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AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCATION. AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION Membership Campaign Fund Raising Letter. William Provine. “No Gods worth having exist, no life after death exists, no ultimate foundation for ethics exists, no ultimate meaning in life exists.”. Stephen Weinberg.
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AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION Membership Campaign Fund Raising Letter
William Provine “No Gods worth having exist, no life after death exists, no ultimate foundation for ethics exists, no ultimate meaning in life exists.”
Stephen Weinberg The world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief.”
Sam Harris “Unless belief in God is eradicated, civilization is likely to end up in a murderous sea of religious warfare. At some point, there’s going to be enough pressure that it is going to be too embarrassing to believe in God.”
Gary Wolf – Wired Magazine “Religion is not only wrong, it is evil.”
Richard Dawkins wrote that God is- “…arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
Victor Stenger – God: The Failed Hypothesis – How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist • Richard Dawkins – The God Delusion and the Root of All Evil • Christopher Hutchens – God is Not Great • Sam Harris – The Case Against Faith • Rational Response Squad – The Blasphemy Challenge to Bring an End to Christianity
Hector Avalos “Hitler was a creationist who used biblical and theological rationales in his policies.”
Adolph HitlerSpeeches of Adolph Hitler, Oxford Univ. Press, 1942 “My feelings as a Christian point me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter… How terrific was his fight for the world against Jewish poison. Today after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before, the fact that it was for this that he had to shed his blood upon the cross.”
Doubt God’s Existence 25% of all Christians (Catholics & Protestants) Reference AP 6-2-2008
The New Science • QUANTUM MECHANICS – Does classical physics not work? • CLONING – Does a cloned human have a soul? • THE HUMAN GENOME – Knowing what I will die of, what diseases I and my children will have affects parenthood, etc. Proof that our past is an animal past. • BLACK HOLES, PARALLEL UNIVERSES, VIRTUAL UNIVERSES – Other sentient beings in other universes? • STRING THEORY – The creation of matter. • THE CREATION OF LIFE – Elimination of death.
UNLESS SCIENCE AND RELIGION WORK TOGETHER, THEY ARE BOTH USELESS. • – Albert Einstein
Science: Knowledge. State or fact of knowing, often as opposed to intuition. Systematized knowledge derived from observation, study, and experimentation, carried on in order to determine the nature or principles of what is being studied.
Bad Science • I Timothy 6:20, 21 “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: which some professing have erred concerning the faith.” • Can’t be falsified or tested in any way. • Science used incorrectly- “Religion without science is lame, but science without religion is blind.” Albert Einstein
Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden, p. 133 In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, and other people are going to get lucky; and you won’t find any rhyme or reason to it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.
THE WORD • John 1:1-14 • Romans 1:19-22 • Psalms 19 • Colossians 1:16-17
Bad Theology • Restricting the methods that God can use- “My ways are not your ways.” • Not taking the Bible literally – Definition: You have to look at who wrote it, to whom it was written, why it was written and how people of that day would have understood it.
Examples of Bad Theologyin Apologetics • Equating “kind” and “species” – How many animals on the ark? • In which verse is the sun created? – “bara” vs. “asah” • How does God produce a soul? – Psalms 139 • Blaming God for the bad things that happen. 2 Peter 3:9 – God’s will is not always done Job 1 & 2 Ephesians 6:12 & 3:9-11