A Lighthearted Discussion on the Necessity of a Divine Creator - Part Four

Nothing.

Like a million years ago, in Part Three of this series (One, Two), I promised that next time (this time) we'd explore the word 'nothing' and see if we couldn't figure out what it's all about. It's actually not all that complicated, but happens to be so simple that it's very easy to get confused thinking about it, expecting it to be more complex than it actually is and getting lost in an infinite thought loop.

No one wants that for you, so, allow me to make good on my promise.

A Lighthearted Discussion on the Necessity of a Divine Creator - Part One

Why do intelligent people believe in God?

Lessons in Bad Philosophy: Dawkins Edition (part 4)

To all those who hung in there for this entire series (part one, part two, part three), thanks! It's been a fun ride, and I am glad to be finally taking a look at Dawkins' unfounded conclusion to his unsound premises. So, without further ado.

Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist.

As I said in the first post in this short series (and as Bill Craig points out in On Guard), even if all of the premises were sound this conclusion simply does not follow. We have seen how none of them are sound, but for the heck of it I'll address this unfounded conclusion as well.

It has been rightly observed and communicated by many an apologist over the centuries that in order to know there is no God one would need to have comprehensive knowledge of the entire universe, both the visible and invisible realms, and also be able to soundly refute thousands of years of spiritual experience, not to mention the myriad of near death experiences of  people who would bet their lives (pun definitely intended) that what they experienced was more real than this physical life. This is clearly impossible. As impossible as swallowing the ocean. 

Now, Dawkins thinks he's clever and has, no doubt after decades of being told the above, reworded the statement to leave an air of uncertainty. He has changed it from "there is no God," which is the only truthful way for an atheist to phrase is, to "God almost certainly does not exist." This slight change, in all honesty, doesn't really do much to lessen requisites which must be present for him to be able to make such a statement authoritatively. 

To illustrate my point, let's say I took one of those handheld metal detectors to the beach, put on my crazy person visor and Bermuda shorts, and braved that scandalous lust-factory in search of buried treasure (for the record, I love the beach and I don't think it's a sin to go there). If I wanted to be able to authoritatively state that there is almost certainly no metal under the sand at that beach I would still need to have covered a good 95% or more of that beach with my metal detector. Sure, it's not 100%, but it's close enough,

Dawkins thinks that his wording exempts him from needing to qualify as an omniscient being in order to justifiably make his statement, but in reality he would still need to be nigh-omniscient before anyone should take this conclusion seriously. But then he would be something so close to God that he may as well be God, and then he would have to either be a theist, which he is clearly intellectually and emotionally opposed to, or deny his own existence, and that would be even more ridiculous than ignoring a universe full of evidence of a divine designer.

Lessons in Bad Philosophy: Dawkins Edition (part 3)

In this, my third post in this series (start here), I'll address Dawkins' last three premises in his argument against God, and then in the fourth and final post I'll sink my teeth into his conclusion that "God almost certainly does not exist."

Let's jump right in.

4) The most ingenious and powerful explanation is Darwinian evolution by natural selection.

Now, Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and deserves some respect for his years of study and decades of experience, so I won't speak as forcefully against this premise as I do the more philosophical examples. I will, however, offer two quick points which illustrate that at the very least Darwinian evolution is NOT the most powerful explanation for anything, and at best, it is pseudo-science which belongs in the history books rather than the science books.

The first is that Darwin himself predicted the fossil record would be overflowing with transitional species by now, and yet science has yet to offer a single unchallenged "missing link" between any species and another. If Darwinian evolution were true then the fossil record would be absolutely teeming with these transitional species. In fact, there should be far, far more of these than of the fully-formed species we find in all corners of the record. So, even if there were a handful of fossils which science categorized as transitional species, which there is not, it would still be inadequate evidence for a system of speciation which requires hundreds or thousands of in-between stages for each fully-formed species.

Secondly, Darwin stated: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." The field of biochemistry alone has demonstrated this very thing. In fact, there is no organism that could have been formed in this way because every organism contains organs, processes, and other aspects which are irreducibly complex - meaning that they absolutely cannot lose a single feature of their construction without being rendered useless, which would have caused them to be rejected by natural selection. A few examples of irreducible complexity in nature are the human eye, the blood clotting factor, and cilia. For more on this get your hands on Michael Behe's fantastic book, Darwin's Black Box. 

5) We don't have an equivalent explanation for physics.

Let's see if I understand what he is saying here. It seems like Dawkins is trying to tell us that there are no antiquated, unfounded, unscientific, wildly speculative, marginally theoretical explanations for physics. I guess I disagree here as well, since physicists such as Stephen Hawking seem to be absolutely overflowing with these sorts of ideas. 

6) We should not give up the hope of a better explanation arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology.

This is nothing more than the blind faith of a committed atheist. This kind of thinking is ironically (and hypocritically) identical to the "God-of-the-gaps" fallacy atheists are so quick to accuse proponents of intelligent design of committing. See, physicists have yet to come up with any explanation at all for the physical world (i.e., the time-space-matter continuum), so otherwise intelligent atheists like Dawkins commit the "no-God-of-the-gaps" fallacy by inserting a yet unknown naturalistic explanation into gaps like this. The really sad part is, unlike theists of old who had no explanation for natural phenomena like lightning and such, who then attributed these phenomena to God, these atheists are so intellectually and/or emotionally committed to atheism that they purposefully exclude what seems to be the most logical explanations for things like a highly-ordered, extremely fine-tuned, indescribably massive, energy-laden, life supporting universe, the irreducible complexity of every living organism, the existence of an undeniable moral code, and plenty of others. 

These guys can maintain hope that someday they will find all the naturalistic explanations they've been dreaming of, but if they are smart and sincerely desire truth above all else, perhaps some of them will finally see the insurmountable heap of evidence for design as... well, evidence for design!

Next time: Does God almost certainly not exist?

Lessons in Bad Philosophy: Dawkins Edition (part 2)

As I promised in my last post, today I will be offering some responses to the the first three premises of Richard Dawkins' syllogism which he has said encapsulates his primary argument against God from his book, The God Delusion. We'll just tackle the first three in this post.

The very first thing, which needs to be addressed right away is that, as William Lane Craig points out in his book On Guard, even if every one of his premises is sound his conclusion simply does not follow. This is just a textbook example of a biologist playing a philosopher (and not the only example!). Dawkins is clearly not qualified to form a coherent, logical argument against God, and he proves that with this abysmally unsound syllogism.

That said, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and still look at each of his premises to see if maybe he had a good idea but just didn't know how to form it into a logical argument.

1) One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.

In other words, "because we know there is no designer we just can't figure out why everything we see exhibits so many signs of having been designed."

Because Dawkins has an a priori commitment to naturalism - he has ruled out a designer before ever looking at the evidence - he simply cannot understand why the universe and everything in it boast so many features which seem to evidence design.

2) The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself.

Again, to paraphrase for those who aren't fluent in atheist-speak: "Because everything looks so designed, the temptation to believe that what looks like design is actually design is unavoidable." Or, "Just because it looks like and swims like and quacks like and has the same DNA as a duck, isn't proof enough that it's a duck."

Dawkins' prior assumption that there is no creator comes out more with each of his premises, betraying the fact that he has an agenda which is far more important to him than actually following evidence where it leads. 

3) The temptation is a false one because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer.

Out of all of his premises, which are all pretty ridiculous, this one will probably be the most misunderstood, and therefore may be prematurely accepted. It may seem like a good argument at first to dismiss the designer argument because it seemingly only pushes the question one step back. After all, when atheist thinkers like Francis Crick suggest that we were seeded here on earth by aliens, we rightly ask the inevitable question, "well where did those aliens come from?"

Isn't this the same thing? It actually isn't. See, in our argument against the alien-seeding theory we are justified in asking that question because, well, aliens aren't eternal, uncreated beings. Crick, Dawkins, and other atheists who resort to this alien-of-the-gaps theory will submit that those aliens had to have evolved somewhere, somehow. This really does push the question back.

Conversely, Dawkins' argument here falls flat because God is described in the holy Bible as an eternal, uncreated, infinitely powerful and intelligent, immaterial Spirit. He needs no explanation because He is a necessary Being - meaning that exists by a necessity of His own nature.

And there's another, more practical and philosophically oriented argument against premise number 3: You don't need to be able to explain the explanation if its is truly the best and most likely explanation. Think about it, when we look at Stonehenge we don't need an explanation of its designers, or to even know if they were human, alien, superhuman, or divine. The best explanation for Stonehenge is that intelligent being(s) designed it. In the same way, we don't need an explanation for a designer of the universe and of life in order to recognize that one must exist. A designer is the best and most likely explanation. Period.

In the following entry we'll look at premises 4-6, and save the conclusion for its own post. See you next time!

My God's No Molech, Man!

What's with that title? Just read, man... it's all down there.

Want to know something shocking about the God you and I worship? Here's something: God told the patriarch Abraham to take his only son, Isaac, whom he loved to an as-yet-unknown location and present him as a burnt offering. Aside from the fact that Isaac wasn't Abraham's only son, which makes it look like the author momentarily forgot about Ishmael, this passage seems to blatantly contradict God's character, since He clearly condemns the murder of innocents, and especially the act of human sacrifice (Lev. 18:21), as was practiced in worship of the pagan god Molech.

Almost as shocking was Abraham's response, which was to essentially say, "alright, Lord, Your will is my command." Talk about a mindless automaton, right?

So, what about God here? Is Richard Dawkins at least partially right when he accuses the God of the Old Testament of being, "arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."? (for a guy who doesn't believe in God he sure seems to hate Him a lot...)

So, what's really going on here? Of course a Bible-believing, Christ-follower like myself doesn't believe any of those facetious statements and questions. But if we are honest with ourselves we will have to admit that, at face value, this incident might seem to validate some of the terrible things unbelievers say about our God. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if many of you reading this have, at one time or another - or possibly right now - felt uneasy about this chapter. There are some who likely avoid this story, skimming it quickly when they come to it and never looking back!

Well, my goal with this four-part series on Genesis 22 is to not only dispel the fears and misunderstandings about this wonderful section of Scripture, but to also tear away the ugly veil woven from false preconceptions, misinformation, and plain old ignorance, to reveal possibly the most radiantly beautiful story in all of the Old Testament.

To that end I will craft this into three distinct sections, meaning that there will be three more blog entries on this subject. The first will be an in depth look at something called the "law of first mention" and its presence in Genesis 22. You do not want to miss out on the information which will be found in that entry! In the second phase we will explore the prophetic - messianic really - significance of the event. The third and final will be a special treat, as we will look beyond Moriah all the way to the end times. I assure you that whatever your eschatological stance may be, you will be comfortable with this portion. Of the three this third one seems to be the most revelatory and profound to those I have shared with, so keep an eye out for that!

Next time: The Mysterious Law of First Mention...

Lessons in Bad Philosophy: Dawkins Edition (part 1)

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. 

1 Peter 3:15

Based upon the Lord's instructions here, as transmitted through His servant, Peter, every Christian should be prepared to give a reasoned defense of the Faith. Now, there's no way that every believer can know how to adequately answer every argument against God, there are several arguments that every believer should prepare to answer. This is one of those arguments.

Richard Dawkins, who is probably the most high profile of the vociferously rabid, God-hating "New Atheists" of our day, summarized his central argument against God (from his best-selling The God Delusion) in the following syllogism:

1) One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.

2) The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself.
3) The temptation is a false one because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer.

4) The most ingenious and powerful explanation is Darwinian evolution by natural selection.

5) We don't have an equivalent explanation for physics.

6) We should not give up the hope of a better explanation arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology.

Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist.

Well, it's obvious the man is no philosopher since the conclusion wouldn't follow from the premises even if all six of them were sound. But we should still all be able to refute the faulty premises here and of course the "conclusion."

If you don't think you could interact with this argument in a meaningful way, take this as a challenge from God. This is the loudest and most unrelenting spokesperson for the anti-God movement presenting his central, and therefore seemingly most compelling argument against God as creator. If there's one intellectually-oriented atheist argument we should be prepared to answer with confidence it is this one. 

In my next post on this topic I will offer some arguments against a few of these premises and in subsequent entries I'll take on the final three premises and I'll finish in my last entry in the series by refuting the conclusion. Keep your eyes peeled for that!

5 Tips For the Timid Evangelist

The Lord Jesus bookended His earthly ministry with admonitions for His followers to be evangelists. If you were to cram those two instances into one statement and then paraphrase it, it might read something like this:

Follow Me and I will make you into fishers of men who will go into all the world and preach the Gospel to everyone, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

With such a crystal clear commission it's hard to believe that somewhere around 80% of professing Christians are not consistently involved in evangelizing the lost. Even more shocking is that 95% of Christians have never won a soul to Christ.

Obviously something is amiss. Many a fired-up evangelistically-minded preacher might simply chalk it up to indifference to the lost condition of the unbeliever and their lack of compassion for their impending eternal punishment. While there may be truth in that outlook, and indeed there is, I choose to give the bulk of my brothers and sisters the benefit of the doubt and assume that our roadblocks to evangelism are the same.

With that in mind I offer a handful of meager tips and strategies for sharing with our unbelieving friends and pagan coworkers.

1. Ask questions - This should be a no-brainer, but let's face it... usually we would rather talk than listen, but this strategy will do two very important things to aid your evangelistic efforts. First, it will make your friend feel comfortable because she, like you, most likely would rather talk than listen. Second, it will gather information for you about what your friend actually believes. Christians will oftentimes hear that the person they are witnessing to is a member of a certain religion and begin to "auto-spout" all the information they think they know about said religion, while in reality the person may not even believe all (or any) of that! Find out what she actually believes.
   
2. Listen! - This obviously accompanies tip number one, but believe it or not many people need to see this tip or they will simply ask a question and try and think of what to say next when they should be listening! Admit it, you have done this. I know I have, and I sense when someone else is, so chances are your prospective convert will sense it too, and nothing hurts an evangelistic encounter more than letting the person know you aren't really interested in their thoughts and opinions. Remember, religion is a sensitive topic for many and gaining some rapport will go a long way toward getting someone to open up enough to actually consider your case.
   
3. Ask more questions - Seriously. Once your friend has answered your first question, don't feel like you have fulfilled your listening-to-a-person-talk quota and immediately launch into a lengthy monologue about why your friend is wrong and you are right. Ask another question. As an example, you could open with, "Do you have any spiritual beliefs?" Let's say your friend answers with, "No, I am an atheist." WARNING! Don't feel it your obligation to explain exactly why atheism is, in fact, a religion in itself. Ask something like, "Oh, really? How did you come to that belief?" Be sincere and humble. Then repeat tip number two.
   
4. Smell the stink: Learn to spot internal inconsistencies and logical fallacies - This practice takes a little bit more experience to get right, but the best way to hone this skill is by doing a lot of the first three steps. Ask, listen, THINK. Much of the time a person's beliefs are not consistent. For instance, one of your more rabid and hateful atheists may mention how he believes religion is evil. This simply cannot be the case if atheism is true, because without a moral lawgiver there can be no absolute moral laws, and without absolute morals there can be no true good or evil. To call something good or bad is akin to stating the flavors of ice cream you like or dislike. So, as you listen learn to spot those inconsistencies and formulate new questions that aim to expose the person to the faulty nature of their beliefs. Trust me, getting someone to realize on their own, through asking well-timed questions, that their beliefs don't make sense is far more impacting than simply telling that person why he is wrong.
   
5. Sow that seed: Be content planting a seed, or just tilling the soil - Sometimes you will be able to plant the Gospel seed, pulling off a beautiful, eloquent Gospel presentation. Other times you may simply plant a seed of doubt. What I mean is, you may only get a couple of questions out which will cause your friend to question their faulty beliefs. That's fine. I call this tilling the soil. Some people are so hardened to the Gospel that, just like in the Parable of the Sower, the seed is immediately snatched away by the enemy. It is these people who need the kind of discussion I'm talking about. Casting doubt on false beliefs can go a long way to getting the soil of the hardened heart tilled. Some people have emotional barriers which can't be helped too much by this approach, but many unbelievers have honest intellectual issues which, once dispelled, will pave the way for the Gospel.

In summary, I really pray that this will be even marginally helpful to some of you who have a sincere desire to reach your lost friends, family, coworkers, and fellow humans with the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ. So, the next time you find yourself in a position to get a discussion going, just remember ALASS! (not the best mnemonic device, but it works)

Sam Harris: a Compassionate Buffoon

Today, in response to the tragic shootings in Connecticut, a Facebook friend posted a quote from card-carrying new atheist, Sam Harris. I noticed many of the comments in response to Harris' thoughts were positive. Many were praising Harris for what they thought to be insightful wisdom. I wanted to take this opportunity to expose some of the self-defeating views coming from today's most vocal atheists. In this case, God-hater Sam Harris.

"The only sense to make of tragedies like this is that terrible things can happen to perfectly innocent people. This understanding inspires compassion.

Religious faith, on the other hand, erodes compassion. Thoughts like, 'this might be all part of God’s plan,' or 'there are no accidents in life,' or 'everyone on some level gets what he or she deserves' - these ideas are not only stupid, they are extraordinarily callous. They are nothing more than a childish refusal to connect with the suffering of other human beings. It is time to grow up and let our hearts break at moments like this.”

― Sam Harris

First of all, I would like to say that I agree with Harris that this is a horrific tragedy, and that we, as humans, should get broken hearts over these things. That is where our agreement stops.

Now, Harris says quite a lot of things in this short two-paragraph statement. My intention is not to unpack and demolish every logical fallacy or mistake in thinking. I just want to draw attention, in particular, to the outrageously self-defeating intellectual stance the new atheists take on certain issues.

That said, I feel it necessary to call Harris out on a particularly heinous false generalization. Harris states that "religious faith . . . erodes compassion." I am assuming Harris actually means "Christian faith" rather than simply "religious faith," as he said. These guys don't usually bother to go after the actually harmful religious faiths, such as Islam. So, speaking about Christian faith, Harris' assumption is not always the case, and it is oftentimes quite the opposite. I will say that Calvinistic soteriology, brought to its logical end, can serve as a means to escape the obligation to feel compassion, and I have no doubt that many, many Calvinists do just that. However, if one simply observes the Lord Jesus; His actions and words in the New Testament, then it becomes crystal clear that true Christianity is a religion built upon the foundation of selfless love and altruistic compassion. Enough said on that point.

I'm not going to assail Harris' assessment of certain cliche Christian phrases, because their truth or falsehood is not important to my main point here. What I would like to point out, for those who care, is that Harris is trying to have his cake and eat it too. He must borrow from religious morality to even make the statements he is pushing here. Because his argument presupposes that there is a transcendent moral law he defeats his own argument. In other words, if he's right he's wrong. He can't be right that there is no moral law and also be right that it's wrong to act or think in any way. If there's no moral law then there's no right and no wrong. Evil and good are words akin to yellow and blue, vanilla and chocolate.

I'll phrase it in the form of a question so that the reader can come to the correct conclusion by using his or her brain.

If there is no God, and thus no moral law, then why is it wrong to kill people, whether adult or child? Why is it wrong to lack compassion?

In order for the word "wrong" to carry any weight there must be some sort of ethical framework that is universal. A localized morality - a system of rights and wrongs based upon the consensus of the inhabitants of the land - doesn't work. We saw that in Nazi Germany. We see it today in many nations at which we Westerners scoff because of their barbaric beliefs (i.e., the stoning of a woman for adultery, the steam-rolling of children for being part of a family that illegally practices a religion not approved by the government). Right and wrong are clearly not determined by the consensus. The law of the land can punish or praise for actions deemed unlawful or lawful, but it doesn't have the power to actually make something morally right or wrong - only legally right or wrong.

To put it into perspective, if our own government made it mandatory for every man or woman to "euthanize" their parents once they reach an age at which they are unsafe behind the wheel of an automobile, would that mean that it's right to do it? A better question is, "would it be wrong to not do it?" You would be breaking the law by not murdering your mom!

I hope you can see how fault cultural ethics prove to be in the real world.

The only non-religious option at this point is an egocentric morality, a.k.a. situational ethics. This would mean that each person chooses what is right or wrong depending on each individual situation. Well, this is clearly not an option because I'm sure Harris, like me, would agree that just because a guy finds it acceptable to murder children for this or that reason doesn't mean that it is.

This brings us back to the question of why.

Why is it wrong to murder? Why is it wrong to do anything? Why is any option better than another, morally-speaking?

Harris is trying to play the white knight riding in on his shining horse, trampling under foot all of the mean people of faith who try to find meaning in situations which may not have any, other than to serve as a painful illustration of the depths to which our nation has fallen in the realm of ethics, but in reality he makes himself out to be more of a village idiot who doesn't even understand the basic foundation of ethics, of the morality he feels so free to espouse without having any right to hold within his chosen worldview.

The Fanatical Self-Destruction of Atheism

I am nearing the end of a marvelous volume by G. K. Chesterton entitled, Orthodoxy. At the end of chapter 8, The Romance of Orthodoxy, I came across the following observation about atheism which I probably read five or six times before I moved on. It is a wonderfully accurate portrayal of modern atheism, even more so than it was of atheism in Chesterton's day.

[speaking of the militant atheist]
"He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even the primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all."

I will follow up that quote with this excerpt from Where All Roads Lead, by Chesterton as well.

"If there were not God, there would be no atheists."

The utter futility of atheism...

I believe I have recently stumbled upon the truth about why such rabid God-haters as Richard Dawkins and Christipher Hitchins expend such copious amounts of time end energy trying to get you and I to stop believing in God. Note that they don't seem to be so much concerned with simply defending their scientifically unprovable stance that there is no God, as they are with vehemently slandering the God they claim does not exist.

So, here is why I believe these men are found spending and being spent in the pursuit of convincing people that there is no God:

"Misery loves company."

Let me unpack that statement a little.

Track with me. If there is no God, no moral Lawgiver, no Originator of meaning and purpose; if Darwinian evolution, neo-Darwinian evolution, punctuated equilibrium, or whatever they come up with next, is true... then we, this planet, this universe, are little more than a cosmic accident, the product of a miraculous belch in which nothing somehow became gasses and then relieved itself. I move to rename it the Big Fart.

So, following logically, if we are the accidental outcome of evolution then our existence is intrinsically meaningless. There is no purpose. Sure, you can accumulate wealth and power but when you die it either goes with you into the ground (if you are a grumpy accident), or it goes to your children (if you are a sentimental accident), or... it goes to charity (if you are an altruistic accident). But even if you pass it on at some point it also passes on, as do all of those you passed it to.

Or, you could live a life of sacrifice in which you choose the betterment of others over your own pleasure, but all of those for whom you spend your time, energy and resources trying to help will also eventually die and then what have you done? You have worked against natural selection!

This can go on for eons and then what?

Heat Death

The universe attains equilibrium and becomes a really, really big ghost town, where nothing can or will ever live again.

This is depressing stuff. Seems like it would tend to make those who believe it miserable. And, as we know, misery loves company.

See, it doesn't make sense to rail against a being who does not exist. What if I started an anti-Shiva website, where I made it my singular aim to defame, insult, curse and otherwise bully Shiva the Destroyer (a Hindu god who, together with Brahma and Vishnu, make up the Hindu version of the Trinity), a being I know to be fictitious? If I know that said being is not real I will give an apologetic for what I believe and against this other entity, as Christians do, but there would be no animosity (and there isn't). I may even speak out against the founder of Shiva worship, laying out evidence that this person is not credible, but I would have no personal emotional response to the deity.

So my question for the New Atheists is this:

Why all the hatred? Why the obvious personal vendetta against a God you claim does not exist? If you say, "Because religion has caused so much death and destruction! That's why!" then you will probably want to tune in for an upcoming entry where I will display and discuss the numbers of people killed in the name of religion compared and contrasted with the numbers of those killed as a result of secular humanism and the atheistic worldview.