Free thought blogger and atheist activist JT Eberhard has given a talk several times this year about why the arguments for the existence of God fail. During the talk, Eberhard discusses his year-long experiment of attending church and asking Christians why they believe in God. The lecture is designed to give atheists an outline of how to dialogue with believers and deconvert them. I have to admit, it was very interesting to watch; Eberhard is a talented speaker, and it's good that he's trying to foster discussion between two groups of people who tend to ignore each other.

Having said that, I think there are some additional debating tips atheists should be made aware of before they go on a campaign to debunk Christianity. If they heed this advice, I think their exchanges with Christians will be more fruitful. So, if you're an atheist and reading this post, take the following into consideration.

Reason Magazine recently interviewed famed magician and author Penn Jillette, probably best known for his hit program on Showtime. The man is an incredible entertainer and writer. He's funny, thoughtful, and vocal about his libertarian politics. Naturally, I'm a fan.

But I've never liked what he has to say about religion. And based on the Reason interview, it seems his views haven't changed much since the Penn and Teller episode about the Bible. Jillette is impressed by the shallow arguments about Old Testament atrocities, Bible contradictions, and convinced that faith is believing without evidence. It's all standard atheist fare, long ago refuted. Nonetheless, let's take a look at some relevant portions of the interview, because I think they reflect the core of the skeptical case against Christianity.

If you aren't aware, a study published in the journal Science this week suggested that critical thinking slightly decreases religious belief, a suggestion I didn't take kindly to in my last post.

But if you didn't read that post, the gist is that analytical thinking, according to this study anyway, actually causes religious disbelief because it suppresses the intuitive processes that are at least partially responsible for religious belief. According to Neurobiologist Douglas Fields, "...the results illuminate how our two minds -- one analytical and the other intuitive -- compete in reaching a decision about what we believe."

It's a clever hypothesis, but I argued that the relationship between critical thinking and religious disbelief changes depending on who you ask. Here's another example.

A number of Christian apologists have blasted skeptics for sharing common ground with the wackiest of religious believers on a number issues. For example, many atheists maintain that the Bible teaches a literal six-day creation, or that Revelation is to be taken as a literal text. Whether believers or skeptics, the people who hold such views often understand the Bible in an absolutist sense, rarely considering its historical context or the author's purpose in writing.

I just finished James White's The King James Only Controversy and discovered another fundamentalist tendency of the skeptical crowd: like the King James defenders, skeptics often believe that the text of the Bible should have been perfectly preserved down through the centuries, and they often make the same arguments in support of this thesis. I supposed I've always been aware of this similarity, but never connected the dots. Let's explore it a little bit.

it really warms my heart. In fact, few things entertain me more than watching scholars heap scorn on perhaps the stupidest idea in all of biblical studies -- the Chirst-myth. They don't have to spend any time on such tomfoolery, but they do. I appreciate that. But what makes this medium of entertainment all the better is when the experts attack mythicists for the same reasons I do.

According to Baylor University's newspaper, Phillip Jenkins, historian and serial destroyer of stupid arguments, has some constructive criticism for Christians when it comes to addressing difficult biblical passages, OT atrocities specifically:

Jenkins...said these passages should be read as a warning for the Jewish people to remain faithful to God, rather than a license to commit aggression.
“Where people are reading the Bible wrongly, in my view, is they are reading the Bible absolutely differently from the way it’s written,” Jenkins said. “How it’s written is the herem ‘threat’ … is meant to apply not to foreign people, but to the Israeli people themselves. If you betray monotheism, terrible things will happen to you.”
Approaching the text without trying to understand the message the authors were trying to portray has misled some Christian scholars, Jenkins said. He said many acts of historical violence, including the 1994 mass killings in Rwanda, have been mistakenly justified on religious grounds.
“Ultimately,” Jenkins said, “I think what we have to do is to read the Bible as it stands and try to understand why they are presenting this message, why the writers are presenting this story. When you read it in this way, I think … you realize the absolutely abominable foolishness of people who would take the scripture as a justification for any form of violence.”