Here is an email I received in response to one of my essays.
I have read the above referenced article very quickly and only looking at parts of it. I think that what you have written is worse than you say Christianity is. For example, you go into how it’s bad that some Christians try to force their religion down your throat and that freedom of religion also mean freedom from religion, yet you then go into how to eliminate Christianity! How can this be? The writer is hypocritcally having a go at what they call hypocrites!
Freedom of religion means that I cannot coerce you to give up your folly. However, it my duty to try to do so through non-violent persuasion. I also have the right to stop you from forcing your nonsense down my throat. Freedom of religion also guarantees freedom from religion.
My main objection to your article is that it just seems to be a load of personal opinions and is not backed up with scientific or other research. Do you have such a chip on your shoulder about Christians?
I gave you 34 reasons right at the top of my combating Kristianity essay. You need still more?
Also, I would like you to know that I live in England and over here we do not have television evangelists, or others trying to steal our money.
A small side point about your referral to teaching creation in schools alongside evolution. I do not have time to go into all of the arguments against evolution, but it is suffice to say that evolution is actually known as the theory of evolution, it is not fact.
Not so. Evolution is an observed fact. Bugs develop immunity to pesticides, bacteria to antibiotics. The fossil record shows animal forms changing over time. Scientists use very conservative language. They call it a theory because they don’t know all the precise details of how and why this happens. The word theory is about as certain a word as scientists ever use. The word law is not used anymore. Don’t confuse the word theory with the way lay people use it, to mean a conjecture or hypothesis.
There are no facts that evolution takes place. There is evidence of natural selection, but that is completely different — that doesn’t change a spider into a horse!
Have you actually studied paleontology or are you just parroting the pseudoscientific twaddle of the creationists? With billions of years, the cumulative effects of the slowest changes can add up to changing a spider to a horse. You can see the record for yourself of how it happened if you are truly interested. You are quite right there is no evidence for intelligent purposeful design, just random mutations and weeding out the bad ones through natural selection.
Creationism, likewise, has no real evidence, apart from the fact that just looking at nature just proves that there must have been a creator — a designer, an almighty architect of some sort.
There is no physical evidence at all to support creationism. There is no evidence for design when you watch the mindless, bungling fossil record. The only reason creationism has any credence at all is because it is the theory proposed in the Bible. There is the entire fossil record supporting the evolutionary explanation.
You say and I quote, "Currently we grant parents the unconditional right to fill their children’s brains with whatever nonsense they choose. Nobody is permitted to interfere in any way. Parents have the right to completely block any other person from offering that child an alternative view. No wonder we have a society of religious bigots and superstitious ninnies."
This I find very distressing. Again, this is just your opinion, but wouldn’t life be horrible if each individual had to start life knowing nothing and then each person find out everything for themselves. You couldn’t teach children anything without somebody accusing you of teaching wrong things. Each child would have to work out how to speak without the parent’s involvement so as not to push the child into speaking in a particular way, they can write and spell as they wish because there is no right or wrong. Soon the whole world would crumble into chaos because nobody can communicate with anybody else. I believe this to be the view of someone who has had a terrible experience of Christianity, but they shouldn’t take it out on Christianity as a whole. After all, on the day of judgement, I know what side of the fence I’d like to be! If there is not day of judgement, then I go where everyone else goes.
It is necessary to teach children facts about the universe and to teach them how to get along with their fellows, but it is despicable to teach them metaphysical speculation and label it as fact. It is the worse possible kind of lying. Even as adults, indoctrinated people can never shake these lies loose.
I hope you will read what I have said and not have a closed mind, but an open one. What if Christianity really is right?
What if the ancient Norse were right and God wants us to hack our fellows to bits? What if the ancient Romans were right and God wants us to celebrate in drunken revelry? It seems equally unlikely the ancient Hebrews were right. If at some future time, the evidence shows they were, I will change my mind. However, for now, all evidence suggests that Christianity is just another of ancient man’s attempts to explain a mysterious universe to himself.
Jon Mansell
Study of Religions Student University College Chichester, England.
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