In defense of higher education

Not that it needs defending but because I couldn’t think of a better title for this post. Some of you have read the floundering thoughts post which was  a response to a post whose author has pestered yours truly to read in order that I should be enlightened on what am missing.

When I wrote the other day about length of posts, I had such posts in mind. The author could have as well written

the bible is the word of god because the bible says so

and be done with it but she goes yapping endlessly saying almost the same thing. I could respond to that statement with a single word BULLSHIT and stop there and I will still have done the post justice. I will however say a bit more because there are groups of people who think ridicule isn’t a good response to credulity.

She tells us the universe is evidence for a creator. That everything we see around is evidence for the god of the Hebrews. We are expected to believe that the creator of the universe slept for generations and only felt it important to talk to men about his works to a band of herders. This is to expect a lot from us. She tells us because we can’t create shit, we can’t question shit. No wonder charlatans frauds pastors still make so much money. The world is populated by people ready to believe the most silly of things.

A wise man living a few centuries back wrote

We are assured that the wonders of nature are sufficient to a belief in the existence of a God, and to convince us fully of this important truth. But how many persons are there in this world who have the leisure, the capacity, the necessary taste, to contemplate nature and to meditate upon its progress? The majority of men pay no attention to it. A peasant is not at all moved by the beauty of the sun, which he sees every day. The sailor is not surprised by the regular movements of the ocean; he will draw from them
no theological inductions. The phenomena of nature do not prove the existence of a God, except to a few forewarned men, to whom has been shown in advance the finger of God in all the objects whose mechanism could embarrass them. The unprejudiced philosopher sees nothing in the wonders of nature but permanent and invariable law; nothing but the necessary effects of different combinations of diversified substance.

but we should see god. To see a creator. This is asking for too much from our intelligence. Maybe a mad man would find the explanation that malaria points to god, a god who later on you will learn is all loving, all-powerful and all-knowing. They question on whose authority you would question the love of such a fiend. It’s messengers/ parsons want you to buy this crap under the threat of eternal fire. Keep your fires, keep your stakes!

If pride is the father of unbelief, call me proud. But it takes a certain amount of stupid to believe that it is pride that makes a man of common sense ask if donkeys talk or snakes walked and ‘fishes’ were used for transcontinental transport. Please!

If you were to ask a person of common sense why the bible needs defense, especially if it must be believed, they will tell you it is self refuting and not self proving. To see it as anything more than that, you requires religion.

In the superstition of the ages the author says this about theology, what our author here calls the study of divine things

There is a science which has for its object only incomprehensible things. Unlike all others, it occupies itself but with things unseen. Hobbes calls it “the kingdom of darkness.” In this land all obey laws opposed to those which men acknowledge in the world they inhabit. In this marvelous region light is but darkness, evidence becomes doubtful or false, the impossible becomes credible, reason is an unfaithful guide, and common sense changed into delirium. This science is named Theology, and this Theology
is a continual insult to human reason

I digress.

Our author asks

What then is the value of the scholarship which does not trust scripture?

A question which I interpret to mean scholarship should make us all bible believing dimwits. Seriously?

We are told

If a person must rely on the testimony of men to give approval of the scriptures, then that person will always be at the mercy of another mans learning.

This is not God’s way as He demonstrates the power in His word  that men’s faith be not in men.

And I keep saying this is high irony.

The first book of the bible starts

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

² And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

³ And God said, Let there be light: and there was light……..

and yours truly must ask, is this the testimony of god or of man?

The author then tells us that pilate deserved no answer when he asked what was the meaning of truth. I would imagine a god would want to settle the ignorance of men but not to the staunch believer.

It is strange when one is a believer how everything is the fault of the reader. A person of common sense reads of Lot shagging his daughters and finds this abhorrent, the believer tells you scripture is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. I will be generous here, someone please tell what lesson we get from this story. I will wait.

Towards the end, there is this charge

A person tells you the bible is a fairy tale. He says you are a lunatic if you believe ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ He thinks you are insane if you actually believe there was confusing of languages in Babel,  he tells you Abraham never existed, he tells you Sodom was not a real city, and he tells you sin is a fabrication. He then tells you the death of the son of God was a joke. He informs you  that the ‘faith once delivered to the saints’ is a deluded hope. He tells you men of higher learning have found errors with scripture.

He then finishes by informing you there are mistakes in what he calls the book of myths, and pleads with you to answer his endless charges.

Which looks like a legit charge but answerable. I will give an analogy; when watching a movie, you know from the onset it is a tale but at the end you say about some scene they lied. You know where you have a guy in a brown shirt and the same guy in a green shirt but he hasn’t left his desk. There is no contradiction in telling you the bible is a book of fairy tales and then pointing out the portions of the fairy tales that are an exaggeration or badly told. So yes, the bible is a book of fairy tales, some badly told and some so exaggerated but fairy tales all the same. It may say something factual about the human condition but this is to be expected written as it is by men, for men and about men.

I will end this post in the words of Shelley P. Bysshe

The educated man ceases to be superstitious.