As I talk to religious believers of various theological bends, I often hear them counter my criticism of their beliefs by informing me that I worship science. While I admit that I am quite fond of the scientific method because it allows us to better understand the world and makes our lives so much easier and more fulfilling, I wouldn’t go as far as saying that I “worship” science.
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The Supreme Court predictably made the least possible decision that they could which continues to move America forward. While it is great that gay rights have moved forward today, the court could have ruled in such a way that would have given equal rights to gays across the country and they didn’t. The fight continues state by state.
“Man of Steel” has recently hit theaters and as I discussed yesterday, the religious media are abuzz talking about how the film was filled with religious references. As it turns out, the last Superman film “Superman Returns” actually have more religious symbolism in it.
I recently saw the new Superman film, “Man of Steel” and the religious media is ablaze with talk about how the film was “filled” with Christian references. To be honest, I really didn’t see any Christian references in the film… at least not any more than one can pull out of any film if you were intent on finding them.
Over the last few months, I have become fascinated by Christian mega-church pastor Rob Bell. I recently reviewed his latest book and interviewed him about the book. Yesterday, I stumbled upon an interesting debate Rob Bell had with fellow Christian Andrew Wilson. I love me some Christian vs. Christian debates.
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The Bible contains a lot of extremely silly and ridiculous claims and unless you are a diehard Bible literalist, that should be pretty obvious. When religious believers come face to face with these silly and ridiculous claims of their religion, they typically fall back to the old, “that part is a metaphor” card. Let’s examine that briefly.
For starters, I would like to inquire about this so called “metaphor.” What exactly is the claim a metaphor for, exactly? I mean when Jesus says that it is better to pluck out your eye and chop off your hand rather than to steal or feel lust, he prefaces it why saying that it is better to lose these body parts than to have one’s soul tortured for all eternity. So what exactly is that a metaphor for? Maybe that wasn’t one of those metaphor parts of the Bible?
There is an atheist meme that states that any part of the Bible that contradicts science or is just blatantly ridiculous is obviously a metaphor. Basically, this meme is making light of the ever sliding scale of biblical credibility.
The old “metaphor” card seems to be the new “God of the Gaps” excuse. It seems that as time goes by and our scientific understanding of the universe grows, there also seem to be more and more metaphors in the Bible. Funny how that works out.
Praise be Christian Piatt! One of my fellow contributors on Huffington Post is the very liberal Christian, Christian Piatt. In the past, his articles almost seem to be atheistic. His newest article takes on the same article I took on yesterday. But more than that, his article gave me an interesting thought that I want to share today.
Often times I will open up my e-mail in the morning and see some incoherent rant from some anonymous religious believer. One of the more comment rants I get informs me that as a “materialistic atheist” I must believe X. The author then goes on to show that X is immoral, ridiculous, or faith-based.
Every time there is a natural disaster, I hear some crazy Christian leader talk about how God sent the disaster (or at least didn’t prevent it) because of atheists, gays, the ACLU, or some other group that fundamentalists don’t like. Now it is my turn!
There are two kinds of people in the world, those who are like me and those who are different from me. Those who are different from me can’t be reasoned with because they are different than me on a fundamental level. I believe in inclusion but those that are different from me categorize people into two groups of people. Because they are different from me, they deserve to be belittled and attacked. We need to drive them out of our community and make them social pariahs.