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Apologists and the bible
#2
RE: Apologists and the bible
(March 23, 2014 at 3:17 pm)sven Wrote: This is a shorter version of an earlier post by me:

"I have a very good friend who is a very intelligent person.. He is a doctor of state sciences and has taught for several years at Oxford University. He is currently teaching at Lund university. He is also a chess master and once beat me at chess blindfolded.
I was shocked when he let himself be baptised into the Catholic church some years ago. (He has since converted to protestantism)
I thought that he shared my atheist views. I was surprised that someone who has spent his entire life subscribing to the idea of empirical evidence would suddenly become a member of the Catholic church, which has spent many centuries working against a logical, rational world view.

Some time ago the subject came up again and I couldn't keep quiet. I said to him that I saw no evidence that god existed, and that I strongly believe that organized religion does more harm than good. He was quite slippery about it and presented a lot of arguments that I have since found to be somewhat similar to what some christian apologists use.
I have to stress that I have very little hope of somehow turning my friend into an atheist. I just want to plant a seed in his mind, since I think he is wasting his time on something that I think is wrong, and simply put just plain false.
We discussed what I feel are the various wrongdoings of the catholic church. The subject of pedophilia came up. He refused to acknowledge my arguments that sexual child abuse by catholic priests was a sign that there is something fundamentally wrong with not just the catholic church, but with all of christianity.
His response was to blame the individual priests, and to say that the blame for this should be placed on humanity itself. This comes of course from a very christian point of view...
He also washed his hands by saying that he had left the Catholic church."

I continued the discussion with my friend on the phone today. He continued to argue like an apologist and one of the things we discussed was this moral contradiction in the bible:

In Exodus 11:4–6 God says that every firstborn in Egypt will die. There can be few other interpretations: God kills them.

Later, in Exodus 24:16-18 (I think) Moses receives the ten commandments from God. One is 'Thou shalt not kill'.

It seems every story in the bible becomes allegorical, or some sort of 'saga' that is supposed to teach us about life, morals and ethics in some roundabout way, when apologists defend christianity. But when you look at the bible it is so full of factual, moral and ethical contradictions that there seems to be very little left to base a sound, modern belief on. If you are a rational, decent human being that is.
That being said I sometimes wonder what apologists of this kind base their beliefs on, since they often seem to think that human beings are unable to form ethical and moral opinion under their own volition.

Ur friend blows
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Messages In This Thread
Apologists and the bible - by sven - March 23, 2014 at 3:17 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by truthBtold - March 23, 2014 at 3:18 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by Minimalist - March 23, 2014 at 3:23 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by Cinjin - March 23, 2014 at 3:30 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by sven - March 23, 2014 at 5:24 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by Cinjin - March 23, 2014 at 5:35 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by Minimalist - March 23, 2014 at 5:37 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by sven - March 23, 2014 at 6:14 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by Zen Badger - March 23, 2014 at 6:40 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by sven - March 23, 2014 at 7:06 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by Neo-Scholastic - March 24, 2014 at 1:13 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by Esquilax - March 24, 2014 at 2:00 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by sven - March 24, 2014 at 5:17 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by Bob Kelso - March 23, 2014 at 7:10 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by sven - March 23, 2014 at 8:08 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by Tonus - March 24, 2014 at 12:52 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by Bob Kelso - March 23, 2014 at 9:40 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by John V - March 24, 2014 at 12:30 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by Fidel_Castronaut - March 24, 2014 at 1:17 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by professor - March 24, 2014 at 5:51 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by max-greece - March 24, 2014 at 6:08 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by sven - March 24, 2014 at 6:39 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by professor - March 24, 2014 at 8:42 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by sven - March 25, 2014 at 7:46 am
RE: Apologists and the bible - by Esquilax - March 25, 2014 at 8:20 am
RE: Apologists and the bible - by professor - March 25, 2014 at 4:02 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by sven - March 25, 2014 at 4:53 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by professor - March 25, 2014 at 7:19 pm
RE: Apologists and the bible - by sven - March 25, 2014 at 7:45 pm

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