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Doug Giles Anti-Atheism Answered Point by Point

By Sally Morem

Let’s begin with an outtake from Mr. Giles’ rancid column on this topic as posted in
www.Townhall.com:

The atheist’s days of running circles around the Christian with their darling questions
are drawing to a close. Yes, the fat lady just wrenched herself off her humongous
backside, has cleared her throat and now is fixin’ to sing the finale on the atheist’s
ability to have fun with their specious little fairy tales at the Christians’ expense.

That is if the Christian will buy, devour, commit to memory and stand up and
challenge the pouty anti-God cabal with the atheist-slaying facts found in two new
books from Regnery namely, What’s So Great about Christianity and The Politically
Incorrect Guide to the Bible.

Authors Dinesh D’Souza and Robert Hutchinson skillfully answer, once again, the
atheist’s pet questions about the existence (or non-existence) of God and how
Christianity has allegedly made the world suck. Suck, for you thick atheists, is a slang
word which means to make or to be really, really crappy (kind of like how our culture
becomes anytime you guys mess with it).

These books will be especially beneficial for high school and college students to draw
upon when their secular anti-God fuming delirious instructors start railing against
God and Christianity.

The childish absurdities of Mr. Giles’ position are made abundantly clear in the
above outtake. We’ll make it even more clear by responding point by point below.

For instance:

Doug Giles states: “When the prissy anti-Christs tell you the Bible stands in the way of
science, inform them that the greatest scientific geniuses in history were devout
Christians—and scientists from Newton to Einstein insisted that biblical religion
provided the key ideas from which experimental science could develop.”

Sally Morem responds: As a philosophical agnostic with a reasonable amount of


knowledge of the history of science, I will readily admit that scientists in the early
Enlightenment were all devout Christians. This is because Europe as a whole was
devoutly Christian in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Would Doug Giles care to expound on the curious fact that science arose ONLY in
Western Europe ONLY during the 17th century??? And NOT during any other
point during the existence of Christianity? What were those earlier Christians,
chopped liver?

However, even if you then argue that this means Christianity was the ancestor of
modern science (I’ll admit only to the fact that Christianity was ONE of the
ancestors of science) this does NOT mean that science has REMAINED Christian.

As in evolutionary biological speciation, Christianity has speciated, producing


numerously daughter species--including science--that are no longer Christian.
Science has become wholly non-religious in nature. This does not mean there are no
longer any religious scientists. It just means what they do is non-religious.

Giles: “When the pissy God haters tell you the Bible condones slavery, you can remind
them that slavery was abolished only when devout Christians, inspired by the Bible,
launched a campaign in the early 1800s to abolish the slave trade.”

Morem: The Bible condones slavery because its writers condoned slavery. Actually,
it’s worse than that—none of the writers of the Bible could imagine a society
without slavery.

By the time devout Christians of the early 1800s worked to abolish slavery, the West
was undergoing a massive technological revolution, better known as the Industrial
Revolution. Those Christians could readily imagine a society without slavery. It
was emerging before their very eyes.

We were in the process of replacing human slaves with machines. Unknowingly for
the most part, in fits and starts, that’s exactly what our 19th century forebears did,
with results known to anyone with a modicum of historical knowledge.

Giles: “When the screechin’ teachers tell you the Bible has been proven false by
archaeology, hark back and show them that each year a new archaeological discovery
substantiates the existence of people, places and events we once knew solely from
biblical sources, including the discovery of the Moabite stone in 1868, which mentions
numerous places in the Bible, and the discovery of an inscription in 1961 that proves
the existence of the biblical figure Pontius Pilate, just to name a few.”

Morem: Archaeology also substantiates the existence of thousands of peoples whose


existence was never acknowledged by the Bible and can’t be shoehorned into the
Middle Eastern toy universe depicted by the Bible.

Giles: “When they get sweaty and tell you that the Bible breeds intolerance, refresh
their memory with the fact that only those societies influenced by biblical teachings (in
North and South America, Europe, and Australia) today guarantee freedom of speech
and religion. Period.”
Morem: All of which were profoundly affected by the American Revolution and the
resulting nation, the United States of America. Numerous Christian nations were
not so affected—they either existed before 1776, or America hasn’t had much effect
on them yet for various reasons. ALL of those nations were and are profoundly
INTOLERANT.

I infer from these facts that Christianity is NOT the catalyst for tolerance that you
claim it is.

Giles: “When one of them queues up and quips that the Bible opposes freedom, smack
‘em with the fact that the Bible’s insistence that no one is above the law and all must
answer to divine justice led to theories of universal human rights and…uh…limited
government.”

Morem: If so, there was a very looooong lag time between purported cause and
observed effect. I suggest that the emergence of political freedom was the effect of a
large number of cultural evolutionary trends, ramped up sharply by the American
Revolution.

And finally, Gile: “When they tell you that Christianity and the Bible justify war and
genocide, unsympathetically remind them that societies which rejected biblical
morality in favor of a more “rational” and “scientific” approach to politics murdered
millions upon millions more than the Crusades or the Inquisition ever did. Hello.
“Atheist regimes have caused the greatest mass murders in history,” says D’Souza.
Inside D’Souza’s book you’ll find little gems like, “The Crusades, the Inquisition, the
Galileo affair, and witch hunts together make up less than 1% of the murders that have
occurred during modern atheist regimes like Stalin, Hitler, and Mao.”

The Bible does include depictions of God as a tribal war chief, ordering his people to
battle. When victorious, he then ordered his people to massacre their captives. Not
nice at all. This philosophical agnostic recognizes that the ancient Hebrews
committed their atrocities all on their lonesome. They were desert warriors with all
the nastiness and cruelty that attribution infers. No need for a god to egg them on.
But religious Jews and Christians BELIEVE in the depictions of God offered by the
writers of the Bible. Probably because they don’t know how seriously nasty some of
those depictions really are.

Test your moral sentiments and practical knowledge by answering the following
questions: Who would you rather surrender to, the ancient Hebrews or the U.S.
Army? Why?

Atheist REGIMES: That phrase explains the origins of the horrors you describe.
Communist societies were NOT secular societies. They were MANDATED atheist
societies. As in “You will be severely punished if you practice religion.” Do you
understand the difference between America, a free society with a secular
government and a (mostly) religious people, and the Soviet Union, an enslaved
society with MANDATED atheism??? If not, you do not deserve your slot as a
columnist at Townhall.com.

Your column has no chance at shutting up atheists. Nor (I wager) will the two books
you reference. This philosophical agnostic will certainly not shut up. This
philosophical agnostic is not impressed by any of your arguments.

Commentary from a post in the resulting discussion of Giles’ column: “But how
should religion be eliminated? Our atheist educators have a short answer: through the
power of science. “I personally feel that the teaching of modern science is corrosive of
religious belief, and I’m all for that,” says physicist Steven Weinberg. If scientists can
destroy the influence of religion on young people, “then I think it may be the most
important contribution that we can make.”

Morem: The study of modern science in the lab, the classroom, and the field IS
corrosive to religious belief. Why? Is it a form of indoctrination? No. Because it
tells a much more accurate and verifiable story on origins, morality, and apparent
design in the universe.

Before the emergence of modern science in the 17th and 18th centuries, there was
NO verifiable alternative to the various religious mythos extent in the world. None.
Those who really, really wanted to know were stuck. They are no longer stuck.

Another comment: "Philosopher Richard Rorty argued that secular professors in the
universities ought “to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted,
homophobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our
own.”

A much better way of handling this situation would be to require all seniors in high
school to take Heinlein's "Moral Philosophy" class before graduating (read
"Starship Troopers"). During the class, the students would discuss and debate the
origins of morality and moral systems around the world. They would then construct
moral systems and arguments in favor and against them. In other words, they'd
have to think all of these things through—religious or secular.

The scientists quoted sound like they wouldn't trust college kids to think things
through. They sound much like the religious fundamentalists they'd replace.

If my system was set in place, the ongoing cultural evolutionary battles of ideas
would be placed front and center in school with total transparency. Very little
chance for indoctrination...in any way. Very different from today’s Leftist tilt in
academe.
To summarize: The ignorance of history displayed by Doug Giles and other
Christian apologists is inexcusable, and yet to be expected. In Giles’ case, ignorance
is the only way he can scrounge up to attempt to deal with secularists and a
secularizing society.

Sorry, Mr. Giles. It won’t work.

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