what is bob jones university?!

Xanatos
Tue, 13 Mar 2007 21:25:09 +0000

http://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618680004/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-6497382-6756904?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173834548&sr=8-1 (This is quite possibly one of the most brilliant people of our time - this isn’t even his field!)

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0307265773/ref=s9_asin_image_1/102-6497382-6756904

http://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/dp/0060738170/ref=pd_bbs_2/102-6497382-6756904?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173834591&sr=1-2 (Oh no, a bestseller for the New York Times?!?!? It MUST be evil!)

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Ages-America-Final-Empire/dp/0393058662/ref=pd_bbs_2/102-6497382-6756904?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173834694&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/American-Theocracy-Politics-Religion-21stCentury/dp/067003486X/ref=pd_bbs_2/102-6497382-6756904?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173834726&sr=1-2

Gah, the stupid site logged me out before I could submit this the first time…don’t feel like elaborating quite as much, this time around. But basically, the first two are refutations by atheists of many of the “popular” positions held for religions and against atheism. The last two have more of a political bent. Misquoting Jesus basically puts forth the idea that the Bible has had so many (mis)translations, omissions, alterations, insertions, and misinterpretations that the book we have today probably does not sound anything like the original. We have no way of knowing what the original “commandments” were, so, even were you to assume that there really is a God and the Bible as it was written (by people who had never met Jesus (if the figure of the Bible even existed) who wrote down the recollections of old men nearly a century after his death) originally is his word, the worship that is put forth by religions in modern times have no connection to the original laws put forth in the Bible before it was basically butchered and mangled for two thousand years. That’s not to mention all of the pagan traditions (not that there’s anything wrong with pagan traditions) absorbed into both Christianity and Islam during their early stages to make it easier to convert people, and the numerous heresies (Arianism, Gnosticism, Catharism, Pelagianism, to name a few of the bigger ones) that were suppressed but have just as much a chance of being true as the “orthodox” view (and, since the Reformation, views).

(****, that was longer than the first time)

I would like to conclude with a quote. Although it is indeed referring to Christianity, I don’t want anybody to think that I am specifically targeting Christianity. This is a great quote because it applies equally to ALL the religions of the world, and it is actually very ironic that the person who spoke these words belonged to a tradition very similar (in the sense of the quote, at the least) to Christianity.

“[… it seems most strange that… ] the Creator of Heaven and Earth resorted to the womb of a certain Jewish lady, grew there for nine months and was born as an infant, and afterwards grew up and was betrayed into the hands of his enemies who sentenced him to death and executed him, and that afterwards… he came to life and returned to his original place…If you have listened all your life to the priests who have filled your brain and the marrow of your bones with this doctrine, and it has settled into you because of that accustomed habit. [I would argue that if you were hearing these ideas for the first time, now, as a grown adult], you would never have accepted them.”


Nahmanides, Disputation of Barcelona, 1263