Friday, February 27, 2009

Since taking such a hit from the free falling Dow Jones, I thought I had finally found a safe investment only to learn that real patriots must pay their taxes and sacrifice for the planet. In 2008 Quilted Northern Ultra and Charmin Ultra increased sales by a whopping 40% in some markets, according to Information Resources Inc.. Finally I had discovered a product doing well and bringing joy and comfort to millions. What more could a Christian investor hope for? What a blessing I could help bring to the world by investing in such an enterprise.

However, Leslie Kaufman of the New York Times has reminded me that "fluffiness comes at a price....millions of trees" must die for our comfort and my profit. Wow, I don't want to be a murderer. Its the comfort of humans vs the life of the trees. Being Pro-Life as I am, the choice seems clear. I must sacrifice money and comfort for the well-being of the planet. We should learn from the Europeans. Kaufman informs us that "In many European nations a rought sheet of paper is deemed sufficient".

We have so much to learn from the Europeans. They teach us that "big government knows best", universal health care can reduce life expectancy and save us money, higher taxes is always good, and that sacrificing comfort and money is the goal of all patriots of the planet. Fortunately we are blessed with some well trained teachers in Washington and New York who can provide us a crash course on the Eureka Europe Experience.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Trees are budding and blossoming, weeds are growing (as evidenced in my grassless lawn), and hope springs eternal. The high temperature forecast for today is 85 and we are still in February. I guess those global warming guys must be right. I wish I had the money to buy some carbon credits, but I've lost my purchasing power through investing in the future. Yet, its spring and I'm sure that if I have the audacity to hope, all will be well. I hope, hope, hope infinitum.



Well, this morning's blog will be the last dealing with the arguments of the atheists. I may, although I haven't decided for sure, present a few blogs on "reasons to believe in God". So much of this type of discussion takes us out of our comfort zone. A few years ago, historian Mark Noll wrote a work entitled THE SCANDAL OF THE EVANGELICAL MIND. His argument was that conservative christians ( some of whom are evangelical ) have produced precious little work that appeals to the mind, and addresses problems that secular academia have presented us. Our children go to institutions of higher learning and are presented with problems they can't answer because parents and churches have provided precious little help in preparing them for the education experience. Should we just give up the mind to the unbelieving world, or should we equiip ourselves to confront unbelief with facts and arguments that provide more than "well, I just believe".



Atheists usually explain "belief in God" as some form of projection or wish for a father, who will protect us and provide for us, as we navigate through a very dangerous world that threatens our very existence. Sigmund Freud is the father of psychoanalysis and it is he who has formulated the view that still prevails among atheists. "Religious ideas have arisen from the same needs as have all the other achievements of civilization: from the necessity of defending oneself against the crushing superior force of nature." Freud adds that religous beliefs are mere "illusions , fulfillments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind...As we already know, the terrifying impression of helplessness in childhood aroused the need for protection---for protection through love---which was provided by the father...Thus the benevolent rule of a divine Providence allays our fear of the danger of life."



If Freud is right, then could one say that atheism results from a wish for "no father". Atheists would be quite resistent to such an idea, but Freud may have inadvertently opened the door to such a view. The previous quotes were taken from THE FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION, but of course Freud published many books. One of his earlier works was TOTEM AND TABOO, and in that work he writes the following: "Psychoanalysis of individual human beings...teaches us with quite special insistence that the god of each of them is formed in the likeness of his father, that his personal relation to God depends on the relation to his father in the flesh and oscillates and changes along with that relation, and that at bottom God is nothing other than an exalted father". Might it not, therefore, be appropriate to examine Freud's relationship with his dad to help explain why he might reject God?



Sigmund seems to have viewed his father, Jacob, as a great disappointment. The family survived on money derived from the mother rather than the father. His dad was viewed by his son as weak and cowardly. Jacob allowed a notorious anti-semite to call him a "dirty Jew" and to knock his hat off without lifting a hand to defend himself. According to Dr. Paul Vitz, a psychologist who has served as professor of New York University, Freud declared his father to be a sexual pervert in a letter that he wrote. Jacob was a Jew and enjoyed reading the Old Testament and Talmud to his son. According to Vitz in his work FAITH OF THE FATHERLESS Sigmund saw his father as a "weak, rather passive 'nice guy' connected to Judaism and God, and also to a serious lack of courage and to sexual perversion, and other weaknesses very painful to young Sigmund". "Psychoanalysis" says Freud, "daily demonstrates to us how youthful persons lose their religious belief as soon as the authority of the father breaks down".



If Freud were the only well known atheist to have a less than desirable relationship with his father, we might dismiss his situation as an aberration, but in fact his experience seems to be the norm among atheists. Vitz documents similiar problems among a number of well known atheists of history. Some of the atheists had no living father during their childhood and that in itself produced lasting problems for their psyche. Among these were such notables as Friedrich Nietzsche, David Hume, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Arthur Schopenhauer. Still others had abusive and weak fathers and this list includesVoltaire, Ludwig Feuerbach, Sigmund Freud and H.G. Wells. Madalyn Murray O'Hair's son wrote that "We rarely did anything together as a family. The hatred between my grandfather and mother barred such wholesome scenes." Albert Ellis, the founder of "Rational Emotive Therapy " was neglected by his parents according to biographer Daniel Wiener. Vitz writes that young Albert

was "abandoned by his father and has had to support himself and his mother" through life.



Historical data such as the above would seem to suggest that it is atheism that may be the product of projection. " If God is a father, then I wish not to have one " seems to be the echo heard from well known atheists through the centuries. Before closing, I want to share one more brief account of one of the most influential philosophers of the past 300 years.



No one has had more influence in the past 50 years or so upon art, music , politics and literature than Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). He pioneered the "God is dead" movement that came to prominence decades later. Nietzsche is often viewed as a prophetic voice of the future of the west. He had a deep hatred for Judaism and Christianity in particular. The Jews were viewed by him as bringing the most despicable religion of all time onto the stage of world history. The mild and gentle Jesus was seen as compensation for weak and cowardly people. These weak and cowardly people couldn't compete with the strong so they introduced a religion that awards "turning the cheek" and other passive, cowardly behavior. Nietzsche introduced the "superman" or heroic strong, self willed leader as the noble and religion as a compensation for the weak.



Nietzsche's father, Ludwig Nietzsche, was a minister in the Lutheran Church. He died just a few months before Friedrich's 5th birthday. Doctors diagnosed the cause of his death as a "softening of the brain". One biographer described him as "passionately attached to his father, and the shock of losing him was profound". Following his dad's death Friedrich wept for days. According to Neitzsche his father's death robbed him of the "superior guidance of a male intellect". Following his father's death he was raised by his mother and female relatives.

His autobiography ECCE HOMO includes the following observation: "The treatment I have received from my mother and my sister, up to the present moment, fills me with inexpressable horror...". His view of women is well illustrated in the following quote: "You are going to see a woman? Do not forget your whip."



Friedrich missed his father, but also viewed him as a failure. His dad had been sickly and according to Friedrich was lacking in "life force". Just months before his total mental collapse and admission to a hospital for the insane, Friedrich wrote that he was suffering from "nervous exhaustion (which is in part hereditary--from my father, who also died from the consequences of a pervasive lack of life force". "My father died at the age of thirty-six; he was delicate, lovable and morbid, like a being destined to pay this world only a passing visit--a gracious reminder of life rather than life itself". Friedrich's criticism of Christianity was that it lacked "life force" like his Lutheran father.



What complicated life for Friedrich was that he shared many of the same qualities that he viewed as defiencies in his father. As a child he was often picked on because of his frequent illnesses and weakness in appearance. He described himself as by nature warlike, but he looked like anything but a warrior. He was quiet, sickly and did not present himself as an imposing figure. As Vitz points out with regard to Nietzsche, he had "a strong, intellectually macho reaction against a dead, very Christian father who was loved and admired but perceived as sickly and weak, a representative of what might be called a 'death force'--the very opposite of the Superman figure tht Nietzsche idealized. As one of his biographers put it, much of Nietzsche's life could be seen as a permanent 'quest for the father.' Indeed, the Superman may be interpreted as Nietzsche's idealized father figure."



Nietzsche's antisemitism influenced Hitler and his atheism influenced Marxism. The rise of nihilism and existentialism in art and music have been heavily influenced by an increased interest in Nietzsche.



Psychoanalzsing theists and atheists is a very speculative pursuit, but as the above shows, atheists cannot claim that theists are the only ones influenced by a need of a father. In my view the atheist argument to explain religion by projection or desire for a father is a mirror of their own father problem. Most atheists claim to depend upon reason for their conclusions, but claim that Christianity is rooted in psychological issues. They would be better served to avoid psycholanalysis and stay with arguments that appeal to reason. In such an arena I think Christianity can not only hold its own, but prevail.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

"The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals." These are the words of Christopher Hitchens in GOD IS NOT GREAT, p.103. He adds the following: "There was no flight from Egypt, no wandering in the desert...no dramatic conquest of the Promised Land. It was all, quite simply and very ineptly, made up at a much later date."(p.103). His problem is not just with the Old Testament, but also the New Testament.



Chapter eight of his book is entitled "The 'New' Testament Exceeds the Evil of the 'Old' One". He quotes such biblical experts as Thomas Paine and H.L.Mencken as dismissing the New Testament as a "helter-skelter accumulation of more or less discordant documents"(Mencken). "But this argument takes place over the heads of those to whom the 'Good Book' is all that is required." (p.110). Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris have little respect for the intellectual acumen of the Christian community. He argues that Christians simply assume that the four gospels present an accurate historical account, when in reality all evidence points to the contrary. The Gospels he tells us "cannot agree on anything of importance" (p.111). He points to the Gospel of Judas which was in the headlines a couple of years ago as being "fractionally more credible than the official account", however, in reality we have zero evidence about the life of Jesus, and in fact that Jesus ever lived is "highly questionable" (p.114).



He accuses the Christians of suppressing reasonable questions about its truth claims: "...until recently, Christians could simply burn or silence anybody who asked any inconvenient questions."(p.115).



His authority in dismissing the accuracy of the Gospels and much of the New Testament is "Barton Ehrman". Ehrman in his book MISQUOTING JESUS describes his journey from a conservative Christian college to Princeton where he earned his Phd and now has a reputation as one of more renowned "textual critics" in America. A "textual critic" is a scholar who studies the many manuscripts of the Bible in an effort to determine the original text. Therefore, Ehrman is someone to be respected for his expertise, but not necessarily for his interpretation of Christianity. Ehrman as a teenager had what he described as a "born again" experience which led him to Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College, Billy Graham's alma mater, before ending up at Princeton. At Princeton and in subsequent years he began to give up his conservative views and determined that the Bible is filled with errors.



Hitchens says that "long before I read Ehrman, I had some questions of my own."(p.121).



Well, what do we make of all this? Has he burst our ignorant bubble and revealed us Christians to be ill informed ignoramuses?



One way to test the power of one's argument is to test the factual claims made. In other words if an author is wrong about his facts then his interpretations are much more suspect. Interpretations can be debated, but facts are facts no matter what one believes about them. The sun is shining this morning, Thursday, February 19, 2009, 10:19 AM in Maypearl, Texas. Someone could argue that its raining outside, but their argument could be dismissed because the facts would expose the argument as fallacious.



Hitchens asserts several facts that are so contrary to the recognized truth that his knowledge and interpretations become suspect simply because his grasp of facts is lacking. This is ironic since the atheists always look down upon the ignorant and uninformed Christians. Their arrogance makes it hard to disagree with them without feeling insecure, but the facts speak for themselves. Let me share just a few of the facts presented by him that are patently false.



On page 59 he writes that "even the stoutest defenders of the Bible story now admit that if Jesus was ever born it wasn't until at least AD 4." This is blatantly false. I have 7,000 volumes in my library, and many are written by Christian scholars who discuss this very question. Not a single one argues for AD 4 as the year of Jesus' birth. Check out whatever sources you may have in your library or in the church library and see what they say. Nearly all Christian and secular scholars would agree that the birth of Jesus most likely occured in 4 or 6 BC. I dare say, you won't nor will Hitchens find a scholar that argues for AD 4, and to claim that "even the stoutest defenders of the Bible story now admit" that Jesus was born in AD 4 shows an ignorance unbecoming such a brilliant atheist.



On page 120, he refers to his one authority on the bible as "Barton Ehrman". This is no big deal, but in the interest of truth and accuracy, where did he conclude that the author's name is "Barton". Maybe he knows something that Ehrman's publishers don't know and that "Bart" has never chosen to reveal in any of his books. If you don't get Bart's name right, then I'm not sure I can trust you to understand his arguments.



On page 112, the Nag Hammadi texts discovered in Egypt more than 60 years ago are described by Hitchens as "scrolls" when in reality they were codices. The difference would be like describing a newspaper as a book. Informed people would not be impressed by the mistake in fact. Yet he is so bold as to describe Malcolm Muggeridge, a well known Christian writer of the past as "silly"and dismisses C.S.Lewis as lacking in reasoning ability.



I am writing a blog and not a book so I can't respond to every issues he raises. Some of his issues have more substance than others. For instance believers have for centuries struggled with the issue of the Old Testament and God's commands to annihilate certain countries and cultures. This is a serious problem and one that cannot be summarily dismissed. However, informed thoughtful answers have been presented that can harmonize the God of the Old Testament with the loving God described in the New Testament. Yet it is true that some believers of the past decided that such harmony could not be achieved and as a result they rejected the God of the Old Testament as evil. The Nag Hammadi documents from Egypt represent gnosticism which was known for viewing the God of the Old Testament as evil. This is probably the primary reason Hitchens gives more validity to these documents than to the writings contained in the New Testament. These documents are all late 2nd century or third century writings and have no claim to historical testimony contemporary with the life of Jesus and the early church. When the gnostics first appeared in history, the Christians dismissed them as heretics because their writings did not harmonize with the early historical accounts and often dismissed Jesus as little more than a phantom.



As to Hitchens' claim that the Gospels do not agree on any of the important claims of christianity, one would be hard pressed to find a more inaccurate statement from anyone claiming to be informed. One can quibble about details. How many angels were in the tomb when the women arrived? Was the Passover of the synoptics the same as the meal described in John's gospel? Was the Sermon on the Mount really delivered on the plains ( compare Matthew and Luke). Hitchens says that Matthew and Luke disagree as to whether Jesus was born of a virgin. Read the first 3 chapters of Matthew and Luke and you decide if they agree. I believe the birth, family of origin, their names, his baptism by John, the mount of transfiguration, his arrest, crucifixion and resurrection are confirmed in multiple Gospels. Not a one of these historical realities are denied or contradicted by any Gospel. Thus to make the claim that they don't agree on anything of importance is beyong "silly".



If Dawkins and Hitchens want to dismiss Christians as uninformed about science, let them at least admit that they themselves are woefully ignorant of Christianity. Maybe we all could learn from one another, but the tone of their works make it hard for Christians to feel comfortable in discussions with them. It would be hard to have respect for someone who has shown such disdain for you and your faith. Yet, as Christians we need to respect people who disagree with us even if it is the devil himself (not that I'm calling Hitchens the devil). Jude writes that false teachers of his day dare to "slander celestial beings. But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil..did not dare to bring a slanderous accusation against him, but said 'The Lord rebuke you'. Yet these men speak abusively against whatever they do not understand.."(Jude 9, 10a). If someone speaks abusively against whatever they don't understand, let it not be us.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Vicki pointed out that today was also Abraham Lincoln's birthday and that he surely deserves at least a mention. Born on the same day and the same year, their contributions to history were significant and significantly different. I can identify with Abraham Lincoln. His family was poor and so was mine and so am I. It seems that he was destined to be president and I guess the parallel ends there. I am sure I was destined for something and until I discover what, I will continue to blog. His wife Mary Todd told her friends that "Mr. Lincoln is to be president of the United States. If I had not thought so, I would not have married him, for you can see he is not pretty." Gloria could have said the same about me except for the president part.

Some speculate that Lincoln might have been bi-polar. He definitely struggled with depression. "I never dare carry a penknife" as a caution against suicide.

Schweikart and Allen in their History write that "Lincoln was homely, but Mary Todd was downright sour looking, which perhaps eontributed to his having left her, literally, standing at the altar one time." Lincoln claimed that he was sick, but was it lovesickness or just sick?

Lincoln's religious faith or lack of it has garnered the attention of historians and not all agree. Some accused him of being a skeptic while others believed him to be a deist. However, not long before his death he was asked by a minister "do you love Jesus". His answer was revealing:

"When I left Springfield I asked the people to pray for me. I was not a Christian. When I buried my son, the severest trial of my life, I was not a Christian. But when I went to Gettysburg and saw the graves of thousands of our soldiers, I then and there consecrated myself to Christ. Yes, I love Jesus."

We are the greater people for having been blessed with an Abraham Lincoln.
Charles Darwin is 200 years old today. Of course he has been dead for some time; a victim of a meaningless, purposeless world produced by evolution. Most educators would name Freud, Marx and Darwin as the three most influential thinkers of the past 200 years. The theories of the first two have experienced the death that was a natural product of applying their theories to real life. Darwin's theory survives and even thrives in academic institutions around the world. Yet, it survives because people live as though "it ain't so". Instead of viewing love as a cold c
chemical process that is biological only, scientists live as though love transcends biology.

Imagine going home in the evening and greeting your wife with "I don't know why I'm here except that chemical activity in the brain led me here. Oh, John Jr., you do realize you are here only because you possess a "selfish gene" that desired to propagate more selfish genes, and Johnny you do understand that you are no different than and have no more value than a toad?"

Such conversations do not occur because scientists live contradictory to their theory of origin and life.

In 1925 there was a trial in Tennessee that pitted a part time science teacher and coach against the state of Tennessee which had banned the teaching of evolution as true. The trial was actually a stage production in that the American Civil Liberties Union had been looking for a teacher who would agree to violate the law and test it in court. They actually advertised in papers looking for a willing collaborator. The leaders of Dayton Tennessee were concerned about the diminishing population and prosperity of their community when one of their leaders saw the add which generated an idea for bringing puplicity to their community. They could get a local teacher to challenge the law and then provide lawyers to defend him. When potential prosecutors were informed of the idea, they went along with it for the sake of the community. The ACLU even offered to pay for the prosecutors, as well as the defense attorneys. The case was so high profile that Clarence Darrow, one of America's best known defense attorneys agreed to defend the teacher, and former Presidenitial candidate William Jennings Bryan volunteered his services to the prosecution. The fact that Bryan hadn't practiced law in more than 30 years was not seen to be a problem. The defendant had already been assured by all involved that he would not serve time.

The argument centered on the open pursuit of truth featured by scientists and the narrow minded bigotry of religion. The classroom should be a place where opposing ideas ought to be allowed so that truth could rise above the arguments.

Today, the shoe is on the other foot, Intelligent Design theory is fighting for a right to challenge evolution which now controls our public schools and schools of higher learning.

In a previous article in this series I quoted from Richard Dawkins, the leading advocate of Darwinism today and an aggressive advocate of atheism, as saying that religion draws its conclusions from a holy book that is not open to being questioned while he as a scientist derives his conclusions from the scientific evaluation of evidence.

The disagreement between theists who believe God is the origin of life and our cosmos and people like Dawkins is not so much as a result of science vs a holy book as it is naturalism vs theism. Most Darwinians are naturalists. They begin with an assumption not science. Their assumption is that nothing exists except matter and that all things and events must be explained by natural causes. They deny that design or purpose has anything to do with our universe and our existence. Theists refuse to rule out the possibility that reality extends beyong the material and natural. Theists believe there is sufficient evidence of design and purpose in the cosmos to lead to the plausibility of God's existence. Read the holy book's record of Paul's argument in Romans chapter 1.

Currently, many biologists, astronomers and physicists agree that design makes more sense then random mutations and natural selection. Maybe in the future we can examine more closely the actual evidence offered by theists and evolutionists, but today we simply want to pay tribute to the third member of the intellectual trinity that has helped shape us. Will we live to see the death of Darwin's theory as we have Freud's and Marx's?

Saturday, February 7, 2009

If you have read my blogs on atheism, would you be so kind as to respond with a simple "yes" so that I can determine if there is any value to my continuing to blog. I simply don't know if anyone is reading and it takes some time to write the blogs. It may be that I'm the only one who values such a discussion, and thus may be writing primarily to myself. If so I'm wasting a lot of the Lord's time that might more profitably be used on other tasks. This is the only problem with a blog. When you're preaching or teaching you can see an audience although you may question if anyone is listening, but when blogging, you don't know if anyone is there.

Friday, February 6, 2009

If any of my readers have read the senate bail-out bill, could you tell me if I'm going to be re-imbursed for the investments I've lost in the recession. From my understanding the money in the bail out bill if given to the long term unemployed in America would provide 250,000 dollars each. I'll bet that would stimulate the economy. However, for those who will be seeking employment when they are ninety years old because they have lost their retirement due to government regulations and lack of self control of lenders and borrowers, well I guess we are the losers. Aren't you glad we can pay our taxes to help stimulate the economy that rewards those that fail and ignores those who are the victims. Actually I don't want other people's money, but I also don't want mine going to reward greedy corporations and politicians seeking to stay in office by rewarding those who have paid to get them elected
As a footnote to my blog of yesterday, I need to point out that the idea of an earth centered universe is not a biblical doctrine, but a doctrine taught by the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Aristotle has had a great influence on Catholicism, and for that matter protestantism also. Thus Science's issue with Christianity is really an issue with Aristotle who influenced Christianity. Maybe I should also point out that the sun centered view of the universe had already been introduced in the 3rd century B.C. by a philosopher named Aristarchus. However, he was unable to support his contention with evidence and as a result his view never gained traction.

I hope some are reading these blogs and if any of the things I write produce questions or problems either respond on my blog or on my e-mail (ronnie.wiggins@ectisp.net). Since I'm not writing for publication, I'm not providing footnotes for my quotes, but if any should be interested in tracking down my quotes, I will be happy to provide that info. upon request.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

In our last blog we discussed the atheist argument that Christianity is responsible for killing more people than any other philosophy or religion in the world. If such were true then it would be little wonder that people would reject it as negating its message of peace. However, we tried in our response to show that the atheists magnify several-fold the evils of history for which Christianity is responsible while at the same time almost completely ignoring the good that has resulted from Chrisitianity.

In the present blog, I want to evaluate their criticism of Christianity because of its alledged opposition to science, knowledge, truth and progress. All of the recent books advance the view that Christians have always opposed science and that scientific advancements have occurred because scientists were willing to be oppressed and persecuted by Christians in order to advance the cause of knowledge and truth.

Of course this view is not new. One of the best known advocates of this view was Bertrand Russell who popularized it in his lecture WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN delivered on March 6, 1927. He argued that people believe in God because they are indoctrinated as small children, then he adds that "the next most powerful reason is the wish for safety, a sort of feeling that there is a big brother who will look after you." Its interesting that in the same year that Russell delivered this lecture, the FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION by the father of psychotherapy was published.

The following quote from Freud agrees with Russell that fear is the origin of God. Religion he says is an illusion. "They are illusions, fulfillment of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind. The secret of their strength lies in the strength of those wishes. As we already know, the terrifying impression of helplessnes in childhood aroused the need for protection--for protection through love--which was provided by the father; and the recognition that this helplessness lasts throughout life made it necessary; to cling to the existence of a father; but this time a more powerful one. Thus the benevolent rule of a divine Providence allays our fear of the dangers of life." In a later paragraph, he says that "scientific work is the only road which can lead us to a knowledge of reality outside ourselves." Thus according to Freud, God is a product of our neurosis and is a result of wish. God has no basis in reality outside of our wishes.

Hitchens in GOD IS NOT GREAT longs for the day when religion will be but a distant dream of a terrible past. "Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it (religion) no longer offers an explanation of anything important...It can now only impede and retard --or try to turn back---the measurable advances that we have made."

Dawkins in the GOD DELUSION gives a great deal of attention to the conflict between Christianity and science. The following words show how he sees each: Christians "know they are right because they have read the truth in a holy book and they know, in advance, that nothing will budge them from their belief...The book is true, and if the evidence seems to contradict it, it is the evidence that must be thrown out, not the book. By contrast, what I, as a scientist, believe (for example, evolution) I believe not because of reading a holy book but because I have studied the evidence."

It is clear from the previous series of quotations that Christians are viewed as weak psychologically and thus in need of a father, and have a superstitious belief in a holy book rather than a mind open to research and evidence.

There is so much here that needs to be addressed, but for the moment I simply want to address the charge that Christianity has waged war on Science. This story of conflict goes back to two books written toward the end of the 19th century alledging that Christianity has been in conflict with science since the early days of science. John William Draper, in 1874, wrote HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE and in 1896 Andrew Dickson White, the first president of Cornell University wrote a two volume work entitled HISTORY OF THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE WITH THEOLOGY IN CHRISTENDOM. In the 100 years since the publication of these books, the conflict model has prevailed.

The centerpiece of their argument is the story of Galileo. According to their account, Galileo, who promoted the Heliocentered view of our galaxy was resisted by the Catholic church, because it would seem to diminish the value of man. The previous scientific model had assumed that the earth was the center of the universe. In that view man was far more important. Actually Galileo was only continuing in the footsteps of Copernicus ( a loyal Catholic) who had already introduced the heliocentric view.

As the story goes, the Pope tried to silence Galileo and when he couldn't, he had him arrested and held in a dungeon where he nearly starved to death. That interpretation is more "wish fulfillment" as Freud would say than scientific. The truth of the matter is that a number of Catholice theologians were open to this new view, but at the time proof was lacking and Galileo was asked not to promote it without any proof. He agreed, but then later broke his word. Thomas Kuhn, a scientist and author of THE STUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS admits that during Galileo's life there was no proof available for this theory. Galileo tried to support with evidence that proved to be false. Later he wrote a treatise DIALOGUE CONCERNING THE CHIEF WORLD SYSTEMS. This treatise is what produced the problem with the pope. Galileo had been free for 20 years since he first announced his support of heliocentric view, but in 1632 with this publication things changed. Pope Urban VIII had been a friend and admirer of Galileo. He even penned a poem honoring him. However, in Galileo's treatise, he featured a dialogue between his view and one named Simplicio. He placed in Simplicio's words an argument that had been publicly espoused by Pope Urban, and then he humiliated Simplicio. In Italian "simplicio" means simpleton. The Pope took offense to what he viewed as an embarrasing "put down". Galileo was ordered to travel to Rome where he was put under house arrest. He was never placed in a dungeon, but was treated with respect.

No question the Pope did not behave properly, but Galileo was not without blame in breaking his word, producing erroneous support for his hypothesis, and betraying his friendship with the Pope in the way that he did. I'm not trying to defend the Pope and the Catholic Church, but am trying to say that this great conflict between Christianity and Science based on this episode is largely a myth.

There is reason why the west has made advancements in Science that the Arab world and most other areas of the world have not. Christianity provided the environment that would encourage Science. Genesis one says that mankind is to exercise dominion over the earth. Such a relationship warrants investigation into how the world works. Furthermore, Christians assume as Paul wrote that God is a God of order. Thus we would expect to find laws that govern the natural world just as we find order in the moral world.

Atheists up until about thirty years ago argued that the world had always existed. The advent of the Big Bang theory was actually a disappointment to many because it said there was a beginning. Eastern religions such as Hinduism had been perfectly content with no beginning, but Jews and Christians insisted that there was a creation. The Big Bang confirmed that there was a beginning.

Polls show that the vast majority of Americans believe in God. At least 40% of American scientists believe the same thing. This troubles Richard Dawkins to no end. He says well the best scientists tend to be atheists. Elitist intellectualism has gone to seed with these guys, but as we noted in a previous blog, they are the "BRIGHTS" don't you know.