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"[size=16pt]But That's the Old Testament[/size]!"
2000

Source: http://freethought.mbdojo.com/butthatstheoldtest.html

I constantly get this phrase thrown at me. It seems that Christians are very quick to disown 90% of their "perfect" Word of God, as if they would cut out the Old Testament if they could, and use only the New Testament.

Christians always use this excuse to distance themselves from the heartless brutality of the killing of women and children at the hands of Moses, Joshua, David, etc., and yet they are sure quick to whip out Old Testament laws when it is convenient for them to do so. When the time comes for fire and brimstone, they'll quote from Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Numbers and Judges; but when the Freethinker brings up all the genocide and cruel inhumanity contained in those books, well, then they back off and say: "That's the Old Testament. Jesus came to bring the New Covenant."

When they wish to heap upon us the 10 Commandments, the Creation Story in Genesis that they want to force into our schools, Noah and his Big Boat, the Wisdom of Solomon (well, he DID have 700 wives and 300 concubines), or ask us to swallow Jonah and his Whale, they will pull out their bibles and open up right to the appropriate Old Testament verse. But when we complain about the cruelty and irrationality of Moses, the infinite cruelty of the Plagues of Egypt and the Pharaoh who was intentionally hardened by God, the butcher Joshua, the criminal David and his murderous raids, Saul the Terrible and the murder of the Amalekites and the hewing of the captured king, they say "Well, that's the Old Testament."

Wait a minute, we are talking about THE Bible here. We are talking about the one and only God that the Christians worship, aren't we? Are there two bibles, two gods?

What these Christians are doing is arguing for something that they claim NOT to believe in, namely "moral relativism": they are saying that morality is not fixed, and changes over time as humanity changes. Go figure,

Exactly how do they do this? How do they create two bibles from the one? They say things like: "Jesus said he came to fulfill the law-- the old law passed away." I think what has happened here is that some ministers have intentionally misunderstood the book of Hebrews. It says: "For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law." (Hebrews 7:12) The laws changed, not passed away. What changed was the need for a daily animal sacrifice (Hebrews 7:27-28). That is what the New Covenant was-- Jesus was a "human sacrifice" for the forgiveness sin, replacing the Old Covenant of sacrificing burnt offerings-- slaughtered animals-- for sins. (Hebrews 8:13). See also all of Chapter 9 of Hebrews, which describes the Old Covenant of burnt offerings, and Chapter 10 which describes how the New Covenant replaces the Old for the purging of sins. THAT is what the New Covenant is all about-- it means that Christians do not have to put on the butcher's apron and slaughter goats. That's what was changed. If the Christians are right about the "old laws passing away", then we could do away with the 10 Commandments, couldn't we? The "New Covenant" does not release Christians from the killing of homosexuals, or witches, blasphemers and the worshippers of other gods either. The leaders of both the Catholic and Protestant Churches knew this when they murdered hundreds of thousands of people just a few hundred years ago.

[b] The next time some Christian tells you to live by the 10 Commandments, tell them: But that is the Old Testament. The 10 Commandments have been replaced by Jesus' new rules to live by:

Resist not evil. (Let evil take over the country, the world, I suppose?)
Love thine enemies. (What Christian ever did this? Is this even possible?) (Matthew 5:44)
Pray in secret, do not let men see you pray. (Matthew 6:1-7)
Marrying a divorced woman is adultery (carrying the death penalty). (Matthew 5:32)
Don't plan for the future. (Matthew 6:34)
Don't save money. (Matthew 6:19-20)
Don't become wealthy. (Mark 10:21-25)
Sell everything you have and give it to the poor. (Luke 12:33)
Don't work to obtain food. (John 6:27)
Don't have sexual urges. (Matthew 5:28)
Make people want to persecute you. (Matthew 5:11)
Let everyone know you are better than the rest. (Matthew 5:13-16)
Take money from those who have no savings and give it to rich investors. (Luke 19:23-26)
If someone steals from you, don't try to get it back. (Luke 6:30)
If someone hits you, invite them to do it again. (Matthew 5:39)
If you lose a lawsuit, give more than the judgment. (Matthew 5:40)
If someone forces you to walk a mile, walk two miles. (Matthew 5:41)
If anyone asks you for anything, give it to them without question. (Matthew 5:42).
"Whosoever shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men to do so, shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 5:19
[/b]


Are any of these ridiculous sayings wise? Is it possible to extract the least bit of common sense from them? Is this what you would teach to your own children?

When Christians throw up the excuse "But that's the Old Testament", I ask: "What do you mean, it's the Old Testament?" Christians say "Well, it was different in those days, " All right then-- how? How was it different, so that cruel wars of extermination and the slaughter of innocent children were perfectly acceptable to Christians? Did people value their lives less in those days? The 50,070 who were killed by God for looking into the Ark of the Covenant, the 70,000 innocent men whom God killed because Joseph chose 3 days of pestilence, the hundreds of innocent townspeople murdered by David during his thieving "raids" in Gath, the tens of thousands of children and babies butchered by Moses, Joshua and Saul, and of course, the 42 little children whom God killed for mocking one of his prophets. Did they value their lives less than we do today?

[b] Remember that Jesus said "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I come not to destroy, but to fulfill." Therefore, Jesus came to fulfill Old Testament Law, such as:

Ex. 22:20 He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed.
Lev. 24:16 And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death.
Ex. 31:15 Whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.
Ex. 21:15 He that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death.
Ex. 21:17 He that curseth his father or his mother, shall surely be put to death.
Ex. 22:19 Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death.
Lev. 20:13 If a man lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death.
Lev. 20:10 And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, the adulterer
and the adulteress shall be put to death.
Ex. 22:18 Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live
1 Sam 15:23 For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft (so much for the American Revolution).
Mal. 2:1-4 And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you. If you will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name,, behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces. (Will Jesus do the spreading of the dung??)[/b]

I can understand why Christians would want to divorce the New Testament from the bloody Old Testament. You would have to to be able to maintain any kind of moral rectitude. But honestly, it cannot be done.

The very first chapter of the very first book of the New Testament lists the genealogy of Jesus back to Abraham.

In Matthew Chapter 17, Jesus speaks to Old Testament figures Moses and Elijah, who's figures appeared before him. Moses, the monster who ordered a man's death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath, and who commanded Joshua to enter the Promised Land and leave no one breathing: men, women and children.

Matthew 24:37 is an undeniable link to the brutality of the Old Testament, where Jesus compares his second coming to the destruction of the Great Flood that killed the world's population.

In the New Testament Jesus makes constant references to "scripture". In Matthew 22:29 Jesus says: "You are in error, because you do not know the scriptures, or the power of God." Now, just what were these scriptures that Jesus was making reference to? The New Testament? I don't think so. At the time there was no such thing as a New Testament! There were only the scriptures of bloodthirsty villains like Moses and David. Every reference to "scripture" in the New Testament establishes one more link to the Old Testament. How many times does the New Testament refer to Old Testament "scriptures"? 52 times.

In the New Testament, Abraham is referred to 68 times, the ancient Israelites are mentioned 73 times, Jacob 26 times, Issac 20 times, Elijah 29 times, Isiah 22 times, Noah 8 times, King David is mentioned 58 times. How about this-- the name Mary (not just the Virgin Mary, but ALL Mary's) is mentioned 54 times in the New Testament. The name Moses, on the other hand, appears 80 times! You think these numbers don't establish an important connection? You don't think that Jesus held that the teachings of Moses were important?

How about this. Jesus gives an absolute endorsement of the teachings and laws of Moses. "If you believe Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?" John 5:45

Are you going to sit there and tell me that the New Testament is not inexorably linked in the deepest ways to the Old Testament?

Will any Christian deny that, according to the bible, Jesus is the one and only same personage as the God of the Old Testament? Did Jesus condemn ANY of his father's bloody massacres? No. In Matt 5:48 he says "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:48)

Do you think Jesus would have questioned any of his father's actions, like the many acts of genocide that litter the pages of the Old Testament? No. Remember what Jesus said when he gave the Lord's Prayer to his followers-- "Our Father who art in heaven, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

Do you think Jesus would have ever disobeyed his father's commands, like when he ordered that his servants should "kill everyone that breathes" upon their entry to the Promised Land? No. In John chapter 10 verse 30, Jesus said: "I and the Father are one." Jesus would have been swinging a sword, hacking nonviolent men, women and children to death, right along side of Joshua and his armies of Israelites! Just picture that. Jesus, the Prince of Peace, splitting a small child in two with his blood-drenched sword.

In John 1:1, we read "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." In verse 14, we read: "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." We are told explicitly that Jesus Christ IS THE GOD OF THE OLD TESTAMENT! You probably already accept this. But, by logical extension, you must also accept therefore that it was Jesus Christ who ordered the Israelites to slaughter millions of defenseless men, women and children in the conquest of Canaan; it was Jesus Christ who killed every firstborn child in Egypt; it was Jesus Christ who ordered king Saul to butcher thousands of children and babies in the genocide of the Amalakites; it was Jesus Christ who ordered the Israelites to capture and mass-rape 32,000 young girls of the Midianite tribe after killing their families; it was Jesus Christ who struck dead 50,000 innocent people at Beshemish for merely looking into the ark of the covenant; it was Jesus Christ who caused the painful asphyxiation of every man, woman, child and animal on the face of the earth during the flood of Noah (with the exception of ; and it was Jesus Christ who condemned every person ever born to a state of eternal suffering, all because 6000 years ago a curious and naive woman ate a piece of fruit. And, of course, it was Jesus Christ who sent 2 bears to chase down 42 little kids and disembowel them for just acting like kids (see What's So Bad About Killing Children?)

WWJD?


Source: http://freethought.mbdojo.com/butthatstheoldtest.html

What's So Bad About Killing Children?
2004

Source: http://freethought.mbdojo.com/killchildren.html


Imagine you are walking down the street, minding your own business, and a group of young children come up to you and start yelling loudly at you, calling you "Big Nose, Big Nose!" This angers you, of course. How dare these children mock you! What disrespect! They must have been poorly brought up, you think to yourself. You just happen to be packing an AK-47 fully-automatic assault rifle with you that day. In your mad rage, you open fire into the group of children, killing them all. The air is split by the loud clatter of gunfire, blood flies, the empty cartridge cases rain down upon the ground, and small bodies are shredded in gory chunks. Screams of small boys and girls fill the air-- they are filled with terror as they run left and right, trying to escape your bullets-- but to no avail-- they can't run fast enough. You're able to hit them all. You stand there looking with satisfaction upon the result of your act: piled heaps of small bodies, blood soaked and shredded; the bodies of children who were but moments before happy and carefree, playing in the sunlight.

How outrageous, how horrendous, this example is. It resembles the worst of the tragic modern news stories of multiple homicides in the halls of our public schools. It's a terrible thing to contemplate, and I hope that we never have to hear such a thing on the news again. I even apologize to you for using such violent imagery. But I really wanted to get your attention.

Let's think about this a little further. Is there any way that we can justify this bloodshed? The children in the above example were terribly disrespectful to an adult. They mocked you. They called you "Big Nose". They were defying your authority. Certainly, they would have grown up to be terrible people. The world is better off without them. They were wicked. Isn't there some way we can look at this situation to justify their deaths? Is there any circumstance that can make this mass murder morally acceptable?

But, you say, children are just like that. They tease, they make fun of people. It's just natural for kids to mock, especially when they get into groups. Kids tend to follow the pack, and want to go along with what their friends do. Surely, this is only common sense! Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me, right? You would think this is common sense, right?

Then, gentle reader, please be so kind as to explain to me why God himself, the Loving Father, did just such a deed as this.

Please open your bible to 2 Kings, 2:23-24.

23: And he (Elisha) went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
24: And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them."

Understandably, our nation went into a shock and a long period of mourning after the Columbine shootings, where around dozen high school students were killed. But here, forty-two little children were just dismembered! Picture the red blood on the sharp white teeth of bears; the long claws slashing open their tender young bodies. Picture the pain on their faces. Think of the faces of your own children. What of the feelings of the 42 mothers, and the 42 fathers? Imagine what went through their minds when they first looked upon the torn bodies of their little children. Now imagine the outrage, the horror, if something like this happened today. It is practically unthinkable. One wonders why God would even create these children if he were going to destroy them in so violent a way.

But the Christian spin-doctors tell us that it's okay, and that I'm just taking this story "out of context". How dare I question these verses? How dare I even bring it up? But that is, after all, the job of the Christian apologist: to tell people like me that they've taken the horrible parts of the bible "out of context", and to contrive elaborate excuses explaining why the bible doesn't really mean what it says.

I must be taking it out of context, right? That's the only explanation, isn't it? God would never do something so heartless, so malevolent, would he?. Please, then, tell me what is the context? Read the verses before and after the ones above: read verses 23 and 25. How does the context lessen the horror that these verses convey? These lines shed no light on the atrocity-- they change nothing at all.

I would ask the Christian this: In what context does the slaughtering of children become acceptable? Is there any circumstance in which you can justify this act? If so, what is your definition of morality? How then is morality absolute? Does the bible continue to deserve the label of "The Good Book"? If you still think so, then read the passages to your 6 year old child as a bedtime story. Make no mistake-- 2nd Kings 2:23-24 describes an act of mass murder, perpetrated by God himself, and all the worse for being carried out on children.

The Living Bible translates the event using the words "a gang of young men". The Living Bible is a "feel good" bible which tries to soften up the scriptures. This instance is a good case in point. The Hebrew words "na'ar qatan" are used for "little children". The word used for "children" is na'ar, [5288], which the Strong's Concordance defines as: "(concretely) a boy from the age of infancy to adolescence, also, (by interchangeable of sex), a girl (of similar latitude in age)". The word for "little" is qatan, [6996], which Strong's defines as "diminutive, literally (in quantity, size or number), or figuratively (in age or importance)." What this means is that the Hebrew words used in the original bible verses, "na'ar qatan" absolutely, positively mean "little children". The writers of the Living Bible, in translating "na'ar qatan" as "young men" (and then further coloring the text using the derisive word "gang" are being dishonest. They're trying to take the edge off the story.

The truth is that this is a horrible story found in a horrible book-- one that you would never read to your children. It is a story that is never read aloud in church, a story that priests and ministers would just as well sweep under the carpet. They would get out their scissors and snip it out of every single bible, if they could.

But they can't. They're stuck with it. And to them, it doesn't matter. But this story serves to illustrate that the made-up God of the bible is a heartless monster, full of pride, and devoid of conscience and mercy. So strong is the power of belief, the desire for eternal reward, that Christians are willing to overlook this and the other atrocities in the bible. There is nothing too awful that they would doubt their religious beliefs. They try to twist logic and twist the text to turn this immoral act into a moral one, and to exonerate their God of the blame. Most people ignore this passage, or are unaware of it. It is my task to make sure they become aware of it.

We are told that God is a god of mercy, of compassion. Jesus said that we should strive to be perfect just as our Father in Heaven. But there certainly is no hint of compassion or mercy in this biblical story. It is a story more worthy of a demon, than of God. But they claim that our "human" concept of mercy and justice can't be compared with God's. Then what do those words mean? How can they continue to even say that God is merciful and just? Christians who use this excuse must cease calling God just and merciful, because they are using our "limited human vocabulary".

But before you claim the all-time cop-out phrase: "But that's the Old Testament", and thereby disown 90% of your "perfect Word", please read this.

According to the bible, isn't Jesus the one and only God? Did Jesus condemn any of his father's massacres? No, of course not. In Matt 5:48 he says "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:48) I guess sending bears to tear apart 42 little children is "perfect" in Jesus' eyes. I think it's as far from perfect as Hitler.

In John 1:1, we read "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." In verse 14, we read: "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." We are told explicitly that Jesus Christ IS THE GOD OF THE OLD TESTAMENT! But if you're a Christian, you probably already accept this. Therefore, by logical extension, you must also accept that it was Jesus Christ who sent two bears to chase down forty-two little kids and tear them limb from limb for just acting like kids. "What Would Jesus Do?"

So what does it all mean? It means that the loving God that Christians pretend to believe in is not the one portrayed in their own bible. Modern Christians have re-created the biblical God in their own, humanistic image. But of course they don't want to admit this. Killing children is wrong now, and it was wrong 2000 years ago. It is wrong if some deranged serial killer does it, and it is wrong in the pages of the bible. This kind of thinking is called moral consistency. They should try it sometime.

One more question for you to ponder, if you've gotten this far. As grisly as it is, I would like you to consider the situation one more time. Here it is: A representative of God is walking up a hill into a city, and he is mocked by little children-- and God slaughters 42 of them.

Under the same circumstances, what would a devil have done? Would he have done anything differently?

Think about that.

Source: http://freethought.mbdojo.com/killchildren.html

Miracles and Disasters
The Uselessness of Prayer
2000

Source: http://freethought.mbdojo.com/miracles.html

Miracles

"Miracle" is one of the most overused and misunderstood words among the religiously-minded. They constantly use the phrase to prop up their belief system (which apparently needs it from time to time). It is commonly used as evidence of the effectiveness of prayers, attached after the fact to any event that has a positive outcome.

It is also used, to the point of nausea, by the media. They are quick to pin the word onto any event, in order to pander to the religious majority and bolster their ratings. I also suspect that it is used as a tool of the conservative media-- Christian owners of televison networks and producers of programs-- to further the impression of the legitimacy of miracles and the efficacy of prayer. Television news programs, when covering a story about a medical condition or an airplane crash, are almost guaranteed to slip in the word miracle at some point in the program. The word has been so overused in the media that it has lost all meaning.

What is a miracle, in the religious sense? It is an event that defies natural law. It is an event that cannot be explained by any natural means. A miracle happens when nature is taken outside of her natural course. The miraculous is the impossible.

How can you determine if something is a miracle? Ask the following question: Is there any way to explain the event using natural means? If so, then by definition it is not a miracle. Just because something is unlikely, and not fully understood, that does not mean that it is supernatural.

Unlikely things happen every day. But the improbable is not the impossible. If something is possible, then it cannot be a miracle.

A person who suddenly recovers from an illness has not experienced a miracle. Why? Because it is known that illness do go away by themselves. Cancer has a certain known rate of spontaneous remission. Most people take traditional medicine, in addition to praying, but when they recover from the illness they invariably assign the cause of their cure soley to their prayers. For example, some parents, when in the hospital having a premature baby, pray that the birth will turn out all right. The doctor and hospital staff, trained and experienced in these situations, with millions of dollars worth of the latest medical technology at their disposal, work hard to make sure that the baby is safely delivered and survives. Yet when everything turns out all right, the religious parents turn their backs on medical science and give the praise to their God and to their faith (and to themselves for praying), instead of where it really belongs.

Consider that before the advent of current medical technology, a hundred years ago, you could pray until your lips fell off, and the likelihood of a premature baby's survival was next to zero. If you bore children in the 1700's or 1800's, the probability was that you would lose most of them before they reached maturity. Why did God suddenly take interest in saving babies' lives (coincidentally at the same time that mankind was able to save them)? How about this as an answer: a god has nothing to do with it!

A heart transplant, sometimes referred to as a "medical miracle", is not a miracle. It is a truly amazing achievement of human intelligence, and it is fully understood by those who perform it. It is not a mystery. To call it a miracle is an insult to the pioneers of medicine who brought about this achievement.

What would be a real miracle? If someone had a missing limb and then suddenly grew it back-- that would defy natural explanation. If we have a documented case of a human subject who is dead, dead beyond normal recovery, dead for several days, being brought back to life-- that would be a miracle. Walking on water and changing water into wine are also examples of things that would be miracles, if they ever really happened.

I for one would sincerely appreciate it if people refrained from using the word miracle to describe an event that is more logically explained through natural means.

Good things happen in life (and so do bad things), regardless if one prays or not. The believer and the non-believer alike share equal risk in the world, and both have equal chances of good things happening to them. The world shows itself to be random, and that prayer has no influence on anything.

People still claim that prayer aids in healing, despite several important studies that show it does not.

"I don't think there's any doubt that people derive enormous comfort from religion, and they should continue to do that," said Dr. Richard Sloan, researcher at Columbia University in New York, who was one of several researchers working on a study that concluded that faith plays no role in healing. "What they shouldn't expect is that religious activity is going to promote their health." The study also concluded that previous studies connecting prayer and healing were not valid, and also discourages doctors from suggesting prayer as an alternative to medical treatment. "If physicians suggest, either directly or even implicitly, that faith and religious activity are associated with health," Sloan said, "then they indirectly suggest the opposite -- which is that the disease and illness are associated with insufficient faith and insufficient devotion."

Another form of populist miracle is when people claim to have seen Jesus or the Virgin Mary. Of course, if this were in fact true, that would constitute a miracle. But just because someone says something, must it be considered true? People have made claims for just about everything. Should I believe someone who says they have seen Elvis at the supermarket? I do not automatically assume that they are lying. I think it is more likely that they're mistaken, or possibly they have experienced a mental aberration. Is there a chance that they really DID see Elvis? Maybe, but it's a vanishingly small chance. Now what's more important is to attempt to substantiate the claim. They would have to substantiate the claim by proving that the body in the grave of Elvis Presley is not his. The burden of proof is on the people to establish that they saw Elvis, or Jesus, not on the skeptics to prove that they didn't. I cannot prove that they did not really see Elvis, or Jesus. But I don't have to. They have to prove that they did.

The exact same thing goes for all supernatural claims. I do not say that I know for a fact that it is impossible. I am able to be convinced, but the quality of the evidence must be very high and unambiguous. And the burden of proof is on the person making the claim to substantiate it-- not on me to disprove it. As it stands now, considering the amount of evidence in favor of miracles, and the counter-evidence of fakery and error, that the chances of miracles actually happening is virtually zero.

The Catholic Church makes claims of miracles. There are many specific events for which it is claimed that miracles are taking place. Statues that weep, or bleed, or centuries old blood that transforms from solid to liquid form and then back again, or miraculous images that appear on walls, floors, etc. But other non-Catholic Christians do not accept the truth of these claims. When was the last time you heard of a Protestant seeing the image of the Virgin Mary on the back of a road sign, or the face of Jesus on a tortilla?



Disasters

"When disaster comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it?" Amos 3:6

Let's move on to disasters. Disasters happen just as often in the US. as in countries that do not practice Christianity-- this country is not saved from them just because of the predominant belief system.

Some people claim that there are more disasters now than in the past, and that this indicates the Second Coming. But is this the truth? El Nino and La Nina make it appear that we have more water related disasters like floods and droughts, but those weather systems are long term patterns that man has known about for hundreds of years. The reoccurrence of El Nino is blamed for the destruction of the ancient Central American civilizations such as the Maya.

Are there more disasters now? Or are there more television shows about disasters now? Think about that. All these television shows feature the same film footage over and over again from the past thirty years, and this might give the appearance that there are more disasters now, especially to someone who would like to think so.

Think about this, many natural disasters are predictable. Earthquakes are now somewhat predictable, moreso than in the past, (this science still needs time to perfect itself), and certainly severe storms that produce hurricanes and and tornadoes are predictable at least several days in advance; dangerous asteroid and comet impacts are predictable years in advance. Here comes the question, if these are all acts of God, then how come we can predict them? Should God's actions be predictable? If we can predict them, and warn people, then people can prepare against the disaster or leave the area, thereby escaping God's wrath. The predictability of natural disasters is evidence that they are of no divine origin.

"Whatever the natural cause, sin is the true cause of all earthquakes."
John Wesley (1703-1791) English evangelist, founder of Methodism

John Wesley was clearly a fool.

Diseases are in the same category. It used to be said that God sent plagues on man. Why has He gotten out of the plague business? He used to use diseases like polio, cholera, bubonic plague, typhoid, etc. But Man has created cures and vaccines for these. Some religions to this day do not allow their members to take vaccines or visit doctors, I guess so that God can have his way with them,

"Vaccination is a direct violation of the everlasting covenant that God made with Noah after the flood. Vaccination never saved human life. It does not prevent smallpox."
"The Golden Age," Feb. 4, 1931 (Golden Age is a predecessor to "Awake" a Jehovah’s Witnesses publication)

"Thinking people would rather have smallpox than vaccination, because the latter sows seeds of syphilis, cancers, eczema, erysipelas, scrofula, consumption, even leprosy and many other loathsome affections. Hence the practice of vaccinations is a crime, an outrage, and a delusion."
"Golden Age" (1/5/29, p. 502)

Most people are vaccinated. But why would any Christian want to deprive God of His ability to smite them with some crippling disease? Some people say that aids is a new plague on Man from God. But then why does it strike innocent people, and helpless children? And what happens when we find the cure for aids? We will rob God of one more of his weapons.

Martin Luther, founder of the Protestant Reformation, thought that diseases were caused by "devils"--

"Idiots, the lame, the blind, the dumb, are men in whom the devils have established themselves: and all the physicians who heal these infirmities, as though they proceeded from natural causes, are ignorant blockheads." Martin Luther (1483-1546)

Was he right? No. Martin Luther was the ignorant blockhead.

God used to be in the famine business too. But now, a humanistic country like the United States can airlift thousands of pounds of food to a starving nation and save many of them. (Many of these food suppliers are Christian groups, but one must ask: why are they deliberately thwarting God's will?) But apparently we haven't quite forced God out of the famine business; due to our lack of effectiveness in distributing food, thousands of innocent children still die every single day of starvation.

This brings to my mind the Christian practice of praying before meals, thanking God for the food. What these Christians are unwittingly doing is blaming God for the millions of starving children. For if you thank God for the food on your table, you are claiming that God is responsible for making the food available. If God is therefore responsible for putting the food on your table, He must be responsible for withholding the food from someone else's table. He either has everything to do with it, or nothing to do with it. The next time you "say grace" before a meal, think about the small, thin, brown-skinned children in Africa who haven't eaten in a week, who are completely innocent of any crime, and remember that God is directly responsible for their condition, and can easily relieve all of their suffering. Why doesn't He? He puts food on your table. He fed the Israelites by dropping manna from heaven, even though they were continually unfaithful to Him. Remember to thank the Almighty for his callous, cruel treatment of the innocent children as you enjoy your steak. Or, maybe now you can realize that the events of the world are random, and that no evidence for god exists.

As Man's power to control the environment increases, the powers assigned to the gods decrease.

There was a controversy over the lightning rod between Benjamin Franklin and the Church. Franklin was considered heretical for his invention of the lightning rod, which prevented buildings from being destroyed by lightning strikes.

It seems that the Church thought that putting a lightning rod on your building, and saving it from destruction, was an attempt to thwart God's will. The Church forbade the use of the lightning rod on churches for decades after its invention, even though churches, because of their tall spires, were the tallest buildings in the towns and therefore the ones most frequently struck by lightning. These lightning strikes caused extensive damage, fires, total destruction and hundreds of deaths. To be a bell ringer in the 18th Century was the most dangerous job in the world. However, the only thing the priests did was to pray harder and consecrate their bells. But the destruction and death continued, and the people said: "Why would God destroy his own consecrated, holy temples? Why would he kill his own servants? Or, why would he allow Satan to do so?"

As an aside, I have always thought that blaming the devil for these things was giving far too much power to him. In the bible, the devil never used natural disasters-- only God did. In fact, in the bible there is no record of the devil ever killing anyone! But there are millions of deaths brought about by the direct action of God. To kill people, God used flood, fire, famine, disease, earthquake, hailstones, animals, human warriors, etc.

In any case, when the first churches started using lightning rods about 20 years after Franklin invented them, all the lightning disasters stopped at once. That is very interesting, and deserves some serious thought by any believer. Was God suddenly stripped of His power to destroy with lightning? Or did He never have this power? Or is there no god at all?

Every time that science discovers a way to prevent or alleviate natural disasters, or cure disease, God is robbed of another of His heavenly weapons. What does this say about the real nature of these events, and about the supposed power of god?

Even now, tornadoes frequently destroy churches in the Bible Belt. Why? If God was going to destroy something, why not a Freethought Hall full of atheists? Or a Jewish temple? Or a mosque full of Muslims? Or a maximum security prison full of murderers? What these events show is that natural disasters are just as likely to strike a good man as a bad man, and just as likely to strike the believer as the unbeliever. It shows that natural disasters are completely random, without cause or reason.

"God is going to judge the entertainment industry." The Rev. Pat Robertson, Founder of the 700 Club & Christian Coalition, uttered this ignorant statement regarding the fire that devastated Universal Studios. Note that the good Reverend was strangely silent when fire destroyed his own radio station, WNTR [4-24-96]. This is a classic example of how people see what they want to see, and ignore what does not fit their beliefs.

If God uses tornadoes, then how come he is limited to a small geographical region? Why must tornadoes occur in flat, arid regions? How come the Tornado Belt just happens to coincide with the Bible Belt, the most religious region on earth? How come we don't hear about tornadoes in New York, that den of sin? Or in Oregon? Or in Sweden? Is God limited to using tornadoes only where the physical conditions permit them? Or is a better explanation the fact that tornadoes are purely natural occurrences that only happen under certain conditions generated in a specific region, and that god is a myth?

The religious have claimed that the End Times are coming, they have claimed this over and over for the last two thousand years. Jesus himself said that there were men standing there listening to him who would still be alive when he came back. But that did not happen. When we approached the year 2000, people panicked and thought the world was ending, it came and went. Now, like always, they say they have re-calculated the end, and now it will be 2001. When that comes and goes, then it will be some other date, I am sure.

And there are many natural disasters-- hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, earthquakes, mudslides, droughts, floods, famines, disease, airplane crashes, etc. Need I go on? What happens when these bad things occur? People pray to God for assistance. Don't they think that He already knows what's going on? And if people survive these catastrophes, they thank God that He protected them. They think that their prayers did good, even though believers and nonbelievers stood the same chance of surviving or dying.

But people never blame God for these acts of extreme violence. A plane crashes in a field, and even though 99 people died, people will still say: "Thank God two survived!" Maybe they should have said: "Thank you for killing only 99!" People forget that if their God is all-powerful and all-knowing as they believe, He knew that the plane crash was going to happen, had the power to prevent it, and failed to do so. You might go so far as to say that He created the conditions under which the plane crashed, and therefore He crashed the plane Himself deliberately. In either case it's the same: He had the power to prevent it (presumably without effort). One might avoid these moral and logical difficulties by considering the more rational conclusion that the plane crash was simply an accident based upon mechanical failure or weather conditions, and that the reason that God did not prevent the accident is because no such being exists.

If this world, looking as random as it does, has a God in it, then what would it look like in my scenario where there is no god? Would it look even more random? Is it possible that the world could look more random? How could you tell the difference between a world where random natural disasters and occasional fortunate events occur from one in which God carelessly plays with peoples lives-- handing out tragedies to good people, and occasionally rewarding bad people with good fortune? Is there any difference?

Why, as an atheist, should I enjoy a better life than millions of devout believers? Why should I live comfortably, in my own home, with my healthy wife and children, with plenty of food, stability, all of our needs met, no major difficulties-- when there are millions of pious believers who are starving and can't keep a roof over their heads? Why should I be rewarded for my disbelief, and for writing all of these atheistic essays? Just one more thing to think about.


The Pointlessness of Prayer

Prayer simply does not work. Thousands of prayers every day are uttered in vain up into the cold and empty sky. The old adage "God helps those who help themselves" does NOT appear in the bible. It was said by Ben Franklin, in Poor Richard's Almanac. Contrary to the popular modern interpretation (that God will give assistance to those who put forth an effort for themselves) Franklin meant that unless you do it yourself, it's not going to get done. He also stated the same concept in another adage: "In this world, men are not saved by faith, but by the lack of it". The second axiom says approximately the same thing as the first-- that if you believe that a supernatural power is watching over you, then you will not take care of yourself. Robert G. Ingersoll said that "Hands that help are better than lips that pray." He also wrote: "It may be that ministers really think that their prayers do good, and it may be that frogs imagine that their croaking brings spring."

Nowadays, people use the adage "God helps those who help themselves" as an excuse to explain why God doesn't intervene more often on people's behalf. It's used as an excuse to absolve God of the blame for millions of human tragedies. But as I have shown, that was not it's original meaning.

If the adage "God helps those who help themselves" is used in the way modern Christians use it, then what about those who are helpless? I guess they're just out of luck.

Christians say that "God answers all prayers, but sometimes the answer is no". Or else they will say: "God answers prayers three ways; yes, no and wait." But these excuses as to why God does not answer prayer are contradictory to scripture. John 16:23 has Jesus saying "I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name." In Matthew 21:22, Jesus tells his followers: "If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer." And Mark 11:24 says the same. Matthew 7:7 continues the bribery by attributing this unfulfillable statement to Jesus: "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you", and so does Luke in 11:9. How does this compare to reality?

Matthew 18:19 goes further by saying: "Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven." Can anything be more absurdly false than this? Honest Christians know these verses are false. How many times have people come together in prayer, for the safety of a child who has fallen down a well, or for the life of a public figure who has been shot, or the victim of an accident, only to have the subject of their prayers die anyway? Prayer simply does not work.

As an aside, why should the Christian bother praying for the victim of accident or the terminally ill? Why pray for the child who has been struck by a car? If the Christian was really filled with love, then they would pray not for life, but for death-- so that the victim could leave this temporary, earthly life and move on to the paradise of heaven. The Christian would especially pray for the deaths of the children and babies, for they have not had the opportunity to sin, and therefore an early death would assure them a spot in heaven (unless you are one of those Christians who believe that unbaptized babies are sent to hell). In any case, how could prayer change any of this, if it is the Will of God?

It is said that God has a Divine Plan, and that he knows all things from the beginning of time until the end. If this is so, and if the letters of Paul to the Romans and Ephesians are true (claiming that the lives of Christians are ruled by Predestination), then it is not possible for humans to change the events in their lives by praying-- the Divine Plan is unchangeable. Say that you pray for your mother to survive an illness. If she dies, then you will readily admit that it was God's Will. If she lives, then you confidently claim that God answered your prayers. But this is faulty logic on the part of believers-- it must be one way or the other. Praying is begging.

Some Christians interpret failed prayer as an indication that there is something wrong with themselves-- their level of faith, their behavior, their inner thoughts. They think they need to "pray harder". This is the victims blaming themselves. True believers don't consider the possibility that they might be praying to the cold, uncaring clouds and the deaf winds.

Most Christians make themselves forget all those failed prayers, and try to focus on those few rare moments when it seemed like their prayers were actually answered. But if they would stop and think for a moment, they would realized that good things happen anyway, all the time. Good things happen to me, an atheist, and I don't pray. In respect to good and bad happenings, there is no difference between the lives of believers and nonbelievers. Life is random, and praying is talking to yourself.

There is something seriously wrong with praying. Think of the arrogance and conceit involved, that the order of the universe should be changed because you want it to be! Be honest. You know that prayer doesn't work. You know you are fooling yourself with magical conceit.

No one would dare to pray to be carried to New York. No one would pray to have a house painted, or a suit made. If you want to go to New York, you get a ticket. If you want your house painted, you call a house painter. If you want to have a suit made, you go to someone who knows how to make it. Anyone who would pray to God to go to New York, or to paint his house, or to make him a suit, would be called a fool, or insane. So why shouldn't we consider people who pray for other things as foolish or insane? If human beings could get what they wanted by praying for it, would there be so many people who are poor, sick, miserable and wretched?

Nature is a blind, random force that rides over humanity the same way as it rides over rocks. It feels nothing, even though the believers try to endow it with pity and call it a god. But it crushes tender children in the same way that it crushes mountains. Nature cannot pity, cannot spare, cannot turn aside, because it is powerless to do so. To pray is useless and foolish.

When people are caught in an earthquake, they pray to God for him to cease the violence and spare them, but he does not. When a mudslide buried a schoolhouse full of children, they prayed within for air, for life, but God sent none. When an airplane plunges to earth, the passengers, in their last minutes of life, pray for God's hand to reach down and suspend the plane, but no help comes. When people are trapped in a burning building, their prayers rise up with the black smoke, and are just as useless in preserving their lives. When parents pray for the life of their sick child, they might as well re-direct their breath toward comforting the child, instead of begging in vain to the ceiling.

There are many true believers who, instead of empowering themselves towards fulfilling their own needs, abandon their own efforts in favor of illusory divine assistance. Does this arise from a profound lack of self-esteem, and perceived unworthiness and powerlessness? Christianity continuously promotes this idea of the "powerlessness of Man in the face of God", convincing people to admit to themselves that they are able to do nothing on their own. Religion denigrates the use of reason, and the concepts of self-reliance and personal responsibility.

Source: http://freethought.mbdojo.com/miracles.html


See also:
Science - 7 God - 0:
The Real Score In The Case Of The McCaughey Septuplets

To what extend would material progress and the free-market exist if "Thou shalt NOT covet" was put into practice worldwide?

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery,
None but ourselves can free our mind.

How about divine protection of stopping the gas leaking altogether? That would have spared the House Of God going up in flames.

Great podcast series of bible stories:

http://reasonworks.com/BS%20Your%20Parents%20Never%20Taught%20You.html

Enjoy

Proofs for the Nonexistence of God
2000

Source: http://freethought.mbdojo.com/disproof1.html


It is often claimed by believers, and sometimes by nonbelievers as well, that we can't prove the nonexistence of God. While the inability to disprove a claim is true in some cases, disproof can be achieved by a logical method. For instance, if a claim is specific enough (supplying enough detail), we can examine those details, and we can determine that the claim is false if the description of it contradicts itself.

For example, if someone claimed he had discovered a "square circle", we could examine the claim through logic, without ever having to view the circle. Both circles and squares are well-defined in geometry. We know that it is a tenet of geometry that circles have no angles. Therefore it is clear that there can be no such thing as a square circle, because the description refutes itself.

The idea of the biblical God can be destroyed in a similar manner.

It is claimed that the God of the bible is omnipotent (all-powerful), omnipresent (in all places at the same time), omniscient (He knows everything), and omnibenevolent (He only does things that are all good). As you shall soon see, not only are these concepts utterly impossible from a logical standpoint, but for the God of the Judeo-Christian bible, they are mutually exclusive with each other, and therefore no such being as the Christian God can possibly exist. Before I get to the logic behind these statements, first you should know that each of those concepts is refuted in the bible. That's right. The bible, our ONLY source of information about God, does not support these strange notions.

Omnipotence:

The bible says "With God, all things are possible." But there are instances in the bible where God cannot in fact do everything. In Judges 1:19 we read: "And the Lord was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron." So, if you want to triumph over God, get yourselves some chariots of iron-- that's the way.

Can God destroy the Devil? Then why doesn't He? If God is the most compassionate of any entity, then why doesn't He release people from the hell that He created, the hell that He sent people to? Is it because He is unable to do so? Or unwilling? Or not completely merciful?

Epicurus posed the following problem in the Second Century BCE.

Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot.
Or he can, but does not want to.
Or he cannot, and does not want to.

If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent.
If he can, but does not want to, then he is wicked.
If he neither can, nor wants to, he is both powerless and wicked.



If He is all powerful, why is He unable to release humanity from the penalty of Original Sin? If you say that He is able to, but that He chooses not to, then how can you claim that He is all-good? Or the most compassionate? If He were all-powerful and all-good, He would have simply erased the Original Sin, and let people be judged on their own actions, not those of someone they never knew. He would have simply eliminated Adam and Eve, and started again (and this time, take the Tree out of the Garden), thus releasing all the other people who would ever live from the sin supposedly committed by the first man and woman.

Why did God need to "rest" on the 7th day? Did He grow fatigued? Did He have a body that got tired? What did He do on the 8th day? How was it different than what He did on the 7th day? Why would someone who is "all-powerful" need to "rest"? He wouldn't. Some suggest that he simply "ceased" what he was doing. But the bible does not say "And on the 7th day the Lord ceased" or "was finished". It says he "rested". Does it mean that he abstained from all activity? Could that even be possible for God, without whose constant attention the world would cease?


Omnipresence:

Christians claim that there God is everywhere, all places, at the same time. He fills the universe with his presence. But there are biblical passages which refute this bizarre notion. Let us first consider Deuteronomy 23:12-14.

"Thou shalt have a place also without the camp, whither thou shalt go forth abroad:
And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee:
For the LORD thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy: that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee."

Christians should be embarrassed that this absurd passage is in their holy book. It is one of the most absurd things I have ever had the misfortune to read. It is apparent that God is too easily offended by a natural process which he knows all humans are subject to, even Jesus Christ. He himself designed the process, as claimed by his believers. Yet the Almighty seems awful squeamish-- perhaps he is afraid he might step in something.

A walking god? But He was omnipresent, everywhere anyway, even in the "place abroad" where they "eased themselves". Why must God have to walk anywhere? It claims that He walked in the camp to a) "deliver thee" and b) "to give up thine enemies before thee". Was He unable to do these things from any other place? Was He unable to do them from His Kingdom of Heaven? Walking somewhere explicitly implies a localized physical presence. It implies feet. It implies physical locomotion. In implies being in one place, and not in any other, and therefore going from where you are to where you are not. This problem is unavoidable, and it contradicts the idea of an omnipresent god.

God, in the form of Jesus, said to "love thine enemies". But here, in the form of God the Father, he is going to "give up thine enemies before thee." Why this change in an unchanging God?

Now let us look at Exodus 33:20-23

"And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen."

This biblical passage is as absurd as the last one. This one implies body parts for God, a physical presence. A front part and a back part. Some parts of him could be seen safely, others could not. His rump was safe to look at, but his face was not. Personally, I'd rather see his face. These verses not only deny His omnipresence, they impose physical limitations on him and his attributes. God should not have to walk anywhere-- He should not have to go from one place to another if He is in all places at once. This shows that the ancient Hebrews thought that their god looked exactly like them, with a male face, body, and hands.

If you could not see His face and live, then it was by His choice, for He is "omnipotent" and with Him "all things are possible." Therefore, if you see His face and expire, it is because he wanted it to be so, and therefore it is hardly appropriate to call Him omnibenevolent, or "all-good".

In addition, this verse is contradicted by other bible passages. Some men did see his face and live,

* Genesis 32:30 "For I have seen God face to face."
* Exodus 33:11 "And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend."
* Isaiah 6:1 "In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple."
* Job 42:5 "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee."

Has anyone seen Him and lived? Or not? It says both. Both statements can't be true.

There is another passage in the Old Testament in which the Lord has to "come down" to a city in order to see it. Why should he have to do this? The mere inclusion of passages like these belittle the god of the Israelites.

Now let's examine Genesis 3:8-10.

"And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself."

Here again we have a "Walking God", going from one place where He is to another place where he is not. Here we see Him not being able to find Adam and Eve who were able to hide from Him. He could not have been in all places at once, if this verse be true. Some Christians use the excuse that God was playing some "hide and seek" game with Adam, even claiming that this passage shows God's "sense of humor". God's sense of humor! Tell that to the 42 children he slaughtered for making fun of one of His prophets. The idea that God was playing some kind of "hide and seek" is rather pathetic, especially considering the magnitude of the judgment God was about to pass upon Humanity; such an explanation is inconsistent with His character. Adam and Eve heard His voice and THEN hid themselves, was God talking to himself while he walked in the garden? Or was He talking to some of those "other gods" that the bible eludes to?

If God is omnipresent, he would not have to walk anywhere. The same for if he is omnipotent. If he was omniscient he would not have had to ask their whereabouts.

If God was omnipresent (and omnibenevolent), why then did He not appear in ALL nations equally at once? Why did He only appear to the Jews? Why was He their tribal god?

Omniscience:

There are real problems with this idea. If God is omniscient, he should NEVER change his mind. Think about that carefully. How could someone who knows the future change his mind? Changing his mind means that he did not know what he was going to do or what was going to happen, and shows his uncertainty. But the bible is full of instances where God changes his mind. For example, first is Exodus 32:14. After the incident when God's Chosen People worshipped the Golden Calf, God decided that He would destroy them all, and raise up some other nation, but Moses begged and pleaded on their behalf, "and the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people." Now consider this for a moment. God knows all things, past and present, including His own future decisions. Therefore, did He really intend to destroy the Israelites? Or did He just bear false witness?

There is also Jonah 3:10 ". . . and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not." If He "did it not", then He knew from the beginning that He would not do it, and if He told someone that He was going to do it, then He was lying.

Of course, the most spectacular instance of God flip-flopping on an issue is when He changed His mind about Humanity, and killed everyone on the planet with a Great Flood. Genesis 6:6,7-- "And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth . . . And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth . . . for it repenteth me that I have made him." But when He created humans, He saw that it was good. If he saw that it was good, then he must have forgotten, or not known about, the evil nature of man.

Didn't He know 'the beginning from the end', as we are led to believe? Didn't He know when he made them that Humanity would become so utterly evil that all men, women and children, millions of them, would have to be drowned? Of course. How then, could He regret that He had made them, if He knew perfectly well from the beginning that He would have to destroy them? That is illogical. Someone who knows the future cannot regret something he did. If he regrets something, that means he did not know the future in the first place.

One may argue that He knew that He would change His mind, and that He knew He would regret these things, but then you have to admit that He did not truly change his mind, and His regret was not real regret-- in other words the bible becomes deceitful and you cannot trust what it says.

Was God being less than truthful? He can't have been, for Proverbs 30:5 tell us that "Every word of God proves true." Also, Proverbs 12:22 "Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord."

Wait a minute, if lying is something that God CANNOT do, is He still "all-powerful"?

Hold on, he "hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee." 1 Kings, 22:23. And "for this cause God shall send them a strong delusion, that they should believe a lie." 2 Thess. 2:11

Well then, He does lie after all, that sounds like the bible is contradicting itself yet again. Does He, or doesn't He? Why does the bible say both?

In fact, the bible tells us explicitly that God CANNOT lie or change his mind, in direct contradiction to to those verses above which say that He does:

Malachi 3:6 "For I am the Lord; I change not."
Numbers 23:19 "God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent."
Ezekiel 24:14 "I the Lord have spoken it: it shall come to pass, and I will do it; I will not go back, neither will I spare, neither will I repent."
James 1:17 " . . . the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."

The bible also says that God knows all things from the beginning unto the end, if this is the case, then there can NOT be a situation where God changes his mind. For if God changed his mind, that can ONLY mean that he did not know the future-- that some event or circumstance altered his knowledge and caused him to change his plan, but this would be impossible. If God is omniscient (knows all things), then he cannot change his mind, for there could be no unknown circumstance or event. Plus, the bible clearly tells us in absolute terms that God DOES NOT change his mind, or repent.

Now this raises even more problems for the idea of a god. This situation implies that God is not "all powerful", or omnipotent. If he was all powerful, then nothing-- nothing at all-- would be impossible for him, including changing his own mind. But clearly, He cannot change his mind if He knows the future. Thus He is robbed of his omnipotence by his own omniscience. In other words, the terms "all-knowing" and "all-powerful" are contradictory terms. They both can't be true at the same time.

Here is another example: Is God powerful enough to create something that He Himself cannot understand? If yes, then he is not all-knowing. If no, then he is not all-powerful. God, as described as both all-knowing and all-powerful, is a contradictory entity and cannot exist.

Another problem for the god idea is that the bible is FULL of accounts of God changing his mind, in direct contradiction to the verses listed above that say he doesn't.

Exodus 32:14 "And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people."
Jonah 3:10 ". . . and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not."
Jeremiah 15:6 "Thou hast forsaken me, saith the Lord, thou art gone backward: therefore will I stretch out my hand against thee, and destroy thee; I am weary of repenting."

Does God change his mind or not? Does He "regret"? If He does, why does the bible say He doesn't? If He doesn't, why does He admit that He does?

There are several places in the bible where it is clear that God does not know what is going on. After Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they realized they were naked and hid themselves in the Garden. God could not find them, and had to wander around calling for them!

Omnibenevolence:

Omnibenevolent means that God only does things that are good. Period. Is everything in this world good? He Himself will let you know that He is not omnibenevolent. Isaiah 45:7 "I make peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things." Jeremiah 18:11 "Thus saith the Lord; Behold, I frame evil against you, and devise a device against you." I Kings 22:23 "The Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee." Why would He do these things if He only does that which is good? The bible is filled with examples of god doing evil deeds.

If God is omniscient, He knows that in a week a tornado is going to rip through Kansas and kill a hundred people, wipe out twenty-thousand homes, and destroy three churches. He is omnipotent, and is therefore able to prevent it. If He was omnibenevolent, He would. Why doesn't He? Many Christians will claim that the destruction, death and misery is God's Will. Is then His Will omnibenevolent? Apparently not. They say that it must work out to some good end that we cannot understand, it works into his Divine Plan. And yet, these same Christians are the first ones to pray to God for him NOT TO INSTITUTE His Divine Plan! They are the ones to pray that the tornado ceases, or turns a mile to the west, or skips over their house. They should not presume to know better than their god, and to try to alter His plan. And then if their house was not destroyed, they get down on their knees amid all the destruction and death and thank their god. What an obscene gesture. They say their prayers were answered. But what of their neighbor, whose house was destroyed, who was just as devout a Christian, who prayed and wailed just as loudly? Well, that's God's Will again. If you believe Ezekiel 24:14 "I the Lord have spoken it: it shall come to pass, and I will do it; I will not go back, neither will I spare, neither will I repent", then you must accept that your house was saved and your neighbor's house was destroyed all in accordance with an unchanging plan. Therefore, why waste your breath praying? If it is going to happen according to the plan, you can't change anything by praying.

Some say that we cannot understand His Will, and therefore some things appear bad that are good, simply because it is a mystery to us. Well to quote Thomas Paine: "But though every created thing is, in [a] sense, a mystery, the word mystery cannot be applied to moral truth, any more than obscurity can be applied to light, Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention that obscures truth and represents it in distortion. Truth never envelops itself in mystery; and the mystery in which it is enveloped is the work of its antagonist, and never of itself. Religion, therefore, being the belief of a God, and the practice of moral truth, cannot have connection with mystery."

The kind of destruction brought about by a tornado is not what falls into my definition of "all good." If God is all-good, then perhaps he is not all-powerful, and could not prevent the tornado. If he is all-powerful and all-good, maybe he is not omniscient, and he just didn't know the tornado was coming. But if he is omnipresent, in all places at once, he must have known it was coming. Or maybe the simplest answer is correct, that he just doesn't exist and was made up by humans to ease their fears and provide explanations of those things of which they are ignorant.

Consider the Titanic, as illustrated in the recent popular movie. If God did not in fact put the iceberg in the ship's path, he at least knew about it. He had the power to move it, or melt it. But he chose not to. It was all part of God's plan, presumably. All those dead men, women and children were part of God's great scheme. Men left without wives, women left without husbands, children left without parents, and fifteen hundred people dying a painful, terrifying, sorrowful and completely unnecessary death. I guess it was just their time. God "called them home". All 1500 of them-- 1500 people who just happened to all be scheduled for the Pearly Gates on April 15th, 1914, 1500 people condemned to death that just happened to all be on the same ship at the same time. What a fortunate coincidence-- for God. He must have said to himself: “I can kill 1500 birds with one stone! Hey, its my lucky day!” Why kill them peacefully and painlessly in their sleep in their old age when you can kill them in a torrent of pain and misery, making a spectacular show of your power by sinking the unsinkable ship! That will teach them!

There are logical reasons why omnipotence is impossible. The old joke spoken by atheist comedian George Carlin: “Could God make a rock so big that He Himself could not move it?” is a real illustration of how omnipotence is impossible. Can God make something so complex that he himself cannot understand it? Can God make something greater than himself? If he can't, he is not all-powerful. Can omnipotence exist with omniscience? No. If God cannot change his mind, then he is not all powerful. If he does change his mind, then he did not know the future. Saying that there is an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent and omnipresent god is like saying there are such things as square circles-- such a thing cannot and does not exist: it is a contradiction.

The conclusion from looking at the bible objectively, not assuming the truth of it, is that the God which it describes does not know everything, there are things He cannot do, and that He is not all good all the time, and He is not in all places at the same time. It shows that the Christian God is a contradictory entity, and cannot exist. But the bible, after all, is just a book. It is words on paper, written out by human hands and printed on ordinary printing presses. The books it contains, the books declared to be "inspired", were included by vote. There is no external evidence that it is anything other than just an ordinary book. Most Christians say that they know god is real because the bible says so. They also say that the bible is true because it is the word of god. Most of them are unaware that that is a circular argument, and irrational.

Some people insist that I take verses out of context and twist them to my meaning. The only people I have ever encountered who twist scripture around are those who seek to defend it. It is I who use scripture word for word, omitting or changing nothing, giving the complete context, and it is the biblical defender who tries to change the verse into something it does not say, to lessen the horror and absurdity of it.

This is solid logical evidence that shows absolutely that such a being proposed as the Judeo-Christian God (omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omnibenevolent) is utterly impossible. Okay, let's see some believer start twisting those verses, and show us why they mean something other than what they really say,

See also:
The Freewill Argument for the Nonexistence of God
by Dan Barker

Is the Bible "The Good Book"?

Source: http://freethought.mbdojo.com/bible_quotes.html

Let's think about this. Don't just react. Read.

The modern, enlightened view on slavery is that it is wrong in all cases. Does the bible, in any of its pages, condemn slavery? Is "Thou shalt not keep slaves" among the 10 Commandments? Did Jesus speak against it? No. In fact, God promotes slavery, and gives specific instructions on how you are to use your slaves:


"When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be punished; for the slave is his money." , Exodus 21:20

"As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from the nations that are round about you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you, to inherit as a possession forever; you may make slaves of them, but over your bretheren the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another, with harshness." , Leviticus 25:44

"Slaves, be obedient to those who are your earthly masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as to Christ, " , Ephesians 6:5

"Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, . . . and they shall be your possession . . . they shall be your bondmen forever." , Leviticus 25:45-46

"Let all who are under the yoke slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be defamed. Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brethren; rather they must serve all the better since those that benefit by their service are believers and beloved." , 1 Timothy 6:1

"Bid slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect, " , Titus 2:9

"And that servant who knew his master's will, but did not make ready or act according to his will, shall receive a severe beating." (Jesus speaking through a parable) , Luke 12:47


Does God have unconditional love for Humankind? Or is He a bloodthirsty monster, worse than the likes of Hitler?

"Behold the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, Whoever is found will be thrust through and whoever is caught will fall by the sword. Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes, their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished." , Isaiah 13:9, 13:15

"I will strew your flesh upon the mountains, and fill the valleys with your carcass. I will drench the land even to the mountains with your flowing blood, "
, Ezekiel 32:5

", the Lord will smite with a scab the heads of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will lay bare their secret parts." , Isaiah 3:17

"Therefore fathers shall eat their sons in the midst of you and sons shall eat their fathers, I will send famine and wild beasts against you and they shall rob you of your children; pestilence and blood shall pass through you; and I will bring a sword upon you. I, the Lord, have spoken."
, Ezekiel 5:10, 5:17

"I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will tear open their breast, and there I will devour them like a lion, as a wild beast would rend them."
, Hosea 13:8

"And I will fill your mountains with the slain; on your hills and in your valleys and in all your ravines those slain with the sword shall fall, Then you shall know that I am the Lord." , Ezekiel 35:8

"Behold, I will corrupt your seed and spread dung upon your faces, " , Malachi 2:3

", I create woe; I am the Lord, who do all these things."
, Isaiah 45:7

"'Pass through the city after him, and smite; your eye shall not spare and you shall show no pity; slay old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women, '" , Ezekiel 9:5


Does God love women as much as He loves men? Have religions been in the forefront of women's rights? Can a freely-thinking woman read these lines and not be offended? Men- think of your wives, daughters and mothers when you read this,

"But if the thing is true, that the tokens of virginity were not found in the young woman, then you shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, " , Deuteronomy 22:20

"Behold the day of the Lord is coming, when the spoil taken from you will be divided in the midst of you. For I will gather the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses plundered and the women ravished, " , Zechariah 14:1

", they have rejected the word of the Lord, and what wisdom is in them? Therefore I will give their wives to others, " , Jeremiah 8:9

", I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the light of this sun." , 2 Samuel 12:11

"I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire will be for your husband." , Genesis 3:16

"Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives, " , Romans 7:2

"For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does, " , 1 Corinthians 7:4

"Likewise, you wives, be submissive to your husbands, " , 1 Peter 3:1

"And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, " (Jesus speaking) , Matthew 24:19

"For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman but woman for man." , 1 Corinthians, 11:8

"As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church."
, 1 Corinthians 14:34

"Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord." , Ephesians 5:22

"Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor." , Timothy 2:11

"It is well for a man not to touch a woman." , 1 Corinthians 7:1

", the Lord has trodden as in a wine press the virgin daughter of Judah." , Lamentations 1:

The Wisdom of Jesus,

"O, woman, what have you to do with me?" (Jesus, illustrating "family values" to his mother) , John 1:4

"Let the dead bury their dead." (Jesus to one of his disciples, who wanted time off to attend his father's funeral.) , Matthew 8:22

"For ye have the poor with you always." (Jesus, explaining why he refused to sell an expensive alabaster box of precious ointment to help the poor).
, Mark 14:3-7

The all-knowing Jesus mistakenly claimed that the mustard seed is the "least of all seeds" (Matthew 5:22) and that salt could "lose its savour" (Matthew 5:13), and cursed a fig tree just because it was fruitless out of season (just like it was supposed to be!):

"On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he (Jesus) was hungry. And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, 'May no one ever eat fruit from you again.'"
, Mark 11:12 (Is that reasonable?)


Was Jesus the bringer of peace on earth?


"Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother- in-law, "
, Matthew 10:34

"Do you think I have to come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division; for henceforth in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against her mother, mother- in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in- law.
, Luke 12:51

"But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them before me." , Luke 19:27 (parable)

"And let him who has no sword sell his mantle and buy one." , Luke 22:36

"If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." , Luke 14:26


Jesus, on what happens if you don't take his word on things,

"If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned."
, John 15:6

"He who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not obey the son shall not see life, but the wrath of god rests upon him." , John 3:36

"The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous, and throw them into the furnace of fire; there men will weep and gnash their teeth."
, Matthew 13:49


Is the Bible a good source of moral values and spiritual guidance? Or is it repugnant, vile and obscene?

"Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." , Numbers 31:17 (Moses)

" . . . and the people lamented because the Lord had smitten many of the people with a great slaughter." , I Samuel 6:19

"The men of Judah captured another ten thousand (men) alive and took them to the top of the rock and threw them down from the top of the rock; and they were all dashed to pieces." , 2 Chronicles 25:12

"Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!" , Psalms 137:9

"But God will shatter the heads of his enemies, " , Psalms 68:21

"The Lord raised up for them a deliverer, Ehud, And Ehud said, 'I have a message from God for you.' And he rose from his seat. And Ehud reached with his left hand, took the sword from his right thigh, and thrust it into his (Eglon, king of Moab's) belly." , Judges 3:15-21

"Slay and utterly destroy after them, says the Lord, and do all that I have commanded you." , Jeremiah 50:21

"For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." , Exodus 20:5

"Then they (the Israelites) utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, sheep and asses, with the edge of the sword."
, Joshua 6:21

"And the Lord our God gave him over to us; and we defeated him and his sons and all his people. And we captured all his cities at that time and utterly destroyed every city, men, women and children; we left none remaining." , Deuteronomy 2:33

"While the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the sabbath day, And the Lord said to Moses, 'The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.' And all the congregation brought him outside the camp, and stoned him to death with stones, as the Lord commanded Moses." , Numbers 15:32

"Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten thousands." , 1 Samuel 21:11


Is the Bible all that is good, clean and wholesome? Do you want to read it to your children?

"David arose and went, along with his men, and killed two hundred of the Philistines; and David brought their foreskins, which were given in full number to the king, that he might become the king's son-in-law." , 1 Samuel 18:27

"He whose testicles are crushed or whose male member is cut off shall not enter the assembly of the Lord." , Deuteronomy 23:1

", she played the harlot in the land of Egypt and doted upon her paramours there, whose members were like those of asses and whose issue was like that of horses." , Ezekiel 23:19

", so when he went into his brother"s wife he spilled the semen on the ground, And what he did (spilling his semen) was displeasing in the sight of the Lord and He slew him also." , Genesis 38:9

"Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, remove the foreskin of your hearts, " , Jeremiah 4:4

"Bless, O Lord, his substance, and accept the work of his hands; crush the loins of his adversaries, " , Deuteronomy 33:11


Does the Bible encourage its readers to think for themselves?

"We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, " , 2 Corinthians 10:5

"The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile." , 1 Corinthians 3:20

Does God forbid abortion?

God frequently kills children, babies, and fetuses, even ripping them out of the bellies of women:

"Samar'ia shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword, their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open." , Hosea 13:16

", Men'ahem sacked Tappuah and all who were in it and its territory from Tirzah on; because they did not open it to him, therefore he sacked it, and ripped up all the women in it who were with child." , 2 Kings 15:16

"Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, " (God speaking through Samuel). , 1 Samuel 15:3

"And he (Elisha) went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them." , 2 Kings 2:23

Consider these verses: In them we learn that a fetus is not a human being!
"If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.
"And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth."
, Exodus 21:22-25 (If a fetus dies as the result of a fight, the man who caused the termination of the pregnancy is fined. BUT if the woman dies, the man is put to death! Therefore, according to the bible, a fetus is not equal to a human life.)


Does the Bible encourage civil obedience, or political subversion?

"Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment." , Romans 13:1

"Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child cannot be a true system."
-Thomas Paine, American patriot and Revolutionary, in The Age of Reason

Interesting report:

http://www.giga-hamburg.de/dl/download.php?d=/content/publikationen/pdf/wp70_basedau-juan.pdf

Some great videos for your delectation:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2pWUvPqKEo&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N5hj8QsdZs&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVhVpP5UZTY&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_dSX2TUpvY&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-miEZNz2qE&feature=related

Enjoy!

A brilliant analytical philosopher. Check him out on

http://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/bradley/bradley.htm

Enjoy!

May kelly:
My Lord JESUS CHRIST is the only Way to the FATHER in HEAVEN. Accept HIM and you shall be saved from destruction.

I thought JC and Father in Haeven where the same person.

Frizy:
huxley, please I just want to ask you, is it true that bill gates and warren buffet are atheists?

Sometimes the best person to ask is the person himself, especially since they are still alive. It is well known that Gates and Buffet are not the regular believers from their own pronoucements;

Here is a few. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of these quotes though;

Gates was interviewed November 1995 on PBS by David Frost. Below is the transcript with minor edits.

Frost: Do you believe in the Sermon on the Mount?

Gates: I don't. I'm not somebody who goes to church on a regular basis. The specific elements of Christianity are not something I'm a huge believer in. There's a lot of merit in the moral aspects of religion. I think it can have a very very positive impact.

Frost: I sometimes say to people, do you believe there is a god, or do you know there is a god? And, you'd say you don't know?

Gates: In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don't know if there's a god or not, but I think religious principles are quite valid.

Gates was profiled in a January 13, 1996 TIME magazine cover story. Here are some excerpts compiled by the Drudge Report:

"Isn't there something special, perhaps even divine, about the human soul?" interviewer Walter Isaacson asks Gates "His face suddenly becomes expressionless," writes Isaacson, "his squeaky voice turns toneless, and he folds his arms across his belly and vigorously rocks back and forth in a mannerism that has become so mimicked at MICROSOFT that a meeting there can resemble a round table of ecstatic rabbis."

"I don't have any evidence on that," answers Gates. "I don't have any evidence of that."

He later states, "Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning."

Retrieved from "http://www.celebatheists.com?title=Bill_Gates"

This page has been accessed 67,034 times. This page was last modified 23:43, 6 March 2006. Content is available under Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Source: http://www.celebatheists.com/index.php?title=Bill_Gates

=======================================================================

What point are you trying to make?

Source: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4012

Today we're going to take a leap of faith into a soft cushion, to see what happens when proven knowledge makes faith irrelevant.

There is a profound contradiction rising in the world of religion. Proponents of various religious dogma such as Creationism, Noah's Flood, and Revelations have taken a disturbing turn. They are crippling their own religion by attempting to do scientific research in an effort to prove their religious claims, thus directly attacking their religion's central pillar: faith.

Abraham is regarded as the father of faith among most of the world's people, including Muslims, Christians, and Jews. He earned this title through demonstrating the mightiest act of all: being willing to sacrifice his own son Isaac, indeed with the dagger poised above his head ready to fall. Isaac was saved when God sent an angel at the last second to put a stop to it, who told Abraham that he'd proven his faith. It was an act that very few among us could have duplicated; I certainly wouldn't have done it. For this reason, Abraham is rightly exalted. It was truly an act of heroic faith.

Consider this question: If Abraham had known that God would intervene at the last second to spare Isaac, would his act have been as heroic?

Theological tradition tells us no, it would not have. The reason the Abraham story is important is that it's the supreme demonstration of faith. Abraham raised his dagger fully intending to kill his beloved Isaac, all for his faith in God. He felt every ounce of the unimaginable anguish. Could you have brought the dagger down and plunged it into your own child? Achieving this level of faith is the essential goal of all Christians, and for that matter, it is for Muslims and Jews as well. Faith is the absolute pillar of religion.

Now let's turn the clock forward a few thousand years and see where the faithful are today. Surprisingly, I see a lot of them doing the equivalent of asking questions before raising the dagger. Questions like "Can you please prove to me that the angel's going to intervene?" Can you show me the scientific evidence that proves Intelligent Design? Can you please prove to me that Moses parted the Red Sea?

The Associates for Biblical Research (abr.christiananswers.net) publishes a quarterly PDF document called "Bible & Spade". It's all about archaeological projects throughout the middle east that they say supports the Biblical record. The current issue offers evidence from Egypt on the location of the Exodus crossing of the Red Sea. They have an exhaustive mission statement page, in which they state and restate their belief that the Bible is absolutely and literally a correct and true historical document. It is "infallible, inerrant and authoritative". Their purpose also includes "Edifying the Christian Church by encouraging a deeper knowledge of, greater appreciation for, and stronger faith in the Bible through knowledge and correct interpretation of the findings from archaeology and science." In short, they are all about proving the Bible is true through archaeology. They call this "encouraging stronger faith in the Bible". Encouraging faith through proof. They want to force us to believe it.

Maybe my dictionary is out of date, but faith and proof are oil and water. Faith needs no proof, and in the presence of proof, faith becomes irrelevant. Faith means to believe without proof; indeed, it means to believe in spite of evidence to the contrary. Where is the heroic faith in believing in something that's proven right before your eyes? That's hardly a demonstration worthy of Abraham. To seek to marginalize the element of faith by showing supporting evidence, is to seek to undermine the whole basis of the religion.

We see the same thing happening in any of the numerous groups seeking to find Noah's Ark on Mt. Ararat in Turkey. On some of their web sites you'll find tremendous amounts of information about how a wooden ark could have survived 6000 odd years, how it could get so high on the mountain when there's not enough water on the planet to do it, exactly where it's located in the satellite photographs, exactly how two of every animal could fit on one ark, what its dimensions are and where and how it was built, and so forth. But nowhere did I find an explanation of why it's important that it be found. To my way of thinking, even if you're of the mindset that Noah's flood was simply a literal account of an incident and not a meaningful allegory, then allowing it to be found, thus proving the story, would be more likely to be on Satan's agenda than on God's. Why would God want to marginalize faith? I can think of every reason why Satan would want to do this, but not God.

Is proving the Bible really doing the work of God?

Abraham's faith did not need the crutch of supporting scientific evidence that God is real, nor would he have made much of an impression upon God if he'd had such. I challenge Christians who are true believers to stick with their faith, and to hold their faith to be (if I may borrow the terms) "infallible, inerrant, and authoritative". Or, if you want to use what science tells us instead, then admit that you're no longer keeping your faith in the infallibility of the Bible. You cannot do both. A true Christian must question their fellow believers who attempt to erode faith through the application of science to scripture. If faith is not enough to support religion on its own, then faith has already been killed.


Source: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4012

Some good videos about critical thinking;


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiZNMxpUS1g&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr-gXeFc9ug&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sP2xFPxTok&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeayJhHktEU&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbHgp69miyQ&feature=related

Enjoy

Which of JC teachings should Christian follow? Aside from giving up those "vices" you listed, what teachings of JC should they follow (and what should they ignore)?

Educate yourself and abandon Christianity and religion altogether

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~slocks/decon.html

Did the Christian copy most of their ideas from the pagan cults of the Roman empire?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCjbGDEPRJ8


Also see https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-113860.0.html

Enjoy!

babaearly:
You would never understand anything if you don't open your heart to know more. You want to know what Jesus Christ meant by the parable about the eye of the needle? I think the following will help you understand it

'The camel and the eye of the needle', Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25

Just where is that gate in Jerusalem?
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:24)
For the last two centuries it has been common teaching in Sunday School that there is a gate in Jerusalem called the eye of the needle through which a camel could not pass unless it stooped and first had all its baggage first removed. After dark, when the main gates were shut, travellers or merchants would have to use this smaller gate, through which the camel could only enter unencumbered and crawling on its knees! Great sermon material, with the parallels of coming to God on our knees without all our baggage. A lovely story and an excellent parable for preaching but unfortunately unfounded! From at least the 15th century, and possibly as early as the 9th but not earlier, this story has been put forth, however, there is no evidence for such a gate, nor record of reprimand of the architect who may have forgotten to make a gate big enough for the camel and rider to pass through unhindered.

Variations on this theme include that of ancient inns having small entrances to thwart thieves, or the story of an old mountain pass known as the "eye of the needle", so narrow that merchants would have to dismount from their camels and were thus easier prey for brigands lying in wait.

Mangled Greek maybe?
There are some differences in the transmitted Greek. The needle in Matthew and Mark is a rafic. In Luke it is a belone. But both are synonyms for needles used in sewing, but Luke's is more likely to be used by a surgeon than a seamstress.

Another possible solution comes from the possibility of a Greek misprint. The suggestion is that the Greek word kamilos ('camel') should really be kamêlos, meaning 'cable, rope', as some late New Testament manuscripts1 actually have here. Hence it is easier to thread a needle with a rope rather than a strand of cotton than for a rich man to enter the kingdom. A neat but unnecessary solution!

A variation on all of the above is that the needle was a 6 inch carpet needle and the rope was made of camel hair- but this is again clutching at straws or camel hair, and is an unnecessary emendation.

Makes sense in Aramaic
An alternative linguistic explanation is taken from George M Lamsa's Syriac-Aramaic Peshitta translation2 which has the word 'rope' in the main text but a footnote on Matthew 19:24 which states that the Aramaic word gamla means rope and camel, possibly because the ropes were made from camel hair. Evidence for this also comes from the 10th century Aramaic lexicographer Mar Bahlul who gives the meaning as a "a large rope used to bind ships". (cf. http://www.aramaicnt.org/HTML/LUKE/evidences/Camel.html)

Some have even suggested a pun in Aramaic between camel and gnat or louse from the Aramaic kalma 'vermin, louse'.

Just as the apocryphal Acts of Peter and Andrew 3 refers the saying to a literal camel and needle, so we are not meant to reason away the apparent difficulty of getting a camel through a needle's eye. For the difficulty is not apparent it is real, and not be solved by textual trickery but by taking the ludicrous language at face value.

What we have instead then, I believe, is a beautiful Hebrew hyperbole, as in the tree sticking out of one's eye whilst one is removing a speck in another's eye! Indeed, Jewish Talmudic literature uses a similar aphorism about an elephant passing through the eye of a needle as a figure of speech implying the unlikely or impossible:
"They do not show a man a palm tree of gold, nor an elephant going through the eye of a needle."4
This first instance concerned dreams and their interpretation and suggested that men only dream that which is natural or possible, not that which is unlikely ever to have occurred to them.
"… who can make an elephant pass through the eye of a needle."5
In this case, the illustration concerns a dispute between two rabbis, one of whom suggests that the other is speaking "things which are impossible".

The camel was the largest animal seen regularly in Israel, whereas in regions where the Babylonian Talmud was written, the elephant was the biggest animal. Thus the aphorism is culturally translated from a camel to an elephant in regions outside of Israel.

The aim is not, then, to explain away the paradox and make the needle a huge carpet needle for, elsewhere, the Jewish writings use the "eye of the needle" as a picture of a very small place, "A needle's eye is not too narrow for two friends, but the world is not wide enough for two enemies."6 . The ludicrous contrast between the small size of the needle's eye and the largest indigenous animal is to be preserved for its very improbability.

Jesus' hearers believed that wealth and prosperity were a sign of God's blessing (cf. Leviticus and Deuteronomy). So their incredulity is more along the lines that, "if the rich, who must be seen as righteous by God by dint of their evident blessing, can't be saved, who can be?". Later Christians have turned this around to portray wealth as a hindrance to salvation, which it can be – but no more so than many other things, when the message is that salvation is impossible for all men for it comes from God alone.

But beyond impossibility is possibility with God for, elsewhere, a Jewish midrash records:
"The Holy One said, open for me a door as big as a needle's eye and I will open for you a door through which may enter tents and [camels?]"7
In other words God only needs the sinner to open up just a crack for him and God will come pouring in and set up room for an oasis. God only needs a 'foot in the door', so to speak.

This is similar to the Talmudic use of two Hebrew letters, one which represents God holiness ('Q' Qoph, as in qadôsh 'holy') and another representing evil ('R' Resh, as in ra' 'evil'), in a story told for the purpose of teaching the Hebrew alphabet and Jewish morals. It is said that 'q' has a separated opening in order that should 'r' repent he may enter into God's holiness through the small opening.

A brief survey of sermons or search on the Internet reveals how many perpetuate the myth of the small gate in Jerusalem. Victorian travellers to the Holy Land even claim to have been shown it. The inaccuracy may appear harmless but it is neither good scholarship nor good exposition. The exaggerated and contrasted size is deliberate and is not an overt judgement on riches or poverty. Jesus reflects on how hard it often is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. The riches are a distraction and hard to share if one is too attached to them. The disciples' incredulity is that if even the rich cannot be saved, who can? But the verdict is that even the rich, not only the rich, will find it impossible to save themselves – but with God all things are possible.

http://www.biblicalhebrew.com/nt/camelneedle.htm

What the hell is all this? I would like to see your own opinion! Whatever "the eye of the needle" was, I think that a comparison was meant between that entity and a rich man.

Or does "a rich man" nor mean a wealth man, but some abstract entity in old jewish mythological figure?

babaearly:
The Instinctive wisdom of birds is certainly impressive. But when it comes to communication skills, humans are much more impressive. God has made humans "wiser than even the flying creatures of the heavens" says Job 35:11. Unique to humans is the ability to convey abstract, complex thoughts and ideas through sounds produced by the vocal chords or by gestures.
Unlike any other creatures, human babies seem to be programmed to learn complex languages. The online journal American Scientist says " Toddlers manage to acquire language even when their parents don't talk to them directly;deaf children will go so far as to invent their own sign languages if they are not exposed to sign at home."

The Ability to communicate our thoughts and emotions through speech or signs is truly a wonderful gift from God.

Watchtower May 1 2008

Why are you posting these rubbish? Is this what you would call "scientific evidence"? Do you realise how disruptable Watchtower is?

Some interesting debates between William Lane Craig, a Christian apologist and many non-believers:

http://manawatu.christian-apologetics.org/william-lane-craig-comprehensive-debate-list/

Enjoy!

babaearly:
You can keep on naming names, and we also name NAMES. Theres nothing intellectual in what uve done so far.Just crappy refrences.

I agree, arguments from authority have their limits. The aim of the list of names is that expert opinion amongst theistic scientist is in favour of evolution.

There are virtually no scientist who reject evolution on scientific reason. There are many who reject it on their religious leanings or on their inability to understand the evidence (called an arguments from personal incredulity).

My challenge to you is this - can you name any credible scientific study that refutes the theory of evolution?

youngies:
huxley you are a retarded, demented, traumatised soul garbed in analysis paralysis. Get off those cheap weeds and get help fast.

I would have liked to have seen a constructive contribution to the post rather than throw insults at me. Have you got the the intellectual ability to refute the points I raised?

Here is a pdf of the classic book by George Smith

http://www.federacionatea.org/documentos/thecaseagainstgod.pdf

or this,

http://www.scribd.com/doc/15951427/George-Smith-Atheism-The-Case-Against-God

Enjoy!

OLAADEGBU:
Who is a fool? Check it out in Psalm 14:1

A fool is someone who:

1. Does not know his origin;
2. Does not know his purpose here on earth;
3. Does not know why death is inevitable;
4. Does not know what happens to him/her after death;
5. Only thinks of today and not of eternity.
6. Only perceives the physical realm and is ignorant and blind to the spiritual world

Matthew 5: 21-22

21"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' 22But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother[b]will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca,' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.[/b]

OLAADEGBU:
Psalm 14:1
"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good."

This truth is resounding in all generations. I wonder where we will be without wise intellectuals who believed in creation and changed the world of science by their discoveries.

Check them out in the weblink below:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/270.asp

Why should I take the bible as being authoritative in anything? Apparently you do. So how about this one?

Matthew 5: 21-22

21"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' 22But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother[b]will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca,' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.[/b]

Do you see a hint hypocrisy here?

LIVING THE QUESTION--EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY AND CRITICAL THOUGHT

By Robert Wuthnow
ROBERT WUTHNOW, professor of sociology at Princeton University, is author of The Struggle for America's Soul (Eerdmans, 1989).

Growing up on a windy prairie in central Kansas, I had a friend named Harry Charles Kitchen. He was one of those afterthoughts, ten years younger than his sisters, who brings special joy to his parents. Eldie and Gracie, as they were called, loved him dearly. Poor tenant farmers, their clapboard house remained unpainted as it had been since the Great Depression, but they had high aspirations for their son.

A friend, I suppose, is not exactly what he was to me, for he was three years older, and being both tall for his age and quite stout, he was often the terror of the schoolyard. Indeed, his mischievous laughter can probably still be heard along the back fence where he dared us unsuspecting youngsters to grasp the electric wire that ran along it. But friend he was, certainly by standards I have since grown used to, for he was an important part of my community of memory and his life influenced me deeply.

When I was eight years old, Harry Charles died. One Saturday morning Eldie and Gracie rushed him to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy, and for some reason he died. Sitting there at my grandmother's house where my father left me to pay a neighborly visit to the hospital, the news spread over me like a sickening dream. My grandmother told a neighbor she'd never seen my father so upset.

I guess I had been conditioned to know about life's frailties more than most children. When I was three my father almost bled to death one night. He was routinely in and out of the hospital for the next fifteen years before he died. When I was four, stray dogs that periodically roamed the countryside invaded the chicken coop one day while we were away and left two hundred chickens nothing more than a grisly mess. When I was five, my mother suffered a heart attack; months of convalescence and worry passed before she recovered. But this was the first time someone my own age actually died. It hit my own mortality--all sixty-five pounds of it--like a ton of bricks.

Suddenly all those sermons I'd heard at the little Baptist church where Harry Charles and I attended Sunday School together--those sermons that spoke of people dying and going you-know-where -- took on painful urgency. After the funeral God's fearsome presence became as real as Harry Charles's lifeless body. I knew it was time, as they said, to get right with God. And in the next few moments I prayed and gained entry with all the attendant security and privileges into the kingdom of, yes, American evangelicalism.

Not long ago The Chronicle of Higher Education--the weekly newspaper that serves as a house organ for tens of thousands of college faculty and administrators--carried as its center front-page story an article about the growing danger posed by evangelical Christians on the nation's campuses. One poor, unsuspecting student, the article recounted, had begun attending services of an evangelical group on campus only to find "that her grades dropped, she lost touch with her friends, and her relations with her family deteriorated." Colleges need to be aware, the article cautioned, that many evangelical groups, while claiming not to be cults, use cult-like methods to attract and retain members, including deception, unethical recruiting, mind-raping, authoritarianism, and dictatorial practices that tell students how to live, whom to marry, and what they can and cannot read.[1]

The die was cast many years ago. In the 1890s the United States government made a fateful decision: if the nation's economy was going to compete effectively in world markets--this was long before we fell behind the Japanese--we were going to have to enter the modern era, which meant applying scientific methods in business, developing new technologies in industry, and promoting higher education among our nation's most talented youth. Land-grant colleges, polytechnic institutes, and graduate research universities were launched with profusion. No longer would higher education be the preserve of church colleges and seminaries. Indeed, private benefactors added to what separation of church and state prevented the government from doing, offering church colleges generous grants if they would only shuck off their sectarian trappings and focus on secular liberal arts training. Caught up in the widespread belief that secular education and social progress went hand in hand, many churchgoers embraced the new developments, calling for modernism in pulpit and pew. Only the fundamentalists held out, taking their very identity from the opposition they voiced to these dominant cultural developments. As the twentieth century began, conservative Christianity was already at war, it seemed to many, with the prevailing values of an enlightened society. By mid-century, historian Richard Hofstadter could look back on the period and write in scathing terms of the anti-intellectualism espoused by this wing of American religion. Fundamentalists and evangelicals were, in his view, narrow-minded, dogmatic, and authoritarian. Not only were they content to believe in the superstitions and simplistic falsehoods of a time gone by, they were so threatened by the intellectual currents in the wider society that they were willing to wage war against it. They were prejudiced bumpkins from the farms and small towns, a subculture left over from the past like some Neanderthal creature, lumbering through the wheatfields and cow pastures without the intelligence to understand what educated people of the twentieth century were thinking.[2]

The only problem with Hofstadter's analysis was that the twentieth century turned out to be more complex than he realized. At the same time Hofstadter was diagnosing the anti-intellectualism of conservative Christians, they were in the process of rediscovering a deeper tradition in their own past -- a tradition of critical reflection that remained critical of secular thought but nevertheless recognized the importance of the intellectual life. While some leaders denounced secular knowledge as evil and called for a radical separation between believers and the world, the majority opted for active participation in the cultural climate of the twentieth century.

They identified themselves with many of the positive intellectual contributions of Western Christianity in the past -- with the juristic approach to biblical literature of the Reformation, the dissenting political traditions of the English civil war, the emphasis on natural science and natural law of the Puritan divines, the studiousness of the Scottish Presbyterian moralists, and the social teachings of the American abolitionists. Believing that the same God who had created the soul had also created the mind, they founded and expanded Christian colleges and seminaries in which biblical studies and the human sciences could be brought together. They formed organizations to make their presence known in high schools and on secular campuses. And they encouraged young people to gain the academic credentials necessary to serve the needs of society and the world--in business, teaching, medicine, engineering, and the professions. They wanted to eradicate the village-idiot image of the fundamentalist, bringing the intellectual life to evangelical Christianity and making Christians* intellectually respectable.

Their work was cut out for them. When the first opinion polls on religion began to be conducted in the late 1950s, the results documented that Christians who held orthodox beliefs were indeed far less educated than other segments of the American population.[3] Many did in fact live on farms and in small towns. Many of their parents were dirt poor; they were the remnants of the dustbowl, recent immigrants from Germany and Scandinavia, Appalachian coal miners, African Americans, displaced migrants from the South, day laborers in the smoke-belching factory cities of the Northeast, sharecroppers like Eldie and Gracie Kitchen. The church colleges many of their leaders tried to nurture were indeed tiny, often little more than overgrown high schools with faculty who were themselves poorly trained and poorly paid. And in the secular colleges and universities, surveys of faculty showed few with sympathies toward these new recruits fresh from the pages of Elmer Gantry.

But social trends were not entirely against these new defenders of an orthodox Christianity. The 1960s and 1970s were a time of enormous expansion in higher education throughout the nation. Faced with stiffening competition in foreign markets and a continuing Cold War, American leaders poured billions onto the nation's campuses. Bright teenagers with good grades could obtain college scholarships more easily than ever before, no matter what their religious convictions were, and for many in the agriculturally depressed regions of the South and Midwest such scholarships were an attractive way out. Government loans made it possible for church colleges to expand dormitory space and for secular campuses to grow into the mega-universities that still dominate the Big Ten, the Big Eight, the California and a number of other state systems. Large numbers promoted diversity; Christian students on these campuses could sometimes find kindred spirits, and, influenced by what was left of the proverbial Protestant work ethic, many were able to succeed. By the end of the 1970s, surveys showed that the gap between the education levels of self-professed Christians and others had been greatly reduced. By the end of the eighties, conservative and liberal Christians were virtually indistinguishable in terms of education.[5]

At the end of the twentieth century, therefore, the connection between Christianity and the life of the mind is far different from that envisioned at the century's start. If the breach opened between faith and higher learning by the fundamentalist movement has not been entirely closed, at least bible-believing Christians are found within the ranks of American higher education rather than outside, peering distrustfully at the distant spires of academe from their benighted villages in the hinterland. The question can once again be asked with urgency: what is the relation between Christian conviction and critical thought? And: what may we expect of this relationship in the decades to come?

Because of my background, I have found it easy to tour the landscape of Christianity within the ivied walls more or less as a fellowtraveler. As such, I have been put off by the arms-length reportage one finds in The Chronicle of Higher Education and other secular media in which naive journalists can scarcely distinguish a Christian from a Jew, let alone an evangelical from a fundamentalist. So follow me for a moment on a mental tour to various spots in academe where I have encountered in one way or another intellectuals who profess to be Christians.

My first stop is an exclusive restaurant in New York City. As I dine with a fellow social scientist from another university, he tells me he has come a long way in his thinking since his undergraduate days at an evangelical Christian college. He says he still believes in the "basics" -- does not elaborate -- but is increasingly annoyed with the clergy. Then, pausing for effect and looking around to see if anyone is listening, he asks me never to tell anyone what he is about to say. He says he often feels depressed about his work as an academic, so much so that he has been considering dropping out, selling his house, and moving to Africa where he could teach children or maybe retrain as a paramedic.

A few weeks later I am at an international conference in Boston hosted by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The gathering includes scholars from all over the world, each of whom is an expert in one or another of the world's four largest religions. They speak with surprising knowledge and yet with considerable detachment about their religion of interest. One young scholar speaks with slightly more passion than the others about the role of the church in the German Democratic Republic, points to the historic importance of Christianity in both sectors of divided Germany, and argues to the surprise of many that a religious revival is taking place in the Federal Republic of Germany. That evening, at a gathering in which he is not present, a colleague of his notes that the young scholar is an elder in an evangelical church in Germany.

As my journey continues I find myself at an academic conference in New Orleans. As we sip cocktails one evening, a friend mentions that some sociologists are having an informal meeting later on and asks me if I want to tag along. I agree and several hours later we enter a hotel room where about ten people--all professors--are gathered. One suggests opening the meeting with a prayer and no sooner are heads bowed than he begins speaking unintelligibly; others follow suit, and I realize I am witnessing glossolalia firsthand. The speaking in tongues stops as abruptly as it began, the host announces, "Gee, I guess we don't have any bread and wine, but here's some Coke and crackers to pass around," and everyone turns to informal chatter about their latest research project.

My final stop is at the home of a social scientist who teaches at a Christian college. We two have retired there for some late-night conversation after a formal dinner with several of his colleagues-formal in every sense of the word: all of us abided by the college's rule against consuming alcoholic beverages in public, bowed our heads and prayed at the appropriate moment, and spoke positively about how nice it was to teach in a Christian environment. But now I was about to hear the other side. My friend spoke openly of his reservations about the college's stand on everything from alcoholic beverages to biblical interpretation. He talked about quitting the local church in protest against its teachings on social issues. He spoke candidly of the difficulties he experiences when he tries to associate with faculty from the major secular research universities. And one by one he recounted similar stories for each of his colleagues.

I do not know how typical these encounters may be. Anyway, my point is not to generalize about the typical but to indicate the diversity that exists among Christians in higher education, just as it does in our whole society. Were I to say more about these various social scientists, it would become evident that they differ vastly from one another in interests, backgrounds, beliefs, and lifestyles; and yet each is in some way identified as a Christian. What then can we say about the relation between Christianity and the intellectual life?

In 1938 Robert Merton, among the leading sociologists of his generation, published an influential book in which he examined the connection between Puritanism and the rise of science in seventeenth-century England.[6] Merton argued that the Puritans had a special disposition toward scientific achievement because of their emphasis on this life as well as the life to come, their conviction that nature was the handiwork of God, and their commitment to the rational knowledge and mastery of God's creation. It was a clever thesis reminiscent of--indeed, modeled after -- Max Weber's argument about the special connection between ascetic Protestantism and acquisitive capitalism. But subsequent inquiries cast doubt on Merton's thesis. Royalists were shown to be as favorably disposed toward science as Puritans, French Catholics were every bit as devoted to science as the English; and such factors as antinomianism and rationalism appeared to be as much at work as Puritanism.[7]

I take the Merton controversy to be an instructive metaphor in seeking close connections between evangelical Christianity and a particular style of intellectual orientation. Some have argued that evangelical scholars may be inclined to accept rigorous empirical generalizations because of their belief that truth can be codified in simple propositions. Translated: Christians make better engineers than artists, or in the case of social scientists, better number-crunchers than theorists. Some have maintained on the same grounds that evangelical Christians may be less able than other scholars to appreciate paradox, subtle interpretation, and nuance. Some have suggested that Christian thought favors voluntaristic social theories more than deterministic ones; others have suggested just the opposite. My journey among my various Christian acquaintances -- some of whom have themselves proposed such arguments -- confirms none of these views.

The truth of the matter is that Christian thought, even evangelical Christian thought, is sufficiently diverse that no straightforward influence on the nature of intellectual work is readily found. Christians do not operate from some set of higher-order truths, such as the trinity, redemption, or original sin, from which they derive notions about the sort of work to do and the best way of approaching it. They may make certain assumptions; we all do. But it has not been my experience that Christian scholars are any more likely than any others to take, say, an authoritarian stance toward certain deeply held beliefs, or to argue from first principles in the face of empirical evidence, or for that matter to let new evidence readily upset favorite theories. The various people I introduced in my imaginary journey in one way or another expressed doubts, raised questions, and exhibited critical distance toward the scholarly role itself. They did not abandon their intellect to be Christians. In fact, I would say they subjected their Christian assumptions, like everything else, to the dictates of their intellect. That, to me, suggests the more fruitful way of approaching the question of how Christianity and critical thought may intersect.

I have borrowed the much-used phrase "living the question" because it seems to me that Christianity does not so much supply the learned person with answers as it does raise questions. It has been said of Marxists that even apostates spend their lives struggling with the questions Marx addressed. The same can probably be said of Christianity. It leaves people with a set of questions they cannot escape, especially when these questions face them from their earliest years. I doubt very much whether there are many practicing academics who have been without religion, found themselves searching for answers to life's questions, and then converted as mature adults to Christianity--although I am aware of course that C. S. Lewis claimed to have followed such a path. In Lewis' case one does see a person attempting through curious tricks of logic to prove that various answers supplied by Christianity can satisfy the logical, rational mind. But, despite the fact that Lewis holds some attraction for many educated evangelicals, I have not found either the pattern of his life or his rationalistic style at all typical. More commonly, someone learns the basic stories of Christianity as a child, becomes a scholar sometime later, and yet continues to be influenced by the questions those stories asked, even though his or her rational arguments, theological outlook, and philosophy of life may have undergone much change.

Let me illustrate my point by referring briefly to some of those stories. To begin at the beginning, take the story of Adam and Eve. To be sure, one can derive theological propositions from this story. But the most memorable aspects of the story itself are probably the questions it raises--questions about gender roles of course, as Elaine Pagels and others have recently argued, but more importantly questions about the nature and limits of human knowledge.[8] Christian scholars I have known take a variety of positions on epistemology, but I would venture the generalization that their interest in epistemological questions is at least relatively acute.

Or take the story of Samuel, of the people of Israel wanting a king, of Samuel anointing David, and of the conflict between David and Saul. I was recently at a little church in the Midwest where the adult Sunday School lesson for the day focused on this story. After viewing a well-presented retelling of the story on videotape, the class was considering the question of why the Israelites wanted a king. One person suggested that, because the surrounding tribes had kings, it was a matter of keeping up with the Joneses; another, that as a society becomes larger it may be helpful to have a centralized source of authority; still another, that people who feel personally insecure may find vicarious esteem by identifying with a king. The leader did not select one answer as correct; that was not the point. The point was that the question is worth thinking about because it prompts reflection on the human condition. That seemed to me to be rather the same way a group of academics might have understood the task.

Or consider the parable of the Good Samaritan. Like virtually all of Jesus' parables, it ends with a question: which of these was neighbor to the man? In the story the answer may be obvious. But a parable is also a mirror in which to observe real life, and in real life it is still the question of neighbor that animates much discussion, not only in theological circles, but in wider scholarly settings such as the social sciences. A Christian sociologist might argue that it is "neighbor" to the countries in Latin America to send financial aid; another might argue that it is "neighbor" to promote economic self-sufficiency. It is on the importance of the question that they agree.

Robert Merton borrowed from the classical work of Max Weber in developing his argument about Puritanism and science. Weber thought religion figured into human behavior as a motivator.[9] The image he used was of a switchman. Different religions switch the behavior of their adherents onto different tracks. Having certain questions in one's mind can be a switchman of this kind. The effect of a particular religious upbringing may be to motivate one to pursue a certain kind of question in one's research. Or, more likely, as Weber would have argued, it provides motivation of a broad sort -not the kind of motivation that says study this instead of that, but the motivation it takes to get up in the morning and get to work because life has meaning.

I am not suggesting that people actually have the questions they learned as children from Bible stories buzzing around in their heads, consciously or subconsciously telling them what is important about the world. It used to be popular to think of motives that way -- to imagine that people might embark on a study of social justice in South Africa because the story of Moses and Pharaoh had always made a troubling impression on them. But motives are more complex than that. They are not univocal, but multivocal. They speak to us with many voices. And they do not often, it seems, speak to us in clear, rational voices. Rather, they come to us piecemeal, as the bits and pieces from which a story about why we do what we do can be constructed. Listen to what French philosopher Bertrand Very says about them: "Subjective motives are not rationally, but semantically built." There are two phases, he says, in the semantic construction of motives. First: "An objective fact, a casual event, a commonplace situation is loaded with meaning. Its crude exteriority disappears. It becomes a motive for a subjectivity." And then secondly: "This motive joins an affective frame, not as a cause mechanically awaiting its effect, but as a sign expected to be connected with other signs to determine a decision. Entangled--as in a musical score--with other motives, its meaning gains more weight and it leads the situation towards a certain outcome."[10]

Religion figures into both phases of this process. In the first phase, certain objective facts or events take on subjective meaning for us, in part at least because of the framework that our religious experiences give us. We are able somehow to see the importance of things because we have a story to tell ourselves about them. Perhaps it is a story that has special importance for us because it is about God. Perhaps it is a personal story, like the one I told about Harry Charles Kitchen. Then in the second phase, as motives become more complex and compel action, our stories become the musical scores, the web of interconnected signs that allow us to make sense of what we do. These are the stories in which we construct ourselves as actors. They make sense of our biographies, allowing us to integrate our lives, and see the importance of what we are presently doing, both to ourselves and to some larger body of relevant others. It is in this sense that the divine word becomes powerful as we appropriate it and make it part of our own story, an idea of course that is entirely consistent with the Christian view of redemption.

What does it mean, then, to say "living the question"? It means pursuing the intellectual life because the questions are inherently important, not because one hopes primarily to advance a career or even because one necessarily expects to discover a definitive answer. For the first person on my imaginary tour, this meant continually questioning the value of what he was working on, even the value of the intellectual life itself. For the second, it meant thinking hard about the church's future in the two Germanies. For the group passing around Coke and crackers, it meant thinking about the joy in life and the need to understand celebration. And for the friend at the Christian college, it meant taking a responsible but critical stance toward his institution and his church. The particular questions themselves are likely to vary. What Christianity does is add seriousness to the enterprise: it says, in effect, these are serious questions that people have raised in one way or another from the beginning of time; do your part to keep them alive. The message is what Madeleine L'Engle (a writer who, though she readily identifies herself as a Christian, disdains the term Christian writer) has likened to the task of pouring water into a lake. The scholar's contribution is like a cupful of water: it does not perceptibly alter the lake at all, but it and thousands of others like it replenish the lake and keep the cycle of nature flowing on perpetually.[11]

Putting it differently, we might say that Christianity sacralizes --makes sacred--the intellectual life. It gives the questions we struggle with in our work' and in our lives a larger significance. Living the question becomes possible because our questions are animated. They have life breathed into them, not literally of course but by becoming part of the stories, the webs of significance, in which we locate ourselves. Any religion, any worldview does this, and does it not just to our intellectual questions but to the questions and tasks that confront us in every part of life. And yet to say that all religions work this way does nothing to diminish the particular way in which it happens for the Christian. The questions that take on significance in the Christian's intellectual work may be, as I have argued, quite diverse. But the reason they have significance is that they are part of a particular story, embedded as it were in a particular religious tradition and in a particular person's biography within that tradition.

This is one way of saying what it means to live the question, one way of saying how Christian faith and the intellectual life intertwine. It fits the cases I mentioned as part of my journey. And yet there is surely more to it than that. For each of the cases I introduced also reflected a certain degree of mysteriousness; a secretive, almost clandestine quality pervaded them.

There are in fact two dirty little secrets that American higher education, for all its commitment to truth and fair-mindedness, continues to harbor. The first is its disdain for evangelical Christians. Few groups are as despised a minority. Jews certainly are not. African Americans no longer are. Gays are not. Women are not. Roman Catholics once were, perhaps even very recently. But no groups arouse passions and prejudices more than evangelicals and fundamentalists.

How is it, after all I have said, that The Chronicle of Higher Education can print a lead story of the kind I mentioned? Because evangelicalism is not a reality that outsiders have tried seriously to understand; it is a symbol for all the fears that mainstream scholars and intellectuals worry about most. Evangelicalism is taboo because it conjures up images of crazed cult members burning books, closing their minds to rational argument, and allowing charismatic leaders to rape their intellects. In a society that values higher education as much as ours, the mind is our most cherished resource. To waste a mind is, as we say, a terrible thing. Drugs and evangelicalism stand for the same thing--the loss of a human mind.

To be sure, the suspicion that lingers in American higher education toward evangelical Christianity takes many forms. Sometimes it is little more than the subtle way in which a colleague asks how anyone can still believe that sort of thing. Sometimes it is more overt. Not long ago at my own institution I witnessed a prospective graduate student's credentials being scrutinized with particular care because study at an evangelical college was part of his undergraduate record. "I just wonder," said one administrator, "whether this person is ready for Princeton."

Knowledgeable persons in the academy recognize of course that Christians are a minority group; whether it is statistically true or not, Christianity has long been seen as a dying remnant from a less enlightened past. But unlike other minority groups, Christians are not the subject of affirmative action, special programs, or efforts to promote greater tolerance. They are treated differently because, unlike African Americans or women or gays, their status is assumed to have been adopted voluntarily rather than being an ascriptive identity. Christians, it is assumed, can at least repudiate Christianity as they gain the intellectual sophistication to recognize its dubious claims.

It is because of this skepticism, overt or covert, that Christians in American higher education adopt the clandestine tactics I noted in the examples I mentioned earlier. They look around to see if anyone is listening; they conceal their involvement in religious organizations; they meet in hotel rooms like some dissident cell group in a totalitarian state; even when they teach at Christian colleges, their true feelings are often kept closely guarded in private space. A faculty member or graduate student may announce proudly that one's parents were immigrants, that one's ancestors tried to overthrow the government, or even that one played football in high school, but one does not admit to having been, let alone being, a Christian. Even to reveal a piece of one's past, as I have done here, is a dangerous thing, unless one moves on quickly to repudiate the experiences of one's childhood.

For this reason, Christians -- perhaps of all persuasions, but especially of evangelical lineage -- are a disinherited people within intellectual circles. They are a people without a past, for theirs is a past too shameful to acknowledge. Evangelicals after all are the anti-intellectuals who tried earlier in the century to halt progress; their simple-minded notions stood in the way of intellectual advancement; they were the parents who did not understand when one went away to college or decided to become an academic; they were the bigots who burned books, supported Senator Joseph McCarthy, imposed quotas to keep Jews out of colleges and universities, marched under the banner of the Ku Klux Klan, opposed the civil rights movement, encouraged the United States government to napalm innocent Vietnamese in the belief they were pushing back godless communists, kept their women at home barefoot and pregnant rather than assisting the feminist cause, fought unthinkingly against the pro-choice movement that all intelligent people of goodwill supported, and made fools of themselves sending money to Jimmy Swaggart and Tammy Faye Bakker.

The dirty little secret of American higher education's prejudice toward evangelical Christians works because nobody in the academy itself dares admit having any affinity with this shameful segment of American society. Universities that might bend over backwards to start programs in women's literature, in African-American or Hispanic culture, or in Jewish studies would never consider a comparable program in evangelical studies. And so, Christian scholars may hide out in hotel rooms or hold forth publicly under the rubric of American religious history, but few are able to appropriate a legitimate past for themselves or to adopt a public identity. This, then, is the tragedy of being a people without a legitimate history, for it is, as I have argued, the ability to construct a meaningful account of oneself, a story that makes sense of one's activities, that amplifies meaning and augments motivation.

The other dirty little secret scholars and intellectuals in American higher education have never been quite willing to confront is the continuing existence of the effects of social class within the academic community. Because education is supposed to be the land of equal opportunity, the great leveler, we tend not to see the lingering influences of class. And those of us at the top of the educational heap are even less inclined to talk about them, especially if our economic privileges made our rise easier for us to do so. Despite all the talk about financial aid, it is no accident that a high proportion of students at places like Princeton have gone to expensive private high schools, enjoyed summers abroad or received tutoring at the finest academies. Nor is it an accident that these students continue on to graduate schools and academic posts in disproportionate numbers. Even among graduate students, where selective processes have reduced the range of disparity, subtle class differences continue to be evident.

Anyone who still retains an identity as a Christian, or simply hales from evangelical stock is subjected to a double stigma: first, the stigma of a shameful religious past; and second, the lingering effects of having been reared -- as a disproportionate majority of evangelicals were -- in disadvantaged ranks of the stratification system.

The typical academic past that one hears, sometimes in print but more often at cocktail parties, is not the past of one who grew up knowing Harry Charles Kitchen, or one whose parents were dustbowl tenant farmers, or one whose father quit school in the eighth grade at the ripe age of seventeen to help keep the family together. The typical past runs a different course. It goes: I remember discovering Thoreau, having already taught myself to read at the age of three, and being very much alone and self-sufficient, not being able to count very much on support from my parents who had devoted my grandparents' fortune to a life of scholarship. And so, when I went off to Harvard myself, it was with considerable misgiving, for I had to overcome the disadvantages of having to translate Homer with difficulty and work in only two languages on my senior thesis.

Evangelicals are as likely to be disdained for their lack of such cosmopolitan roots as for anything they themselves are or are not. Like children from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds, they are unlikely to have parents who planned sending them to Harvard, if not because of the costs alone, at least because nobody in their circles had ever gone there. The exceptional evangelical student may have earned top grades but never traveled outside the United States, felt compelled to read Flaubert, or had the courage to tackle Camus. And the evangelical student who happens to have decided to enter graduate school, pursue a Ph.D., and eventually become an academic is unlikely to have parents able fully to understand the derision, let alone explain their offspring's folly to neighbors and church folk. Once embarked on advanced studies, the evangelical student from a typical background is also likely to face a number of continuing obstacles: inadequate foreign language training, which prolongs the years of study; the need to support a spouse and, perhaps, children, which reflects the evangelical dating and mating subculture; and a pragmatic working-class orientation, which extols finishing quickly and getting a job rather than taking the intellectual risks that someone of more affluent means can afford.

All of this is often an enormous disadvantage in pursuing the intellectual life, a disadvantage deepened by the fact of its denial. Indeed, it is more the denial of this background than the background itself that troubles me. Quite a few Christians have, as I have said, through hard work and native intelligence joined the ranks of the intelligentsia despite class disadvantages. But to enter a world in which the lessons of disadvantage are no longer valued is to live in a world of denial.

And yet, there are, as we know, certain gains associated with disadvantage and denial, particularly the freedom that comes with exclusion, the creativity that comes with marginality. Exclusion and marginality often facilitate critical thought. Alienation and ambivalence catalyze it subjectively; dispensation from established class roles enhances it objectively. We should no more lose sight of these goods than we should pretend that the problems do not exist.

American culture shows few indications as it moves into the twenty-first century of becoming any less dominated by the rich and powerful, by elite institutions of higher learning, by big government and big industry, or by the competitive materialism to which we desperately cling in hopes of saving our place in the global economy. I am Calvinist enough to believe in that, but I am also Calvinist enough to believe that such experiences as my encounter with the death of Harry Charles Kitchen have a permanent impact on one's life, whether we later reinterpret them with more sophisticated theological understanding or not. And thus, there is in my view a continuing role to be played by Christians in the intellectual realm. In living the question, in being true to the realities of their own existence, persons of faith can respond to the challenge of thinking critically about what is going on in the wider world as well.

Karl Marx thought Christianity a form of false consciousness that prevented people from seeing reality as it really is. But he was more right when he referred to it as the heart of a heartless world. Lived as a question rather than a set of absolute answers, Christianity can stimulate critical thought. And in so doing, it is likely to continue bearing the burden of misunderstanding and prejudice. But that response should only galvanize its courage to tell a different story. For a story of disinheritance and struggle can also be the story of a legitimate past.

[*] Among evengelicals, the noun Christian designates the person who, through personal conversion, holds, professes, and acts on faith in the atoning death of Jesus Christ as revealed in the Scriptures. [Editors]

Notes

[1] Tanya Gazdik, "Some Colleges Warn Students That Cult-Like Methods are Being Used by Christian Fundamentalist Groups," The Chronicle of Higher Education (November 15, 1989), 1.

[2] Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Vintage, 1962).

[3] For a summary of these studies, see Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), especially Chapter 7.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Results from a national survey of the American population I conducted in 1989; see Robert Wuthnow, Acts of Compassion: Caring for Others and Helping Ourselves (forthcoming), Chapter 5.

[6] Robert K. Merton, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England (New York: Harper and Row, 1970 [1938]).

[7] Robert Wuthnow, Meaning and Moral Order (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), Chapter 8.

[8] Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988).

[9] Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963 [1922]).

[10] Bertrand Very, "Milan Kundera or the Hazards of Subjectivity," Review of Contemporary Fiction 9 (Summer 1989), p. 81.

[11] Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1981), Chapter 3.

ROBERT WUTHNOW, professor of sociology at Princeton University, is author of The Struggle for America's Soul (Eerdmans, 1989).

Source: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/College%20ScienceTeaching/HamiltonReview.html

Evangelicals and fundamentalists have been accused of anti-intellectualism for years. Some have frankly acknowledged this accusation and worn it with pride. Others have taken vigorous exception. Many of us have worried that the accusations are on the mark, have wondered why evangelicalism has come to this state and what can be done about it. Mark Noll leaves no doubt of his own judgment on the state of the evangelical mind.

The first sentence of the book reads, "The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." Noll pulls no punches as he elaborates: "[T]he major indictment of the fundamentalist movement, and especially of the dispensationalism that provided the most systematic interpretation of the Bible for fundamentalists and later evangelicals, was its intellectual sterility. Under its midwifery. the evangelical community gave birth to virtually no insights into how, under God, the natural world proceeded, how human societies worked, why human nature acted the way it did, or what constituted the blessings and perils of culture.

To be sure, fundamentalists and their descendants had firm beliefs about some of these matters--beliefs, moreover, that were backed up by citations from Scripture. Some of these beliefs were entirely correct. What even the laudably scriptural beliefs lacked, however, was profound knowledge of the divinely created world in which those beliefs were applied. As a result of following a theology that did not provide Christian guidance for the wider intellectual life, there has been, properly speaking, no fundamentalist philosophy, no fundamentalist history of science, no fundamentalist aesthetics, no fundamentalist history, no fundamentalist novels or poetry, no fundamentalist jurisprudence, no fundamentalist literary criticism, and no fundamentalist sociology. Or at least there has been none that has compelled attention for insights into the way God made the world and situated human beings on this planet. And because evangelicals, though often dissenting from specific features of fundamentalism, have largely retained the mentality of fundamentalism when it comes to looking at the world, there has been a similarly meager harvest of evangelical intellectual life.

The first five chapters trace the historical influences which have led to anti-intellectualism among evangelicals. A primary factor, in Noll's view, is the embracement of the principles of the Scottish Enlightenment by 19th century American evangelical thinkers. The fundamental principle of the Scottish Enlightenment was that men are gifted with inborn moral discernment and epistemological capabilities. This held a powerful attraction for Americans bent on establishing traditional morality without appealing to traditional (human) authorities. The Scottish Enlightenment established common sense as the universal basis for morality and thought. He also blames Dispensationalism for focusing evangelicals' attention on eschatology to the exclusion of being concerned with dealing in a Christian way with today's politics, and the Holiness movement for the debilitating effect of its "let go and let God" mindset. Chapters 6 and 7 analyze how the development of the evangelical mindset in the 19th century translates into political reflection and evangelical views on science respectively. Noll discusses four eras in Chapter 6: The age of Bryan, 1896-1925, the age of fundamentalism, 1925-1941, the age of new beginnings, 1941-1973, and the age of the New Right, 1973 to the present.

He compares leadership style of American evangelicals with that of more traditional Christian groups using William Jennings Bryan and Pope Leo XIII as examples of their respective traditions. Bryan's style was activist, speech-oriented and not based on church tradition or authority. This was a sharp break with the Catholic tradition of pastoral letters from the popes addressing specific issues from the standpoint of general Christian teaching. Noll argues that the evangelical focus on individual action tended to contribute to erosion of the importance of the various institutions, "--family, church, community, social structures of any sort -- from which communities have traditionally drawn guidance." The age of fundamentalism was characterized by pessimism that political activism such as Bryan's would bring about a better society. Forces molding this period included Dispensationalism, the Holiness movement and modernism: "Bryan's optimistic prospects for reform and his support for active government gave way to cultural pessimism and a fear of government encroachment. Concern for political involvement was replaced by an almost exclusive focus on personal evangelism and personal piety. Current events evoked interpretations of prophecy instead of either reforming activism or political analysis, Political activism, as well as political reflection, reached its nadir among evangelicals in the 30's."

Noll describes the Era of new beginnings as an era in which "a number of subterranean stirrings began to redirect the political energies of evangelicals." He leaves the discussion of most of these stirrings to Chapter 8, but briefly notes the influence of the civil rights movement. Although the civil rights movement was peripheral to the concerns of older white evangelicals, it had deep roots in evangelical revivalism and provided a rallying point for younger evangelicals. The era of the new right began with Roe v. Wade in 1973 and extended at least until dissolution of the Moral Majority in 1989. The central story of this period is "the reassertion of moral activism in response to the perceived crises of the day." Noll likens the revived activism to the activism of William Jennings Bryan's day. He suggests that the era of the new right may be drawing to a close and sees the coming era as one pregnant with possibilities -- if evangelicals can overcome past habits like trying to fit current events into prophecy instead of applying Scriptural insights to understanding and dealing with them.

Chapter 7 discusses fundamentalist/evangelical reactions to developments in science. Much of the discussion revolves around the creation/evolution controversy and its development. Early reactions to evolution among Christians were quite varied. B. B. Warfield, James McCosh and others believed that biological evolution could be accommodated within the framework of orthodox Christianity. Until the 1930's, he notes, most conservative Protestants believed that the creation days were long periods of time. What apparently catalyzed the modern shift to young-earth creationism was the rapid secularization of the universities, which left fundamentalists and evangelicals feeling that they were losing their ability to influence the culture. Seventh Day Adventist George MacReady Price had limited influence in his day, but by the early 1960's when Morris and Whitcomb published "The Genesis Flood," they were providing an answer to considerable frustration stemming from the secularization of the surrounding culture. Noll attributes the popularity of creation science to the intuitive belief of many evangelicals that it embodied the simple teachings of Scripture, growing intrusion of Federal government in local affairs, especially education, resentment against America's self-appointed knowledge elites, and dynamics arising from fundamentalist theology, particularly fundamentalist eschatology and the fascination with dispensations. He blames creation science for making it much more difficult to think about human origins, the age of the earth and mechanisms of biological change; for undermining the ability to look at the world God has made and to understand what we see when we do look; and for creating "noisy alarums" which have made it difficult to listen to careful Christian thinkers like many in ASA or Phillip Johnson.

Chapter 8 outlines developments which offer hope that evangelicals are returning to efforts to bring Christian thinking to bear on the social, philosophical, political and scientific problems of the world around them. However, most of the examples are examples of evangelicals borrowing from or being enriched by other traditions within Christianity. The chapter ends with this sobering statement: "The question must remain whether evangelicalism as it has taken shape in North America contributes anything intrinsic to the life of the mind. Historically considered, especially over the course of the twentieth century, it is difficult to find such a contribution, And here this book might end. The scandal of the evangelical mind seems to be that no mind arises from evangelicalism. Evangelicals who believe that God desires to be worshipped with thought as well as activity may well remain evangelicals, but they will find intellectual depth -- a way of praising God through the mind -- in ideas developed by confessional or mainline Protestants, Roman Catholics, or perhaps even the Eastern Orthodox. That conclusion may be the only responsible one to reach after considering the history sketched in this book. Even if it leaves evangelical intellectuals trapped in personal dissonance and the evangelical tradition doomed to intellectual superficiality (or worse), the recent past seems to point in no other direction. But because American evangelicalism is a form of Christianity, a religion notable for its paradoxes of faith, hope and love, perhaps there is more to say, "

Chapter 9 addresses the question of what is inherent in evangelicalism that can make a significant contribution to the intellectual life of Christians. He concludes that evangelicalism does have much to offer, and suggests how these qualities may contribute to a rebirth of evangelical intellectual life. In part, Noll's prescription is that evangelicals must not let evangelical distinctives crowd out Christian essentials. We must not allow activism to crowd out rigorous thinking about how our Christian faith relates to all areas of life, or to override an attitude of profound gratitude to God. Literal hermeneutics must be seen as a poor substitute for "profound trust in the Bible as pointing us to the Savior and orienting our entire existence to the service of God." We must not allow our emphasis on crisis conversion to crowd out lifelong spiritual development.

Finally, Noll outlines evangelical characteristics that will in his view contribute to a renaissance of evangelical intellectual life. While evangelicals have emphasized supernaturalism and Scripture in ways that have not been supportive of intellectual activity, we have kept Christianity itself alive. Our emphasis on supernaturalism has kept the understanding of God's transcendence alive. We may have used the Scriptures superficially, but we know the Scriptures. We know how desperately we need to be saved. Even our evangelical activism has unappreciated value in building a Christian intellectual life. As we have evangelized people of different cultures, they have taught us much about what it means to think in a Christian way. Assimilation of Christianity by a different culture always brings surprises which, if carefully studied by missiologists will yield much knowledge about what it means to be a Christian. The great doctrines of Christianity provide much stimulation for Christian thought. The Incarnation means that this material world is important to God. The Atonement tells us that God redeemed people for life in this world as well as in the world to come. The fact that the gospel goes out as a universal offer for all of humanity suggests something about the dignity in this world of all human beings and the potential value in this world of all that they do.

This book is not for those who are content with the Bible-only separatism evangelicals are frequently accused of. Much of the book will seem familiar and depressing to those who have worried about the decline of the evangelical mind. But Noll helps us understand how we came to be what we are, and shows that the crucial ingredients for recovery are already available to evangelicalism, and that they lie precisely in the Christian essentials evangelicalism has preserved. It is required reading for those of us who believe that we can and must serve the Lord we love with our minds.

Source: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/College%20ScienceTeaching/HamiltonReview.html


References:

http://www.up.ac.za/dspace/bitstream/2263/5518/1/Harold_Stewarship(2007).pdf