Let\u2019s look at the arguments we\u2019ve seen against the faith here on Public Catholic. They tend to fall into categories.<\/p>\n
By far the largest category is the Dawkins without attribution crowd. These people repeat arguments Dr Richard Dawkins has made in his popular books, usually without adding a single thought of their own. But they don\u2019t attribute them to Dr Dawkins. There are so many of these it would be worthless to try to list them. Here is one recent example.<\/p>\n
A reader made the statement (I\u2019m paraphrasing) that the reason we live in a universe that appears to be tuned for life, at least life here on Earth, is that, well, however improbable, that\u2019s the universe we live in. This is from Dr Dawkins\u2019 runaway best seller The God Delusion.<\/p>\n
Obviously, this doesn\u2019t answer anything. It simply sidesteps it. Also obviously, it wasn\u2019t the reader\u2019s own thought.<\/p>\n
There are a large number of pretend Dawkins commenters on this blog. Except for one time, I\u2019ve let every single one of them pass through without calling them on their failure to say that they are quoting someone else.<\/p>\n
What is interesting is that they don\u2019t seem to be able to think past quoting Dawkins without attribution. I don\u2019t remember one of these people adding anything to Dr Dawkins\u2019 thinking when they slap these things down in the combox.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know for sure of course, but I\u2019m guessing most of them haven\u2019t thought all that deeply about what they\u2019re quoting. If they had, they would probably have decided it isn\u2019t worth repeating, as it doesn\u2019t hold water.<\/p>\n
God-is-evil commenters are another large group. They have picked up out-of-context Bible verses and stories, sometimes from Dawkins, but I think mostly from Christian-bashing blogs. They come swooping in here with their Bible verse or story and throw it down with an almost audible There! Take that!<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve noticed that Public Catholic readers aren\u2019t so good at answering this tripe. Our religious education has not taught us to look at the Bible from a viewpoint of defending God Himself in disputation.<\/p>\n
Protestants are good at seeing specific verses because that is the way they have been taught. They are much more adept than Catholics at picking out a verse anywhere. I know Protestants who can recite whole chapters of the Bible. I can give them a word or two of a verse and they will tell me immediately where it is in the Bible by Chapter and verse.<\/p>\n
Catholics are good at seeing the overarching story of the Scriptures, because that is the way they<\/em> have been taught. Every Sunday we hear an Old Testament reading, a Psalm, a reading from an Epistle and a reading from the Gospels. Catholics who go to daily mass will hear almost the whole Bible read to them this way in a three year cycle. These readings are chosen so that New Testament fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy or foreshadowing is placed side by side, along with an Apostolic interpretation of these same things from one of the Epistles.<\/p>\n Catholics come away from this with a good understanding of how the Bible fits together to tell one, single story of our salvation.<\/p>\n However, neither Protestants nor Catholics have been trained to deal with the dubious \u201cscholarship\u201d of highly aggressive Christian bashers. These people are cult-like followers of leaders who earn their living by attacking Christ, Christianity, the Church and God. Many of the Christian-bashing blogs are over the top with followers. Hate expressed in anti-intellectual shibboleths is popular with certain types of people. It always has been.<\/p>\n These leaders comb the Scriptures looking for stories or single verses that they can manipulate to support their contentions. They studiously overlook the vast bulk of Scripture that abrogates their prejudices so clearly that even they cannot twist it into meaning something else. They then\u00a0reinterpret their gleanings according to their own malice in order to judge both God and Christians by the obnoxious standards of 21st century self-righteous nihilism.<\/p>\n This whole practice of pulling things out of context and ignoring all scholarship to reframe them according to your propaganda is intellectually bogus. It is not a sign of intelligence, especially since the people who come on this blog to throw these things down are just parroting what someone else has said or written without any real understanding.<\/p>\n I haven\u2019t been trained in dealing with this. So far as I know, nobody has. After all, those of us who follow Christ are more intent on learning what the Bible actually teaches than mining it for gotcha verses and stories to use against God.<\/p>\n However, a lot of dumb clucks are buying it as if it meant something. I don\u2019t mean Public Catholic readers. I mean your friends and mine. I mean our kids and the family we see once a year at Thanksgiving. People who have not studied the Bible in an intelligent and informed way are sitting ducks for this sort of anti-intellectual approach to Scripture.<\/p>\n From what little I have read and seen in this area, every single one of these accusations is answered by simply learning why and what the Scriptures are actually saying. I haven\u2019t read one attack on the faith from Scripture that didn\u2019t fall down dead by simply knowing what the Scriptures actually mean.<\/p>\n The problem is that these understandings don\u2019t fit in a combox. In fact, they would only fit in a full post if you take them one at a time, and that would be an entire blog of its own. They require what these anti-intellectual propagandists claim for themselves but don\u2019t demonstrate: A certain amount of intellectual gravitas.<\/p>\n In this post Christian world, we\u2019re all going to have to become apologists, each in our own little world. The time when we could devote our studies to personal piety has ended. We are in a battle and we must, as St Paul said, \u201ctake on the whole armor of faith.\u201d That includes an understanding of how and why these attacks on Christians and on God Himself through Scripture are both anti-intellectual in their methodology and untrue in their facts.<\/p>\n The result for us as individuals will be a greatly strengthened faith that \u201cneeds not be ashamed.\u201d<\/p>\n Faith grows when you step out on it, and that\u2019s a fact.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let\u2019s look at the arguments we\u2019ve seen against the faith here on Public Catholic. They tend to fall into categories. By far the largest category is the Dawkins without attribution crowd. These people repeat arguments Dr Richard Dawkins has made in his popular books, usually without adding a single thought of their own. But they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1144,3018,10,39,3814,40,516,43,726,2082,1],"tags":[742,4672,4705,4707,2992,4556,4706,4703,617,4708,4555,4704,2923],"class_list":["post-15204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-calling-evil-good","category-calling-good-evil","category-catholic","category-christian-persecution-2","category-christian-solidarity","category-christianity-2","category-culture","category-faith","category-following-christ","category-scripture-2","category-uncategorized","tag-atheist","tag-bible-stories","tag-bible-study","tag-catholilc-bible-study","tag-christ-bashing","tag-dr-richard-dawkins","tag-evolution","tag-god-is-evil","tag-protestant","tag-protestant-bible-study","tag-richard-dawkins","tag-studying-the-bible","tag-the-bible"],"yoast_head":"\n