Christianity And Its Evidence Keep Growing

Alex Tsakiris recently interviewed John Loftus on his Skeptiko podcast. Tsakiris makes some good points, and his comments at the end of the podcast (recounting an email exchange he had with Loftus) are especially worth listening to. Don't just read the transcript. There are significant parts of the program that the transcript doesn't include.

Tsakiris made some of his usual anti-Christian comments. At times, he'll dismiss "Christianity" without qualification. At other points, he refers to something like "fundamentalist Christians". He mentioned inerrancy. Judging by this podcast and his previous comments, I suspect that he's referring to conservative professing Christians in general. It's misleading to refer to conservative Christianity as a whole as "fundamentalism", but I suspect that's what he's doing. He wants to move beyond the disputes between atheism and the type of Christianity he's criticizing. He thinks people are "stuck on stupid" by focusing too much on atheism and traditional Christianity. He thinks work like what Loftus has done has effectively debunked conservative Christianity. He's weary of "silly, empty tomb Christianity kinds of debates". He wants to move on.

But much of what he wants to move on to, such as near-death experiences and "whether or not consciousness is an illusion", has been discussed by conservative Christians for a long time. He's interviewed some of them on his program (e.g., Gary Habermas, J. Steve Miller). I'd agree with Tsakiris that Christians should be discussing such issues more often and in more depth, but the issues are already on the table to some extent. And he's given us no reason to dismiss the other disputes atheists and Christians are involved in. If he doesn't think we should be discussing something like the empty tomb or inerrancy, he should explain why. Furthermore, the traditional arguments for Christianity, which are highly significant and need to be addressed, are being supplemented by a large amount of modern evidence. We're living at a time when Christianity has become the largest religion in the history of the world (in fulfillment of prophecies that were very unlikely from a naturalistic perspective), Israel has reemerged as a nation, Jerusalem is central in human affairs, and the growth of the church in China and other parts of the world is accompanied by widespread miraculous activity, to cite a few examples. Tsakiris' dismissal of Christianity, or even just conservative Christianity if he meant to limit his comments in that way, is far from the truth.

By the way, the material by Victor Stenger that Loftus cites during the interview has been reviewed by Steve Hays and me in chapter 13 and appendix 11 of The End Of Infidelity. We, along with others on the Triablogue staff, have written extensive reviews of a few of Loftus' books. See the "eBooks" section of our sidebar.