(January 14, 2019 at 10:41 am)HelenMaxxeen Wrote: Science and religion can actually compliment each other. For example, there may be examples of medical miracles, but the majority occur because God created thinking, intelligent individuals who make breakthroughs in medicine.
If god created thinking, intelligent individuals--as you say-- then why does the Bible (aka word of God) preach anti-intelectualism? There is pronounced tendency of the Bible to denounce intellect, thought, and what the New Testament refers to as human wisdom.
Like:
Ecclesiastes 6:8, "What hath the wise more than the fool";
1 Corinthians 1:22-23, "Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles";
1 Corinthians 4:10 "We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ";
1 Corinthians 2:1-2 "I [Paul] did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified";
1 Corinthians 3:18-19 "Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God."
Christianity seems very much like a philosophy in which one of its prime propagandists openly advocates becoming a fool.
1 Corinthians 1:19-21 "It is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart. Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom";
1 Corinthians 2:13-14, "We impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit. The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned";
1 Corinthians 2:4, "And my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom"
Ecclesiastes 1:18, "In much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."
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"