Atheist believes that Africa needs Christian missionaries

The same kind of spiritual rebirth also helps to liberate thousands of addicts each year and lifts people out of homelessness. Seen it many times.

Yeah, Christianity is a crutch in the same way that surgery is a "crutch" for a burst appendix. The disease is called a sinful nature and Jesus is the cure.

Now you'll retort that there's no such thing as sin. Then I'll ask if you think your spouse cheating on you is perfectly OK and she should just go do it. After all, it doesn't hurt anyone.

Religion helps people. Fine. Few would disagree. But what does that have to do with its truth value?

Many inmates are helped by Buddhist practices. Many addicts and crimnals change their ways after discovernig Islam. I doubt many Christians would accept the truth claims made by Islam and Buddhism because of the help that they have given people.

On a personal note, I would LOVE to see Ms. McGinty take on Hitchens. Maybe next time he is discussing religion on CNN she can be on the other side. After all, he has moved through the most popular opponents to the D-list Christian writers by now.

"They need to replace their current belief system with one that frees them and Christianity does that. It frees them from the superstitions that bind them and frees them to think for themselves."

My goodness, that is such an ethnocentric statement. Michele, in all honesty, please do consider taking some anthropology/cultural sensitivity courses.

Guy Arthur Thomas you are a person who does not believe in anthropology so the laugh's on you fella. ROFL!

ZZ:

I'm not an atheist.

But thank you for further proving my point; anybody who voices a contrasting view, following your logic, must inherently be “against” you.

Not so.

cynthia
December 31, 2008 11:13 AM
You show the same stupidity as your anscestors who were involved in the slave trade and the destruction of Africa in the first place.
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Said the clown whose own historical ignorance completely forgot that BLACK AFRICANS themselves sold their own people into slavery and for the last 160 years Africa's decline has been its own through its brutality and stunted culture...please name me one INVENTION of significance coming from Africa since then...just one. Have you ever driven an African car? No? Why not? Because with all of their natural resources they STILL don't have the cultural advancement to produce one. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Next Please!

Boris
January 1, 2009 1:09 AM
The reason Africa hasn't been able to make a car is because it has been colonized and enslaved by white supremacist Christians just like you.
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Deep breath...wiping tears of laughter from eyes...hahahahahahahahahaha! Yeah, tell those victims of the murderers in the Congo who are being slaughtered by their own people and not a white face in sight that it's all "whitey's" fault. Your degree of delusional thinking is impressive but spouting CHRISTOPHOBIC and ANGLOPHOBIC propaganda isn't an effective treatment for your disorder.

Next Please!

Many of my posts are censored because they contain a little too much truth for a Christian blog.
You said regarding Guy Arthur Thomas: Examine the tone and prose of his messages. I simply cannot believe that any rationally thinking adult would so frequently resort to such juvenile hysterics.

Beneath that confident exterior is a tortured mind that is in total panic and fear. Science has shown that God does not exist: God the Failed Hypothesis, How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist by Victor Stenger is a must read. Historians have now completely rejected the historical Jesus. History shows very clearly that Jesus Christ and his disciples including the Apostle Paul never existed. Archaeologists have dug up every inch of Palestine and have found absolutely nothing that could substantiate any of the stories in the Bible. The Passover event is a myth and the Israelites were never even in Egypt. Bible scholars point out that narratives with dialog in them are never historical narratives but are always fictive narratives. But 5th graders know that much. I guess this shows that the average fundamentalist Christian is NOT smarter than a 5th grader.

People like Guy Arthur are frustrated because they can no longer evangelize adults. And when they can’t get other people to buy into the crap they believe it makes them question their own shaky beliefs. Everything I write just pushes Guy Arthur and the other fundies closer to the edge of sanity.

"Archaeologists have dug up every inch of Palestine and have found absolutely nothing that could substantiate any of the stories in the Bible."

I suggest that you do some up-to-date reading about archaeology in the Middle East, even if it's popular stuff like Finkelstein's latest "David and Solomon." Compare assumptions and assertions made by archaeologists in biblical lands to those made by those who work in other areas of the world and you'll see that generally weak evidence is accepted as "true" in extra-biblical areas that is rejected as being "weak" when found in the Middle east. (Although, as a former archaeologist myself and knowing how these things go I have grave suspicions that most of our narrative about most prehistorical socisties anywhere in the world are so far off the mark as to be laughable...)

Also, you may want to qualify yourself... there is a difference between claiming that an historical figure (such as Jesus, and Paul, etc) was not what he has presented himself as and/or claimed to be and claiming that he did not exist at all.

Since, to white Europeans, African natives were uncivilized so that there was little wrong in treating them as animals. The white man's atrocities in conquering the inlands of Africa far surpass any of the atrocities that have made news in this century.

The best chronicle I've seen of the white man's drive to take over Africa is Thomas Pakenham's The Scramble for Africa. It's a thick book replete with atrocities committed by guns versus spears and arrows.

A response to Michelle's "take that Hitchens" comment.
Christianity creates otherworld entities and dimensions of alleged reality which are unsupported by scientific and rational evidence. It draws the focus of attention and energy away from the present world of day-to-day existence where we lead our actual lives, to a dimension which may well be pure fantasy, and thus the real world gets neglected, disparaged, distorted; it becomes populated with concepts which can only be detrimental to humanity’s enlightenment. Belief in angels and devils and personal savior gods has never produced one iota of real human progress. Conviction of salvation comes attached to required doctrines of faith, and not all are going to adopt those doctrines; many will have other, rival faiths of their own. Such differences create divisions between people, families, societies, nations; they have formed a long line of unbelievers, heretics, infidels, those in league with evil forces, leading to inquisition, witch hunts, religious wars.

The level of ignorance, bias, cultural insensitivity, imbalance and just plain stupidity, not to mention idiocy, in the comments are astounding and very sad. "I will emphatically state that none of the major figure mentioned in the Bible such as Abraham, Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, John, Paul and Jesus never existed. I base this on the fact that there is absolutely not one shred of evidence for the existence of any of these figures." That is not only not true, the writer exhibits the determination of a closed mind. Use your own argument. Saying God doesn't exist doesn't make it so. "Christianity is a cult based on the worship of living Jews as Gods." What nonsense. Anthropology saves lives? Is it not slavery to deny people the right to move into the 21st century?

Not only are the arguments presented here without value, they have long ago been discarded by Christian and non-Christian alike. What nonsense parading as wisdom.