Monthly Archives: August 2015

by

why Christianity?

And not because I converted.

This is a response to why choose Christianity and not something else or nothing else? It is an exercise in special pleading, appeals to authority and a case of ignorance.

The author starts by telling us most other religions are explicable without appeal to the supernatural. In his words

The naturalistic explanation, saying “men came up with myths about Zeus and others” fits all the data we have available much better than an appeal to a supernatural explanation; “men spoke about Zeus and the rest because those gods were real.”

and I ask where is the difference between this and Christianity. All the data we have point to the bible and its god[s] being a work of humans. They are created and dressed in human language and given human character just as the ancients did, except in their case, people could surpass the gods. The christian has created a monster that no matter how much effort, you can’t outdo it in cruelty and pettiness.

The author even has the mind to tell us

In this sense, atheism is a powerful ally to Christianity for the atheists help us make the case for why we reject the vast majority of religions.

The atheist rejects all gods. All includes the middle Eastern god to whom billions of Muslims, Jews and Christians around the world genuflect. To think yours is an exception is to me, the height of blind ignorance.

To make his case for Christianity, he gives, what he calls supernatural pseudo explanations. I call them pseudo explanations because they have not been shown to be true. The reasons he alludes to are

  1. coherency in the biblical message- while here, forget that there are two creation stories, that the story of Jacob and Isaac [?] look like cardboard copies, that we don’t know, from the supposed biographers of J. Hubris Christ his correct genealogy
  2. People willing to die for the claim Jesus is risen- the people who willingly died in Uganda following the advice of the cult leader must make it true
  3. Sudden birth and rise of christian theology- anyone who reads history would know this is not the case. Maybe he should have said the slow and violent rise of Christianity. This would be close to the facts.
  4. Many indoctrinated people have remained Christians. I thought if he had any sense he would see this is true of all other religions.
  5. His last point is so absurd I have to put it here in its entirety for prosperity –
    • The supernatural explanation accounts for the big questions like “Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there life when the odds are against there being such? How did the universe get started? Why is there something startlingly different about humans compared with other animals? Why is there such a strong yearning for purpose among humans? Why do humans reflect on morality so much? Why is there evil and what can be done about it?” Naturalism struggles to explain what Christianity simply and  profoundly answers.

From here on, he goes of the rails in so complete a fashion that only a brain replacement would restore him. In the example of Paul, where there are many plausible explanations, he sticks with a pseudo explanation because it is good for his script. Facts be damned.

You would expect this fellow is going to make a serious case for his religion only to repeat the trope of Jesus rose from the dead and why? It is in the bible.

Why should one become a christian? Because the bible says there is an afterlife and you may have a chance with angels if that is your kind of thing. Really? Can’t we have apologists who are reasonable and who tell us reasonable things? Or is their target audience the already damned deluded?

by

while I was away

Yours truly has been away on an annual convention for architects, time which I was busy holidaying to post much.

I know there are those who have always wanted to see the person behind this blog, here he is in full colour
Sea urchins for those of you who have only read about them
It’s not what you think! It didn’t fall off anyone’s pants.
Sea centipede. I am told it can kill you. I didn’t want to find out
I can’t remember what this was
Star fish
Our guide told me their grandfathers, long before they had watches used these as sea clocks. They would tell the tides- low or high depending on how they were lying on the ground
Can you spot the fish?
This is poison from the fish you are to spot in the next image
I think this was written be me. You see I have good foot writing. My handwriting is even better 🙂
Need I say more
I don’t remember what fish this was
Some fish I can’t recall which
baby star fish
i like water fountains
by

I say

With Dresser,

I do not know what truth is, what beauty is, what love is, what hope is. I do not believe any one absolutely and I do not doubt any one absolutely. I think people are both evil and well-intentioned.

by

Every generation thinks the generation after them is immoral

I couldn’t have chosen a better title for this post, so we will make do with the above. In his post, glorifying sex, alcohol and drugs Aloo wants to portray a picture of decadence of morals among the present generation school going children.

He tells us, in his own words

As I join everybody else in condemning the behavior of the students in question and their lackluster approach to life, I must point out that there was nothing shocking about the incident because ours is a rotten society. [emphasis by me]

How is the society rotten? Is it because school girls and boys were having sex, doing drugs or because they were found doing this? Whilst I don’t urge drug use among adolescent you, blanket condemnation of society as being in a state of decay maybe because there is so much sex is in my view hypocritical.

Our interlocutor goes ahead to claim, unashamedly, that

What you have to understand is that the society is affected by reckless (allow me to use this word again) sexual behavior of young people. This is reflected in the rate at which sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS is spreading across the nation.

And when pointed to statistics from the ministry of health about which demographic leads in the spread of HIV/AIDS, he brushes it off with a slight of hand because it doesn’t fit into his scheme of propaganda. He blames everyone else of sugaring their stories with sex tales to sell while he does the same while ignoring facts. One wonders what his goals are. Is it to demonize the unlucky students who were unlucky or to offer guidance in how to solve the problem.

Before you start demonize yours truly for promoting loose morals; lets not pretend that our generations were far better than the current breed of children. We may not have been caught in buses during school holidays not because we were paragons of virtue, far from it. It could be because we didn’t attend school far from home and did not have access to drugs.

End of rant.

 

by

your god is too small: book review

I really don’t know whether to be ad that I wasted my time or happy that there is nothing in this book worth writing home about, which is the same thing really. J.B Philips audience must be Christian. His goal is to tell us why the gods many people believe in are too small or rather, he means to say people believe in the wrong god and he has the right god worked out. Here is a list of the wrong gods you may have believed in and that is why you are godless

  1. Resident policeman- you believed god was watching your every move. Wrong god
  2. Parental hangover- your parents were horrible, you think god is horrible. Wrong god
  3. Grand old man- everyone you respected was older than you. You think god is an old man in the sky. He is actually very young. Wrong god
  4. Meek and mild- you have had this said about Jesus. He was kickass. wrong god
  5. Absolute perfection- you were told go yea be perfect. You think god is perfect, it may not be the case. Wrong god
  6. Heavenly bosom. You read in the bible you can take your problems to the lord and think that is what god is. You are wrong. Deal with your shit
  7. God in a box. You were catholic and believed the only true god is the catholic god. You were wrong
  8. Managing director- you think because the universe is vast, god can’t know when you jerk off. Wrong god
  9. Second hand god-your idea of god is given through works of fiction. Too bad
  10. Perennial grievance- god has disappointed you once and this is what you think of god. Wrong god
  11. Pale Galilean- do I need say more
  12. Projected image- self explanatory
  13. God in a hurry- he wanted you yesterday. Wrong. He is a patient god
  14. God for the elite- you think god is for the saints and mystcis. Wrong god
  15. God of Bethel- Your god is god of the OT. Wrong god
  16. God without godhead- the kind of god Hart believes in. Ground of being kind of god. Wrong god
  17. Gods by any other name- you worship money, your wife/ husband. Here I would add that he claims man is a worshiping animal. Last I checked, we are social animals.

And I know you have been waiting for the real god all this time. It is Jesus. God become man and so on, died on a cross and resurrected kind of thing. To say this is a bad book, in my view, would be an understatement of the century. If you set out to tell us what the true god is, believing our conceptions of god are all wrong, I think you should do better than telling us this god is represented in Jesus. Your god is too small [pdf]

by

Quotable quotes

I rarely quote from the American founding fathers. I am going to do that today because these are too good not be shared. They are from speeches by Jefferson and quoted by Joseph Lewis.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must approve the homage of reason rather than of blindfolded fear. Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it end in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and in the love of others it will procure for you

and elsewhere

I consider the Government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from meddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, disciplines, or exercises. But it is only proposed that I should recommend, not prescribe a day of fasting and praying. That is, I should indirectly assume to the United States an authority over religious exercise, which the Constitution has directly precluded them from. Every one must act according to the dictates of his reason and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents

on Jesus he said

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classified with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.

by

god, science, evolution

Does science disprove god? so the question gets asked.

Most who are scientifically minded quickly say no. They quickly add science is not in the business of god and accommodationists argue science and religion occupy different magestria.

But is this really the case or is this about modesty?

Take for example the case of evolution. If evolution is fact, Genesis 1 is disproved and this is a case of science disproving god. I may add here, for the benefit of my critique, that the theist could argue that it is their god that put the mechanism for evolution in place. This could be the case but they will have to choose whether such a god is beneficent or omnipotent.

In the same scenario, does an old universe disprove god? I think it does. And more still, whereas both the theist and atheist are ignorant of whether the universe is self existing or created, the atheist can say that so far as we know, all manifestations in nature (that is phenomena) need no supernatural push and to this extent science has shown no divine agency is necessary.

But one may ask about the nature of things in themselves and whether there is an Unknowable something beyond it all. Here, the theist may argue that at the beyond phenomena, in the dark areas where human knowledge can’t penetrate, there, their god resides. The atheist will argue from the indestructibility of matter and persistence of force, lies the source of all things. Since this is beyond all possible experience, conceding this to the theist gives them no advantage over the atheist.

In conclusion, in the area of experience, which is, in my view, the purview of science, it has been demonstrated there is no god, whatever they are conceived to be, but beyond the level of experience, everyone, atheist and theist alike are free to speculate all they want. Each must however remember that to think something could be, does not translate to it being.