AW! Epistles
From Sheldon
Abstract
Sunday, September 24, 2000
I have the following comments on: The case for Christianity Examined. Truth or Lies. Sorry mike, I couldn’t finish this drivel… While I have no belief that the bible is true, or that there is even a god out there, I find your arguments as banal and invalid as those of the "dishonest Christian." The comment on Paul admitting to be a liar is taken horribly out of context and so badly bastardized I can’t even form a rebuttal. I can see from your arguments that you don’t have even the slightest suspicion that a god could exist, which is fine. But then you apply that fact to those that do believe in a god that created the universe in 7 days. The so-called impossibility of a man rising from the dead is laughable to people who believe in a god who created all the stars at a word. That is one of the prime differences between Christians and non-Christians. Or members of other religions that require a god-being to serve. Hence why Apologists and Atheists don’t get along. They both make one assumption which is the trickle that eventually becomes the river of the mind, if you will forgive an ugly analogy. Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t disagree with your ultimate conclusions or even some of your observations of certain "Christian tactics", but overall I find your arguments to be biased and lacking in open-mindedness. Here is a quote from your Apologetics page:
Nevertheless, clerics assert that their own "evidence" is sufficient for faith and therefore sufficient. They will always insist that their critics will make no allowance for the miraculous, yet they are invariably selective in what they accept as proving it. So, they will quote instances of miraculous cures or faith healing, but will ignore the untold numbers of people who were not cured or even died as expected, despite the supposed miraculous procedure.
Do you understand the definition of the word miracle? A miracle is (according to the online Cambridge English dictionary: "an unusual and mysterious event that is thought to have been caused by a god, or any very surprising and unexpected event." That statement you made invalidates itself and is a prime example of your bigotry towards Christianity. If a miracle was common place, it would cease to be a miracle and would become a treatment. Just because a god doesn’t cure everyone doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It is the same as a lion that can be handled by it’s trainer every day without incident until something triggers it’s instincts and it kills it’s trainer. Was the lion any less of a lion because it did not kill earlier? Or did it only come into existance when it killed the trainer? I am, as I am sure you are too, only satisfied to accept quantum behaviour on particles much smaller than lions. It does make the point though, that a god need not always fulfill the wishes of it’s believers.
For someone who is not bothered about God or the bible, you seem to get excessively indignant over what I have to say in reply to this man’s ’drivel’. Sorry you think my replies are drivel too, but at least you imply they are no worse. Perhaps it is a bit like playing chess. It is hard to play good chess against a poor opponent.
Anyway, let’s look at what upsets you. Paul admitted he was a liar, but you are not willing to rebut it. Perhaps you read it again and began to think it sounded as if he was. Listen:
To those under the law, I become as one under the law, though not myself being under the law…
How is he saying anything other than that he pretended to be a Jew to win over Jews. He was no longer a Jew subject to the law but pretended he was. You say this is not admitting lying. He concludes by clearly saying he was all things to all men, admitting that he would take on whatever role it was expedient for him to take in order to spread God’s good news. William Neil says in his One Volume Bible Commentary:
Instead of flaunting his freedom from the Jewish law he has conformed to it to win the Jews for Christ. Conversely among Gentiles he has stressed the irrelevance of Jewish law… he has been prepared to accommondate himself to everybody…
How does that differ from modern Christians who assume it is perfectly legitimate to make up any falsehood to persuade people to convert?
I can only guess at the origin of your point about the resurrection. I do not doubt that Christians are capable of believing anything, but I need only show how their beliefs originated in a natural way. The way is the one that Matthew or an editor goes out of his way to refute in his gospel, so is the one that people suspected at the time and is likely to be correct.
Your analogy was wonderful, but I did not get what assumption you meant that I had made. Again, it is sufficient that I show that the events that Christians consider on flimsy evidence to be supernatural are easily explained naturally on the same evidence, but more convincingly for being free of supernaturality. If this is the assumption you mean, then tell me how you can eliminate it. In a natural world, the explanation of events must be natural. There are plenty of people calling themselves Christians who will not accept that God will break his own laws of nature as a gratuitous demonstration of his might to a few unsound dipsticks who cannot understand what is going on. The reason is plain enough. If God wanted to save humanity, he would do it in a more convincing way. He either does not want to save us or the whole story is man-made.
What made you think that I should be open-minded about something that I have made my mind up about. You sound like a sociologist. They convinced themselves in the 60s that they could not reach a conclusion because it would bias them. The whole point of presenting and considering evidence is to reach a conclusion. I have considered all the Christian evidence and find it is ’drivel’ to repeat your expressive word. Am I still to give it house room?
I do not get your point about miracles either. A miracle is an impossible event, which is why your source says it has to be an act of God. It is only an unusual event by dilution. People today speak of miraculous recoveries from illness when they are not miraculous at all, but are within the chances prescribed by the appropriate distribution law. That is the point I am making. The trick is an ancient one. People used to put up placards or thanksgiving offerings outside the temple of the god of their choice when they thought they had been miraculously saved from illness or misfortune. There were always plenty of these offerings but even then the skeptics used to pass by and comment that the ones who had not been saved could not put up their curses to the deity for letting them die.
If a miracle happens at all, it ceases to be a miracle. A miracle is impossible. It seems to me it is a miracle that lions do not always kill their trainers. I conclude that lion trainers must be the only good Christians these days. Their prayers are mostly answered, but the odd one must be a sinner.
There is no need to invoke quantum statistsics. Ordinary statistics will suffice to explain the distribution laws. It is no more a miracle that some people should luckily survive illness or misfortune than it is that some people are born eight feet tall or with an IQ of 180. They are simply rare events, but perfectly normal ones within the distribution laws of nature.
You are right that I am excessively indignant even though it doesn’t affect me. I am not affected by the pain suffered by 12 year old children working in shoe factories in third world countries, yet I am indignant about it. I don’t expect you to accept Christianity with open arms, just an open mind. By open mind I am not referring to blindly accepting hokey philosophy as the sociologists you described. I am referring to the allowance for and tolerance of other people’s beliefs. Comments like " to a few unsound dipsticks who cannot understan what is going on" imply a strong bigotry. Your assumption is that only idiots would believe in a god, or at least a Christian god. That is why I found your article to be drivel. Not because you didn’t have valid points, but because of the poisonous atmosphere you wrote them in. I should have been more clear to avoid offending you, my apologies to you.
Clarks’ Shoes was founded by Quakers. For long, Quakers had a more moral approach to employment and treatment of employees than most Christian factory owners, but now they have closed most of their factories in the advanced countries to open factories in the third world. I hope, and believe it is likely, that Clarks would not employ child labour, but they were obliged to compete with all the other, largely Christian, manufacturers that do. It is because I am indignant about Christian hypocrisy that I write as I do. If you suppressed your memories of Sunday school for awhile and made an effort to read some of the drivel on my pages, you will find a lot more about why I take the view that I do.
Mrs Whitehouse and puerile Christians like her tell me it is because I cannot face the challenge of Christianity. If she thought for a second she will see that that is what I am doing. Of course, the challenge she means is to be a Christian. I cannot face that challenge, because I would rather be honest and go to hell than be a liar in heaven. What you call bigotry and poisonous is simply giving as good as you get. Bigotry is a word used originally of believers in religious creeds. You extend it to those who vigorously deny the bigots. If Christians insist that pigs can fly, and I insist that they cannot, you say that I am as bigotted as the Christian. That is why I say that you sound like a sociologist. It has become some sort of convention to be polite to Christians because we must assume they are sincere however deluded they might be really. I do not accept it.
“How is he saying anything other than that he pretended to be a Jew to win over Jews. He was no longer a Jew subject to the law but pretended he was. You say this is not admitting lying.” And I will continue to say it. The context was along the same lines as “when in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Which is probably a quote from Paul for all I know. My opinion on those verses, as I was taught in Sunday School, was that Paul was referring to eating food, unclean to the Jews, with the Gentiles, but not eating that same food with the Jews. He believed that there was no such thing as unclean food, but to avoid giving the Jews ammo to use against him or Christ he avoided the issue. Not that it wouldn’t come up eventually, but he was trying to make a good impression. I don’t think that is lying, I think that is good manners. Imagine you are in a tribal village somewhere trying to sell a new water filtration system that will save countless lives. You have found it was considered impolite to drink during your meal. No matter how thirsty you are, and no matter how stupid that rule sounds would you risk insulting your host and losing your sale? I would certainly hope not. Most people would swallow their pride to do what is necessary and not consider it a lie.
The analogy would be more precise if I were selling these villagers bottles of liquor to drink and agreeing with them initially not to drink at the table. My intention is to get them drinking my liquor as often as possible, but I will pretend it is not, to begin with. For Jews, the law was the whole of God’s lovingkindness given to His own people. It was not merely eating certain foods, though it involved that too. Paul was intent on persuading Jews to give up the law to become Christian. So, by pretending to accept the Jewish law initially to win over their confidence, he meant to persuade them to give it up ultimately, as you admit. That is dishonest in my book, but perhaps I should have taken more notice of the Sunday school teacher.
“I did not get what assumption you meant that I had made.” By assumption I meant that Christians make the assumption, without proof, that there is a god. You make the assumption that there is not with no more or less proof: “In a natural world, the explanation of events must be natural.” Why is this so? What is the proof that the world is “natural?” I know that science models reality and based on models we can predict future events. Can we assume that the world is natural, simply because we can describe it in those terms? What if we can describe it in non-natural terms? Does that make the world non-natural?
That is exactly the point. No supernatural explanation of the world has enabled us to understand anything, in the sense that you say, of being able to make a prediction out of it and therefore being able to take evasive action or make use of it. Christians always demand proof of their critics when they need none for themselves, a typical dishonesty of theirs that I highlight on my pages, but if proof is to be found in practical application, then all the proof we have is that the world is natural. If someone tells me that a deep container contains some black snooker balls and some red ones, I can decide for myself to test what they say, simply by taking a few balls out of the bin. After a while I have picked out only red ones. What should I decide? A hundred years later, I still have only red ones. What is my conclusion? There might still be some black ones in there, but if my life depended on it, I would have to bet that the next one out would be red. It sounds as though you would toss a coin, to be fair to both possibilities. I make the same point about the more detailed Christian evidence. I have considered it carefully and have concluded that people who believe it are dupes, insane or charlatans. Most are dupes and the professional ones are charlatans.
“Again, it is sufficient that I show that the events that Christians consider on flimsy evidence to be supernatural are easily explained naturally on the same evidence, but more convincingly for being free of supernaturality.” It’s all a matter of perspective, based on the initial assumption. Let’s take it back to the very beginning: Big Bang or God… which is the more plausible? I say neither. But either one, or both had to have occurred for the universe to be here. So it boils down to which assumption do you make. After that you can convince yourself about anything you need to be convinced about.
If one at least had to occur for us to be here but you think neither did, do you think you are not here? Perhaps you mean either one or something else had to be true for us to be here. The universe might be itself everlasting, simply pulsating to give an impression of expansion from a remote beginning. Anyway, the point is that invoking the supernatural is merely admitting that we cannot find or cannot be bothered to find a natural answer. God answers nothing and offers no ways of knowing what is the right way forward. If people believe a dead man had left his tomb in the middle of the night, we would today seek a natural answer. Why then must we accept a supernatural one from 2000 years ago?
“You sound like a sociologist.” LOL! Nothing could be farther from the truth :)
Perhaps so, but I did not say you were a sociologist. You just sound like one because you are not willing to reach a conclusion. We have to sit on the fence to be polite to Christians. No fear. They have never been polite until recently. They even used to be disgustingly rude to each other in the theological debates of the Middle Ages, and ultimately the majority got its own way by incinerating its opponents. For me, no such religion could possibly be the work of a good god.
