Why I Don't Worship Jesus

I was recently invited by Christian philosopher William Lane Craig to look more closely at Jesus of Nazareth and consider his claim to be the absolute revelation of God and his resurrection (see his response to a question I submitted, which he shared on his website). I've written a whole book explaining why I don't believe that Jesus is God, which is called Politely Rejecting Jesus. I thought it might be good to summarize my thoughts on this topic.

Deism After All

As part of my recent effort to get a final answer on whether or not I can accurately describe myself as a deist, I sought out feedback from a couple of professional philosophers. One of them was Leland Harper, who currently teaches philosophy at Siena Heights University (although I understand that the school will be closing its doors soon). I reached out to him because I found a book of his called Multiverse Deism that was interesting, although I didn't find it to be very persuasive. Still, I was thrilled to find someone in the philosophical world who openly affirms deism. Professor Harper was gracious enough to answer some questions for me via email.

The Argument from Reason (Part 3)

I have said that there are four versions of the argument from reason that, taken together, push me toward theism. The first argument establishes the reality of selves, persons, conscious states, and thoughts, while the second argument establishes the reality of free will. These two conclusions point in the direction of a third claim about the reality of mental causes, but the reality of mental causes is also independently supported by another version of the argument from reason.

The Argument from Reason (Part 2)

The argument from reason begins with the fact that we are capable of making valid logical inferences, and then it aims to show that this fact is incompatible with some underlying assumption of atheism. There are four such arguments that, taken together, push me toward theism. The first, already discussed in a previous post, is an argument against a specific type of atheism called eliminative materialism. That version of the argument justifies a realist view of selves, persons, conscious states, and thoughts.

The second argument from reason is not aimed at atheism per se. Rather, it is aimed at an idea that is embraced by many theists and atheists alike: determinism. Thus, this second argument from reason is an argument for free will. It is an important part of my rejection of atheism because most atheist philosophers affirm determinism on the grounds that free will (or at least, the non-determinist version of free will) is very hard to make sense of on an atheistic view of reality, and I happen to think that they are right. So if determinism is false, that poses a significant challenge to atheism.

The Argument from Reason (Part 1)

In my opinion, the argument from reason is one of the most compelling arguments in natural theology. As with any argument in natural theology, what we call "the argument from reason" is actually a family of arguments. In fact, there are quite a lot of different arguments that count as arguments from reason. But there are four in particular that, taken together, push me toward theism. In this post I will discuss the first argument, which is probably the least complicated of the four, and which is also only aimed at one very specific type of atheism. But before I do that, I want to make some brief introductory comments about how this kind of argument is meant to work.

Thoughts and Plans Concerning Politely Rejecting the Bible

I published my first book, Politely Rejecting the Bible, back in December of 2021. I had thrown myself into the project as hard as I could starting in 2020. First, I spent almost a year building a small personal library for biblical studies (it was during the COVID-19 quarantine so libraries were not accessible for most of that time) and outlining my material in a way that made sense to me at the time. I experimented with different tones—should I try to make it funny? should I go crazy with footnotes? and so forth—and agonized over word counts and other self-imposed parameters.

Then, when the book was finally done, I made a few bold choices with trying to market it, including through sponsored ads on Facebook. The end result felt surreal: I ended up with a very positive review from Publishers Weekly, a number of scathing personal attacks from random Christians on social media, and critical reviews from two Christian authors whose work I quoted in the book. Personally, I was having a great time, though some of the comments I received were so harsh that a few of my friends periodically checked in with me to see if I was doing okay (I was).