Ironwolf

From the Richard Dawkins web site:

This interview was filmed for the TV documentary The Root of All Evil? but was left out of the final version. Time restrictions dictated that not all interviews filmed could be used. This was especially regrettable in the case of the McGrath interview, which is therefore offered here now, unedited.

McGrath is an excellent example of a Christian apologist who adopts and eminently reasonable tone, but disingenuously evades the logical consequences of their articles of faith at every turn. The uncut interview is over an hour long, but well worth the time.

I don’t usually spend much time debating with theists on their own blogs— they tend to suddenly get raptured out of existence with alarming frequency— but today I made an exception.

In my surfing I came across the remarkable Blogs 4 Brownback, a blog devoted to either getting religio-conservative-wingnut Sam Brownback elected president, or proving the Earth is flat— I haven’t quite figured it out yet. Some of the postings are rather astonishing, and make me wonder how these people can even find it in themselves to use advanced technology like say, doorknobs.

But I truly ventured into the heart of darkness when, while browsing a recent posting there called Science: The New Inquisition, I came across this statement by one of their main authors:

Andy: This is all very confusing to me, but it seems you really have a handle on it, and I’d really like your guidance. Which parts of the Bible are meant to be literal and which parts are incorrect because of interpretation and/or translation?

Sisyphus: All of it is to be taken quite literally. To do otherwise is to tempt Hellfire.

So I decided to put in my two cents against the biblical-literalist position. I had quite a bit of fun in the process, and thought I made some good points. My comments start around #78. I started by offering Dan Barker’s Easter Challenge and went from there.

An excerpt from one of my comments:

Like [commenter] R.L.Page, I’m also not convinced this site isn’t a parody. If it is a parody, then I am happy to interact in the little bit of Internet street theatre going on here. If it is not a parody, then there are some important misconceptions asserted here that need to be corrected. Am I being too humorless for a satirical blog? Too bad. This satire is so smooth and sensationalistic that a lot of people will take it seriously.

The “points” I raised were simple for anyone not bomb-grade stupid: Without a risen Christ, Christianity is nothing. Many Christians don’t need the bible to be “inerrant” to believe in Jesus, and fine for them— it’s simply a matter of faith. But when someone comes along who claims that the Bible is perfect in every word and without contradiction, then they have a big problem. Their typical way of shooting down contradictions is one at a time, and most individual contradictions can be answered by some sort of tortured logic. This is a sort of divide-and-conquer approach. But the Easter Challenge is about understanding a critical story of the bible in its full context. This simple exercise reveals a mass of contradictions that cannot be teased apart and answered individually.

It was amusing to see them do a “booga booga” dance around the Easter Challenge— attempting in vain to get me to break it up into bits small enough for easy digestion by their platitudinous enzymes.

Here’s one of the more astonishing quotes by one of my opponents:

As long as one believes in an omnipotent supernatural being who created the universe, there’s no good reason to feel that violations of the laws of nature are out of place. His house, his rules. This is the ‘omnipotent’ and ’supernatural’ part of ‘omnipotent supernatural being.’ Consequently, there is literally *no* contradiction that one could find in the Gospel narratives that cannot be reconciled with an omnipotent supernatural being. In other threads, we have already determined that Herod was in fact a fox (although possibly an acaudate, disguised fox), that Jesus was a vine in addition to being a man and God, and that the Earth is the center of the universe, almost certainly flat, and that it may well once have been piloted around by God like an immense hover-car. I see no problem with any of this, although it has angered a surprising number of people.

Angered? Naw, I don’t get angry, and I don’t usually bother to get even: I much prefer to get odd, but these people beat me to it.

UPDATE: If I ever gave these guys the benefit of the doubt as to their sincerity, that’s all gone now. (My comments start at around #31.) This site is definitely parody, although they won’t cop to it openly. Definitely in the Landover Baptist tradition, but a little more subtle. However, I do still think some of their regulars and walk-ins are sincere.

Ending today’s quiz-spree are my results from the all-knowing Belief-O-Matic. No surprises here.

Apparently a scientific/spiritual one. Good call.

What kind of atheist are you?
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