Let’s continue our look at
how Christians react to disaster situations. God’s failure to intervene when his followers (and even many non-religious) are begging him to presents a problem to the believer: How do they manage to account for an absent God, while avoiding cognitive dissonance? The religious mind has come up with an ingenious solution:
Take what humans do to help those in need, and attribute those actions to God.
In effect, they are mentally Photoshopping God into a situation where he never was.
In the most recent June/July issue of Free Inquiry magazine, Robert Price congratulates Baker Books for publishing our book, saying, "It represents a departure from the traditional evangelical Christian resistance to let readers, hearers, and students encounter alternative viewpoints except through the filter of apologetical distortions by 'our side.'" He suggests the change is perhaps because "the internet has made everything instantly accessible...and virtually unavoidable." This is welcomed no matter what the reason. He goes on to "heartily" recommend the book "as the basis for small group dialogues," but along the way also says some good things and bad things about it.
Yesterday, as the devastating tornado ripped a path of destruction through Moore, Oklahoma, I watched the storm play out through the Facebook status updates of a friend who lived in the area. This friend is a Christian, and her response is similar to that of many believers in the face of such an event. Earlier in the day she posted:
“Praying the storms won’t hit.”
Then, as it became evident that this prayer was unanswered,
“Hang on, my friends.”
Followed by a Bible verse:
"Give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares about you. 1 Peter 5:7”
Next status:
“We are in a safe shelter. Praying for all those in the path in the storm. Jesus, protect us!”
Then:
“Lord, we beg your mercies upon us. Praying for the two schools that were hit. Please keep the children & teachers safe.”
Is this the best that Christians can say? This review is mind-boggling, but somewhat positive.
Enjoy. There is way too much ignorance here to bother responding.
Have at it in the comments below.
After forty-four years of studying the Bible and Judeo-Christian theology, I am totally convinced (as I visit our local mall and other public places) that 98% of the people I pass could not only have done a better job, but would have been far more compassionate to humanity than either of the Biblical deities (God and Jesus)!
In 1844 the thirty-eight year old founder and revelator of the Latter Day Saints, Joseph Smith, Jr. (along with his brother Hyrum) were murdered at the Hancock County jail in Carthage, Illinois by an angry mob in retaliation for Joseph Smith having ordered the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor, a newspaper edited by a former Church member for revealing to the outside world Smith's secret doctrines of polygamy and polytheism as well as for exposing Smith’s ambition to use politics to advance his theocratic agenda.
WE MUST DEVELOP UTTER HONESTY ABOUT THE TRUTH, WE MUST DEEPEN OUR CARE FOR EACH OTHER, AND WE MUST LEARN TO RESPECT THE PLANET THAT IS OUR HOME. NOTHING ELSE MUCH MATTERS.
ROBERT W. FUNK 1926 – 2005 (FOUNDER OF THE WESTAR INSTITUTE AND ITS JESUS SEMINAR)
Okay fellow atheists, can we just admit when we are wrong? I mean, all along we’ve been claiming that the Bible is not a scientific book - that it's the product of superstitious ancient men, not an all-knowing God, and yet here is clear proof that we have been mistaken! In light of this discovery, I have no choice but to relinquish my unbelief.
In this short passage, quietly tucked away in Deuteronomy, is the very key to what so many scientific researchers are pursuing; the secret to extending the human life span.
Jesus is presented in the anonymous work known as the "Gospel of Matthew" (18: 15 – 18) instructing his disciples on how to reprove a sinful fellow believer:
Humans are pattern-seeking creatures. Religious people have found divine communications in the strangest places – from an appearance of the Virgin Mary on a cheese sandwich, to the likeness of Jesus on a tortilla.
Popular evangelical pastor Louis Giglio has wowed audiences with a
sermon based on the ‘revelation’ that in scientific drawings, the protein molecule Laminin is shaped like a cross. Of course, the actual electron microscopic image of Laminin hardly looks like a cross – more like a deformed swastika, but that did not quell his audience’s enthusiastic cheers and clapping.
Randal and I will be squaring off for three days of discussion/debates in June. I'm flying to Edmonton, Canada, for these public events:
June 3: Calgary (@ Renfrew Baptist Church)
June 4: Red Deer (@ Unity Baptist Church)
June 5: Edmonton (@ Taylor Seminary)
There will be an audio available afterward. I'll be a lion in the Christian's den. :-)
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. Matthew 10:29-31 (NIV)
Nice try Jesus*. I suppose you meant this little ‘gem’ to be comforting, but I have to say it fails badly. This is just the sort of ridiculous, crappy platitudes that many of your followers spout whenever bad things happen.
I suppose we should not be surprised that women fare badly in a religion in which penises play a prominent role.
Anyone who has taken a stroll through the Bible soon encounters the fact that Yahweh is creepily interested in men’s junk. For starters, he required penile surgical alteration as a condition of male membership to the Jewish faith:
I confess.
When I was a Christian, I was overly impressed with the writings of C. S. Lewis, and in particular, his ‘trilemma’, as presented in the book Mere Christianity:
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
While I still enjoy Lewis’s writing style, I can now see how he stacked the deck by limiting the options regarding Jesus to Lord, liar, or lunatic. One doesn't have to be much of a detective to see that there are a couple of missing L’s.
There are various perspectives among people who criticize religion. 1) There are critiques of religion coming from within each one of them over specific doctrines; 2) There are critiques coming from former believers of a specific religion; 3) There are deistic critiques of all "revealed" religions, 4) There are agnostic critiques of all metaphysical claims; 5) There are atheist critiques of all religion, and with it faith itself.
My present perspective is represented by (2) and (5). But I have embraced all five of them in my intellectual journey from believer to atheist. So, being the pragmatist that I am, let me introduce just a few selected Christian works on biblical issues that should shake most evangelicals, Calvinists, and presuppositionalists to the core, representative of (1) above.
According to the famous Whitney Houston song, the greatest love of all is to love oneself. Travelling back in time long before Grammy awards were handed out, we find that Jesus, (according to the Gospel of John), had a different idea:
“Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13 (NIV)
The Apostle Paul (not-surprisingly) had his
own take on it:
On Facebook I had placed this quote from Aldous Huxley: "The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence." Wes Skolits commented: "What evidence does he have for *that*? methinks he overstates." Not to be outdone my Christian philosopher friend, Dr. James Sennett, sarcastically commented: "Don't question, Wes. Just believe." Whether this is an rhetorical overstatement or not, it is both shallow and stupid not the see the evidence for Huxley's claim. Anyone want to help them out? I've linked this post to their comments.
“God said it. I believe it. That settles it!”
Christian bumper sticker
“All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell... And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”
Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) member of the House Science Committee
“In this respect fundamentalism has demonic traits. It destroys the humble honesty of the search for truth, it splits the conscience of its thoughtful adherents, and it makes them fanatical because they are forced to suppress elements of truth of which they are dimly aware.”
Paul Tillich
I would like to present a few thoughts on the marked difference between the fundamentalist view of truth and the scientific pursuit of truth.
Which of the following names have objective credence in historical reality?
A.
Abraham
B.
Moses
C.
Jesus
D.
Polyphemus (
The Cyclopes in Homer’s Odyssey)
Christian apologists will find themselves relying of on faith, theological dogmas and outright denials as they attempt to deal with the following facts.
Plus (to further prove my case) I have then listed 295 sacred Jewish and Christian texts of which the bulk of these are Jewish works which were produced at the very time the Jesus myth was emerging. While the Jews could only present their God in terms of past events, Christianity quickly learned that miraculous present events won converts.
Of this debate Dr. Hector Avalos said to David Marshall: "I’ve seen your debate with Carrier, in which you were clearly outmatched intellectually, theologicaly, historically, and scientifically." Having seen it myself I agree.
“Today, we bring your attention to another attack on Christian education. A Christian K–12 school in South Carolina, with dedicated and highly qualified Christian teachers, has come under vicious attack by atheists. Why? Because one of its instructors, a fourth-grade teacher, tested her children about biblical creation, science, and dinosaurs (using AiG resources), and she has become (in) famous on many atheist websites and blogs.” “Knowing The Truth” with Pastor Kevin Boling 
I suppose we should not be surprised that women fare badly in a religion in which penises play a prominent role.
“What we need is a religion that is not only right where we are right, but right where we are wrong.” G.K. Chestertongives us a clear model for moving forward in honest, truth-seeking relationships across the religious divide.
I confess.
Campbell challenged my comparison of the Jesus resurrection stories to the reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Medjugorje, a town in what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina. Since 1981, millions of people have reported having all sorts of visionary and other types of miraculous experiences there.
This book seeks to help readers view religion from an outside perspective, to better understand the irrationality of believing in one god (or set of gods) over all others. And it encourages believers to apply the skepticism they have toward other religions to their own. LINK.