You know we're living in an odd world when prominent atheists encourage people to read scripture. More than 50,000 viewers each day sample atheist science blogger PZ Myers' posts on Pharyngula. "There's no surer way to make an atheist than to get someone to actually read the Bible," says Myers. Here is why:
Genesis 6 and 7, for example, tell of God planning and executing the slaughter of billions of innocent animals and millions of children in Noah's flood. In the words of one distraught parent, "A few weeks ago I read my son a book on Noah's Ark and my brain started to hurt. It just never really hit me before how truly awful this story is."
Sometimes it is the kids themselves who notice the disparity between the morality portrayed in a holy book and the morality they (and their modern culture) take for granted. Author Nancy Ellen Abrams recounts her run-in with ancient scripture as a child:
"My career in Hebrew school began and ended in the second grade. The first story we read was about Abraham smashing all the merchandise in his father's religious idol store, and we were supposed to sympathize with Abraham when his father consequently threw him out. The next story was about Abraham not batting an eyelash at taking his son to a mountaintop to kill him. This was too much for me. 'Who is Isaac supposed to pray to?' I asked, in perhaps a less than respectful tone of voice. This question elicited an icy stare and a long silence. I was never called on again and eventually I stopped going. That was the end of my Hebrew education."
Nearly a decade ago, I myself was taken aback when a churchgoer lent me an audiocassette book by one of the earliest "New Atheists": Michael Scott Earl. My wife and I had already been shaken by listening to Earl's first audiobook, Bible Stories Your Parents Never Taught You. Listening to his second, The Ultimate Terrorist, was even more painful.
I shall never forget one dusk, watching the full moon rise straight ahead while driving eastward across Ohio. Earl was speaking these words:
"If we want to know why people kill in the name of God, and why they have been doing so for thousands of years, we must face one simple and obvious fact that almost nobody wants to confront. The fact is this: the God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- the God of monotheism -- is a terrorist. This is not mere hyperbole on my part; it is an easily verifiable fact. For example, the U.S. Department of Defense defines terrorism as 'the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate others in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.'""When we look at an event like the conquest of Canaan, the massacres of millions of women and children, we must not lose sight of the fact that these actions were carried out in response to orders from God. The Bible makes that absolutely clear. When we read the brutal Law of Moses, where people's brains are being bashed in with rocks for breaking the Sabbath, for having sex with the wrong people, for believing the wrong things: all of these atrocious laws can be traced back to God. And when we read in scripture about hell, about billions of unbelievers being tortured in fire for all eternity -- it is God who is orchestrating all of this. God employs the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to inculcate fear -- and he does it for religious reasons. In anybody's book, that's terrorism."
So here's my vision:
Thinking of "divine revelation" in mere mythic ways will last a few more decades. But knowing that God (Reality) communicates more clearly through evidence than ancient texts will change everything. Christianity itself will have a born-again experience by mid-century.
Looking back a hundred years from now, few things will be seen to have had a greater positive impact than the "Evidential Reformation" and the transformation that occurred when Christian leaders worldwide began teaching and preaching how "God's Word" is not limited to the Bible but is revealed in every fact discovered by science. Practically overnight the science versus religion war will end, and the Church will not only regain its moral authority but will become an inspiring force for evolutionary and ecological good in the world.
Follow Rev. Michael Dowd on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MBDowd
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1) have never read the bible to any worthwhile degree - particularly the old testament (my own particular favourite is Moses telling his followers in defeating a city to kill all males and females who have "been with men" and rape all the females that haven't)
2) know little of the appalling history of the church - particularly the Catholic Church (though the later churches are not much better but never quite had the political power the Catholic Church abused)
The first requirement of religious belief is a well developed talent for denial: embrace the good stuff but ignore the bad (or blame oneself for it as in the dogma of Original Sin).
Where do you base your judgement that I don't have peace in my heart in regards to sin?
Or the true joy the Holy Spirit has put in my heart?
I can invite you to show you how God will reveal himself to you.
Matthew 6:6
But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Romans 10:9
That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Be honest and tell him what's in your heart. He is listening.
To be able to discuss the material you have to know it. And, it really is the best way to make an atheist. Once people read it and actually see the nonsense in it for themselves, think about it for themselves and educate themselves; how can they be anything but?
Once you sift through all the hyperbole of the bible, all you are left with is a patchwork book. No moral to that story.
God Is Reality Personified, Not a Real Person
http://www.thankgodforevolution.com/node/2010
Religion Is About Right Relationship to Reality, Not the Supernatural
http://thankgodforevolution.com/node/2012
The Church of Reality
http://www.churchofreality.org
If it's logical that "something of great intelligence and magnitude [...] created all the laws of nature, gravity" then it's ALSO logical that something of even greater intelligence had to create that "something". And if so, something of even GREATER intelligence had to create THAT "something". And so on and on. It's turtles all the way down, as the old saying goes.
Until your religion can explain away this unavoidable conundrum, then your claim that "God is real because it is logical" is little more than Sunday school silliness. God is not logical because fantasies seldom are...
People like you are the fantasy within their own existence...lacking in both myth and reality.
It's also just as logical that there was some other cause. Just because God is the only "answer" you can come up with, desn't make it the only answer. Your imagination is extremely limited.
You can be a good, decent, moral, upstanding individual without the dubious benefits of religion. God isn't necessary.
Yes, God is necessary for the future of the universe which is absolutely finite. If there is no God then man has no future...not even the satisfaction of having lived. So, Katherine's imagination is not limited. Within, her world through God all things are possible...in your imagination nothing is possible because there is nothing.
Hi Gray! If you dont mind can you tell us your logical explanation?
"You can be a good, decent, moral, upstanding individual without the dubious benefits of religion. God isn't necessary".
GOOD, DECENT, MORAL, UPSTANDING are all reletive... would you not agree? If you do then I ask reletive to what? I wonder if Stalin or Hitler thought of themselves as good, decent, moral, and upstandanding. I guess I'm asking are you comparing this statement to the God of the Bible standards? By the way I agree that a person can be all of this without religion. But I do ask myself from where did this moral standard come from that most if not all of humanity uses as a reference when making a statement like yours.
Dowd knows, just as well as atheists and true Christians, that God is not responsible for killing anyone. Atheists don't believe in God therefore it is impossible for God to be guilty of killing. And, true Christians know that many atrocities have taken place in history by men ascribing it to the will of God...which was in reality man's will - not God's.
The real question which is being ignored is murder, genocides, etc. a part of man's evolutionary nature? And, furthermore, it is wrong single out atheists as being responsible for such acts due to some nations, past and present, being predominately atheistic either by politics or desire.
Articles like this one fan the flames offering "Evidential Reformation" as the solution.
I appreciate your concern and that you took the time to post a reply with links. I believe that you are genuinely a good man with your heart in the right place. And, I understand that you would like to see a re-engineering of the human evolutionary constraints on God.
However, what I see lacking in your articles, etc. is the embracing of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of mankind. What I see is a theist operating under the guise of being a Christian minister.
I, too, have a BA Degree in Religion, Philosophy, and Humanities graduating magna cum laude. So, maybe I read more into your articles than a superficial intent of a marriage of science with religion. Be candid with me and simply answer this question: Do you believe in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ and His physical resurrection from the grave?