On Following Links Farther...
When I started this exercise, I intended to go to an atheist
link, explore it and respond.
By responding to EVERY such link, I hoped to avoid being accused of only picking
sites that were easy to rebut or ignore.
I found that some links are basically portals to other links (possibly with some personal observations). I also found that if you follow links long enough - the interesting pieces cross web-sites and that there is a lot of repetition. That in itself is not a criticism - it just makes it more tedious to craft a common approach across websites.
I'll use the following trail of links as an example:
I started with:
C h r i $ t i a n i t y Bogus Beyond Belief
This page starts with a smiling man in front of
flames - I guess some kind of joke about Hell. The site contents itself
with a
few OT quotes that portray God as harsh and blood-thirsty - I guess to frighten
away anyone who doesn't understand the historical context and jumps to judging
God (I couldn't worship a God who...). Briefly visited pages
like "Why
Christians Just Don't Get It". This page is something of a muddle - it is upset at
Christianity vs. science, it says that "faith in Bible claims is the most
morally virtuous act...", it extends all this to say that Christianity
values gullibility and ignorance).
The problem is that sorting out this muddle to the concepts better expressed elsewhere and then discussing them would be tedious for me and boring for you. I will just pick out one example though. The author quotes George Smith (Atheism: The Case Against God) to explain one of his thoughts (he uses Smith's interpretation of Christianity to define what Christians believe and then tries to attack that). The quote illustrates the problem:
"Another significant element of biblical faith is its intimate association with virtue. Jesus does not demand that people believe in him in the name of truth; He demands that they believe in him in the name of morality. Acceptance by faith is a virtuous act. 'Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe,' and as Paul warns, 'whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.' "
You can see my difficulty. Perhaps, in context, Smith has some point to make and perhaps it is the same as the author of the website - I'd have to read Smith to know if this is a reasonable use of his thoughts. The website author uses this quote to imply that Christians believe that Faith ("no matter what the facts say") is "the highest manifestation of moral righteousness". Where is logic and reason in this process? "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe" is primarily an admonition to those who physically witnessed Christ. Why are atheists using this phrase - aren't they the ones who say that God should prove himself? Doesn't this passage suggest that we are stubborn people for whom "proof" will not suffice? In this context, faith means the openness to hear the message and feel its truth and its beneficial impact on life. It does not mean that if the Church says the world is flat or evolution wrong or seven days means seven 24 hour days, the righteous Christian believes that. And it does not mean that even if misguided Christians have used the passages to justify their blind faith in their (mis) interpretations of the Bible.
I quickly got bored and moved on to stuff not written by the website author...
On to the next link (actually, a copy of another author on the same site) -
Tough Questions For The Christian Church
Well, at least this page is calm and reasoned. The questions turn out to not be so tough though...
"Was the Law given by
Yahweh perfect (Psalm 19:7), or wasn't it (Hebrews 8:6-8)?"
- Christianity is all about a
New Covenant for all people because of the failed Covenant
between
Yahweh and the Jews. The Law was perfect (read on in Hebrews) but
people
are
not.
"Why were the disciples surprised by
Jesus's resurrection after Jesus had told them repeatedly to expect it?"
-
Why did Thomas still doubt after he saw Jesus resurrected? Why were the
disciples afraid on a ship
when they had
already witnessed Jesus and his miracles? Why did Peter sink while walking
across the
water to
Jesus? Seems to me this is a source of consistency - not
inconsistency! The NT reflects
human
weaknesses - it doesn't invent perfect disciples to tell a more credible (or
incredible!) story.
The doubts
and humanness of the disciples not only rings true for the time it was written
but as
a lasting
comment on human nature. Proof is never good enough...
Various "inconsistencies":
I tracked down the first two "inaccuracies" that I came across -
Gospels
misquoting
the Old Testament. In particular, I looked at Matthew 3:3 vs. Isaiah 40:3
and Matthew 12:17-21
vs. Isaiah
42:1-4. These passages are remarkably similar - not inconsistent at
all. Remember, it is not like
any of these
people would have had handy pocket-sized editions of the Old Testament to refer
to!
But what is more interesting is when you drill deeper (to the author's page itself). Start with:
http://home.att.net/~j-buckner/essays.html
One of the first things you run across is a disclaimer:
At the time of the writings you see here, I knew only a little about the liberal Christian point of view, and that only through a conservative evangelical/fundamentalist lens. If you are a liberal Christian, and especially if you are without first-hand experience of conservative evangelicalism/fundamentalism, you will find that my remarks touch on Christian liberalism little or not at all, and that the issues I raise do not necessarily have relevance or even make sense from the liberal Christian point of view. When you see the word Christian in these writings, please understand that I am referring to conservative Christian evangelicalism/fundamentalism, which in many ways can be considered a distinctly different religion than liberal Christianity.
Well, gee, that sounds a bit more reasonable. But you have to really dig to find out that what you have read is not really directed at Christianity but at the seriously flawed (and distinctly different) offshoot of Christianity that includes rabid fundamentalists. Small clue here, if someone preaches hate or says I'm going to heaven/You're going to hell - not a Christian! And note that the starting website makes no such disclaimer.
But it even gets more interesting when you learn why this individual wrote what he wrote.
An
Exchange with my Former Pastor
There is no such thing
as exit counseling from the Christian church. Here is an exchange of letters
with my former pastor, who tries to hang on to a sheep gone astray from his
flock. His religion has left him unequal to the task, and entirely predictable
in his strategy, to boot.
Mr. Buckner intends for this link to show some failing on the part of his pastor and how religion failed the pastor. You read it. Read elsewhere where Mr. Buckner then started attending a Unitarian church - still a disbeliever but... I think the pastor comes off as unpersuasive and a bit heavy-handed - but he is exactly correct that Mr. Buckner appears to have suffered some spiritual loss and tried to compensate by using his intelligence. In the process, the hole is still there but the direction unlikely to fill it...
Having exhausted that path, I went back and checked out:
if you really want to waste part of your precious life (or see how other do), check out this nonsense! Evidently there is a war between "apologists" and "skeptics" and one of the apologists really gets on the skeptics nerves! This page documents some really tedious debates between the sides - expressing outrage only at the silliness of the apologist. I couldn't find anything interesting from either side (but I didn't look very long!).
----------------------
My original intention doesn't allow for this kind of drilling down - I'd be linking to hundreds of sites! So I'll just put up representative sites and you'll just have to take it on faith (grin) that I am not skipping well-written, well-reasoned sites!
email me at doug@hardts.net