of faith.

According to information I found on the TalkOrigins.org website, an eye doesn't have to have an optic nerve in order to function, and there are animals who have cells without a nerve (Source: www.talkorigins.org / Index to Creationist Claims, Claim # CB301), so an early stage in human eye evolution most likely didn't "need" an optic nerve to help with sight.

Marshall claims that irreducible complexity is an objection to evolution that should be heard, yet I must disagree because every claim of irreducible complexity has been shown to be false.

In the last section Marshall asks the question if evolution disproves god. As far as evolution and god are concerned, I say it's possible, however so very unlikely as to be impossible. As I've said before, the very idea of evolution disproves the first chapter in the bible, in which god creates everything at once. The geologic column proves that. This destroys the very concept of god which all religions are based upon. So, if their starting premise is false (their description of god and how things happened) then the entire belief system most likely is wrong too. Yet, Marshall often says that Genesis and evolution, both, tell different parts of the story, and that genesis describes some of what science has found. Really? I'd like to know where it does, because I've read genesis and it sure doesn't sound anything like what science has discovered about the world.

Right off the bat you can see I nailed the main purpose of this chapter, as I've shown in my updated review, and throughout nearly the entire review of the chapter I made the same statements (though backed them up with more evidence and went into more depth to argue my case) in the updated review. The only two issues in this chapter were my misunderstanding of his argument about Sternberg, which as I said before, I corrected in the second edition. I also misunderstood one of his arguments about evolution. He wasn't arguing that we don't see species changing, but why we don't see evolution creating new mutations in human beings at this point in time. Despite these few errors I understood the majority of the chapter. In addition, I greatly expanded upon this chapter in my updated review and refute more arguments than I had previously.

Chapter 5: Did god Evolve?

In this chapter, Marshall attempts to rebut the claims of many which state that god is a creation of man and tries to find holes in various people's arguments for such an origin for religion, by Dennett and Dawkins. While trying to shoot down Dawkins' and Dennett's ideas regarding the origins of religion, he doesn't offer any evidence of his own, so I'm curious where he thinks religion came from? My guess is, that he feels these experiences by ancient man were legit, and is proof that all of the things detailed in the bible are true. If so, that is nothing but preposterous, and I've explained why in my many writings. No sense in going over it all again.

On page 82, he makes a claim for the supernatural, saying that out of body experiences, miracles, and other miraculous cures, are proof of something more then just the superstitious beliefs of the ancients that have been handed down through the generations, as is the common view of religion.

Sorry, Marshall, but there is evidence that these experiences have natural causes, so an argument using these examples fail ( I detail some of these in throughout my writings).

On page 89, he tries to argue the fact that since many people all over the world have the same basic concepts of god (he is eternal, a kind of creator, communicates with his creations, etc) that religion could be true. Why else would all these people, in vastly different places, have such similar beliefs?

Well, that is certainly not proof of a factual nature of religion. Just as different beliefs, or fads, get passed from different places, it's the same with religion. All these people likely had passed on these basic beliefs down the ages, and as people spread across the world, the beliefs went with them. Or the beliefs were simply spread from one place to another. This is a much more plausible explanation. Plus the fact that so many religions have a lot of contradictory beliefs, and customs. This is never more telling then the continuing killing that is going on in the middle east between people of different faiths. If these beliefs were all truly part of "one truth" why all the arguing and violence over beliefs?

Even though I didn't go over all of Marshall's arguments in this chapter, such as his attempt to rebut the many claims that Jesus is a myth based on other individuals, I once again understood the arguments I addressed, and in fact, use much the same line of argumentation in the updated review, though try to back up my assertions. As I said previously, I didn't like the book and rushed through it, though I am more thorough and address more arguments in the updated review.

Going through the review, too, also reminds me of how poor many of my rebuttals were. Not only did my lack of knowledge of some of the subjects under discussion hamper the effectiveness of the review (among the other issues I've explained already), but I also felt his arguments were mostly silly and I believed that I didn't need to back up what I said as much with facts and sources since I felt his errors would easily be spotted by anyone who read his book. But this just showcases my lack of experience in writing reviews at the time.

Chapter 6: Is the Good Book Bad?

Marshall tries to convince readers that the bible is actually a good book, and that the story in Genesis 22:2 about god asking Abraham to sacrifice his son, in which many skeptics claim is child abuse, and that the bible condones it. Yet, Marshall claims that this isn't about child sacrifice, only a story about god wanting his people to quit child sacrifice, which is why god stopped Abraham; it is a story of progress according to Marshall.

But the problem with that answer is that only in Deuteronomy 12:31 does god tell people that child sacrifice is wrong, so how does Marshall claim that in the very beginning of the bible (in the first chapter in Genesis) it shows progress, when child sacrifices are still practiced?

In 2 Kings 16:3, a king sacrifices his son, though it does say, against the wishes of god, but a sacrifice does take place. The same happens in 2 Kings 21:6. Though, Kings is after the Deut. law that was passed.

But let us not forget one of the most brutal passages, which actually occurs in Hosea 13:16, where god murders a mother and her unborn baby, and smashes childrens' heads on rocks.

To say that the Abraham story is a lesson of "progress" is a huge error. Even after god makes child sacrifice wrong, people still do it. I think this christian might want to read his bible more.

Marshall also does what so many religious people do, and that's point to a different verse in the bible which contradicts the bad things which so many atheists point out. As I've said before, the bible was written by many people, each with different beliefs, and motives. There were certainly some groups who allowed child sacrifice, while others who didn't, and this shows up in the bible.

Marshall then begins to discuss the argument that because there are various conflicts between what one should do regarding right and wrong (the bible says it's OK to sacrifice your child; own slaves, etc.) and if the bible is the word of god, then why don't christians follow it? It's because, the argument goes, that all people have a deeper origin of morality then just some age old book. If christians really did follow the bible to the letter, it would be pure chaos. Though it also depends on which laws you follow, and that brings us back to the original argument.

How to christians decide which is good, and what is bad?

Marshall says that the bible speaks of "natural law" which is talked about in Proverbs, and is actually one of the kinder parts of the bible.

This is actually not an argument at all, because he still doesn't answer the question. How to christians choose between the good and the bad?

Next, I'm perplexed about Marshall's next claim that all of god's violent acts was good for "all nations" and is why the jews survived (page106).

First of all, any kind and loving god who commands the death of anyone not of his chosen people is cruel, and is nothing more then biblical story telling. To quote Marshall, "which may be why the jews survived", leads me to believe that Marshall thinks that this is all true to history. I find that amusing.

On page 107 Marshall says that the bible contains "6 1/2 pages of verses containing the word 'love' or its cognates - over 700 references!"

Here again, Marshall is trying to point to only the kind, loving, verses in the bible, and discount the many cruel and inhumane ones. Besides, there are a hell of a lot more then six and a half pages of cruel acts by this loving god.

On page 108, Marshall tries to claim that the bible stood for racial unity, and cites the following passage: "If I have denied justice to my menservants and maidservants...what will I do when god confronts me?...Did not he who made me in the womb make them? (Job 31:13-15)"

How odd he would say such the thing. The bible never once says that slavery is wrong. With the many different translations, maidservant and servant simply mean slave...a later insert by bible translators to soften the harsh stories of the bible. But, in any case, the bible has many regulations for the treatment of slaves, and even says that you are allowed to beat your slave all you want, as long as you don't kill them.

Next, Marshall takes up the task of attempting to prove that the bible doesn't talk down to women by citing the same verse that Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort did, when they tried to downplay the horrible treatment of women in the bible, in their Evidence Bible (See my post Taking the Way of the Morons [master] to Task: The Evidence Bible Demolished). The verse talks about how men should love their wives (Ephesians 5:25-28), yet he some how misses these other verses about women:

1 Corinthians 11:8-9: "For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man."

1 Corinthians 14:24-35: "Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church."

1 Timothy 2:9-14: "I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship god."

1 Timothy 2:11-14: "A women should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner."

Ephesians 5:22-24: "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the savior. Now as the church submits to christ, so also wives should submit to your husbands in everything."

I think that is more then enough verses now...as there are many more like this.

On page 110, Marshall makes the claim that he finds "unity (within diversity) in the bible", when he asks if the bible is "disjointed".

This is such a silly statement because of course the bible is disjointed. In his religiously- closed mind, of course he sees unity. There are christians who see nothing but love and kindness in the bible, and think that it doesn't contradict itself. All of which are false.

The bible must be a jumble of different teachings and ideas, because of the way it was written and put together. There is no way around it. I don't see how there can be any kind of unity when the bible continually tells people that on one hand to love your wife, then at the same time make her be submissive to you. That is not love; that is a form of slavery, and there are many other examples.

Most of this chapter is spot on and a majority of the arguments here are much the same as in the updated review. There is hardly any form of a gross distortion of Marshall's arguments here (as he likes to argue), except for the fact that I don't go into detail about why he's wrong, and even upon opening the book again and rereading the quote about the Jews surviving I'm still not sure what Marshall was getting at. I am nitpicking over small details, which was one of the reasons I wanted to rewrite the entire review and focus on the main arguments, which I handily refute in my updated review.

Marshall also discusses evolutionary morality and I handily refute his arguments in my updated review and go into a lot more detail about why he's wrong and clearly confused about morality (as are most christian apologists...or should I say all?).

Chapter 7: What Should an Atheist Do About Jesus?

In this chapter Marshall attempts the impossible. He tells the readers that he wants to try to prove that the gospels tell the whole truth about jesus, and nothing but the truth; that jesus was unique among men.

That's funny because first of all, buddha said many similar things as jesus, and buddha predates jesus by many years. This is one of the reasons many people feel that buddha, and even jesus were never historical people...in fact there are many parallels between the two people. They both had a single loyal follower, who was with them more then any other. Buddha had Ānanda, while jesus had John, the one many people say is the one that jesus "loved", as is quoted in the bible.

Marshall's excuses for the reality of jesus are absurd. He claims that stories told, which took place six decades ago would be reliable, when he referenced a families' funeral, yet he didn't say whether or not the stories were accurate. Yes, people can remember things, but the question is, how well can they remember? It's a fact that memory is not very reliable. Just ask any cop.

He makes the claim (page 119) that all the gospel writers were around when everything took place, and they sound like "eyewitness reports". How would he know this? He claims that many details only an archaeologist would know like "details about the pool of Siloam or Jacob's well".

Well let's just look at some of the findings of archaeology shall we?

There are many findings of archaeology which contradict the bible:

For example, Luke 2:4 describes Nazareth as being Joseph's home, but the archaeological evidence indicates that the town did not exist at the time. The Exodus, which should have been a major event, does not appear in Egyptian records. There are no traces in the Sinai that one would expect from forty years of wandering of more then a half million people. And other archaeological evidence contradicts it, showing instead that the Hebrews were a native people. And lastly, there is no evidence that the kingdoms of David and Solomon were nearly as powerful as the bible indicates; they may not have existed at all.

(From my book review Taking the Way of the Morons [master] to Task: The Evidence Bible Demolished)

Just because these places are actual locations, doesn't mean these people wrote about them, when they were around. There are references to several historical places, but that doesn't mean any of the writers were around in the time of jesus. In fact, evidence contradicts that. There are no historians during jesus' time who write anything about him, except a forged passage in a work of Josephus'.

Marshall next attacks the various early gospels that have been found, and makes some wild claims. On page 221 he says that historians such as Karen King don't see these gnostic gospels as historical, and thus don't take them as seriously as the books that are in the bible.

Well, most historians, as I said before, don't take the bible to be historical either. Like the gnostic texts, the bible was written by many people, with different motives, throughout a long period of time.

He lashes out at Dawkins yet again, when he says in his book, The god Delusion, that the Gospel of Thomas has stories of jesus in them abusing his powers, and scolds Dawkins, saying how he doesn't know what he is talking about, because he quoted from the wrong book. It is the Infancy Gospel of Thomas that has the stories, not the Gospel of Thomas, which only contains sayings of jesus.

Marshall is correct, after looking up both books. But, to talk down to Dawkins because of a possible mistake (who is to say he did it on purpose?) is pointless. After all I don't think Marshall can say much because he himself, has made many errors in talking about the very book he claims is inspired by god.

He also claims that the books in the bible today were more important to the people who put the bible together, then all the other ones. Really? I'd like to know how he would know this. Did Marshall travel back in time with his time machine?

To me, almost all the writings were deemed important, at least to the groups who wrote them. If it wasn't important, why bother to write them down? It was only the people, with their individual agendas, who put the bible together, and wanted to put forth a particular message. They tried to discard the writings of the gnostics who felt that jesus was only a mere man, or only a spirit, or else that would throw off the Council of Nicaea's plan to have jesus become some kind of savior, and destroy the theology they wanted to create. Though, because of the fragmentary nature of the gospels, many contradictory teachings, and beliefs, went into the bible, destroying the consistency of the bible they tried for.

In the next section Marshall tries to disprove the "jesus was a legend" idea that has been around for many years.

He makes the most absurd, and biased claim, that the gospel stories are not legends, and quotes Richard Burridge, in his book What Are the Gospels?, as saying that they "closely confirm to the genre of bioi, or ancient biography".

He quotes an authority for his proof, and yet in the last section, bashes Dawkins for doing the same, when Dawkins quotes Thomas Jefferson for his perspective on things (page 122). Jefferson was a well read man, and knew his history, so to say that quoting Jefferson doesn't mean anything is pointless.

Marshall's claim that the stories in the gospels are an accurate biography is hilariously off the mark.

Since when do people rise from the dead, cast a spell which allows a dead man to come back to life, walk on water, and all of the other astonishing things jesus is said to have done?

Aside from the seemingly impossible feats ascribed to jesus, none of the gospels agree what he is said to have done, or said. Even the resurrection accounts differ to a great degree.

How anyone can claim these things really happened is at the height of stupidity.

Marshall's next task is to try and disprove the similarities between jesus and all of the other savior gods, though he does quote another authority, he doesn't give any evidence for his claims. He just continues to say how these atheists keep making things up from earlier books and from the internet, some conspiracy to destroy christianity, yet gives no other explanation about why all these myths are so similar, other then his claim that "it's probably impossible to write a biography that doesn't resemble myth in some ways".

Is that so, Mr. Marshall? There are thousands of biographies that don't have incredible claims, and myth making in them. There can be discrepancies, but no one claimed that Martin Luther King walked on water, or rose from the dead, and we have first hand witnesses, and video, to prove what he did and said.

A legendary figure, Elvis Presley, has been said to not be dead...sound familiar? Does anyone actually believe that Elvis didn't die? Has anyone ever seen a dead man come back to life (aside from while being worked on in a hospital)? I don't think so.

He claims that "there is no other jesus (page 125)" , which just makes me laugh. If that were true why do we have so many similar gods, with the same stories, which predate jesus? Marshall claims that these stories came after jesus, but even Justin Martyr said, "When we say that jesus christ was produced without sexual union, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended to heaven, we propound nothing new or different from what you believe regarding those whom you call the sons of "Jupiter".

Even when the jesus story was beginning to be spread, there were objections about its factual nature, because there already were many other gods, with the same stories about them, yet the christians claimed that this time it was real, and that satan just counterfeited those other gods, in advance, in order to cast doubt about the truth of jesus. (Source: the documentary The god Who Wasn't There)

In the next section called "How Do You Know I'm Here", Marshall talks about a discussion he had with a "skeptic" on an amazon.com forum, and said how the skeptic makes assumptions about him, and how the "skeptic" "betrayed" the scientific method by making those assumptions, because the "skeptic" couldn't study him (page 128). How funny.

You don't need to run tests on people in order to know how someone thinks, or to deduce whether or not someone has evidence for their beliefs. Atheists have read both sides of the arguments (at least many of them) and know what, and how, christians think, in general.

I know, for example, that you, Mr. Marshall, are a very illogical person, who doesn't do his homework very well, with many of your unsubstantiated claims about the bible and jesus.

Marshall makes the claim that "Jesus...remains outside all the boxes people try to place him in. He is the most interesting person on earth".

Wow! Such praise! You can tell his church (assuming he goes to church) has brainwashed him well. Praise and accept jesus, and you will get everlasting life!

I don't see how his own beliefs verify any kind of truth about jesus.

On the last page of the seventh chapter, Marshall again attacks Dawkins for not being able to "understand" the story about jesus dying on the cross, seemingly pitying Dawkins. He cites many other people who believed in jesus dying on the cross, as if that makes it any more special, let alone true.

For more information about jesus, you can see my post called Evidence Against Jesus' Existence from 9-10-07

As with a few of the other chapters, I did mostly understand what Marshall was discussing but due to my lack of knowledge I wasn't able to argue his points as well as I did in the updated review, though my opinions are still much the same. I admit I failed miserably to rebut even some of his more outstanding claims and that was my fault for rushing things. I also again paid too much attention to small, inconsequential statements and not enough on the main argument.

I did address very briefly his argument about jesus and other figures and their similarities, though despite my correct reading of his argument my rebuttal is seriously lacking.

Chapter 8: Is Christianity A Blessing?

In this chapter Marshall's goal is to restore christianity's good side (in an attempt to counter all of the bad things it is responsible for) by trying to counter Sam Harris in is book Letter to a Christian Nation, in which he writes that Gandhi was Martin Luther's inspiration for his non-violent stance in the fight for racial equality. Marshall says that Gandhi got his non-violent ideology from reading the bible; from jesus. Gandhi is quoted as saying:

"I did once seriously think of embracing the Christian faith," Gandhi told Millie Polak, the wife of one of his earliest disciples. "The gentle figure of Christ, so patient, so kind, so loving, so full of forgiveness that he taught his followers not to retailate when abused or struck, but to turn the other cheek, I thought it was a beautiful example of the perfect man..." (Source: http://www.geocities.com/orthopapism/gandhi.html - Editorial by Fr. Benny Aguiar, in the Examiner, the official organ of the 'Mumbai' diocese of the New Church, 26th September 1992, titled Gandhi vs. Christ)

But Gandhi also said:

"However, on another occasion, he said he could accept Jesus "as a martyr, an embodiment of sacrifice, and a divine teacher, but not as the most perfect man ever born. His death on the Cross was a great example to the world, but that there was anything like a mysterious or miraculous virtue in it, my heart could not accept." (Source: Same as last quote by Gandhi)

Marshall says on page 137, regarding Gandhi not being a christian, "Perhaps not, but Gandhi did believe in god!"

I'm guessing this must imply that Gandhi did these things because of his beliefs? If so, that claim is meaningless because belief in god doesn't necessarily make one a good person. Besides, the bible was not Gandhi's only influence...as Marshall confesses.

As for Marshall's claims about Christopher Hitchens' accusations about mother Teresa being cruel, I must agree with Hitchens. She did shelter the sick and dying, but after seeing video of one of her hospices, it was horrible. The people were laying on the floor, or dirty cots, in dingy conditions, with no medical treatment whatsoever. With all of her money she got I have no doubt she could have used it to help these people die a more dignified and comfortable death.

On page 144, Marshall attacks Sam Harris about a quote of his where he says how the abolition of slavery had to be forced in the South, when it's clear to most thinking people, that slavery is wrong. Marshall says, "Only a historically sheltered child of the West and the product of a politically correct public school system could achieve such breathtaking and uncritical naivete'".

It's funny, but Marshall needs to read something other than the christians' historical revisionist textbooks and read about the real history of the bible, slavery and christianity.

The united states was one of the last countries to abolish slavery. France abolished slavery due to the Revolution in the late 1700's (Source: The Story of Civilization: The Age of Napoleon, by Will and Ariel Durant), yet the U.S. didn't abolish slavery until 1865 - almost 200 years later. (Source: http://en.wikipedia
org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_the_United_States#Historiography_of_American_slavery).

The bible was used as justification for the necessity of slavery, as told by church leaders themselves:

"The slave should be resigned to his lot, in obeying his master he is obeying God... "

- Saint John Chrysostom


" ...slavery is now penal in character and planned by that law which commands the preservation of the natural order and forbids disturbance. "

- Saint Augustine

(Source for above quotes: http://atheism.about.com/library/weekly/aa112598.htm - article by Austin Cline, titled, Christianity and History: Bible, Race & Slavery)

The bible itself says nothing about ending slavery, but actually sanctions it.

Marshall gives some examples of christians being a part of the slavery abolition movement, but as history shows, they sure didn't do a very good job. Many years went by with christians using slaves, and using the bible to condone their cruel practices.

Marshall talks about the many missionaries who went to different countries, yet he doesn't tell you about their goals of converting all people to christianity, in each place they visit. They don't respect each counties' particular beliefs, and must convert them to theirs, with their preaching of hell fire, and sin. In Africa missionaries preach the "sinfulness" of condom use, where AIDS is a growing problem. They also brought their abstinence-only programs over there in an attempt to curb the spread of the disease, yet without protection and proper education about sex (something these programs say nothing about) their sexual urges will no doubt get the best of them, and they will continue to spread the disease. Though, christianity teaches suppression of those urges, and labels it a sin, which is harmful. Sex is a normal and necessary function of all species.

This is something Marshall considers good? I wonder what he has to say about this? He is silent in his book.

Marshall is hypocritical in his telling about the role that the bible had in liberating women. As I've pointed out many times, the bible clearly says that man is dominant and is more important then a woman.

He says on page 150 that missionaries brought monogamy to many countries, and that "polytheistic societies...keep women illiterate and tell them they need to worship their husband..."

How funny... the bible says:

1 Corinthians 14:34-35: "Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church."

It's clear in the bible that women are said to be inferrer to men, and are to rely on men for everything, and are under complete rule by them.

Next, he tackles the founding fathers and religion.

He claims, on page 50, that when he spoke to many christians, they agreed that america was founded upon "christian principals", not as a "christian nation." I'm curious about this one though, because every christian I've seen on TV or when I've read something in a book, or the internet, they always proclaim that the united states was founded as a "christian nation" so I'm curious to know where he did his poll, and how many people gave their opinion. It's clear that many christians are under the false impression that this was founded as some kind of christian nation.

Even this country being based on "christian principals" is false. Where does it say anywhere, in any of the founding documents of the U.S., anything about christianity, or the god of christianity? The "creator" mentioned in the declaration of independence refers to the deist creator and not the god of christianity. In fact, some founding fathers, such as Thomas Paine, detested the bible, and called it the work of a "demon", and not that of a god, in his book The Age of Reason.

In a letter to his nephew Peter Carr in 1787, Thomas Jefferson wrote of the bible:

"...facts in the bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces."

Jefferson disliked many parts of the bible...and didn't believe any of its supernatural claims. He did however, like the kind sayings of jesus, and cut out the passages that he liked. It's possible to buy Jefferson's cut and paste version of the bible, which is called The Jefferson Bible. In it, there are no miracles, or the heartless sayings that are attributed to jesus; only the ones which Jefferson was inspired by.

At the end of the chapter, on page 153, Marshall asks "What is the source of that evil?"

I say religion itself, for all the massacre and evil that has been done in religions' name.

In this chapter I understood most of his points though, once again due to my lack of knowledge, I don't feel I did a good job rebutting them. For my updated review I tackle in much more detail Marshall's argument about christianity and slavery and other more important claims in the chapter. I also try to counter all the good Marshall claims christianity did with all the much worse things it did. Though, due to my lack of knowledge about the abolition movement I didn't quite understand Marshall's argument, though I handily refute his claims in my updated review. And, as it so happens, Hector Avalos destroys many of Marshall's arguments at Debunking Christianity, and I pointed out a few of the same flaws as Avalos did.

Here is where I also can be clearly seen to have begun doing some research and did my best to find sources and information that would rebut him.

Chapter 9: Or a Curse?

Marshall says on page 157, "If christianity deserves no credit for plotting the course of planets or writing the Magna Carta because "everyone is religious" when these things were accomplished, why blame it for the Inquisition?"

I don't understand his comment because before Darwin, everyone basically had to be religious, because religion was the only thing which had any kind of answer for the appearance of mankind. But I think it's crazy for him to make the claim that you can't blame religious people on the Inquisition. It was because of religious belief, and the power they had and wanted to keep, which they killed people for.

Marshall tries, it appears, to simply brush off the Inquisition, and claim that "why blame jesus when people do the opposite of what he taught? (page 160)" He also cites the Japanese inquisition, and asks why no one blames Buddha or Confucius. Well, Marshall, the Buddhists aren't trying to take over our country and force their religion down our throat, and they aren't the ones using violence by killing abortion doctors.

Yet another lie by Marshall...he really should study up on this book he reveres so much.

Jesus and the bible lay claim to the inquisition. From the book The Story of Civilization: The Age of Faith, by Will Durant, page 776:

"The Old Testament laid down a simple code for dealing with heretics: they were to be carefully examined; and if three reputable witnesses testified to their having 'gone and served other gods,' the heretics were to be led out from the city and 'stoned with stones till they die' (Deut. 17:2-6)."

Also from The Age of Faith:

"According to the Gospel of St. John (15:6-7), Jesus accepted this tradition: 'If anyone abide not in me he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither; and they shall gather him up, and cast him into the fire, and he burneth.'"

According to the bible itself, jesus did in fact sanction the inquisition.

In his defense of christians in regard to the Salem Witch Trials Marshall makes the claim that there were christians who actually helped "witches", yet these people are still dead because of people's silly beliefs.

Marshall tries to address people's claims that the bible is "anti-semitic". He claims that jesus was jewish, and quotes the bible that salvation was "first for the jews".

If this is the case, then why do so many christians dislike jews? From their own mouths, it is because they denied jesus as being the the true messiah. Even the slurs of actor Mel Gibson in 2006 about jews, when he was drunk and being arrested. He is quoted as saying, "Fucking Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Gibson then asked the deputy, "Are you a Jew?"

There is some dispute, however, whether or not there is an anti-jewish message in the bible. One such disputed verse is Revelation 2:9: "...I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan."

But the question arrises, if there is no hatred in the bible against jews, where did it come from? Perhaps these verses shed light on the matter, but that is debatable.

The next section, Marshall tries to show that christians saved jews from the Holocaust.

On page 176 Marshall writes: "Hitchens writes, 'Many christians gave their lives to protect their fellow creatures in this midnight of the century, but the chance that they did so on orders from any priesthood is statistically almost negligible.' (Of course, according to a fisherman named Peter, every christian is a priest - Peter 2:9)"

That's his only argument? Quoting scripture? If every christian is a priest, then why go to church and let someone else tell you what the scripture means? If everyone is their own priest, why can't they each figure it out themselves? If they are their own priest, wouldn't god speak to each and every christian, instead of going to church and listening to someone else tell you what god wants? This makes no sense, and does nothing to refute Hitchens' argument that there were very few christians who helped the jews escape from the Holocaust.

He cites sources which claim that pope Piux XII helped save between 700,000 to 860,000 jews, and says that "these are hardly 'negligible' numbers." Assuming this was true, that might sound like a lot, but according to the wikipedia.org entry on the Holocaust, the number of jews to have been killed has been estimated at six million. Comparing figures, yes I would call that "negligible."

Even Marshall himself admits that Piux XII's involvement in helping jews is "disputed" (page 167), and that Piux XII refused to condemn Hitler's actions publicly when asked by Roosevelt's State Department, and makes various claims about why he didn't do as asked. One such reason, as Marshall quotes historian James Felak, "If you were a jew hidden in a monastery...Would you want the pope to speak out publicly?"

This is a possible reason, though, so what? Given the history and power of the church, I don't doubt they could have protected any jews hidden in a monastery. This is nothing but opinion either way.

At the end of the section Marshall boldly claims "Hitler hated christianity and planned to destroy it when the time came, as he explained in private. If the New Atheists want to do the same, let them take a number,"

Brave words Mr. Marshall, but again, you make a statement without any evidence. A conversation "in private"? He lists no sources so I'm curious where he got this information.

I do have sources, however. Hitler's close associate, Rudolf Hess, wrote in a letter the Prime Minister of Bavaris, "I know Herr Hitler very well personally and am quite close to him. He has an unusually honorable character...is religions, a good Catholic." (Source: The god Delusion, by Richard Dawkins)

Also in a speech of Hitler's in 1922 he said many times he was a christian. The following are the quotes in which he claims he is a christian, also from Dawkins' The god Delusion:

"My feelings as a christian points me to my lord and savior as a fighter."

"In boundless love as a christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the lord at last rose...."

"As a christian I have no duty allow myself to be cheated..."

"For as a christian I have also a duty to my own people."

However, Hitler did also say some anti-christian remarks, so who knows which to believe, but one thing is for sure, Marshall's unsubstantiated claim that Hitler wanted to "destroy" christianity falls flat since he has no evidence to back up such claims.

The last part of the chapter once again attacks something which Richard Dawkins said in his book The god Delusion. He quotes Dawkins' that "most of us in the twenty-first century are...way ahead of our counterparts in the Middle Ages, or in the time of Abraham, or even as recently as the 1920's"

Marshall goes after Dawkins by claiming that we are really not that moral with many killings going on around the world, and other horrible events.

I don't want to put words in Richard Dawkins' mouth, but after reading the text directly from his book, Dawkins certainly didn't deny that there are set backs. He even described the slow march of progress of morality as "not a smooth incline but a meandering sawtooth. There are local and temporary setbacks such as the United States is suffering from its government in the early 2000's."

The fact remains however, that much of the wars occurring in the world right now are, in fact, religious wars. I still say that a world without religion would be significantly safer and more peaceful, though there will always be some kind of conflict within the human species, but at least some of the most constant and never ending - those of religion - could be eradicated.

Also, we are ahead of the people of bible times as far as morality. I do not doubt that there were kind, and loving people of the period, but many were horrible people too. The bible is a testament to that fact, with their treatment of women, slavery, religious wars, etc.

We have gotten rid of at least some of these horrible practices from that time, which I feel is what Richard Dawkins was getting at. Not that we are all of a sudden totally moral people, with no violence, as Marshall makes it appear.

Marshall also quotes 1 Corinthians 13:4-7: "Love is patient, love is kind...." and says, "Was Paul 2000 years ahead of the moral curve, or are we two millennia behind it?"

This is the most absurd statement. The bible is full of stories of wars, incest, murder of children, mistreatment of women, human sacrifices, hatred of other races and religions, slavery, rape...need I say more? Most of these horrible things we have abandoned, and despite these things filling the bible, they continue to call it the "good book".

Finally, I'll comment on two quotes of Marshall on page 172:

"...I think the world expects more from followers of jesus."

Well, of course! Christians preach morality constantly, yet many don't uphold that morality they preach. The republican party, with it's many scandals the last several years, is a testament to that.

"Whatever they say, even skeptics know in their hearts that jesus is good."

This is such a ridiculous statement...what planet are you living on Marshall?

There are both good, and bad sayings, reportedly spoken by jesus, so which are we to believe? Jesus is said to have told his disciples that you must hate your family, and give up all you own. It is written in the bible that jesus said:

"Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it." (Matthew 10:34-39)

Atheists have no reason to like to dislike anyone who may or may not have even existed.

Also, on page 161 Marshall accuses atheists Thomas Hobbes and Jean Bodin as being for the burning of witches, and quotes Hobbes in his book Leviathan, in the second chapter,as saying:

"From this ignorance of how to distinguish dreams, and other strong fancies, from vision and sense, did arise the greatest part of the religion of the Gentiles in time past, that worshiped satyrs, fauns, nymphs, and the like; and nowadays the opinion that rude people have of fairies, ghosts, and goblins, and of the power of witches. For, as for witches, I think not that their witchcraft is any real power, but yet that they are justly punished for the false belief they have that they can do such mischief, joined with their purpose to do it if they can, their trade being nearer to a new religion than to a craft or science. And for fairies, and walking ghosts, the opinion of them has, I think, been on purpose either taught, or not confuted, to keep in credit the use of exorcism, of crosses, of holy water, and other such inventions of ghostly men. Nevertheless, there is no doubt but God can make unnatural apparitions: but that He does it so often as men need to fear such things more than they fear the stay, or change, of the course of Nature, which he also can stay, and change, is no point of Christian faith." (Source: http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/hobbes/leviathan-a.html)

This kind of rationalization is interesting. It reminds me of a child who has just stolen some candy, and feeling guilty, says to a friend who criticizes them about it, by telling the friend, "Well you've stolen something too." The only difference is, the child doing the criticizing hasn't actually stolen anything.

Neither Hobbes nor Bodin actually killed anyone for being a witch as far as my sources tell me (I referenced their entries in the online encyclopedia, wikipedia.org), but for whatever reason, felt witches were real, and should be tortured.

I think Marshall is simply trying to find any kind of dirt on any atheists he can find, and claim that atheists are no better then christians, but of course, the two men (Hobbes and Bodin) which Marshall referred, never actually killed anyone in the first place, only sanctioned it. Though, to be fair, they were just as irrational and cruel to hold those opinions, but at least they didn't act on their beliefs. Too bad christians can't say the same.

Despite the arguments about the good and bad things religion has done, from looking back through history, and even current events, it's clear that religion has been a force for horrible acts, and crimes against fellow man. There is much more evil that has been done in the name of all gods which man has created, then all the good, put together. If a man was said to have saved the lives of twenty people, yet murdered two-hundred, would you call this person "good"? I must answer no. The evil clearly outweighs any good which was done.

I still agree with the majority of this chapter, though I could certainly have gone into more detail as I did in the updated review. While I hit a lot of his points I still feel I commented on too many little things that were not worth mentioning. Once again, I did understand most of his points. It seems there is a definite pattern emerging here. Marshall has claimed on a number of occasions that I can't understand the English language and didn't understand a damn thing in his book. Well, here is the original review he continuously insulted me about and claimed I didn't understand. It sure seems I understood an awful lot for 'not being able to comprehend the English language' to paraphrase Marshall.

Chapter 10: What About the "American Taliban"?

In this chapter, David Marshall attempts to show that christianity isn't as bad as the "new" atheists try to show, and claims that he has evidence that christianity has actually been good for america.

Marshall quotes Dawkins once again, and again, takes what his book, The god Delusion says out of context.

On page 175, Marshall references a footnote made by Dawkins about a alleged comment which was made by Pat Robertson about Ellen Degeneres' being gay being the cause of hurricane Katrina in 2005, which wiped out New Orleans.

Marshall snaps at Dawkins saying that being a "well respected Oxford professor", with his use of such an unsubstantiated claim is a blow to Dawkins, and Oxford.

Marshall attacks Dawkins claiming that Dawkins shouldn't have put such misleading information in the body of the text, and not leave it for a footnote, and that Dawkins should have used a legitimate quote. Funny, because Dawkins does use a substantiated quote of Robertson in the footnote about Robertson's comment on The 700 Club, on August 6th, 1998. He said, "I would warn Orlando that you're right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don't think I'd be waving those flags in god's face if I were you." (Source: http://www.snopes.com/katrina/satire/robertson.asp)

Something Marshall may not realize is that Dawkins is from another country! He may not be aware of the many satirical websites which float around the internet, and the brand of humor of americans. The point is that Dawkins was not being deceptive. He was up front, saying that I found this online, and this is what I found. I also found a source which refutes that claim, so I am unsure if it's true or not. Not to put words in Richard Dawkins' mouth, but it's clear when reading his book, that was his intention. But of course, with Marshall's bias he can't seem to see that.

After all, Robertson is famous for making odd ball comments and even Jerry Falwell made remarks that "pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians" and other groups he hates, were the cause of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centers.

Given the track record of these two men and their bigotry, it would make sense that Dawkins would believe such a claim.

On pages 176-177, Marshall tackles the "christian terrorism" claim and says the silliest thing. He talks about Dawkins' book The god Delusion where he talks about a Lutheran minister who murdered an abortion doctor named Paul Hill. Marshall says that if president Bush and all the other right wingers were in on some conspiracy to take over america, why kill one of their own, because Hill was executed under Florida governor Jeb Bush, the president's brother?

Wow...what astounding reasoning. Absolutely stupid to say the least. Hill broke the law, and Jeb Bush's job is to enforce it - though like most polititicans, give himself some leeway to break them himself.

To end his section, Marshall racks up some "atheist" terrorists such as Jim Jones (who wasn't even an atheist, but a New Age Marxist, according to Marshall), the Unibomber, and Timothy McVeigh.

From my research, Jim Jones was a christian, and according to the wikipedia article about him, "He became an ordained minister in 1964 in the mainstream Christian denomination, Disciples of Christ." (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones)

Seems that Marshall has shot himself in the foot once again.

The Unibomber was never even identified as an atheist at all, and in his manifesto, spoke against "leftists" (whatever he meant by that) and "technology and industrialization".

How Marshall can claim that the Unibomber was an atheist (or as Marshall calls him, a "bright") confuses me. I searched the internet and couldn't find any mention of the Unibomber being connected to atheism in any way. After looking at the wikipedia entry about him it sure doesn't seem like atheism to me. He was just crazy, and most atheists aren't crazy. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Kaczynski) The atheists I know, love technology and scientific progress. Kaczynski clearly didn't.

Last but not least is Timothy McVeigh, who Marshall simply calls an "agnostic", who wasn't even close to being a "militant atheist" so many speak about, who want to take out religion.

According to the wikipedia.org entry on McVeigh's religious beliefs :

"After his parents' divorce, McVeigh lived with his father, and his sisters moved to Florida with their mother. He and his father were devout Roman Catholics who often attended daily Mass. In a recorded interview with Time Magazine[3] he professed his belief in "a God", though he said he had "sort of lost touch with" Catholicism and "never really picked it [back] up." The Guardian reported that McVeigh wrote a letter claiming to be an agnostic[4], though his execution included a Roman Catholic ceremony." (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh)

So, McVeigh claimed a belief in "a god", and yet it's also claimed he was an agnostic, so to claim that he was one of these horrible atheists is just ridiculous. After all, even McVeigh himself said that the bombings were retaliation about "what the U.S. government did at Waco and Ruby Ridge." ( Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh#Motivations_for_the_bombing)

Once again, Marshall needs to do more research.

At the end of the section, on page 177, Marshall writes: "In a predominately christian country in grave threat of conquest by the 'American Taliban', Dawkins finds one christian terrorist who killed two people."

Seems Marshall is trying to imply that the actual number of hostile, and violent christians, is actually much smaller then many people claim. True, the number of christians who want to "reclaim" america is small, but they are a powerful and organized group. There are many more christian groups who have bombed abortion clinics, and even murdered atheists (See my post from 9-24-07 called Atheist Discrimination about the murder of Larry Hooper), who Dawkins did not interview.

On pages 178 -179, Marshall attempts to debunk the idea that religion ups the murder rate.

Marshall makes some guesses as to why many republican states have higher murder rates, but that's all he talks about is the murder rate. He doesn't try to explain the higher rate of teen pregnancy, burglary, and "violent crime" in the republican majority states.

Marshall makes Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins seems like they're saying for an absolute fact that religion is the cause of all of these problems, yet even Sam Harris in his book Letter to a Christian Nation says on page 45, "Of course, correlational data of this sort do not resolve questions of causality..." and that it proves "conclusively, that widespread belief in god does not ensure a society's health."

These facts prove that given a belief in god, large problems remain, and can even be made worse, such as teen pregnancy. The so called cure is abstinence-only programs, which is highly pushed in many conservative states, and does nothing to stop pregnancy, and doesn't educate our youth about safety. Many studies have been done, such as studies by Peter Bearman and Hanna Bruckner, and a 2005 Texas sponsored a study of abstinence programs, which show these programs do nothing to make our children safer or wiser, regarding sex. (Source: The Rise of Christian Nationalism: Kingdom Coming, by Michelle Goldberg)

In the next section Marshall botches his next section horribly when he tries to prove that christians actually don't want a theocracy. Again, the number of christians who are extremists are smaller then the whole of christians believers, but they are here, and they are working to destroy everyone's freedom.

In the last section Marshall bashes Dawkins over not being able to find any more "christian terrorists" and yet in this section, he only goes to two churches to interview people about if they want the bible to be the law of the land, and out of the 58 he interviewed, Marshall says, not one agreed.

Wow, those are some big numbers there...

I can give Marshall some quotes of many christians which claim the opposite.

Though on Marshall's question about whether or not the government should favor christian belief, 42 percent said yes in one church Marshall went to, and at the other, only two people said yes ( pages 180-181).

In the next section titled, "What Taliban?", Marshall tries to dispel the idea that the christians have anything to do with the Taliban.

Marshall writes that the Taliban women were not allowed to work, or study; music was banned, and kite shops were "abolished".

He claims that christians don't want to ban music and that christians treat women fairly and well. Maybe now christians treat woman fairly, but the bible tells a different story of how women were often viewed throughout christian history.

Marshall is trying to compare christians with the Taliban act for act, when that's not really the idea which the atheists are trying to get across when we refer to an "american taliban". What it means is our loss of religious freedom, religion being combined with the state, non-believers being punished, or killed, etc. it's the general idea of religious ideas overtaking society, not that christians will mimic the exact actions of the Taliban.

Now I will cover the section titled "The Case Against Letting Christians Raise Kids" which is found on pages 184-186.

The name of this section puzzles me. No one has ever said that christians shouldn't be allowed to raise children. Dawkins simply says that no religious belief should be hammered into a child until they are at an age at which they can clearly understand such teachings, and beliefs.

The stories about them going to hell if they don't believe, and the fact that in some religious communities, one sect of religious children cannot play with another, and so they don't get a chance to learn about other beliefs, and very well might become bigoted against children of other denominations.

Marshall starts off this section very badly when he comments on a story which Dawkins relates in his book The god Delusion about a boy who wore a T-shirt to school which read "Homosexuality is a sin, Islam is a lie, abortion is murder. Some issues are just black and white!"

The school told the boy that he was not allowed to wear such a shirt and the boy's parents sued the school under the banner of "freedom of religion" and won the case.

On page 23 of The god Delusion Dawkins says, "...hate only has to prove it is religious, and it no longer counts as hate."

That is very true and I have written about this some in the past, but back to Marshall's sorry excuse for a rebuttal.

Marshall apparently doesn't have a problem with the T-shirt and says on page 184, "But is this really 'hate speech'? The shirt calls certain behaviors wrong, and a certain belief false. Why define the expression of such views has 'hatred'? If the constitution doesn't let us say something is wrong or false, what good is it?"

First off, this is pure hypocritical bullshit because if someone wore a T-shirt that said that christianity is wrong, the bible is false, every christian in the nation would be shouting "bigotry! and hatred!" all over the place.

And yes it is hate speech. Calling homosexuals sinful is hate speech. If I said all christians were evil people, or that all black people were sinful wouldn't that be hate speech and prejudice? It's the same concept...just replace 'black' or 'christians' with homosexuals.

Next, Marshall attacks Dawkins yet again about talking badly about James Dobson, the founder of the group Focus on the Family.

Marshall claims that having heard Dobson's advice on child raising he has some good advice, yet from what I've read it doesn't sound like the greatest advice to me. Marshall claims that Dobson advocates "parents to be intimately involved in the lives of their children." (page 185).

Next, Marshall claims that Dawkins' story about a jewish child in Italy, who was taken away from his parents to be raised as a christian, is implying that Dobson wishes to do the same.

I read Dawkins' book and no where did I see any implication that Dawkins said anything about Dobson wishing to kidnap children. I'm not sure where Marshall got that from.

But, as far as Dobson's parenting advice, I have never read any of Dobson's books, but in a book I have called The Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right, by Robert Lanham, it has a few sentences taken from two of Dobson's books about disciplining children which doesn't seem like very good advice to me.

On page 3 and 4 of The Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right, Lanham gives you some highlights from two of Dobson's books, Dare to Discipline and The Strong-Willed Child:

"[P]ain is a marvelous purifier...There is a muscle, lying snugly against the base of the neck....when firmly squeezed, it sends little messengers to the brain saying, "This hurts; avoid at all costs."

"I suggest [spanking with] a switch (a small, flexible twig from a tree) or a paddle....if it doesn't hurt it doesn't motivate."

Then the book relates some of the things Dobson has to say about children and homosexuality.

It's no secret that Dobson hates gays and feels that it is purely a choice, not anything to do with the brain, but Dobson has some advice, according to Lanham's book, about what parents should watch out for; warning signs that your child might be gay:

1. "may avoid other boys in the neighborhood and their rough and tumble activities"
2. "preferences for cross-dressing, or simulating female attire"
3. "may start using his mother's makeup"
4. "may start speaking in high-pitched voice"

As for Dobson's advice on how to prevent homosexuality, on page 5 of The Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right:

"[T]he boy's father has to do his part. He needs to mirror and affirm his son's maleness. He can play rough and tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger."

As an added bonus....on page 7 he quotes Dobson as saying this about submissive wives:

"If you feel that your wife is not submissive, pray for her to have a submissive heart....Then ask god to help you love her the way He does. I guarantee that you will see her submission level rise..."

I don't know about you, but this is horrible advice...if you can call it advice at all. It's just plain creepy to me. Now, this book is a satire, but there is some legit passages in there that are truthful, and they seem to be direct quotes from his books. But if anyone has access to Dobson's books and wants to correct me, feel free.

To try and be thorough, I did look up Dobson's book Dare to Discipline in a search engine, MSN.com, and looked up their book search and found some "snips" of Dobson's book. Because of copyright, I couldn't search the whole book, but on page 64, the search says, Dobson says he does condone the use of a switch or paddle, with Dobson saying, "The reason I suggest using a switch or paddle is because the hand should be seen as an object of love..."
So, it appears that the quotes from Lanham's book are correct, and not just a part of his joke making. Not that the things Dobson says are funny...they are cruel.

On page 185, Marshall makes the claim that Dawkins doesn't want any children to be taught about any religion because they are all "evil". Sorry, but that isn't the idea that Dawkins has at all. As I said before, children should not be indoctrinated. They are not old enough to figure out fact from fiction, and will blindly believe pretty much whatever someone tells them, which is exactly what the religious want, of course. But, if they are to be taught a particular belief system, wait until they are of an age where they have learned critical thinking skills, so they can analyze what they have been told rationally. Then if they want to follow a particular religion, it will be of their own choice - not by force. Even in Dawkins' own words, on page 327, in The god Delusion, "If, having been fairly and properly exposed to all the scientific evidence, they grow up and decide that the bible is literally true or that the movements of the planets rule their lives, that is their privilege. The important point is that it is their privilege to decide what they shall think, not their parents' privilege to impose it by force majeure."

The woman that Richard Dawkins interviewed in his documentary on religion, The Root of all Evil?, Jill Mytton said of her traumatic experiences as a child, when she was told about hell: "If I think back to my childhood, it's one dominated by fear. And it was the fear of disapproval while in the present, but also of eternal damnation. And for a child, images of hell-fire and gnashing of teeth are actually very real. They are not metaphorical at all." Mytton continues, "It's strange isn't it? After all this time it still has the power to...affect me...when you...when you ask me that question [when Dawkins asked her what she was told, as a child, about hell]. Hell is a fearful place. It's complete rejection by god. It's complete judgement, there is real fire, there is real torment, real torture, and it goes on for ever so there is no respite from it." (The god Delusion, page 322)

When Dawkins asks Mytton if she felt that this upbringing to belive in a literal hell was similarly traumatic as sexual abuse, she responded, "That's a very difficult question...I think there are a lot of similarities actually, because it is about abuse of trust; it is about denying the child the right to feel free and open and able to relate to the world in the normal way...its a form of denigration; it's a form of denial of the true self in both cases."

I would certainly call what this woman went through as mental abuse. She, as well as other adults, suffer from this even to the present. Obviously not every case is this extreme, but these people are proof that it does happen, so why tolerate parents threatening their kids with this talk of eternal damnation? As Dawkins said, educate, don't threaten, and let them figure it out on their own.

In this chapter I made a mistake in misunderstanding what Marshall was arguing. I believed that Marshall was trying to pin terrorist actions upon people who are/were atheists and so I try to show they weren't atheists, however that's not his point at all. Marshall's point is that without a standard set of morals human beings can justify any atrocity and tries to use these examples to show how naturalistic philosophies and godlessness can lead to immoral acts.

I also botched the fact that it was Paul Hill who killed the abortion doctor, not that a christian murdered a doctor named Paul Hill. Woops. But then I seemed to have read it correctly later on because I mention that Hill was executed for the murder! Double woops.

While I didn’t address Marshall’s claim directly and at length, I did understand what he was arguing since I said,

”Seems Marshall is trying to imply that the actual number of hostile, and violent christians, is actually much smaller then many people claim. True, the number of christians who want to "reclaim" america is small, but they are a powerful and organized group. There are many more christian groups who have bombed abortion clinics, and even murdered atheists (See my post from 9-24-07 called Atheist Discrimination about the murder of Larry Hooper), who Dawkins did not interview.”

I believe what Marshall was saying in the section titled “What Taliban?” was completely different than how I orignally interpreted it, though I didn’t feel what he said was very relevant to his argument anyway so I mostly ignore it in the updated review. When I said, "In this chapter, David Marshall attempts to show that christianity isn't as bad as the 'new' atheists try to show, and claims that he has evidence that christianity has actually been good for america", I thought he was trying to downplay how bad religion has been, and slightly missing his point since he was actually discussing the religious right's attempts to take over of america and dismissing it as pure propaganda, though I handily refute him in my updated review.

Then I get it right when I accuse Marshall of misreading Dawkins and what he says about “child abuse” and point out his errors on that subject. Something he has never owned up to, despite my many attempts.

As far as my claim that Marshall argues that James Dobson wishes to kidnap children, I've been told that was not Marshall's intention (by Marshall himself as well during our early discussions), though that is how even up to now I see the passage. In the updated review I go to great lengths to defend my reasoning for this. I obviously admit I may be wrong in my interpretation, but I don't think I am because of the way Marshall worded his statement. Either way, I prove undeniably that Marshall is dead wrong about Dawkins wishing to “intrude into” the lives of parents and tell them how to raise their kids. And, as the point I was trying to make above, I'm sure Dawkins would be a much more loving father than Dobson since I seriously doubt Dawkins would beat a child. And for those who might argue that a switch is not beating a child, you need to get your head examined. Striking a child with a stick is child abuse!

So, despite the fact that I got a few details wrong I understood and refuted some major arguments in this chapter.

Chapter 11: Can Atheism Make the World Better?

Marshall starts off with a quote from Sam Harris' book Letter to a Christian Nation about why god would allow such horrors in the world, and Marshall offers his own twisted argument:

"...if one hates suffering, shouldn't one applaud the religion whose followers invented science, the modern hospital, and the Red Cross, and helped end slavery...?"

I find this remark just plain ignorant. It's a fact that christians used the bible to justify slavery, as this 19th century remark shows:

"The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example." Rev. R. Furman, D.D., a Baptist pastor from South Carolina" (Source: http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_slav.htm. Also, here is this website's source link: Ref. Dr. Ricahrd Furman, "Exposition of the views of the Baptists relative to the coloured population in the United States in communication to the Governor of South-Carolina," (1838), at: http://www.furman.edu/~benson/docs/rcd-fmn1.htm)

Other quotes:

Circa 600 CE: Pope Gregory I wrote, in Pastoral Rule: "Slaves should be told...not [to] despise their masters and recognize that they are only slaves."

13th century CE: Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) accepted the teachings of the ancient Greek Pagan philosopher, Aristotle, that slavery is "natural."

1519: Bartholomew De Las Casas, a Dominican, argued against slavery. "No one may be deprived of his liberty nor may any person be enslaved" He was ridiculed, silenced and ignored. (Source: http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_slav4.htm, or, Edward C. Rogers, "Slavery illegality in all ages and nations," (1955). Online at: http://medicolegal.tripod.com/)

(All other quotes from: http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_slav4.htm)

As for Marshall's claim that christians invented science, tell me then, why they persecuted anyone who did do science, like Galileo? Religion has always been against science, and that's a fact. Now, the first "scientists" were naturalists, who with the limited knowledge of the time believed in god, and learned about nature and such, but later on, when others began to learn that the facts of the world contradicted the scriptures, many people doubted the bible on many things, and that's when religion began to persecute people for heresy.

Christians did operate many hospitals for various people, but I wouldn't say they were the developers of "modern" hospitals. According to wikipedia, "In Europe the medieval concept of Christian care evolved during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries into a secular one, but it was in the eighteenth century that the modern hospital began to appear, serving only medical needs and staffed with physicians and surgeons. The Charité (founded in Berlin in 1710) is an early example." (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital)

In fact, it seems that the Sri Lankans were the very first to develop hospitals:

In Asia the "Sinhalese (Sri Lankans) are perhaps responsible for introducing the concept of dedicated hospitals to the world. According to the Mahavamsa, the ancient chronicle of Sinhalese royalty written in the 6th century A.D., King Pandukabhaya (4th century BC) had lying-in-homes and hospitals (Sivikasotthi-Sala) built in various parts of the country. This is the earliest documentary evidence we have of institutions specifically dedicated to the care of the sick anywhere in the world. Mihintale Hospital is perhaps the oldest in the world." (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital)

As for his claim that christians started the Red Cross, I looked up the history of the Red Cross on wikipedia.org and found that it was first developed by a woman named Clara Barton, who was, according to the wikipedia entry, a “Deist-Unitarian.” And that "her actual beliefs varied throughout her life along a spectrum between freethought and deism. In a 1905 letter to her friend, Norman Thrasher, she called herself a 'Universalist.'"
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Barton#Religious_beliefs)

Looks like Marshall really stuck his foot in his mouth again....

Next he brings up Joseph Stalin, trying to claim that he was an atheist, and atheism was responsible for communism. The thing is, did Stalin perpetuate these horrors because of his atheism, or was he just a cruel person? Given the very, very few atheists who have ever harmed anyone throughout history, I think it's clear that Stalin didn't do what he did because of a lack of belief. After all, communist countries are naturally atheistic in some ways, because they simply worship the state; it's state worship, and just like religion, communist leaders want everyone to only worship and obey them.

On page 194, in the section, "Darwin to Hitler?", Marshall tries to attack the idea of social Darwinism, which Marshall claims is tied directly to Darwin's idea of evolution, which it's not. Social Darwinism is basically just a moving from purely biological selection to a kind of societal selection, in which the weak and dying are killed off, in order to allow the better, stronger, richer, etc. to better spread and live.

This is a complete perversion of evolution, and Darwin never thought of evolution as applying to society, as far as killing off the weak. In fact, if you look at history, the idea of evolution actually favors the "weak" in a sense. Look at humans for instance. We don't have the large mass of a tiger or lion, the claws or sharp teeth, but we do have a very intelligent brain. The idea that it's only the big and strong that survive in nonsense. We survived because we outsmarted our pray and preditors.

Also, according to this wikipedia entry, social Darwinism had been around before Darwin even wrote Origin of Species in 1859, and Darwin hated that perversion of natural selection, saying that, "social policy should not simply be guided by concepts of struggle and selection in nature and that sympathy should be extended to all races and nations." (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin)

In the following section called "Did Atheism Build the Gulag?", Marshall once again goes after the several communist leaders and proudly proclaims atheism a horrible idea, saying that "[c]hildren of religious parents were kidnaped by the state (my emphasis) and taught atheism in truly "Darwinian" state orphanages." (page 198)

Yes, kids were kidnaped in order to brainwash them in to obeying the state, and nothing but the state. They didn't want anyone to obey any other authority, whether real or imagined. Yet Marshall claims all this would be the result if atheism would be dominant throughout the world. How foolish. True, there would still be problems in the world, but the religious wars would be no longer. Now, wars would still be fought over greed, power, etc., which often ties in with religion as well, but I figure, one bad thing at a time.

In the next section, called "Do Atheists Fight?", it is a fairly short section claiming that various wars in the world were caused because of atheism, and lists a few events, such as the October Revolution, Chinese Civil War and Korean War.

Each of these events were related to communist nations, not atheism, and as I've stated before, communism is dedicated to state worship, disallowing anything else. These events are all wars in communist countries, because of state worship - not atheism itself.

In the section "Does Atheism Liberate?" Marshall talks about the many wars being fought over religion across the world, yet claims that these people may just be "choos[ing] religion to 'flag' themselves against enemies." That people in a fight often choose sides and "justify themselves by whatever dogma are lying around." (page 203)

Sorry Marshall, but this excuse is absurd. These wars going on in the middle east are entirely religious. Especially the ones in which people are killed simply because of a difference of belief. In muslim countries you have religious fanatics blowing themselves up, along with "infidels" because they truly believe they will get to heaven with the 72 virgins. The same with the September 11th attacks. You have wars over the "promised land" because the bible says god promised this land to the Jews, and wars are fought over it. The men of the inquisition truly believed in the bible, and so wanted to save the souls of the non-believers, so they did anything they could to try and persuade them to convert, even if that meant killing them before they converted. The witches were burned because people truly believed that they were witches, and were superstitious, and their religious belief kept them ignorant. These horrible things were done because of what these people believed, not because they just felt like going out and killing people one day. Marshall's argument is pure nonsense.

In the final section of the chapter, titled "Sexual Liberation: Are We Having Fun Yet?", Marshall seems to try his hand at making some stabs in the dark about why we are so promiscuous and seemingly blames the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, saying that she proclaimed to women that they have a right to be unmarried and "had the right to destroy", whatever that meant. And of course he blames evolution. He claims that Aldous Huxley said that he "wrote about a brave new world in which all the girls were easy (page 205)." However, he gives no sources for this.

He also laughingly claims that while living in Oxford he would "often wake up to lover's quarrels at about 3:30 in the morning." He claims this is proof that less religion in great old England isn't as good as many claim, because people still fight. Well, of course people will have arguments! Humans are bound to have conflict, even two people who love each other. Though, from the words of the shouting Marshall claimed he heard, it sounds like that particular couple didn't love each other. But, I'm pressed to understand how those few incidences can qualify Marshall to say that England isn't better off then america.

On 206, aside from these pathetic excuses, he says the following:

"Nevermind abortions and sexually transmitted diseases. I'll tell you what bothers me most....How many children can't use the word Daddy or Mommy because their parents are too 'liberated' to bother making a house?"

That's very nice of you Marshall to talk down to the many single parents in the world...

Maybe a woman can't seem to find the right man, and still wants a baby? It's called artifical insemination. What if parents get a divorce? I've shown in other writings that christians have about the same divorce rate as non-believers...in fact the non-believers was six percent lower in fact (see my review of the Evidence Bible, Taking The Way of the Morons (master) to Task, Q. # 9).

The phrase, "too liberated to bother making a house" just reeks of contempt. Who says being "liberated" is bad? No sex equals no more human race. People don't need to feel ashamed to have sex, Mr. Marshall, as your stupid belief system advocates. Sex is nothing to be ashamed of, and instead of hiding from it, embrace, get educated about it. I agree, there are dangers, but if all one does is sit through some religiously motivated abstinence - only class, and learns about the false preaching that condoms don't work, then yes they will get pregnant, and they very possibly could get a disease.

It's funny, because people get killed in car accidents every day. People die in sky diving accidents, and no christians are trying to stop people from doing that. Many things people do in life are risky, but we still let them do it. It's got nothing to do with safety and everything to do with their pointless religious dogma about sin and that sex is bad (unless it's within marriage). Who says? Some age old book? What about in Numbers 31:17-18 when Moses told his band of murderers (that is what they were in this story) after taking over a city after killing everyone to "keep the women for yourselves?" Yes..he told them to rape the women.

Marshall makes some of the same arguments as earlier, claiming that christians invented science, the Red Cross, and hospitals. According to my brief period of research a lot of this seems to be false, especially the claim about science; something I've researched much more heavily then the other claims and so I'm much more confidant about that one.

Next, Marshall brings up the 20th century atrocities of Nazism and Communism...two subjects I've studied up on quite a bit since this review and have debated Marshall on, on numerous occasions and he's never once given me a reason why he believes the atheists killed because of their lack of belief. I go into this subject in quite a bit of detail in my updated review and other posts so I won't bother trying to argue it here.

The fact is, this was the very first time I'd ever heard this argument about the Communists and Nazis and atheism so I was completely unprepared for it and was not sure how to respond, though I did look into those periods of history and did my best to argue against him.

Truth be told, I didn't fully understand that argument until I read David Aikman's book The Delusion of Disbelief where Aikman goes into a lot of detail with this argument. It was there that Aikman made it clear that this was not an issue about whether or not they were atheists, but one of morality. I felt Aikman was a much better writer than Marshall which made his book a good read, though his arguments were also nonsense. Once I read Aikman's book the light came on and I went back and read the eleventh chapter of Marhall's book again and saw it in a whole new light.

Some of the other later subjects I neglected to address in the updated review because I felt they weren't central to his main argument. However, one issue I did not address due to my lack of knowledge of the subject was his discussion of evolutionary morality, which in the new review I completely demolish his arguments and show he actually doesn't understand the subject at all.

Chapter 12: Consilience

This is the last chapter of the book where Marshall tries to put everything together, and even here I found some problems with what he has to say. He says, "The New Atheism reveals its simplistic grasp on reality in many ways. First, the most cocky atheists often fail to recognize the limits of science. Second, their theories leave too many facts out. Third, they refuse to ask certain obviously important questions. Fourth, to obscure the failure of their theory, some are driven to play a game of 'let's pretend'." (page 209)

First off, of course science has it's limits, but we don't yet know it's bounds, so to say that "science has it's limits" is just ignorant because we don't know where those limits are. We may figure out the origin of the universe some day; we might not. There are many things throughout history many people deemed as impossible, yet is common place now, like space travel, for example. These christians are way too eager to count science out, because that exactly what they want. Just like the dark ages, they don't want science to discover anything about anything, which is why they didn't allow the dissection of bodies to learn about anatomy and other restrictions.

Now that religion has (for the most part) lost it's control of the practice of science (with some exceptions like the political bullshit on banning stem-cell research), all they can do is use their voice to try and convince the naive that science can't solve this, or science can't solve that. Sorry, Mr. Marshall, but I bet it will, as do many others.

Under the section titled "Random Acts of Inquiry", Marshall goes hog wild with the old design argument asking how life got here, why this and why that...if the earth wasn't in this particular spot in the universe, life could not have arose, "how did jewish shepherds know the universe had a beginning...?" etc., etc. He goes on for three pages asking some arguments which are meaningless, like the ones I just mentioned and even asks "Why was so much of the world awaiting a savior?" Funny, Mr. Marshall, but that's just how the myth arose.

Well, of course life is in a good spot...if it weren't we would not be here to observe it. Just because we are here doesn't mean there is some supernatural explanation. Certain things just happen to turn out just right, and some things don't. We just happened to evolve and get here.

True there are many unanswered questions, but again, science very could well find the answers in the future.

In the section "Two Ways to be Childish" Marshall gets back to his bafoonery by claiming that not only does the religious experiences of people confirm the story of god, and religion, but that the data fits the religious concept better, then evolution.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Since so many people have claimed to see space aliens does that prove that space aliens are real? I'm curious to know Marshall's rationalization. Or maybe he, too, believes in little green men? Could be, since there just just as much evidence for aliens as there are for god. And hell, there is more evidence for space aliens then there is for god! I've seen video of an alien autopsy (the hoax "documentary" called Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction, directed by Tom McGough, from 1995)! No one has ever gotten god on video! I'm only joking of course. But the fact remains that there is no evidence as Marshall claims.

His next paragraph is even more ludicrous! He says that atheists play games of "let's pretend" by saying that "let's pretend the bible cannot be read as a single book with a coherent divine message...[that] bible-thumpers didn't end slavery [or that] human sacrifices are wrong. Let's pretend that american christians plot to tear the constitution to shreds...pretend prayers are never answered." (page 214)

He's is plain wrong on all accounts. These weren't his only answers, of course. I only included his most absurd ones. Some were honest answers.

The problem is that atheists don't pretend. We don't pretend that religion hasn't done some good throughout history, yet we're also not blind to the fact that it's done more harm then good.

Atheists also do not pretend, as theists do, that some magic man in the sky can help with problems, and when he doesn't come flying down from the clouds to the rescue with his big red "G" cape on, you immediately come up with some excuse as to why he didn't.

In the next section, "Tutors to Christ", Marshall makes some huge blunders here as well. He briefly takes on the challenge about the similar stories of all the many savior gods, yet seems not to feel he can handle the task, and just writes them off and untrue and unimportant.

In the final section, "Mirror, Mirror On the Wall" he talks down about science and how bad it is with "social Darwinism, abortion, free love (*huge laughter* this one is plain idiotic to blame on science), LSD, gas chambers...slave ships...." (page 219).

Yes, science has not always been for the benefit of mankind. Weapons of mass destruction (something which I'm surprised Marshall didn't mention), guns, etc.

Yet, because of science we also have great medical advances, which help us daily in our lives, and even help those lying televangecals (preachers on TV) get their millions of viewers to send in their life savings by telling them they are going to hell if they don't send their money.

That, along with other advances in technology we can travel easier and science makes other areas of our life better through entertainment, with TV, music, etc.

I often find it hard to understand how so many christians can talk down to science when it has done countless great things for the human race, but if they want to live in a world of delusion, be my guest. Just don't bother me with your idiocy.

I've reached the end of the book, and it was just as badly argued as I expected. I feel I've refuted each of his arguments well, and many of them were just plan pathetic to be honest.

The back of the book says "What are the new atheists saying? How can we respond?"

How funny...well judging from the book, Marshall has responded poorly indeed.

I still find it odd how he can call this the "new atheism", as I said at the beginning (over 40 pages ago!). Nothing is new under the sun, and just about every argument for and against god is one of the basic ones of design, personal experience, or just plain bullshit, which has been spread around and regurgitated for several hundred years. We'll see where the future leads...hopefully out into the light, out from this huge rock of ignorance, called religion.

I don't have much to say about this last chapter and it looks to me like I still agree with the majority of my comments, though I did leave out my comments in the updated review about Marshall's statement about science developing LSD, free love, etc. In our early discussions Marshall got on my case about this and, with his usual rude and insulting attitude, told me I couldn't read. I am undecided about Marshall's intentions with the quote since I believe it to be a bit ambiguous and it's not important, nor part of a major argument anyway.

I've now reached the end of the original review.

Conclusion

As one can see with their own eyes, throughout most of the book I did understand the vast majority of Marshall's arguments, though didn't have the required knowledge at the time to best argue against some of them. The only chapters where I truly fail to understand Marshall's arguments are chapters three and eleven. The rest I understood and even refuted many arguments, though not nearly as effectively as I do later on with the updated review.

I recall during one of our discussions on Amazon.com I asked Marshall to critique my review of his book and he asked to see the original draft and told me that he'd point out all I got wrong. I had already finished the second draft and wanted to prove to him that I fixed all the errors, and when he asked to see the first draft I was perplexed. Why, I asked, when I know what was wrong with it and I fixed the problems? It doesn't matter anymore. I told him to look at my new one, and he refused. However, much later on Marshall did read my review for about ten minutes (I noted this in my visitor logs) but just made the sweeping claim that nothing I said was a 'serious challenge' to his arguments and left it at that, to which I scoffed at him, believing him to be full of shit. If my arguments were as bad as he'd continuously claimed I'm sure he would've said something about them but he did not.

I obviously agree that I didn't get everything right in the original review, and in some cases I made some pretty large errors that even make me cringe when I read them, though I still got much correct and understood most everything, though Marshall would (and still does) argue that I can't read or understand his book. Though, as I've shown, that's just plain false...no let me say what it really is: Bullshit. I believe it was (and still is) Marshall's confirmation bias that convinces him no one has poked holes in his arguments, along with his narrow-mindedness. I also believe it's not only highly presumptuous, but also condescending, when he always says that because I have no formal education in these topics I can't possibly say anything of value about them. But that just highlights Marshall's immature, rude, and close-minded attitude.

That is the reason I got so upset with Marshall and called him a liar during the early discussions we had at the beginning of 2008. I knew I had understood most of his arguments but he would always act as if I didn't, but to any rational person it's clear I did. All I wanted from him was to acknowledge I did understand the arguments and actually debate and discuss them with me instead of continually talking down to me and saying I didn't understand his book. It was highly frustrating, though it also made me believe (and I still think this) that Marshall deep down felt he might lose any debate and so did everything he could to avoid a serious one.

Thank you for reading and I hope my posting of the first draft was helpful in further proving the dishonesty and deceit of David Marshall. A dishonesty that he has clearly been engaging in since the very beginning of our discussions about the contents of my review (and has continued ever since). Again, I agree most of my rebuttals were far from satisfactory...OK, OK, they plain sucked...but for the most part I understood what Marshall was arguing, unlike what he's been dishonestly saying for about the last three years.

All in all, I think it's absolutely ridiculous for someone to dislike someone else and lie about someone over a few misreadings; misreadings that were acknowledged and quickly corrected! Mistakes happen in life. No sense in personally attacking someone because of it - especially if they were up front (as I was) and corrected any errors. Then once this is done, when everyone is on the same page, a respectful debate can then take place but it's clear this never happened and not because I didn't want one. But I've exposed Marshall and his immense dishonesty and I know I've accomplished my goal. All Marshall can do for his part now is remain humiliated and discredited over his immature and dishonest actions or he can send me a real apology (and not a fake one either; as he did on Amazon.com and then a week later began hurling insults at me again). From the looks of things it seems to me he wishes to remain humiliated and discredited. So be it.

Because this review is obsolete I will not accept any critiques of it. I know there are errors (which I've just spent the last several pages pointing out) and if you'd like to argue against my review of the book please refer to my expanded and updated review. Thank you.

The Truth Behind the New Atheism: A Review: The First Draft with Commentary