Philosophy
Educated and moderate Christians know better than to interpret the Bible literally. To do so, they rightly understand, would entail the rejection of virtually all good science. It would take lots of twisted logic (and an unabashed sense of denial) to reject the massive amounts of empirical evidence produced by independent branches of science over the past four centuries, all of which seem to suggest that the claims about the universe found in the Holy Book are just false.
Now, if you claim the book is to be understood metaphorically instead of literally, you get to avoid this hugely embarrassing problem... until you consider the doctrine upon which Christianity is founded: Jesus came to sacrifice himself to redeem humanity from the original sin committed by Adam and Eve. Of course, since everything we know from science tells us this couple never really existed, Jesus' real torture and death would have been made for the sake of a metaphorical story that never actually took place... and that will be difficult to explain without having to resort to the same kind of twisted logic for which we all tend to mock fundamentalists.
Channeling the spirit of PG Wodehouse (metaphorically, of course), Richard Dawkins explains this logical problem in the following short piece of humorous literature:
For more on the intersection between literature and religion, you might enjoy Jorge Luis Borges' macabre short story The Gospel According to Mark.
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- Charity For Romney
I've been thinking about Mitt Romney's claim from his religion speech the other day, "Religion needs freedom and freedom needs religion." It has been largely written off as a sop to the religious right, a slap to secularism designed to do nothing...
- ?kant?s Moral Argument Cannot Be Defended.? Discuss.
The claim that Kant?s moral argument cannot be defended is questionable. Freud is someone who would agree with this claim. For Freud our moral awareness comes through a clash between our subconscious desires, instincts or wants (known as the id) and societal...
- Don Cuppit On Jesus As Philosopher
When thinking about the relationship between the Old and New Testaments one could argue, on the one hand, that Jesus represents a radical departure from, and rejection of, conventional Jewish doctrine; or, on the other hand, that the two Testaments are...
- Richard Dawkins - So Who Was The First Person Really?
Richard Dawkins is coming out with a great new illustrated book about how scientists come to have the knowledge they do, and it'll be released here in the US on my little niece's birthday, so guess what she'll be getting from her favorite...
- Is Atheism The New Fundamentalism?
Atheists have been around for a long time, but until recently, they usually tended to keep their free-thinking disbelief to themselves, both because they considered their opinion a personal matter and out of politeness for believers. The rise of increasingly...
Philosophy
Richard Dawkins - The Great Bus Mystery
Educated and moderate Christians know better than to interpret the Bible literally. To do so, they rightly understand, would entail the rejection of virtually all good science. It would take lots of twisted logic (and an unabashed sense of denial) to reject the massive amounts of empirical evidence produced by independent branches of science over the past four centuries, all of which seem to suggest that the claims about the universe found in the Holy Book are just false.Now, if you claim the book is to be understood metaphorically instead of literally, you get to avoid this hugely embarrassing problem... until you consider the doctrine upon which Christianity is founded: Jesus came to sacrifice himself to redeem humanity from the original sin committed by Adam and Eve. Of course, since everything we know from science tells us this couple never really existed, Jesus' real torture and death would have been made for the sake of a metaphorical story that never actually took place... and that will be difficult to explain without having to resort to the same kind of twisted logic for which we all tend to mock fundamentalists.
Channeling the spirit of PG Wodehouse (metaphorically, of course), Richard Dawkins explains this logical problem in the following short piece of humorous literature:
For more on the intersection between literature and religion, you might enjoy Jorge Luis Borges' macabre short story The Gospel According to Mark.
.
- Charity For Romney
I've been thinking about Mitt Romney's claim from his religion speech the other day, "Religion needs freedom and freedom needs religion." It has been largely written off as a sop to the religious right, a slap to secularism designed to do nothing...
- ?kant?s Moral Argument Cannot Be Defended.? Discuss.
The claim that Kant?s moral argument cannot be defended is questionable. Freud is someone who would agree with this claim. For Freud our moral awareness comes through a clash between our subconscious desires, instincts or wants (known as the id) and societal...
- Don Cuppit On Jesus As Philosopher
When thinking about the relationship between the Old and New Testaments one could argue, on the one hand, that Jesus represents a radical departure from, and rejection of, conventional Jewish doctrine; or, on the other hand, that the two Testaments are...
- Richard Dawkins - So Who Was The First Person Really?
Richard Dawkins is coming out with a great new illustrated book about how scientists come to have the knowledge they do, and it'll be released here in the US on my little niece's birthday, so guess what she'll be getting from her favorite...
- Is Atheism The New Fundamentalism?
Atheists have been around for a long time, but until recently, they usually tended to keep their free-thinking disbelief to themselves, both because they considered their opinion a personal matter and out of politeness for believers. The rise of increasingly...