RE: Atheists unite and help persuade
November 29, 2016 at 6:44 am
(This post was last modified: November 29, 2016 at 6:45 am by Fake Messiah.)
Maybe you could try with something like: Maybe it would be OK to believe in version of the world that Bible proclaims which is that world is flat, that heavens are firmament trough which holes water falls on the world created by wizard in 6 days if we were living in primitive agrarian society, but we're not.
We live in highly technical society with nuclear bombs and pressing ecological problems for which it would be highly irresponsible and deadly to cling to some anachronistic sciences of ancient Egypt. By believing in them you automatically exclude yourself from participating in this modern world and you are practically an invalid that has to rely on rational people that took on medicine, nuclear energy, engineering and all other sciences that make our life better and that can't rely of promise of magical beings that Bible assures us will do all that instead.
Also this clinging to explanation of the world from the Bible is by authority and not observation, which means that you are always under their authority, for better or worse, but most of the time for worse, because you always owe them something, you're always not good enough for all the failures that come from their faulty claims you yourself will be for the blame. Reliance on faith—belief, without evidence is a danger to both science and society. The danger to science is in how faith warps the public understanding of science: by arguing that science is based just as strongly on faith as is religion; by claiming that revelation or the guidance of ancient books is just as reliable a guide to truth about our universe as are the tools of science; by thinking that an adequate explanation can be based on what is personally appealing rather than on what stands the test of empirical study.
We live in highly technical society with nuclear bombs and pressing ecological problems for which it would be highly irresponsible and deadly to cling to some anachronistic sciences of ancient Egypt. By believing in them you automatically exclude yourself from participating in this modern world and you are practically an invalid that has to rely on rational people that took on medicine, nuclear energy, engineering and all other sciences that make our life better and that can't rely of promise of magical beings that Bible assures us will do all that instead.
Also this clinging to explanation of the world from the Bible is by authority and not observation, which means that you are always under their authority, for better or worse, but most of the time for worse, because you always owe them something, you're always not good enough for all the failures that come from their faulty claims you yourself will be for the blame. Reliance on faith—belief, without evidence is a danger to both science and society. The danger to science is in how faith warps the public understanding of science: by arguing that science is based just as strongly on faith as is religion; by claiming that revelation or the guidance of ancient books is just as reliable a guide to truth about our universe as are the tools of science; by thinking that an adequate explanation can be based on what is personally appealing rather than on what stands the test of empirical study.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
