On the one hand, it sounds like any other unobtrusive, cute pop song I’d hear on the radio. Phrases like “I know I should be working but I’m thinking of you,” “forever in my heart, always on my mind,” and of course “I love the way you hold me” are equally at home on a top-40 station as they apparently are on one of my local Christian stations.

On the other hand, Jamie Grace is “an American Contemporary Christian musician, singer, rapper, songwriter, and actress” and her song was playing on one of my local Christian stations, which means the song must have been deemed “family-friendly.” Obviously you can be a Christian songwriter and write songs about whatever you want … but judging by the content of these radio stations, the way to be “family-friendly” is to sing about God and Jesus and how great they are (how great he is?), and nothing else. If this song isn’t about God, it would be a first in my experience.

Back on the first hand, though, the song has almost zero religious language in it. There’s one line that goes, “Lord, I love the way you hold me,” but that could just be an exclamation.

On the other hand again, the music video is full of lens flare and Jamie Grace looking out over scenic vistas, which seems pretty God-tacular. She’s playing her guitar in the back seat of a Jeep that has two guys in the front, but they only look at each other occasionally. There’s no obvious affection between any of them. There’s certainly no physical holding of any kind going on in the video.

Plus, it seems Jamie Grace also did the song God Girl [link to video] in which she addresses God with a similar got-a-crush tone, saying “I’m your girl” — by way of explaining that she isn’t interested in dating any boys right now (and, amusingly, that she wants all her “Facebook friends and foes” to know that she worships God).

So I guess I’m talking myself into a religious interpretation here. But I could be convinced otherwise.

If you know anything about the Bible, you know (at least some of) the Ten Commandments. It’s probably pretty easy to imagine why a Jewish or Christian — and, depending on interpretation, Muslim — person would refrain from lying. It’s right there, with a “thou shalt not” in front of it, directly from God: “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” But what about atheists? In the absence of divine command, do we have any reason to want to tell the truth? I argue yes, though I don’t claim to speak for all atheists — merely to illustrate that it is possible to have well-develeoped moral beliefs without relying on supernatural ones. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my understanding of moral and immoral acts regarding truth-telling is a bit more nuanced than “thou shalt not.”

As you know if you’ve been following along at home, I believe that on some level we have to base our moral judgments on our intuition. I try to begin with the most fundamental, most obvious axioms, and reason from there. Because of this, I start with things like “more happiness is good” and “more sadness is bad,” and I generally judge actions based on their consequences for overall happiness and well-being — though I take a long view and look at as many consequences as possible, including the consequence of setting precedent in which everyone might act that way.

In the spirit of taking this sort of mathematical approach, let’s begin by defining what it means to tell a lie. A lie must have two components:

1. The statement must be false (i.e. not a matter of opinion that differs from yours, but actually opposite real facts)
2. The speaker must know their statement is false

I don’t think it is appropriate to assign moral weight to something a person has no idea they are doing. If the speaker should reasonably be expected to educate themselves on the matter on which they’re speaking, we can assign some level of culpability. More so if they have deliberately remained ignorant of the facts in order to continue to spread a falsehood. But in general, if you really think something is true when you say it, I don’t think it makes sense to call that “lying.”

Also in mathematical style, I want to establish a “base case.” I don’t believe that lying in itself is inherently wrong. That is, in the absence of a supernatural record-keeper making his list and checking it twice, there is nothing morally problematic about standing alone in an empty room and making a counterfactual statement out loud. I wouldn’t think it the most effective use of my time, but if you get some enjoyment out of announcing to no one in particular, “I am a beautiful butterfly” — go for it, I guess. No complaints here. This is why I think that any moral problem with lying must arise from what happens when you tell a lie to others.

Tiny lies in polite conversation

Some lies told to others have no negative effects that I can see. If anything, they have positive effects of streamlining interpersonal interactions. As such, I consider these lies morally permissible.

By way of example: have you ever been listening to someone telling a story about something cute a little kid did one time, and they get sidetracked by explaining how the kid was related to them? Maybe it was “my niece; well actually she’s my cousin’s neighbor’s kid; well, the daughter of my cousin’s neighbor at the place she used to live at, before she moved to Springfield; well, she’s kind of like a daughter to my cousin ’cause they’re close like family and we just call everyone who comes to our backyard barbeques aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews or whatever.” Does it matter to the story at all? No. The cuteness would be conveyed equally well or better if the person just said “my niece” and moved on. While it’s technically a falsehood, its utter inconsequence makes it equivalent to our base case. I’m sure you can supply lots of other similar situations.

Little white lies

“White lies” are told to make someone feel good, spare someone (perhaps yourself) embarrassment, and so on. They’re also typically about relatively inconsequential topics (whether your friend looks awesome or just okay in that dress; how long you were waiting and whether it was an inconvenience; etc.). In general, white lies probably do more good than harm the vast majority of time. However, I can think of circumstances in which telling one actually covers up a problem that deserves attention and therefore delays its resolution.

Example: I don’t see anything on face problematic about declining an invitation by saying, “Oh, I’d love to, but I already have plans that afternoon” when really you just don’t want to spend time with a person and you want to soften the blow. It’s worth considering, though, whether a polite lie in this instance will lead to more awkward situations and hurt feelings down the road. If you have to turn down invitations repeatedly, your attempt at politeness becomes confusing and then insulting. In this case it would be more moral to state your real reason for saying no, as graciously as possible, so that no one gets strung along and disappointed.

Lying in important situations

Next, there’s the sort of situation where someone has requested information from you and obviously intends to make meaningfully important decisions based on that information. Lying in times like these has a number of bad consequences, ranging from eroding that person’s trust with you (leading to unhappiness in your future interactions with them) to promoting decisions that fail to address reality (leading to unhappiness for all the people those decisions may affect). Therefore, I would say that lies in this category are by and large morally bad.

Example: you’re a test engineer and your supervisor asks you, “Is our new product safe to put on the market?” If the facts say no and you answer yes, the product will be sold, people will likely be harmed, your company’s reputation will be harmed, you and many others may lose your jobs, etc. On the other hand, if the facts say yes and you answer no, the product will be delayed, people who could have benefited from it will be deprived of those benefits, your company will do worse (possibly also costing people their jobs), etc. Other obvious examples include lying as a witness in court and lying to your significant other about aspects of your life you know they care about. Even if you would preserve your own good reputation or make people feel better by lying in these cases, there are many more / more severe negative outcomes than positive ones.

Lying for the greater good

Of course, there’s a subset of cases in the previous category where I think it ought to be considered morally good to lie. I separate it into its own category because it’s historically been a matter of some debate among moral philosophers. What if the person requesting information from you wants to use it to do something that is morally reprehensible? Perhaps they want to know when the night watchman goes on his break so that they can rob a store without being caught, or they want to know where the nearest abortion clinic is so that they can throw a bomb inside. I’m usually a proponent of spreading knowledge of reality so that people can make informed decisions, but that assumes that people are able to and intend to make morally acceptable decisions. If you know that someone’s correct knowledge of reality would lead to them taking other actions that we can judge (through other reasoning) to be morally wrong, I say that withholding truth from that person is the right thing to do.

The classic example of this is one that was used to critique Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, and which Kant himself totally accepted as an implication of his philosophy. If you believe that lying is always wrong, then you would believe it immoral to lie to a murderer who is asking you for the location of his intended next victim. By the standards of judgment I’ve laid out here, I think the moral costs that would be associated with a lie in such cases are clearly outweighed by the moral good brought about by the lie.

So, what do you think? Am I on target, or missing something? One big area I’ve failed to discuss is lying by omission (haha), but I don’t really make action/inaction distinctions — do you think that refraining from telling the truth is meaningfully different from telling an outright lie?

Now, the laws concerning religious freedom in Sweden are not exactly like those in the US, as this New Yorker Culture Desk post explains:

In Sweden, the separation of church and state became law on January 1, 2000, the day that the Lutheran Church of Sweden stopped being the official state church. Since then, a government agency called the Kammarkollegiet has accepted applications for the legal recognition of religions. “They don’t make any kind of assessment of what the beliefs are, and the association is not sanctioned by the state,” Anders Bäckström, a professor of the sociology of religion at Uppsala University, told me. But the recognition of Kopimism, he said, is “a new situation. We haven’t seen anything of its kind before.”  …

For the Missionary Church of Kopimism, which holds up privacy as one of its chief values, [the scrutiny which comes with being a registered religion] could be a big problem, and it’s not clear what they’ll gain from registration. “We don’t really get any formal rights or benefits,” Gerson said. “We can apply for the right to marry people. There is government aid we can apply for, but we have no such plans today. I don’t, at least.” Rick Falkvinge, the Pirate Party founder, speculated that if the Church incorporated the seal of confession into its rites, members could take advantage of the confidentiality that comes with certain privileged conversations. Generally, though, Sweden offers few legal exemptions for religious practice. No one, Gerson included, has any expectation that registration will exempt Church members from copyright law. “What the registration has done mostly is strengthen our identity,” Gerson said. “I think it will be easier to find new members now that we’re recognized.”

But imagine that the Missionary Church of Kopimism were to spread to the United States. How should the US recognize, or not recognize, the practice of their faith? If we stand by the decision made in the Hosanna-Tabor case, we would have to say that the First Amendment protects the right of religious organizations to choose who runs their worship services and how they do it. If their most basic tenets require that criminals (violators of copyright law) be present for religious ceremonies, and that those ceremonies involve more criminal acts — who are we to stop them?

Maybe you think that we can uphold the “ministerial exception” for violators of disability rights law, but copyright law is outside the bounds of reasonable interpretation here. To you I ask: why? What is the line you can draw between these different types of laws, and what is the legal basis you are invoking for that distinction? What if I found a new religion called the Church of Discrimination, which has no other beliefs except that it is morally obligatory to discriminate on the basis of race and gender when hiring?

I have an idea! Since gods aren’t real let’s debate how the Christian gods are “universally reliable.” Shall we? After all, when a notion isn’t real, how does a charlatan best obscure that fact? Well, said charlatan debates the characteristics ascribed to it, in arguendo. As it relates to gods, one debates one of the traits a believer has assigned to his god deceptively leaving unstated the premise: for the sake of argument, assume this god, as defined, is real.

We could, for instance, debate the size of Thor’s hammer or how far Zeus could hurl a lightning bolt. Thor wasn’t real, but how big was his hammer? Zeus didn’t exist, but, whaddya think, he could throw lightning to the moon? Bible gods, Bible Jesuses, and Bible Holy Ghosts observably do not exist, so let’s work from the implicit assumption that they do exist while we debate how Father, Son and Holy Ghost are all the same, and, yet, all separate. Bible god doesn’t exist, so let’s debate how the Bible is the inspired, inerrant word of god. Leaving the assumptions unstated leaves those credulous Christians thinking our debate concerns things that aren’t imaginary. So, by all means, do let’s use “debate” as a tool of deception in our discussion about the trait of being “universally reliable,” which at least one Christian uses to define his god.

…Gods don’t exist, so let’s “debate” why gods allow suffering. Damn. Religious deception at its best.

This is advice I could stand to take from time to time. I’ve got to try to remember to keep the dialog focused where it matters and not get led off on too many rabbit trails. Rabbit trails can be interesting, sure, but they’re bound to be frustrating if that’s where you spend most of your time.

(Spoiler: nope.)

Let’s go through each of the seven proofs this article lays out, and see if they meet reasonable evidentiary and logical standards. It’s important to remember that they are each presented as proofs — not as bits of evidence that add up to a most likely conclusion, but as seven separate and complete proofs — so I think the standards I apply are more than fair. After that, I’ll touch on a few of the things that are mentioned offhand in the intro to the article and linked but are not listed as key points.

The Resurrection Proof #1: The Empty Tomb of Jesus

Wait, what? How is this evidence? The only reason anyone thinks Jesus’ tomb was empty is because the Bible says so. Obviously if you believe the Bible is true, you would believe that Jesus was resurrected. But in order to prove that the accounts of the Bible actually happened, you would need to cite something other than the Bible itself. Especially if you’re going to write things like, “Angels said Jesus had risen from the dead.”

The Resurrection Proof #2: The Holy Women Eyewitnesses

Again, we’re simply citing something from the Bible as evidence that the Bible is a reliable source. Here, at least, the argument is slightly more nuanced: why refer to female witnesses at a time when women were seen as inferior and couldn’t even offer their testimony in court? Well, I’m not sure. But “This would have been stupid unless they had a good reason, so they must have had a good reason” totally ignores the “it was stupid” option. It’s maybe a hint or a suggestion, but it’s a far cry from proof.

The Resurrection Proof #3: Jesus’ Apostles’ New-Found Courage

I agree that, at various points in history, people have felt extremely strongly about their belief in Christianity. People have also felt very strongly about their belief in Islam, their belief in Judaism, or their belief in Hinduism. Clearly, someone holding a belief strongly is not evidence that their belief is true, as Matt Dillahunty articulately explains in this video with a cute analogy. There are so many other ways I could refute this idea, but that’s sufficient so I’ll leave it there.

The Resurrection Proof #4: Changed Lives of James and Others

Belief in Christianity has changed many people’s lives. Belief in Islam has also changed many people’s lives. Becoming an atheist, for that matter, changes people’s lives. The fact that people’s beliefs are related to the events of their lives (in whatever direction, probably both) should not come as a surprise. This can’t be proof of the veracity of one set of beliefs without being proof of them all — so by (a metric ton of) contradiction, it fails. Not a proof of anything.

The Resurrection Proof #5: Large Crowd of Eyewitnesses

Yet again, citing many verses in the Bible as proof that the Biblical account is correct. We get it, guys, the text of the Bible supports belief in Christianity! No one is surprised by this, and it isn’t actual evidence for belief. Here is my favorite part, though it is utterly beside the point: “The hallucination theory is further debunked because after the ascension of Jesus into heaven, sightings of him stopped.” Could use some background research … maybe start here and read on down the page?

The Resurrection Proof #6: Conversion of Paul

Ah, yes. Because no one else has ever gone from feeling strongly about one set of religious beliefs to feeling strongly about a different set of beliefs unless they were converts to Christianity. Especially not when “hardships” might result from such a change. Look: given that you wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) accept it as proof of Islam, Judaism, or atheism, don’t offer it as a proof of Christianity.

The Resurrection Proof #7: They Died for Jesus

I wish I were making this up. But the article actually says, “Countless people have died for Jesus, absolutely certain that the resurrection of Christ is an historical fact.” (Eurgh. They even said “an historical.”) It seems to acknowledge that this is not unique to Christianity and therefore not good evidence — see above — going on to say, “An isolated group may give up their lives for a cult leader, but Christian martyrs have died in many lands, for nearly 2,000 years, believing Jesus conquered death to give them eternal life.” Yet again, asserting, “This would be amazingly stupid without a good reason” is not the same thing as proving a good reason exists. Without any actual evidence, I’m forced to conclude that it’s much more likely Christian martyrdom is an amazingly stupid — and amazingly tragic — phenomenon.

Some final remarks

I would be remiss not to point out that the article also opens with assertions that archaeology has repeatedly verified the historicity of the Bible, and that the Gospels and the book of Acts are all “eyewitness accounts of the life and death of Jesus.” It also points to Josephus, Tacitus, Lucian, and the Sanhedrin as sources which verify Jesus existed. These are warranted by hyperlinks to other ridiculous articles, so I’m going to refute them with the hyperlinks I’ve added to this paragraph — no further discussion needed. (Well, I will say that the Sanhedrin-linked site talks about differences between the Talmud and the New Testament but, shall we say, does not share my point of view.) Of course, even if the Bible was written by contemporaries of a guy named Jesus (or, Yeshua) who really did make all the claims the Bible says he did — it doesn’t prove the Bible accurate; see that Atheist Experience video again.

At the end of the day, this is just sad. I almost feel mean posting this, honestly. But I also feel mean asking for evidence in my blog posts and elsewhere and relatively rarely wrangling with the evidence that’s supposed to be out there. As always, if you have some better evidence — for Christianity or any other supernatural belief — that you would like me to look into, I’ll be happy to do so. I genuinely want to be informed enough to change my mind if my current views are incorrect. If this kind of garbage is the best you’ve got, though … I definitely remain unconvinced.

But seriously, folks. As I’ve said before (in the post I just linked to),

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is one of the greatest things about this country. Every time I consider the possibility of moving to another country someday, the First Amendment is what reminds me I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. I love the American conception of rights as inalienable. I love the importance we place on free expression, free discourse, and free thought.

This is why the censorship proposed in SOPA and PIPA is deeply troubling to me. Protecting intellectual property is important, but we already have laws to do that and these bills don’t add anything effective. Instead, they would allow the government to shut down websites that link to other websites that contain any copyright-infringing content, or that post information which might be used to circumvent the censors. This would be an outrageous imposition on our freedom of expression and a crippling blow to the communicative and informative power of the internet.

In the time today you would have spent browsing Wikipedia or Reddit, please educate yourself about SOPA and PIPA and if you live in the US, tell your legislators how you feel.

The court ruled for the city, but I’ve got to say I think I come down with the churches on this one. We’re talking about a general policy of availability for anyone who wants it.  As I said yesterday, my preferred version of First Amendment interpretation is that religious groups need to be treated just like every other group. You obviously can’t give them preferential access to these rooms, but you shouldn’t give them less-than-standard access either.

I should say that I don’t think the decision is crazy.  The city of course has a respectable goal, and I can imagine people perceiving the endorsement.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president, said that among the top complaints FFRF gets is churches using tax-supported public schools as their primary place of worship. “The low rental prices amount to taxpayer subsidy of worship. Huge religious banners, planted on public school property on weekends, are sometimes left up nearly permanently. We have had complaints about used diapers left in classrooms and school swimming pools routinely used for baptisms. Public school names are used in advertising and fliers with no disclaimers.”

The thing is, these seem to me like reservation policy enforcement problems, rather than issues with the reservation system itself. A general policy — one not put in place as a sneaky way to help churches — isn’t actually an endorsement, and anyone who cares enough to investigate the policy should be able to figure that out. There are some other factors in play, of course. There tend to be more spaces available on Sundays than on Saturdays or weekdays (presumably when school programs are more likely to be scheduled), so Christians get better access than Jews or Muslims. And of course that’s not entirely a coincidence, since the modern weekend comes from Christian (and Jewish) weekly holy days. That said, unless you think having government offices closed on Sundays is a violation of church-state separation (and for the record, I don’t), then I think you have to be okay with this. Sometimes particular government policies just happen to mesh better with the teachings of some particular religions, but as long as they’re generally applied and weren’t passed for those reasons, that’s just the way it is.

In June 2004, before the next term opened, [Cheryl Perich, a teacher at a Lutheran elementary school] suddenly became ill and was hospitalized. She ultimately was diagnosed with narcolepsy, and took a leave for the following school year. In January 2005, she told the school she would be cleared to return to work in February.  The school, however, decided that her health would not permit her return, and a replacement was hired to teach third and fourth grades.  School officials then decided it would be best if she resigned.  Ultimately, Perich and school leaders came into sharp conflict, when she threatened to sue, claiming that the refusal to retain her was based on her illness, and thus the school would be charged with violating the Americans with Disabilities Act.  When she tried to return to school, she was fired; she was told that she was let go because of her threat to sue, which violated a Lutheran religious tenet that members of the faith should resolve internally their disagreements.

The court found for the school, finding a “ministerial exception” to employment discrimination laws. The argument they make was that First Amendment religious freedom requires that religions be free to choose their leaders. Most of the controversy here focuses on whether teacher in question was really a “minister,” but I’m sort of okay with saying she was — she taught secular subjects primarily, but did lead the class in prayers a couple times a day and taught one small religious class.  My bigger issue is with the idea that there’s a ministerial exception at all.

I should say, there is one obvious way in which religious groups discriminate in hiring that I’m totally fine with, and that’s that they hire people of their own religion. I’m fine with a ministerial “exception” to laws against employment discrimination based on religion. But that comes out of my general ideas about discrimination. Race is usually irrelevant to performing your job, so not hiring someone because of their race is unfair. We do, however, make an exception when it’s relevant. No one’s going to be upset because a casting director hires a black actor to play Coalhouse Walker Jr. or a white actor to play Macbeth. Similarly, offices of religious authority are some of the few jobs where your religion really is relevant to doing the job well, so of course it should be considered.

But there’s no reason that the disability of a teacher is more important to a religious school than a secular school. And the final issue, that of whether one shares this particular, apparently sacred (read: pulled-out-of-their-asses) belief that it’s against Lutheran Christianity for a person to sue a Lutheran organization, is obviously not related to qualification for the job Perich held. So why a religious exemption?

The Supreme Court ruled in Employment Division v. Smith that “a neutral law of generally applicability” could be enforced even when doing so violated someone’s religion. And honestly, this makes perfect sense. It would be absurd to operate under any other standard. Satanists can’t just say, “But our religious beliefs require that we kill people!” and get exempted from murder laws. This has also been applied to a variety of less blindingly absurd things — paying taxes, being required to remove veils for driver’s license pictures, etc. Religious freedom doesn’t mean that religious people get free reign to break all the laws they feel like. (…As Hosanna-Tabor Lutheran Church and School was obviously trying to do in this situation.) It simply means that the government can’t ban a religion itself, and can’t ban other things just because they are part of a religion they don’t like.

Let’s say that a religious school wanted to hire pedophiles to teach kindergarten. (Hypothetically! Just a hypothetical, yeah….) Should we grant that school an exemption from laws that protect children from molestation? I think most people would be horrified at that prospect. What about if they wanted to hire only white people? In this continuum of otherwise illegal hiring metrics, where do you draw the line?  I think there’s an easy way — you draw the same line you would with a secular private school, with the single sensible exception of making sure they believe the religion if they’re going to be teaching it.

I do understand that there are cases where fully removing discrimination exceptions would have a big impact. Should we make the Catholic Church hire female priests? Well, I would say yes. “My religion told me it’s okay to discriminate on gender” isn’t any better of an excuse than “My religion told me it’s okay to murder.” Obviously the degree of harm caused by letting them get away with it is less, but I don’t think the logic is any better.

Now, plenty of bishops and monks and other officers of the Catholic Church were scientists, back in the days when religion and government were more fully intertwined and there was no separate, say, National Science Foundation to fund research. And before scientific investigation unearthed so much evidence against the specific claims made in the Bible, it was fashionable for Christians to be scientists; who wouldn’t want to know more about God’s creation?

The strange thing about Nicolas Streno is that he seems to have been acutely aware of what we would see today as the fundamental contradiction between a scientific approach and a faith-based approach. “By 1659,” we know from his diary, “Steno had decided not to accept a statement as true simply because it was written in a book, but rather to rely on his own research.” He’s quite the model of cognitive dissonance, having stopped somewhere short of applying this scientific attitude to religion. (The Templeton Foundation would have loved this guy.)

… Well, okay, maybe he didn’t think he stopped short of thinking scientifically about faith. Quoth Wikipedia:

Steno’s questioning mind also influenced his religious views. Having been brought up in the Lutheran faith, he nevertheless questioned its teachings, something which became a burning issue when confronted with Roman Catholicism while studying in Florence. After making comparative theological studies, including reading the Church Fathers and by using his natural observational skills, he decided that Catholicism, rather than Lutheranism, provided more sustenance for his constant inquisitiveness. In 1667, Steno converted to Catholicism on All Souls’ Day when Lavinia Cenami Arnolfini, a noblewoman of Lucca insisted.

I’m sure that Catholicism “provided more sustenance for his constant inquisitiveness.” It’s provided exactly this sort of trap for smart people for centuries; Catholics have gotten very good at dressing up their bullshit in pseudointellectual blather and making you feel as if you’re being academic while making baseless assertions. I haven’t read Steno’s own letters, just the Wikipedia bio … but it sounds as though he compared Lutheranism to Catholicism but never Christianity to other religions or irreligion. (This would be consistent with how I’ve seen many people in our modern age come to their religious conclusions, too.) The thing is, Catholicism doesn’t have any better evidence for the beliefs it teaches than any other set of supernatural claims has. But I guess it’d be too much to expect anyone in Europe in the 1600s to think that far outside of their cultural assumptions, prolific scientist or not.

The theme is biblical prophecies. One of the recurring arguments I hear from believers is that the Bible must be true because of the fulfillment of so many of its prophecies.

Over the ages, people have claimed to have the ability to predict the future. However, be it a Biblical prophet or a modern day astrologer, not one of these people has shown his or her skills to be resistant to careful scrutiny.

So, my aim here is to demonstrate that all the well-known prophecies in the Bible can easily be explained by mechanisms other than real clairvoyance.

He’s already got links there to seven posts, and each follows a clear, deliberate, and conscientious format. It’s hard for me to imagine anyone, theists included, having real problems with the interpretations and explanations that he lays out. (Well, okay, it’s not that hard to imagine. But that’s because plenty of folks are pretty irrational, not because there are actually valid objections to be raised.)

This is a really fantastic series, and I urge you all to follow along as Keith adds to his list of debunked prophecies. At the very least, bookmark this index so that the next time an apologist tells you fulfilled prophecy proves Christianity true, you’ll have responses at the ready.