Perhaps my favorite rebuttal offered by Christians or other theists is the Reductio ad Hitlerum in which the Christian attempts to discredit atheism and evolution by claiming "But Hitler was an atheist! And so were Stalin and Mao! Therefore atheism and evolution leads to wanton murder and genocide!"
If these claims are accurate, they clearly paint a very bleak picture of atheism. After all, Hitler is responsible for the deaths of 20,946,000 people, Stalin for 51,755,000 deaths, and Mao for 56,218,000 deaths. That said, these allegations, are problematic on a couple of levels.
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Sunday Sermon: What About Islam?
It is not at all uncommon - especially on websites that criticize Christianity - to see some commenter or other make a snide little remark to the effect of "You atheists never have any problem attacking Christianity because you know that we won't kill you for it, but are any of you brave enough to attack the homophobic and womon-abusing Islamic religion?"
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Sunday Sermon: What Might Have Been
There are a fairly standard set of objections that are used against Christianity. Just to name a few: Christianity is notoriously homophobic, has outdated views on sexuality and reproduction, has a long history of wanton murder, horrendously intolerant of other points of view, and insistent that people were born as broken, wicked, evil people, who deserve to burn forever unless they bow to Jesus.
All of these are blatant problems that typically drive people away from Christianity. Even many Christians have adopted the "New Covenant" doctrine to allow them to casually discard the Old Testament whenever it becomes inconvenient, simply by claiming that Jesus changed the verse in question. This argument typically doesn't hold up when arguing against non-christians, as non-christians realize that the Old Testament seems to not apply, only for those verses where the Christian in question doesn't want that particular verse to apply (i.e. homosexuality is still a sin, but dietary restrictions on eating shellfish don't apply, even though they're in the same book).
Bearing this in mind, I would like this post to be a mixture of a brief history lesson, and some wishful thinking. You see, Christianity didn't have to be this way. In the early to mid second century, Marcion of Sinope was heading up the Marcionite church, which, for a few years, was a real contender to become the dominant Christian faith.
All of these are blatant problems that typically drive people away from Christianity. Even many Christians have adopted the "New Covenant" doctrine to allow them to casually discard the Old Testament whenever it becomes inconvenient, simply by claiming that Jesus changed the verse in question. This argument typically doesn't hold up when arguing against non-christians, as non-christians realize that the Old Testament seems to not apply, only for those verses where the Christian in question doesn't want that particular verse to apply (i.e. homosexuality is still a sin, but dietary restrictions on eating shellfish don't apply, even though they're in the same book).
Bearing this in mind, I would like this post to be a mixture of a brief history lesson, and some wishful thinking. You see, Christianity didn't have to be this way. In the early to mid second century, Marcion of Sinope was heading up the Marcionite church, which, for a few years, was a real contender to become the dominant Christian faith.
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