AW! Epistles
From John H
Abstract
Monday, 20 October 2003
Mike, I have the following comments on: AskWhy! Christianity Revealed - Personal Introduction by Dr M D Magee.
You have a choice Dr Magee, do be warned. John H.
That is how you ended your email to me, but I am not likely to be warned off criticising the Christian scam by your crude threats, although I thank you for proving how odious Christians still are. The rest of your case was:
Dr Magee your cynical refutation of much of the Bible is an exercise in faith probably larger than the faith of those whom you seem to despise.
I suggest that you could not recognise the difference between faith and fact if it hit you on the nose. Fact requires evidence. Faith requires no evidence, and despises evidence. People who accept anything on no evidence are habitually fooled by confidence tricksters and used car salesmen. That is why Christianity is a confidence trick and why the confidence tricksters of the world advocate it so keenly.
There are many strange people who claim to be Christian who have very funny ideas. However their existence doesn’t mean that the underlying Christian Gospel is therefore unreliable.
If these people only claim to be Christian, perhaps you will tell me how I am to distinguish a real Christian like you from a false one like them. The whole point about Christianity is that anyone can claim to be one and use it as a cover for their nefarious ploys or simply to beg forgiveness when they are caught. Every creepy three card trickster that gets caught will pretend to have found God in the hope of sympathy and a light sentence.
The essence of the Gospel is that it is founded on faith, not empirical evidence, although I and many like me believe that the empirical evidence from time to time is discovered. I enjoy Christian apologetics but they are not the route to faith.
Christians use empirical evidence when it suits them, and they reject it otherwise. It shows their utter dishonesty. You do not like my empirical evidence because it is detailed and exposes Christianity for what it is. But if you had a potential convert of an uncitical frame of mind, as most are, you will offer empirical evidence to persuade the neophyte, even though you actually reject it as unnecessary. Christians are crooks.
I lost patience reading your tirade as you speak with such apparent authority on what you consider in the Bible might be true and what you declare emphatically as fiction. Not so much scholarship as hubris.
No one obliged you to read any of it, though it would do you good to read all of it. People can only fear nemesis if they believe in gods. I do not. However, I suggest that your own smugness amounts to the same thing, and since you believe in God you have something to fear.
There is noone who does not argue from their own prejudices. To select Christians in particular is indeed great prejudice.
It is a great prejudice to you because Christianity is beyond criticism to you. That is one of the greatest failings of your type. That is your own hubris to which I alluded just now. You have a saying about motes and beams. I suggest you try to understand it.
Take the most blatant example of blind faith, the whole theory of Darwinian evolution. All falls down on the laws of thermodynamics.
You have now become a scientist, I take it. You plainly know less about science than you do about humility.
Why you wish to preach an anti-Christian message is strange.
You prove that you are talking out of your hat. Read the pages, that you criticise from a position of ignorance, and then you might understand. Of course, I have no faith that you will, because you all think you know everything directly from God. That is the mark of your insanity.
If there is no creator to whom we are accountable and the whole of existence is some meaningless cosmic joke why bother the get so exercised about it?
I am not exercised about any Creator. You are. I am exercised by the crooks and shysters who have robbed people of their money, their dignity and their lives for the last 2000 years, supposedly on the say so of this Creator of theirs. If He exists, anyone rational has to conclude that He is Satan. Did you ever think you were worshipping the wrong one in the pair that constitute the duality of Good and Evil? Not a chance of it, my smug friend.
If I had taken more time I could have probably written better and shorter.
I suggest this is your excuse for having no arguments that will bear any weight.
However I would counsel you to accord the Bible the dignity of less bigoted spectacles.
I would offer you the same counsel
Satre said, “There is only one question, why is there something and not nothing? ”
I am sure that Satre was intelligent enough to know the answer. If there was nothing, then there could have been no question.
The apostle Paul said, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”
This is a circular argument because sinners are defined as those who do not believe in Jesus Christ.
The question is not “Is the Gospel reasonable?” It is, “Is the Gospel true?”
Are you saying it can be true and unreasonable? I suspect that is precisely what you are saying. Well, there is one thing that I believe in myself and that is that any Good God could not possibly be unreasonable, and nor could He send unfathomable messages to persuade His Creation that they need saving. An almighty God has the wherewithall to make His salvific message utterly clear. That is proof enough to me that Christianity is a false construction of human cheats and rogues aiming to force others into dependence and slavery. The bible refers to you all as God’s slaves, but you tricksters translate it to suit yourselves. Slaves is what you are, but not to God, to the priests and pastors who you keep in port wine.
Paul also said, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?”
Let me try to make it clear to you. An ancient book can contain ancient wisdom, but it can also contain ancient rubbish. If God has any salvation for me, he is capable of telling me so. So far he has not told me or anyone else we need saving. You can believe it, if you wish, but you have no evidence for it being true.
