CelticBear’s Musings

…not written by me.
John W. Loftus, according to his brief bio, has: “the equivalent of a Ph.D. in the Philosophy or Religion/Apologetics (three master’s degrees and Ph.D. studies). I majored under William Lane Craig and earned a Th.M. degree at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 1985.” Trinity is one of the most prestigious religious schools in the nation, and Craig is a preeminent Christian apologist. He also studied under the distinguished theologian Dr. James D. Strauss. So when Mr. Loftus writes about the mythology of Christianity, one can be pretty certain he’s not doing it out of his hat; he has a rather significant background in religious studies which gives his outlook a certain…gravitas, shall we say. Legitimacy, at the very least.

He’s written a book: Why I Rejected Christianity: A Former Apologist Explains, and maintains the blog Debunking Christianity, which features other educated and well-spoken contributors in addition to himself.

I’ve quoted from his site on several occasions in the past, although not so much the last few months as I’ve tried to avoid all issues of religion on here, due to my problem of coming off being rather mean and demeaning when dealing with that subject. But the issue of religion is an undeniably important if not crucial topic in our culture, and entire world, today. The fruits of religious belief are all around us, from the hate-mongering of the Fred Phelps church (a groups of evil Christians so vile I’m not even going to link to anything about them), to the recent murdering in Toronto of a 16 year old Muslim girl by her own father because she refused to wear the head covering demanded of her by Mohamed. The woman in Saudi Arabia who was gang-raped, and then convicted by the religiously controlled Saudi Arabian judicial system as being at fault and sentenced to being lashed (instead of killed as Islamic (and Jewish, by the way) law demands, since Saudi Arabia is an ally of the U.S. and didn’t want to cause an “incident”), to the Jesus Camps around America which brainwash thousands of kids a year to become intolerant haters of everything non-Christian and literal warriors in the war to turn the U.S. into a Christian theocracy. Let’s not forget the reasons 9/11 happened, by any means. Or the proliferation of HIV and other diseases and starvation in 3rd-world nations where many Christian-based charities preach that condoms are sinful while they’re handing out desperately needed food. (Interesting, the worst atrocities of needless human-on-human suffering come from the Abrahamic religions, which share the same belief in the schizophrenic, psychopathic, blood-lusting god(s) that came out of the exiles of Canaan.

Whodda thunk that the mythology of a small, ancient, superstitious, nomadic group of people so filled with war-mongering intolerant hatred for all the non-Semetic cultures around them, would survive 4,000 years and give rise to a trinity of world dominating religions that in a modern world still believe in the perfect and infallible Bronze Age superstitions and cultural rules? Reality is certainly stranger than fiction, sometimes. But I have horribly digressed!

So, John Loftus has posted a lengthy but fascinating, well-reasoned and insightful article on his blog today:

♦ A Summary of My Case Against Christianity

A snippet:

Most Christians do not believe in the God of the Bible anyway. Instead they believe in the perfect being of St. Anselm in the 11th century A.D. after centuries of theological gerrymandering. The Bible isn’t consistent in describing its God, but one probable description is as follows: The God of the Bible starts off being little more than the polytheistic Canaanite god Elohim, who, rather than creating the universe ex nihilo, fashioned the earth to rise out of the seas in divine conflict with the dragon sea god Rahab. This God is merely the “god of the gods,” who like the other gods had a body that needed to rest on the 7th day, and was found walking in the “cool of the day” in the Garden of Eden. This God fathered several sons including Yahweh, whose wife was Ashterah, to whom was given the people and land of Israel to rule over. This God was responsible for doing both good and evil, sending evil spirits to do his will, and commanding genocide. As time went on Yahweh was believed to be the only God that existed. Still later Satan was conceived as an evil rival in order to exonerate Yahweh from being the creator of evil. Still later in the New Testament the God of the Bible was stripped of any physical characteristics and known as a spiritual being. As theologians reflected on their God they came to believe he created the universe ex nihilo. Anselm finally defined him as the “greatest conceivable being.” But Anslem’s God is at odds with what we find in most of the Bible.

Some of his arguments include and are organized by:

• Sociological Reasons
• Philosophical Reasons
• Scientific Reasons
• Biblical Reasons
• Historical Reasons
• Empirical Reasons

With sections asking:
“What would convince me Christianity is True?”

• Present Day Evidence
• Prophetic Evidence
• Scientific evidence
• Biblical Evidence
• Evidence specific to Jesus