In almost record time, A. S. A. Jones has posted "A Response To Farrell Till's Criticism of an Autobiographical Account of an Ex-Atheist" on her website. The haste with which she obviously wrote it no doubt accounts for its superficiality, but since she has posted it, I will accommodate her with a reply to point out that she again said exactly nothing that would give nonbelievers any logical reasons to follow her example and convert to Christianity. On the ii errancy internet lists, we have had many Christians tell of their personal experiences with Jesus, but none of them was ever able to give any logical reasons why we should believe that those experiences were real. Jones has proven to be no different, and the reply that she wrote to my article was another maze of illogical nonsense that once again proved nothing. I wouldn't even consider her "reply" worth answering except that she made an attempt to point out errors in the Qur'an. This section of her reply will give me the opportunity to show that any alleged contradiction in the Qur'an, the Book of Mormon, or any other holy book can easily be explained by using the same apologetics that biblical inerrantists use to resolve discrepancies in the Bible.

Those who have seen her "reply" know that she color coded it, to help readers follow who has said what, but I will use the headers Till(1) to tag my original comments, Jones to tag her reply, and Till to tag my replies to her reply. Jones's part will also be italicized; mine will be in ordinary print.

Till(1):
In the Word is a quarterly journal published by Mark McFall, a former biblical inerrantist, who, despite having seen the folly of trying to defend the inerrancy doctrine, continues to believe that the Bible is in some sense "the word of God." McFall has been a long-term member of the ii errancy internet list, but during his tenure there, he has resisted requests to explain (1) what the purpose of divine inspiration was if it was not to so guide writers that whatever they recorded would be true information and (2) how one can tell truth from error in the Bible when the information involves matters that cannot be verified by science, logic, or extrabiblical records.

Jones:
Allow me to answer the questions that you put forth to Mark McFall.

1) The purpose of divine inspiration is to make the truth about God’s nature and man’s nature known to man. The narrative vehicles, used to accomplish this, may or may not contain literal truths. A chemistry professor may be teaching his class the truth about PH while misidentifying the type of leaf that he is using in his demonstration. He may be using an oak leaf, when in fact it is a maple leaf. Does this error negate the truth about the principles of PH? No, it does not. Hence, irrelevant error can occur without compromising the greater truth involved.

Till:
Well, I honestly can't understand how the professor could be "using an oak leaf, when in fact it is a maple leaf." I suspect that Jones meant that the professor may have told his students that it was an oak leaf when in fact it was a maple leaf, but it would have been logically impossible for him to have been using in his experiment an oak leaf that was in fact a maple leaf. Whatever she may have meant, we can excuse Jones's ambiguity because she obviously wrote her "reply" in haste. Be that as it may, her analogous "explanation" for why there may be errors in the Bible is typical of the kind of superficial thinking that we see in those who take the errant-but-still-the-inspired-word-of-God view of the Bible. If, for example, the chemistry professor were omnisicient and omnipotent, would he have made the mistake of telling his students that he was using an oak leaf when in fact it was a maple leaf? In other words, we simply want Jones or Mark McFall or Matthew Bell or anyone else with their view of the Bible to give a logical reason why books that were inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity would have errors of any kind in them. In "Traditional Biblical Inerrancy (3)," I showed that logic will require those who claim that the Bible is the inspired word of God to claim also that it is inerrant in everything that it says, because it is inconceivable that a deity who knows everything there is to know and who can do anything that is logically possible to do and who is omnibenevolent in his relationship to mankind would inspire a revealed guide to heaven that contained errors. Traditional inerrantists realize this, but somehow people like Jones, McFall, and Bell just can't see it, so they talk about an errant Bible that is still in some sense "the inspired word of God."

I have yet to find an advocate of the errant-but-still-the-inspired-word-of-God view who can satisfactorily show that errors in a book inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omni-everything deity could contain mistakes. Having read Jones's article about her discovery that the Bible revealed to mankind who Jesus was, i. e., the savior of the world, we can now see that she is no more able than others who share her view to give a logical reason for the presence of errors in a book that was so inspired.

Jones shot herself in the foot in the very first sentence of her attempt to explain why there are mistakes in the "inspired word of God." She said, "The purpose of divine inspiration is to make the truth about God’s nature and man’s nature known to man," but if this is so, wouldn't the omniscient, omnipotent, omni-everything deity who undertook to make these truths known to man understand that mixing the truths in with errors would be self-defeating? Why would an omnibenevolent deity, who cannot lie (Titus 1:2) and who wants all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:3), mix truth with error in his revealed plan of salvation and thereby run the risk of so confusing some people that they would fail to understand that plan? These are questions that we have unsuccessfully begged Mark McFall and Matthew Bell to answer, and now it seems that A. S. A. Jones is not going to be able to answer them either.

Jones:
2) How can one tell that any unverifiable issue is true?

Till:
We can't, and that is precisely the point that Jones either can't see or doesn't want to see. Since so much information in the Bible is unverifiable, any omniscient, omnipotent deity should have known to produce a book that was so unified, so harmonious, so clear in its message that only divine inspiration could account for it. That kind of harmony and unity would have been its own evidence of divine origin. Instead, we have a Bible that is so riddled with confusion, ambiguity, inconsistencies, and such like that it has created warring sects among those who believe that it is "the word of God" and forced even some of its believers to admit that it contains mistakes.

All that aside, Jones apparently didn't realize that her question was an admission that much of the information in the Bible is unverifiable, so I will ask her the question that Mark McFall and Matthew Bell have evaded for years on the ii errancy forum. How can one determine truth from error in an errant Bible? Needless to say, I don't expect any kind of direct answer from her.

Jones:
We confront many such unverifiable matters in life. When a person tells you that which cannot be verified, what causes you to believe, or disbelieve, what they have to say? Chances are that you take into consideration the character of the person who is saying it. If the person is a known liar, you will be less inclined to believe him. If the person has a reputation for being honest, you will be more inclined to believe him. A person’s character can make itself known through that person’s actions and words. Christians consider Christ’s character as trustworthy, and therefore, even though we can’t verify that what he says is true, we do trust that he is telling us the truth about God.

Till:
I basically agree with what Jones said here. The only problem is that what she said is applicable only to those whose character can actually be known and to situations that are within the scope of one's empirical understanding of the world. If, for example, I personally know Jones to be someone of integrity and she tells me that she had a flat tire on her car while she was driving in the countryside yesterday morning, I would see no reason to doubt this, because flat tires are common occurrences that comform to our empirical knowledge of the world. If, on the other hand, Jones told me that an alien spaceship landed on the road in front of her while she was driving in the countryside and that lizardlike hominids exited the craft, abducted her, and flew her to their planet, where she saw amazing technological advances before she was returned home, I wouldn't believe her no matter how honest I knew her personal character to be. I would understand that hallucinations or psychological problems would be far more reasonable explanations for her experiences.

The same would apply to her analogous attempt to prove the inspiration of the Bible. In the first place, I don't know anything at all about the personal integrity and character of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Peter, Paul, and Mary (pun intended), so I have no reason at all to believe what the Bible says about them. How can I know whether they were really people of high integrity or that those who wrote about them or what they wrote about themselves was merely crafted to present them as such? How do I know that some of them even existed at all? For the sake of argument, let's just assume that biblical characters like those named above were real and that their personal integrity was every bit as depicted in the Bible. Why would that be a reason to believe tales that they told about an axehead floating in water, men walking unharmed through the flames of a fiery furnace, a snake and a donkey talking with human voices, the water of a sea parting to let millions of people cross it on dry land, a man walking on water, men and women rising from the dead, etc., etc., etc.? Rational people simply do not believe fantastic tales like these, no matter how much they may personally know the tellers of the tales to be honest and dependable. Jones knows as well as I that if a friend whose integrity is personally known to her should tell her that she saw many people rise from their graves in a cemetery and go into town where they were seen by many other people, she would not believe this, yet she will believe that a similar event claimed in Matthew 27:52-53 actually happened, even though she knows nothing at all about the character and honesty of the person who wrote this yarn. It's in the book, and that is enough for her. That is not critical thinking; it is gullibility.

There is an axiom that says that what proves too much proves nothing at all, and that axiom strikes at the core of Jones's analogy. On the ii errancy internet list, I often reply to those who post their personal experiences with God or Jesus by simply taking their posts and rewriting them with nothing changed except to substitute Allah, Muhammad, and the Qur'an for references to God, Jesus, and the Bible. If this were done to Jones's analogy above and presented as the personal testimony of a fictional Muslim named Yusef Amasaali, Jones would have no difficulty at all seeing that the analogy proves nothing. The rewitten version below should be read with the understanding that Yusef Amasaali is presenting "evidence" that the Qur'an is the inspired word of Allah.

How can one tell that any unverifiable issue is true? We confront many such unverifiable matters in life. When a person tells you that which cannot be verified, what causes you to believe, or disbelieve, what he has to say? Chances are that you take into consideration the character of the person who is saying it. If the person is a known liar, you will be less inclined to believe him. If the person has a reputation for being honest, you will be more inclined to believe him. A person’s character can make itself known through that person’s actions and words. Muslims consider Muhammad's character as trustworthy, and therefore, even though we can’t verify that what he says is true, we do trust that he is telling us the truth about Allah.

How impressed with the realiability of the Qur'an would Jones be if she received this kind of testimony from a Muslim? If she will answer that question, she will understand just how unimpressed rational people are with her analagous attempts to prove the Bible trustworthy.

What Jones's analogous argumentation shows is that she had the cart before the horse. She first believed the Bible and then used this belief as an argument for converting to Christianity. That she did this is obvious from her analagy above. How, for example, could she have used the character of Jesus and other biblical characters as a basis for trusting that they were "telling us the truth about God" unless she had first believed that these characters were trustworthy, but how could she have believed that they were trustworthy unless she had first believed that what the Bible said about them was true? She is arguing in a circle and apparently can't see it, despite her exceptionally high IQ that she brags about.

My article continues....

Till(1):
In issue number 20 of McFall's journal, he published "From Atheism to Christianity," an article by A. S. A. Jones, which as I am writing this has not yet been posted on McFall's website linked to above. When the article is posted, I will revise this reply to it to include a link so that readers can see for themselves that I am not exaggerating when I say that Jones gave no verifiable evidence to support her claim of having found Jesus.

Jones:
My autobiographical account should not be mistaken as an effort to supply an objective, verifiable reason for my conversion. I give my reasons for believing what I believe, not reasons for others to believe what I believe.

Till:
This may have indeed been her purpose in writing the article, but I am reasonably sure that Mark McFall had something else in mind when he published it in his paper. Articles like these are usually published with the hope of influencing readers by example. It is an editor's way of saying, "See how this atheist came to see the truth of Christianity? Why can't you do the same?" I suspect that Jones also had something like this in mind when she wrote the article.

As I said in my first reply to Jones, skeptics also publish articles written by ex-Christians and especially ex-preachers, but I have noticed that the authors of articles like these usually give reasons for having abandoned their faith. Dan Barker's Losing Faith in Faith and Robert Price's Beyond Born Again would be examples of books written by ex-preachers who gave reasons for abandoning their former belief that the Bible is the "word of God." I have also wrtten articles about my deconversion, but in them I tried to give reasons that justified what I had done. In one of them, "Long Day's Journey into Light," I emphasized, among other things, that discovering inconsistencies, contradictions, and other discrepancies in the Bible was sufficient reason to destroy my confidence in the Bible.

Back when I was still a preacher, I knew that if I was going to be a good one, I would need to be familiar with the Bible, so I was determined to learn as much about it as I could. I didn't want to "know" the Bible; I wanted to know it inside out.

This determination led me to put many hours into biblical studies. One method of study that I used was to sit at a desk with several different versions of the Bible opened to what I was going to study during that session. I would read a passage in one version and then the same passage in another version and so on through several versions in both English and French. If on that day I was studying something from the life of Jesus, I would go through this process in Matthew's account and then repeat it for Mark's, Luke's, and John's versions of the same story. Sometimes I would apply the same method to parallel accounts in the Old Testament. I would read from several versions a part of, say, David's life as told in the books of Samuel and then read the same account, if there was one, in 1 Chronicles.

When I was doing these parallel studies, I couldn't help noticing inconsistencies and even outright contradictions in the way the same stories were related. This made me wonder about the marvelous unity and harmony of the scriptures that I had heard so much about in sermons and Bible classes both when I was growing up and attending college. However, one doesn't grow up in a fundamentalist environment and then throw his belief in Bible inerrancy away the very first time he encounters problems that don't quite agree with what he has been taught all of his life. I sincerely believed that there were explanations and solutions to be found. All I had to do was look for them. When I looked and couldn't find them, I experienced deep feelings of guilt and shame. The problem had to be with me. It just couldn't be that the Bible was not what I had been taught to believe.

Once the seeds of doubt had been planted in my mind, I began to see that the Bible wasn't a book with just a few problems; it was riddled with inconsistencies, discrepancies, contradictions, and absurdities. As long as I believed that the Bible was inerrant, for example, I was able to rationalize the barbaric nature of God as presented in the Old Testament. I accepted the premise that God was not immoral in ordering the massacre of children and babies (Num. 31:17; 1 Sam. 15:3), for if he could create life, he had the right to take life; if he killed children and babies in the heathen nations around Israel, he was actually doing them a favor, because they would go to heaven rather than grow up to be like their wicked parents. To my embarrassment and discredit, I have to admit that I actually preached this kind of stuff when I was a fundamentalist minister. Once my faith in inerrancy was shaken, however, I was able to see the folly of stupid attempts like these to justify the despicable conduct of the Hebrew god. When I crossed that line, I had gone too far ever to turn back again.

I was clearly giving reasons here for why I came to reject the traditional view of the Bible, but in her article Jones gave no reasons why she came to accept that traditional view beyond saying that a reading of Matthew 16:15-16 had brought her a sudden enlightenment that had somehow inexplicably eluded her during her years of "atheism." Despite saying now that she didn't intend her article in any missionary sense, I am sure that in the back of her mind at least, Jones had hoped to teach by example when she wrote and posted the article. Otherwise, why would she have written it? If, however, someone intends to teach by example that Christianity should be espoused, why would she not try to give at least a few sensible reasons why others should follow her example? I think I saw a few attempts to do this, but, as I said in my first reply, those attempts were all anecdotal and therefore gave no logical reasons why her example should be emulated. Therefore, if she is being truthful and her intention really wasn't to influence by example, her article was pretty much a waste of the time that it took to write it, because no skeptic or atheist is going to convert to Christianity on nothing better than the claim that a former atheist found fulfillment by becoming a Bible-believer.

If the truth could be known, I suspect it would show that Jones thought that she was giving logical reasons why skeptics and atheists should convert to Christianity. I base this suspicion on, well, empirical knowledge of having had numerous experiences with Christians who have tried to proselytize by just relating their "personal experiences" with Jesus. I invariably found that people who do this would become quite irritated when skeptics would point out to them that their personal experiences prove no more than what the personal experiences of Muslims, Mormons, and Hindus prove. "You can't tell me that what I know happened to me didn't happen," they would respond angrily, but soon they would fade into the woodwork and go away when they continued to be pressed for evidence more substantial than their unverifiable personal experiences. I really suspect that Jones wrote her article thinking that readers would see in it logical reasons for converting to Christianity. I don't doubt that some did see it this way, but these would have been people who were already converted and needed nothing to convince them. Critical thinkers, however, could see through her anecdotal evidence as easily as one can see through cellophane.

Jones:
Throughout the rest of the site, I place a great deal of emphasis on how and why people base reasonable conclusions on matters that go above and beyond logic, but not against logic.

Till:
I took the time to go through the index in Jones's website and read some of the articles whose titles suggested that logic was discussed in them. Readers will have to go to her site and see for themselves just how laughable her attempts at logic were, because there is too much there for me to review in a single article. I think that those who take the time to read some of these articles will see that "go[ing] above and beyond logic" is Jones's way of trying to dance around the logical consequences of some of her attitudes and religious beliefs. In "A Message to Any Christian Entering Debate or College," she openly downplayed the importance of intelligence and logic.

Intelligence, logic, and academic accomplishment used to be the criteria by which I judged another's worth. When I grew up, I found that these were no longer the details of people that impressed me. A doctorate is no substitute for integrity and intelligence cannot replace kindness. If belief in Jesus Christ assists us in being better persons, logic should tell us to retain this belief. If Christianity is a crutch that enables us to be better, kinder people, what does it say about a person who would willingly attempt to kick it out from under us?

I don't disagree with what she said in her opening sentences, because I learned in my academic career that integrity and intelligence aren't necessarily character traits of those who have advanced degrees. However, I can't understand why someone with even average intelligence--much less the superior IQ that she brags about--can't see that she went on to use a line of argumentation that would justify just about any personal belief. This can be shown again by taking her statement quoted above and applying it to any religious belief. Read the rewritten version below as if it had been written by a Muslim.

Intelligence, logic, and academic accomplishment used to be the criteria by which I judged another's worth. When I grew up, I found that these were no longer the details of people that impressed me. A doctorate is no substitute for integrity and intelligence cannot replace kindness. If belief that Muhammad was Allah's blessed prophet assists us in being better persons, logic should tell us to retain this belief. If Islam is a crutch that enables us to be better, kinder people, what does it say about a person who would willingly attempt to kick it out from under us?

This brings us right back to the axiom that I mentioned above: What proves too much proves nothing at all. We could take Jones's statement and adapt it to Mormonism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, or any other -ism, so is she willing to say that Islam is truth just because acceptance of it can make its converts better, kinder people? The problem with her writing, then, is that she paints with a brush that's too wide, because what she says would make truth of anything that anyone chooses to believe.

I can't discuss the "logic" in all of her articles, so I will quote just one more example. In "Analyze This," which can be accessed here, she made an attempt at a "logical" response to the argument that the widespread suffering around us indicates that there is no "loving God" looking after us.

We make an analogy between God, the loving Father, and human parents. The attribute that we are comparing is the ability of each to love his ‘children’/’creation’. [sic]

Right away her analogy is in trouble, because she is comparing the actions of an omniscient, omnipotent deity with the conduct of "human parents." Such an analogy is bound to be false, and the fact is that many biblical inerrantists will defend the Yahwistic massacres in the Old Testament on the grounds that what ordinary humans find to be morally repugnant wouldn't necessarily be repugnant to a deity whose ways are much higher than those of ordinary men. I am sure that Jones herself would immediately point this out if someone attempted to argue that morally upright humans would never commit or command genocide, so a deity who would commit or command such atrocities would not be a morally upright deity. Anyway, let's look at her rebuttal argument.

1) We consider parents to be loving when they permit their child to suffer insignificantly for a greater good.

2) Our greater good is salvation.

3) Our earthly suffering is insignificant when examined in the scope of eternity.

4) Therefore, we can experience suffering and still believe in the existence of a loving God.

If we assumed that it would be logically appropriate to compare the conduct of an omniscient, omnipotent, omni-everything deity with the conduct of ordinary, fallible human beings, we would still see problems in Jones's argument. First of all, an argument is only as sound as the premises on which it is based, and Jones's premises assume the existence of "salvation" and "eternity," meaning, of course, eternal life, but there is no way at all to verify the actual existence of either salvation or eternal life. The best evidence we could find for it would be the testimony of those who wrote about it in the Bible, but how can we know that those who wrote about it are trustworthy? We discussed this problem above, and now it resurfaces to show the weakness of Jones's argument. Unless she can produce some hard, verifiable evidence that these things she calls "salvation" and "eternity," i. e., eternal life, actually exist, she has nothing at all to support her argument. Like the anecdotal evidence in her original article, her evidence is completely unverifiable.

That Jones's argument suffers from a severe case of false analogy is evident from the fact that "God," as he is depicted in the Bible, doesn't act toward his children the same way that human parents act toward theirs. If, for example, a child suffered from some disease or disability, any human parent would cure the child if he/she had the ability to do so. We could hardly conceive of a human parent who would let a child go through life suffering from blindness or paralysis if it were in the parent's power to effect a cure. "God," on the other hand, can presumably do anything, yet he does nothing to alleviate the suffering of his earthly children. Indeed, if we are to believe the Bible, he even intervened at times to inflict suffering and even death on his earthly children for what were rather minor offenses. Two of Aaron's sons, for example, were consumed with fire that came forth from Yahweh (Lev. 10:2). Their offense? Well, it seems that they lit their censers with "strange fire," which would have been fire from some source other than the sacrificial altar. Uzza was struck dead (2 Sam. 6:6-8) for touching the ark of the covenant during its transportation to Jerusalem when the oxen pulling the cart stumbled. It is certainly hard to see any "greater good" that Yahweh accomplished by killing men for "offenses" no worse than these. Indeed, it is difficult to see any offense at all in what these victims of Yahweh's wrath did, so if Jones hopes to find a satisfactory solution to the problem of human suffering, she is going to have to do better than the false analogy in her "argument."

Another problem in her argument is the term insignificant, because if she can't verify the existence of "salvation" and "eternal life," then any suffering at all in this life, which may be all that we have or will ever have, becomes very significant. If the suffering is something permanent, such as blindness, paralysis, and amputation, or terminal like cancer or AIDS, then that would be more than just "significant"; it would be catastrophically humongous, because those afflicted with such handicaps and diseases must live out the only known life they will ever have enduring hardships and deprivation on a daily basis. That is hardly "insignificant." I would be curious to know if Jones suffers from any handicap or disease like those mentioned above. I suspect that she doesn't, because I doubt that anyone who has to endure pain and a severe handicap on a daily basis would say that suffering is insignificant. Being married to someone who works professionally with the severely handicap, I am aware of just how much some people suffer through no fault of their own. Just maybe, then, Jones will understand my cynicism when I say that it is so facile for someone with good health and a high IQ to say that having to suffer in life is insignificant. Quite frankly, people who say that suffering in life is no big deal because everything will be hunky-dory in the sweet bye and bye give me a pain in a part of my anatomy that I won't mention.

Jones:
My autobiographical account describes the events that led up to my conversion. It is not an argument for or against Christianity, although I do provide those types of arguments in other areas of the ex-atheist.com site.

Till:
I wonder why Jones put "ex-atheist" into the name of her website. Why didn't she just call it www.devoutchristian.com or some such? I am sure she used ex-atheist in the name in an attempt to influence those who are attracted to the site. If she denies that she wanted this part of her URL to make her readers think that there must be something to Christianity if a former atheist was converted to it, I will really wonder about her integrity. I don't really fault her for using this device to attract readers; it is a smart advertising tactic. After attracting them, however, she should give them something rational to consider as she tries to persuade them to convert too. That is where she is falling down on the job.

Till(1):
Jones is no stranger to members of the ii errancy debate list. She came to this forum touting how she had finally seen the light and converted to Christianity after having been an atheist for 20 years, but she was never able to give us any kind of logical reasons for her conversion, which other skeptics could use as templates to help them see the light too. She would, in fact, get rather miffed at inquiries about this and have some rather sarcastic things to say about those who questioned her along these lines.

Jones:
My most sincere apologies for having been so sarcastic. The members of the errancy list were so polite, so kind and well mannered, and so evenly tempered. They were above taking cheap shots at their opponents. Patronization, condescension, and smug self-righteousness were never a part of their repertoire of criticism. They knew not the attraction of ad-hominem, nor did they employ it. They were full of a humanist love that was beyond my comprehension! They deserved nothing but my mutual respect. I dare say, I don’t know what got into me, Farrell! I feel…I feel so dirty for having been such a viper. Really. (Yes, I am being sarcastic once again!)

Till:
Oh, really? I would never have known had Jones not told me, because sarcasm is so unlike her. She speaks of "humanist love" in a way that reminds me of an internet signature that I have seen in the ii errancy forum: There is no hatred like Christian love. I would never try to deny that skeptics can be brutally sarcastic at times, and I can be as guilty as any of them. However, skeptics do not embrace a religion that requires them to turn the other cheek and go the second mile, a religion that commands a much higher standard of conduct than what we see in the general, run-of-the-mill Christian population. Consider these quotations from Jones's guidebook to heaven.

Titus 3:1 Remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, 2 to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show every courtesy to everyone.

1 Peter 2:19 For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. 20 If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God's approval. 21 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. 22 "He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth." 23 When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.

Colossians 4:5 Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. 6 Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone.

Jones used the tu quoque fallacy to try to justify her anger and sarcasm toward skeptics, but I can find no basis at all for a Christian to argue that she is entitled to engage in questionable conduct because nonbelievers do the same thing. If nonbelievers use profanity, would Jones consider this justification for her to do the same? If nonbelievers drink, carouse, and engage in premarital sex, would Jones consider this reason enough for her to so live? I can honestly say that when I really believed that the Bible was the "word of God," I made a sincere effort to practice what it required of those who professed to be Christians, and I certainly didn't engage in conduct condemned by the Bible and then try to justify it by saying, "Well, nonbelievers do these things too." How qualified is Jones to speak about why one should become a Christian if she doesn't even know that the New Testament requires Christians to rise above the conduct of unbelievers?

Yes, I do use sarcasm when I am contending with "Christians" who have demonstrated that they are never going to listen to evidence that disputes their claim that the Bible is the "word of God," but if I were a believer, as Jones claims to be, I would make an effort to respect what the New Testament says about the attitude that Christians should have toward those who aren't believers. Furthermore, if Jones's thinks that what atheists and skeptics do should be the standard by which she lives her life as a Christian, then she is sorely in need of a crash course in Christian Ethics 101.

Till(1):
She wound up in the e-mail filters of many members who tired of her incessant abstract attempts to explain how she had managed to find Jesus, because we suspected that her 20 years of atheism had really been nothing more than 20 years of being "unchurched."

Jones:
1) My ‘incessant... attempts to explain’ how I had managed to find Jesus were directly proportional to the members’ incessant questions asking me to explain how I had managed to find Jesus.

Till:
When a Bible believer joins an internet forum whose membership is primarily skeptics and atheists, she should expect to be questioned extensively about her beliefs, especially if she joins with the boast that she was once an atheist. If she wasn't prepared for that kind of scrutiny, she should never have joined the list, and she should take down her apologetic shingle. My complaint about Jones's performance on ii errancy was not that she wrote about her conversion, but that she always wrote about it in abstract, anecdotal terms that gave no specific, concrete answers to questions about her reasons for converting to Christianity.

Jones:
2)You also suspected me of being John Powell, Joe Alt (I can’t recall his last name), and a myriad of other people. Your members also suspected that I was a man, not a woman. So much for your suspicions.

Till:
Jones is thinking about Joe Alward, an atheist troll, who has assumed different identities in the forum for no apparent reason except to divert attention from what the list was set up to do. For a time, I did think that Jones was John Powell, because he had joined the list with apparent trolling intentions too, which I am glad to see that he has finally abandoned. At the time Jones joined the forum, Powell had been filtered by several list members, and he had tried to circumvent their filters by subscribing with multiple addresses, and Alward had done the same. It was therefore entirely reasonable to think that Jones was just another Powell or Alward identity. As for the "myriad of other people" whom Jones referred to, I really don't remember thinking she was anyone else. I make no apologies for having thought at first that she was a troll, because ii errancy has been bothered by "Christians" who have tried to disrupt the operation of the list, so I consider my suspicion justified. If Jones can't understand this, I really don't care.

Jones:
3) Also, if we were to apply the same logic that allowed you to conclude that I was nothing more than ‘unchurched’, [sic] others can likewise conclude that you, despite holding a ministerial position, never really were a Christian.

Till:
I mentioned Dan Barker and Robert Price above, so I will use them as examples to expose a huge hole in Jones's logic. If I point out enough illogical examples in her writing, maybe even she will come to see that despite her exceptionally high IQ, she needs to work at honing her critical thinking skills. Dan Barker spent time in Mexico as a missionary, and Robert Price was a Baptist preacher. These positions that they held can be seen as reasonable evidence that they were at one time sincere Christians. I spent almost five years working as a missionary in France, and I conducted one oral debate in Portageville, Missiouri, in which I defended a New Testament doctrine. I have always been inclined to write, and during the time that I was a preacher and missionary, I contributed articles to the Church-of-Christ publications Firm Foundation, Gospel Advocate, and The Christian Chronicle, which Jones can verify by checking bound volumes of these publications from around 1955 to 1961. Since I received no payment for writing these articles, I obviously didn't write them for money.

I wonder if my point is sinking in. In case it isn't, I will try to draw Jones a picture. Before her conversion to Christianity, what articles did she write in support of her atheistic position? Did she conduct any debates or give any lectures in which she defended/advocated atheism or biblical skepticism? If she didn't, then she can point to nothing that we can take as evidence that she was indeed once an atheist. That leaves us with only her word, so why should we accept her word?

I will try to explain my skepticism of her claim that she was once an atheist. Josh McDowell claimed that he was an atheist before he was converted while he was a university student. When I read this, I wrote him a letter and asked if he could cite any substantial work that he had done on behalf of atheism, possibly articles that he had written or some such, but I never received a reply to the letter. This, however, may not mean much, because I learned from debate challenges that I also sent to McDowell that he doesn't answer mail that takes him to task. Nevertheless, I have had other experiences that told me that the claims of prior atheism that some Christians make are probably not true. I recall an incident that happened during Dan Barker's debate with Michael Horner at the University of Northern Iowa. During the question-and-answer period, a young man stood up and instead of asking a question made a rambling comment about his former life as an atheist, after which he said something like, "I don't really have a question; I just wanted you to know that I was once like you until I learned better." He then stormed out of the auditorium. Since I was sitting by an exit, I went into the lobby, found him, and engaged him in conversation. When I asked him about his former atheism, he told me that he had never been an atheist and that he wasn't even a practicing Christian. He explained that he was just angry at hearing the Bible attacked. In his case, then, the young man was obviously just "unchurched," but having grown up in a society in which people are expected to believe that the Bible is the "word of God," he was lashing back at someone who dared to question that tradition.

The more I hear from Jones, the more I suspect that this was the case with her. I have never seen her give any kind of tangible evidence in support of her claim that she was once an atheist. We have only her word, and, well, her word just isn't good enough, because she claims now to be a Christian but acts in a very un-Christian way toward those who aren't Christians. All of this, however, is irrelevant, because the conversion of an atheist to Christianity would no more prove that Christianity is true than would the deconversion of a Christian to atheism prove that Christianity is untrue. In both cases, logical argumentation would be what was needed to score any points, and we are not seeing any logical arguments in support of Jones's personal experiences.

Jones:
Case in point: Surely, a minister would have known about the mass murder instigated by God in the OT. Why would this knowledge, years later, cause you to re-examine your Christianity?

Till:
Well, I must say that I am glad to see that Jones recognizes that the Old Testament claims that mass murder was instigated by God. As for whether I had known about this when I was a preacher, I addressed this matter above in the section that I quoted from my article "Long Day's Journey into Light," so I need to make only a few comments here. Jones's problem is that she doesn't understand what cognitive dissonance is. This is the ability to hold to beliefs that are internally inconsistent. Everyone who has changed from Bible-believer to Bible-skeptic has experienced cognitive dissonance. When one who was reared to believe that the Bible is the "inspired word of God" begins to see internal evidence that clearly disputes this claim, he will wrestle with cognitive dissonance and try to reach some kind of mental accommodation that will enable him to cling to his old belief even after he has come face to face with inconsistencies in it. As I explained above in the quotation from my article, I knew about Old Testament atrocities, such as the Amalekite massacre, but I rationalized them with those absurdly ridiculous "explanations" that God created life, so he has the right to take life, and that he was actually doing the massacred children and babies a favor by killing them at an innocent stage in their lives so that they could go to heaven. All along, I had been grappling with cognitive dissonance but didn't realize it until my belief in biblical inerrancy finally collapsed under the weight of all the inconsistencies, discrepancies, contradictions, atrocities, and such like that I had come to see when my personal studies were no longer being orchestrated by Bible professors.

The fact that Jones converted to Christianity so suddenly upon reading Matthew 16:15-16 speaks volumes about the lack of depth in her atheism (if she ever really was an atheist), because if she had had any strong convictions about atheism, she wouldn't have turned so easily to Christianity. She too would have wrestled with cognitive dissonance before making the change.

Jones:
Surely, there are enough contradictions within one translation of the Bible to cause doubt, yet you claim that you needed to sit down with 5 different translations in order to realize this.

Till:
Ah, so Jones had read  "Long Day's Journey into Light," before she wrote her reply. I wonder why she didn't notice that I had explained in that article how I had been able to ignore biblical massacres for so long.

As for her comment about my study methods in which I read the same passages from different translations, I can only say that if she doesn't understand that one translation can shed light on meaning that another translation fails to bring out, she needs more help than I can give her. I would suggest that she try this method sometime to see if it doesn't help her understanding of what the intended meanings of the biblical writers probably were.

Jones:
Your deconversion is about as logical as one who says, “I was a devout Christian my entire life, until one day I read the Bible”!

Till:
As usual, Jones has oversimplified. In the first place, no one could read the Bible in one day, and I don't believe that she could ever find an atheist who would claim that he became a non-Christian after reading the Bible "one day." However, she is certainly on the right track. I do everything I can to urge Christians to read the Bible and especially the Old Testament. Too many people who say that they are Christians have a very superficial knowledge of the Bible. If they would just read it and really learn what is in this book, I suspect that many more of them would eventually reject their traditional beliefs about it.

Jones:
In other words, Farrell, you claim to have been a Christian, not knowing that which you professed to have believed.

Till:
There is a difference in knowing what the Bible says and in mentally grasping what it says. Jones has bragged about her high IQ, so I am going to brag about what I knew about the Bible even when I was a college student. We used to play a one-on-one game in college in which one party would read a verse from the Bible, and the other would guess where it could be found. One point was given if the correct book were named, five points were given if the book and chapter were named, and ten points were given if the book, chapter, and verse could be correctly named. I almost always won this game. I still have yearbooks from my college days in which students, as students at that age will do, wrote their comments, and several of them expressed appreciation for my knowledge of the Bible. I recall a summer between my sophomore and junior year when I went to Wisconsin to work with a preacher in what was considered a Church-of-Christ mission field. I introduced to him the game just mentioned, and he would try and try to beat me, but he never could. If Jones would like to know the name of this preacher, I will be glad to tell her. The last I heard, he was still alive and teaching in a Bible school in Texas.

When I preached, I never read scriptures; I always quoted them. At one time, I was able to quote from memory the ASV of the entire book of John. At that time, my goal was to commit the entire New Testament to memory, but I came to realize, as I explained in  "Long Day's Journey into Light," that I was studying the Bible in the wrong way. I was trying, for example, to memorize a book that was no more the inspired word of God than was the Iliad. I stopped this kind of "biblical study," and turned instead to a concentration on trying to understand what this book was saying, and that has been my focus ever since. I really don't care if Jones believes me or not, but I knew the Bible much, much better at that age than most professing Christians did, or rather I should say that I knew what words were in it without always understanding what the words were saying.

Till(1):
However, we could see nothing in her anecdotal posts about her personal experiences with God that could give us any logical reasons to think that she had discovered much of anything except that religious epiphanies give some people "warm fuzzy feelings," but the problem with warm fuzzy feelings is that they always seem to vary from person to person. They give no logical reasons at all for why others should follow in the steps of those who have found personal comfort in finding Jesus or Allah or Vishnu or whatever deity may have been involved in the epiphany. We could never get Jones and those like her in the forum to see that it makes no sense that person A's warm fuzzy feeling would turn her to Christianity, whereas the warm fuzzy feelings experienced by B, C, and D would lead them to accept Mormonism, Islam, and Buddhism respectively. There's no logic to it, and it is strange indeed that personal experiences with deities almost always convert people to whatever religion is prevalent where the personal experiences happened. If these personal experiences always resulted in conversions to the same religion, say, Eastern Orthodox Catholicism, that would be a compelling reason to think that the experiences are real encounters with God, but as long as such experiences lead one person to become a Baptist, another a Pentecostal, another a Mormon, another a Muslim, and so on, that will be equally compelling evidence that the experiences are nothing more than emotional reactions to encounters with local religious influences.

Jones:
My point in arguing from a perspective of experiential perception was that reality is first perceived through our senses.

Till:
That is certainly true, but Jones surely realizes that the senses can play tricks with perception. People often think that they perceive things that they really aren't experiencing. The mind is playing tricks on them, and so they hear, see, smell, taste, and feel things that aren't really real. The more emotional a person is, the more likely he/she will be to "perceive" through hallucinations. I recall a "personal-experience" advocate on the old alt.bible.errancy forum who related an experience he had had when he was "filled with the spirit" and through a kind of out-of-body experience saw the Holy Spirit leaving his body by coming out of the top of his head. He became quite irritated when other members of the forum would not believe that this was a real experience that he had had. He left the forum after angrily telling us something like what I related above: "You can't tell me that I didn't experience what I know that I experienced."

Now Jones may want to believe that this person did perceive reality through an experiential perception, but a person would have to be hopelessly gullible to believe that all mystical experiences like this that people relate were real, actual experiences. This is why her "point" argued from "a perspective of experiential perception" was completely wasted on people who critically examine claims before accepting them. She gave us nothing to critically examine, and so we rejected her claim. She may not like that, but that is just the way it is. If she wants to be another Robert Turkel who preaches to his choir, that is a decision she will have to make. She may succeed in receiving the praise of the already-converted, but she won't have much success at bringing outsiders into the fold.

Jones:
We then go about attempting to intellectually analyze what our perceptions tell us.

Till:
She may have done this, but she certainly didn't give any indication of it in her article. What criteria did she use, for example, to tell her that she should read the Bible with a view to interpreting every passage two ways? The double-entendre certainly occurs in written documents, but most often the authors will write a passage with just one meaning in mind. Readers should therefore exegete texts with a view to deriving the authors' intended meanings and not meanings that would remove inconsistencies in what the different authors said. The former is intellectual honesty; the latter is simply rationalization done to justifiy untenable beliefs.

Jones:
As you state, religious experiences (although I would disagree that my experience could be described as your condescending ‘warm and fuzzy’ definition) vary and people naturally drift toward the religion that is presented by their culture.

Till:
So Jones still doesn't get it. If all of these "personal experiences with God" that we hear so much about in emotional testimonies were real experiences, they would lead all of those who experience them in the same direction, i. e., to the same religion, but this doesn't happen. In a Christian culture, the personal experiences of one will lead her to be a Baptist, whereas the personal experiences of others will lead them to become Baptists or Catholics or Mormons. In an Islamic society, one's personal experiences with Allah will lead him to be a Muslim, either a Sunni or a Shiite, depending on where he lives and what he has been exposed to. Very rarely does a person in a Christian culture have an experience with "God" that leads him to become a Muslim; likewise, the experiences of Muslims aren't likely to lead them to become Christians. Why? Jones can't dismiss this by just saying that such experiences cause people to "naturally drift toward the religion that is presented by their culture," because the obvious purpose of her article was to show that her experiences with God had led her to the truth. If this were really the case, then whatever Christian community she belongs to now (Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, etc.) would have to be the true religion. If not, then why did God bother to have these experiences with her if he wasn't going to use them to guide her into the truth?

An example from Jones's "inspired word of God" should be sufficient to show the fallacy in her claim that the religious experiences that people have cause them to "naturally drift toward the religion that is presented by their culture." After Moses had fled from Egypt, he found refuge in Midian, and while he was there, he had an encounter with God (Ex. 3:1-15) in the burning bush. After this encounter, Moses didn't "naturally drift" toward the religion that was presented by the Midianite culture. Not at all, because God told Moses that he was Yahweh the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, so, "quite naturally," Yahweh was the deity that Moses turned to. I would therefore like for Jones to explain to us why God today will have encounters with people but will not tell them which god he is, as he did in biblical times, but leaves it to people to drift naturally toward the religion of their culture. I would like for her to explain this to us, but I don't really expect her to.

The problem, then, is the same one that Mark McFall and Matthew Bell can't seem to resolve. They say that there are errors in the Bible but that it is nevertheless the "inspired word of God." If that is so, then why did God bother to inspire his chosen writers if he wasn't going to go all the way and guide them with a degree of inspiration that would have protected them from errors of any kind as they wrote. They can't answer this question, and I doubt that Jones will ever be able to give a logical explanation for why God interacts with humans in "personal experiences" but doesn't use those experiences to guide the subjects of his interaction into the truth.

By the way, if Jones doesn't like "warm, fuzzy feeling," she should substitute "feel-good emotions" for it. It all amounts to the same thing, i. e., an unverifiable emotional feeling that makes her feel good but doesn't prove anything.

Jones:
Therefore, many have the perception that a god exists, but they go about trying to explain that perception with variation. They are convinced that a god does exist, and then either accept the deity of their culture, or set about trying to find the right one.

Till:
But Moses didn't "set about trying to find the right" god. He knew from his experience which one was the right one. We want to know why personal experiences with "God" today don't seem to work the same way. Will Jones tell us why?

At any rate, as I pointed out above, the people Jones is talking about put the cart before the horse. They first believe in God and then look for "evidence" to support that belief. Unable to find any, they allow their emotions to make them think that they have talked with God or experienced him in some way that confirms their presupposed belief in God. They then jump from their presupposed belief in "God" to a presupposed belief that the Bible is his "word." However, they cannot offer any kind of tangible, logical evidence that would prove their experiences were real and not just imaginary, and they can offer no logical evidence that the Bible is the word of their presupposed god. Furthermore, if their experiences were real, why would they "explain that perception [of God] with variation"? Why wouldn't God, who is interacting with them, be able to guide them into explaining their perceptions with a clarity so intelligible that they would all describe God in the same way? Did not God so reveal himself to Moses?

We are really back to the problem that has tongue-tied McFall and Bell. They recognize that the Bible is errant but nevertheless think that it is the "inspired word of God," but they can't explain why God, if he really did inspire the writing of the Bible, couldn't have used an inspiration that would have protected his chosen writers from making any kinds of errors. Jones thinks that the personal experiences that she and others have had with God were real, but she can't explain why "God" couldn't have guided them all to report those experiences with a unity and intelligibility that would have removed all doubt that the experiences were real.

Jones:
Personally, I can’t deny the perception and so I seek to explain and defend its cause.

Till:
I mentioned elsewhere that my wife works professionally with the physically and mentally handicapped. Some of them have been schizophrenics, who had hallucinations that they thought were real. Like Jones, they couldn't deny perceptions that they experienced, even though those perceptions were obviously unreal. Some of them talked with God and thought that these experiences were real too.

People obviously have "perceptions" that seem very real to them when they aren't, so what good is Jones's testimony that her perceptions were so real that she couldn't deny them? I suggested in my first reply to Jones that she may need psychological help. The more I read about her "perceptions," the more I think that I gave her a suggestion that she should seriously consider acting on.

Jones:
In my opinion, Christianity stands up to logic better than any other religion.

Till:
If that is true, why can't Jones give us a few logical arguments in support of Christianity? So far we have seen nothing from her but unverifiable anecdotal "arguments."

Till(1):
When McFall's journal arrived, on the same day that I began writing this article, I started looking through it out of curiosity, but when I saw Jones's article on the front page, I sat down and read it through to see if she had found anything besides anecdotal "evidence" to offer in support of her conversion to Christianity. She hadn't. It was the same old stuff about her unusually high IQ, her scientific studies in college, her graduation (with honors, of course), and her disillusionment with life until she finally found Jesus. At one point in the article, she claimed that she had reached a stage where she even viewed humans with disgust.

Humanity had become nothing more to me than an organized network of molecules and enzymes. I viewed people as mere organisms going through their daily routines of metabolizing nutrients and expelling wastes, ovulating their eggs and ejaculating their semen. I knew the psychology of humans almost as well as their anatomies. The hidden thing that pulled them this way and that were very evident to me. They were like guinea pigs, only more predictable, and my chief form of entertainment was to see how skillfully I could manipulate them. I knew that I was supposed to care about them, but I didn't. I couldn't. If mankind's goal was to alleviate its own suffering, a bullet to the head was more efficient and made more sense in my thinking than screwing around with medication or disease control.

When I read this, I immediately thought that Jones needed psychological help more than she needed Jesus. Perhaps it isn't too late for her to get the help she needs, and I hope she finds it.

Jones:
Um…this deserves a copy and paste: My sincerest apologies for having been so sarcastic. The members of the errancy list were so polite, so kind and well mannered, and so evenly tempered. They were above taking cheap shots at their opponents. Patronization, condescension, and smug self-righteousness were never a part of their repertoire of criticism. They knew not the attraction of ad-hominem, nor did they employ it. They were full of a humanist love that was beyond my comprehension! They deserved nothing but my mutual respect. I dare say, I don’t know what got into me, Farrell! I feel…I feel so dirty for having been such a viper. Really. (Yes, I am being sarcastic once again!)

Till:
Well, I won't cut and paste my earlier reply to this, because readers have already seen it. The fact that Jones cut and pasted a previous statement that had nothing to do with what I said above, which didn't even mention the sarcasm that her cut-and-pasted comments referred to, tells me that she didn't know how to reply to my suggestion that she needs psychological help. Has she been taking lessons in evasions from Robert Turkel? As we will see later on, she is one of his admirers.

Till(1):
At any rate, I also thought of how different her reaction to life had been from mine. She went from atheism (so she claims) to Christianity, where she (so she says) has found inexpressible happiness, and I went from Christianity to atheism, where I have found a much more satisfying happiness than I had ever experienced in Christianity. If her anecdotal evidence is reason enough to follow in her steps, why wouldn't mine be reason enough to follow in my steps? You see, that is the problem with anecdotal evidence. It doesn't prove anything. Believers and nonbelievers are both guilty of using anecdotal evidence to promote their personal viewpoints. Believers will relate stories of those who were wallowing in the degradations of drunkenness, drug addiction, sexual promiscuity, etc., etc., etc. until they found Jesus, who then turned their lives around and brought them personal fulfillment, and nonbelievers will tell stories of ex-Christians and ex-preachers, who saw through the phoniness of religion and found fulfillment in skepticism. Both are examples of anecdotal argumentation that prove nothing. Jones viewed people with contempt before she "found Jesus." I didn't view people with contempt when I was a believer, but I truly believe that I have more interest in people now than I did when I was trying to save the world by preaching Jesus.

Jones:
Yes, Farrell. You are completely devoid of contempt for others.

Till:
I know that Jones was being sarcastic, but I am going to treat it as a serious statement, so that I can make a point. I have contempt for many people, phony politicians and religious charlatans in particular, both of whom we have no shortage of in this country. I make no apology for showing contempt toward them.

Jones:
Surely you have come across my e-mails to you, inquiring about your well-being.

Till:
Actually, I haven't. When I determined that Jones was just another I-have-had-a-personal- experience-with-Jesus Bible-believer, I put her address into my e-mail filter, so I wouldn't have seen any messages from her unless someone in the ii errancy forum replied to them. Two or three years ago, someone sent me a message asking about my health and said that I reminded her of her father. That could have been Jones, but I receive so much e-mail that I can't remember everyone who contacts me.

Jones:
I can engage in these little intellectual skirmishes with those who are diametrically opposed to my philosophy without losing my concern for them;

Till:
And I can't?

Jones:
if I take a cheap shot, it is done for humor’s sake. Can you say the same?

Till:
Yes, I can say the same. If Jones had been around ii errancy longer than she was, she would have seen me saying that I appreciate a little sarcasm now and then and dish out the same, because it can spice up a debate that would otherwise become boring. This is not to say that I am not sometimes serious in my barbs. Robert Turkel, for example, has shown himself to be the kind of person whose sarcasm deserves responses in kind, so I give him what he deserves.

Jones:
I believe in destroying arguments, not people.

Till:
I believe in destroying both. I go first for the arguments, and this is why I prefer to use point-by-point, detailed rebuttals that answer everything and leave the opponent with no way to go except to dodge the rebuttals with sarcasm and insults as Robert Turkel does or to ignore them and pretend that they are off-topic, as Jason Gastrich does. If there is a need, I will go after the person. I see a need to do this when debaters know that their arguments have been demolished but try to pretend otherwise as do the two would-be apologists whom I just mentioned. I believe that phoniness should be exposed, and I have seen reason to believe that both of these guys are as phony as the U. S. excuse to invade Iraq. If Jones will answer my rebuttals, I will concentrate on her answers and not her, but from what I have seen so far, she doesn't intend to answer arguments.

Jones:
But I have seen you attempt to destroy the person behind the argument.

Till:
Yes, I just said that I sometimes do this and explained why. Should hypocrites not have their phoniness exposed? Would it have been wrong, for example, to have tried to destroy the reputation of Jimmy Swaggart?

Jones:
It isn’t for me to examine you, but know that you have made your heart known through the constant exercise of publishing your thoughts. Examine yourself.

Till:
That, of course, is hard for anyone to do, but when I try to examine myself, I see what I was when I was a preacher and missionary and shudder at the thought that I could have remained like that. When I think of the great emotional and economic sacrifice that it cost me to escape from all of that, I just can't help thinking that I was sincere in what I did and am still sincere in what I am doing. I honestly want people who are shackled by their blind faith to a ridiculous religious system to escape it, and I have spent years trying to help them do this. At the age of almost 71, I don't sit at my computer each day writing articles like this one because I am not interested in helping people see just how badly they have been duped. I can think of much better ways to have fun. I would like to help Jones too, but, regrettably, I doubt that anyone can help her. I say this, because it has been my experience that those who constantly parade their personal experiences with "God" as the reasons why they are Christians are beyond help. I hope I am wrong in her case.

Jones:
By the way, it isn’t about personal fulfillment. It’s about the [sic] finding the truth.

Till:
I agree, but I would add to this that "truth" that cannot be defended with logical argumentation isn't very likely to be real truth. I doubt that this probability has ever occurred to Jones.

At this point, the subject shifted, so I am going to post this as Part One and resume my reply with Part Two.