My longtime readers know that I like to get many perspectives when it comes to things regarding politics and religion. Well, this post deals with the latter. I feel that even though I may not agree with a person’s view, I can still learn from them and I can get a better idea of what people think of my views, unfiltered.
I’ve been following former Christian and current atheist Daniel Florien for a while now. I like how he writes about his history and find insight on his perspective on things regarding the Christian faith. He does this with a non-confrontational view and provides a lot of substance with his thoughts, well, at least in my opinion.
Anyways, last week he made a post about defending the Bible. I know many of you will probably not agree with his post because he takes a very liberal view of the Bible, but then again, you don’t read about an atheist defending the Bible everyday either.
So here’s the piece, and I would be interested in your thoughts.
Interesting. He's not really defending the Bible for being what it says it is, he's defending the Bible for being inconsistent. I checked out the rest of his website, and most of it seems like a rant against cultural phenomena of evangelicalism in America. He doesn't seem to totally want to engage intellectually the claims of Christianity; he only sprinkles those debates in amongst mockeries of fringe Christianity. There are lots of red herrings, for example If evolution is provable, the Bible is necessarily false.
I would recommend (to him) a deep look into the historicity of the resurrection and its affects on those who witnessed the risen Jesus, and the reliability of the Biblical texts in comparison with other ancient documents. Josh McDowell has done some work in this field. Also, an interesting counterpoint to Dawkins' The God Delusion (which is listed on the site's Reading List) is David Berlinski's The Devil's Delusion.
I concur with Rev. Hart. It seems like the author is not being objective. I think that he missed the point of Job completely. This post rhymes well with something Douglas Wilson mentioned in his debates with Christopher Hitchens: "There are two tenets of Atheism: One, there is no god. Two, I hate him."
Hating the God of Job is a bit like hating gravity or the statistical reality of entropy. It is, it rules, it cares not at all that we might not like it.