Playing the Indian Card

Friday, January 26, 2007

Letter in National Post

A letter of mine is in today's National Post.
Posted by at

11 comments:

Jeff Harmsen said...

Oh, I see, you went ahead and bashed my letter behind my back like a coward.

I might ask a Christian about empathy? Why don't we ask one of the millions of families whose ancestors were burned to death, canabalized, or otherwise tortured or murdered? Or, why don't we go to Iraq where innocent women and children are being murdered during the current Christian Crusade?

It's a fact that the current President, who many claim is the worst in American history, would never have been elected once, let alone twice, if not for the blind faith of the bible belt.

But don't worry. Your conception of a god will spare you from a conscience.

Jeff

9:04 PM
Steve Roney said...

Wow! Thanks for sharing!
It kind of sheds a whole new light on your original letter.

7:54 AM
Steve Roney said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
7:55 AM
Jeff Harmsen said...

Your welcome. Thanks for the polite way of saying, "Please don't bother us with the truth."

I understand. Brainwashing, by your age, takes it toll so that no matter what the truth is, you'll go on believing what you want.

However, hope springs eternal. The youth of today are becoming more aware of the truth about religion.

If you can't handle the reality about your imaginary friend in the sky, the least you can do is take responsibility for centuries of ongoing atrocity caused by your cult.

Yours in peace and humanity,
Jeff

10:17 AM
Steve Roney said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
2:33 AM
Steve Roney said...

I am proud to take responsibility for the centuries of ongoing atrocity directly attributable to Christianity: things like empirical science, democracy, the doctrine of human rights, the doctrine of human equality, the end of slavery worldwide, the end of blood sacrifices, the industrial revolution and the resulting growth in human material wealth, the concept of the brotherhood of man, the writings of Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Cervantes, Dante; the paintings of Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Raphael, Blake; the music of Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, Brahms.

Perhaps you were thinking of something else?

3:25 AM
Jeff Harmsen said...

You're taking credit for way too much. Cervantes, my all time favorite writer, wrote Don Quixote as a parody of the crusades. This is the second most read book in the world, next to the bible. It trumps the bible by far when it comes to humanity. For one thing, there is no humor in the bible.

Secondly, when it come to science, Christianity as been an egregeous clog. For example, they didn't want to believe infections were caused by germs after the microscope was invented, they insisted disease was caused by demons. Thus, they refused to do things like wash their hands while aiding in childbirth.

Moreover, the Greek began science and medicine long before Christ was born.

And then there's the inhumanity of the anti-condom advocacy in AIDS torn Africa.

Finally, the science of medicine proves that most people who say they believe in a god don't really. If someone is having a heart attack, do they head to "God's house," a church, or do they go to the hospital, an institution built on emperical research? Only those truly demented by their cult refuse medical treatment in favor of faith.

And, on top of all this false credit you're assuming, assuming it is your defense mechanism to avoid responsibility for the atrocity of your Catholic cult. It's like a neo Nazi saying, "Yeah, we were brutal but we gave the world VWs!"

10:48 AM
Steve Roney said...

EJ:
You're taking credit for way too much. Cervantes, my all time favorite writer, wrote Don Quixote as a parody of the crusades.

SR:
That’s an amusing theory, but not plausible. After all, Cervantes spent his youth repeatedly fighting against the Muslims, and refused the opportunity to renounce his faith in Muslim captivity. It is possible he reversed his views in later life, but that’s pretty speculative. In the absence of hard evidence, I think we must assume he remained a devout Catholic.

EJ:
This is the second most read book in the world, next to the bible. It trumps the bible by far when it comes to humanity. For one thing, there is no humor in the bible.

SR:
You don’t know the Bible well enough, then. In the original Hebrew, for example, the Eden story in Genesis is full of wordplay. The Book of Jonah is clearly comic in tone and plot structure.

Don Quixote is humorous throughout. The Bible is not, because it is not one piece, but a collection of different writings of different genres. In addition, many miss the Bible’s humour because humour suffers in the transition between cultures and languages in a way other genres do not.

EJ:
Secondly, when it come to science, Christianity as been an egregeous clog. For example, they didn't want to believe infections were caused by germs after the microscope was invented, they insisted disease was caused by demons. Thus, they refused to do things like wash their hands while aiding in childbirth.

SR:
Hard to tell who “they” are in this account, and why the Christian religion is responsible for them and their views.

EJ:
Moreover, the Greek began science and medicine long before Christ was born.

SR:
No, if what the Greeks did was “science and medicine,” they founded neither. Their practices in approaching and understanding the physical world, and in healing illnesses, were not fundamentally different from those of the Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, the Persians, the Indians, or the Chinese.

“Science” properly refers to “the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment” (Oxford). This scientific method was essentially invented by Sir Francis Bacon. The most important innovation involved was probably the publication of results, so that they could be tested by others.

This attitude is certainly influenced by Aristotle, but it emerges in a pretty straight line from the theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and was explicitly understood by Bacon and other early scientists to be a matter of seeking “the footprints of God in nature.” The central thesis of the enterprise was the existence of God: if God exists, nature will be regular and studying it will produce universal “laws.”

Showing it is the product of an intelligent creator.

QED.

EJ:
And then there's the inhumanity of the anti-condom advocacy in AIDS torn Africa.

SR:
What about the inhumanity of telling Africans that indiscriminate sex is safe as long as they use a condom? Kind of like encouraging people to play Russian roulette. Studies suggest a condom failure rate in preventing HIV infection as high as 31%. The failure rate at Russian roulette is only 16.6%.

EJ:
Finally, the science of medicine proves that most people who say they believe in a god don't really. If someone is having a heart attack, do they head to "God's house," a church, or do they go to the hospital, an institution built on emperical research? Only those truly demented by their cult refuse medical treatment in favor of faith.

SR:
By your logic, most people do not believe in food either. For, if someone is having a heart attack, do they head to a restaurant? Or do they go to a hospital? Come to think of it, if they really believe in hospitals, why don’t people send the bodies of their dead relatives there, instead of to a church? Can’t hospitals offer eternal life? Clearly, their ability to improve our health is limited.

10:14 AM
Jeff Harmsen said...

What do you think Don Quixote is about anyway? As one of 100s of examples, he slaughters sheep thinking he has vanquished an army. The same thing happened in the Crusades as Christians slaughtered sheep in the pich dark thinking they were under attack.

Re medicine, guess you never heard of Hippocrates, father of modern medicine, born 100s of years before your great Jewish Rabbi.

Re who "they" were: Christians who believed infections were caused by demons, refusing to belief in germs seen in a microscope.

There is no proof whatsoever of a creator. The bible is loaded with errors. No bible, no creator.

Nobody is advocating promiscuity in Africa. However, because sex is a natural drive, like hunger or thirst, people will have sex. When they do, they should wear a condom.

This anti-sex advocacy is a joke. In the States, Christians organized virginity clubs where youth vowed celibacy until marriage. Five years later, researchers found that over 90% of those who took the pledge had broken it!

Steve, I'll humor you re your last comment, callow as it is. People don't claim eating bread will cure a heart attack. However, people do claim God is magical and can do anything, like fix a person's heart. When they go to a hospital instead of a church, they are admitting they believe in science more than God.

Which reminds me of the beguiling practice of faith healing. Researchers have proven it's a scam. Do we not have laws against false advertising? Preachers who claim to faith heal should go to jail!

People send the deceased to churches because they can not accept death is the end of existence and use the delusion of an afterlife to help them through. The penultimate Pope (J.P 2) even admitted there is no physical place as heaven or hell.

This misconception of an afterlife is the staple of suicide bombers who believe they are off to hang with virgins.

Religion: one delusion leading to another until people get hurt.

6:25 PM
Steve Roney said...

EJ:
What do you think Don Quixote is about anyway?

SR:
Illusion and reality.

EJ:
Re medicine, guess you never heard of Hippocrates, father of modern medicine, born 100s of years before your great Jewish Rabbi.

SR:
Not modern medicine, medicine per se. Paracelsus is usually cited as the father of _modern_, “scientific” medicine. And medicine as a profession, not as a science. And there are similar figures in most cultures. He was only the founder of the _Greek_ medical profession, to which modern Western medicine considers itself heir.

EJ:
Re who "they" were: Christians who believed infections were caused by demons, refusing to belief in germs seen in a microscope.

SR:
Really? Joseph Lister, the doctor who invented the compound microscope and who introduced the idea of antiseptic surgery, was himself a devout Quaker. von Leeuwenhoek, who first observed bacteria, was Dutch Reformed. Christians.

EJ:
There is no proof whatsoever of a creator.

SR:
You have an argument, then, with Aristotle, Anselm, Descartes, Leibnitz, Kant, et al. You still need to address this.

EJ:
The bible is loaded with errors. No bible, no creator.

SR:
So let’s get this straight: you are necessarily claiming that Muslims do not believe in a creator?

EJ:
Nobody is advocating promiscuity in Africa. However, because sex is a natural drive, like hunger or thirst, people will have sex.

SR:
When I taught in China, my students pointedly listed for me the traditional Chinese “necessities of life”: shelter, food, transportation, clothing, entertainment. And no sex. They argued that Westerners are depraved to think otherwise. These days my Arab students say the same thing, and speak of the “wicked West.” Contrary to popular belief in the West currently, it is perfectly possible to live without sex. Moreover, with monogamy, condoms are also irrelevant. And it is not just possible to remain monogamous; it is the only correct and moral option.

EJ:
This anti-sex advocacy is a joke. In the States, Christians organized virginity clubs where youth vowed celibacy until marriage. Five years later, researchers found that over 90% of those who took the pledge had broken it!

SR:
I believe the research you refer to here has since been debunked. But the claim was a bit different—it was that virginity pledges made teenagers no more likely to avoid sex over the next few years. It turns out it they do make having sex somewhat less likely.

EJ:
Steve, I'll humor you re your last comment, callow as it is. People don't claim eating bread will cure a heart attack. However, people do claim God is magical and can do anything, like fix a person's heart. When they go to a hospital instead of a church, they are admitting they believe in science more than God.

SR:
Not at all; this is already covered in the New Testament. “Thou shalt not put the Lord thy God to the test.” This is a crucial difference between religion and magic. You do not make demands of God.

Nor do Christian churches claim that going to church will cure a heart attack. With a few specific exceptions: Christian Scientists, say.

EJ:
Which reminds me of the beguiling practice of faith healing. Researchers have proven it's a scam.

SR:
No, research has proven that faith healing works. The well-known “placebo effect” is an example of faith healing, and its benefit is measurable.

EJ:
… People send the deceased to churches because they can not accept death is the end of existence and use the delusion of an afterlife to help them through.

SR:
This is circular reasoning: you are merely assuming what you need to demonstrate.

EJ:
The penultimate Pope (J.P 2) even admitted there is no physical place as heaven or hell.

SR:
Did you think heaven or hell were physical places? Did you think the pope was saying something new?

2:36 AM
Jeff Harmsen said...

Exactly! D.Q is about illusion vs reality. Those knights Cervantes makes fun of are Christian, through and through. The windmills Bush and Bin Laden charge include real people, with families. D.Q demonstrates that one can be perfectly Christian and perfectly insane at the same time.

We were not discussing modern medicine but its origins. Of course you can find plenty of examples of Christians who contributed to science. Over 90% have believed in a God for centuries because they have been brainwashed(forced as children to believe in things that are not real) from birth. Ergo, it's a matter of odds that discoveries will be made by religious people. Nevertheless, religious delusions have been a clog to science. The stem cell debate is another of a long history of examples.

It is possible to live without sex, especially if someone has a low drive. However, it is not natural. This partially explains why so many priests molest children. Anyone with a normal sex drive will be climbing the walls if they go too long without sex.

I don't have to argue with great philosophers re God's existence. It's amazing how far someone can go with an argument based on a false premise. Everyone of their agumnets is based on knowing the Bible, a book that is loaded with erroneous content.

I don't think you understand the importance of epistemology. Be a detective for a moment. You have three witnesses who claim to know who killed someone. You askt all three: "How do you know Bob killed Fred?"

Witness one: "Because an invisible pink elephant told me Bob did it!"

Witness two: "Because witness one told me Bob did it!"

Witness three: "Because I saw Bob stick a knife into Fred's heart."

By your way of thinking Steve, Witnesses one and two are just as reliable as witness three because you take the word of the bible and those who preach it.

The Muslims believe in another Bible, another book of myth. Both Christianity and Islam are based on the Old Testament. So yeah, Muslims have fallen into the same delusional trappings as Christians.

Re "Do not put God to the test." This is an excellent example of mind control (otherwise known as brainwashing). On the one hand, believers are told to pray, that something magical can come of it. On the other hand, when it's shown there is nothing magical about praying, it becomes "Don't put God to the test!"

Another brilliant piece of nonsense is "The Lord works in Mysterious ways." You could say this about anything, so it means nothing.

You think tricking people with the placebo effect is legit? So then selling snake oil as a panacea is perfectly fine in your world. From my perspective, taking money from people after lying about a product or service is a from of stealing. We have laws against false advertising. Churches break these laws on a daily bases.

Of course churches peddle heaven and hell as real places. As soon as J.P2 published his revelation it became taboo to discus the matter. I bet the vast majority of Christians believe heaven and hell are real.

Keeping it real,
Jeff

10:06 AM

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