I was re-reading John Loftus' "Why I Became an Atheist," and this passage really spoke to me. It's not so much the accuracy or even cynicism that I like in this passage. The part that really makes me love this quote is where John shows just how simple the reasons for which Christianity is laughably false is really are.
On the internet you will find endless debates on whether Christianity is responsible for modern science, and to what extent. Even smart and rational people often get dragged into this supposedly legitimate historical "debate." John ends this debate with one simple quote. You love to see it!
“Christians claim their faith gave rise to modern science even though the Bible literally contains talk of a six-day creation, a three-tired universe, a worldwide flood let loose from the firmament above, nine-hundred-year-old men, talking snakes and donkeys, a sun that stood still, and a hell in the deepest parts of the earth, and they still want to claim their faith gave rise to science?”
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Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity
This brings us to another of John Loftus’s excellent points: the constant reinvention of Christianity, down through the years. Edward T. Babinski writes an excellent essay on the Bible’s faulty cosmology in one of Loftus’s anthologies, I think, specifically, ‘The Christian Delusion’. I, personally, do not allow Christians to reinvent Christianity. I insist that the Bible claims that God carved out a flat earth, from the primordial waters, thousands of years ago, because this is clearly what the Bible says. Christianity had to reinvent itself when the earth was found to be a sphere, when the firmament, whereupon God’s throne was built, such that he could observe from that vantage point “the circle of the earth” was found not to exist. Christianity has to reinvent itself to account for heliocentrism, as the Bible is clearly a geocentric book. Christianity had to reinvent itself when evolution was found to be true. etc. Loftus says that these days, Christianity reinvents itself every 25 years or so. And so Christianity is this ship of Theseus that is completely different from one epoch to the next. As science progresses, Christianity must reinvent itself to keep up, more and more, quicker and quicker. In my view, Christianity should have been abandoned when the telescope was invented. The telescope confirmed that there was no heaven up there, that Jesus ascended up into. God does not have his throne, up there, just above our heads, as the book of Ezekiel put it. However, since the 1600s, when Christianity was definitively falsified by means of the telescope, some of Christianity’s nastiest religious wars have occurred.
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