Thursday, June 5, 2008

The New Apostles

In the "Classic" defense of his personal religious beliefs (Mere Christianity), C.S. Lewis offers a stunning smorgasbord of flawed premises, tortured logic, and non-stop non sequiturs; from a master wordsmith, jabberwockey.

Francis Collins (The Language of God) on Jesus: "He claimed to be God...He also claimed to be able to forgive sins...He was humble..." A humble man who proclaimed his divinity and his power to absolve Man of sin---sometimes Believers (even the "smart" ones) say the darnedest things.

Theologian John Haught (God and the New Atheism) declares that we should be grateful for the imperfect Creation ("the ambiguities and evil") of his perfect god---thank god for our manifold pain and suffering; without it, there would be no "freedom," no "adventure," no "grand cosmic story," no "opening to infinite horizons up ahead." In a startling (unwitting?) conflation of heaven and hell, he concludes: "Locked eternally into splendid perfection," Man would be "mere puppets and statues"!
On behalf of the New Atheists whom Haught excoriates, I rest my case.

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