I have been following debates on religion, atheism, evolution and creation on News24 over the past few weeks and have been, how should I put it….. Severely discombobulated!
My frustration is with the lack of coherent argument on the one side and the repeated presentation of logical argument on the other. There is a plethora of Bible quotes, one attacking the bible, the other supporting it. The joke is, the bible supporters don’t realize that by ‘counter’ quoting they are highlighting the inconsistencies in the Bible. They seem to think they need to balance the scale, ‘good stuff ‘ balances ‘Bad stuff’.
Then there is the interpretation argument, when the texts say things like ‘you can have a sex slave, as bounty from killing her family in a war, but you can’t sell her. (Duet 21:10), it’s somehow metaphorical.
My favorite argument went something like this ‘The Holy text were not meant to be read by everyday folk, who can’t comprehend what is written, the church battled long and hard to keep it from them”. Very interesting! Just to clarify, this was from a supporter of the bible.
Then there is the relentless begging for proof of creation, which never comes. It seems that the argument for Creation is actually ‘If I can discredit evolution then it follows that everything was created”. I’ve said it before, disproving theory ‘X’ does not make theory ‘Y’ true, it is a fallacious argument. Interestingly, the requests for proof of evolution receive mountains of scientific, researched and thought out responses. These are summarily dismissed, as they are not 100% watertight.
I have sympathy for the believer’s viewpoint, there is an avalanche of scientific discovery, filling in the gaps, plugging the holes in the theory of evolution and the access to the internet is opening the minds of the masses, which is eroding the power of religious indoctrination.
Compare the age we live in to the period in history when religion ruled, aptly called ‘the dark ages’. Which period in history would you rather have lived through?
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