Cross Examined

The podcast is going on vacation. I've enjoyed chatting with you. I'll be focusing on the blog: www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined. Please visit!

Apologists love to bring up the women at the tomb. Women weren't reliable witnesses in Jewish culture at the time, so why would the gospel authors place them there if the story weren't true? However, a little scrutiny unravels this story. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.Patheos.com/Blogs/CrossExamined)

Imagine throwing your Net of Truth into the water. You want to pull up truth and nothing but the truth. What is your procedure for winnowing fact from fiction? (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.Patheos.com/Blogs/CrossExamined)

How many days did Jesus teach after his resurrection? Was it 40 days as Acts says or less than one as Luke says? Matthew writes about an earthquake that opened graves and sent reanimated corpses walking around Jerusalem. Why didn't the other gospels write about this remarkable event? These and many more contradictions make us wonder if the gospel account is history or merely legend. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.Patheos.com/Blogs/CrossExamined)

The crucifixion story? Not that big a deal. Here are 10 reasons why it makes no sense. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.Patheos.com/Blogs/CrossExamined)

Religion and sports both have important dates throughout the calendar. They both have sacred designs and special clothes. They both have revered spaces. Superstition in sports is like supernatural belief in religion. They both create an "us" and a "them. " How far can we take this comparison? (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.Patheos.com/Blogs/CrossExamined)

The Christian accepts the claims of the gospels. Contrast this with another claim: that aliens have visited the earth. Since that claim beats the Jesus story on every point, does that mean you must accept alien claims? (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.Patheos.com/Blogs/CrossExamined)

An online Christian ministry has a flabby argument against homosexuality and same-sex marriage that needs dismantling. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.Patheos.com/Blogs/CrossExamined)

Let's wrap up our analysis of a Catholic blogger's rant against atheism. He gives us three more arguments with which he's not impressed. Curiously, neither am I. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.Patheos.com/Blogs/CrossExamined)

A Catholic blogger claims to have distilled atheists' arguments down to just two. And he's not impressed. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.Patheos.com/Blogs/CrossExamined)

Christians are eager to imagine the founding fathers building the nation's foundation on a Christian footing. Is the Law of the Land secular? Or do these Christians have a point? (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.Patheos.com/Blogs/CrossExamined)

The U.S. Constitution is secular, which provides protection to both atheists and believers, but this trait is under attack by Christian revisionists. They pretend that it's actually religious. Let's consider what a religious constitution would actually look like. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.Patheos.com/Blogs/CrossExamined)

Some events are common in our everyday lives. When we see one of these, we know what bin to put it in. Other events are common, but only as legends--raising from the dead, for example. Here's the principle behind this natural categorization. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.Patheos.com/Blogs/CrossExamined)

Have you come across enigmatic verses where God seems to be one of many? The Old Testament is full of them. Let's take a look and see the transition from polytheism to monotheism. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.Patheos.com/Blogs/CrossExamined)

The book of Exodus gives God's demand that the Jews stick with their own kind when they returned to Canaan. God had to make sure that they weren't corrupted by the other religions. But the Bible wouldn't have this prohibition unless the religion had been invented! The Bible defeats itself. 

Listen up, atheists! What's good for the goose is good for the gander. We've asked Christians what it would take them to change their minds. Now: what would it take for you to change YOURS? (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.Patheos.com/Blogs/CrossExamined)

How resilient is Christianity to contrary evidence? Does it blunder on in spite of clear evidence that its claims are false? Or are Christians eager to follow the evidence where it leads? (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.Patheos.com/Blogs/CrossExamined)

A hypothesis should be testable, including "God exists." How honestly do Christians follow the evidence? And have they made their hypothesis unfalsifiable? (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.Patheos.com/Blogs/CrossExamined)

That God allows slavery in the Old Testament is one of the stickier issues Christian apologists deal with, but instead of dealing with it honestly, some want to ignore the difficult parts. Take a look at what they don't want you to know. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.Patheos.com/Blogs/CrossExamined)

Consider some of the popular science-y Christian apologetics: the Cosmological, Teleological, and Design Arguments, for example. They all share a flaw that gets too little attention. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined)

If anything is unchanging, God should be. But our picture of God (all powerful, omniscient, omnipresent) doesn't represent the God you get out from the Old Testament. Back in God's youth, he was a lot weaker than he is now. Consider two examples from the Bible. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined)

One of the three doors has a car behind it. You pick one, and the game show host reveals that one of the other two is a goat. Knowing that there's a total of two goats and one car, do you switch? (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined)

DNA is marvelously complicated, but mere complexity can make us miss the real issues. When we examine DNA and the sloppy way it's put together, the Argument from Design collapses. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined)

Teleology says that life shows the hand of a designer; dysteleology says the reverse. Four aspects of DNA—the c-value enigma, pseudogenes, endogenous retroviruses, and atavisms—make a clear case for the latter. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined)

How can probability be used to help clarify the God question? A quick (and easy) summary of Bayes' Theorem will provide a useful tool in weighing competing claims. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined)

Let's conclude our look at Greg Koukl's analysis of the Problem of Evil. We're on the same page that this is a tough problem for Christianity, but I'm not sure that his resolution is as complete as he thinks. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.Patheos.com/Blogs/CrossExamined)

Groundhog Day (February 2) is a day when we can celebrate some old wives' tale about groundhogs seeing their shadow, but few people know about the religious foundation of this day. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined)

My comments in honor of the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade has gotten a response. It's more supportive than many Christian responses. Let's take a look. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined)

A popular fundamentalist Christian wrestles with the Problem of Evil. He's confident that he's got this persistent problem under control. Take a look and see if that optimism is well placed. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined)

You don't call yourself an a-unicornist. Or an a-Santaist. Why should people without a god belief call themselves a-theists? (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined)

"Abortion means the death of a baby!" That's true only if you say that a newborn baby is no different than the single cell that it came from. But this denies a spectrum of personhood that we all acknowledge. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined)

How do you describe the relationship between you and Jesus? It's similar to an ordinary person-to-person relationship ... or so goes the popular analogy. Think about it for a moment, however, and this analogy falls apart. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined)

A podcaster has pushed back against my recent "Scientist Thinking vs. Lawyer Thinking" post. Let's give him a hearing and see what that does to my argument. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined)

The Catholic League's Bill Donohue enjoys getting agitated about this or that perceived insult against his religion, but he's delighted with a new study showing the religious to be more generous. A little research uncovers a different story, however. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined)

"God exists" is an easy claim to make, but how likely is it? Consider a series of increasingly unlikely categories of claims to see where the Christian claim fits in. (For the podcast transcript, search for the title at www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined)

Christians often reshape their view of life's events to fit and bolster their Christian worldview, but give it a little thought. The simple Christian explanation of God's hand at work often leads to a bizarre conclusion. (To find the transcript, search for the title at www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined)

Sift through Paul's writings, and you get very little of the biography of Jesus. What does this say about how the Jesus story grew over time? (To find the transcript, search for the title at www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined)

Is a scientific consensus inconvenient? Then just handwave a reason to reject it! Though this is a popular response to unwanted scientific conclusions, it is intellectually indefensible.

Consider two kinds of thinking--scientist thinking and lawyer thinking. Each has its place, but we fool ourselves when we use one but pretend that we're using another.

Christopher Hitchens' book observed, "God is Not Great." While we're at it, God doesn't seem particularly good, either. Take a look at the slavery, genocide, and general barbarity the all-loving Creator of the universe apparently approves of, and "good" doesn't seem to apply.