The tedious ‘new’ atheism
I’m not sure how I came across this article on Canada.com about ‘professional atheist’ Christopher Hitchens, but I was certainly intrigued by the title.
Leonard Stern, writes,
Here’s the problem: The atheists don’t understand that it’s possible to reject scripture as history but still accept it as sacred narrative.
I would say the problem for Christians is that they are cowed by atheists’ ridicule. Christ spoke about Genesis like it was literal, e.g. when talking of the importance of marriage (and quoting Genesis 2) and so should we.
We can count on the new atheists to remind us yet again that the Sumerians had their own version of a flood story (the Gilgamesh epic)
What does the Bible say? There was a global Flood. Many cultures all around the world relate a flood story. Why? Because there was a global flood! It explains an awful lot about our planet that a uniformitarian worldview cannot.
Do Not Covet Thy Neighbour’s Wife, reduces women to property.
Hitchens is so ‘new man’ isn’t he? Except a wife does belong to her husband and vice versa. Successful cultures have men as the head of the family. Hitchens’ mistake is to believe (or wish) that this means women are treated as second-class citizens, which it doesn’t necessarilly.
Religion is ridiculous for Hitchens because, in his view, it means that you necessarily believe that Eve was made from Adam’s rib.
Ribs are the only bones that will grow back.
Wilson really believes, for example, that Noah crammed all those animals on a single boat. I wonder how many times Hitchens has patiently crunched the numbers for his pal, calculating the mass of the animals in order to show that Noah’s task was an engineering impossibility.
The Ark was not an ‘engineering impossibility’. Korean naval architects, using the dimensions stated in Genesis, calculated that it would be extremely stable in high seas. As for the sheer number of animals, it is not nearly as many as people imagine. Like humans adapted to suit different parts of the world, so did the animals. There weren’t hundreds of different people groups on the Ark, just eight people in total. There needed to be just one or two types of cat, dog and bear for example and as they spread and bred after the waters receded, natural selection provided the speciation.
Yet all the professional atheists want to do is take out a Bible, flip to the story of Balaam in Numbers 22:1-35, and demand to know if you believe in talking donkeys.
Why shouldn’t we believe that the Almighty can make an animal talk? He created them in the first place. He made Balaam speak his words as well. Christ ordered devils to leave a man and they entered the Gadarene swine. God can do things that we cannot. It can’t be that hard to understand.
The problem with the “atheist”, and I like to put this word in inverted commas because I don’t believe anyone is totally atheist, (Richard Dawkins has described himself as a 6.8/6.9 out of 7 atheist. That makes him an agnostic!) is that he seems to have a limited capacity for imagining what could be, and is contented to settle for what is. He finds it hard to understand that an Almighty Creator can do whatever he wants.
Christians should stop apologising for scripture and realise that atheists, or rather agnostics, have problems understanding the world around them and the spirit within them.
“Leonard Stern, writes,
Here’s the problem: The atheists don’t understand that it’s possible to reject scripture as history but still accept it as sacred narrative.
I would say the problem for Christians is that they are cowed by atheists’ ridicule. Christ spoke about Genesis like it was literal, e.g. when talking of the importance of marriage (and quoting Genesis 2) and so should we.”
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Stern is wrong on this. We understand that it’s possible to accept scripture as sacred whilst rejecting it as history. We can see all around us people who understand that the Biblical texts are not historical.
What we don’t understand, I think, is why Christians don’t see this as diminishing the authenticity of the Bible. In some ways I respect your position on it, Stewart, because to an extent you’re saying that your belief in God relies upon an inerrant historical Bible. I believe that there is sufficient evidence for you to suppose otherwise, but that’s where we disagree so no point going into it.
I don’t think you should be cowed by ridicule from atheists, but I do think you should show humility in the face of empirical secular evidence. We know that the dates given in The Bible for the census are wrong at best, and at worst that it never took place (seriously? A census of THE ENTIRE ROMAN EMPIRE? Didn’t happen. By which I mean: happened in The Bible, there’s no other record of this happening, and the Romans were big on historical records!)
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We can count on the new atheists to remind us yet again that the Sumerians had their own version of a flood story (the Gilgamesh epic)
What does the Bible say? There was a global Flood. Many cultures all around the world relate a flood story. Why? Because there was a global flood! It explains an awful lot about our planet that a uniformitarian worldview cannot.
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A lot of largely Middle-Eastern bronze age cultures have the same story, but there is no evidence to suggest that there has ever been, or indeed that there could realistically ever be, a global flood in human times. Geologically there is no credible (by which I mean peer-reviewed, without an agenda) evidence to suggest the flood. Tree-ring data flat out contradicts the notion.
At best what Noah had was a localised flood.
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Do Not Covet Thy Neighbour’s Wife, reduces women to property.
Hitchens is so ‘new man’ isn’t he? Except a wife does belong to her husband and vice versa. Successful cultures have men as the head of the family. Hitchens’ mistake is to believe (or wish) that this means women are treated as second-class citizens, which it doesn’t necessarilly.
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That isn’t what makes The Bible sexist. Frequent allusions to women not being permitted to speak in church, to enter into the presence of God, to have equal-footing with man (everywhere, men are at the head of everything), etc.
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Religion is ridiculous for Hitchens because, in his view, it means that you necessarily believe that Eve was made from Adam’s rib.
Ribs are the only bones that will grow back.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8293731.stm
Disproof by counter example.
You also fail to note that ribs will only grow back under very specific conditions. The membrane that covers them must be undamaged for them to show regrowth.
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Wilson really believes, for example, that Noah crammed all those animals on a single boat. I wonder how many times Hitchens has patiently crunched the numbers for his pal, calculating the mass of the animals in order to show that Noah’s task was an engineering impossibility.
The Ark was not an ‘engineering impossibility’. Korean naval architects, using the dimensions stated in Genesis, calculated that it would be extremely stable in high seas. As for the sheer number of animals, it is not nearly as many as people imagine. Like humans adapted to suit different parts of the world, so did the animals. There weren’t hundreds of different people groups on the Ark, just eight people in total. There needed to be just one or two types of cat, dog and bear for example and as they spread and bred after the waters receded, natural selection provided the speciation.
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I believe that the engineering impossibility being referred to is the task of getting 2 of every kind of animal onto the ark, rather than the building of the ark itself.
It almost goes without saying that the ark described in Genesis is not big enough to house two of every kind of animal. Woodmorappe is the only Creationist who has ever done any research into this, and he has been taken to pieces over it elsewhere.
If you seriously consider it possible that 16,000 kinds of animal (minimum) led through ‘natural selection’ to the multitude we have around us today in just 10,000 years then I would encourage you to take me up on my offer of a discussion of evolution over email, because you’re misunderstanding something quite fundamental.
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Yet all the professional atheists want to do is take out a Bible, flip to the story of Balaam in Numbers 22:1-35, and demand to know if you believe in talking donkeys.
Why shouldn’t we believe that the Almighty can make an animal talk? He created them in the first place. He made Balaam speak his words as well. Christ ordered devils to leave a man and they entered the Gadarene swine. God can do things that we cannot. It can’t be that hard to understand.
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Thats not all we want to do. I want to know why Christians believe that Jesus died on the cross. Roman crucifixion was intended as both a torture and an execution. It takes *days* to die from crucifixion on a cross. Jesus was up for a matter of hours. There’s so much evidence in The Bible alone that Jesus may not have died on the cross:
{1. Matt 12:40 Jesus compares his fate to Jonah’s story (i.e. an intrinsically survival-based story)}
2. Jesus was placed on the cross for only a few hours. Death by crucifixion takes several days.
3. He couldn’t have died of respiratory distress if his legs were intact, which they were.
4. The spear wound had blood gushing from it (a pretty watertight indication of a beating heart.)
{5. Jesus prays to be rescued (Matthew 21:22)}
6. John 19:39 says that Nicodemus brought healing plants that were commonly applied to wounds in the era.
7. Jesus shows his wounds to Thomas (John 20:25–7) which means he didn’t have a supernatural body, he had a human/patient’s body. This was three days after he had been cut down from the cross, including the sabbath during which–conveniently–nobody would have been poking their noses around the tomb.
8. There isn’t a single account in any of the gospels that Jesus was dead when he was taken down from the cross, or when he was placed in his tomb.
Theologically it may not be convincing but if you’re looking to explain a David Blaine style stunt, it’s a compelling solution. He couldn’t possibly have died from lacticacidosis or any other typical respiratory failure. It’s interesting that The Bible doesn’t provide any conclusive evidence that he died.
So what’s simpler? That the whole of natural order was suspended so a man sent by an invisible god, looking to correct his own mistakes, died and rose again from a crucifixion that couldn’t possibly have killed him; or that a man was briefly crucified did not contradict medical experts who say he couldn’t have died from the ordeal, was hastily entombed according to Luke’s gospel (“Because the Sabbath was drawing on”–most convenient), then spent three days repairing his wounds using the aloe Nicodemus brought with him, then popped out of the tomb and said cheerio?
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The problem with the “atheist”, and I like to put this word in inverted commas because I don’t believe anyone is totally atheist, (Richard Dawkins has described himself as a 6.8/6.9 out of 7 atheist. That makes him an agnostic!) is that he seems to have a limited capacity for imagining what could be, and is contented to settle for what is. He finds it hard to understand that an Almighty Creator can do whatever he wants.
Christians should stop apologising for scripture and realise that atheists, or rather agnostics, have problems understanding the world around them and the spirit within them.
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It doesn’t make him an agnostic. Agnosticism is someone who believes we cannot know one way or the other about God. Dawkins believes we can show beyond reasonable doubt, but because he is a scientist he will not allow himself certainty on the matter, since that would be extraordinarily unscientific.
We don’t find it hard to understand that an almighty creator could do whatever he wants. We don’t see any compelling evidence for him one way or the other; just like you don’t see any for Zeus or Thor or Allah.
I’m not sure what you mean by atheists have problems understanding the world around us. Perhaps you could point to some of the key scientific breakthroughs that have come as a result of solely religious-led research?
In terms of not understanding the world around us, look at Catholicism. Telling Africans that contraceptives are evil and that they won’t stop HIV? The movement in America for fundies to kill abortion clinic doctors? The crusades?
It seems apposite to close with a quote from Hitchens. “Name me an act of altruism that can only be performed by a religious man. Now name me an immoral act that could only be done by a religious man.” Impossible to answer number one. But there are oh so many examples of number two.
(I hope this isn’t too long for your comments section!)
We don’t find it hard to understand that an almighty creator could do whatever he wants. We don’t see any compelling evidence for him one way or the other; just like you don’t see any for Zeus or Thor or Allah.
Just to follow-up on my own point there: I see what you mean when atheists argue about the credibility of what happens in The Bible from a supernatural perspective. There’s no point arguing with someone that Jesus couldn’t walk on water because it’s impossible: that’s the POINT.
A more worthwhile endeavour is to show that the God of the Old Testament is a thoroughly detestable, objectionable fellow, and that Jesus wasn’t all that great either (sure, call a Canaanite woman a dog. No problem.) according to the Gospels & the apocrypha. There are enough cracks and holes in The Bible without calling into question the miracles.
Also, something I forgot to add on the crucifixion: Josephius, who is a fairly central figure to the birth of the Bible, wrote of three of his friends who survived FULL LENGTH crucifixions. That is: up for three days, taken down and alive when they came down. Worth a thought.