Author Archives: Bob Seidensticker
Only 21 More Shopping Days Till the End of the World!
That’s right, boys and girls—the world will end one month from today on October 21, 2011. There’s not much time left to finish those nagging last-minute chores!
Of course I’m referring to Harold Camping’s predicted Rapture on May 21 and the end of the world 153 days* later. Not a lot happened on the “Rapture” and, as Armageddons go, the one we’re in right now seems quite mild. Camping’s predictable backpedaling reframed May 21 as “an invisible judgment day.”
Camping’s Family Radio organization came out of this fiasco financially strong, but many of his followers spent their retirement savings to spread the word during the run-up to May 21. Camping has done nothing to correct the harm he’s caused, and some have called for a fraud investigation.
Camping hasn’t learned from his public humiliation and is holding fast to his date for the end of the world. He said, “It won’t be spiritual on October 21st. The world is going to be destroyed all together, but it will be very quick.”**
Many Christians, embarrassed that Camping spoke for their religion, quoted Matthew 24:36 to argue that Camping is unable to make a prediction about the end. In this verse, Jesus says:
But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
Christians also quote another verse: “The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.… Destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman” (1 Thessalonians 5:2–3). But Camping can quote the very next verse:
But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief.
Aha—the true Christian like Camping apparently can know the end!
Or maybe the Bible is simply a sock puppet that can be made to say anything.
Photo credit: Wikipedia
Continue reading
Comments on a Robert Price vs. James White Debate
I recently listened to a May 7, 2010 debate between Robert Price, “The Bible Geek,” and James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.
(I wish you could, too, but YouTube reports that the video has been removed. Dr. White is now charging for it.)
The topic was “Is the Bible True?” If you don’t know the players, Dr. Price, of whom I’m a big fan, took the negative position.
A couple of points stood out for me. Continue reading
God Doesn’t Exist: Believers are Products of their Environment
What fraction of Muslims were not raised in a Muslim environment? What fraction of Christians were not raised in a Christian environment? What does it say about the validity of religious claims that people typically take on the religion of their culture?
When someone gets a religious vision, why does it have elements from that person’s religion and not some other religion? Why do Hindus not get visions of Mary or Jesus or Christian angels, and why do Christians not get visions of Hindu gods?
To avoid the charge of special pleading, Christians must argue that they were just extraordinarily lucky to have been born in a place and time in which the correct religion happened to be available.
Religion is like language. I speak English because I was raised in America. I didn’t evaluate all the languages of the world before I picked the best one; it was just part of my environment.
Any Christian will tell you that babies born to Muslim parents are almost exclusively Muslim for no more profound reason than that they were raised in a Muslim environment. Why should it be any different for babies born to Christian parents?
Christians aren’t Christian because Christianity is true, but because they were born into a Christian environment. Christianity is a cultural trait, not a reflection of the truth.
Photo credit: Wikipedia
Related posts:
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- See all the arguments in favor of atheism at the first post in the series, God Doesn’t Exist: Historians Reject the Bible Story
Interesting Insight
Gee, maybe that makes me a believer!
God Doesn’t Exist: Christianity Looks Invented
Let me propose this axiom: a human-invented religion will look radically different from the worship of a real god. That is, human longing for the divine (or human imagination) will cobble together a very poor imitation of the real thing.
Let’s first look at an example in the domain of languages. Imagine that you’re a linguist and you’re creating a tree of world languages. Each language should be nearer languages that are related and similar, and it should be farther from those that are dissimilar. Spanish and Portuguese are next to each other on the tree; add French, Italian, and others and call that the Romance Languages; add other language groups like Germanic, Celtic, and Indic and you get the Indo-European family; and so on.
Here’s your challenge: you have two more languages to fit in. First, find the spot for English. It’s pretty easy to see, based on geography, vocabulary, and language structure, that it fits into the Germanic group. Next, an alien language like a real Klingon or Na’vi. This one wouldn’t fit in at all and would be unlike every human language.
Now imagine a tree of world religions. Your challenge is to find the place for Yahweh worship of 1000 BCE. Is it radically different from all the manmade religions, as unlike manmade religions as the alien language was to human languages? Or does it fit into the tree comfortably next to the other religions of the Ancient Near East, like English fits nicely into the Germanic group?
You’d expect the worship of the actual creator of the universe to look dramatically different from religions invented by Iron Age tribesmen in Canaan, but religious historians tell us that Yahweh looks similar to other Canaanite deities like Asherah, Baal, Moloch, Astarte, Yam, or Mot. What could he be but yet another invented god?
Photo credit: Wikipedia
Related posts:
- See all the arguments in favor of atheism at the first post in the series, God Doesn’t Exist: Historians Reject the Bible Story