A Terrible Argument Against The Resurrection

I find this completely bizarre.

Jason Thibodeau has a “new” argument against the resurrection over on The Secular Outpost. I say, “new” because even if the argument hasn’t gotten widespread attention before, I cannot possibly imagine that it has not been previously advanced by someone. JT isn’t vouching for this argument per se, but rather he wanted to “present it [there] and solicit the thoughts of the Secular Outpost community”.

What is this grand argument? I copy it verbatim:

(1) God is completely rational.

Thus,

(2) Any action that God performs is undertaken on the basis of some good reason.

(3) There is no good reason for God to resurrect Jesus from the dead.

Therefore,

(4) God did not resurrect Jesus from the dead.

Premise (1) follows from the fact that God is perfect and (2) is a consequence of (1). Therefore, the soundness of the argument depends on the truth of (3). We can defend (3) by considering possible reasons that God might have for resurrecting Jesus and rejecting them. It is probably impossible to consider all possible factors that might count in favor of God’s resurrecting Jesus. However, that need not undermine the argument. Suppose we are not certain that there is no good reason for God to resurrect Jesus from the dead. We can issue a challenge to any person who believes that God did resurrect Jesus. That challenge would be to provide the good reason for God to resurrect Jesus. In the absence of any such account of God’s reason, we ought to be skeptical that there is such a reason.

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Racism Not Among Known Side-Effects

This is hysterical.

Rosanne Barr has attempted to excuse her racist tweeting by claiming that she was on Ambien (an anti-insomnia medication) when she put out her last 10 years of tweets, or, well, at least that last one:

guys I did something unforgiveable so do not defend me. It was 2 in the morning and I was ambien tweeting-it was memorial day too-i went 2 far & do not want it defended

While it’s true that being awake while dead tired can make you think that you’re funnier and smarter than you really are, it doesn’t make you think different things. You’re just more likely to expect everyone to laugh at your comic genius. But, of course, being a wealthy celebrity has the same effect, and if you tweet out Rosanne-level shit over ten or more years and still get offered a new sitcom, that’s going to have an inhibition-lessening effect as well. All of which had the makers of Ambien feeling they had no reason to be generous to Barr. So they put out a tweet of their own:

People of all races, religions and nationalities work at Sanofi every day to improve the lives of people around the world. While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.

They were, of course, a little slower on the draw than individuals who didn’t have to get a tweet approved by some corporate supervisor, but I gotta say that I like the idea of a company willing to trash casual racism instead of taking some bullshit “above the fray”, supposedly morally neutral position.