Atheism 18 - History's Greatest Period

     A couple of people have commented on my post "Can the Biblical Record be Trusted?"  They are both intimate friends and made their comments via telephone rather than the comment section of the post, so you, my gentle reader, cannot benefit from them.  In essence, they both took umbrage at my assertion that the stories in Genesis may not represent accurate historical record.  They were kind in their rebukes and demanded no sort of rebuttal, but I thought I might clarify a few things for the benefit of other readers of like mind and perhaps less chutzpah.

    First,  I would like to reiterate a point made in the original post, one that leads toward the post's thesis; specifically, that Genesis is part of the Jewish Torah or Pentateuch.  It is, by definition, a Jewish book.  It is my opinion (and this post is dealing specifically with my opinions)  that no Protestant minister or Catholic priest, regardless of his pedigree, can ever hope to speak to Jewish Scripture with anything approaching the authority of a Jewish rabbi. That minister's seminary may be more than a century old, perhaps even two centuries, but that compares little (to my way of thinking) with the 2500 years of Jewish tradition presented at my local synagogue. The statements expressed in my post are the result of many discussions with those Jewish rabbis with whom it has been my privilege to converse. 

     Second, since both of these friends are believers (as may be the reader), let me remind them (and you) that, while I cherish your input, you are not this blog's target audience.  I am writing for the reasonably intelligent non-believer.  At this stage, I am trying to give my reader a reason to simply believe in the existence of a Supreme Being of any sort, not necessarily the one you or I believe.  Basically, I'm attempting to teach a primary class, so I'm not dealing much in intermediate concerns.

    To put it another way, my bride and I were, at one point attending university together, I a Theatre Arts major, she a Biology major.  As a core requirement, I had to take a semester of General Biology.  At one point, I was complaining to my bride over lunch that we had just spent four weeks of lecture going over the Kreb's cycle (the process by which cells turn food into energy), only to conclude the unit with the professor asserting, "of course, it's actually infinitely more complicated than this."  Four weeks, and it was still more complicated!  She told me that she had had an entire 4-hour class covering a full semester just on the Kreb's cycle, only to be told at the end of the term that it was, of course, "infinitely more complicated than this."

    No wonder 7th Grade Biology books say "the body digests and liquefies food which is carried through the bloodstream to the individual cells where a miracle happens and the cells convert the food into energy."  What 7th grader will sit through 14 weeks of explanation, only to end up with "it's infinitely more complicated than this?"  My readers are not ready to split hairs over the inerrancy of Scripture.  And why should they?  We're studying elementary stuff here, not post-graduate stuff.

    Third, I should like to repeat a favorite quote from C.S. Lewis, often regarded as the greatest Christian Apologist of the twentieth century:  "I didn't go to religion to make me happy.  I always knew a bottle of port would do that.  If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don't recommend Christianity."  Agreed.

    Fourth and finally, I wish to point out what I consider the most important period in History.  Here, I'm not discussing a particular era, but rather a punctuation mark.

    The Apostle Paul was a lawyer by trade, and anyone who has studied his writings know that he writes exactly as a lawyer would.  Where five words would do, he would use twenty-five.  Yet, when the jailer asks him what he must do to be saved, Paul answers, "Believe in my Lord Jesus as the Christ, and you will be saved."  Again, "believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved period."  That period is arguably the most profound punctuation mark in recorded history.

    He didn't say go to church or tithe your tenth or believe in inerrancy of Scripture or anything else.  From a guy who seems to enjoy little more than the sound of his own voice, we get "believe" and a period. 

    At some point you and I, dear reader, may find  that we disagree on any number of topics such as the inerrancy of Scripture, the place of the LGBTQ+ community in relation to the church universal, the rights of the poor, the immigrant and the unborn and the proper place of gun control in American society and law.  And none of it will matter.  As adults, we can simply agree to disagree on such matters and remain good friends and colleagues, because when it's all been said and done, the only thing that matters is whether or not we believe.  Period.

Pax