Posted on 04/16/2007 7:20:28 AM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
Excerpted from http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/04/post_47.html
USA Today has complained about copyright issues, so cut and paste the link to read the full article:
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My local Barnes & Noble has the following titles on display — Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam ; The Quotable Atheist; Letter To A Christian Nation; God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist; and The God Delusion, which is a New York Times best-seller.
Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., has become the first member of Congress to announce that he doesn't believe in God. He's probably just looking for a book deal.
Why the sudden outpouring of atheist advocacy? Perhaps it's a way for the cultural left to assert itself in the face of the religious right. Or maybe it's meant to show that the anti-God argument can be framed more intelligently than in a Bill Maher monologue. Whatever the impetus, as a believer, I welcome the phenomenon. After all, the great enemy of belief isn't disbelief but indifference.
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Sometimes the concept of hell gets people worked up. The argument on “How can a good God cast people into hell when they have lived a pretty good life” is false logic. Hell is a place where God is absent. This is exactly what the people who rejected God all their lives wanted. The “pit” of hell maybe a very comfortable place where everyone who rejected God their entire lives must now reside knowing they had lived their lives in a lie. That they had wasted it all. That actually may be worse than a guy with pitchfork.
God has given us all the “free will” to chose. God has sent his only son to die for us, to suffer for our sins and to show us the way. God could have easily made a bunch of robots that would do everything he said but instead loved us enough for us to make our own decisions. So tell you relatives to make their own decision after they have reviewed the evidence. After all, Jesus Christ’s resurrection is either the supreme fact in the history of mankind or a gigantic hoax. If Christ’s resurrection is true — they ignore its implications at our own peril. If not — Christianity is the biggest fraud in the history of the world and should be easy enough to disprove. If they believe it is a hoax, then they must take an honest look at the evidence. And the evidence is overwhelming...
The facts:
(1) This pseudointellectual deconstruction of the New Testament has been going on for four centuries now - it didn’t start with Voltaire.
(2) Since the initiation of this critique archaeologists and historians have discovered mountains of fascinating data about the first century of which the people of the 1600s/1700s had no knowledge.
(3) Despite centuries of criticism and the discovery of so much new, hard data the deconstructionists have actually lost ground.
(4) Did after dig, ancient document after ancient document, the hard research either corroborates or does not contradict the New Testament accounts. Yet hard research has discredited theory after deconstructionist theory.
(5) And so the deconstructionists have had to abandon any serious, scholarly analysis and have resorted to the methods of the Jesus Seminar: i.e. deconstructionists vote among themselves as to what they think really happened. Imagine this happening in any other discipline - it’s preposterous.
The theories of the deconstructionist critics are indefensible and that is why they continue to wax shriller and more offensive.
Nineteenth century writer H.L. Hastings once forcibly illustrated the unique way in which the Bible has withstood the attacks of skepticism:
“Infidels of eighteen hundred years have been refuting and overthrowing this book, and yet it stands today as solid rock. Its circulation increases, and it is more loved and cherished and read today than ever before. Infidels, with all their assaults, make about as much impression on this book as a man with a tack hammer would on the Pyramids of Egypt.
“When the French monarch proposed the persecution of Christians in his dominion, an old statesman and warrior said to him, ‘Sire, the church of God is an anvil that has worn out many hammers.’ So the hammers of infidels have been pecking away at this book for ages, but the hammers are worn out, and the anvil still endures. If this book had not been the book of God, men would have destroyed it long ago. Emperors and popes, kings and priests, princes and rulers have all tried their hand at it; they die and the book still lives.”
“No other book has been so chopped, knived, sifted, scrutinized, and vilified. What book on philosophy or religion or psychology or belles lettres of classical or modern times has been subject to such a mass attack as the Bible? With such venom and skepticism? With such thoroughness and erudition? Upon every chapter, line and tenet? The Bible is still loved by millions, and studied by millions.
All forms of paganism (including today’s environmental movement) boil down to one thing: the worship of nature. It comes in the form of exalting trees, plants, animals, weather, astronomical objects, etc. The wiccan movement, druidism, astrology and the most radical tenets of the environmental movement are forms of paganism.
St Paul the Apostle once wrote of this (way back when): “Behold they have exchanged the Truth for a lie and worshiped the creation rather than the Creator.” Regards and Written by, 2banana
Atheism is the highest form of arrogance.
They are inspired by the success of gays coming out of the closet and pushing their anti-Bible agenda.
I agree. The Bible has withstood every criticism that infidelity has launched against it, and continues to do so today. A hundred years ago, the best and brightest atheist minds told us that the Old Testament was just a book of myth and fables because “none of it was supported by evidence”. The Hittites were just a mythological people invented by ancient Jews to be the bad guys in a national epic. Now the Hittites are one of the most well-known people in ANE history. Archaeology supports the Biblical record, the culture that the Bible presents, and the events told about in the Bible. It is infidelity, on the other hand, that has had to discard one theory after another as unsubstantiated by evidence. The Bible is completely and absolutely true, in and of itself, without need for reference to science or history. But true science and history, all the same, yet show the Bible to be true as well.
Not all atheists are leftists. There are a number of right-wing and libertarian atheists on this forum.
While it’s true most atheists I met in college were the stereotypical obnoxious pseudo-intellectuals who felt religion was for the dumb and unenlightened, I don’t think they accurately represent atheists as a whole. Most of us aren’t anti-religious at all. What good would I accomplish by insulting someone’s belief system?
Dittoes
Heh, I resemble that remark :) I suppose being an atheist is pretty arrogant. That is why I suppose that Muslims are obligated to kill us. Now that I think about it, Christians kill heretics too. Nothing like having half the world mad at you ^_^
Seriously why do you folks worry about us non believers so much? You have all of eternity to gloat over us as we burn in hell don't you?
Later read/pingout.
Isn’t it nice to live in a society where you can either believe or not believe?
Darwin Central - have you read Dr. Walt Brown’s book, “In The Beginning”? It’s a scientific treatise supporting creationism and the flood. I’d like to hear your take on his hydroplate theory.
How supremely sad that you actually think believers will be gloating over the tragedy of unbelievers never getting a second chance to believe and be saved. “There are no unbelievers in hell.” The only “gloating” we might possibly do is when we think about the fact that we pray for you - yes, you - and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.
>>Seriously why do you folks worry about us non believers so much? You have all of eternity to gloat over us as we burn in hell don’t you?<<
I know you’re just joking around, so don’t take anything to seriously.
But suppose a plague is sweeping the earth, and a vaccine has been invented. Most of the world freely accepts this, and does so hurredly. But say you come across pockets of people who don’t believe in vaccines. They’re going to die a gruesome death. Do you:
A) try to convince them otherwise
B) try to force the vaccine upon them
C) let them die a miserable death in peace?
On top of that, you have the Great Commission in Christianity... So that attitude, no doubt, is what you’re coming across. And there are plenty of Christians in categories A, B, and C above.
*toO seriously
I guess I won't be an unbeliever after I die, will I? If it is any consolation, I do hope that there is a supreme being and that there is a purpose to our existence.
Yes, it sure beats the old Soviet Union!
I suspect the final word will be “that,” or some variant of it, in a sentence like, “What was that?”
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