The Secular Frontier

Regarding the transformation of the Roman soldier at the cross in Mark, last time I said: Just to show Mark’s Roman Soldier isn’t being sarcastic as Neil Godfrey claims, we read: 37 Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. 38 And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. 39 Now when the centurion who stood facing him saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” (Mark 15:37-39 NRSVUE) As anyone can see, the miracle of the temple curtain being torn precedes and is the context for understanding the admission by the soldier that Jesus is God’s true son, snubbing Caesar who the Romans would have seen as the son of God. Just as the curtain miraculously tore, the Roman soldier miraculously declared Jesus the son of God rather than Caesar. The soldier has undergone a transformation. A “gospel” means propaganda, that’s what kind of writing it is – exaggeration and flattering a known historical figure. Helms com ... Read Article

Ehrman comments: It is easy to see Luke’s own distinctive view by considering what he has to say in the book of Acts, where the apostles give a number of speeches in order to convert others to the faith. What is striking is that in none of these instances (look, e.g., in chapters 3, 4, 13), do the apostles indicate that Jesus’ death brings atonement for sins. It is not that Jesus’ death is unimportant. It’s extremely important for Luke. But not as an atonement. Instead, Jesus death is what makes people realize their guilt before God (since he died even though he was innocent). Once people recognize their guilt, they turn to God in repentance, and then he forgives their sins. see: https://ehrmanblog.org/did-luke-have-a-doctrine-of-the-atonement-mailbag-september-24-2017/ I expand the Lukan Moral Influence interpretation of the cross to the New Testament generally, not just Luke, and use it to argue against the Penal Substitution (sin debt payment) interpretation of the cross. As ... Read Article

Theists Get All the Breaks – Really, They Do Conservative LOVE to go on and on and on complaining about Cancel Culture, about how the secular lefties are suppressing the free speech rights of those of the right on campuses, denouncing right wing nonacceptance of LGTBQ rights as bigotry, demanding to dismantle Confederate monuments and place names, and so forth. That is rich in that conservatives LOVE to cancel of the culture of those who dare disagree with their righteous opinions, such as those who take a knee during the National Anthem (which was written by an advocate of slavery and trashes Black rights but that is another subject), evicting  views on alternative sexuality and Common Core and liberal social-emotional learning out of public schools and libraries, is going after corporations for standing up for nonconservative social values, and denounces Woke Culture, the 1619 Project, BLM and intersectionality in an effort to protect the delicate sensibilities of White theocons fr ... Read Article

 Anthology co-editor Keith Augustine has kindly provided a response to the Hasker review I mentioned previously.  He writes:  Incidentally, Hasker is interestingly wrong about some things. For example, he writes: "However, they [my coauthor of chapter 10 & I] go well beyond the dependence thesis, arguing that brain function is not merely a necessary condition but in fact is a sufficient cause for experience, thus rendering an immaterial soul otiose."In fact, all my coauthor and I argue is that brain functioning is necessary for human mental life, although we indicate that we suspect that the right kind of brain functioning is probably sufficient, too. (That brain function is "sufficient" for human mental life is rendered false by the fact that there's still some brain functioning going on in unconscious patients--it's got to be the right kind of brain functioning.) First, by simply saying that "having a functioning brain is a necessary condit ... Read Article

I wanted to share a helpful review of The Myth of an Afterlife by William Hasker here: https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/the-myth-of-an-afterlife-the-case-against-life-after-death/ There is a lot to chew on here, but I just wanted to address a couple points: 1 Perhaps even more striking is the omission of any consideration of theism as a serious option. This omission is impor­tant because theism and belief in an afterlife provide important support for each other. Theism needs an afterlife in which injustices can be remedied and suffering assuaged; without this, there is a massive, perhaps insoluble, problem of evil. And on the other hand belief in an afterlife is far more plausible if theism is accepted. This is not merely because God is needed, on many views, in order to secure personal survival. Beyond this, there is need of something like divine agency to insure that conditions in an afterlife are morally benign. This applies even to the belief in reincarna­tion, in spite of the fact that reinca ... Read Article

Why This Skeptic is Secular Blogging – It’s a (Fairly) Long Story My religious history that led to yours truly becoming a skeptical intellect doing research and commentary is complex. And rather interesting. Not my father’s side of our (rather dysfunctional) nuclear family. Indiana Hoosier from corn country, a Cold War United Methodist Republican to whom atheism was Godless Bolshevism. Yawn. To his credit when he found out I was an atheist in 2002 he was not happy, but did not make too much of a fuss, and did not reraise the subject prior to his death a few years ago at 94.  Ye Olden Times It was over on my mother’s side is where it was very interesting. Some of her folk where associates of the Joseph Smith who concocted Mormonism, one being a body guard, they made the trek to Utah, and had multiple wives (check out https://www.gatheringgardiners.com/2010/03/noah-guyman-1819-1911.html, it’s pretty cool). Ah the good old days. My grandmother Zella who I knew very well, and was a quietl ... Read Article

The idea of being washed by the blood of Jesus is popular among conservative Christians who adhere to the “paying our sin debt” interpretation of Jesus’s death.  Recently, Jessica Brodie (mostly from sources outside Paul or the 4 Gospels) summarized it this way: In fact, it was the shedding of Jesus’ blood, his “blood sacrifice,” that paid the price of our own sin-debt forever in the eyes of God. The Bible tells us the blood spilled as a sacrifice by Jesus ensures we are forgiven and redeemed from our sins (Ephesians 1:7). That blood reconciles us to God (Colossians 1:20) and gives us direct access to God, the “Most Holy Place” (Hebrews 10:19) without need for an intermediary priest. As the apostle Peter wrote to the early church, “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1: ... Read Article

WHERE WE ARE For the sake of being able to evaluate the second DILEMMA in Kreeft and Tacelli’s series of four dilemmas, I am going to temporarily set aside the serious problem of the historical UNRELIABILITY of the Gospel of John, and pretend (assume for the sake of argument) that the historical Jesus actually spoke the words attributed to Jesus in quotations from the Gospel of John presented by Kreeft and Tacelli in support of the view that Jesus claimed to be God. The question at issue concerning our evaluation of the second DILEMMA is thus whether Jesus meant these statements LITERALLY, and whether in making them he was LITERALLY claiming to be the eternal creator of the universe and the omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good ruler of the universe. Here are the six verses from the Gospel of John that Kreeft and Tacelli quote in the opening pages of Chapter 7 of their Handbook of Christian Apologetics (hereafter: HCA): John 8:12John 8:46John 8:58John 1 ... Read Article

No Mental Life after Brain Death: The Argument from the Neural Localization of Mental Functions Gualtiero Piccinini and Sonya Bahar  (Martin, Michael; Augustine, Keith. The Myth of an Afterlife . Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.) For today’s post on The Myth of an Afterlife, I wanted to unpack some thoughts from Piccinini and Bahar’s chapter regarding the physical grounding of mystical experience.  They comment: In 1983 Michael Persinger suggested that religious and mystical experiences in general might be artifacts of temporal lobe microseizures (Persinger, 1983). More recently, a wealth of brain imaging studies have complemented the early EEG studies, confirming the temporal localization of such events (Hansen & Brodtkorb, 2003). Other studies suggest that mystical experiences are not solely localized to the temporal lobe, however, and that they may involve a large and complex network of activations in the brain. Cosimo Urgesi, Salvatore M. Agliot ... Read Article

Today I wanted to think a little about the difference between the kinds of lenses theological hypotheses provide in comparison with secular lenses in science and even literature.  In his introduction to the book, Augustine points out that regarding the secular framework for viewing death: "Because we are built from the same flesh and blood and DNA that forms nonhuman animals, and share their evolutionary origins, their mortality implies our mortality."- Martin, Michael; Augustine, Keith. The Myth of an Afterlife . Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.  Theistic explanations of reality are indifferent to the reality they are trying to color.  In response to horrific animal and human suffering, the theist responds "God promises justice in the next life, not this one."  This means through the theist lens the world looks exactly as it would if there was no omnipotent, omnibenevolent God.  Similarly, in response to empirical scientific experiments that show the in ... Read Article

It is sometimes said that the only difference between Paul and the Jerusalem bunch on Jesus is that Paul didn’t think gentile converts needed to be circumcised (become fully Jewish).  This hardly makes Paul historically interesting, and seems to miss a key distinction. In previous posts I talked about Jeremiah’s prophecy that the law would be written on people’s hearts, which seemed to have been fulfilled in Jesus who redefined love from Greek eros (Honor seeking Achilles) to Christian agape (love of enemy).  The key event post-Jesus was the realization of God’s chosen one being horribly tortured and killed by the sins of the enraged crowd, corrupt religious elite, and crowd placating, indifferent to justice Pilate, which were also the sins in all of us.  This slap in the face of his beloved followers was a catalyst to realize how corrupt we and the system were and inspire change, which was particularly important because the end of the age and hence judgment was imminent.  The ... Read Article

One of the topics I explore in my penal substitution essay is the question of Isaiah 53 influencing the New Testament writers. One topic I didn't include in the Isaiah 53 section of the essay is Matthew and Isaiah 53:4 of the Septuagint (The Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures the NT writers used) Matthew, though appearing first in the bible, was written after Mark and incorporates a great deal of Mark into itself. It shows itself to be a Judaizing of the gentile gospel of Mark, so it is notoriously difficult to trace material back from Matthew's narrative to the historical Jesus. It seems to incorporate early material, the hypothetical Q source, which is the material common to Matthew and Luke that didn't come from Mark. In my penal substitution essay, I try to show that Conservative Christians are wrong to think the NT writers used Isaiah 53 to suggest penal substitution, the idea Christ suffered/died in our place to pay our sin debt. Today I am going to look at Mako Nagasawa's arguments w ... Read Article

Inquiry Question: "If Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet predicting the soon end of the age, why the major emphasis on personal and societal growth and transformation?" "meretrix pudicam:" “The harlot rebuketh the chaste.” (proverb referenced by Athenagoras of Athens) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIKc3oxMjNc Here is an abridged transcript of the interview: Q1 – Why do you think that Luke goes against the standard model of the atonement (or penal substitutionary model)? I tend to think Luke is actually the most conspicuous case of what is generally going on in Mark and Paul.  Ehrman writes: It is easy to see Luke’s own distinctive view by considering what he has to say in the book of Acts, where the apostles give a number of speeches in order to convert others to the faith. What is striking is that in none of these instances (look, e.g., in chapters 3, 4, 13), do the apostles indicate that Jesus’ death brings atonement for sins. It is not that Jesus’ death is unimport ... Read Article

WHERE WE ARE In Chapter 7 of their book Handbook of Christian Apologetics (hereafter: HCA), Christian philosophers Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli make a case for the divinity of Jesus. Here is the main argument they present in Chapter 7: 1A. Jesus was either God, liar, lunatic, guru, or myth. 2A. Jesus could not possibly be a liar, lunatic, guru, or myth. THEREFORE: 3A. Jesus is God. In Part 3 of this series, I analyzed and clarified a series of four dilemmas (four EITHER/OR statements) that they use to support premise (1A). The four dilemmas are used to try to prove that there are only FIVE possible views that can be taken on this issue. I summarized the clarified version of their four dilemmas in this decision tree diagram: In Part 4 of this series, I argued for some key points about the first dilemma in the above diagram: Here are those key points: When Kreeft and Tacelli added two more possible views to the TRILEMMA to make their QUINTLEMMA, they unknowingly changed ... Read Article

Some Thoughts On Keith Augustine's Introduction to "The Myth of an Afterlife" Today I wanted to think a little about the difference between the kinds of lenses theological hypotheses provide in comparison with secular lenses in science and even literature.  In his introduction to the book, Augustine points out that regarding the secular framework for viewing death: "Because we are built from the same flesh and blood and DNA that forms nonhuman animals, and share their evolutionary origins, their mortality implies our mortality."- Martin, Michael; Augustine, Keith. The Myth of an Afterlife . Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.  Theistic explanations of reality are indifferent to the reality they are trying to color.  In response to horrific animal and human suffering, the theist responds "God promises justice in the next life, not this one."  This means through the theist lens the world looks exactly as it would if there was no omnipotent, omnibenevolent God.& ... Read Article