Harry Potter vs Jesus

There is a common trend among internet atheists that, if you want to prove that Jesus didn't exist, all you have to do is show similarities between Jesus and some other mythical figure.  Of course, this approach doesn't work for two reasons.  First, it ignores the wealth of positive historical evidence we have for His existence.  Second, superficial similarities are irrelevant; the differences (of which there are many), are what's important.

Don't be fooled: these arguments are vacuous.

God commanding Abraham to sacrifice Isaac: a horror?

Statue of Abraham & Isaac (Princeton)

The story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son disturbs many people, and has been a favorite point of attack by atheists on the Christian religion.  The stance is that anyone who thinks he hears a voice telling him to kill his son is psychotic, and any God that would ask someone to do that (even if He were never planning on letting it happen) is a horrendous deity.  But is this attack fair? I think not.  In fact, I think that every single one of the folks attacking this story, were he in Abraham's shoes, would have done the exact same thing that Abraham did.  Furthermore, an honest look at this story shows us that the bible does not want us to have blind faith, but instead a faith defined by trust build on evidence.  Here's why.

Dawkins vs. Bayes

Recently we've taken a look into several atheist arguments that seem valid on the surface, but are actually circular reasoning.  In particular, we've discussed Richard Dawkins, Bart Ehrman, and David Hume.  Dr. Dawkins assumes God cannot exist in his attempt to prove God does not exist.  Dr. Ehrman assumes miracles are probability zero (i.e., impossible) in his attempt to show that miracles are not accessible historically.  Hume assumes one must see a miracle in order to prove a miracle.  But besides circular reasoning, what do each of these have in common?  Each of their arguments are easily defeated by simply applying rigorous probability theory.