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Ian Wishart Christian Fundamentalist
Are these beliefs of his real or are they merely a delusion? Are his arguments for Christian fundamentalism valid? Should we all be reverting back to a literal belief in the Bible? No. It's all a scam.
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(Click the Investigate magazine cover to view a larger image. Please note that this cover is a spoof of Investigate magazine. And while it should be obvious, the pictures of Jesus, Adam and Eve etc in this article aren't real either.) Unlike most Christian fundamentalists who rant from street corners, assail you in supermarket carparks or disturb your privacy by going door to door, Wishart is kind enough to document some of his arguments in his Investigate magazine, even though he assures us that "Investigate is not a 'Christian' magazine. It is a current affairs magazine published by Christians." [10] This, coupled with pushing his fundamentalist beliefs on Radio Rhema and Newstalk ZB, means that Wishart has become something of a minor celebrity in the NZ Christian fundamentalist sphere, even appearing on TV to argue against evolution. His arguments for Intelligent Design (ID) will not be looked at in this essay, they deserve one of their own. So we decided to take a random selection of Investigate from the last three years, and a couple of other sources, and see if his arguments made any sense, or were they, like the spiel coming from the ignoramus on the street corner, just bullshit. This essay will look at typical arguments, courtesy of Wishart, put forward by fundamentalists worldwide and will demonstrate that they are all false. It is obvious that Wishart and other fundamentalists are suffering from a delusion no different than believing in Zeus, Apollo, Osiris, Shiva, Maui, Thor or the Tooth Fairy.
This essay isn't written like a murder mystery, where you need to read the whole thing to find out who the killer was. We'll tell you right now who the killer was. It was God. To that end each section in this essay can be read in any order. Each tackles a specific claim that Wishart has made in Investigate, normally in a column he calls 'Tough Questions'. And again, you don't need to read the whole essay to discover our view of Wishart's arguments. They're all bullshit. They may be printed in a fancy glossy magazine but they're nothing new. It's the same old rubbish that Christians have been pushing for years, sometimes thousands of years. While our science and technology pushes us towards the stars, and our humanist philosophies help create a just society, fundamentalists try and drag us back to a primitive time of superstition and one of punishment, servitude and death at the hands of imaginary gods.
We're all Religious Fundamentalists Ian Wishart is obviously intelligent and well read, which begs the question as to why he has regressed into a religious fundamentalist. But Wishart would probably take this as a compliment, so I'd better define what the widely accepted meaning of religious fundamentalist is, and why I believe Wishart has corrupted it. Dictionaries define fundamentalism as: FundamentalismSo by religious fundamentalist I mean someone who takes literally the passages written in their holy books. They are convinced that these books are infallible, that they contain no errors whatsoever. Every claim is true no matter how outrageous it may seem. What is written in these books must never be changed and can never be shown to be wrong. Never. Why? Because they were inspired by God, a perfect being incapable of error. They are the ultimate authority. For Ian Wishart this inerrant book is the Christian Bible, made up of the Old and New Testaments. Wishart knows full well that this is what people mean when they use the word fundamentalist. Look at the following statement where Wishart describes becoming a fundamentalist and also clearly acknowledges that atheists and a skeptics are not fundamentalists: 'I didn't begin my journey as a fundamentalist, I began as an atheist and a skeptic… I'd been well and truly turned off fundamentalists in the early 1980s - imagine my surprise to find I am one!… As for the supernatural, I was a skeptic until God struck me in a way I couldn't weasel out of, forcing me to come to terms with this dimension.' [17]It's interesting to note that nearly everyone that now professes a strong belief in God, or something equally wacky, such as psychics, ghosts or ESP, all claim that they were originally atheists and/or skeptics. I sincerely doubt that most were, but it seems to give them more credence with their fellow Christians, that even with the resources of atheism and skepticism at their disposal, the Power of God vanquished them both. Note also that Wishart admits he is no longer a skeptic — 'I was a skeptic until God struck me'. I guess it is impossible to be a true skeptic and religious at the same time. Christianity or skepticism, one had to go. But back to Wishart's use of fundamentalist. He also acknowledges that people often see this term in a negative sense, as an insult: 'Heck, I've even taken a liking to it myself as a means of describing diehard secular humanists: atheist fundamentalist fruitbats.' [1]Realising that we're going to continue to call him a fundamentalist in this negative sense, Wishart tries to deflect this criticism by claiming that actually we're all religious fundamentalists: 'You see, there is no one in your home or office who, deep down, is not a religious fundamentalist of some kind'. [1]It seems that even I, a hard core atheist, am a religious fundamentalist at heart. It should be pretty obvious that if your argument reaches the conclusion that atheists are religious fundamentalists then there is something seriously wrong with your reasoning. Even Wishart realises this and attempts to hide this flaw by deviously redefining the meaning of fundamentalist: 'But what does 'fundamentalist' really mean? It means someone with a strong worldview. Someone who is confident that they understand the world and their place in it, and therefore not somebody likely to be swayed from that worldview easily. A fundamentalist is someone who believes in the reality of objective truth.' [1]It seems Wishart believes he has some right, no doubt God-given, to corrupt arguments by simply changing the meanings of words. To demonstrate how easy it is to come up with completely bogus conclusions consider the following: A paedophile is someone who cares greatly for young children.This is technically correct, and therefore you can follow with this: Thus at a shallow level every single caring parent is a paedophile.This shows how by careful selection of words, by fudging their meaning, and without actually lying, you can appear to say something insightful, but which is actually complete rubbish. But let's continue with Wishart's fundamentalist definition, that fundamentalists aren't 'likely to be swayed from [their] worldview easily.' I agree that scientists, for example, are confident that they understand a lot about the world and our place in it, certainly not everything, or anything near it, but a lot, and that they are unlikely to be swayed from that view easily. But the fact remains that they can be swayed, and have been swayed numerous times throughout history. They won't be swayed easily and the evidence will need to be robust, but if new evidence indicates a particular scientific theory is false, they will reject it in an instant and happily embrace its successor. There are of course fundamental facts of science that scientists continually refer to and which are set out in science books. But these are not set in concrete and scientists will change them tomorrow if need be. For example up until 2006 every modern science book described Pluto as a planet. It has now been re-designated as a dwarf planet. All future books will be edited to show this change. If you compared a science textbook of today with one from a century ago, you would find new chapters on evolution, relativity, cosmology, genetics, plate tectonics, quantum mechanics etc. And even those chapters that did carry over from the old books would be so heavily edited as to be almost unrecognisable in many cases. Wishart has redefined fundamentalist in such an all-encompassing way that it will now fit most people. So while scientists, historians, philosophers and ordinary atheists like me do fit Wishart's new improved definition of fundamentalist, can it be applied to the very subject we're discussing — religion? So called religious fundamentalists certainly have a strong worldview, but could they be swayed from this worldview with new evidence? No, because then they wouldn't fit one of the widely accepted characteristics of religious fundamentalists. To be a religious fundamentalist means you can't be swayed from your worldview. They're absolutely convinced that their holy books are literally true and that no amount of evidence could convince them that parts of them were in error. Remember that a perfect being who can't make mistakes inspired them, therefore it's impossible that anything would need to be added, deleted or corrected. Take the Koran (or Quran) for example, Islam's holy book. Muslims claim (incorrectly) that not a single word of Arabic has changed in it from when it was first written circa the 7th century CE. As for the Bible, while there have been numerous translations from its original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, there have been no additions or deletions since around the 4th century CE. Although even then, the most recent book that was included in the Bible, possibly 2 Peter, was written two centuries before, around 130 CE. We've had no updates since then. Regardless of the mountain of knowledge that has been gained over the centuries, and in direct contrast to science and history textbooks, no new chapters have been added to the Bible, none have been deleted, and not even one verse has been modified to reflect new knowledge. Of course many Christians do now reject as false many verses and even whole chapters and books, Genesis for example, and some do modify their Bibles in a minor way to reflect this, but these Christians are never referred to as fundamentalists (except now by Wishart). Wishart is adamant that the Bible is literally true, that it contains no errors: 'It's easier to be a Christian if you accept the Bible and its claims at face value. It claims to be without error, and it is'. [2]Wishart is not someone that indicates he could be swayed from his worldview, no matter what evidence was produced. So while most people on the planet can now be defined as religious fundamentalists using Wishart's definition, people that we used to refer to as religious fundamentalists, can't. Wishart has so corrupted the meaning that it fits everyone except himself. But his devious attempt to neutralise an insult fails. Regardless of his silly wordplay, the rest of us still know what a religious fundamentalist really is and we will continue to call him one.
Bible inerrancy. As strange as it seems, that's what Christian fundamentalists believe. That's what Wishart believes. That the Bible, made up of the Old and New Testaments, is inerrant. It contains no errors, it is infallible, and it's literally true. Remember that fundamentalists believe that the Bible was inspired by God, a perfect being incapable of error, thus it's inconceivable that there could be anything that would need to be added, deleted or corrected.
There are no erroneous facts of history, no mistaken facts of science, none of geography, of culture, logic, reason, mathematics etc. There are no contradictions. No matter what type of error that you can think of, there are no examples of it in the Bible. Could this really be true? No, of course not. The Bible is rife with errors. But first, does Wishart actually believe that the Bible is literally true, that it contains no errors? Most certainly he does. Here are a few of his assertions: 'Science has not proven the Old Testament is wrong. Not even in one little paragraph.' [2]Since there have been numerous books detailing Biblical errors we obviously can't recount them all, but this doesn't matter, since only one, single, measly error needs to be demonstrated to completely demolish the argument of no errors. Remember that fundamentalists don't say that the Bible is 99.999% error free or mostly error free, but 100% error free. It must be completely error free because if even one error was found, you couldn't be absolutely certain there wasn't another, and another, and another. You wouldn't know which part you could trust and which parts you couldn't. Which parts were inspired by God and which merely invented by man? Which parts carried God's authority and which didn't? Which parts of the Bible are factual and which parts are mere fiction? And it's not just atheists and skeptics who see a problem if there is even one error in the Bible. Here's what John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, said: "If there be any mistake in the Bible, there may well be a thousand. If there be one falsehood in that book, it did not come from the God of truth." (Journal, Wed., July 24, 1776)Wishart has reached the same conclusion: 'The Old Testament is without error. Philosophically, to believe that it has error is to believe that we worship a God who cannot communicate accurately with humankind.' [5]If the Old Testament has errors, why should we believe the New Testament? Why indeed, since there are plenty of errors to be found. This would suggest that the Bible was either written by primitive desert nomads ignorant of science etc or a God who is a crap communicator. Although contradictions are the most prolific type of error in the Bible, let's first look at some of the factual errors. These are errors of science, history, geography etc. "The rabbit, though it chews the cud, does not have a split hoof; it is unclean for you." (LEV 11:6)In fact rabbits do not chew the cud, and do have a 'split hoof'. Rabbits may appear to chew their cud, but in fact they are chewing fecal pellets. To put it simply, they are eating their own shit. They need to do this because of their digestive system. Wishart may well argue that the original text probably said this, but later translators didn't understand about coprophagy (the eating of excrement) and changed it to chewing cud. Wishart has said: 'The OT, properly understood in the language of its time, is without error.' [6]These are weasel words. Regardless of what it may have originally said or how the Hebrews understood it in the language of their time, it's an indisputable fact that Bibles today claim, incorrectly, that rabbits chew their cud. The question is not whether this is an error — it is, but why did God let translators introduce this error into the Bible? After the first draft did he wipe his hands of it? Was he actually embarrassed about the eating shit part and decided that ignorance was bliss? And what sort of God would design animals that have to eat their own shit in the first place? "These are the birds you are to detest and not eat because they are detestable: the eagle, the vulture,... the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe and the bat." (LEV 11:13-19)Contrary to what God thought, bats are mammals, not birds. Of course, like the chewing cud bit, it's perfectly understandable how primitive man got it wrong, thinking that all flying things are birds. But if the Bible was inspired by God and not by man, why did God get it wrong? "The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed which…is the least of all seeds, but when it is grown is the greatest among herbs and becometh a tree." (MT 13:31-32)There are smaller seeds than the mustard seed, such as the orchid seed; and mustard plants don't grow into trees. "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. " (MT 6:26)If that's the case then my neighbour is God! She feeds them breadcrumbs every morning. In fact most birds in the wild work bloody hard at finding food. Hummingbirds must feed all day just to stay alive and birds such as penguins and albatrosses must cover enormous distances to find food. Many, many birds working their little beaks off fail to find enough food for themselves and their offspring, and die, and birds that sit around waiting for the heavenly Father to feed them are definitely dead. Contrary to what Jesus thought, there is no divine soup kitchen for birds in the wild. "Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor." (MT 4:8)No matter how high the mountain is, you can never view the earth's entire surface, never see 'all the kingdoms'. This sentence only makes sense if the writers of the Bible thought the world was flat. Oh that's right, they did! "He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it." (1KI 7:23)As we all learnt in school, the circumference of a circle can be calculated by multiplying its diameter by pi. This gives 31.4 cubits not 30, meaning that God thought pi equalled exactly 3 and not 3.1415926… Every school kid knows that you need to express pi to at least two decimal places to be useful. Exactly 3 is not accurate enough, even thought there have been legal attempts in some places in the US to change pi to exactly 3 to match the Bible. 'And he said to them, "I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power."' (MK 9:1)This is Jesus telling his disciples that he would return before all of them died. Some of them would witness the Second Coming. Yet they all died without even so much as a phone call from Jesus. If you're not convinced that the early Christians thought the Second Coming was imminent, here's another quote from Jesus: "Behold, I am coming soon!"… Then he told me, "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, because the time is near… "Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done… "I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches… He who testifies to these things says, "Yes, I am coming soon." (REV 22:7-20)Not only are these claims false, we're still waiting. If someone owned you money and promised that you would receive a cheque in the mail 'soon', and 2,000 years later your descendants were still waiting by the mailbox, wouldn't it be time to admit you've been conned?
"And the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind." (REV 6:13)Unlike the writers of the Bible — primitive desert nomads — we now know that this would be impossible. Stars are colossal compared to the earth, and not even one star could fit on the earth, let alone a third of all visible stars. A star couldn't even get close to the earth without destroying it first. "He shakes the earth from its place and makes its pillars tremble." (JOB 9:6)The earth is built on pillars. I guarantee you didn't learn that science fact at school. Or that stars sing together in some sort of choir. Maybe our radio telescopes aren't listening to the right frequencies? And remember that these are direct quotes from God. "Tremble before him, all the earth! The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved." (1CH 16:30)The earth is firmly established and can't be moved? But I though it rotated once a day, and orbited the sun, which in turn orbits the galactic centre, which in turn is moving? Not only can the earth be moved, it's moving very fast. "Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, 'This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt'?" (JOB 38:8-11)Doors and bars control the sea? Another well-established scientific fact I suppose. "Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, 'Here we are'?" (JOB 38:35)We've known for some time now that lightning is a natural electrical discharge, rather than a talkative bolt from God. "Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle? What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?" (JOB 38:22-24)Yet again, snow and hail are quite natural. How can the claim of storehouses for snow and hail, and supposedly lightning and wind, be anything other than errors? "What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings?" (JOB 38:19-20)God seems to believe that darkness is something that is emitted, given out like light, rather than being merely an absence of light. It also seems that both light and darkness have their own dwellings on God's housing estate. I wonder if they're neighbours? "Who endowed the heart with wisdom or gave understanding to the mind?" (JOB 38:36)Another primitive, and erroneous belief, that the heart is the source of wisdom. "And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light… God called the light "day," — the first day (GE 1:3-5)Light was created on day one, yet the sun, the actual source of our light, was not created until day four. Thus there can't have been any light until day four. If God created a source of light without the sun, what do we need the sun for? Also the moon is not a source of light. It appears to shine only because sunlight reflects off it, and then only some of the time. That's why you can't see it during a 'new moon' phase. So God actually made one great light and one great mirror. Note that God even made the vegetation, which requires sunlight to live, before he made the sun. His construction sequence wasn't all that well thought through. "Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness." (GE 1:26)Note that God clearly says 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness' and 'like one of us'. The use of us and our clearly implies that there is more than one god, thus the later claim that there is only one God is an error. If there is only one God, then these verses are in error. Either way an error exists. Of course some may reply that God was simply talking to angels or his mate Satan, not other gods, but there are many passages that support multiple gods. For example: 'God takes his stand at the Council of El, and surrounded by all the other gods, he delivers his judgements. "How much longer do you intend to continue with your injustices,… I ask you now: Are you not gods, are you not all the sons of El, the Most High?" (Psalms 82)It is quite clear that in the first books of the Old Testament there were many gods fighting for supremacy, that God was initially only the god for one tribe of people, the Hebrews, and no one else. He chose them to be his people and other gods chose other tribes. All the other peoples had their own gods, which the Hebrews considered just as real as theirs. Remember the encounter between Moses and the Egyptian Pharoah: "So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the LORD commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts." (EX 7:10-11)This is a straight playoff between the Hebrew god and the Egyptian gods, and clearly the Egyptian gods were just as powerful as the Hebrew god. Mind you, for someone that can create the universe, it seems like a pretty pathetic trick, one that all the gods seemingly knew how to perform. But if there is only one god who has created everyone, as Christians insist, then he is by default the God of everyone, not just the Hebrews, and he would have clearly set people straight on this fact. The fact that God chose or was allocated the Hebrews, clearly shows that he was competing with other gods for members. At the beginning of the Bible God is just a minor god, one among many, but by the end he is not only the most powerful, he claims to be the only god that has ever existed. He has tried to write his competitors out of history, so why leave in the references to other gods and the story of your climb up the corporate ladder? That's one major error if you ask me. "So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped,… The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day." (JOS 10:13)If this isn't an error, then why didn't every other group of people on the planet record it happening? No matter where you were on earth, you would notice these historic events, which had never happened before and have never happened since. From a scientific perspective, as with innumerable events recounted in the Bible, the problems with this are enormous. It simply couldn't happen. The fact is that history would say it never happened, and that science would say that it is impossible. Therefore it's a Biblical error, another that will be denied by Wishart. He'll insist that science hasn't proved the OT is wrong since no science experiments have been performed that prove the earth didn't suddenly stop spinning and go into reverse. This is probably quite true, in the same way that scientists haven't bothered doing experiments to prove that Greek gods didn't toss lightning bolts from Mt Olympus. There's plenty of reliable science that makes it unnecessary to test silly things like this. From an historical perspective, fundamentalists will claim that just because no one else mentioned these events, it doesn't mean they didn't happen. That's as silly as claiming that just because no one mentioned a hot dog stand operating at the base of Jesus' cross, doesn't mean there wasn't one. We can't write history based on what people don't tell us. Oh, and if the earth did suddenly stop spinning (at around 1670 kph at the equator) and go into reverse, the inertia alone would probably have killed everyone, not to mention that the deceleration forces involved would have destroyed the planet, leaving nothing to put in reverse. Since you're reading this, we can be sure it didn't happen. Many creatures also used to appear in the Bible that we now consider mythological. You won't find them in modern Bible translations simply because they have been edited out. For example Psalms 22:21 in the King James Bible mentions unicorns, but that's now been changed to 'horns of the wild oxen'. But the original biblical writers thought these creatures actually existed. Some examples are: Cockatrices - Jer. 8:17, Isa. 11:8. 59:5 (a serpent hatched from the egg of a cock who could kill with a glance)I know that fundamentalists will insist that earlier translations were a mistranslation and that the modern versions are correct. We now know that unicorns don't exist and therefore they assume that the original writers must have meant something else, something real, and something not mythical. But we don't correct other historical documents in this way, we simply acknowledge that this was the extent of their knowledge at that time. If Plato or Cleopatra wrote that they thought the world was flat, we would faithfully recount their opinions. But if a Biblical character suggests the world is flat, fundamentalists immediately say we must have misinterpreted him. If the Bible is continuously reinterpreted to match new knowledge, then all the silly errors evaporate away. "They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request." (JN 12:21)Oops. Bethsaida was in the province of Gaulontinis, not the province of Galilee. Even the village of Nazareth would seem to be an error, since archaeologists now tell us that it didn't even exist during the 1st century, the time Jesus supposedly lived [20]. Ancient historians and geographers don't mention it before the 4th century. It's not mentioned in the Old Testament or the Talmud which names 63 Galilean towns. Josephus wrote about 45 cities and villages in Galilee and stayed in a village one mile from modern-day Nazareth, but never mentioned it. The fact that Nazareth exists now means nothing. Paris exists now; it didn't then. And while we're at it, the likes of Capernaum and Bethany were also unknown outside the gospels before the end of the first century. Mark also appears to be ignorant of Palestinian geography: "Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee. (MK 7:31)The Sea of Galilee is to the east of Tyre whereas Sidon is to the north. Sidon simply isn't on the way to the Sea of Galilee; and no sane person in an age without motor vehicles would take such a silly route. It simply demonstrates that who ever wrote the gospel of Mark was unfamiliar with Palestine and made an error. Even the writers of the King James Bible realised this and changed it, but it has since been changed back in later translations. "When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery." (MK 10:10-12)Again, who ever wrote the gospel of Mark was unfamiliar with Palestine in the time of Jesus. Only men could obtain a divorce, thus it is inconceivable that Jesus would mention a woman divorcing her husband. This is one example of later writers putting words in Jesus' mouth in an attempt to have Jesus support their cultural beliefs. 'Jesus replied, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." (JN 12:23-24)Jesus believed that seeds weren't living things, that when they fall from a plant they die, and from this dead seed a new plant springs forth to produce more seeds in turn. Of course we now know that this ancient belief is false, that seeds are definitely living, and that dead ones produce nothing. But then I guess Jesus was a carpenter and not a botanist. 'And God said, "… I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth… I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. " (GE 9:12-15)Rainbows are a natural occurrence that can happen whenever you mix sunlight and water. Noah would have seen plenty of them prior to building the ark. They are not a post-it note that God put in the sky after the flood to remind him not to commit mass murder again. That's enough sampling of factual errors. Of all the errors in the Bible, the great majority are Biblical contradictions. This is where one verse says one thing and another verse elsewhere in the Bible contradicts the first verse. For example: "And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen." (I Kings 4:26)So, how many stalls did Solomon have? Was it four or forty? Maybe both verses are wrong or maybe one is correct, who knows, but it's quite obvious that they both can't be true statements. At the very least one must be an error. Some may now say that it's a pretty simple error, to mix up 4 and 40, especially if one of the authors wrote their piece years later. And who really cares exactly how many stalls he had, it was a lot, OK? I agree, it's an unimportant error in the scheme of things. But remember the claim of fundamentalists like Wishart is that there are no errors. None at all. Zilch. Zero. Nada. Nary a bean. They're not arguing that there are no major or important errors that change the theme of the Bible. They're arguing that there are no errors, not even silly, little, unimportant ones. Here are a few more examples of contradictory passages in the Bible. Now remember it doesn't matter whether you think they are important passages or not. It doesn't matter whether you think they can probably be explained away as a simple misunderstanding or a mistranslation. All we're interesting in is determining whether there are passages in the Bible that give contradictory messages. If they're contradictory, then at the very least one must be an error. It doesn't matter which one. We're not interested in why any errors may have occurred, but simply are there any errors. Are we punished for our parents' sins? "For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." (Exodus 20:5) (Repeated in Deuteronomy 5:9)Does God tempt people? "Let no man say… I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man." (James 1:13)Has anyone seen God? "No man hath seen God at any time." (John 1:18)When was Jesus crucified? "And it was the third hour, and they crucified him." (Mark 15:25)Did Michal have children? "Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death." (II Samuel 6:23)How many generations were there from David to Jesus? 28 generations, with mostly different names to Luke's version, including the fact that Solomon is the son of David. (Matt 1:6-16)These are just a small fraction of the contradictions that have been discovered in the Bible. For those that are interested, there are links to many, many more errors at the end of this essay. Christian fundamentalists believe that every one of these errors — contradictions and errors of fact — can be resolved with a little thought, well ok, a lot of thought. They call this creative thinking 'harmonisation'. Hundreds of problems have been harmonised in numerous books; one book evidently attempts to explain over 500 apparent conflicts. It should be noted that these solutions only convince other Christians, not skeptics. The process of harmonisation is revealing in itself, since it means that Christians admit that there are hundreds of passages in the Bible that appear to contradict other passages and/or science, history etc. Even Wishart admits this: 'As a Christian, I know that the Bible does not conflict with itself when correctly interpreted.' [16]He admits that the Bible, as read by ordinary Joe Christian, contains apparent conflicts that need to be 'correctly interpreted'. It makes you wonder why an all-powerful god couldn't write a book that his followers could understand, without the need for an interpreter. But I guess that's the problem with all holy books written by primitive man, you have to keep 'reinterpreting' them to match new knowledge. And of those conflicts that they can't resolve, they insist there is a solution, but that we will have to wait for future knowledge to reveal it. How convenient. Another method they use to hide these problems from modern Christians is to simply remove them from the Bible. Edit them out. Here for example are the passages about Solomon's horse stalls in 'The Holy Bible: New International Version' from the International Bible Society: "Solomon had four* thousand stalls for chariot horses, and twelve thousand horses." (1KI 4:26)Note that the Kings passage which should read 'forty' has been changed to 'four' to match the other passage. Modern Christians won't see a problem because it has been deviously edited out. The International Bible Society must feel a little guilty though, because in the small print of the notes they reveal that the original Hebrew word was actually 'forty'. Here's another example: "Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he became king." (2KI 8:26)The second passage should say 'forty-two'. Once again they admit in the small print that they have changed the passage to remove the contradiction, but don't explain why they feel justified in doing this. And of course most Christians wouldn't even notice many of the original contradictions since the conflicting passages are in different parts of the Bible. So the older Bibles, the King James Version for example, actually contain many more errors than modern translations because translators are progressively editing them out. Changing a word here and a phrase there to weed out obvious errors and to make a verse vague enough to be open to new interpretation. Vague verses are easier to harmonise with others. So I hope by now that I've convinced you that there are undeniably many errors in the Bible. You may not be convinced that all my examples are real errors, but remember, a fundamentalist insists that there is not one single error in the Bible. Thus fundamentalists must be able to explain every single 'apparent' error that has been identified by Biblical scholars and skeptics. It doesn't matter if you've convinced yourself that you can explain away hundreds of problems. If one error remains, the Bible is flawed. Wishart believes that the Bible is inerrant. Some people believe they have been abducted by aliens. Others believe their house is haunted. Some believe that the Tooth Fairy swaps teeth for money. None of these people have credible arguments.
Another ridiculous claim that Wishart makes (and many other Christians), is that 'atheism is a religion' [7]. Here's another similar example from Wishart: 'a philosopher named David Hume, whose writings established what we now know as the religion of secular humanism.' [8]Atheism, secularism, humanism. These words are all used interchangeably by Christians to imply one meaning: non-believers in God and Jesus Christ. They all identify the enemy. The heathens. They're used as insults and they love combining them for greater effect, like secular humanism, yet secular humanism is redundant. It's like referring to a dead corpse. It can't be a corpse if it's not already dead. Likewise humanism already implies secularism. Wishart's word games are just a childish ploy. But now they add another term to the mix — religion. Atheism, secularism and humanism are all religions. Anyone that can say this with a straight face is either very ignorant of what 'atheism' and 'religion' actually means, or is of the belief that it is perfectly acceptable to redefine words in the support Christianity. Maybe lying is OK if souls are saved? Religion in its everyday use means a belief in gods and the supernatural. Atheism on the other hand means no belief in gods or the supernatural. These two concepts contradict each other. People that don't believe in gods cannot honestly set up an organisation that, by definition, does. Think about it. If the statement 'atheism is a religion' was really true, this means that an atheist is a religious person. Could you honestly describe an atheist as religious? And if 'atheism is a religion' then why can't secular (or atheist) organisations get tax exemptions like churches do? Of course some people quote things such as 'He worked religiously at his job' to indicate a devotion to something. The word religion doesn't always mean that gods are involved. This is true, but in Wishart's article that discusses the Christian God, Jesus, Satan and the fact that atheists don't believe in these beings, it's being dishonest to then mention the word 'religion' and insist that it has nothing to do with God. If someone tells you they are very religious, not many people would assume that they are talking about their devotion to work. Likewise if someone says 'I don't believe in religion', not many people would expect them to continue with, 'therefore I don't believe in atheism, since atheism is a religion'. To say that 'atheism is a religion' just doesn't make sense. (For more on atheism as it relates to religion, see the essay on Agnostics.)
Many, including Wishart, even imply that science is a religion: 'your belief is a faith-based one even if you are an atheist scientist.' [1]Christians seem to think that since religion is firmly rooted in a belief — a belief in God, then any field of thought that involves a belief of some kind, such as atheism and science, must also be a religion. But merely holding a belief is not the definition of religion. It is not the belief, but what the belief is about, ie God, that defines religion. It is too simplistic to leap from belief to religion. For example, I have the belief that I am a male. That belief is not a religion. Yet by Wishart's logic it would be. Many, including Wishart, also confuse the word belief with the word faith. Christians claim both belief in God and faith in God. Belief and faith are seen as interchangeable. Wishart assumes this must be the case in all fields. Since scientists and atheists have beliefs, they must also have faith, and since faith is integral to religion, science and atheism must also be religions. This claim fails simply because science is not faith-based, and will be discussed fully in the next section. For now just take it as another bogus argument from Wishart. So clearly atheism and science aren't religions, and don't suffer from its failings. But what's the purpose of Wishart's subterfuge? Why do Christians even sully the word religion by trying to connect it to atheism and science? I believe it's because today society puts great trust in science. They respect its findings, whereas religion is looking more and more like a fairytale. Scientific claims, more often than not, are astonishingly accurate, and are backed by an extraordinary amount of evidence. However religion, specifically the Bible, is increasingly being shown to be false, and the evidence that supposedly supported it is rapidly disappearing. Many people consequently have great confidence in science and little confidence in religion. What Wishart attempts to do by claiming that science is a religion, is to suggest that science and religion are essentially the same, that they both have the same foundation of belief and faith. Their strengths and weaknesses are the same. If you have confidence in one, you must therefore have confidence in the other. Wishart implies that we can trust religion for the same reasons we can trust science. But if we distrust religion, for the same reasons we must distrust science. If one fails, they both fail. Science can not claim superiority over religion, because it is a religion. But science can most definitely claim superiority over religion, because it's clearly not a religion. And neither is atheism, secularism or humanism. This childish attempt to drag science down to the flawed level of religion fails miserably.
Another common ploy that Wishart uses again involves corrupting the meaning of a word. This time the word is faith. Here are two typical comments from Wishart: 'Pushed to its extremes, science relies on faith just as much as Christianity does, more so in fact.' [2]It's well accepted that Christian belief in their worldview, fundamentalist or not, is a matter of faith, as Wishart clearly states above. It's also well accepted that blind faith is a very shaky foundation to base a belief on, with everyone preferring their beliefs to be supported by evidence, reason and logic, rather than faith alone. Even Christians are furiously looking for reasons to reinforce their faith. What Wishart attempts to do is to convince us that by accepting that the scientific worldview is also a matter of faith, science is therefore also based on a very shaky foundation. Thus if we are suspicious of religion because we are expected to believe it on faith, Wishart insists that we should be equally suspicious of science, even more so for some reason, since it too is faith-based. But once again Wishart is fudging the truth. Both science and religion can, technically, be called faith-based, but only if you hide the fact that there are two types of faith. Let's call them everyday faith and religious faith. Dictionaries provide two definitions for faith as follows:
FaithThe first definition would be what I'd call everyday faith. Confident belief in the truth, value or trustworthiness of a person, an idea, or a thing. This confident belief could be faith that a scientific theory is correct, faith that your parents will help you when needed, faith that the justice system will treat people fairly. This is not blind faith unsupported by evidence or reason. On the contrary, there could be an enormous amount of evidence supporting your faith in a scientific theory. Likewise your faith in your parents. For many years they have consistently and without fail come to your assistance whenever you needed help. They have told you they will continue to do so. Based on this evidence you have good reason to have faith in their continued support. The same with your faith in the justice system. It is based on the evidence of its past performance. You can examine case after case, weighing up how they treated various citizens and conclude that they treat people fairly. These beliefs are not conclusive proof that your theory is correct, that your parents will always help you or that justice will always be fair, but you have very good reasons to believe that these beliefs are most likely true. So while you may say you have faith in these everyday things, this faith, this belief, is soundly based on evidence and reason. The second dictionary definition of faith is religious faith. This type of faith is what people are talking about when they say they have faith in God, faith in Jesus and faith in the Bible. Religious faith is just the opposite of everyday faith. Religious faith is most definitely not a belief that is supported by reason or evidence. Religious faith is the ability to still believe in something even when there is no good reason to believe it, and no evidence to support it. What's even more worrying is that religious faith is the ability to still believe in something even when, not only is there no evidence to support it, there is actually evidence and/or reasons that contradicts your belief.
Here's how two academics define faith in regard to religion: 'Faith is belief without, or in spite of, reason.'It's confusing that we have two different meanings of faith, and Christians, either deliberately or through ignorance, take advantage of this confusion. In reality though, one would be better to stop referring to everyday faith, and simply call it reason instead, since everyday faith is based on reason. Religious faith is devoid of reason. So Wishart's claim that both science and religion are faith-based is deceptive, and should be more accurately stated as: Science is reason-based and religion is faith-based.What we now have is science and reason verses religion and faith. Wishart's claim that science is faith-based is only true if he is honest and states that this faith is based on reason, whereas the faith used to believe in Christianity is religious faith, which abhors reason.
The fact is that Christians have always been at war with reason and the knowledge it leads to. Throughout its history Christians have been required to replace reason with blind faith, as the following quotes demonstrate. First some quotes from the Bible which encourage blind faith over reason and evidence: 'Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen' (Hebrews 11:1)Now some from other authors: Celsus, author of the earliest surviving attack on Christianity which dates from around 178 CE, criticised the new religion as a lure for dim-wits: 'Taking its root in the lower classes,' he complained, 'the religion continues to spread because of its vulgarity and the illiteracy of its adherents. It thrives in its purer form among the ignorant.'In the 5th century Emperor Constantine needed a religion to unite the Roman Empire. He chose Christianity because it had: "purged itself of all its troublesome intellectuals. It was already an authoritarian religion which encouraged the faithful to have blind faith in those holding positions of power".Martin Luther, leader of the Reformation in the 16th century, described reason as "the devil's bride" and "God's worst enemy". He wrote that: "There is on earth among all dangers no more dangerous thing than a richly endowed and adroit reason, especially if she enters into spiritual matters which concern the soul and God. For it is more possible to teach an ass to read than to blind such a reason and lead it right; for reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed."Other gems from Luther are: "Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God."Another obvious example that shows that God doesn't want man to use reason is in the first book of the Bible, Genesis. He forbids Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. He wants them to remain naked and ignorant. Not that there's anything wrong with naked. It's the ignorant bit that I have a big problem with. And it's not just Christians that discourage using reason in regard to God. Muslims also are instructed not to be too inquisitive about God: 'Reflect upon God's creation but not upon his nature or else you will perish'If you think Christians may have changed their ways since Martin Luther, think again. Reason is still the enemy and must be avoided. Look at this revealing statement from Wishart: 'It's easier to be a Christian if you accept the Bible and its claims at face value.' [2]In other words, don't start thinking about what the Bible claims, don't try and use reason to understand it, just accept it at face value. Wishart's thinking hasn't changed from Christians in the 16th century. His plea to just blindly accept the Bible reminds me of that lazy hypnotist on the TV comedy 'Little Britain': Look into my eyes, not around my eyes, look into my eyes. You will believe the Bible. You will not question the silly bits or the numerous contradictions. You will believe… believe… believe…So for Christians, faith is preferred over reason. Yet most everyone in their daily lives rely on reason, logic and evidence to conduct their affairs. Whether in their career, buying a used car or evaluating climate change, we use reason to make the right choices. We don't blindly accept the spiel from the used car salesman on faith. Not even the Christians. Yet when it comes to religion, Christians and the Bible tell us that we should ditch our old reliable friend reason and use faith instead. But why? Why don't Christians continue to rely on reason if it's such a powerful tool? Well they do in fact, every chance they can. Every time that Christians can utilise reason and scientific evidence to support the Bible they do so. Christians actively hunt through science books and papers looking for facts that they can misconstrue as evidence for the Bible and Creation. The fact is that no other avenue of inquiry, including religion, has the reliability and predictive power of science to describe the physical universe. Thus Christians grasp science with indecent haste when it appears to support their beliefs, and accuse it of being erroneous, close-minded and faith-based when it doesn't. Whenever science claims something that contradicts the Bible, Christians counter this by stating that we can't ultimately rely on scientific claims because they're faith-based. They're saying that science is inherently unreliable because it's faith-based. Of course we've already determined that it's not, but let's just assume it is for the moment. But remember that religion is most definitely faith-based. So if all faith-based beliefs are inherently unreliable then so is religion. Rather than build religion up to the reliable level of science, they have merely tried to drag science down to their level of unreliability. They have shot themselves in the foot. Like small children they are saying to scientists, "Of course religion is crap, but so are you. Yes I know religion has no firm foundation, but neither have you. So there! We're both the same." The fact is that Christians only resort to faith when reason fails them. Of course reason hasn't really failed them, they've merely elected to ignore it. They ignore reason when they encounter talking serpents or talking donkeys or men walking on water or burning bushes that don't burn or the claim that day and night existed before the sun was created or that stars fell to earth. Reason would say that these things never happened, that they are fantasies, therefore Christians say reason must be discarded and replaced with faith. A faith that says these silly things really did happen because the Bible says they did. And remember that Christian theologian and philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas believed that any discrepancy between science and the Bible was due to errors in science rather than errors in the Bible. So what have we discovered? It's that when people say they have faith in science or their parents, what they really mean is that they have good reasons to trust science or their parents. And that when people say they have faith in the Bible, what they really mean is that they have no good reason to believe it's true, but they'll continue to believe it anyway. We have discovered that to have faith in science and faith in Christianity is two completely different things. We can now see that Wishart's claim that 'Pushed to its extremes, science relies on faith just as much as Christianity does, more so in fact', is utter rubbish. Science doesn't rely on faith to diagnose bodies with MRI scanners or land robotic rovers on Mars in the way that Christians need faith to believe in talking donkeys. It never amazes me the way some people are prepared to twist language to falsely bolster their silly beliefs.
Along the same theme, let's look at this quote from Wishart: 'Believing in the truth of the Bible is no different than believing in any other kind of truth, even scientific truth. The pursuit of science, in fact, is supposed to be the pursuit of truth. What makes scientific truth more important than religious truth?' [6]What utter bullshit! Truth is truth. You don't get different kinds of truth. This silly idea that truth is not absolute but relative to different groups is know as Relativism. At its extreme someone could claim that while 2+2=4 may be true for us, it's not for them. For them 2+2=5 is true and they would insist that their truth is just as valid as our truth. Morons. You can certainly say that there may be different paths to the truth, but there is only one truth at your destination. You can't have religious truth and scientific truth. You can have religious claims and scientific claims, but there is only one truth. Science and religion can both make claims, but once the truth is determined, it is simply called the truth. Not religious truth or scientific truth, but simply the truth. Even Wishart acknowledges this as he goes on to say: 'But you and I are both making religious truth claims. We cannot both, however, be right. If I am right, then your own belief must be wrong, by a process of logic. And vice versa.' [6]So Wishart's question, 'What makes scientific truth more important than religious truth?' is bogus. It's based in relativism, even though he doesn't subscribe to it. Yet he is prepared to couch his question in these terms to delude his fellow Christians, to win the argument. The words truth and important are misleading. What he should ask is this, "What makes scientific claims more reliable than religious claims? And the answer would be that science can rigorously support its conclusions. Religion can not. Belief in scientific claims is based on the scientific method — evidence, reason and logic. Belief in religious claims is based on gullibility — swallowing the superstitious ramblings of ancient texts and actively ignoring scientific and historical evidence. Wishart's different attempts to make science and religion appear equal is disingenuous.
Atheist Wars vs Religious Wars Do you know how many people have been killed in atheist wars? Perhaps you're not familiar with all the deaths that atheists have caused? Let Wishart explain: 'More people have been killed in conflicts caused by secular atheists than in all religious wars combined. People go to war over control of resources, left verses right, over freedom verses totalitarianism etc.' [10]Why would a Christian want to highlight how many people atheists have killed? It's simple. It's to draw our attention away from how many people Christians have killed, because most people are well aware that an enormous number of people have suffered and died at the hand of God and God's followers throughout history. By comparison atheists look like saints, so Wishart wants to highlight the true murderous nature of atheists. But has he got a case? Let's look at a few of God's exploits first. His most famous act of genocide was the flood of Noah when he killed every living thing on the planet, except for the handful in the Ark. Not just every man, woman and innocent child, but every animal, fish and plant as well. Then he wiped out Sodom and Gomorrah, even the innocent babies, and then killed Lot's wife for daring to watch his murderous rampage. He killed every single innocent firstborn in Egypt, humans and livestock, over a tiff he was having with the Pharaoh. He slaughtered personally or ordered killed 12,000 people of Ai, 10,000 Moabites, 10,000 Perizzites and Cannanites, 120,000 Midianites, 50,070 at Bethshemesh, 70,000 people from Dan to Beersheba, 185,000 Assyrians, 24,000 Israelites on one occasion and 14,700 on another, not to mention the peoples and cities in which he killed 'many' or destroyed completely. And this is just a small sample of God's murderous interaction with mankind. The disgusting, barbaric nature of God as detailed in the Old Testament is beyond belief, and the Bible should be reclassified as 'horror', not religion. Then of course God stopped interacting with his playthings directly for some reason, but this didn't stop his followers from killing and torturing in God's name. Consider the many wars fought between Jews, Christians and Muslims. When they weren't fighting the other 'People of the Book', all descendants of Abraham, they were fighting amongst themselves in the name of religion, right up to today, such as Sunni Muslim against Shiite Muslim in Iraq and Catholic against Protestant in Northern Ireland. Religious wars must also include Hindus, Buddhists, Aztecs and innumerable other religions throughout history. And let's not forget the many Christian crusades and inquisitions, including the infamous Spanish Inquisition, religious massacres, pogroms, and the slaughter of heretics and witches. Many have even described the West's 'war on terror' as a war between Christianity and Islam. There's no denying that killing in the name of religion has an appalling record, yet now Wishart wants us to believe that atheists have killed far more people than all religions combined. Even if this were true, all that this would mean is that atheists have now surpassed the murder tally originally held by Christians and others. This is nothing that Christians should be proud of. But it's not true; it's blatantly false. It's all misleading crap. He mentions 'religious wars' and thereby implies that the other type must be 'atheist wars'. In all religious wars people died because of conflicting religious beliefs. No one has died in secular wars over a conflict regarding atheism. While there is an enormous number of religions to fight with, including your own, there is only one atheism. If atheists go to war with each other it is never over atheism. Wishart even acknowledges this with his statement, "People go to war over control of resources, left verses right, over freedom verses totalitarianism etc." No mention of going to war over atheism. Even wars that weren't fought for religious reasons, eg WWI and WWII, were nevertheless almost totally fought by and controlled by religious believers, not atheists. Even if you say that Russia's official stance was that of atheism, many (if not most) of its soldiers still believed in God. And in any case, the atheist Russians were on our side, fighting the Christian Germans and Christian Italians. Why were the atheists fighting with the Allies against Christians? Were we on the wrong side? And Wishart is wrong stating that Hitler was an atheist, he was a Catholic. Atheists do not persecute Jews, Christians do. Why would an atheist want to persecute Jews? Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: "I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord's work." In 1941 he informed General Gerhart Engel: "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." Soldiers of the vermacht wore belt buckles inscribed with: "Gott mit uns" (God is with us). In a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933, Adolf Hitler said the following, "We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out." Why would an atheist fight to stamp out the atheist movement? The Nazi persecution of the Jews only succeeded because Germany was a Christian nation. Ask anyone that fought in WWII or lived through it, and none will ever reply, 'Ah yes, WWII, the great war against atheism'. You'll hear, 'My grandfather died fighting the Nazis', but you'll never hear, 'My grandfather died fighting the atheists'. They fought for freedom, democracy, and even the flag, but never against atheism. But it doesn't matter if Pol Pot and Stalin were atheists, or even Hitler. None of the deaths caused by them were committed in the name of atheism. Atheists have never started 'Holy Wars', carried out inquisitions, burnt people at the stake or gassed them because of their religious beliefs. Atheists have never started churches, set out on murderous crusades or flown planes into skyscrapers. The reasons that Pol Pot or Stalin killed people had nothing to do with atheism — greed, power, glory, revenge or racial hatred perhaps, but not atheism. Christians know that other Christians have murdered people throughout history in the name of Christianity, therefore they reach the stupid and silly conclusion that atheists must therefore murder people in the name of atheism. Wishart and other Christians claim (wrongly) that Hitler was an atheist, therefore he killed millions because of his atheistic beliefs. If you replace the word 'atheist' with 'artist' you can see how silly this argument is: Hitler was an artist (which he was), therefore he killed millions because of his artistic beliefs. Strangely you don't hear Christians saying that 'artists' have killed more people than Christians. And let's be realistic here, the reason that these people could kill so many in a short period was that they had machine guns, bombs and gas chambers. Previous to that, God's children, even with the help of an all-powerful being, had to make do with inefficient swords and burning at the stake. But perhaps Wishart's argument is that atheists don't kill in the name of atheism, but kill because of the lack of God given morals? Atheists simply don't understand it's wrong to kill and have no fear of punishment from God. But what examples does Wishart provide of atheists killing vast numbers? Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin. I've already stated that I believe Hitler was much closer to Christian than atheist, and I doubt if Hitler killed many people personally, if any. Those that he ordered to do the killing were Christians, possibly 100% or very close to it. The same for Stalin, many of the Russians that actually did the killing for him would have been religious, regardless of the official stance. And as I've already said, the atheistic Russians were on our side. The Christian Germans and Italians were the enemy. Even if we accept, for argument's sake, that both Hitler and Stalin were atheists, and each personally killed around ten people each for example, that's only about 20 people killed by atheists. The millions killed in the war were killed by Christians, not their atheistic leader. Even though Wishart has deluded himself into believing that Christianity was just a front for Hitler, a tool he used to manipulate his countrymen, we must not forget that it was Christians that did the killing, regardless of Hitler's religious views. Why did these morally driven Christians, with their fear of God, kill their fellow man in the millions just because an 'atheist' told them to? Why didn't their Christian morality stop them? As for the political killings of Pol Pot, is Wishart implying that his lack of Christian morals and fear of the Christian God resulted in mass murder? This is a specious argument since Cambodia wasn't a Christian country before Pol Pot took power, so it already lacked Christian morals and the fear of the Christian God, yet its people didn't commit genocide. Wishart seems to believe that atheists are killers because of a lack of morals, as he states elsewhere that only Christians are truly moral: 'True morality is a gift from religion… a gift found only in Christianity.' [11]If this lack of Christian morals is what causes atheists to kill, then all non-Christians should be mass murderers, and remember that the great majority of the world's population are non-Christians, and always have been. Obviously non-Christians are not mass murderers, so this clearly proves that not being a Christian doesn't turn you into a killer. Thus Pol Pot's atrocity had nothing to do with his atheism. The fact is that atheists have killed next to no one compared to Christians. If Wishart were correct, it would be atheists killing abortion doctors and homosexuals, not Christian fundamentalists, and atheists would be flying planes into skyscrapers, not Islamists. If atheists were the real killers, then our prisons would be fill of atheists, not Christians. Christians can sleep soundly. Their record is perfectly safe. They still hold the record for the number of religious conflicts resulting in mass murder and the record for the total number killed. And they hold these records by an enormous margin. Rather than demonise atheists, if they want to find the real killers, they just need to read the Bible, a history book, or look in a mirror.
Since Wishart believes the Bible is literally true, he is of course forced to believe the story of the Flood of Noah, and he openly admits this: 'I'm more than happy to accept Noah's Flood as a reality.' [4]To support his belief Wishart states that cultures around the world have recorded stories of gods flooding the world and wiping out all life except that which survived on some kind of boat. Wishart looks at this similarity and asks: Why are the legends so similar? [4]He implies that they're similar because there was only one worldwide flood, one original story, and all the others are just corrupted copies of the original. This is quite possible since many of the cultures that had flood stories were in contact and would have heard of the flood myth. This is not to say there was an original flood, but merely an original flood story. However Wishart takes this similarity and proposes a faulty conclusion. 'To my way of thinking, ignoring all the similar Noah's flood stories from around the world… is virtually burying your head in the sand in denial.' [4]Note how Wishart implies that all these stories are corrupted retellings of the original Noah tale, e.g. 'Noah is remembered as Nu-u', and thus these characters — Manu, Fah-he, Nu-u etc — are not real flood survivors in their own right. These cultures are merely recounting the real flood of Noah, but generations of retelling in a new culture has corrupted a few of the minor details, like what Noah's name really was and what god was involved. But why couldn't it be the other way around? Instead of 'Noah is remembered as Nu-u', perhaps it should be 'Nu-u is remembered as Noah'. Note that Wishart states that the Sumerians and Babylonians told similar flood stories, but also note that he conveniently omits to inform the reader that the Sumerian and Babylonian flood stories existed well before the Biblical one. The Biblical story of Noah was not the first, not the original. So perhaps it should be that the 'Sumerian myth of Ziusudra is remembered as Utnapishtim by the Babylonians', which then changed to 'Utnapishtim is remembered as Noah by the Hebrews'. So if there was an ark and a world wide flood caused by a god, as Wishart insists, isn't it more likely that it was caused by a Sumerian god? This story was changed by the Babylonians and then the Hebrews merely retold the story again years later, corrupting the names in the same manner that he believes all the other cultures did? Anyone who compares the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh story with the Noah story immediately realises that it's almost impossible to believe that the Babylonians had a fictional worldwide flood story that turned out to be nearly identical to a real Biblical one that was to occur later in history. Even if the Babylonian and Sumerian floods were fiction and the Biblical one real, it's pretty obvious where Wishart's God got the idea from. Not very original for an all-powerful god! Can you accuse a god of plagiarism? So logically, if Wishart's argument has merit — story corruption by later cultures — then the only conclusion that can be reached is that if there was a worldwide flood, it was caused by a Sumerian god. Wishart goes on to confuse the destructive work of his God with stories from Greek mythology: 'Don't even get me started on the lost civilisation of Atlantis, which is another piece in the flood legend jigsaw.' [4]It just shows that being gullible opens you up to all manner of silly beliefs. How can stories from other mythical gods support the Bible, which doesn't even hint of Atlantis? Wishart then moves on to explaining away some of the apparent problems with the flood that skeptics have raised. 'Where did all the water come from? Firstly, if you're dealing with a supernatural God that created the universe in literally a split second… snapping his fingers again to flood the planet is a much smaller issue.' [4]Oh well, that explains it all. It was a miracle. I don't know why Wishart doesn't just stop there, but for some reason he feels the need to provide more detail of what actually happened when God snapped his fingers. I wonder if God also said Abracadabra? Why, when you belief as Wishart clearly does, that it was all done by magic, do you then go on to try and explain how it might have been achieved if God had to resort to natural means? Wishart tells us that the snapping of fingers caused it to rain for forty days and also opened the 'floodgates of the great springs of the deep oceans.' [4] Both events are closer to natural occurrences than supernatural. But if you can explain the flood by freak natural occurrences, then why do you need God? If it could occur without God, then perhaps it did? What does Wishart really believe? If his God is all-powerful, why can't he just snap his fingers and immediately flood the planet, with the water appearing from nowhere, a la Harry Potter? Wishart said that his God 'created the universe in literally a split second', so why did it take him forty days to flood a measly little planet that was already 75% flooded? And since he mentioned it, I thought it actually took God six days to create the universe, not 'literally a split second'? And where does it say God snapped his fingers to create the universe anyway? This is simply Wishart making stuff up after having watched too many episodes of 'Bewitched'. Wishart then goes on to explain why we shouldn't really be concerned where the water came from or how much was required: 'The Earth is actually eight thousand miles in diameter, so raising the oceans to a total depth of twelve miles is still very minor in comparison with the overall volume and capacity of the earth… Big deal.' [4]What a silly analogy. Wishart tries to dismiss the difficulties of flooding the earth by suggesting that compared to the volume of the earth, the volume of water required is so small it can almost be ignored. Imagine killing someone and then saying that compared to the number of people that you could have killed — 6 billion — killing just one is nothing. Unimportant on the scale of things. We wouldn't dismiss that murder as inconsequential, yet in the same way, by making a silly comparison, Wishart wants us to dismiss the volume and source of water required in the flood as inconsequential. One minute he's trying to find scientific explanations — rain and ocean springs — then he's claiming that for a supernatural being flooding a planet is child's play. For people that value blind faith so much, it amazes me how much they so desperately want to find scientific support for their myths. They furiously attempt to find rational and natural explanations for how their god could have performed his 'miracles', seemingly forgetting that their god is a supernatural being and thus his supernatural methods probably wouldn't make sense to us. But, as much as Wishart and his ilk love to quote science, as soon as science disagrees with their assertions they immediately retreat into the supernatural realm. They insist that their stories don't have to make scientific sense, since God can work outside the laws of nature. Why did God take this decision to flood the entire earth anyway? Why did God, angry only with humans, decide to 'destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it.' Why did he lash out at everything, killing all the innocent life? A supernatural god could surely kill just the immoral humans and not all life. Even we humans have methods at our disposal that we could use to wipe ourselves out without killing the rest of the planet, diseases that only affect humans for example. Yet Wishart's God, who supposedly created these human diseases in the first place, couldn't think of anything better than a worldwide flood, or if he could, he didn't have the power to implement it. Yet when he later goes on his rampage through Egypt, God was able to easily select and slaughter every firstborn, human and animal, without killing anything else in the whole country. Why didn't he use this mess-free, precision killing method to destroy those pesky humans in Noah's day? It can't be argued that perhaps he was unhappy with the carnage and mess created by the flood and was thus forced to develop a better method for killing humans when the Egypt problem arose. That argument could work for a human killer whose knowledge increases based on his experience, but God is all-knowing and unchanging. He knows everything, so he can't invent new ways of killing because that would mean he didn't know everything at the time of Noah's Flood. He can't learn new things, since if he knows everything there is nothing new to learn, and learning a new fact would mean that his knowledge had changed. But supposedly God can't change. There has been an enormous amount written over the centuries on the innumerable problems that arise when you claim your god is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, immutable etc. In simple terms: all-powerful, all-knowing, in all-places-at-once, all-good, unchangeable. I'm not going to go into them here, but it's important to realise that being all-powerful for example, rather than simply very-powerful, causes more problems than it solves. There have also been many books and articles written, mainly in the last few decades, detailing the ever-increasing number of problems with the physical details of the Flood myth. I'll provide some links in the References section at the end of this essay. Here I'll just look at some of the arguments that Wishart puts forward.
The barrier that the oceans posed to animals on their journey to and from the Ark is one problem raised by skeptics. Wishart's argument is that continental drift hadn't begun at the time of the flood, and that everything lived on the world's biggest landmass called Gondwanaland: 'As for the kiwi migrating to NZ… remember that NZ was at an earlier time in history part of Gondwanaland, which joined us to Africa and the Middle East and South America and India… all lands where Flood stories can be found. We don't truly know why the biggest landmass the world has ever known broke up and flew apart… scattering itself across half the globe. Significantly, we don't truly know "when" either.' [4]Thus there were no oceans that animals needed to cross. Kiwis, tuataras, platypuses, koalas, kangaroos, armadillos, pandas, toucans, polar bears and penguins supposedly all lived within walking distance of Noah's place. So did dinosaurs, pterosaurs and plesiosaurs (I wouldn't be surprised if some Christian fundamentalist schools actually label The Flintstones cartoon as a science documentary!) Strange that the only real animals that the Bible mentions, especially when detailing what the Hebrews can and can not eat, are those that can be found in the Middle East now or in recent history, that is, long after the flood. They may have dispersed after the flood to the ends of the earth, but before the flood, they were supposedly all in one place. So why no acknowledgement that the Hebrews were familiar with any animals other then modern Middle Eastern ones? Even if the majority of animals never visited the Middle East prior to the flood, why didn't Noah at least, express amazement at all these unusual animals turning up for the cruise? He spent a year with them but still not a mention of anything exotic. Wishart's argument has several flaws. For one, 'the biggest landmass the world has ever known' is Pangaea, not Gondwanaland. Pangaea actually split into Laurasia and Gondwanaland. While all the animals in Gondwanaland could theoretically be connected to the Middle East, those in Lurasia (North America, Europe, Asia) could not. So how did all those animals get to the ark and then disperse after the flood eg. armadillos, pandas and polar bears? He also states that the Flood stories all come from Gondwanaland 'countries', yet in this same article he relates flood stories from China and North America, which were part of Laurasia not Gondwanaland. No doubt he'll say he actually meant Pangaea, not Gondwanaland. A simple mistake. But the kiwi hadn't even evolved when Pangaea existed, and which broke up around 180 millions years ago. Like The Flinstones, is Wishart suggesting that the kiwi lived alongside the dinosaurs? Also, Wishart's claim that scientists don't have any idea when these landmasses broke up is false. It's great how Wishart is perfectly happy to adopt the scientific theory of continental drift and plate tectonics because he thinks it explains the kiwi's trip to and from the ark, but in the same breath he dismisses (and suppresses) the timeline that plate tectonics proposes, simply because it destroys his argument. Another problem with Wishart's argument is that he has no justification to put forward this 'supercontinent' theory. Where in the Bible does it say that all the land in Noah's time was one supercontinent and that it later split up to take the form that it was in during the time of Jesus? No where that I'm aware of. No mention that after the flood the new continents ripped apart and raced across the globe to their present positions. All these different cultures seemingly noticed or recorded accounts of the flood according to Wishart, but no one bothered to mention these enormous chasms appearing that separated the land, pushing their neighbours out to sea, never to be heard from again. I challenge Wishart to detail where the Bible mentions that there was one supercontinent that splits and forms the earth's present continental layout. You may think I'm being unfair to insist that if the Bible doesn't explicitly state a certain fact, then it can be discounted. I'd agree. But this stance is one that Wishart actually insists on, not me. Look at how Wishart responds to a letter writer to Investigate magazine: '… there is widespread ignorance about what the OT actually says. You, for example, suggest there's no evidence of a worldwide flood 4000 years ago. Great. Now tell me where in the OT it says there was a worldwide flood "4000 years" ago? This sort of strawman rubbish would be laughed out of most theological colleges… ' [5]Christians have implied from Biblical verses that the flood happened 4000 years ago, but Wishart insists that since the Bible doesn't state this explicitly, it's no more than a silly guess, one that would be laughed at today. According to Wishart's own rules, if the Bible doesn't explicitly state a certain fact, then you can't use it as a premise to your argument. And the Bible most definitely doesn't talk about Gondwanaland, continental drift or plate tectonics. Nor does it mention kiwis. According to the Bible God told Noah to make a wooden ark 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high, which is about 140 meters long, 23 meters wide and 13.5 meters high. While this seems like a large vessel, and certainly would be an enormous wooden vessel if it had ever been built, by comparison a large modern oil tanker is about 460 meters long and 70 meters wide. If we assume a similar height increase, this means that an oil tanker would dwarf the ark, having a volume around 30 times greater. As far as we know, Noah wasn't a boat builder or even a carpenter. Yet with primitive tools and no knowledge, he and his 3 sons managed to build the largest vessel the world had ever known, outfitted with facilities to house and care for two of every animal on the planet. And would it even stay afloat? No, experts today state that a wooden boat of these dimensions wouldn't be seaworthy [21]. Wishart states that there is only 2,447 species of land animals on the earth at present, thus only 5,000 would be needed on the ark [4]. He then compares the ark to a train hauling cattle wagons and states that it would have had a storage capacity equivalent of 40,000 cows or 200,000 sheep. Plenty of room. The Christian Answers website [19] also employs this railway stock wagon comparison yet their ark could only accommodate 135,000 sheep. Maybe they used fatter sheep? They state that Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study by John Woodmorappe suggests as few as 2,000 animals may have been on the ark, or maybe 35,000 according to The Genesis Flood by Morris and Whitcomb. The Christian Answers authors increase this to 50,000 animals, supposedly to keep the skeptics happy, and believe the ark has room to spare. So the Christian 'experts' believe that the number of animals on the ark was 2000 or 5000 or 35,000 or 50,000 or... Well at least they're all in agreement and presenting a united argument to science! The problem with these scenarios is that scientists have at present described around 1.4 million living species. They say the actual number of species could be anywhere between 2 and 100 million, but probably somewhere between 10 and 30 million. There are 3,000 or so land mammalian species, which alone exceeds Wishart's total number of land species. There are 350,000 different species of beetle! Even if we take just the known species, that would still mean 2.8 million individuals would need to be on the ark, not 5,000 as Wishart claims or even 50,000 as Christian Answers claims. Of course they are only letting land animals onto the ark, not every species, but as we'll shortly discover, everything needs to be saved from God's wrath.
Wishart claims that this ark would have had plenty of capacity to carry all the land animals, yet we now know that the enormous number of species in existence today is only a fraction of what has existed and has since gone extinct, dinosaurs for example. Scientists believe that around 98% of all species have gone extinct. To put it another way, of all the animals that God created to populate the Garden of Eden, only a measly 2% now remain. If we assume that this 2% is around 10 million species, this means that God originally created around 500 million species, most of which would have needed to be booked on to the ark. Half a billion different species compared to Wishart's 5,000. In reality the ark wouldn't even be remotely capable of housing two representatives of all present animals, let alone all animals that have ever existed. Plus they'd need room to exercise. And then you need enough food and water for a year. People often think the earth was flooded for 40 days, when in fact it merely rained for 40 days. The earth was actually flooded for a whole year, a total of 371 days according to the Christian Answers website. They were cooped up in the ark for over a year, with only one window. Remember that some animals, pandas for example, only eat specific types of bamboo, so Noah or his sons would have had to travel to 'China' to collect it. And it had to be fresh, so it would have to be growing on board, not stored in sacks. Carnivores eat flesh so Noah would have had to have taken on board lots of live animals solely for food, e.g. zebra and antelopes etc for the lions. They had no freezers to store meat. And just imagine how much a Tyrannosaurus Rex would eat in a year, times two. An enormous amount of space would be required to grow fresh food and store the 'prey animals' which would in turn require food and water until they were eaten. But this is only the start of your problems. We know that the Hebrews considered animals as living things, but not plants. It's also accepted by fundamentalists and creationists that invertebrates such as worms, insects, spiders etc were not taken onto the ark. Since the earth was flooded for a whole year, all plant life would have perished, and thus samples of all plants would need to be on the ark. How they got enough sunlight through the one window is anybody's guess. Also people assume water based life would survive the flood, but most live either in salt water or fresh water, and can't survive in the other. The flood would combine them both, resulting in water that would possibly kill all life. For some the water would now be too salty, for others not salty enough. All the soil being washed into the sea would make the ocean one muddy mess. Fish that required clear water to hunt in would die. Increasing the depth of the ocean by around 9 kilometres would prevent sunlight reaching the sea floor. All vegetation in oceans, lakes, streams etc would die. Fish that relied on this vegetation would die. Life that fed on these fish would die. The temperature of the water would change dramatically, cooled by the rain and possibly heated by the deep ocean springs. Ocean life that relied on a crucial temperature, e.g. corals, would perish. So fish, whales, crustaceans, coral etc would need to be on the ark as well. All micro-organisms (bacteria, protozoa, viruses etc) would need to go aboard too, and not just those on animal bodies, since micro-organisms in the soil and on vegetation etc are equally important for our survival. The aforementioned invertebrates would also definitely need berths. They may be small but there's a hell of a lot of them and they're vitally important. An ark that could store and support a pair of every species that has ever existed would be astronomically huge. The different artificial support systems that would be required — hot, cold, wet, humid, dry etc — would be mind-boggling. Enormous water filled, temperature controlled tanks for the blue whales, water tanks at extremely high-pressure for the deep ocean fishes, polar conditions for the penguins and polar bears, arid conditions for the desert animals and plants, swamps for the alligators and lagoons for the hippos. And how would species that only function in groups survive? Colonies of bees, wasps or ants and schools of fish? Some fish and insects for example must be in groups to mate. A solitary pair wouldn't mate and thus wouldn't produce offspring. Even if Noah managed to keep them alive while on board, as soon as they were released they would be doomed to extinction. Yet they're still here. How did they manage it? Remember that this wasn't just a short trip, it lasted for a year. Many species don't even live that long. While you can put a tiger or elephant in a small cage for a trip to another city, they would need much larger accommodation to survive for a whole year. This is one flaw with Wishart's 'train hauling cattle wagons' scenario. You couldn't just pack them in like sardines. The support crew required on the ark would have been huge. Different teams of people would be needed to feed, water and exercise the animals, tend the vegetation, clean the enclosures and remove the waste, maintain the ark superstructure and its enclosures and monitor the health of every species (remember they only had one sex of each species. One single death of any animal would mean extinction of that species). Even with our modern technology and knowledge we have enormous problems keeping things alive in captivity. Yet according to the Bible, at least 4000 years ago (and perhaps even 200 million years ago according to Wishart), eight primitive desert nomads managed to keep a sample of every species on the planet alive locked up in a wooden box adrift at sea for a whole year. The ark's crew, 4 men and 4 women, two of whom were around 600 years old, did this with no experience or knowledge of the animals they were caring for. And not one animal died, although Noah did kill and burn some of the animals as a sacrifice to God as soon as they landed. God found the aroma 'pleasing'. Luckily they had taken some spares of so-called 'clean' animals. Amazingly every animal managed to disperse to the ends of the earth and mate successfully without being eaten on the way, falling off a cliff or becoming entangled in the debris left behind after the flood. Not one caught a disease from all the rotting dead bodies lying around and I guess Noah's wife packed them all a few sandwiches to bide them over until all the plants grew back. Even more amazing, all the plants and fungi managed to find their way 'home' too. Of course critics may reply that God assisted Noah on the ark. But Wishart would probably say, 'Where in the Bible does it say God helped Noah look after the animals?' and I would also ask this. In fact the Bible states that rather than help Noah, God seems to have forgotten about him for the first 150 days of the flood: The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days. But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. (GE 7:24, 8:1)God disappears again until after the ark has grounded. So God played no part in helping Noah look after his animals. He didn't even help Noah build the bloody boat. Note also the phrase 'God remembered… all the wild animals and the livestock that were… in the ark'. This tends to suggest that the number of wild animals on the ark was similar to the number of livestock, yet we now know that livestock numbers would be inconsequential compared to wild animals. This reveals primitive notions of how many animals there really were in the world. But why was Noah even involved in this genocide in the first place? Well God saved Noah because he was supposedly the only moral person on the planet. OK, so why did he save Noah's wife and his sons? If Noah's righteousness rubbed off onto his wife and sons, why didn't God mention this, and why did the son's wives get tickets for the cruise? If they were also righteous then isn't it probable that their parents and brothers and sisters were also righteous, especially since Noah let them marry into his family? And perhaps some of Noah's righteousness rubbed off onto his neighbours? The argument that God needed Noah's sons and their wives, even though they weren't perfect, to repopulate the earth, doesn't wash. He was trying to rid the earth of 'ungodly people', so keeping some just starts the whole problem over again. Doesn't God learn? He screwed up with Adam and Eve, now he's doing it again. Why couldn't he just keep Noah, the only goody-two-shoes on the planet, kill the rest and whip another wife for Noah after the flood? Noah's wife was around 600 years old so I'm sure Noah would have appreciated a young, voluptuous, naked Eve look-a-like as reward for all his effort. The more you think about Noah's Flood, its purpose and the method an all-powerful and all-knowing God supposedly took to carry it out, the sillier and more childish it seems. Why even bother storing them away on an ark? He's God for Christ sake! Just click your fingers. Even Captain Kirk of Star Trek fame could have used the matter-transporter to move pairs of every animal off the planet, destroyed all remaining life with phaser blasts and then transported the saved animals back to the surface. No need of an ark. No messy flooding. No need for long treks by kiwis and penguins. No need to collect one years food supply. No need for Noah to rebuild his house, replant his vineyard, get drunk and lie around naked. No need for humanity to be tortured to death by drowning. By this account, Captain Kirk would be far more efficient than God and far more moral. Most people now realise that no all-powerful, super intelligent being would take this ridiculous course of action to destroy a minor species on an insignificant planet. Talk about gross overkill. But Wishart is stuck with this story and must rationalise it, whereas the rest of us can recognise it as just a silly fairytale that doesn't have to make sense. And doesn't make sense. No matter how much we debate whether Noah's Flood actually occurred, the following fact is not in dispute, by either skeptics or fundamentalists. Noah's Flood would have been the largest genocide ever committed, wiping out every single member of every living species on the planet, bar the handful on Noah's tub. No genocide attempted by humans can match it, in scope or intent. The loss of life probably rates it as the most disgusting, obscene, offensive, immoral act that God performed, demonstrating his utter contempt for not just human life, but for all life. And yet Christians tell their children this story and expect them to worship the world's most prolific killer. Noah's Flood is a fantasy, thankfully, but if it were true, there would be a warrant out for God's arrest, on charges of gross crimes against humanity.
Atheist's argue that child abuse is OK I'm not joking. According to Wishart some atheists actually argue that child abuse is acceptable. In an article entitled 'Child abuse and the nature of evil' [9], Wishart asks: 'Christ treated demons, or dark angels, as real creatures, albeit invisible to the eye… Is it possible that by abandoning belief in God, people can leave themselves open to genuine spiritual evil? … When the person… no longer believes in angels - where does their advice come from?' [9]I'm sure you can see where this is leading — atheists have abandoned their belief in God and consequently we have left ourselves open to Satan and evil. I recently had a friend ask me, "If you don't believe in God, aren't you afraid you might go to Hell?" Many Christians really struggle with this idea. They can't seem to grasp that when we abandon our belief in God and angels, this automatically causes us to abandon our belief in Satan and demons also. We reject the entire supernatural bit, not just certain characters from it. Let me put it another way. If you don't believe that Star Trek's Captain Kirk and the starship Enterprise are real, or that Kirk's United Federation of Planets actually exists, doesn't that leave you defenceless to attack by the Klingons? Hopefully you'll realise that the answer is no, since how could someone accept that Star Trek is just a fictional TV show and yet still be afraid of the Klingons, aliens from the same show? Yet if Christians can grasp that if Captain Kirk is fiction, then all the characters in the Star Trek universe are fiction also, why can't they apply the same logic to the way atheists view their story? If God is fiction, then all the characters in the Biblical universe are fiction also. It's so simple, but many Christians just can't get their head around it. As to where we get our advice from, if not from angels, try our partners, parents, family, friends, peers, doctors, lawyers, counsellors, philosophers and scientists etc. All of them very real. Note I didn't recommend politicians. Perhaps if Christians could try listening to some of these people and not imaginary voices in their heads, the world might be a safer place. Before I continue, I need to provide a little background info about someone called Graham Capill. He's a devout Christian. He was also a church minister and leader of the NZ political party 'Christian Heritage Party' for 13 years. He campaigned on Christian morals and family values and spoke out against 'child sex abuse, pornography, homosexuality, hypocrisy and social liberalism'. He even demanded the chief censor resign over the 'South Park' movie (one of the funniest and most intelligent TV shows of all time). Then in 2005 Capill was arrested and subsequently found guilty of indecently assaulting an eight-year old girl on four occasions, and a further three charges of indecent assault, one of rape, and one of unlawful sexual connection, all c |
All hail the ancient text.