March 17, 2009
I Get These Kinds of Emails at Least Once a Week Now:
Hi John, I wanted to thank you for your site. I have been a Christian for several years now, and stumbled upon your site. Quite honestly, it really rocked my world – I had thought the Christian apologetics that had been taught to me answered every question that non-believers could pose, and left no room for doubt. However, after spending hours on your site and then reading your book, it is extremely obvious to me that the case against Christianity is far stronger than the one that supports it.
Don't Visit DC Unless "You are Prepared for Serious Attacks on Your Faith"
So says Mike over at Ransomed Heart. He also said DC's arguments are presented in such a way "so as to actually shake my faith." But he still believes anyway because he has a relationship with his triune God, something rational argumentation apparently cannot touch.
Really? Come on now believers. Does this not remind you of a little girl who has an imaginary friend and believes her friend exists no matter what we say to her? It's like these Christian believers were raised in a cloistered monastery or something. Have they never ever met people who say the same things about Allah or the Jewish Yahweh, or the Mormon God, the Jehovah's Witnesses God, or Native American spiritual forces, or the Hindu God? Where do these Christian people live who reject arguments in favor of such a relationship? I'm serious. Do they actually have jobs where they must rub shoulders next to other people who say they have a relationship with a different god, one of over 2,500 deities of the world? Atheism Blog informs us that at least 500 of these deities are dead, where we also read:
You betcha he did.
Really? Come on now believers. Does this not remind you of a little girl who has an imaginary friend and believes her friend exists no matter what we say to her? It's like these Christian believers were raised in a cloistered monastery or something. Have they never ever met people who say the same things about Allah or the Jewish Yahweh, or the Mormon God, the Jehovah's Witnesses God, or Native American spiritual forces, or the Hindu God? Where do these Christian people live who reject arguments in favor of such a relationship? I'm serious. Do they actually have jobs where they must rub shoulders next to other people who say they have a relationship with a different god, one of over 2,500 deities of the world? Atheism Blog informs us that at least 500 of these deities are dead, where we also read:
J.L. Schellenberg argues that the odds are always going to favor the conclusion that your view is wrong in this situation. There are just too many other gods out there that undermine the probability that you’ve got the right one.Now did he just present an argument?
You betcha he did.
March 16, 2009
David Wilkerson Predicts Mayhem Will Soon be in the Streets of NYC.
David Wilkerson is the author of The Cross and the Switchblade, one of the most popular books in evangelical history. (It's ranked #32 in Christianity Today's list of "Top 50 Books That Have Shaped Evangelicals.") On March 7, Wilkerson posted an "urgent message". It began:
But how can we hold Wilkerson's face to the floor on this prediction? Is it too vague to do so? The subtitle says that "An Earth-Shattering Calamity Is About To Happen." Earth shattering? I'm sure we would all recognize this if it happened, right? Is the time limit for the prediction too vague? Why is this an "urgent" message if the events are not to happen for another year? What does the word "urgent" in "urgent message" mean? And if it does not happen in Wilkerson's lifetime will the Christian community rise up as one and denouce him as a false prophet?
Ha, ha. I know the answers. This would be sad if it weren't so damn funny. As far as I know if we just laugh hard enough at him we may find Wilkerson and some members of his church secretly trying to start these fires and looting themselves just to get the ball rolling!
AN EARTH-SHATTERING CALAMITY IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN. IT IS GOING TO BE SO FRIGHTENING, WE ARE ALL GOING TO TREMBLE — EVEN THE GODLIEST AMONG US. For ten years I have been warning about a thousand fires coming to New York City. It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires — such as we saw in Watts, Los Angeles, years ago.Then at the end he wrote:
There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting — including Times Square, New York City. What we are experiencing now is not a recession, not even a depression. We are under God's wrath.
Note: I do not know when these things will come to pass, but I know it is not far off. I have unburdened my soul to you. Do with the message as you choose.Wait just a minute! Why pick on major cities here? Why not some small towns instead? And doesn't this already describe certain streets in NYC anyway? Besides, why are preachers like him so interested in a doom and gloom message? Is it that they are secretly upset at Americans and want them to suffer and die? Is it to raise money? Is there some correlation with a rise in gifts when the message is one of doom and gloom?
But how can we hold Wilkerson's face to the floor on this prediction? Is it too vague to do so? The subtitle says that "An Earth-Shattering Calamity Is About To Happen." Earth shattering? I'm sure we would all recognize this if it happened, right? Is the time limit for the prediction too vague? Why is this an "urgent" message if the events are not to happen for another year? What does the word "urgent" in "urgent message" mean? And if it does not happen in Wilkerson's lifetime will the Christian community rise up as one and denouce him as a false prophet?
Ha, ha. I know the answers. This would be sad if it weren't so damn funny. As far as I know if we just laugh hard enough at him we may find Wilkerson and some members of his church secretly trying to start these fires and looting themselves just to get the ball rolling!
The Relationship of the Bible to the Christian Faith: Indispensable?
There is no such thing as Christianity. There are only Christianities, local ones, which operate in local settings. Need I remind you how many branches there are around the world?
As I've said, I left my faith behind when I could no longer believe the Bible. It was a process that began with the recognition that the stories in Genesis 1-11 were nothing more nor less than mythic folktales.
My faith was an evangelical Christian faith, one that believes what the Bible says. So when I could no longer believe the Bible I could no longer believe. It was that simple to me.
The interesting thing about this is that liberal and Catholic Christians will hear my story and pretty much scoff at me, since their faith is not based upon the historical accuracy of the Bible. I find that strange, very strange. But they don't. They claim that if I started out with the correct faith to begin with I wouldn't have left the fold later when my faith in the Bible was shattered.
This is an interesting argument, one I completely reject, since I don't understand why I should believe the community of believers when the stories they preach are not founded on the historical truth. But I raise the issue here. Is the relationship of the Bible to the Christian faith, indispensable?
As an atheist I'm not in the business of settling "in-house" arguments between Christians, and this is one of those type of arguments, one of many. Although, I do think the conservatives have this right.
As I've said, I left my faith behind when I could no longer believe the Bible. It was a process that began with the recognition that the stories in Genesis 1-11 were nothing more nor less than mythic folktales.
My faith was an evangelical Christian faith, one that believes what the Bible says. So when I could no longer believe the Bible I could no longer believe. It was that simple to me.
The interesting thing about this is that liberal and Catholic Christians will hear my story and pretty much scoff at me, since their faith is not based upon the historical accuracy of the Bible. I find that strange, very strange. But they don't. They claim that if I started out with the correct faith to begin with I wouldn't have left the fold later when my faith in the Bible was shattered.
This is an interesting argument, one I completely reject, since I don't understand why I should believe the community of believers when the stories they preach are not founded on the historical truth. But I raise the issue here. Is the relationship of the Bible to the Christian faith, indispensable?
As an atheist I'm not in the business of settling "in-house" arguments between Christians, and this is one of those type of arguments, one of many. Although, I do think the conservatives have this right.
March 14, 2009
I'll Be Speaking at the Mid-West Regional Meeting of The Evangelical Philosophical Society
That's right! The EPS meets in conjunction with the ETS where I'll be presenting and defending my Outsider Test for Faith in the midst of these Christian scholars. They meet at Ashand Theological Seminary on March 20-21st (next weekend!), and I'll be speaking Friday at 11:40 AM. I'd love to meet readers of this blog. I'll be the first atheist invited to speak at such a meeting, so as you'd guess, I'm both excited and a bit nervous.
Could This Be True, That William Lane Craig "Would Not Jump at the Opportunity" to Debate Me?
Here's an email I received from an admirer of my work:
I would pay whatever the cover charge would be to see you and William Lane Craig have a two hour debate! I can readily see why he would NOT jump at the opportunity.Could this be true? Naw, not for a second.
March 13, 2009
Churches Headed for Collapse
With recent reports that more Americans say they have no religion -- now comes this prediction: Evangelicalism on the outs, says author Jim Brown.
Also:
A Christian writer is predicting a "major collapse of evangelical Christianity" to occur within ten years.
Christian blogger Michael Spencer says evangelicalism as it is known in the West is "bloated and hyper-inflated" and will soon collapse because of its emphasis on the culture war and affiliation with the Republican Party. According to Spencer, many people who are identifying themselves as evangelicals are not at all sold on the evangelical version of personal discipleship and commitment to Jesus Christ.
He expects about half of evangelical churches will die off in the next 25 to 30 years due to generational reasons or because their members become more attracted to a secular version of life.
(OneNewsNow - 3/12/2009)
Also:
A Christian writer is predicting a "major collapse of evangelical Christianity" to occur within ten years.
Christian blogger Michael Spencer says evangelicalism as it is known in the West is "bloated and hyper-inflated" and will soon collapse because of its emphasis on the culture war and affiliation with the Republican Party. According to Spencer, many people who are identifying themselves as evangelicals are not at all sold on the evangelical version of personal discipleship and commitment to Jesus Christ.
He expects about half of evangelical churches will die off in the next 25 to 30 years due to generational reasons or because their members become more attracted to a secular version of life.
(OneNewsNow - 3/12/2009)
"We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity."
So says evangelical Michael Spencer. See Link. The new emerging Christianity, if this happens as predicted, is what I meant when I said Christianity simply reinvents itself in every generation.
HT Russ
HT Russ
Apostates and the Trust Factor
I've written about the fear factor earlier. Christians and atheists fear for the future if one side dominates the landscape. Now let me write about the trust factor. We don't trust each other to be truthful and objective with the evidence. Red flags go up whenever the other side makes an argument because we don't trust each other's research nor their authors. On each side of the fence we think the other side distorts its facts to fit their preconceived conclusions.
That’s why Ed Babinski has argued that if we do a great deal of reading we will eventually read an author just a little to the left of us, perhaps in college as part of a research project. While this author may be outside our comfort zone he’s not so far out there that we can't give him some kind of benefit of the doubt. Then if he convinces us we’ll read a book he recommends which might be to the left of him. This process takes place slowly if at all. That’s the process by which I learned to reject my Christian faith. It wasn’t because I read the atheist literature, although I read a few of their books, it was because I continued to read book after book by Christian authors who were more theologically liberal than the previous one. It was Christian scholarship that eventually caused the downfall of my faith. And their books were books that didn’t throw up the red flags because they were only a step to the left of me rather than being way over on the other side of the intellectual universe.
When it comes to the trust factor there is one type of person who stands in the gap between atheists and Christians. It's the apostate; whether it’s a former Christian who became an atheist, or a former atheist who became a Christian. The impact of their apostasy has more of an effect when we personally know them, but it does have a general impact on the other side anyway, especially the more well-known the person is.
These apostates are usually not liked by the side they left because they are an embarrassment to them. Since apostates have some kind of credibility the opposing side tries to discredit them. That’s probably one of the reasons why the team members here at DC are personally attacked so much. The attempt is to discredit us in one way or another so believers can write us off. It makes them feel better. It lets them sleep at night. It reassures them that the problem wasn’t with the faith at all, but rather that the problem was us.
Okay, I guess.
My view is that people just change their minds from time to time, that’s all. We do this about a myriad of issues throughout our lives. Why should it be different with regard to religious or non-religious beliefs? We don’t ever need to attack the apostate who leaves our side for the other side. I don't do this. People are people and they believe for different reasons, that’s all.
That’s why Ed Babinski has argued that if we do a great deal of reading we will eventually read an author just a little to the left of us, perhaps in college as part of a research project. While this author may be outside our comfort zone he’s not so far out there that we can't give him some kind of benefit of the doubt. Then if he convinces us we’ll read a book he recommends which might be to the left of him. This process takes place slowly if at all. That’s the process by which I learned to reject my Christian faith. It wasn’t because I read the atheist literature, although I read a few of their books, it was because I continued to read book after book by Christian authors who were more theologically liberal than the previous one. It was Christian scholarship that eventually caused the downfall of my faith. And their books were books that didn’t throw up the red flags because they were only a step to the left of me rather than being way over on the other side of the intellectual universe.
When it comes to the trust factor there is one type of person who stands in the gap between atheists and Christians. It's the apostate; whether it’s a former Christian who became an atheist, or a former atheist who became a Christian. The impact of their apostasy has more of an effect when we personally know them, but it does have a general impact on the other side anyway, especially the more well-known the person is.
These apostates are usually not liked by the side they left because they are an embarrassment to them. Since apostates have some kind of credibility the opposing side tries to discredit them. That’s probably one of the reasons why the team members here at DC are personally attacked so much. The attempt is to discredit us in one way or another so believers can write us off. It makes them feel better. It lets them sleep at night. It reassures them that the problem wasn’t with the faith at all, but rather that the problem was us.
Okay, I guess.
My view is that people just change their minds from time to time, that’s all. We do this about a myriad of issues throughout our lives. Why should it be different with regard to religious or non-religious beliefs? We don’t ever need to attack the apostate who leaves our side for the other side. I don't do this. People are people and they believe for different reasons, that’s all.
To Respond or Not to Respond; That is the Question
From time to time a friend will send me a link to a site that attempts to deal with an argument of mine. I'm glad people are thinking and attempting to deal with my arguments, of course. But some of these sites are filled with so many obvious straw man type arguments, non-sequiturs, either/or fallacies, and/or ad hominems that it amazes me these writers actually think they've considered my arguments at all. I don't think this is just a matter of believers who are blinded by their faith, although that's certainly a factor. It's that they cannot think. There are rules for thinking critically and these people cannot do it.
In any case, when I see these types of sites I figure it won't do any good to respond because if they couldn't think critically in their first post they won't be able to do so a second time in response to my comment.
In any case, when I see these types of sites I figure it won't do any good to respond because if they couldn't think critically in their first post they won't be able to do so a second time in response to my comment.
March 12, 2009
The "Best Book Ever Produced" on Evolution.
That's what Michael Shermer says of Donald Prothero's book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters, in his latest eskeptic. He wrote...
The claims of the Intelligent Design creationists are brilliantly encapsulated and devastatingly dismantled by the geologist and paleontologist Donald Prothero in the best book ever produced on the subject. In particular, Prothero’s visual presentation of the fossil and genetic evidence for evolution is so unmistakably powerful that I venture to say that no one could read this book and still deny the reality of evolution. It happened. Deal with it.
The Fear Factor: Are Atheists and Christians Fearful of the Future Should the Other Side Win This Cultural War?
I hear this coming from Christians, that they fear for their future if atheism gains more political influence, as I do coming from atheists concerning the Christian influence in our society. Are these fears justified? Can we all right now decide to commit ourselves to the separation of churches and state in advance of who wins this cultural war? Will that help assuage our respective fears? In hopes this could help I do. I strongly affirm the separation of churches and state. And although atheism is not a church nor a religion I strongly affirm that there should be no anti-religious test for state office and that no one should teach or affirm atheism in our schools, nor that words like "We Are a Godless Nation" replace the words "In God We Trust" on our currency (even if we would remove the present words off our bills), etc. etc.
March 10, 2009
Why I Left Christianity
While I was quite young my mother began taking me and my other siblings to an inner city Southern Baptist mission. At the age of twelve I went to a religious summer camp by invitation of one of my Junior High school teachers. It was at this camp that I “accepted” Christ and first professed Christianity. I continued attending the Baptist mission until I was 17 when I realized that I was not living the Christian life that I professed. I then dedicated my life to being a consistent Christian and became intensely interested in theology.
At this early stage of my life I went through a number of theological changes and transitions. I moved from dispensationalism to amillennialism, Arminianism to Calvinism and embraced the tenets of Landmarkism. For those interested Landmarkism is a branch of the Baptist family that sees itself as the true heirs not only of the Baptist faith, but of the apostolic faith. Landmarkism and Landmarkers believe they can trace their churches back through the centuries of Christian history back to the apostles. They call it Baptist Church Succession or chain link successionism. This viewpoint was popular among Baptists of the 19th century but has many holdovers still today.
I was with the Landmark Baptists for about 20 years and even created a website dedicated to defending the basic ideas of Calvinistic Landmarkism. During this time my theological views continued to develop and change. My views of the church (and Landmarkism in general) began to moderate, so for example, I came to reject the chain link succession view and instead I embraced the concept of a “spiritual kinship.” I also rejected tithing which is very popular among most Baptists of all types. Although many of my theological views tended to moderate, some on the other hand became more hardened such as my Calvinism. I found the concepts preached by the Protestant Reformed Church and Gordon Clark very interesting and couldn’t deny their logic. I was drawn to their double predestinarianism, superlapsarianism, denial of the free offer of the gospel, and their emphasis on rationality and reasoning.
Although I remained with the Landmarkers for 20 years it was during the last two to three of those years that I came to fully reject their views. Instead I embraced “house church” theology and ecclesiology as I found it to be very scriptural and aligned very well with the way many scholars conceived of the early church. The problem for me was that I could not find any house churches in my area that were Calvinistic as most were typically Arminian and Charismatic.
Around the year 2000 I had found a strong Calvinistc group that met in my area where the guy pastoring the group was sympathetic to many of the house church concepts. After some reluctance I finally visited the group and then joined them and remained with them for over 8 years. The thing that sets this group apart from the ones that I had been in contact with in the past was their emphasis on the work of Christ (understood from a strictly Calvinistic perspective) and the doctrine of Justification by imputed righteousness. For them these were the heart of the gospel message so much so that they denied a person was truly a Christian if they did not hold to them. They had no problem with the idea that all Arminians were lost and even traced their “true” conversion to the Christian faith to when they embraced these views. Any religious faith before then was defined as false religion holding to a false gospel. And yes, I did embrace these viewpoints as well because they made sense to me. Oddly enough it was during my time with this group that I also embraced evangelical egalitarianism.
This should give you enough information about my theological background to give you an idea of where I came from and the direction of where I was headed.
One of the things that I have always been very interested in since I first became theologically aware was Christian apologetics. I have read numerous books on different topics from young earth creationism, to the inerrancy and reliability of the Bible, to the existence of God and the resurrection of Christ.
About two years ago I was studying a number of related topics: the historicity of the Old Testament, the creation account in Genesis, and the age of the cosmos. It was during these studies that the evidence for an ancient earth became so strong that I could no longer deny it. Of course this led to a number of questions related to Genesis, the flood, Adam and Eve, and creation and evolution. Having been taught young earth creationism all of my life this was quite shocking to me. This led to my restudying the historicity of the Old Testament, especially the early chapters of Genesis, and this in turn opened the whole question of biological origins. These studies and four books in particular are what led to my rejection of the Christian faith.
These four books changed my whole perspective on the Bible and biological origins so I want to briefly mention each one and some of the arguments that they contain. All are written by evangelical Christians who still hold to some form of conservative Christianity.
The first of the books was Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. Much of what Enns is saying corresponds to a lot of what other Old Testament scholars like Paul Seeley have been writing about: in order to understand the Old Testament we need to understand its background. The literature of the ancient near east has a huge impact on understanding and interpreting the Old Testament whether we are talking about the creation account, the Noahic flood, or the wisdom, or prophetic literature. There is also the amount of theological diversity within the Old Testament that can be found between the different authors, books, and time periods that are often contradictory. There is also the issue of how the New Testament authors understand and interpret the Old Testament using first century Jewish hermeneutical principles that we would reject today.
The next book that had a major impact on my thinking was Coming to Peace with Science by Darrel R. Falk. This is the first pro-evolution book that I had ever read and once I finished it I was thoroughly convinced. Evolution is not what most Christians make it to be and the evidence for it is overwhelming. Some of the things that Falk brings up include the evidence for an ancient universe that can be accurately measured using radiometric dating. I had always been taught to not trust this dating method but Falk shows that we can indeed believe its results. The distribution of fossils in the fossil record corresponds to the evolution of life, from single celled organism, to multicellular life, to the vast array of life forms that we see today. There is the evidence of organisms with transitional features such as Pakicetus and Archaeopyeryx and the various fossil series such as the whale and the horse series. There is also the evidence from the geographical distribution of life and DNA. And these are just the tip of the iceberg.
Another book that clinched it for me in favor of evolution was Stephen Godfrey and Christopher Smith’s book Paradigms on Pilgrimage: Creationism, Paleontology, and Biblical Interpretation. What Falk did for biology, these guys do for paleontology. The evidence of fossil footprints and various other types of trace fossils at various levels of sediment blow “flood geology” out of the water. The natural history of life that is recorded in the sediments is easily explained by evolution, but cannot be done by any form of creationism.
The fourth book was God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship by Kenton Sparks. By the time that I read this one I had already rejected inerrancy and was looking for a way to still hold to the Bible as some form of God’s word. Sparks does want to maintain the inspiration of the Bible but most evangelicals would not agree with his explanation and besides the evidence he brings forth is just too overwhelming against it. It is simply a fact that most evangelical scholars do not deal seriously with biblical criticism and Sparks calls them on the carpet over and over again. Some of these critical problems include the close similarity of the ancient near eastern literature with the Old Testament which needs to be adequately assimilated by evangelical scholarship. There are serious problems with the Pentateuch such as authorship (it is pretty much a consensus that Moses did not write much, if any, of it), its chronology, theological diversity, and historicity. There are the questions of the historicity of Exodus, and more generally Israelite historiography. There are multiple issues with the prophets including their message, content and failed prophecies. Take Daniel for example, the evidence is that it was written around 175-164 BCE and that the four kingdoms prophesied where Babylon, Media, Persian, and Greece (and not the traditional Babylon, Medo-Persian, Greek and Rome) and that the author thought that the kingdom of God would break in to destroy Antiochus but that his prophecy failed. In the New Testament there is the issue of the liberty that the Gospel writers take in presenting their stories and the flawed hermeneutics used by the New Testament writers in general. Again, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
By the time I finished reading the book by Sparks I sat down and realized that there was nothing left for me to believe. The overwhelming evidence for biological evolution, the natural history of the world, and the historical critical problems with the Bible left me dumb founded. I came to the conclusion that I was no longer a Christian and that I had to reject the faith that I had believed, loved and cherished for so long. I now consider myself an agnostic but am very suspicious that atheism is probably true and am leaning more and more in that direction.
I am still very interested in things related to religion in general and Christianity in particular as it helps me to see where I was, where I am now and to be more equipped at discussing these things with Christians who are still locked into their false hope.
At this early stage of my life I went through a number of theological changes and transitions. I moved from dispensationalism to amillennialism, Arminianism to Calvinism and embraced the tenets of Landmarkism. For those interested Landmarkism is a branch of the Baptist family that sees itself as the true heirs not only of the Baptist faith, but of the apostolic faith. Landmarkism and Landmarkers believe they can trace their churches back through the centuries of Christian history back to the apostles. They call it Baptist Church Succession or chain link successionism. This viewpoint was popular among Baptists of the 19th century but has many holdovers still today.
I was with the Landmark Baptists for about 20 years and even created a website dedicated to defending the basic ideas of Calvinistic Landmarkism. During this time my theological views continued to develop and change. My views of the church (and Landmarkism in general) began to moderate, so for example, I came to reject the chain link succession view and instead I embraced the concept of a “spiritual kinship.” I also rejected tithing which is very popular among most Baptists of all types. Although many of my theological views tended to moderate, some on the other hand became more hardened such as my Calvinism. I found the concepts preached by the Protestant Reformed Church and Gordon Clark very interesting and couldn’t deny their logic. I was drawn to their double predestinarianism, superlapsarianism, denial of the free offer of the gospel, and their emphasis on rationality and reasoning.
Although I remained with the Landmarkers for 20 years it was during the last two to three of those years that I came to fully reject their views. Instead I embraced “house church” theology and ecclesiology as I found it to be very scriptural and aligned very well with the way many scholars conceived of the early church. The problem for me was that I could not find any house churches in my area that were Calvinistic as most were typically Arminian and Charismatic.
Around the year 2000 I had found a strong Calvinistc group that met in my area where the guy pastoring the group was sympathetic to many of the house church concepts. After some reluctance I finally visited the group and then joined them and remained with them for over 8 years. The thing that sets this group apart from the ones that I had been in contact with in the past was their emphasis on the work of Christ (understood from a strictly Calvinistic perspective) and the doctrine of Justification by imputed righteousness. For them these were the heart of the gospel message so much so that they denied a person was truly a Christian if they did not hold to them. They had no problem with the idea that all Arminians were lost and even traced their “true” conversion to the Christian faith to when they embraced these views. Any religious faith before then was defined as false religion holding to a false gospel. And yes, I did embrace these viewpoints as well because they made sense to me. Oddly enough it was during my time with this group that I also embraced evangelical egalitarianism.
This should give you enough information about my theological background to give you an idea of where I came from and the direction of where I was headed.
One of the things that I have always been very interested in since I first became theologically aware was Christian apologetics. I have read numerous books on different topics from young earth creationism, to the inerrancy and reliability of the Bible, to the existence of God and the resurrection of Christ.
About two years ago I was studying a number of related topics: the historicity of the Old Testament, the creation account in Genesis, and the age of the cosmos. It was during these studies that the evidence for an ancient earth became so strong that I could no longer deny it. Of course this led to a number of questions related to Genesis, the flood, Adam and Eve, and creation and evolution. Having been taught young earth creationism all of my life this was quite shocking to me. This led to my restudying the historicity of the Old Testament, especially the early chapters of Genesis, and this in turn opened the whole question of biological origins. These studies and four books in particular are what led to my rejection of the Christian faith.
These four books changed my whole perspective on the Bible and biological origins so I want to briefly mention each one and some of the arguments that they contain. All are written by evangelical Christians who still hold to some form of conservative Christianity.
The first of the books was Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. Much of what Enns is saying corresponds to a lot of what other Old Testament scholars like Paul Seeley have been writing about: in order to understand the Old Testament we need to understand its background. The literature of the ancient near east has a huge impact on understanding and interpreting the Old Testament whether we are talking about the creation account, the Noahic flood, or the wisdom, or prophetic literature. There is also the amount of theological diversity within the Old Testament that can be found between the different authors, books, and time periods that are often contradictory. There is also the issue of how the New Testament authors understand and interpret the Old Testament using first century Jewish hermeneutical principles that we would reject today.
The next book that had a major impact on my thinking was Coming to Peace with Science by Darrel R. Falk. This is the first pro-evolution book that I had ever read and once I finished it I was thoroughly convinced. Evolution is not what most Christians make it to be and the evidence for it is overwhelming. Some of the things that Falk brings up include the evidence for an ancient universe that can be accurately measured using radiometric dating. I had always been taught to not trust this dating method but Falk shows that we can indeed believe its results. The distribution of fossils in the fossil record corresponds to the evolution of life, from single celled organism, to multicellular life, to the vast array of life forms that we see today. There is the evidence of organisms with transitional features such as Pakicetus and Archaeopyeryx and the various fossil series such as the whale and the horse series. There is also the evidence from the geographical distribution of life and DNA. And these are just the tip of the iceberg.
Another book that clinched it for me in favor of evolution was Stephen Godfrey and Christopher Smith’s book Paradigms on Pilgrimage: Creationism, Paleontology, and Biblical Interpretation. What Falk did for biology, these guys do for paleontology. The evidence of fossil footprints and various other types of trace fossils at various levels of sediment blow “flood geology” out of the water. The natural history of life that is recorded in the sediments is easily explained by evolution, but cannot be done by any form of creationism.
The fourth book was God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship by Kenton Sparks. By the time that I read this one I had already rejected inerrancy and was looking for a way to still hold to the Bible as some form of God’s word. Sparks does want to maintain the inspiration of the Bible but most evangelicals would not agree with his explanation and besides the evidence he brings forth is just too overwhelming against it. It is simply a fact that most evangelical scholars do not deal seriously with biblical criticism and Sparks calls them on the carpet over and over again. Some of these critical problems include the close similarity of the ancient near eastern literature with the Old Testament which needs to be adequately assimilated by evangelical scholarship. There are serious problems with the Pentateuch such as authorship (it is pretty much a consensus that Moses did not write much, if any, of it), its chronology, theological diversity, and historicity. There are the questions of the historicity of Exodus, and more generally Israelite historiography. There are multiple issues with the prophets including their message, content and failed prophecies. Take Daniel for example, the evidence is that it was written around 175-164 BCE and that the four kingdoms prophesied where Babylon, Media, Persian, and Greece (and not the traditional Babylon, Medo-Persian, Greek and Rome) and that the author thought that the kingdom of God would break in to destroy Antiochus but that his prophecy failed. In the New Testament there is the issue of the liberty that the Gospel writers take in presenting their stories and the flawed hermeneutics used by the New Testament writers in general. Again, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
By the time I finished reading the book by Sparks I sat down and realized that there was nothing left for me to believe. The overwhelming evidence for biological evolution, the natural history of the world, and the historical critical problems with the Bible left me dumb founded. I came to the conclusion that I was no longer a Christian and that I had to reject the faith that I had believed, loved and cherished for so long. I now consider myself an agnostic but am very suspicious that atheism is probably true and am leaning more and more in that direction.
I am still very interested in things related to religion in general and Christianity in particular as it helps me to see where I was, where I am now and to be more equipped at discussing these things with Christians who are still locked into their false hope.
Calvinist Professors Are Targeted at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
"I will say," president Patterson said, "that Southwestern will not build a school in the future around anybody who could not look anybody in the world in the eyes and say, 'Christ died for your sins.'" Link. As I've irreverantly said before for other reasons Calvinism is Bullshit.
More Poll Data on Unbelief
Given the Poll Data that was recently released where we learn 15% of Americans have no religion, former team member "d" cataloged other Poll Data in the last few years on unbelief:
- Feb 2009 CUNY ARIS, 12.3% atheist + agnostic
- Apr 2008 Harris, 28% "not religious", 14% "not at all religious" [table 6]
- Nov. 2007 Harris, 18% atheists + agnostics
- Nov 2007 various by Zuckerman and Paul, "America's disbelievers...number 30 million, ...far outnumber American Jews, Muslims and Mormons combined."
- Aug 2007 Pew, nonreligious: 16.1%, with 4% atheist + agnostic and 12.1% generally unaffiliated
- Mar 2007 Newsweek, 10% "no religion", 6% atheist + agnostic
- 1972-2006 GSS Data, 14.4% "not religious" [here], 6.1% atheist [here]
- Dec 2006 Harris, 14% agnostic, 4% atheist, 6% "would prefer not to say"
- Sept 2006 Baylor U., 10.8% "religious nones," 5.2% atheists
- 2005 Adherents.com global data, 16% of people globally are atheist, agnostic, or related
- May 2004 Pew, 16% "unaffiliated", 7.5% "secular" and 3.2% "atheist, agnostic"
- Dec 2001 CUNY ARIS, "no religion" 8% in 1990, 14% in 2001. 14.3 million in 1990, 29.4 million in 2001 (more here)
Faith is Not an Acceptable Answer
We’ve argued against the concept of faith many times before, but let me try again. I have argued that the Christian faith originated as a purely human religion completely accountable by humans acting in history without needing any divine agency at all. But setting that important discussion aside, faith is a cop out, especially when it comes to the number of things Christians must take on faith in order to believe. Let’s recount some of them.
1) No reasonable answer can be given for why a triune God, who was perfect in love neither needing nor wanting anything, created in the first place. Grace and Love are non-answers, especially when we see the actual world that resulted. For Christians to say God wanted human creatures who freely love him is nonsense, for why did he want this at all? If love must be expressed then God needed to express his love and that implies a lack.
2) It’s hard enough to conceive of one person who is an eternally uncaused God, much less a Godhead composed of three eternally uncaused persons. There are some Christians who maintain the Father eternally created the Logos and the Spirit, while others claim that three persons in one Godhead is simply an eternally brute inexplicable fact. Why is that brute fact more reasonable to accept than accepting the brute fact of the laws of the universe, which is all that’s needed to produce the universe? There are social Trinitarians and anti-social Trinitarians. Both sides accuse the other side of abandoning the Chalcedon creed, either in the direction of tri-theism, or in the direction of unitarianism.
3) This triune Godhead is also conceived of as a timeless being who was somehow able to create the first moment of time. How a timeless being could actually do this is extremely problematic. For if his decision to create a first moment of time is an eternal one, then there could be no temporal gap between his decision to create the first moment of time and the actual creation of the first moment of time. If there was no temporal gap between God's eternal decision to create a first moment of time and the creation of that first moment, then his decision to create would alone be sufficient for a first moment of time to be created. God could not eternally decide to create at any future point since there is no future point for him to create. So if a timelessly eternal God decided to create at all then the universe is eternal and never had a first moment in time.
4) This timelessly eternal triune God who parodoxically created time must now forever be subject to events in time. He cannot become timeless again, for to do so would destroy all that happened in time as if these events never happened at all. So although God somehow existed outside of time before creating the first moment of time he must now forever experience a sequence of events. Whereas before creation he was a timelessly existing being he is now going to forever experience a sequence of events that is never ending.
From here it only gets worse.
5) We are told that the Logos, the 2nd person of the trinity, became a man. No conception of this God-man in the flesh has yet been able to stand scrutiny. How, for instance, can such a being be 100% God and 100% man with nothing left over? All attempts to solve this problem have failed.
6) But we’re not done, for we’re told this God-man atoned for the sins of man. No sense can be made of how the death of Jesus actually forgives sins. There is no relationship between punishment and forgiveness at all. We forgive people who have not been punished and sometimes we won’t forgive people even after they've been punished. To say that in order to forgive someone they must first be punished does not describe forgiveness at all, anyway. It describes revenge. Revenge can never be a moral reason for acting and revenge has nothing to do with offering forgiveness. We don't even need for people to ask forgiveness in order to forgive them. Sometimes it's better for our mental health to forgive someone regardless of whether or not they're even sorry for what they've done.
7) This God-man was a unique never-before-existing being who is described in the creeds as one unified person. Here an additional problem surfaces. Where is the human side of this God-man now (i.e. the human nature of Jesus)? Since this human side of the God-man was sinless he couldn’t be destroyed, nor could this human side of the God-man be separated from the divine side, for such a being was now one person according to the creeds. So theologians have concluded that the trinity includes an embodied Logos. Now we have a trinity with an embodied 2nd person in it. Picture this if you will!
8) Stepping forward a bit, sinners sent to hell retain their free will, since it’s argued they continue to rebel in hell, while the saints who enter heaven have their free will taken away to guarantee there will be no future rebellion in heaven. If free will is such a great gift why reward people by taking it away from them and punish people by having them retain it? That makes little sense to me.
I’ve only touched on a few of the beliefs needed to make sense of Christianity. There are many others, and some Christians have different scenarios. But who in their right mind would embrace Christianity if he or she heard about them all when first being challenged to believe? Very few people. That’s what I think.
But we’re not done yet. For there is the additional problem of the lack of evidence for these beliefs. Archaeology disconfirms the flood and Exodus stories. What we have are the claims of people who wrote the books that later were accepted into the Bible. Why should I believe what they wrote? Why should I believe that the sun stood still, or that a star pointed down to a specific place, or that a virgin gave birth, or that a man walked on the water just because of what a person in the superstitious past wrote? Even in the Bible itself we see how the people of that same era believed in the actions of gods and goddesses like Apollo, Zeus, Baal, Artemis, and others, which hardly anyone accepts today. So why do Christians accept one set of claims in the past but reject the others? The same evidence supports them all: Testimonies by superstitious people in the past.
Christians must defend too many beliefs, any one of which, if incorrect, would be fatal to their whole worldview. These beliefs are based upon the conclusions of historical evidence which is extremely problematic given the nature of that evidence and the nature of the superstitious pre-scientific people in the ancient past.
Christians must defend things like the existence of the social Trinitarian God (versus an anti-social Trinitarian God) of the Bible (which had a long process of formation and of borrowing material from others) who never began to exist and will never cease to exist (even though everything we experience has a beginning and an end), who never learned any new truths, who does not think (for thinking demands weighing temporal alternatives), who is not free with respect to deciding his own nature, who revealed himself through a poor medium (history) in a poor era (ancient times), who condemns all of humanity for the sins of the first human pair, who commanded genocide, who allows intense suffering in this world (yet does not follow the same moral code he commands believers to follow), whose Son (the 2nd person of the trinity) became incarnate in Jesus (even though no one has ever made sense of a person who is 100% man and 100% divine) to be punished for our sins (even though there is no correlation between punishment and forgiveness) who subsequently bodily arose from the dead (even though the believer in miracles has an almost impossible double-burden of proof here) and now lives embodied forever in a “spiritual” human body who will return to earth in the parousia (even though the NT is clear that the end of all kingdoms and the establishment of God's kingdom was to be in their generation), who sent the 3rd person of the trinity to lead his followers into "all truth" (yet fails in every generation to do this), who will also judge us based upon what conclusions we reach about the existence of this God and what he has done (paralleling the ancient barbaric thought police), and who will reward believers by taking away their freedom and punish the dammed by letting them retain their freedom?
Since the larger the claim is the less probable it is, the Christian faith is simply too improbable to be believed by reasonable people. Period.
1) No reasonable answer can be given for why a triune God, who was perfect in love neither needing nor wanting anything, created in the first place. Grace and Love are non-answers, especially when we see the actual world that resulted. For Christians to say God wanted human creatures who freely love him is nonsense, for why did he want this at all? If love must be expressed then God needed to express his love and that implies a lack.
2) It’s hard enough to conceive of one person who is an eternally uncaused God, much less a Godhead composed of three eternally uncaused persons. There are some Christians who maintain the Father eternally created the Logos and the Spirit, while others claim that three persons in one Godhead is simply an eternally brute inexplicable fact. Why is that brute fact more reasonable to accept than accepting the brute fact of the laws of the universe, which is all that’s needed to produce the universe? There are social Trinitarians and anti-social Trinitarians. Both sides accuse the other side of abandoning the Chalcedon creed, either in the direction of tri-theism, or in the direction of unitarianism.
3) This triune Godhead is also conceived of as a timeless being who was somehow able to create the first moment of time. How a timeless being could actually do this is extremely problematic. For if his decision to create a first moment of time is an eternal one, then there could be no temporal gap between his decision to create the first moment of time and the actual creation of the first moment of time. If there was no temporal gap between God's eternal decision to create a first moment of time and the creation of that first moment, then his decision to create would alone be sufficient for a first moment of time to be created. God could not eternally decide to create at any future point since there is no future point for him to create. So if a timelessly eternal God decided to create at all then the universe is eternal and never had a first moment in time.
4) This timelessly eternal triune God who parodoxically created time must now forever be subject to events in time. He cannot become timeless again, for to do so would destroy all that happened in time as if these events never happened at all. So although God somehow existed outside of time before creating the first moment of time he must now forever experience a sequence of events. Whereas before creation he was a timelessly existing being he is now going to forever experience a sequence of events that is never ending.
From here it only gets worse.
5) We are told that the Logos, the 2nd person of the trinity, became a man. No conception of this God-man in the flesh has yet been able to stand scrutiny. How, for instance, can such a being be 100% God and 100% man with nothing left over? All attempts to solve this problem have failed.
6) But we’re not done, for we’re told this God-man atoned for the sins of man. No sense can be made of how the death of Jesus actually forgives sins. There is no relationship between punishment and forgiveness at all. We forgive people who have not been punished and sometimes we won’t forgive people even after they've been punished. To say that in order to forgive someone they must first be punished does not describe forgiveness at all, anyway. It describes revenge. Revenge can never be a moral reason for acting and revenge has nothing to do with offering forgiveness. We don't even need for people to ask forgiveness in order to forgive them. Sometimes it's better for our mental health to forgive someone regardless of whether or not they're even sorry for what they've done.
7) This God-man was a unique never-before-existing being who is described in the creeds as one unified person. Here an additional problem surfaces. Where is the human side of this God-man now (i.e. the human nature of Jesus)? Since this human side of the God-man was sinless he couldn’t be destroyed, nor could this human side of the God-man be separated from the divine side, for such a being was now one person according to the creeds. So theologians have concluded that the trinity includes an embodied Logos. Now we have a trinity with an embodied 2nd person in it. Picture this if you will!
8) Stepping forward a bit, sinners sent to hell retain their free will, since it’s argued they continue to rebel in hell, while the saints who enter heaven have their free will taken away to guarantee there will be no future rebellion in heaven. If free will is such a great gift why reward people by taking it away from them and punish people by having them retain it? That makes little sense to me.
I’ve only touched on a few of the beliefs needed to make sense of Christianity. There are many others, and some Christians have different scenarios. But who in their right mind would embrace Christianity if he or she heard about them all when first being challenged to believe? Very few people. That’s what I think.
But we’re not done yet. For there is the additional problem of the lack of evidence for these beliefs. Archaeology disconfirms the flood and Exodus stories. What we have are the claims of people who wrote the books that later were accepted into the Bible. Why should I believe what they wrote? Why should I believe that the sun stood still, or that a star pointed down to a specific place, or that a virgin gave birth, or that a man walked on the water just because of what a person in the superstitious past wrote? Even in the Bible itself we see how the people of that same era believed in the actions of gods and goddesses like Apollo, Zeus, Baal, Artemis, and others, which hardly anyone accepts today. So why do Christians accept one set of claims in the past but reject the others? The same evidence supports them all: Testimonies by superstitious people in the past.
Christians must defend too many beliefs, any one of which, if incorrect, would be fatal to their whole worldview. These beliefs are based upon the conclusions of historical evidence which is extremely problematic given the nature of that evidence and the nature of the superstitious pre-scientific people in the ancient past.
Christians must defend things like the existence of the social Trinitarian God (versus an anti-social Trinitarian God) of the Bible (which had a long process of formation and of borrowing material from others) who never began to exist and will never cease to exist (even though everything we experience has a beginning and an end), who never learned any new truths, who does not think (for thinking demands weighing temporal alternatives), who is not free with respect to deciding his own nature, who revealed himself through a poor medium (history) in a poor era (ancient times), who condemns all of humanity for the sins of the first human pair, who commanded genocide, who allows intense suffering in this world (yet does not follow the same moral code he commands believers to follow), whose Son (the 2nd person of the trinity) became incarnate in Jesus (even though no one has ever made sense of a person who is 100% man and 100% divine) to be punished for our sins (even though there is no correlation between punishment and forgiveness) who subsequently bodily arose from the dead (even though the believer in miracles has an almost impossible double-burden of proof here) and now lives embodied forever in a “spiritual” human body who will return to earth in the parousia (even though the NT is clear that the end of all kingdoms and the establishment of God's kingdom was to be in their generation), who sent the 3rd person of the trinity to lead his followers into "all truth" (yet fails in every generation to do this), who will also judge us based upon what conclusions we reach about the existence of this God and what he has done (paralleling the ancient barbaric thought police), and who will reward believers by taking away their freedom and punish the dammed by letting them retain their freedom?
Since the larger the claim is the less probable it is, the Christian faith is simply too improbable to be believed by reasonable people. Period.
March 09, 2009
Proof Positive that ONLY Christians Can Have Morals and Ethics!
Time and time again we atheists at DC are sternly informed that, without God, we atheists have no base at all for morals and ethics which can ONLY come from God alone.
Well, as they say: “The Devil is in the Details!”
Police Arrest Pastor for Allegedly Setting Fire to His Own Church
Church Previously Vandalized On Several Occasions
Anderson, SC
Monday afternoon, Rev. Christopher Daniels, who is from Belton, was charged with second-degree arson. His bond was set at $25,000.
The State Law Enforcement Division has joined the Anderson County Sheriff's Office in the investigation.
In recent months, there have been incidents of graffiti and vandalism in the church that are still under investigation.
Investigators said Blue Ridge Baptist was targeted by vandals four times at the end of 2008.
In mid-December, gang symbols and hate-filled messages were left in the church's Sunday school building.
Earlier that month, the same thing was done to the classrooms downstairs.
Rev. Daniels is being investigated by the State Law Enforcement Division also as a suspect in the earlier vandalisms which caused over $20,000 worth of damage to the chruch.
Well, as they say: “The Devil is in the Details!”
Police Arrest Pastor for Allegedly Setting Fire to His Own Church
Church Previously Vandalized On Several Occasions
Anderson, SC
Monday afternoon, Rev. Christopher Daniels, who is from Belton, was charged with second-degree arson. His bond was set at $25,000.
The State Law Enforcement Division has joined the Anderson County Sheriff's Office in the investigation.
In recent months, there have been incidents of graffiti and vandalism in the church that are still under investigation.
Investigators said Blue Ridge Baptist was targeted by vandals four times at the end of 2008.
In mid-December, gang symbols and hate-filled messages were left in the church's Sunday school building.
Earlier that month, the same thing was done to the classrooms downstairs.
Rev. Daniels is being investigated by the State Law Enforcement Division also as a suspect in the earlier vandalisms which caused over $20,000 worth of damage to the chruch.
More Americans Say They Have No Religion.
This is according to an Associated Press story from a recent poll. Link. According to a Washington Post story "15 percent of Americans have no religion" and "the percentage of Americans who call themselves Christians has dropped dramatically over the past two decades." The actual survey can be found here, but I haven't read through it yet. We are slowly winning...very slowly. Everyone who has ever spoken out has been a part of this slow trend.
The Blasphemy Board Game
This board game created by Steve Jaqua will be used by the CFI Michigan group for a night of fun for the whole family this Wednesday. It looks interesting. Be sure to click on the small FAQ link at the bottom. Your aim is to convince others that you are the genuine Jesus. To do this your Jesus must give stirring sermons, perform miracles, attract devoted followers, and make every effort to discredit his rivals. In the end, he must get himself killed. That's when you win the game. What? That's Blasphemy!
I Think Christianity is a Cult.
Here's a ten part essay on cults, including how they recruit, how cult members are deprogrammed, and so forth. I think most Christianities are cults from the various descriptions I read there. What d'ya think?
March 08, 2009
Finally, a Book that Educates the Masses: A Review of Bart D. Ehrman's Book, Jesus Interrupted
You can find my review of Bart D. Ehrman's book Jesus Interrupted, by following this link and then scrolling down on the page. If you find it helpful I'd appreciate a "yes" vote on the review. There's also a button next to my name that says "see all my reviews." Click on it if you want to read some other book reviews I've written, two pages of them.
Eyewitness: How Accurate Is Visual Memory?
Although the earliest Gospel of Mark was conservatively written over 40 years after the life and death of Jesus and, although these stories circulated in various oral traditions for decades by people who were to illiterate to give these narratives some form of textual stability; major Christian apologists assure us that, other than some minor textual problems that probably were added by careless scribes copying the text, the originals are very trustworthy accounts of what the Historical Jesus really said and did. But is this really the case at all?
Below are two links from CBS’s 60 Minutes that reveal the problems and deception of eyewitness accounts and how they can not be trusted.
Exclusive: The Bunny Effect
Manufacturing Memories
Below are two links from CBS’s 60 Minutes that reveal the problems and deception of eyewitness accounts and how they can not be trusted.
Exclusive: The Bunny Effect
Manufacturing Memories
How Human Reasoning Makes Or Breaks the Biblical God of Miracles
When it comes to Biblical faith, the Bible is equal to a chemical catalyst (a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any change). By this I mean that if the Christian believer has the will to believe, then this person also has the ability to explain away exactly why either God or prayer fails to work, or explain a positive random event as the will of God or an answer to prayer.
An example of the Bible as a catalyst would be the story of the Prophet Elijah on Mount Carmel squaring off with the 450 heathen prophets of Baal (and 400 heathen prophets of Asherah: I‘m not sure what happen to them ( 1 Kings 18: 20 -40)).
I can not count the times I heard this preached on at Bob Jones University and in many Baptist churches as an example of what faith in the true God can do. Hey, we all know lighting is a destructive force and how even Jesus (Luke 9: 54) just as Luke in Acts has Paul ( Acts 9: 3 -9 = Acts 22: 6 - 11 = Act\s 26:12 -18) seeing such forces of nature as miracles from God.
On the other hand, I have never heard the wild, but equally truthful Biblical story of Jacob tricking Laban out of his flock by peeling the bark off a stick and placing it near the animal‘s watering hole to cause the breeding animals to produce striped, speckled, and spotted offspring:
“Then Jacob took fresh rods of poplar and almond and plane trees, and peeled white stripes in them, exposing the white which was in the rods. He set the rods which he had peeled in front of the flocks in the gutters, even in the watering troughs, where the flocks came to drink; and they mated when they came to drink. So the flocks mated by the rods, and the flocks brought forth striped, speckled, and spotted." (Genesis 30: 37 - 39).
But whether one story is preached on a lot to show the power of God while the second story in avoided like the plague from the pulpit; as for as the Bible is concerned, they show the power of faith in men blessed by God.
So, if one believes the Bible as written form Genesis to Revelation, it does not matter whether if Elijah is facing down the 400 prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel; Jacob peeling the bark off a stick to make the DNA in animals mutate and produce weirdly marked offspring or Jesus coming back from the dead on the third day, as for as the Bible goes, they all carry equal Biblical truths or Biblical facts.
Now, since these Biblical stories of God working miracles in the past must be accepted on faith if one is to be a Christian (a point we hear all the time from comments posted here at DC), for the faithful and unquestioning Christian, this Biblical catalyst will set in motion human denial of the logical for the religious mind that believes God can and does act today though miracles just as he did in the Bible. Since the believing Christian can not “Throw the baby out with the bath water”, then the miracle of Jacob’s peeled sticks carries the same miracle truth as the resurrection of Jesus; though not the same theological importance.
We usually hear stories from survivors who have experienced an acute situation in which God has saved their life. This is often heard on radio and television newscast following a plane crash in which religious people give tanks to their God for sparing their lives.
If the entire human life on the plane is spared (as was the case of US Airways Flight 1549 landing in the Hudson River in New York recently) then the catalytic Bible with its miracle stories of faith seems to vindicate itself.
However, when an entire plane goes down, leaving no survivors at all or when over half the passengers are killed during a crash, we only hear the praises to God from the humans still alive and able to talk while the majority of passengers killed are strangely pushed aside and silently left out of the miracle of God’s protection in this equation.
As noted above, an acute situation does not leave one time to relax and think logically, but rather the suddenness of the situation makes it a “Knee Jerk Reaction” based on a cry for help from the divine realm ( the old “there are no atheists in a foxhole” reaction).
On the other hand, doing a chronic or long term situation, one has more time to weight in on the Biblical claims and this mostly leads the victim to conclude both God and the Biblical miracle stories just don’t work.
An example of this is my 14 year old daughter went into End Stage Renal Failure in 1999. I vividly remember the night she and her Renal Nurse came home from choosing a peritoneal dialyzer and how she cried stating that she had to pick out a machine she had to be hooked up to every night to remain alive for the rest of her life.
I also remember the good intentions of the many churches which formed Prayer Chains for my daughter’s recovery. I recall the night a pastor stopped by to assure her that God loves her and will take care of her. But I was even more struck by her response to this pastor. She said: “I love my cats and dog and I take care of them because I love them. If God loves me, then why didn’t He take care of my kidneys?” The pastor just stood there.
Again, in contrast to the acute plane crash situation, the chronically afflicted victim has had time to be exposed to God though faith and prayer and has rightly reasoned that they are basically among the dead passengers in a plane crash.
To further prove my point concerning the chronically afflicted victim and their lack of faith in God and the Biblical catalytic miracle stories; every two years we attend the Transplant Games where people who have had kidney, heart-lung, pancreas, bowel, liver and other donor organs (from both living and dead people (given so that others facing chronic illness and death can live)) attend to celebrate life by competing in athletic competition of life and friendship. The ages of these people include anywhere form a one year old child to 80 plus senior citizens.
As a former seminary student and preacher, I wanted to see how these transplant patients (most must take 20 plus pills per day the rest of their life to keep from rejecting their life giving organ) felt about God and religion.
To experience this on a large scale, I attended both the Opening and Closing Ceremonies in which up to 3,000 transplant patients attended and where many gave talks about life and the wonders of modern medicine and their loving thankfulness to the donor families.
Nowhere, and I repeat, nowhere, and at no time was there ever a prayer offered at these opening and closing events! Nowhere and at no time did anyone in these two hour plus ceremonies ever mention, thank or praise God, Jesus or religion as making it possible for them to live (instead, and contrary to the Bible, they praised “sinful man” and his works).
Unlike the acute person who “Finds God” in a panic during a passing time of trouble, these former long term chronically ill transplant people have seen the failure of God, prayer and religion in their lives. Many of the children and youth see themselves born (or created) by the very God the Bible and churches exhort them to turn to. They know and have first hand experience of the futility of religion and Biblical miracles. (Sorry District Supt. Harvey Burnett!)
While the Bible and its God labels humanity as sinful and in need of salvation that can only come from faith and God, these thousands upon thousands of transplanted people know as a fact, that without modern doctors and drugs, they would be just another head stone in some cemetery waiting for Jesus to come back in just another failed Biblically based miracle promise.
An example of the Bible as a catalyst would be the story of the Prophet Elijah on Mount Carmel squaring off with the 450 heathen prophets of Baal (and 400 heathen prophets of Asherah: I‘m not sure what happen to them ( 1 Kings 18: 20 -40)).
I can not count the times I heard this preached on at Bob Jones University and in many Baptist churches as an example of what faith in the true God can do. Hey, we all know lighting is a destructive force and how even Jesus (Luke 9: 54) just as Luke in Acts has Paul ( Acts 9: 3 -9 = Acts 22: 6 - 11 = Act\s 26:12 -18) seeing such forces of nature as miracles from God.
On the other hand, I have never heard the wild, but equally truthful Biblical story of Jacob tricking Laban out of his flock by peeling the bark off a stick and placing it near the animal‘s watering hole to cause the breeding animals to produce striped, speckled, and spotted offspring:
“Then Jacob took fresh rods of poplar and almond and plane trees, and peeled white stripes in them, exposing the white which was in the rods. He set the rods which he had peeled in front of the flocks in the gutters, even in the watering troughs, where the flocks came to drink; and they mated when they came to drink. So the flocks mated by the rods, and the flocks brought forth striped, speckled, and spotted." (Genesis 30: 37 - 39).
But whether one story is preached on a lot to show the power of God while the second story in avoided like the plague from the pulpit; as for as the Bible is concerned, they show the power of faith in men blessed by God.
So, if one believes the Bible as written form Genesis to Revelation, it does not matter whether if Elijah is facing down the 400 prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel; Jacob peeling the bark off a stick to make the DNA in animals mutate and produce weirdly marked offspring or Jesus coming back from the dead on the third day, as for as the Bible goes, they all carry equal Biblical truths or Biblical facts.
Now, since these Biblical stories of God working miracles in the past must be accepted on faith if one is to be a Christian (a point we hear all the time from comments posted here at DC), for the faithful and unquestioning Christian, this Biblical catalyst will set in motion human denial of the logical for the religious mind that believes God can and does act today though miracles just as he did in the Bible. Since the believing Christian can not “Throw the baby out with the bath water”, then the miracle of Jacob’s peeled sticks carries the same miracle truth as the resurrection of Jesus; though not the same theological importance.
We usually hear stories from survivors who have experienced an acute situation in which God has saved their life. This is often heard on radio and television newscast following a plane crash in which religious people give tanks to their God for sparing their lives.
If the entire human life on the plane is spared (as was the case of US Airways Flight 1549 landing in the Hudson River in New York recently) then the catalytic Bible with its miracle stories of faith seems to vindicate itself.
However, when an entire plane goes down, leaving no survivors at all or when over half the passengers are killed during a crash, we only hear the praises to God from the humans still alive and able to talk while the majority of passengers killed are strangely pushed aside and silently left out of the miracle of God’s protection in this equation.
As noted above, an acute situation does not leave one time to relax and think logically, but rather the suddenness of the situation makes it a “Knee Jerk Reaction” based on a cry for help from the divine realm ( the old “there are no atheists in a foxhole” reaction).
On the other hand, doing a chronic or long term situation, one has more time to weight in on the Biblical claims and this mostly leads the victim to conclude both God and the Biblical miracle stories just don’t work.
An example of this is my 14 year old daughter went into End Stage Renal Failure in 1999. I vividly remember the night she and her Renal Nurse came home from choosing a peritoneal dialyzer and how she cried stating that she had to pick out a machine she had to be hooked up to every night to remain alive for the rest of her life.
I also remember the good intentions of the many churches which formed Prayer Chains for my daughter’s recovery. I recall the night a pastor stopped by to assure her that God loves her and will take care of her. But I was even more struck by her response to this pastor. She said: “I love my cats and dog and I take care of them because I love them. If God loves me, then why didn’t He take care of my kidneys?” The pastor just stood there.
Again, in contrast to the acute plane crash situation, the chronically afflicted victim has had time to be exposed to God though faith and prayer and has rightly reasoned that they are basically among the dead passengers in a plane crash.
To further prove my point concerning the chronically afflicted victim and their lack of faith in God and the Biblical catalytic miracle stories; every two years we attend the Transplant Games where people who have had kidney, heart-lung, pancreas, bowel, liver and other donor organs (from both living and dead people (given so that others facing chronic illness and death can live)) attend to celebrate life by competing in athletic competition of life and friendship. The ages of these people include anywhere form a one year old child to 80 plus senior citizens.
As a former seminary student and preacher, I wanted to see how these transplant patients (most must take 20 plus pills per day the rest of their life to keep from rejecting their life giving organ) felt about God and religion.
To experience this on a large scale, I attended both the Opening and Closing Ceremonies in which up to 3,000 transplant patients attended and where many gave talks about life and the wonders of modern medicine and their loving thankfulness to the donor families.
Nowhere, and I repeat, nowhere, and at no time was there ever a prayer offered at these opening and closing events! Nowhere and at no time did anyone in these two hour plus ceremonies ever mention, thank or praise God, Jesus or religion as making it possible for them to live (instead, and contrary to the Bible, they praised “sinful man” and his works).
Unlike the acute person who “Finds God” in a panic during a passing time of trouble, these former long term chronically ill transplant people have seen the failure of God, prayer and religion in their lives. Many of the children and youth see themselves born (or created) by the very God the Bible and churches exhort them to turn to. They know and have first hand experience of the futility of religion and Biblical miracles. (Sorry District Supt. Harvey Burnett!)
While the Bible and its God labels humanity as sinful and in need of salvation that can only come from faith and God, these thousands upon thousands of transplanted people know as a fact, that without modern doctors and drugs, they would be just another head stone in some cemetery waiting for Jesus to come back in just another failed Biblically based miracle promise.
March 07, 2009
Crusade: A March Through Time
We rented a movie recently and my wife didn't know there was probably a Children's Crusade in the 13th century. They all got slaughtered. Regardless of whether there was or not, this movie shows you how people of faith think and argue. The movie is instructive I think, for the boy hero of the story was troubled by it all. Christian, how would you respond to such faith talk? Watch the movie and tell us. That's exactly how you sound to us!
Dr. David Eller Interviewed on the Secular Nation
Eller is the author of Atheism Advanced, which I highly recomend. Link
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