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From: tim@unc.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Religious Test
Message-ID: <6423@unc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 16-Dec-83 12:29:42 EST
Article-I.D.: unc.6423
Posted: Fri Dec 16 12:29:42 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 17-Dec-83 07:44:57 EST
References: <673@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Organization: CS Dept., U. of N. Carolina at Chapel Hill
Lines: 48

David Rosen, a new contributor to net.religion, asks us the following
questions in a recent article:

>> "If I proved that Christ was the Son of God, would you consider Him?"    <<
>> "If I proved the Bible to be a reliable document, would you believe it?" <<

I am going to assume that what he meant by the first question is "... would
you accept his role as the greatest human being ever and as the savior of
mankind?"  (If this isn't what you meant, I apologize, but encourage you to
be less ambiguous in the future.)  The answer is no.  The reason is that
Yahweh is a barbaric, hideous monster if the Judaic portion of the Bible is
accurate, and that Christ is just as bad if the Christian portion is
accurate.  I discussed these points at length in two articles this summer;
if there is any interest, I will post them again.  The initial article was
entitled "Even If I DID Believe...", explaining my moral objections to
Judaism and Christianity.  John Rutis then responded with an article
claiming that my assertions about the Bible were false.  I responded to this
with a 700+ line article documenting all my contested assertions.  So far,
John has not seen fit to reply, despite the fact that he did get the
article.  If I repost, I will probably take my two articles, split them into
four parts, and redistribute them on this group.  (I'd do John's, but there
would be massive redundancy, since my response quotes all his accusations.)
If you would like to see this, send me mail.  If the subject interests you,
I suggest reading Mark Twain's "Letters From The Earth" and Bertrand
Russell's "Why I Am Not A Christian", both of which can be gotten at any
good bookstore or library.

The second question is silly, since the entire Bible cannot be proven true.
For example, how could you prove that Moses used this word instead of that
when he ordered the slaughter of the Midianite children?  Ancient tape
recordings?  However, if a subset can be proven true, I will certainly
believe in that subset.  That does not mean I will become a Jew or
Christian, as I've explained above.

David attempts to pre-categorize the reponses to his question, as follows:

	1) The (my) truth is like this, stupid, but you'll never accept it
	2) You are an idiot to believe that anything religious can be proven
	3) No one ever has (or ever will) prove it to me
	4) !#$%^&*    (no real statement, just likes to hear himself speak)
	5) Prove it
	6) Attaboy, Dave

I have a hard time finding much correlation between this response and any of
those answers, although I do have some sympathy for the second.
--
Tim Maroney, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
duke!unc!tim (USENET), tim.unc@csnet-relay (ARPA)