I was dismayed at one bit of conversation with Dr Rod Butterworth, head of the place. He was trying to explain how the bloody god of the Old Testament really wasn’t such a bad fellow after all.
“You don’t understand: all those people he had to kill, were horrible people. They deserved to be killed!”
To which I replied, “But that’s exactly the excuse Hitler used to murder the Jews!”
“No…” He seemed slightly nonplussed.
One of Mattir’s spawn was there, and she explained to him that it was true, that Jews were accused of blood libel, and the Nazis claimed they used Jesus’ blood in evil rituals.
“Oh, well, there probably were Jews who did that, who hated Christianity, and those Jews would have deserved it.”
You could have knocked me flat with a feather.
I pointed out that his god, according to his myth, exterminated the entire population of the planet, except for 8 people. Was he really arguing that all of those people, even the babies, were all so wretchedly evil that they deserved death?
He replied that yes, they did, because they refused to worship god, and god as their creator had every right to do with them as he will. - PZ Myers
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So, what lessons did we learn? And what does the future hold?
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Amid the all the hand-wringing, or wailing jeremiads, or triumphant op-eds
out there, *I’ll offer in this election post-mortem some perspectives that
you...
4 days ago
4 comments:
This is sort of beside the point. The Old Testament was made up. It's pretty damn weird when people have to justify mass murder in a made up story. Even Jewish scholars are now thinking the Old Testament was made up. Anthropologists just aren't finding sites that show any of the genocide that the Bible describes. The twelve tribes did not conquer the land of Canaan by coming in as invading hordes like described in the Bible.
Nor were all the people in the world but six killed by a flood. It was just a story that many cultures made up after the last ice age ended and many places around the world flooded from rising seas and glacier meltings.
Yes, but they believe it, Jim. And the justification for this is chilling, don't you think?
Perhaps PZ Myers forgot to mention the atheists who were apologizing to those at the Creation museum because they were ashamed of how he treated and spoke to Dr. Butterworth (all 10 minutes of their conversation)? What IS chilling is that anyone would follow PZ Myers, as he seems like a thoroughly negative person. I wouldn't trust what he says in his blog to be straightforward, since he devalues people (understatement - he'll go to any length and exaggeration). A classic raging narcissist with a bunch of followers. Now that's 'chilling.'
You and I apparently have very different definitions of 'chilling,' Anonymous.
But more importantly, I notice that you have absolutely nothing to say about that quote, except to make an ad hominem attack against the person who said it. Apparently, you can't defend Butterworth's comments, so you just attack the messenger.
Note that Myers didn't say that Butterworth was fat, or call him an egotist, nothing like that. Myers criticized what Butterworth said. And he seems to make a good point, too.
Now, if you expect me to change my mind about that, you're going to have to speak to what Myers actually said. I don't care if he's a "thoroughly negative person." I don't care if he's a "raging narcissist." Even if those things were true, it wouldn't make him wrong.
Ad hominem reasoning is a logical fallacy. Nothing in your comment addresses the issue here, not one word. I'm sorry, but you're going to have to do better than that if you expect me to take you seriously.
Note that I've disagreed with PZ Myers before. (So what? I don't agree with anyone about everything.) But you've certainly given me no reason to disagree with him this time.
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