Chapter 7 and Comment About "Expelled"
I just read Chapter 7 of God VS The Bible.
I'm a bit surprised that Ben Stein suggested that Richard Dawkins wanted to take away today's Christians notion of a loving god. (See J. Armstrong's most recent vid "Debunking Christian Apologetics: Liberal Theists" at You Tube.)
Apparently, Stein must be a liberal Christian in the sense that he only believes part of the bible and not the hideous things god, or Yahweh, condoned. It sort of undermines my stereotype of creationists as biblical literalists. I assumed that all creationists accepted the bible as the word of god, not just some of it.
I didn't see "Expelled," but was Stein suggesting that the bible is not literally true? Was he suggesting that the acceptable approach to Christianity is to ignore the violence, rape, genocide, mysogony, and slavery of the bible and just accept the parts that depict yaweh as loving and just?
It makes no sense that such Christian faith can disregard the parts that don't make it into the Sunday sermon, but yet accept the biblical story of creation as fact.
The case against politicians and influential pastors like John Hagee wanting to change or amend the constitution into biblical law is a topic for another thread--and that alone can take up enough volume for a book!
Stein is actually a Jew and not a Christian. I don't know to what extent he regards the OT as inspired but his question to Dawkins was in response to Dawkins' assessment of Yahweh as a bloodthirsty tyrant.
It was something along the lines of "Sure but what about the modern view of the Judeo-Christian god?"
I'm not kidding. He made no effort to defend the biblical god from the sharp accusations from Dawkins, a response we normally expect from fundies. He instead went right to "that's not the modern view".
I agree it seemed a bizzare question from someone who says he's a believer. If he really is, then God shouldn't be subject to popular opinion. If, on the other hand, he has a more loving image of Yahweh, how does he reconcile that view with what's clearly written in the OT?
I wonder how many fundamentalist Christians watching the film (or Jewish fundies for that matter) will think about that. I find it perplexing that Stein would keep that portion of the Dawkins interview in the film. How can one reject the god depicted in the OT and still believe in the creation story? Someone should ask Stein, or any creationist, that question.
In regards to the recent video "Skeptic Stein Study: A Darwinist Conspiracy?," I have a thread at the Sam Harris message board about the belief that atheism is akin to autosities committed by the Nazi's. Sam Harris has often had to defend his position that nationalism can be like a religious movement.
http://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread/4412/
Stein believes that Darwinism lead to the Nazi movement. As you can see in the link (that includes a link to Hitler's speeches), Hitler mentions god and their command to follow his will. Hitler, and members of his so-called cabinet, often met with the heiarchy in the Catholic church.
http://nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm
Once again, I agree with Sam Harris.
I remember studying the rise and fall of the 3rd Reich in German IV class and being struck by how religious the entire Nazism movement was. The same could be said of Communism, with its scripture, prophecy, sacred figures and most of all, it's black-and-white worldview.
The common thread here is an arrogant certainty about things nobody can be certain about.