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Randy
SFN Regular
USA
1990 Posts |
 Posted - 03/07/2009 : 06:40:33
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Head's up on a great NPR Fresh Air interview. Terry Gross interviews Bart Ehrman who wrote the recent book, "Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and why we don't know about them)".
The interview, from last Thursday, is about 30 minutes in length. Be sure to listen to his eloquent reply on how it's like for him now being agnostic after years of being a bible literalist.
I missed this broadcast, but fortunately, someone posted this link on the Austin Atheist Community message board. Send this puppy around to all your xtian friends; ask for their opinions.
Would like to see this guy really get out there in more national lime-light. Maybe on Oprah, and her book of the month club (fat chance, huh!)
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"We are all connected; to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, to the rest of the universe atomically."
"So you're made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?"
-Neil DeGrasse Tyson |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2009 : 10:04:07 [Permalink]
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| I will most definitively listen to that, thanks for the link. |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
 Posted - 03/07/2009 : 13:26:39 [Permalink]
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Yes, that's an excellent interview, like this other one by Ehrman on the "Problem of Evil."
There seem to be two main paths from religiosity to freethinking: The erosion of faith in the face of increasing scientific knowledge, as happened to Charles Darwin, and the realization that scriptures and gospels are themselves full of errors, and that they were designed with divergent purposes in mind. The latter realization began the transformation of Bart Ehrman.
Ehrman's was a slow, decades-long evolution from fundamentalism, to liberal theologian, and finally to agnostic. The last step of his journey came from his contemplation of the Problem of Evil" (Wiki).
The Problem of Evil could be described as the built-in god-killer flaw of the Abrahamic faiths. No apologist has successfully tackled this problem, though many have tried. The worst of them look like fools, while the best simply try to obscure their defenses in mystical complexity.
There are many chinks in the armor of these religions, but the Problem of Evil is a huge hole in the breastplate over the heart, with concentric red circles painted around it.
I suspect that such apostasy as Ehrman's may be the rarer form, but that's just a guess. Either way, his arguments are useful to bear in mind when we confront fundamentalists.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 03/07/2009 14:16:19 |
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Zebra
Skeptic Friend
USA
354 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2009 : 14:04:31 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by HalfMooner
Yes, that's an excellent interview, like this other one by Ehrman on the "Problem of Evil."
There seem to be two main paths from religiosity to freethinking: The erosion of faith in the face of increasing scientific knowledge, as happened to Charles Darwin, and the realization that scriptures and gospels are themselves full of errors, and that they were designed with divergent purposes in mind. The latter realization began the transformation of Bart Ehrman.
...
The Problem of Evil could be described as the built-in god-killer flaw of the Abrahamic faiths. No apologist has successfully tackled this problem, though many have tried. The worst of them look like fools, while the best simply try to obscure their defenses in mystical complexity.
There are many chinks in the armor of these religions, but the Problem of Evil is a huge hole in the breastplate over the heart, with concentric red circles painted around it.
...
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Ehrman's book The Problem of Evil is a good read.
HalfMooner, you alluded to a third path away from religion: personally experiencing a bad event & realizing the Problem of Evil is inconsistent with everything you'd assumed was true about god. Though some people may just go from loving god to resenting god, for working in "mysterious ways", without ever moving on to realizing god is imaginary.
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I think, you know, freedom means freedom for everyone* -Dick Cheney
*some restrictions may apply |
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Zebra
Skeptic Friend
USA
354 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2009 : 14:09:42 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by HalfMooner
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Ehrman's was a slow, decades-long evolution from fundamentalism, to liberal theologian, and finally to agnostic. The last step of his journey came from his contemplation of the problem of evil" (Wiki).
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Hmm, that link isn't working right now.
Here's the "wikiversity" page on The Problem of Evil, and here's the Wikipedia page on same topic. (I'd never heard of "wikiversity" before finding this link - can you get a Wikidegree at W.U.? Maybe a wiki-B.S. or wiki-Ph.D.? Uh oh, that means a conservapedia-Ph.D. can't be far behind...  |
I think, you know, freedom means freedom for everyone* -Dick Cheney
*some restrictions may apply |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2009 : 14:18:00 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Zebra
Hmm, that link isn't working right now. |
Sorry! Fixed that now. And thanks for the new link.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 03/07/2009 14:39:26 |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2009 : 14:42:10 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Zebra
HalfMooner, you alluded to a third path away from religion: personally experiencing a bad event & realizing the Problem of Evil is inconsistent with everything you'd assumed was true about god. Though some people may just go from loving god to resenting god, for working in "mysterious ways", without ever moving on to realizing god is imaginary. |
And we should be ready to point out that sloppy, "mysterious" step they took.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Jesus Interrupted: Revealing Hidden Contradictions
