An Honest Sermon about the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 5
More episodes of pious superstition to boost holy hero Jesus
More episodes of pious superstition to boost holy hero Jesus
I was asked by a Christian theologian to comment on "Who Created God?" OR "Where Did the Universe Come From?"
See what you think:
1. God exists in our thought world because he (and others) were created by prescientific superstitious peoples who didn't have a clue about the universe, how it works, or how it all might have originated.
2. The options are that something popped into existence out of nothing, or that something has always existed. Both options seem irrational, but one is correct and the other is false.
Here's a good discussion I had with a Christian Apologist:
APOLOGIST:
Consider. If an atheist like yourself claims to be using "reason" why do you trust it? For no doubt you thought you were using "reason" when you believed Christianity was true. What reason do you have now to suppose your reason is leading you to the truth? If it deceived you before, why would you think it was trustworthy now?
Recently I had the delightful opportunity to sit down to breakfast with the formidable atheist internet infidel and prolific author John W. Loftus. John came down to Texas for a visit recently and our ministry, Watchman Fellowship, invited John to participate in our Atheist & Christian Book Club. John is a good friend of our ministry’s president James K. Walker and has been on our book club as a guest at least three times, if memory serves me correctly.Below is a link to Part 1, plus our comments back and forth. As usual, there isn't enough time to comment on everything, or in great detail. Check it out and make your own observations.
Let me say up front that John is truly a gentleman and likable fellow. He was both thoughtful and respectful throughout our conversation about faith, epistemology, and several other topics pertaining to atheism and Christianity. You might disagree with John’s conclusions about God and Christianity, but one thing you cannot say of John is that he hasn’t thought much about why he no longer believes in God. We even spent some time discussing Latter-day Saint beliefs and my recent trip to Utah for the LDS spring General Conference. John asked me all about how I approach engagement with Mormons in Utah. And he listened. He wasn’t just pontificating atheism over hash browns and coffee, John genuinely seemed interested in why I believe Christianity is true.
One thing any engagement with John’s work will do for you is to make you check yourself as to whether or not you are just “parroting” your beliefs or if you really have examined and looked into them and have sound epistemological reasons for holding to your belief. John knows the Bible rather well, knows a lot of apologetic arguments for Christianity and was once a student of Christian philosopher William Lane Craig.
As an atheist, John has popularized the “Outsider Test for Faith” which you can find here. It is a test that has unfortunately caused not a little trouble for some folks who haven’t really examined the epistemological side of their faith in God. “How do you know what you claim to know?” If you have never examined that aspect of your beliefs, it can be a little intimidating, especially if you’re confronted by an atheist on the street who asks you this question.
And I can attest, that even though John might disagree with your conclusions if you are a Christian, he will respect your answers to his questions if you can demonstrate you have thought about why you believe what you believe.
John asked me over breakfast to check out some of his essays on The Secular Web. Since we chatted briefly about Mary, I thought I would have a go at responding to some of John’s points in his 9,000-plus-word essay on why he thinks Mary cannot be the mother of Jesus.
I don’t here claim I’ll be able to do justice to everything John mentions in the essay, and this may end up being a couple of posts, but this is why I like to write. I often have no idea where I’ll end up!
1 Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us, 3 I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received. [NABRE - New American Bible (Revised Ed.)]Luke's Gospel rejects significant stories told in Matthew's previous Gospel!!
Religious personal opinion doesn’t replace epistemology
New reading material. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life () by Richard Hofstadter (–). Although written more than 60 years ago, this book has a renewed relevance, today, given the distinctly anti-intellectual movements of MAGA, Christian Nationalism, Climate-change denial, etc. One cannot understand American anti-intellectualism without understanding its brand of Christianity, which is why Hofstadter devotes three whole chapters to critiquing American Evangelical Christianity.
America still, overwhelmingly, practises a religion that extols the virtues of sheep and unthinking little children; that tells its adherents not to be taken captive by philosophy; and that tells them to not lean upon their own understanding. The “carnal mind”—i.e. the mind as explained by neuroscience—is something to be distrusted, in Evangelical circles. As Dennis McKinsey (–), points out: it is impossible for America to remain a secular enlightened democracy, when millions of Americans think—or rather refuse to think—this way.
To attempt to understand American anti-intellectualism without understanding its anti-intellectual religion would be dishonest, and Hofstadter, to his credit, does not shy away from critiquing Christianity in his exploration of American anti-intellectualism.
Anti-intellectualism is a puzzling phenomenon. Americans would rather vote for people who loudly and proudly vaunt their ignorance—as though that were a virtue!—rather than for people quietly confident in asserting what they know from years upon years of reading and study. Hofstadter uses the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower (–) as a case in point. The brilliant intellectual, Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965), Eisenhower’s opponent, is whom the American electorate would have voted for, if they valued brains. However, the American public turned down Adlai Stevenson in favour of Dwight D. Eisenhower… twice!
Hofstadter points out that the American populace has been at war with the life of the mind for a very long time.
Hofstadter points out that anti-intellectualism causes the ‘vulgarization’ of politics. Is anyone more vulgar than Trump?
Ciarán Aodh Mac Ardghail (Ciarán Mc Ardle) is a digital creator from Ireland. Here is his linktree. Here is his YouTube Channel. Here is his LinkedIn. Here is his Instagram.
Labels: atheism, Christianity, politics
Jennifer Bird PhD asked, in a thumbnail, the question: How many creation accounts are there in the Bible?
I know of three. I discuss all of them in the below video, but, in particular, the lesser known 3rd creation account, where the Jewish god slays a female sea-monster called Rahab, and fashions the created world with her body. I call attention to the Egyptian sky goddess Nut or Nuit who, seems to me to resemble Rahab, in some respects.
The scroll in this thumbnail reads, in Hebrew: ‘The Book of Isaiah’ wherefrom I read in this video, and, in particular, from ch. 27 v.1. I employ the Legacy Standard Bible, in this video, because, as Kipp Davis points out: we really ought to translate the tetragrammaton as ‘Yahweh’ and not as ‘LORD’. The LSB is to be commended for doing this.
(My video transcript for this video may be viewed as a word document.)
CIARÁN AODH MAC ARDGHAIL: “The third creation account in the Bible: and the version of the Bible that we are reading is John MacArthur’s Legacy Standard Bible and the reason why I use this is because Kipp Davis says that ‘LORD’ is really a mistranslation whenever we see yod hey vav hey [יהוה], in Hebrew, we should really translate that as ‘Yahweh’ and not as ‘LORD’. Most Bibles translate the tetragrammaton— tetragrammaton [τετραγράμματον] is really a Greek word that means: ‘four-lettered-thing’ ‘tetra-’ [‹τετρα-›], in Greek, means: ‘four’; ‘grắmma’ [‹γρᾰ́μμᾰ›], in Greek, means ‘letter’, and: ‘-on’ [‹-ον›], in Greek, means ‘thing’, so the ‘tetragrammaton’ is: ‘the four-lettered thing’, and the four letters are the Hebrew letters yod hey vav hey, and whenever we see yod hey vav hey, I agree with Kipp Davis we should translate it as ‘Yahweh’ and not as ‘LORD’, and the Legacy Standard Bible does this admirably and there are at least three creation accounts in the Bible. Jennifer Bird recently did a show: How Many Creation Accounts Are There in the Bible? and if you are a Fundamentalist or an Evangelical who adheres to biblical inerrancy, then you most likely would say ‘one’, however if you do not adhere to biblical inerrancy then it’s quite obvious that in the Book of Genesis there are two conflicting creation accounts: the Elohim creation account and the Jehovitic or Yahwistic creation account and these two accounts are completely contrary to one another. One creation account takes seven days whereas the other one takes only one day. I think the second creation account, which I think is the Jehovitic creation account: it begins with ‘in the day when God created the heavens and the Earth...’, whereas the previous creation account; the Elohim creation account; it takes 6 days and then God rests on the seventh day, which is ‘shabbath’ [‘שַׁבָּ֫ת‚] or ‘sabbath’ or ‘Saturday’ and that’s why the Ten Commandments tell us to keep Saturday . ‘Sabbath’ is a mistranslation. ‘shabbath’ [‘שַׁבָּ֫ת‚] means ‘Saturday’, so it’s not keep... the Commandment is not: ‘keep the Sabbath!’ it’s ‘Keep Saturday!’ or ‘keep the...’ ‘keep the seventh day!’ so I mean these people want to hang the Ten Commandments everywhere: they breach at least one of them because they don’t keep Saturday and I think even in the wording of the Ten Commandments it says ‘You must keep Saturday because on Saturday God rested!’ God didn’t rest on Sunday, indeed Sunday was the day he began the creative work... however that is its own tangent... so there are at least two creation accounts in the Bible and these are found in the Book of Genesis, [in] the opening two chapters, however there is also a third creation account in the Bible, and this is an account where the Jewish god slays a Great Serpent and then I think creates the ‘firmament’ the ‘raqî́yan͡g’ [‘רַקִ֫יעַ‚] or the ‘sky’ with the body of this great sea serpent and this great sea serpent is called ‘רַהַב‚ or ‘Rahab’, so this is another creation account and it’s very similar to the Egyptian creation account where I think it’s the goddess Nuit, one of the Gods takes goddess Nuit and puts her up in the sky and she becomes the sky... so there is another creation account in the Bible and we see glimpses of it... I think the redactors tried to get rid of it but they didn’t get rid of it completely, and here we see in Isaiah chapter 27:
‘In that day Yahweh will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent,
With His fierce and great and mighty sword,
Even Leviathan the twisted serpent;
And He will kill the dragon who lives in the sea.’
so there is this myth referred to periodically in the Old Testament of Yahweh killing a great sea dragon and I think the biblical Scholars say that this is in reference to the earlier creation myth where the Jewish god killed Rahab and then created the sky with her body and that was the means in the Book of Genesis: it talks about God stretching out the heavens and dividing the waters that are beneath the [‘רַקִ֫יעַ‚] ‘raqî́yan͡g’ or ‘firmament’ and the waters above the [‘רַקִ֫יעַ‚] ‘raqî́yan͡g’ or ‘firmament’ and perhaps this is how he did it: he killed Rahab and he used Rahab’s body to divide the waters from beneath the firmament from the waters above the firmament and so I just thought that I would discuss this because Jennifer Bird has already discussed it and I find it extremely interesting.”
Ciarán Aodh Mac Ardghail (Ciarán Mc Ardle) is a digital creator from Ireland. Here is his linktree. Here is his YouTube Channel. Here is his LinkedIn. Here is his Instagram.