Posted on 05/01/2011 7:24:18 AM PDT by Ethan Clive Osgoode
The squabble between Darwin lobbyists who openly hate religion and those who only quietly disdain it grows ever more personal, bitter and pathetic. On one side, evangelizing New or "Gnu" (ha ha) Atheists like Jerry Coyne and his acolytes at Why Evolution Is True. Dr. Coyne is a biologist who teaches and ostensibly researches at the University of Chicago but has a heck of a lot of free time on his hands for blogging and posting pictures of cute cats.
On the other side, so-called accommodationists like the crowd at the National Center for Science Education, who attack the New Atheists for the political offense of being rude to religious believers and supposedly messing up the alliance between religious and irreligious Darwinists.
I say "supposedly" because there's no evidence any substantial body of opinion is actually being changed on religion or evolution by anything the open haters or the quiet disdainers say. Everyone seems to seriously think they're either going to defeat religion, or merely "creationism," or both by blogging for an audience of fellow Darwinists.
Want to see what I mean? This is all pretty strictly a battle of stinkbugs in a bottle. Try to follow it without getting a headache.
Coyne recently drew excited applause from fellow biologist-atheist-blogger PZ Myers for Coyne's "open letter" (published on his blog) to the NCSE and its British equivalent, the British Centre for Science Education. In the letter, Coyne took umbrage at criticism of the New Atheists, mostly on blogs, emanating from the two accommodationist organizations. He vowed that,
We will continue to answer the misguided attacks [on the New Atheists] by people like Josh Rosenau, Roger Stanyard, and Nick Matzke so long as they keep mounting those attacks.Like the NCSE, the BCSE seeks to pump up Darwin in the public mind without scaring religious people. This guy called Stanyard at the BCSE complains of losing a night's sleep over the nastiness of the rhetoric on Coyne's blog. Coyne in turn complained that Stanyard complained that a blog commenter complained that Nick Matzke, formerly of the NCSE, is like "vermin." Coyne also hit out at blogger Jason Rosenhouse for an "epic"-length blog post complaining of New Atheist "incivility." In the blog, Rosenhouse, who teaches math at James Madison University, wrote an update about how he had revised an insulting comment about the NCSE's Josh Rosenau that he, Rosenhouse, made in a previous version of the post.
That last bit briefly confused me. In occasionally skimming the writings of Jason Rosenhouse and Josh Rosenau in the past, I realized now I had been assuming they were the same person. They are not!
It goes on and on. In the course of his own blog post, Professor Coyne disavowed name-calling and berated Stanyard (remember him? The British guy) for "glomming onto" the Matzke-vermin insult like "white on rice, or Kwok on a Leica." What's a Kwok? Not a what but a who -- John Kwok, presumably a pseudonym, one of the most tirelessly obsessive commenters on Darwinist blog sites. Besides lashing at intelligent design, he often writes of his interest in photographic gear such as a camera by Leica. I have the impression that Kwok irritates even fellow Darwinists.
There's no need to keep all the names straight in your head. I certainly can't. I'm only taking your time, recounting just a small part of one confused exchange, to illustrate the culture of these Darwinists who write so impassionedly about religion, whether for abolishing it or befriending it. Writes Coyne in reply to Stanyard,
I'd suggest, then, that you lay off telling us what to do until you've read about our goals. The fact is that we'll always be fighting creationism until religion goes away, and when it does the fight will be over, as it is in Scandinavia.A skeptic might suggest that turning America into Scandinavia, as far as religion goes, is an outsized goal, more like a delusion, for this group as they sit hunched over their computers shooting intemperate comments back and forth at each other all day. Or in poor Stanyard's case, all night.
There's a feverish, terrarium-like and oxygen-starved quality to this world of online Darwinists and atheists. It could only be sustained by the isolation of the Internet. They don't seem to realize that the public accepts Darwinism to the extent it does -- which is not much -- primarily because of what William James would call the sheer, simple "prestige" that the opinion grants. Arguments and evidence have little to do with it.
The prestige of Darwinism is not going to be affected by how the battle between Jerry Coyne and the NCSE turns out. New Atheist arguments are hobbled by the same isolation from what people think and feel. I have not yet read anything by any of these gentlemen or ladies, whether the open haters or the quiet disdainers, that conveys anything like a real comprehension of religious feeling or thought.
Even as they fight over the most effective way to relate to "religion," the open atheists and the accomodationists speak of an abstraction, a cartoon, that no actual religious person would recognize. No one is going to be persuaded if he doesn't already wish to be persuaded for other personal reasons. No faith is under threat from the likes of Jerry Coyne.
Reciprocity does not prove the rights of humans.
I require a logical, irrefutable argument that Person A is wrong for depriving Person B of life or liberty.
To answer your questions. These are the questions as I understand them.
“what is to stop you from committing the worst of atrocities, and then begging forgiveness after the fact?”
Answer: the repentance must be real or the forgiveness doesn’t apply. While humans might be fooled, God knows the heart.
Question 2: “how is the purpose of justice served when an unbeliever is murdered by a believer who later seeks forgiveness?”
Answer: Civil justice is not deterred. Civil consequences remain. In terms of God’s justice, when real repentance is sought (as with the Apostle Paul), the justice of God has been satisfied by God’s decree that a perfect one could take the place of an imperfect one. The power of God to allow a champion to stand in the stead of a weaker warrior is somewhat reflected in a president’s ability to pardon or grant amnesty.
In the not too distant past, the use of a “second” was acceptable. The logic behind the use of a champion is the inability of the offender ever truly to be able to stand on his own. Thus, human total depravity, requires a champion for the human can never stand on his own.
I repeat, though, that you have not proven human rights. I see absolutely no rationalization for them in the law of the jungle, of tooth and nail.
To where??? Where have you ever explained anything about your "position" on anything???
Methinks you can't do it. But I'm more than willing to see you try.
That argument is a complete fallacy. It begins with a false premise and deteriorates from there.
While it is true that anybody who has committed sin can repent and be forgiven, as the thief on the cross demonstrates, anyone who presumptuously sins like that, counting on obtaining forgiveness and using that as a license to sin, is NOT saved.
That is spitting in the face of God and trampling underfoot the blood of Christ.
Anyone with that mentality is not saved and not ever likely to be saved.
Also, how is the purpose of justice served when an unbeliever is murdered by a believer who later seeks forgiveness?
A believer does not murder. Anyone who murders is not a believer. Another false premise on your part.
What's your next reason/excuse for rejecting Christianity?
This is just a classic case of “this cannot be true. They don’t work hard, and here they stand, saved. And here we are, showing our religion by our fasting, ashes on our foreheads, rushing to the morning, afternoon, and evening masses, always in line for the eucharist, reading our vespers, studying our responses, polishing our bracelets, and taking up our cross to suffer with Christ, praying to the saint of the day, asking for intercession, checking and double checking our hearts to make sure they align with God’s will, and in the end, asking Mother Mary to intercede on our behalf with her Son. All the while praying that Christ will have mercy on them, a poor sinner. If the Holy Spirit tried to speak softly to their soul, to lead them in truth, how could they possibly hear Him? Busy bodies have little time to reflect on truths that are written in a man’s heart and confirmed by God’s Word. The heart of this matter is lost in the constant search for self-worth and acceptance.
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Let me ask you this.....If I or anyone else could answer fully and completely your questions would you be prepared to give your life to Christ?
Those who use their salvation as license are, indeed, spitting in the face of God.
This is the “doctrine” of “cheap Grace”. There have been a lot of “emergent” apostate churches that ascribe to that,
including many churches with adulterous pastors.
But if our unrighteousness brings out God’s righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us? (I am using a human argument.) Certainly not! If that were so, how could God judge the world? Someone might argue, “If my falsehood enhances God’s truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?” Why not say—as some slanderously claim that we say—“Let us do evil that good may result”? Their condemnation is just!--Romans 3:5-8
What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?--Romans 6:1&2
If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.
How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified [him], and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?--Hebrews 10:26&27, 29
Human rights are based on the simple realization that this world is as much yours as it is mine, by virtue of our birth on this planet, our earthly citizenship. It's a given. You didn't earn it and neither did I. It is a concession that you have no more right to be here then I do.
Are human rights something carved ins tone? Of course not. It's a convention current humanity is willing to subscribe to, at least in principle, based on the Golden Rule.
Is it something abused? You bet. Some people, groups and nations feel they have more rights, and some have the means or ways to grab more than others and get away with it.
Human rights should be called Human Rights and Responsibilities. No one ever speaks of human responsibilities. If we all have same rights as human beings with respect to each other, then we all share the same responsibilities towards each other. You violate my rights, and the Golden Rule says I have the right to violate yours. An eye for an eye. That is reciprocity and that validates our rights.
Based on that principle, my State's law says that I have the right to stand my ground if threatened, and use deadly force if I feel my life in threatened by someone. That's why I carry, and I never miss, but I hope I never have to exercise that right.
The problem with human rights is that there are no universal standards of morality or conduct. We find many things abominable in some cultures, and they find many things abominable in ours. How do we reconcile this?
I think there is an objective measure to determine which culture is "better", and it is based on which culture provides more happiness to its population across the board, not which pretends to be the best by its own definitions. Success is best measured by happiness, imo.
Anarchies and dictatorships and oligarchies and theocracies fall short in that respect as compared to democracies without exception. Among democracies it's a matter of degree and not of kind. Democracies come the closest to providing rights tom life, liberty and happiness to its populations across the board by practicing live and let live principle of rights and responsibilities.
Get real, bb: people commit wrongful deeds in a moment of passion, not with a forethought, thinking of the consequences or else they wouldn't be doing it.
It is only after the fact that they realize what they have done, regret it, and asks for forgiveness. More often than not, it's too late to undo the damage they have done.
Does that mean they will never do it again? Hardly. But they are told that they are fallen, that their will is weak, that they are human and humans err, and that people fall again and again, and are forgiven if they repent every time: "And if he sin against thee seven times in the day, and seven times turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him." [Luke 17:4]
It's not as if God gives three-strikes-and-you-are-out warning; there is no limit how many times you can fail. There is a certain degree of "assurance" that even if they give in to their weakness repeatedly they still stand a chance, as long as they believe in Jesus.
Luther pretty much said that when he mentioned a thousand fornications a day, and the Catholics are told that if they go to their regular confession, do their penance and take their communion, they are absolved. How is any of this a deterrent when there is only one sin that cnanot be forgiven, against the Holy Spirit [Luke 12:10]?
I don't think anyone deliberately says "it doesn't matter, I know I am saved" as they commit wrongful acts. People simply commit wrongful deeds, blame it on weakness, the devil, economy, whatever, and then ask for forgiveness.
But if they know that their sins are part of their "fallen nature" and therefore expected to repeat, and if they are told that if they confess they will be forgiven [1 John 1:9], that does not do much for them to try harder to not fail again.
Oh, by thge way, you can also repent at your last breath and be "saved" regardless what you did. That is not something that will make people try harder but rather it makes it easier for them to give in to their moment of weakness.
Not understanding "metaphysics" is merely the tip of the iceberg of what the proud, but invincibly ignorant atheists don't want to understand.
I'll sum it up to begin: Whenever you run across any person who criticizes the Bible, claims findings of contradiction or error -- they do not deserve the benefit of the doubt. They have to earn it from you. Here's why.
Obviously the vast majority of [people] spend their entire lives doing little more than reading the Bible in English (or whatever native tongue) and importing into its words whatever ideas they derive from their own experiences. This process is very often one of "decontextualizing" ..
It doesn't take very long to realize that a thorough understanding of the Bible -- and this would actually apply to any complex work from any culture -- requires specialized knowledge, and a broad range of specialized knowledge in a variety of fields.
Let's anticipate and toss off the obvious objection: "Why did God make the Bible so hard to understand, then?"
It isn't -- none of this keeps a person from grasping the message of the Bible to the extent required to be saved; where the line is to be drawn is upon those who gratuitously assume that such base knowledge allows them to be competent critics of the text, and make that assumption indifferent to their own lack of knowledge -- what I have elsewhere spoken of in terms of being "unskilled and unaware of it."
"...The genres of the Bible include narrative, poetry, proverbial literature, wisdom discourse, a treaty (that's what Deuteronomy is, believe it or not!), legal codes, genealogies, biography (that is what the Gospels are!), personal letters and general letters, rhetoric (an art form in the ancient world), riposte, and apocalyptic. ....."
HERE: Fields of knowledge required for proper study of the Bible
<>
Fundie atheists and their inane, so-called "Bible contradiction" arguments, are dealt with day in and day out HERE. Scroll down to "Chapter 14" especially.
It is only after the fact that they realize what they have done, regret it, and asks for forgiveness. More often than not, it's too late to undo the damage they have done.
Get real yourself and get some reading comprehension lessons, for more reasons than one.
Do you not understand what presumptuously sins means? Do you not understand how sinning as a deliberate premeditated act counting on obtaining forgiveness later differs from falling into sin because we are imperfect sinful beings?
What you are addressing is not what JCB asked. Do try to stay on topic.
BB, perhaps you would also like to weigh in here since you were addressed in this comment.
James C. Bennett wrote: “LOL, it would now seem that if we understand metaphysics, we can accept that donkeys can talk, snakes can charm and humans can stay alive inside fishes”
kosta50 replied: “Indeed, and that diseases are cured by casting out evil spirits...(by those who have been given special powers)! I wonder what evil spirit causes the flu...? :)”
YOU MAY BE A FUNDY ATHEIST IF....
You consistently appear on discussion lists demanding that Christians accept your literal interpretation of various scriptural passages just so you can then launch into the usual “argument by outrage” - despite being told over and over that no learned Bible scholar shares your particular bizarre literal interpretation.
You complain that “Christian Apologists warp the definitions of words to make the Bible say what they want it to say.” And then you go on to say that in the Bible, “feet” means “genitals” and “thigh” means “fetus”.
You become upset when a Christian says that not everything in the Bible should be taken literally.
You pontificate about the Bible as if you are an expert in theology, textual criticism, ancient languages & cultures and much more besides, when your knowledge of the Bible is just cut and paste from atheist discussion lists which cut and paste it from atheist websites which cut and paste it from embarrassingly unscholarly rantings by the likes of Messer’s Freke & Gandy and Acharya S, etc.
When a Christian’s interpretation of a passage (based on the social/literary context) solves one of your favorite contradictions, it is only their personal interpretation, and can be dismissed as such. But your interpretation (based on a “plain” reading of the text) to arrive at the contradiction in the first place is entirely objective, and is obviously THE correct interpretation.
Your only knowledge of The Bible comes from searching ‘bible contradictions’ in Google.
You debate (argue, vilify, etc.) as if every theist was a Jack Chick fan.
You think Richard Dawkins’ analogies of God and theism are sound and the examples of the “Flying Spaghetti Monster” and Zeus make an excellent argument against the existence of God.
You label all scholars that actually believe the Bible as “biased fundies” while those who don’t believe it are known as “honest” and “accepted scholarship.” Yet you find you have a grudging respect for fundy theists for ‘sticking to their guns’ even while complaining they don’t think for themselves. ‘Thinking for yourself’ means adopting an atheist viewpoint.
You think that Isaac Asimov was a world-class authority in Biblical Studies.
You’re infuriated by the term “village atheist.” You prefer “right-thinking urban humanist.”
Everytime you don’t understand a passage in The Bible, instead of researching the legitimate scholarship, you blame God for not writing it better.
You think that God would have made things a lot clearer for everyone, ranging from the medieval knight to the Chinese peasant, had He inspired His Word in modern English in words and concepts you could understand. You also ask, when told of the scarceness of paper in the ancient world, why God didn’t provide enough paper to write a longer story.
You create a web site: http://www.EvilBible.com, and post an Evil Bible Quote of the Day on usenet. The quotes always end with: “What kind of person would get their moral guidance from an ancient book of myths and magic that says it is OK to murder, rape, pillage, and plunder?”
You claim to hold no Dogma. Yet, you’re just as rigid and stubborn with your beliefs as any Dogmatists.
The only reason you go to hear a concert pianist play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata is to complain to him afterwards about the name. Obviously it was chosen as part of a conspiracy to hide the fact that the Bible’s mentions of the moon giving light were errors rather than phenomenological language.
You claim that there is no way a book thousands of years old can be relevant today, but refuse to do the necessary homework to see how it could apply in modern situations, preferring instead to argue that God should have provided an updated version.
You can’t understand why people can’t see the logic in your question,”The Lord of the Rings is a book. The Bible is a book. What makes one fiction,and the other true?” And if they say they don’t see the logic in that question, they MUST be lying!
You leave ‘freethought’ tracts lying around, like the littering missionaries. Although you are a ‘free-thinker’ and ‘rational’ person, you lose all reason when reading The Bible. You can gladly believe any number of conflicting philosophical positions, as long as they’re atheistic!
You start a local Atheists and Agnostics Society, the goal of which is to prove through good deeds that atheists and agnostics can be just as generous and caring as some Christians are. When nobody joins, and the club eventually unfolds, you are flustered. You have no idea why a group of people who by definition do not base their morality on anything greater than their own ideas wouldn’t jump at the chance to be self-sacrificing for no logical reason.
You get a big kick out of either spamming online Christian forums with offensive material or posing as a grossly over-the-top parody of a Christian on such websites.
You quote The God Delusion like Christians quote the Bible.
You are part of a non-belief organization such as American Atheists, Church of Freethought, Humanist Association of Canada, Student Freethought Alliance and/or the Council of Secular Humanism. You claim these organizations have absolutely no creeds and that the people involved independently think of different things from one another. Yet of course, on your organization’s website they define the commonalities that all non-believers follow. Is that not the definition of creed?
You think that spamming Christian chatgroups and discussion lists with expletives and insults demonstrates superior free-thinking, rational, atheistic logic.
You think that it is possible to talk meaningfully about “good and evil” “right and wrong” when decrying the sins of the Church while simultaneously subscribing to the notion that neither sin nor good and evil exist as ultimate categories but only as personal and social constructs.
You have never pondered the question: why does a smart guy like Richard Dawkins regularly give atheists a bad name by putting his foot in his mouth with his inane and ridiculous pronouncements about God and religion?
You have never pondered the question: why did a really smart guy like Bertrand Russell write such a pathetically limp, uninformed and adolescent critique of Christianity in “Why I Am Not A Christian”?
You assert that “faith is believing things which you know aren’t true”. You really “believe” that many human beings actually believe things they know aren’t true.
You believe the movie Dogma gives the most accurate portrayal of Christian theology.
You feel that prefacing your responses to Christians with the word bull$#@! somehow makes your argument a little more valid.
You deny that someone can possibly know they know the truth (’It’s just belief, not knowledge,”) while at the same time claiming to know the truth. You think that logical fallacies are only fallacies when theists use them. Your favorite word is “ad hominem”,even if you can’t spell it.
You don’t eat at Church’s Chicken, and it’s NOT because the chicken’s too greasy.
You go to an Atheism versus Christianity debate in which you must vote for whoever you think wins. The Christian side is represented by a highly prestigious historian and theologian, and the atheist side is represented by a dog that’s able to bark the theme song to “I Dream of Jeannie” off key. You vote for the dog.
You try to prove that the bible contradicts itself by producing out of context quotes like “God...is...a...liar....” (Genesis 1:3 - 1 John 3:4)
You consider “Ha, ha, ha” a substantive rebuttal to an argument.
You can’t believe in a book that was created over two thousand years ago because “we’re not sure WHAT happened”, but you know for a fact that religion was created tens of thousands of years ago specifically to control the brainwashed public.
You feel guilty whenever you use the word faith and have decided to remove it from your vocabulary.
You believe any person who writes a book critical of Christianity is doing it for “education” purposes. Conversely, you believe that any person who writes a book defending Christianity is “just in it to make money.”
You go around amazon.com posting 1000 word prefab rebuttals to religious books you’ve never actually read.
Your best argument against Christianity is the fact YOU don’t believe in it.
Most of what you’ve learned about God comes from the Computer game ‘Black and White’.
You atempt to make an objective list at amazon.com entitled “Did Jesus Exist?”, and cite “The Da Vinci Code” as a work that argues for the historicity of Jesus.
You think the fact that something isn’t flying out of your butt means it doesn’t exist.
You criticize Christians for not accepting the reasons for your deconversion to atheism yet you consider yourself “a former fundamentalist.”
You say that religion is ruining your life and the society you live in and you spend every day of your life obsessing on ways to rid the world of it.
You say that having faith in something is “evil” yet you do not believe in absolute wrong or rights but despise the words “moral relativism” when attributed to atheism.
You want to make widely known that the Founding Fathers were “deists” and “freethinkers”, yet you applaud and praise “Letter To A Christian Nation” by Sam Harris.
You believe that because someone is an atheist, they are more educated and more open minded than a religious person.
You perceive that religious people and theologians sincerely believe in an “invisible man” who is literally sitting on a cloud high up in the sky.
Ridicule and sarcasm are your best weapons in an informal debate. However when Christians do those things you will say “How Christian like of you!”
You claim to know more about the Bible and Christianity then 99.999% of Christians, then go on to say that Jesus is a rip-off of Mithra.
You claim all thinking men are atheists, but ignore the fact that the best thinking men in history have been theists.
You think that the word ‘Christ’ comes from Krishna, and therefore Christianity is a lie.
You mock the Bible as as a fairy tale because the KJV mentions unicorns in passages like Deuteronomy 33:17. When a Christian points out to you that the Hebrew word re’em means “wild ox” and that every modern English translation renders it like that, you still insist that the KJV’s rendering must be the best one and continue to mock the Bible for mentioning unicorns.
You have your own list of how to tell who is a Christian that itself runs on Fundy Atheist principles.
You get apoplectic about being called a Fundy Atheist for believing all those self-evidently true propositions above. And you label all theists as “fundies”.
You find the term ‘fundy atheist’ meaningless, baffling, illogical and just plain oxymoronic/self-contradictory even though the two terms are not exclusive of each other (except in the minds of fundy atheists, of course). ~ tektoonics
Only a fool would gamble his eternity on counting on having that chance at his last breath. Nobody knows when that will be and often as not, there is is not the time to think, *Oh, I'm dying. This is my last breath. Please for give me God.*, Nor would I consider someone with that attitude to be sincere. God will not be mocked.
That is no different than the presumptuous sin that JCB mentioned, sinning and then counting on forgiveness. Again, spitting in God's face and expecting mercy from Him because you said the right words. sounds more like what man-made religions espouse.
I listed some of their tiresome "wrecking balls" in my post #2292 above. :)
More indignant blather. I have seen Calvinists on these forums tell me that the Bible is "perspicuous" and that even a 5-year old can understand it. Pathetic.
Presumptuously sin? Who does that?
What you are addressing is not what JCB asked. Do try to stay on topic
I am. In #227, JCB wrote "Since belief in your deity’s dogma allows for the forgiving of sins, however grave they may be, what is to stop you from committing the worst of atrocities, and then begging forgiveness after the fact? To know you will be forgiven, allows you to do whatever you want, and then beg forgiveness."
Staying on the topic means the whole thing, not one sentence. It's pretty clear what idea he is presenting in context of this when he said "presumptuous sinning", i.e. tat it's easier to sin believing in the back of your mind that you can always repent and be forgiven.
Maybe you can follow only one sentence at a time and miss the big picture...I can't help you there. But you sure seem to miss a lot of things that are said here.
What's "pathetic" is that you can't legitimately defend your inane positions so you attempt to change the subject by making an intellectually dishonest, deceptive effort to misrepresent --to the careless reader-- what I posted, by leaving OUT the key points.
The "key points" of my post that you deliberately left out:
It doesn't take very long to realize that a thorough understanding of the Bible -- and this would actually apply to any complex work from any culture -- requires specialized knowledge, and a broad range of specialized knowledge in a variety of fields.
Let's anticipate and toss off the obvious objection: "Why did God make the Bible so hard to understand, then?"
It isn't -- none of this keeps a person from grasping the message of the Bible to the extent required to be saved; where the line is to be drawn is upon those who gratuitously assume that such base knowledge allows them to be competent critics of the text, and make that assumption indifferent to their own lack of knowledge -- what I have elsewhere spoken of in terms of being "unskilled and unaware of it."
"...The genres of the Bible include narrative, poetry, proverbial literature, wisdom discourse, a treaty (that's what Deuteronomy is, believe it or not!), legal codes, genealogies, biography (that is what the Gospels are!), personal letters and general letters, rhetoric (an art form in the ancient world), riposte, and apocalyptic. ....."
Talk about the fundie atheist pot calling the Christian kettle black!
See my post to kosta50 at #2297 above. LOL
M-PI: You...you....you...you....you...you...you......you....you...you....you...you...you...you....you...you....you...you...you...you....you...you....you...you...you...
It's not clear, after your tirade, if you are trying to say that you actually believe that diseases are caused by "evil spirits" or not? So, what do you do when you get sick, go to a real doctor and get real medicine or try to dive 'evil spirits'?
dive=drive
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