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It is very common for me to get email messages quoting Bible verses at me, or just giving chapter and verse references as if I should go and read the Bible. Don't these people recognize what status the Bible has with an atheist? |
I agree with the claim that religion is something that is taught.
So many people are religious, thinking they can bribe God to let
them into heaven. We cannot do anything to earn our way into heaven.
None of us deserve it. None of us are good (Romans 3:12). We have
evidence of wind because we see its effects around us; likewise,
we have evidence of God because of our conscience (Romans 2:15).
Have you ever lied, stolen, looked with lust? If so, you are a
lying, thieving, adulterer at heart. Have you ever used God's name
in vain? Blasphemy is a grave offense, taking the name of our holy
God and using it without meaning or to express disgust. If God
judges you by this standard you will be guilty, condemning yourself
to hell on your own merits. God made a way for you to be saved.
That is to turn from your sins and trust in Jesus Christ that He
did what He claimed to do for you, and you will be given eternal
life. Then read your Bible daily, studying its proper grammatical-historical
context and you will never fail in God's promises. Many people
lack the understanding of God's holy, just, and righteous nature:
He is perfect. The reason why atheists deny God is that they love
sin (2 Peter 3). That is also why atheists deny the Flood: they
do not want to be held accountable to God. "Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit
the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor
idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves,
nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will
inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Corinthians 6:9). "For
the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness
and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
because that which is known about God is evident within them; for
God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world
His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature,
have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been
made, so that they are without excuse...(Romans 1:18-32). I, too,
am fallen in nature: a sinner in desperate need of a Savior. I
am not better than you, but I am infinitely better off than you.
Repent while God still gives you breath. You do not know when you
will die: it can happen any moment. Let Jesus Christ save you today. Mike |
Why the chapter and verse?
I do not believe in any gods and I have no special soft spot for any Jewish god, I am not a Jew.
Please explain to me why you wrote to me giving me a reading list from an old book of superstitions compiled by committees of foreign religious maniacs.
Haven't I made it clear that I am not interested in having a religion?
Haven't I made it clear that I do not believe in a soul? No soul, no life after death, no prospect of eternal torture therefore you have no hold over me.
Beliefs do not change reality. It is possible that observation changes reality on a quantum level but belief doesn't, if it did casino operators would go out of business overnight.
Name me one invention that was made possible by biblical introspection
rather than by understanding how the universe really works.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
Martin - You wrote, “Please explain to me why you wrote to me giving me a reading list from an old book of superstitions compiled by committees of foreign religious maniacs.” Its simple. The Bible tells you the truth about God and humanity. It verifies what I am writing you. Your description of the Bible shows an anger at God or His Word. It is an emotional response. You see it as some fanatical gibberish; I see it as the inspired, inerrant Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16). The chapter and verse is for reference. I was searching the internet and found your site on Atheism. I thought, “What does all this have to do with the fact that Martin will stand before God on the Day of Judgment (whether he believes in him or not) and give an account of his life - as will all religious pretenders, atheists, and so on.” Many scientists, past and present, think of science as a way to unravel the works of God; how God makes things operate. You are right, beliefs do not change reality. But reality can only be known if reality is absolute - if it is transcendent above all beliefs despite what we personally want to believe. You don’t need faith to believe in God (Romans 1). His reality transcends all truth. Faith is only necessary in the form of trust, when we want to seek and know our Creator. How does the universe really work? That understanding is based on our own personal presuppositions and interpretations. The atheist has a belief in the non-existence of God (of any kind). That is the atheist’s religion. You have a religion, Martin, no matter what you claim. We all do. Evolution is the faith of an atheist. Without any tangible proof or observance (the facility on which science operates), the evolutionist has interpreted the history of the earth according to assumptions such as uniformitarianism and natural selection (I do not deny natural selection. Science proves that natural selection operates on genes already present in our genetic make-up. When natural selection occurs, a loss of information takes place. There is no proof that any information is added in the process, nor is the creature being selected anything more than a variation - microevolution. The creature is still the same kind of creature before natural selection took place - variation does not prove macroevolution: the acquiring of new information). The Christian should interpret the world through the history book of the universe: the Bible; the Word of God. So the difference between us is how you and I choose to interpret the world. Thought and Logic is misused by atheists. Martin, you have to use the facilities God has given you to deny His existence. Without God, logic is meaningless. Thoughts would be nothing more than random processes of chemical reactions that occur without any accurate ability to interpret. That means your thoughts are indefensible on the grounds that since they are random accidents you can never know if they are right or wrong. You cannot even know if things are right and wrong. “The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.'” (Psalm 14:1). You cannot understand how the universe really works without God or without the Bible. His reality allows us to know the world. Without any absolute truth, understanding is relative - which means, there is no discernible reality. The prophecies of Matthew 24, Luke 21, and 2 Peter 3 being fulfilled
in the last days testify to the truthfulness of the Word of God.
You are not convinced of God now, but you will be fully convinced
when you die and stand before him to give an account of your life.
Your arguments will be removed without question because they will
all be answered in one moment of death. Listen to your conscience.
Repent while there is still time. Put your trust in Jesus Christ
before you perish. Mike |
You really don't understand it at all do you? I do not believe in gods. Any of them. All tales of gods are made up by men. By charlatans or madmen. We know that false religions exist. My list of false religions is merely one longer than yours.
It is simply ridiculous to be using the words of the Bible to verify the content and meaning of the Bible, it makes as much sense as pointing at the forged signature on your forged nine dollar bill and saying that signature makes it genuine and proves it is what it says it is. If there are no gods there can be no books written by gods. What part of I don't believe in any gods are you having difficulty understanding?
It does not matter what is written in the Bible for exactly the same reason it doesn't matter what appears on your nine dollar bill. I don't accept it, I do not accept that it is what it pretends to be. Quoting it at me is simply making you appear to be stupid, too stupid to understand what you are debating, too stupid to be taken seriously. I don't want to debate with stupid people, please don't continue to debate like that.
Why don't you need faith to believe in God? I am not going to read your book, tell me why, yourself, using your own words. Don't appeal to an authority I have no respect for. If I argued half a case and then gave you page references from Das Kapital or Mein Kampf would you be convinced? Of course not, you don't regard those books as authorities on anything worth knowing, not that you have read them, and you have no intention of reading them now. Am I beginning to get through to you yet? The Bible is just a big old book written by largely anonymous deluded ill-educated pre-scientific foreigners. It has no merit beyond the historical and literary. I think people should be familiar with the content of classic works of popular mythology of otherwise dubious literary value. People today should be familiar with characters and stories from the Bible, they should know their Homer as well as their Simpsons, the story of Abraham and Oedipus, St. Luke and Anakin. They should know about the myths of King Arthur, Robin Hood, Wyatt Earp, Zorro, El Cid, Ned Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde as well as the myth of Jesus Christ. They should recognize references to Peter Parker, Peter Pan as well as Peter and the Pearly Gates (and note the inconsistency between the tunnel of light leading to the staircase to the Pearly Gates versus the sleeping in the grave until The Last Trump). The Bible should just be a part of the culture like Shakespeare, Superman* and Sherlock Holmes.
I do not have a religion. If atheism is a religion then not lifting weights is an exercise program and not not eating carbohydrates is a diet. Defining atheism as a religion makes the term religion meaningless. You see your belief in one god as part of your religion. You can't infer that everybody's beliefs about gods form their religious beliefs from your own example. Many people believe in a god or "something out there" but are not in any meaningful way religious. An ideal religion (no value judgement implied, ideal in the Platonic sense) would be something like Catholicism, which has a systematic set of beliefs, recognized practices and obligations leading to a predictable mindset. If you hear somebody described as a Catholic intellectual you have a pretty good idea what kind of ideas they are likely to have. Atheistic beliefs do not lead to a predictable mindset. Some of the biggest jerks I know are atheists. Merely having an absence of theistic beliefs does not make a person act in any particular way.
How does the universe work? I don't know but I'd like to find out. I don't expect to be told that it is nothing to be bothered by, somebody else's problem. I have a quotation for you, from the Bible, I can't give you chapter and verse but I'd guess it's on page one, it was as far as I got last time I tried to read the Bible. "He made the stars also." Have you any idea how many stars there are? The men who wrote the Bible, yes, men, not people, not God, could see about three thousand stars. Stars are apparently very small and don't seem to do very much. To a Bronze Age herder five words seems reasonable to give to those little lights in the sky, and three thousand seems like a big number but if they wanted to allude to a bigger number they would talk of grains of sand. How can you conceive of the Bible as the inspired word of God if it dismisses so much of the universe in five words? How hard would it have been to describe the real extent of the universe in words that primitive tribe of herders could understand? It is so very easy:
There are more stars in the sky than sands in the desert. The world you know of is but a tenth of the whole world, which is round, the seas you know are like puddles to the great seas of this world. This world is but one among several that travel around the sun. The sun is but a star, a small star. Far bigger stars exist in the sky. Some of the stars you see are like boulders compared to the sun as a pebble. The sky contains more stars than you can count in a lifetime... and so on. Big numbers and large spans of time can be described by primitive people, the universe of the Hindus and Meso-Americans was much grander than anything in Hebrew mythology.
There is nothing in Bible which hints at the scale of the universe. Nothing. The Bible is an insult to the majesty of the universe. The small-minded shallow, vindictive intellectual pygmy of a god portrayed in the Bible is an insult to the world we know. If there really is a god who made this universe we live in I'd bet he'd be a lot happier with my appreciation of it than yours. Your Bible makes the universe look tiny, man-shaped, with man at the centre trying not to use his genitals in a way that might upset the bigot in the sky. The universe revealed by science is far bigger, grander and inspiring than anything described in the Bible. It is a universe we can live in but it is not for us any more than a forest is for the deer to live in.
Uniformitarianism is a reasonable idea but a poor dogma. It is reasonable to assume that the past was more similar to the present than different unless you have strong evidence to suggest otherwise. It is a common human error to conceive of dream times or olden days when dragons roamed and brides were virgins and everything was simpler and there were no cynics or con-artists. I believe that volcanoes today are like volcanoes twenty thousand years ago and that religious charlatans of the twentieth century like L Ron Hubbard are similar to charlatans of the nineteenth century and the first. Why do you see Biblical Times and the Holy Land and Jewish "prophets" as different?
Thought and logic are spurned by the religious as dangerous. That's why they didn't let anybody read unless they were in Holy Orders subject to discipline and dependant on the church literally for their bread and shelter. Imagine the chaos if people could read the Bible for themselves!
God does not exist therefore nothing I have is a gift from God. Can you just hang onto that thought for a moment or two? I do not believe in gods. I am not going to start to believe in your god just to help your arguments sound a little less lame.
There is nothing random about thought processes. Random is a word often bandied about by Christians to attack any world view which does not depend on their pet uncaused first cause.
Of course I can know the difference between right and wrong. It is an absolute absurdity to suggest that the will of a god is the only way to tell if an action is good or bad. Every human society there has ever been has had moral standards and ethics. While Radio God has been transmitting solely on the kosher wavelengths until three or four years after the death of Jesus somehow people have managed to decide the difference between right and wrong. How was that done, Satanic influence?
The reason people are open to manipulation by charismatic religious cultists like David Koresh, Jim Jones, John the Baptist and Saul of Tarsus is that people have an innate sense of morality. We know that co-operating with people is a good idea when we can get it to work. We know that killing and stealing is wrong because we can empathize. If we really think about it we can even empathize with foreigners. Empathy with women or slaves obviously takes more effort than Christians could manage for the best part of two thousand years. Religious people often offer up a deal, a contract. It seems reasonable to us that a god would make a contract too. That's because we are so arrogant we imagine that gods are like us: jealous, vindictive, interesting in smiting their enemies, winning them some land and having queasy feelings about the shenanigans of homosexuals, responding to love and praise and so on. If a being doesn't need a universe in which to exist why imagine that he has the character typical of a social ape? That doesn't make the slightest bit of sense, and quoting some Bible passage (or is it just a common cliché?) about God working in mysterious ways does nothing to cover up the gaping hole in Christian thinking.
Nothing capable of making the entire universe is likely to have a sense of justice, morality, a right side or a bosom let alone a big white beard. There is a perfectly rational explanation for why man would invent a god in his own image but none at all that would explain the reverse.
"Without God logic is meaningless" is one of the most facile pieces of nonsense I have ever dismissed. It means nothing, it explains nothing, it predicts nothing, it cannot be proved, disproved or even defended.
How can smell exist? There is no perfect stench. All smell is relative. How can there be such a thing? Surely the existence of smell is proof of the existence of The Great Stinker? That is a lame argument. Truth is real. Truth is the absence of falsity, lies and distortion. It exists theoretically just as absolute cold exists theoretically. There does not have to be an absolute zero or a Lord of All Things Cold for temperature to have meaning. I know it's cold at the South Pole, that knowledge does not require me believe that there is an anthropomorphic personification of the concept of cold which allows me to perceive it and it to exist.
I don't believe I am anything other than my own body. That was the same belief of most of the characters in Genesis. The idea that people were separable from their bodies came later. It does not in the least follow from human experience. I have never had the slightest hint of an out of body experience and I haven't met a sane person who has.
If your superstitious nonsense is true I will want to know why your god was playing silly buggers with mankind for so long. I will want to know what was so special about the Jews, why did he stick with them for a few thousand years and then start talking to other people, but only people who believed that Jews were special. I will want to know why an all-powerful god can't arrange justice in life, and why he thinks it is reasonable for man to try to do it for him. I will want to know why an all-powerful god cares about consensual sodomy but condoned and even gave precise instructions for the conduct of slavery, genital mutilation of children and genocide. I will want to know why an all-powerful god can only talk to people he has been formally introduced to. Why couldn't God speak to everybody? Why couldn't God speak to Adolf Hitler? It's not as if the bastard didn't expect him to.
God will have more explaining to do than I will.
I did not start to doubt the existence of God to make him disappear, I didn't want him not to exist. I stopped trying to believe in God when I realized that God doesn't make sense and that smart people with a genuine interest in the way the world really is did not believe in that old discredited hypothesis.
* (Nietzsche, Shaw and DC Comics)
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/