"Religion Causes War and Atrocities": Response to 'Religulous," Part 3

Bill Maher of the new movie, Religulous, has pointed to religion as a source of wars and atrocities. I believe he is partially correct. Certain religions have been a source of wars and atrocities. The Jihad (holy war) carried out by Muslims is a great example. The Qur’an (Koran) encourages the slaying of one’s enemies -- anyone who does not follow Islam.

Jesus Christ, however, taught to love one’s enemies, to do good to even those who mistreat you, to offer the other cheek to someone who slaps you, and to bless those who curse you. And Jesus commanded that we should treat others the way we ourselves would want to be treated.

No one, therefore, who has read the Bible or observed the humanitarian efforts carried out by Christians could ever say of Christianity that it has done more harm than good. When you look at the deeds of Christians like Mother Teresa and organizations like Samaritan’s Purse, World Vision, and Feed the Children, to name just a few, you begin to get an idea of the compassion for mankind that faith in Jesus has inspired. It would be difficult to count the number of hospitals, orphanages, and schools that have been built with funding by Christian individuals and organizations, not to mention the impoverished that have been fed and clothed, the diseased who have been cared for, addicts who have been ministered to, and the lonely and hurting who have been taken in and nurtured. Society would be much different in a way that you and I would not like if it were not for the influence of the Church of Jesus Christ.

Yet many atrocities have been committed by those who have abandoned true Biblical Christianity and practiced a perverted form of it by those still claiming to be acting for God. The Bible says of such people that they will get their just rewards in eternity. The early Roman Catholic Church, for example, morphed into an unbiblical monstrosity of historic proportions, which sparked the first Christian Reformation led by Martin Luther and others.

In more recent times, people like the infamous Jim Jones, and later David Koresh, who claimed to be Jesus Christ Himself, did much damage with their insanities and perversions of Biblical teaching. However, what these people and organizations practiced was not something you will ever find encouraged in the Bible, but were heresies inspired only by their own lust for power and control over people and societies.

Similarly, people practicing true Biblical Christianity are grieved by the conflicts in Ireland between the people calling themselves Catholics and Protestants. Christianity is not militant. It is peace-loving.

The Bible says that the fruits of a life truly devoted to Christ will result in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (see Galatians 5:22-23). True Biblical Christianity is a faith that inspires compassion, morality, peace-loving, equality, and justice for all. In fact, it was a black Christian man, a preacher no less, who led perhaps the most historic movement of equality the modern world has ever seen. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was inspired by his faith, quoted from the Bible often in his memorable speeches, and ultimately paid the ultimate price for pioneering the kind of equality He saw demonstrated in the pages of his own Bible.

More than a hundred years before Dr. King was Abraham Lincoln, who was also an outspoken and devoted Christian. It was Lincoln’s own hatred for slavery that led to emancipation for the oppressed negroes of his time, and it was his Biblical convictions that inspired his policies. If you doubt Lincoln's commitment to Biblical principles influencing his policies, you may be suprised to learn that Lincoln once wrote, “It is the duty of nations as well as men to own their dependence on the overriding power of God… and to recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proved by all history, that those nations only are blest whose God is the Lord.”

Shortly before Lincoln was William Wilberforce, a Christian member of British Parliament whose tireless efforts have been credited in almost single-handedly bringing about a ban of slave trading throughout the British Empire.

The argument by Maher that religion is a source of wars and atrocities also seems to assume that no wars have been fought and no atrocities have ever been committed by those who don’t claim any Christian convictions, which of course is the farthest thing from the truth. All I need to do to prove that is mention the names of a few folks whose stories you might be familiar with: Charles Manson, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, etc. These are people whose hatred for certain groups of humanity led them to commit the most egregious acts in human history. In fact, two of these notorious and sinister figures in particular, Hitler and Stalin, were humanists and whose racism was fueled by their devotion to evolutionary ideas. Hitler’s dream of a perfect race was based in part on his understanding of evolutionary thought, and he reasoned that the German race would have the unhindered opportunity to evolve to a higher state than was ever possible before given the right circumstances where races and people groups that he considered lower forms of humanity (Jews, in particular) were exterminated from the human gene pool. Hitler thought he was doing mankind a favor, and his madness was fueled by ideals that differ starkly from what the Bible teaches.

To say that religion is the source of wars and atrocities is a sweeping generalization that cannot be fairly applied to Biblical Christianity.

What about the Crusades then? Okay, let’s talk about the Crusades.

Pop culture has led us to believe that the Crusades were carried out by ruthless Christians who were carrying out an expansion conquest of Europe. But history tells a very different story. The Christian Crusaders were actually being terrorized in many cases by Muslims who had been persecuting them for years. Under the duress of persecution, the Christians were themselves victims of the expansion conquest being carried out by Muslims through Jihad, or so-called holy war. Thus, the Christians decided to fight back or face possible extermination. The Crusades were actually the only way the early European Christians could save their own lives, but that version of history has been conveniently re-shaped to suite the modern humanist worldview, just as the founding of our country by Christian men and women whose intent was that America be solely a Christian nation has been revised as well.

If somehow it could someday be proven beyond any doubt that there is no God and that the Bible is a book of myths and fairytales, I don’t think it would be a good idea to let the Christians know that, because so much good for humanity is being carried out by Christians who believe that when they do good to their fellow man, they are following the example of Jesus.

From time to time I watch Extreme Home Makeover, and one year they went to all 50 states to find selfless families who had let their homes and finances be decimated as they helped others before themselves. It was astonishing to find that almost all of them were Christians.

So my advice to Maher and to all who share his sentiments is to leave the supposedly delusional Christians alone. It would be a disservice to humanity to discourage us. Since there aren't any atheist hospitals, orphanages, or humanitarian groups, leave the Christians and Jews alone and let them take care of the world. We are better off for it.

"Christians are Intellectual Weaklings": Response to 'Religulous' part 2

The new movie, Religulous, dramatizes what its creator, Bill Maher, has been saying for years, that religious people are intellectually underdeveloped. In many respects it is understandable how Maher comes to this conclusion, because many people who consider themselves spiritual or religious, including New Agers, do not really know why they believe what they believe, except that it just feels right to them. However, that is not true of Christians who have truly investigated the claims of Jesus Christ and the veracity of the Bible.

For example, Dr. Simon Greenleaf (pictured) is the author of the textbook that all law students are required to study on the laws of evidence and was one of the principle founders of Harvard Law School. There is perhaps no one in the world who knows as much about law and the laws of evidence as Dr. Greenleaf did. Having once been an atheist, Greenleaf decided to use his deductive genius to disprove the “ridiculous” notion that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. After years of investigation, Simon Greenleaf came to a surprising conclusion. He said, and I quote, “I can prove to any court in the land that Jesus Christ was an actual historical figure who was crucified according to the scriptural account, and who was raised from the dead three days later.” He also said, "According to the laws of legal evidence used in courts of law, there is more evidence for the historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ than for just about any other event in history."

But something happened to Greenleaf during his investigation. For him the evidence supporting the most important event in history went beyond simply an intellectual exercise. He became convinced that because Jesus Christ was truly raised from the dead, then Jesus must have been the Messiah and only way to God that He claimed. Greenleaf, a genius and staunch atheist, was intelligent enough to know that the claims that Jesus made and the scientific and historical proof of His Lordship demanded a response, and Greenleaf therefore decided that the only choice left to make was to become a disciple of Jesus Christ! He spent the rest of his life using logic and evidence to defend the claims of Christ and the Christian faith.

In more recent years, Sir Lionel Luckhoo, a British defense attorney who holds the Guinness world record for successfully defending 245 consecutive murder cases, embarked on his own investigation of the claims surrounding the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Having come to the same conclusion as Simon Greenleaf, he stated, “I say unequivocally that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof that leaves absolutely no room for doubt.”

No room for doubt? Wow! That’s an extremely profound statement, especially coming from someone who is called the modern day Perry Mason and whose deductive genius and mastery of the laws of evidence are legendary. And what was Luckhoo’s response to these revelations? He, too, became a devoted Christian.

Yet again, former atheist Lee Strobel, once an investigative journalist with the Chicago Sun Times, embarked on a similar 2-year investigation of the claims of Jesus Christ and of Christianity, and he too came to the same conclusion as Simon Greenleaf and Sir Lionel Luckoo, that Jesus Christ was and is exactly who He claimed to be…the Messiah and Son of God, the only way for mankind to be reconciled to God. Strobel has gone on to publish his findings in numerous books such as The Case for Christ, The Case for a Creator, and others.

Why didn’t Maher interview Lee Strobel or one of the countless others like him who can intelligently defend their faith? Well, that wouldn’t sell a movie or Maher’s worldview, would it? But you can listen to Strobel here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxiddSTtKpA&feature=related

I am considered unintelligent by Maher and those who share his views because I believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and that He created the world and that I did not evolve from some primordial ooze in the bottom of a slime pit. Yet for those who are truly open-minded enough to investigate the facts, it becomes clear that the Bible is historically and scientifically defensible (ask me for examples if you are interested), whereas every other religious belief system fails under the same scrutiny. Evolutionary thought, likewise, as far as I can tell from my own research over many years, is not scientifically defensible when placed under a microscope untainted by humanistic biases. (See my post on evolution by clicking here.)

If you take the evolution thing to its reasonable end, you come back to the question of the Big Bang. Where did the gases that supposedly interacted with one another that produced the Big Bang come from in the first place? No one can tell you. It’s taken on faith. Yes, faith. It can’t be proven where those gases came from or how they got there, or if they were ever really there at all, but it is just assumed that this is how the whole world with all its intricate complexities began. An atheist once told me that it is just assumed that those gases "were just always there." Hmmm.

Because this is such a dead-end for evolutionists and humanists, I have had discussions with some people who say that they believe that life on earth was spawned by aliens, and they said it with a straight face! And of course no explanation is given for how the aliens came to be either. Yet Christians are the ones without a sound basis for their faith?! Even Richard Dawkins, author of the book, The God Delusion, and one of the world’s foremost spokespersons for atheism, suggests that life on earth may have been spawned by aliens, and then turns right around and says that those aliens probably somehow evolved on their own world. I don’t know how you read that, but it seems like an incredible copout to me.

Why is the Big Bang theory or the alien theory any less ridiculous than the idea that God created the world and all its complexities? If the definition of religion is believing in something that cannot be proven by science, then evolutionists and New Agers are as staunchly religious as anyone on earth. Yet evolutionists are hailed in pop culture as setting a scientific standard and New Agers are supposedly enlightened, but I am a religious fanatic because I believe that an Intelligence beyond this world created the universe and that that Intelligence provided a clearly outlined plan of salvation in the pages of the Bible.

How many paths of “enlightenment” can claim that what they practice can be found standing after subjected to the scrutiny of science, historicity, archeology, antiquity, and the laws of evidence? I’ll tell you. None but Christianity. If you disagree, that’s fine, and I respect your opinion. But on what facts do you base your opinion? If you are staking your eternal destiny on what you believe, you might at least give yourself the assurance of your eternal security based upon a spirituality that can survive being put to the test. The time to find out whether or not you were wrong is NOT after you get plunged into eternity! Given the incredibly high stakes, I figure I have a lot less to lose if I am wrong about Jesus being the only way to salvation than others do if their chosen path is wrong.

For anyone who truly has an open mind and who is willing to investigate the evidence, the body of evidence supporting the Biblical account of creation, the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and the veracity of scripture as divinely inspired is extensive and impressive indeed. And for many reasons other than that of creation vs. evolution, true Biblical Christianity (not the modernized TV evangelism version of it) is a faith for the thinking person.

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God did indeed leave a trail of evidence validating the Bible as being divinely inspired. I’m so glad I that the path I have chosen to follow can be validated under scrutiny. Anything else just leaves one guessing at which path to follow. I don’t like leaving my eternal destiny to chance. If you feel good about guessing, that’s up to you. But I feel better about knowing, and as far as I can tell Christianity is the only faith that is intellectually satisfying for the truly open-minded seeker who wants the truth, no matter how uncomfortable or inconvenient.

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2 Excellent Resources:

Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis

Why I am a Christian: Leading Thinkers Explain Why They Believe

My Response to 'Religulous,' Part 1

Bill Maher is the host of a new documentary movie called, Religulous, which marries the word religious with ridiculous in an all-out full frontal attack on the beliefs and values of those who hold any religious convictions. You can view the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nahmIajIzfA and a YouTube response to the film here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImcOSa4frKA

Maher pretty much lumps all religious groups into the same category, portraying Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike as brainless weirdos who have no ability to think rationally. So because Maher and those who share his opinions have chosen to be so bold as to assume this attack mode, suggesting that Christians and Jews are a threat to the sanity of our society, I think that it is reasonable and fair that I speak up in defense of myself and those who believe like me.

I want to make it clear that my purpose here is not to prosyletize. What I wish to do is promote intelligent dialogue. I do not disrespect those who believe differently than I do. I have never wished to ram my convictions down anyone’s gullet. But since it is increasingly clear that society wants to ram their worldview down mine, isn’t it reasonable that I ask those who may share Maher’s views to at least look at both sides before you judge me and my fellow Christians? I want to tell you WHY I believe like I do, and demonstrate that Christianity is a faith for rational people and critical thinkers. So please hear me out. I think much of this will make sense to you.

I am the first to acknowledge that there have been a lot of weirdos and charlatans who are religious, or who appear to be religious. And I also recognize that there are charlatans and weirdos in every facet of life - law enforcement, government, medicine, education, the arts, etc. But the weirdos and charlatans in these areas do not negate the importance of these entities in society, just as the religious wackos do not negate the claims of Christianity and its massive postive influence on society (I'll elaborate on that point in a later post).

In his film, Maher portrays Christians as people who do not know why they believe as they do and who cannot defend their faith. Yet most of the people I have ever met who practice nearly any religion, including New Age, cannot intelligently articulate WHY they believe like they do, but largely rely on their own feelings and opinion and not hard facts (i.e. "I believe such and such because I just FEEL that...").

I agree that most American Christians have not read enough of their Bibles to know why they practice what they practice, and Maher’s street interviews expose a few of them. But my primary issue with the movie is that it is horrendously slanted because Maher makes no attempt to show those in Christian circles who are off-the-charts intelligent – those who practice law, who are physicians, scientists, artists, professors, politicians, and entrepreneurs – and who know what they believe and why they believe it and can articulate it intelligently, and who can demonstrate the sound reasoning behind their beliefs. No, Maher would have no part of them. His movie shamelessly promotes his worldview on his terms, and he will have it no other way.

So in this and the posts following are just a few short responses on some of the issues that Maher and others like him use to call into question the legitimacy of the Christian faith in particular.

“Religious People are Close Minded”
With due respect to Maher and those who share his views, that criticism is a bit like the pot calling the kettle black, because in my experience most (not all) of the people who have ever engaged me in debate over religious matters wish only to do all the talking and recoil if I attempt to share my views. I’m not implicating everyone who disagrees with my views, but I’m just sharing my experience. I have been in perhaps hundreds of religious discussions with non-religious people. A few of those people have been very nice and most others have been combative and adversarial, but there has never been a single time when I have been in a religious discussion with someone where my counterpart seemed to care what I thought and offered something like, “So… tell me why you believe like you do.” It seems like everyone just assumes to know what I believe and why I believe it and are interested only in attempting to show me why I’m wrong.

I, for one, have investigated most of the world’s main religions in more detail than probably 99.9% of the American population, which really isn’t saying a whole heck of a lot. And I am therefore a Christian because it is the only faith that makes rational and intellectual sense to me, whereas atheism, deism, agnosticism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Universalist/Unitarianism have never resonated with me because I have never been able to reconcile any of these other beliefs with rational thought and historical/scientific scrutiny. But lest I get ahead of myself, that's a discussion for another post.

It is difficult for me to imagine how someone who is not even willing to engage an intelligent Christian in a meaningful exchange of ideas can accuse Christians of being close-minded. On numerous occasions I have quietly and respectfully sat across the table from someone who is opposed to my beliefs and listened to him or her rant and rave about why I am wrong and he/she is right. It has often been difficult to get a word in edge-wise. A respectful offering of my thoughts was not allowed without a combative and close-minded response. Yet I am the one who is supposedly close-minded. Again, I am not generalizing. I am just sharing my experiences.

Maher, likewise, along with numerous others, believe staunchly that how they feel about religion and spiritual matters is absolutely correct. Yet I have never heard anyone intelligently defend his/her anti-Christian beliefs with any compelling facts. If a scientist attempted to defend a scientific hypothesis with some of the weak, circular reasoning that I have heard some people use to defend their spiritual (or lack thereof) convictions, they would be thrown out of academia. Yet they hold to those beliefs as if they were proven with 10,000 double-blind placebo controlled peer reviewed trials, and they are not open to any concepts that come from the Bible. Yet I am the one who is supposedly close-minded.

While I know my language is revealing how incredulous I am at all this, I really do try to respect those who differ with me. I know some people do have some intelligent and reasonable objections to what I believe, and I am not opposed to discussing those objections. But I am not one to force my beliefs on anyone, and I like to live by the axiom, "live and let live." Sure, I would like to see more people share my views, but all who are reading this are like that as well. If you are a liberal, you want more people to be liberal so that you can live in the kind of society you think is best. So how is that any different than me wanting more people to see things my way so that the world can become a place that I believe it will become by more people observing Christian principles -- a place of love, peace, mutual respect, and justice for all people? (Of course, my concern for people's eternal destiny motivates me as well, but that is another matter.)

Perhaps Maher and others believe that I am close-minded because I believe a certain way and will not compromise my values with those with whom I disagree. But Maher and those who believe as he does are not willing to be persuaded by those with whom they disagree either, and that is supposedly an expression of open-mindedness. Pardon my frankness, but how does that make sense? Our society supposedly values open exchange of ideas and tolerance toward those who hold different views than ours. As it appears to me, that tolerance is extended to just about everyone but Christians. I would hope that those who truly are open-minded and intelligent enough to investigate both sides of any issue would be willing to respectfully accept the invitation to discuss this issue with a spirit of mutual respect.

Well, enough for now. In the several posts following I am going to address critcisms such as "Religious people are weak-minded and base their beliefs on fairy-tale ideas," and "religion is a source of war and atrocities," and "Christianity is just one of many ways to God," and others. I welcome your RESPECTFUL feedback (badgerings will not be posted or responded to), and hope that you can take in these arguments with an open mind.

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Blessings until next time. Stay tuned.