Long Island doctor to cheating wife: I want my kidney back

Tom,
I found this blog while posting on the Lynn verses Sekulow Beliefnet site. I get on these blogs for several reasons. One is that every now and then I can write an intelligent and or funny response to something someone else wrote. I’ve got a book I’m trying to get published and I can practice writing that way. Also I read ancient Greek so I’m always looking for Christians who are trying to learn or have learned Koine Greek so they can read the Greek New Testament. We can Email back and forth if they have the Greek fonts installed and practice writing since this language is a dead language and it is difficult therefore to stay sharp with it. Also I consider myself an anti-theist. “Atheism can be the naked pursuit of truth, but anti-theism is more often the adolescent joy of upsetting and mocking religious people.” – Jim Rigby, pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin Texas. I could go on but those are some of the main reasons. I don’t think I’m going to change the minds of people who are so wrapped up in their religion that they are on sites like this talking about it. But I do make it quite clear to everyone that there are VERY good reasons NOT to believe and what these reasons are. This makes fundamentalists who wish to evangelize well aware that they must lie and lie a lot to promote their religion.

“Inflexible beliefs on matters where one has no experience is superstition whether one is a believer or an atheist.” – Jim Rigby – Perhaps, but on matters where one has no experience – supernatural matters, for example – NOT believing surely makes more sense.

“Atheism can be the naked pursuit of truth, but anti-theism is more often the adolescent joy of upsetting and mocking religious people.” – Jim Rigby – He’s got me pegged right.

“Some people argue that evolution disproves religion. I would say that evolution helps us understand why religion is inevitable in human beings. Our upper brain functions are built on top of a marshy swamp of animal instincts… Much of our most important processes are irrational, even more are unconscious altogether. To say we will be purely scientific and objective is an act of imaginary dissociation from the liquid core of our own being.” – Jim Rigby – He’s saying religion is inevitable because it grows from our primitive instincts and irrationality. I’ll buy the latter proposition. But does evolution help us understand why religion is inevitable, or why outgrowing it is inevitable?

“Hegel defined religion as putting philosophy into pictures. Strange and foreboding topics like… metaphysics can be taught to almost anyone if they are put into story form. While it is important not to accept these images literally, it is just as important not to reject them literally.” – Jim Rigby – I say those images are only blocking the view.