Skip to main content

Letter to an evangelical

By Victor Webster, (retired surgeon), Sydney --

This is a genuine letter to an evangelical which, against all expectations, made him stop and re-consider:

My apologies for describing your writings as "gibberish".

Science does not purport to have the answers to everything. There are many things we just do not know, and many things humans will never know the answers to. What you are asking is the age-old question - "why is there something rather than nothing?" Scientists don't know the answer to that. Like all mammals, our brain power has its limits. For example, you could try to teach, say, a dog the principles of calculus for 5 years non-stop, at the end of which he would not understand any of it. Similarly, understanding why there is something and not nothing - that is the real question -or why the universe exists at all - may well be simply incomprehensible to the human brain - let's hope not.

To then say that some god or other must have done it is nonsense. The Vikings didn't know what caused thunder and lightning, so they came to the conclusion that Thor the god of thunder was throwing down lightning bolts. That was not an unreasonable theory in those days, as people had no other way to explain the nature of things. We still don't know it all, but science has uncovered a huge amount of knowledge, and it is now completely unreasonable to hold such views.

Evangelical preachers are not in a position to educate their flocks in such matters. They almost all have no scientific knowledge or training. As an ex-evangelical once said: at the heart of every evangelical preacher is a used car salesman.

We don't know how the first microbes came into existence, although there are several theories. But there is now no doubt at all that all forms of life gradually evolved over massive time scales from extremely simple beginnings. I believe this as I have been formally educated in and have a major interest in biology, and let me tell you that evolutionary biology is not a "theory" any more than it is just a "theory" that the earth revolves around the sun. The evidence for it is overwhelming, even before the discovery of DNA and the mapping out of entire genomes, which has confirmed Darwin's theory in spades. In Darwin's day (his earth-shattering book was published in 1858), it WAS just a theory, although a very strongly based one. The evidence now is irrefutable. I recommend that you consider reading "The Greatest Show on Earth - The Evidence for Evolution" by Richard Dawkins, a book written for intelligent non-scientists which I have no doubt you are. By the way, there is no "missing link" in the fossil record, as there was in Darwin's day. But even if there were no fossils at all, the DNA evidence for evolution, which completely validates Darwin's theory and then some, is staggering.

In Darwin's day, it (evolution) WAS just a theory, although a very strongly based one. The evidence now is irrefutable.Several early scientists were executed by the church for claiming that the earth revolved around the sun. Galileo missed out by the skin of his teeth. Giordano Bruno didn't - he was brutally tortured for several days, then dragged out and burned alive as recently as the year 1600.

I know how hard it is to chuck out a religion that one has been taught as absolute truth since infancy. I was brought up a devout catholic - altar-boy, confirmed and all the rest of it. It can be very psychologically disturbing to say the least. But having done it as a young man of 22 (I am now pushing 60), what I previously thought was a source of comfort and solace (esp. the thought that one doesn't REALLY die), was actually a source of much anxiety, even terror, at the thought of the possibility of an eternity of unspeakable torture in hell, or even just a few thousand years of it in 'purgatory". I mean, anyone can make a mistake e.g. break one of the church's "rules" and then get hit by a bus.

What actually happened when I finally had the guts to admit that it's a load of bullshit was like being released from a dungeon into the fresh air and sunlight! OK, so when we die that's the end for us, but is that really so bad? After all, as the great American writer Mark Twain said (I assume you are American), "before I was born I'd been dead for billions of years and it didn't hurt a bit!"

Let me finish off with a bit of light entertainment from South Park, which is just a cartoon version of an actual conversation between Richard Dawkins and an audience member.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

Why I left the Canadian Reformed Church

By Chuck Eelhart ~ I was born into a believing family. The denomination is called Canadian Reformed Church . It is a Dutch Calvinistic Christian Church. My parents were Dutch immigrants to Canada in 1951. They had come from two slightly differing factions of the same Reformed faith in the Netherlands . Arriving unmarried in Canada they joined the slightly more conservative of the factions. It was a small group at first. Being far from Holland and strangers in a new country these young families found a strong bonding point in their church. Deutsch: Heidelberger Katechismus, Druck 1563 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I was born in 1955 the third of eventually 9 children. We lived in a small southern Ontario farming community of Fergus. Being young conservative and industrious the community of immigrants prospered. While they did mix and work in the community almost all of the social bonding was within the church group. Being of the first generation born here we had a foot in two

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not