Being Skeptical

Being skeptical is smelling the milk before you drink.

Being skeptical is checking out your daughter's boyfriend before you let her stay out past ten.

Being skeptical is watching the weather forecast before the road trip.

Being skeptical is a sign of intelligence, of being rational, of being a good steward.

Skepticism is part of the thinking process. An important part.

Not being so eager to die for a cause or argue a point is a sign of maturity.

Sometimes the patience to watch, wait, listen, research and think trumps guns-a-blazin'.

The genuine hero says it when ears don't want to hear it and takes the knocks and walks the line simply because no other life is possible than the real one.

~Terry Walstrom

"Get[ting] The Fear Of Hell Out Of The Human Heart"

Robert Ingersoll was asked the following question (one of several

in an interview in the Philadelphia Times):

Question. Haven't you just the faintest glimmer of a hope that in some future state you will meet and be reunited to those who are dear to you in this?

Answer. I have no particular desire to be destroyed. I am willing to go to heaven if there be such a place, and enjoy myself for ever and ever. It would give me infinite satisfaction to know that all mankind are to be happy forever. Infidels love their wives and children as well as Christians do theirs. I have never said a word against heaven—never said a word against the idea of immortality. On the contrary, I have said all I could truthfully say in favor of the idea that we shall live again. I most sincerely hope that there is another world, better than this, where all the broken ties of love will be united. It is the other place I have been fighting. Better that all of us should sleep the sleep of death forever than that some should suffer pain forever. If in order to have a heaven there must be a hell, then I say away with them both. My doctrine puts the bow of hope over every grave; my doctrine takes from every mother's heart the fear of hell. No good man would enjoy himself in heaven with his friends in hell. No good God could enjoy himself in heaven with millions of his poor, helpless mistakes in hell. The orthodox idea of heaven—with God an eternal inquisitor, a few heartless angels and some redeemed orthodox, all enjoying themselves, while the vast multitude will weep in the rayless gloom of God's eternal dungeon—is not calculated to make man good or happy. I am doing what I can to civilize the churches, humanize the preachers and get the fear of hell out of the human heart. In this business I am meeting with great success.

—Philadelphia Times, September 25, 1885.

Prophecy Fulfillment And Probability

A very concise and accurate statement by Farrell Till concerning biblical prophecy. Excerpted from Prophecy Fulfillment And Probability, The Skeptical Review, 1993 / July-August:

...Mr. Dobbs alleged that the miracles of Jesus had been prophesied in Isaiah 53:4-5, his crucifixion in Psalms 22:16, his resurrection in Psalm 16:10, and his ascension in Psalm 68:18. Examination of these passages in context, however, reveal the same problem that Earle Beach and I discussed above relative to Jeremiah 31:15. The statements are notoriously obscure and become prophecies only through the arbitrary claims of the New Testament writers who lifted them out of context and applied them to situations that the original writers were not referring to. So there is no way that anyone can establish that these "prophecies" were originally intended to be prophecies. All we have is the mere unsubstantiated word of the New Testament claimants that they were meant to be prophecies, and that is not a good enough foundation to build a probability argument on.

People Just Stopped Listening

This is a letter from the mailbag section of The Skeptical Review, 2001/March-April. It is a commentary on how foolish biblical inerrantist apologists look with their speculative, far-fetched, unlikely How-It-Could-Have-Been-Scenarios in their attempts at answering the Bible's myriad problems:

Letter to Hatcher...

I read your articles in The Skeptical Review. I was raised a Christian and am now an unbeliever, and wanted to share with you what I believe to be the greatest problem with the Bible.

I used to be an attorney (I now work in high tech), and I once represented a young man who was accused of stealing a lot of money from his employer. There was a lot of accusatory evidence, and for what it's worth his wife and his attorney both believed him to be guilty. For every piece of incriminating evidence he had an answer. For example, he had forged someone's signature on a number of documents; he said that person had verbally authorized him to do so. (The person had since died and was not available to either corroborate or disprove my client's statements.) He claimed to have made a trip on company business but there was no record of the trip having actually been made; he claimed that company officials had instructed him to travel incognito because of the highly sensitive nature of ongoing negotiations. And on and on it went.

At some point, the problem with his case became no one piece of evidence, but the cumulative weight of everything. And at some point it really didn't matter that he had an answer for everything; people just stopped listening.

That's the problem I have with the Bible. It contains a whole lot of what on the surface appears to be contradictions, historical inaccuracies, scientific inaccuracies, absurdities and outrages. Inerrantists such as you have an answer for every blessed one of them, your current discussion with Farrell Till about the Book of Daniel being a case in point.

But the real problem with your case, as I see it, is not whether you can answer this skeptical argument or that one; it is that there is such a multitude of problems with the text that at some point it just doesn't matter any more. The cumulative weight of contradictions, inconsistencies, historical inaccuracies and the like are just too much. I call this the "Everything Problem," and, brother, you've got it bad.
(Mel Dahl)

"A Sense Of Awe...Reverence...And...Great Mystery"

"I am very much a scientist, and so I naturally have thought about religion also through the eyes of a scientist. When I do that, I see religion not denominationally, but in a more, let us say, deistic sense. I have been influenced in my thinking by the writing of Einstein who has made remarks to the effect that when he contemplated the world he sensed an underlying Force much greater than any human force. I feel very much the same. There is a sense of awe, a sense of reverence, and a sense of great mystery."

--Walter Kohn (1923-), American theoretical physicist, awarded Nobel Prize in 1998

"...Something Incredible..."

 "Somewhere something incredible is waiting to be known."
 ~ Carl Sagan

DNA, the internal combustion engine, aerodynamics, radio, television, computers, artificial hearts, radar, atomic particles, sub-atomic particles, electricity, the light bulb, photography, motion pictures, antibiotics, space exploration, etc., etc. The intelligence behind this amazing universe no doubt has many more astonishingly wonderful surprises waiting for us to discover.

"Square Circles"

A continuation of the discussion of July 10-15, 1999, on Yahoo group
errancyn, between a Christian (TUFLY) and Farrell Till, from July 21,
1999:

TUFLY
Whether you accept the truth or not is up to you, I am just presenting it
to you.

TILL
Why, sure, you are. I have just one question to you. How do you know that
what you are presenting is "truth." A Mormon will tell me the same thing,
and so will a Muslim, and a Hindu, and a Zoroastrian. Please forgive my
stupidity, but I'd just like to see a little evidence to support your
"truth" claim.

TUFLY
Can any of you give me proof that God (Judeo-christian) does not exist?

TILL
Yes, I can, and I have done it before in public debates where the evidence
was not replied to by my opponent. The matter is as simple as this. The
so-called Judeo-Christian god is a logical impossibility. Just as square
circles are a logical impossibility that enable us to know that they can't
exist, the god Yahweh, who is depicted in the Bible as both an infinitely
loving, merciful, and just deity AND a deity who is also petty, vindictive,
and barbaric to the point of killing babies and commanding that children
and babies be killed, is a logical impossibility. An entity that would do
such things as this cannot possibly be infinitely kind and loving.
Therefore, this deity of yours cannot exist. If any deity does exist, it
would have to be one different from your Yahoo. Anyone who can't
see this must have his head in the sand like an ostrich.

This is just one example of mutually exclusive characteristics that the
Bible attributes to this god of yours and enables rational people to know
that he cannot exist. Whether you accept the truth or not is up to you, I
am just presenting it to you.

Now where have I heard that before?

TUFLY
Please consider what is at stake, your soul for eternity.

TILL
I have considered what is at stake. My intellectual integrity is a stake,
which in and of itself is sufficient to make me reject your ancient
superstition.

Now will you please prove to us that any such thing as a "soul" even
exists? Can't do it? I didn't think so. And we're supposed to be the stupid
ones.

TUFLY
What is at stake for the likes of Till (providing he could ever be right)? I
would rather be wrong about christianity than wrong about any other
religion (or non-religion).

TILL
Well, you should be happy, because you are wrong about Christianity.

Farrell Till