GI: Reading Rainbow

I am beginning to wonder if the people who so forcefully pound the Bible and hold it up as the avatar of their authority actually have ever READ the thing. 

Today's edition of GI examines the sublime assertions of two individuals whose expertise in the art of looking at sentences and parsing meaning out of them is, unfortunately, sadly lacking. As is their historical and liturgical knowledge.  I don't like to generalize, but it's thinkers like this who want to tell everyone else how to use their brains.  That would be like giving a baby a machete and asking him to carve the turkey at Thanksgiving.  Take notes, kids -- there will be a pop quiz and the winner gets a free Kazoo. Onward...
 
(punctuation original – AD)

“personally, I find the common atheist assertion that "these books were written by man" completely irrational and ahistorical. Who exactly is their author? There's no historical documentation that suggests it, and in many cases, it would require widespread conspiracy to perpetuate the fraud - which also lacks evidence. Yet atheists continue to insist, utterly without any evidence, that there was some phantom author.

“please explain the existence of religious texts and the religious experience of the first generations that experienced those texts”

I am not disputing that spiritual and religious texts may have been inspired by a deity; however…

I presume you know of some fellas named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?  Paul the Apostle—he wrote a bunch of letters (epistles) to the Corinthians?  Even Jewish scholars acknowledge that the Torah (read: Old Testament to the Gentiles) was written by men, albeit unknown and unnamed.  Solomon? Song of?  I got a million of ‘em.


**

[re Obama: "We Do Not Consider Ourselves A Christian Nation". Emphasis mine. Here we go again…AD]

“He needs to go back and read the Constitution, and other historical documents that this country was based on.”

Sigh.  "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? "– Matthew, Chapter Seven, Sermon on the Mount—Greatest Hits

The United States Constitution, Article I:  "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Treaty of Tripoli, 1797, Article 11:  As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.[3]

Declaration of Independence:  When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.  (No mention of Christ here or anywhere in the document.)

You may not like Obama, and you have that right.  However, he was a Professor of United States Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago.  Whether he’s Christian, Muslim, Wiccan, Hindu, Buddhist, or a worshiper of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, he’s got a better grasp on the wording and content of our founders’ documents than you do. 

Then again, so does the average fifth grader who does a simple search on the internet and actually READS them.

--Irish