Farewell, forever. Again.

Well, the long sabbatical may have been an idea to run with after all. I’ve been looking at Right To Think, life and the whole theist/atheist debate over the last week or two, and I think it’s time for me to call it a day. Blogging seems to have become a chore, not a pleasure, and frankly I have neither the time nor the inclination to keep plugging away at it.

I’ve pretty much said all I have to say on the subject of religion. Yes, I could go on dredging up the really obscure faiths out there, trashing the idiot arguments spewed by creationists, cataloguing the atheists of yesteryear and predicting catastrophe for everyone, but these days I’d rather spend time with Wifeshui and Babyshui than roll out yet another example of why Mormonism/Catholicism/Islam is really, really stupid. There are plenty of other people out there doing that – just look to the blogroll on the left of your screen for a whole slew of them. You don’t really need my voice adding to the onslaught, so I’m gracefully bowing out.

Thanks to everyone who’s been reading Right To Think, especially the commentators. I will no doubt see you again around the intertubes, but this is the last time I’m posting here. Look after yourselves, and each other.

All the best,

yunshui

Divine Origins, Part 5

Once again, we return to the Christadelphian argument for divine inspiration. Today, Fred Peace’s diatribe returns to subjectivity, so if you don’t think the way Fred does, you’re going to find this rather unconvincing.

Argument 11: The Course of Civilisation

The 20th Century (claims Fred) was due to be a new age of progress, education and advancement. Instead, it was a big old failure:

“The sophisticated nations have turned their backs on religion, but have found nothing effective to put in its place. The divorce rate rises and so does the crime rate. New diseases appear, especially AIDS, which has already made serious inroads in Africa and threatens to spread in the West. Famines threatening millions of lives, though partly caused by drought or mismanagement of land, are also the result of civil wars. Small nationalities are asserting their rights, and are ready to take up arms to defend them. In short, the nations are shaken to their moral, political and economic foundations to an extent undreamed of in past ages.”

Well, when you put it like that, it seems pretty bleak. I mean, I know that children are ten times more likely to survive to adulthood now than in 1900, and vaccination programmes have massively reduced deaths from polio, diptheria, TB, tetanus, measles and others; then there’s the end of colonialism, resulting in indigenous independence for numerous countries and meaning that more than a billion people in Africa and India now have civil rights, and the spread of democracy to many states which had previously been totalitarian. After the Cold War, Europe entered the first period of sustained peace in the continent’s history. Global communications enabled information to be widely disseminated for the first time, resulting in improved education opportunities (particularly in the developing world). We went to the Moon and sent probes to ther planets. We developed new, safer, renewable energy sources. We gained knowledge in the fields of biology, physics and chemistry that gave completely new insight into the workings of the universe. But, you know, the divorce rate is up, so clearly the century sucked.

My point here is not that we had a great run last century, but that Fred has cherry picked events to support his position, just as I have to oppose it in the above paragraph. It’s impossible to claim that a period as long and broad as the 20th century was either “good” or “bad” – there was progress, there was disaster, just as in every other century. Which segues neatly into the next argument:

Argument 12: The Bible’s View of Mankind

Fred claims (based, again, on a somewhat outdated bit of scholarship) that the Bible anticipates a great crisis and disaster at the peak of human civilisation. This demonstrates that God wrote the Bible. “No other explanation meets the facts.”

So: if you believe that the 20th century is the culmination of human existence, and you believe that the 20th century was an unmitigated disaster, and you subscribe to Cadbury’s view that the Bible claims “mankind’s career will end in a great crisis and a dramatic change”, and that the Bible verses he refers to were specifically talking about the 20th century and not about one of the many contemporary disasters which befell Israel in its early history, then it becomes self evident that God wrote the Bible.

Do I even need to explain why that doesn’t work for me?

In our next instalment: conspiracy theories! How the New World Order proves that the Bible is the word of God!