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<\/a><\/p>\nAtheist and anti-theist\u00a0Bob Seidensticker<\/a>\u00a0runs the influential\u00a0Cross Examined<\/em>\u00a0blog<\/a>. I have critiqued 80 of his posts<\/a>, but he hasn\u2019t counter-replied to any of them. Nevertheless, he was gracious enough to send me a free e-book copy of his new volume, 2-Minute Christianity:\u00a050 Big Ideas Every Christian Should Understand<\/em><\/a> (May 2022). He (unsurprisingly) declined to discuss it back-and-forth, but at least we were civil and cordial. Since I have responded to so much of his material, over four-and-a-half years, I decided to see how many of the 50 issues raised by this book have already, in effect, been \u201cresolved\u201d in my existing writings. And I\u2019ll add a few present responses as well. His words will be in blue<\/span>.<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n Bob writes in his Introduction:<\/span> \u201cIs Christianity true? If it is, it can withstand critique. If you have a religious belief, it should be grounded by evidence and reason.\u201d The blurb on the Amazon book page adds: \u201cIf God wanted mindless faith, he wouldn\u2019t have given you a mind.\u201d<\/span> Yep; I couldn\u2019t agree more. That\u2019s what I have devoted my life\u2019s work to: offering evidence and reason for all aspects of the Christian faith (what is called \u201capologetics\u201d). And so I\u2019ll apply that goal to this book. It offers critiques; here I offer solid, superior Christian answers to them. Let the reader decide who has made a better, more convincing case.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n 1 Map of World Religions<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Let\u2019s return to the map of world religions. Religions claim to give answers to life\u2019s big questions, answers that science can\u2019t give. . . .\u00a0But the map shows that the religious answers to those questions depend on where you are<\/em>. . . .\u00a0We ask the most profound questions of all, and the answers are location specific? What kind of truth depends on location?<\/span><\/p>\n 38 Christianity Without Indoctrination<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n 39 The Monty Hall Problem<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n 48 Religion Reflects Culture<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n No<\/em> truth depends on location; I fully agree. I don\u2019t deny that people\u2019s opinions mostly arise from their environment (\u201cwe are what we eat\u201d). But I go on to note that atheists are no different<\/em>. So, for example, in England about 50% of the population is non-religious (which comes down to atheist or \u201cpractical atheist\u201d \u2014 which I used to be, myself, up until age 18: living one\u2019s life as if<\/em> God doesn\u2019t exist).<\/p>\n Therefore, by the very same reasoning that Bob offers, I\u2019d bet good money that in twenty years from now, the atheist population will remain at least this high and maybe grow. And why<\/em> would that be, if so? It\u2019s precisely because most people adopt the religion or other worldview of their parents. So the atheist growing up in an intensely secularized English home will (big shock!) likely turn out to be an atheist, just as ostensibly Christian environments churn out Christians: at least in name only (sadly, often not much more).<\/p>\n Bob\u2019s buddy and fellow Internet anti-theist John Loftus is very big on this argument. He calls it \u201cthe outsider test of faith.\u201d I answered his argument over fifteen years ago<\/a>, and (as usual) he decided not to grapple with my critique. Here is part of what I wrote:<\/p>\n Religion needs to be held with a great deal more rationality and self-conscious analysis for the epistemological basis and various types of evidences for one\u2019s own belief. I believe everyone should study to know why they believe what they believe.<\/p>\n This \u201cone becomes whatever their surroundings dictate\u201d argument can be turned around as a critique of atheism. Many atheists \u2014 though usually not born in that worldview \u2014 nevertheless have decided to immerse themselves in atheist \/ skeptical literature and surround themselves with others of like mind. And so they become confirmed in their beliefs. We are what we eat. In other words, one can voluntarily decide to shut off other modes and ways of thinking in order to \u201cconvince\u201d themselves of a particular viewpoint. That is almost the same mentality as adopting a religion simply because \u201ceveryone else\u201d in a culture does so, or because of an accident of birth. People can create an \u201caccident of one-way reading\u201d too.<\/p>\n My position, in contrast, is for people to read the best advocates of any given debate and see them interact with each other. That\u2019s why I do so many dialogues. John Loftus could write these papers, and they may seem to be wonderfully plausible, until someone like me comes around to point out the fallacies in them and to challenge some of the alleged facts. Read both sides. Exercise your critical faculties. Don\u2019t just read only Christians or only atheists. Look for debates where both sides know their stuff and have the confidence to defend themselves and the courage and honesty to change their opinions if they have been shown that truth and fact demand it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Another related \u201cturn the tables\u201d argument along these lines is to note that many famous atheists had either no fathers, or terrible ones, with whom they had little relationship (as I have written about<\/a>). They projected that onto God as the Cosmic Father and rejected Him.<\/p>\n This was true with regard to atheists such as Freud, Marx, Feuerbach, Baron d\u2019Holbach, Bertrand Russell, Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus, Schopenhauer, Hobbes, Samuel Butler, H. G. Wells, Carlyle, Madalyn Murray O\u2019Hair, and Albert Ellis. Theology based on family relations or lack thereof? That\u2019s hardly a rational or objective analysis. That proves nothing. But there you have it: many atheists have this background: a \u201cmap of atheist families\u201d so to speak.<\/p>\n 2 A Leaky Ark<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n This is not one sustained argument, but the typical atheist \u201c100 questions at once\u201d routine. No one can possibly answer all these questions at once (which is why this cynical tactic is often used), unless they have made a sustained, in-depth study of the matter, as I have.<\/p>\n To see the many articles I\u2019ve written about it, please visit my Bible & Archaeology \/ Bible & Science<\/a> collection, and\u00a0 word-search \u201cNoah\u2019s Flood\u201d and \u201cFlood & Noah\u201d for all the resources. Here I\u2019ll make brief replies to a sampling of four of Bob\u2019s innumerable rapid-fire \u201cgotcha\u201d\u201d questions.<\/p>\n It would have required tens of thousands of big trees. Where did the wood come from?<\/span><\/p>\n We know that wood was available in northern Mesopotamia around 2900 BC (when and where I posit that a local Flood occurred) and could be shipped down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to the plains where wood was scarce.<\/p>\n How could all the world\u2019s species fit on board? <\/span><\/p>\n They didn\u2019t have<\/em> to, since it was a local Mesopotamian flood.<\/p>\n What did the carnivores eat while on the voyage?<\/span><\/p>\n I suggested a possible solution to that<\/a> in a 2015 article.<\/p>\n A worldwide flood would have buried the bodies of animals from the same ecosystem together. . . . The fossil record doesn\u2019t show this. . . . Geologists tell us there is no evidence for a worldwide flood, . . .\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Again, educated Catholics and Protestants alike have believed that the Flood was local, not worldwide (and that the Bible, rightly interpreted, is fully harmonious with this view), for well over a hundred years now. I addressed this straw man in a reply to atheist Jonathan MS Pearce<\/a> a few months back.<\/p>\n 3 The Bible\u2019s Shortsighted View of the Universe<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Here Bob mocks biblical cosmology, which he clearly doesn\u2019t understand very well; and so he presents the usual caricatured, warped view of the biblical skeptic. I\u2019ve written many articles along these lines:<\/p>\n Biblical Flat Earth (?) Cosmology: Dialogue w Atheist<\/a>\u00a0(vs. Matthew Green) [9-11-06]<\/p>\n Flat Earth: Biblical Teaching?<\/a>\u00a0(vs. Ed Babinski) [9-17-06]<\/p>\n Genesis Contradictory (?) Creation Accounts & Hebrew Time:\u00a0+\u00a0<\/strong>Refutation\u00a0of a Clueless Atheist \u201cBiblical Contradiction\u201d<\/a>\u00a0[5-11-17]<\/p>\n Seidensticker Folly #21: Atheist \u201cBible Science\u201d Absurdities<\/a>\u00a0[9-25-18]<\/p>\n Seidensticker Folly #23: Atheist \u201cBible Science\u201d Inanities, Pt. 2<\/a>\u00a0[10-2-18]<\/p>\n Carrier Critique #3: Bible Teaches a Flat Earth?<\/a>\u00a0[3-31-22]<\/p>\n 4 Christianity as Society\u2019s Burden<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n The period when Christianity was in charge in Europe didn\u2019t stand out for the flowering of science and technology. There was innovation during the medieval period (eyeglasses, the water wheel, metal armor and gunpowder weapons, castles, crop rotation, and others), but that was in spite of Christianity, not because of it.<\/span><\/p>\n 10 The Society that Christianity Gave Us<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n 47 Christianity\u2019s Big Promises<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n This is sheer nonsense and myth.\u00a0Eminent physicist\u00a0Paul Davies\u00a0(as far as I can tell, a pantheist) stated in his\u00a01995 Templeton Prize Address:<\/p>\n All the early scientists such as Newton were religious in one way or another. \u2026 science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological world view.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Philosopher\u00a0Alfred North Whitehead\u00a0(1861-1947) expressed the same notion in his book\u00a0Science and the Modern World<\/em>\u00a0(1925):<\/p>\n The inexpugnable belief that every detailed occurrence can be correlated with its antecedents in a perfectly definite manner \u2026 must come from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God \u2026<\/p>\n My explanation is that the faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n One of the leading philosophers of science,\u00a0Thomas Kuhn\u00a0(1922-1996), elucidated the medieval background in his book,\u00a0The Copernican Revolution<\/em>\u00a0(New York: Vintage Books \/ Random House, 1959):<\/p>\n After the Dark Ages the Church began to support a learned tradition as abstract, subtle, and rigorous as any the world has known \u2026 The Copernican theory evolved within a learned tradition sponsored and supported by the Church \u2026 (p. 106)<\/p>\n The centuries of scholasticism are the centuries in which the tradition of ancient science and philosophy was simultaneously reconstituted, assimilated, and tested for adequacy. As weak spots were discovered, they immediately became the foci for the first effective research in the modern world. \u2026 And more important than these is the attitude that modern scientists inherited from their medieval predecessors: an unbounded faith in the power of human reason to solve the problems of nature. (p. 123)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Loren Eiseley,\u00a0an\u00a0anthropologist,\u00a0educator,\u00a0philosopher, and natural science writer, who received more than 36 honorary degrees, and was himself an agnostic in\u00a0religious matters, observed:<\/p>\n It is the Christian world which finally gave birth in a clear articulated fashion to the experimental method of science itself \u2026 It is surely one of the curious paradoxes of history that science, which professionally has little to do with faith, owes its origins to an act of faith that the universe can be rationally interpreted, and that science today is sustained by that assumption. (Darwin\u2019s Centenary: Evolution and the Men who Discovered it<\/em>, New York: Doubleday: 1961, p. 62)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In my research, I have discovered that Christians or theists were the founders of at least 115 different scientific fields (see the entire list<\/a>). Here are a select 49 from that list (an asterisk denotes a Catholic priest):<\/p>\n See also:<\/p>\n Reply to Atheist Scientist Jerry Coyne: Are Science and Religion Utterly Incompatible?<\/a>\u00a0[7-13-10]<\/p>\n Christianity: Crucial to the Origin of Science\u00a0[<\/a>8-1-10]<\/p>\n Books by Dave Armstrong:\u00a0Science and Christianity: Close Partners or Mortal Enemies?<\/em><\/a>\u00a0[10-20-10]<\/p>\n Albert Einstein\u2019s \u201cCosmic Religion\u201d: In His Own Words<\/a>\u00a0[originally 2-17-03; expanded greatly on 8-26-10]<\/p>\n Atheist French, Soviet, & Chinese Executions of Scientists<\/a>\u00a0[10-22-15]<\/p>\n Loftus Atheist Error #7: Christian Influence on Science<\/a>\u00a0[9-9-19]<\/p>\n The Bible is Not \u201cAnti-Scientific,\u201d as Skeptics Claim<\/a>\u00a0[National Catholic Register<\/em>, 10-23-19]<\/p>\n The \u2018Enlightenment\u2019 Inquisition Against Great Scientists<\/a>\u00a0[National Catholic Register<\/em>, 5-13-20]<\/p>\n Embarrassing Errors of Historical Science\u00a0<\/a>[National Catholic Register<\/em>, 5-20-20]<\/p>\n Seidensticker Folly #44: Historic Christianity & Science<\/a>\u00a0[8-29-20]<\/p>\n 5 Jesus, the Great Physician<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n 15 The Bible Has No Recipe for Soap<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n In addition to soap, the Bible could have then added the basics of health care\u2014when and how to use this soap, how boiling will purify water, how to build and site latrines, how to avoid polluting the water supply, how to respond to a plague, how germs transmit disease, the basics of nutrition, how to treat wounds, and so on. After health, it could outline other ways to improve society\u2014low-tech ways to pump water, spin fiber, make metal alloys, keep livestock healthy, or improve crop yields.<\/span><\/p>\n Bob goes after the Bible as supposedly anti-medicine, because healings took place, and there is no recipe for soap. It\u2019s not. I\u2019ve written about this several times, too.<\/p>\n Demonic Possession or Epilepsy? (Bible & Science)<\/a>\u00a0[2015]<\/p>\n The Bible on Germs, Sanitation, & Infectious Diseases<\/a>\u00a0[3-16-20]<\/p>\n Bible on Germ Theory: An Atheist Hems & Haws (. . . while I offer a serious answer to his caricature regarding the Bible and genetics<\/a>)\u00a0[8-31-21]<\/p>\n 6 Argument from Desire<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Theistic Argument from Desire: Dialogue w Atheist<\/a>\u00a0[12-2-06]<\/p>\n Theistic Argument from Longing or Beauty, & Einstein<\/a>\u00a0[3-27-08; rev. 3-14-19]<\/p>\n Dialogue with an Agnostic: God as a \u201cProperly Basic Belief\u201d<\/a>\u00a0[10-5-15]<\/p>\n Implicit (Extra-Empirical) Faith, According to John Henry Newman<\/a>\u00a0[12-18-15]<\/p>\n Argument for God from Desire: Atheist-Christian Dialogue<\/a>\u00a0[8-7-17]<\/p>\n 7 Psalm 22 Prophecy<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Reply to Atheist on Messianic Prophecies (Zech 13:6, Ps 22)\u00a0<\/a>[7-3-10]<\/p>\n 8 Ontological Argument<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n