The Secular Frontier

The Secular Outpost shut down (publication of new posts ceased) in December of 2021. The Internet Infidels have started a new skeptical blog called The Secular Frontier. Posts previously published at The Secular Outpost will still be available here at The Secular Frontier. ... Read Article

WHERE WE AREIn his Handbook of Christian Apologetics Peter Kreeft raises 14 objections against the Hallucination Theory in an attempt to DISPROVE or REFUTE that skeptical theory.  Kreeft thinks he can prove the resurrection of Jesus by disproving a few skeptical theories about the resurrection of Jesus, such as the Hallucination Theory.Kreeft's first three objections focus on the idea of the credibility of eyewitness testimony in support of the resurrection of Jesus.  These objections evoke the centuries-old idea of a court trial providing evidence beyond reasonable doubt that Jesus rose from the dead.In recent posts, I have provided powerful evidence in support of two important factual claims: HUMAN MEMORY IS UNRELIABLE.HUMANS ARE DISHONEST. In Part 13 of this series, I provided evidence showing that human memory is UNRELIABLE.In Part 14 of this series, I provided evidence that very young children (ages 2 to 3 years old), and young children (ages 4 to 10 years old) are DISHONEST and that tee ... Read Article

ADULTS ARE DISHONEST In general, studies of lying behavior indicate that college students lie more frequently on average, than the general adult population.  However, based on recent studies with larger sample sizes, the difference in average number of lies per day is fairly small between college students and the general adult population: College students and adults A common source of fascination is in the similarities and differences between college student samples and representative adult samples. As mentioned in the introduction, the general trend is that lying increases with age through childhood, peaks during the teen years, and then declines gradually with age. Despite maturation, the positive skew is maintained (Debey et al., 2015; Serota et al., 2010). Understanding the size and nature of these trends, however, requires considerable nuance. The difference was the largest in the original DePaulo et al. (1996) study where adults lied once per day and stu- dents twice per day. Depending on how one fra ... Read Article

WHERE WE ARE As part of my response to Peter Kreeft's first three objections against the Hallucination Theory,  I want to point out two major problems with EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY: HUMAN MEMORY IS UNRELIABLE HUMANS ARE DISHONEST In Part 13 of this series, I summarized key points from an excellent article on problems with eyewitness memory and identifications made by eyewitnesses.  The main conclusion of that article is that eyewitness testimony is UNRELIABLE because human memory is UNRELIABLE.  The evidence from that article provides solid justification for this conclusion. In Part 14 of this series, I provided a summary of evidence for the view that YOUNG CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS ARE DISHONEST, and in this post, I will be providing evidence that YOUNG ADULTS (specifically college students) ARE DISHONEST.   COLLEGE STUDENTS ARE LIARS If most people lie and deceive, and if people often lie and deceive,  then we have good reason to be skeptical.  We have seen in previous posts that most children lie ... Read Article

WHERE WE ARE I am currently examining Peter Kreeft's third objection against the Hallucination Theory.  His first three objections are all concerned with the TESTIMONY of WITNESSES, namely EYEWITNESSES.  The first three objections by Kreeft thus evoke the centuries-old idea of proving the resurrection of Jesus in a court trial.  If we take that idea seriously, though, Kreeft's first three objections become a pathetic joke.   Objection #3 is about "Five Hundred Witnesses" who allegedly had an experience of the risen Jesus at the same time and the same place. In Part 12 of this series, I began taking this idea (of a court trial about the resurrection) seriously, by walking through modern procedures and criteria for a careful and proper "initial investigation" of a murder (or other serious crime).  Witnesses in a murder trial are NOT just randomly grabbed off the street and put on a witness stand.  There is usually an initial investigation, where the crime scene is carefully examined and evidence collecte ... Read Article

WHERE WE ARE I am currently examining Peter Kreeft's third objection against the Hallucination Theory.  His first three objections are all concerned with the TESTIMONY of WITNESSES, namely EYEWITNESSES.  The first three objections by Kreeft thus evoke the centuries-old idea of proving the resurrection of Jesus in a court trial.  If we take that idea seriously, though, Kreeft's first three objections become a pathetic joke.   Objection #3 is about "Five Hundred Witnesses" who supposedly had an experience of the risen Jesus at the same time and the same place. In Part 12 of this series, I began taking this idea (of a court trial about the resurrection) seriously, by walking through modern criteria for a careful and proper "initial investigation" of a murder (or other serious crime).  Witnesses in a murder trial are not just randomly grabbed off the street and put on a witness stand.  There is usually an initial investigation, where the crime scene is carefully examined and evidence collected and document ... Read Article

WHERE WE ARE I am working my way through Peter Kreeft's 14 objections against the Hallucination Theory, the view that one or more of Jesus's disciples experienced a hallucination or dream about Jesus after the death of Jesus, and this experience was mistakenly believed to be an ordinary sensory experience of a living and embodied Jesus who had risen from the dead, and that this experience (or those experiences) became the primary basis of the early Christian belief that Jesus had physically risen from the dead.  Kreeft's objections against this theory are presented in Chapter 8 of his Handbook of Christian Apologetics (hereafter: HCA). So, far I have shown that Kreeft's first two objections against the Hallucination Theory FAIL: OBJECTION #3: FIVE HUNDRED WITNESSES Kreeft presents his third objection against the Hallucination Theory in a single paragraph: The five hundred saw Christ together, at the same time and place.  This is even more remarkable than five hundred private "hallucinations" at different t ... Read Article

(Be sure to read Part 1 before starting this half) The Rape Nonexception Factor This is a good place to further explore the callous indifference of the hard right to rape that has a yet again naïve center-left wondering what is going on. In their twisted logic a woman who is truly Godly and virtuous cannot be raped to pregnancy because she will not dress or be provocative or intoxicated in a manner that entices a man to sexually assault her, and if one does he will not be able to achieve penetration because of her not being sexually aroused. In that theory only a woman who is sufficiently loose and in some way desiring the assault can be impregnated – remember if you will how during the 2012 election cycle some GOP pols made statements to this effect. The slander of women as the foolish temptresses is not at all novel, it goes back over millennia as per the story of sinful and seductive Eve and the apple. As vile as this deep patriarchal attitude appears to today’s ethical westerners, the traditional mis ... Read Article

(This being a big subject that has been largely ignored it needs a lot of explanation, the essay is split into two parts. Part 2 will be posted tomorrow) It has not worked. The pro-choice movement opposed by the religious right has been making an enormous mistake. We know that because it is facing disaster. That when a solid majority of Americans favor abortion rights. It is all too clear that what it has been done in support of women being full class citizens has been gravely defective. It follows that it is time to move on to a more effective strategy. Roe v Wade rests largely upon the 14thAmendment principle of privacy as a legal and societal expression of individual freedom from invasive state control in favor of personal responsibility. The thesis is valid, but it is a defensive posture that has proven insufficient to fend off assaults from a dedicated forced birth campaign. The situation is so bad for the sovereign rights of American women that even as Catholic heritage nations like Mexico and Ireland p ... Read Article

Discrimination by Neglect: The Chronic News and Opinion Media Bigotry Against Atheists Theists Get All the Breaks – Really, They Do There is currently, in these United States, a form of casual and pernicious bigotry that continues to be directed against the fastest growing portion of the population. It is the big bigotry that hardly any pay attention to, and to a great extent other minorities subject to their own levels of prejudice also ignore or even participate in. It is the discrimination of paying as little mind as possible to the existence and especially the opinions of those who commit the culturally inconvenient social crime of lacking belief in the supernatural deities that the substantial but shrinking American majority persist in believing in. What does continue to enjoy endless attention and media coverage is theism. That occurs in a number of ways. The mainstream media that tends to be centrist to liberal in sociopolitical sensibilities, and mainline or alternative theist to varying degrees, pe ... Read Article

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 last year at 94.   Ye Olden Times   Over on my mother’s side is where it was very interesting. Some of her folk where associates of the Joseph Smith who made up 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 quietly devout believer, was born in a central Utah desert town out of the old west and lived ... Read Article

WHERE WE ARE On page 187 of his Handbook of Christian Apologetics (hereafter: HCA), Peter Kreeft presents his second of fourteen objections against the Hallucination Theory. In Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and Part 7 of this series,  I clarified, analyzed, and evaluated Peter Kreeft's Objection #2 (Witnesses Were Qualified) against the Hallucination Theory, and in Part 7  I concluded that this objection FAILS. On page 186 of HCA, Kreeft presents his first objection against the Hallucination Theory. In Part 8 of this series, I clarified Peter Kreeft's Objection #1 (Too Many Witnesses) against the Hallucination Theory. In Part 9 of this series, I clarified the group-hallucination principle that is a key premise of Objection #1 (Too Many Witnesses). In Part 10 of this series, I argued that we have good reason to doubt the group-hallucination principle that is a key premise of Objection #1 (Too Many Witnesses), and thus we have good reason to reject Objection #1. In this post, I will examine the hist ... Read Article

I am a left-wing atheist who hates Donald Trump and who is disgusted with every White Evangelical Christian SHITHEAD who supports Trump and his evil racist, sexist, anti-immigrant basket-of-deplorables. I spend much of my time critically examining the arguments of Evangelical Christian apologists like Norman Geisler, Peter Kreeft, and Josh McDowell.  I have come to the conclusion that the intellectual efforts of these apologists amount to stinking piles of dog shit.  They present mountains of unclear, illogical, ignorant, dubious, and false BULLSHIT as if they were presenting intelligent arguments, thus polluting the minds of millions of Christians by presenting paradigm examples of IDIOCY and STUPIDITY as if they were presenting examples of intelligent reasoning.  I have little respect for these Evangelical Christian apologists and significant contempt for them. NEVERTHELESS, the recent criticisms of Josh McDowell as being a "racist" strike me as UNFAIR and UNFOUNDED.  So, although I have significant con ... Read Article

WHERE WE ARE In Part 9 of this series I began to examine the core argument of Kreeft's Objection #1 (Too Many Witnesses) against the Hallucination Theory: B. IF on multiple occasions more than two persons had the same experience of an alleged appearance of the risen Jesus at the same time, THEN it is extremely unlikely that those experiences on ALL of those occasions were hallucinations. 3a. On multiple occasions more than two persons had the same experience of an alleged appearance of the risen Jesus at the same time. THEREFORE: C. It is extremely unlikely that the experiences on ALL of the occasions when more than two persons had the same experience of an alleged appearance of the risen Jesus at the same time were hallucinations. I pointed out that it is natural for skeptics to raise objections to the historical claim made in premise (3a), but that premise (B), a generalization about group hallucinations, is in need of further clarification, and that I suspected that when the meaning of (B) became clear, it ... Read Article

WHERE WE ARE In Part 8 of this series, I focused on Peter Kreeft's VERY UNCLEAR argument constituting his Objection #1 ("Too Many Witnesses") against the Hallucination Theory.    I argued that this was a brief and UNCLEAR version of Josh McDowell's "Very Personal" objection against the Hallucination Theory (found in his book The Resurrection Factor, hereafter: TRF).  On that basis, I was able to make sense out of Kreeft's VERY UNCLEAR argument. The core argument constituting Kreeft's Objection #1 in my clarified version of his argument goes as follows: B. IF on multiple occasions more than two persons had the same experience of an alleged appearance of the risen Jesus at the same time, THEN it is extremely unlikely that those experiences on ALL of those occasions were hallucinations. 3a. On multiple occasions more than two persons had the same experience of an alleged appearance of the risen Jesus at the same time. THEREFORE: C. It is extremely unlikely that the experiences on ALL of the occasions when mo ... Read Article