Chitchat with a roving atheist

Passing through this blog, as it were. My response:

#2: So you acknowledge, tacitly, that your criticism of the Church/Christians not caring about the ill and sick was incorrect, but now try to distract by complaining that hospitals require money? As for charities, the Catholic Church operates "the largest private network of social service organizations in the United States [that] works to support families, reduce poverty, and build communities." Just one of many possible examples.

#3: The Christian god is in heaven. Heaven is a synonym for sky. The Christian god is a sky god. Uh, no. Not even close. Let me introduce you to the first verse in the Bible: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1). This isn't mere poetics, but a theological assertion by the author about the nature of Elohim over against Babylonian gods, namely, he is not part of creation, but is Creator. This is a continual theme, expressed in various ways, through the Old and New Testaments. For example: "For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it; he did not create it a chaos, he formed it to be inhabited!): "I am the LORD, and there is no other" (Isa. 45:18). And, in the New Testament: "Worthy art thou, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for thou didst create all things, and by thy will they existed and were created" (Rev. 4:11). It is a basic, fundamental point, and if you wish to be taken seriously at all, you need to accurately present the Judeo-Christian understanding of God. Otherwise, you simply make a fool of yourself.

#6: Suffice it to say that Christians equally as murderous as communists. Say it all you wish, but where is the historical evidence? First you dismiss numbers as unimportant (as if they don't say something significant about actions, beliefs, intentions, etc.), and then you blithely suggest, without a shred of proof, that Christians have killed tens of millions. I suppose you can run to the Inquisitions, but keep in mind that over a 300-year-long period, the Spanish Inquisition was responsible for about 5,000 deaths, the vast majority executed by the civil government. And so forth. My claim is not that Christians are perfect (far from it!), but that the advent and growth of Christianity was the most revolutionary cultural, social, and religious movement of the past 2,000 years--and it has been overwhelmingly for the betterment of mankind.

#7: We have only a short blip of consciousness, then we die, and consciousness is finished. And yet you chafe at my description of your beliefs as expressing a nihilistic, meaningless existence. Wow.

We are bathed in eternity at every moment. Um...which one is it: we have "only a short blip of consciousness, then we die", or we are "bathed in eternity at every moment"? You do recognize an obvious contradiction when you see one, right?

What on earth does a sky god having sex with a virgin giving birth to a sacrificial lamb who monitors your every thought and deed have to do with my love for my family? Are you nuts? Your approach to "argument" over these big questions is both obvious and banal: 1) mischaracterize what Christians believe, 2) flippantly contradict yourself about when expressing what you believe, 3) fling weak and desperate insults at the Christian. Yaaawwwwn!

#8: I said that China is still Communist, which is not necessarily the same thing as Marxist. The fact that China is governed/ruled by the Chinese Communist Party seems ample enough evidence for my non-controversial statement.

#9: Do you have a deep understanding of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Islam, to pick just a few major religions? No? I'll bet your knowledge of them is very superficial. So how can you possibly reject them for Christianity? Well, I do own over 80 books on Buddhism and am currently co-authoring a book on Catholicism and Buddhism with Dr. Anthony Clark, professor of Asian history at Whitworth. I have an entire bookcase of books on other Asian religions, Islam, Judaism, etc. I won't claim to be an expert on any, but I've likely read more books about each than 99% of population. Let's put it this way: I know far more about each of these religions than you do about Christianity.

That was Round #2. Start at the top and read down to catch it all.