FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Updated
1. Your
previous book was available for reading online. Why is this one not?
The foremost reason is that other works are quoted extensively in the book, and I did not want to
risk someone liberally copying and pasting that material as they have with my
previous book. I also wanted to see if there was a significant difference in the amount of sales between this book and that one. I may
revisit this decision at a later date, but don’t hold
your breath.
2. What
happened to your email link? Why are the no reader response pages?
I removed the link and discontinued the pages for the
same number of reasons. I have received a number of somewhat threatening and
harassing emails. I have also received a large quantity of responses that do
not deserve comment, particularly bigoted copy-and-paste articles that I did
not want to run the risk of plagiarizing by reproducing and editorializing. I tired
of politely responding to the same old arguments that I have debunked several
times before. My tolerance to those letters noticeably diminished with time.
Responses to some absurd reader comments gave them an air of respectability
that they did not deserve. It takes the reader very little time to compose an
unorganized flight of ideas, but I take much more time to
carefully construct a response. With a forty-hour job, the load was too
much. Someone also thought it would be funny to sign me up for Christian
mass-mailing lists. I appreciate all the letters of support, but perhaps you
can now send those in the form of reviews on amazon.com.
3. Can I
help you out by writing a review?
Absolutely. If you had the opportunity to read the book but did
not want to purchase a copy of your own, a well written
review may be just as beneficial. Good or bad, let the world know what you
think. Here are some direct links to The
Religious Condition review pages of the three major online booksellers: amazon, barnes & noble, and books-a-million.
This process takes no more than two minutes to complete. Please note that your
review will not appear immediately after you submit it.
4. Why would
you write such a book?
As stated in my previous book’s introduction,
“Although I can’t offer an exact reason, my passion is probably driven by the
salient danger created by Christianity and its subsequent influence on nearly
two billion people every day. While the evil forces of certain deceitful
religions have somewhat subsided in more recent times, the hatred inadvertently
generated by these belief systems remains the greatest threat to humankind’s
continued existence. In the past 2000 years, Christianity has been guilty of
initiating several wars and crusades resulting in thousands of needless deaths,
blatantly oppressing women to the point of worthlessness, abhorrently
justifying the enslavement of Africans and perpetuating cruelties upon them we
would rather just forget, shamelessly driving its followers to hang or burn
alleged witches, nearly exterminating the entire Native American population,
and inconspicuously robbing billions of people of countless man-hours that
could have been much better spent on improving our planet. Someone certainly
needs to address these issues, and the book most of the Western world swears by
demands a thorough critical analysis.”
I thought I had said everything I wanted to say after
writing Biblical Nonsense, but the
overwhelmingly positive response I received on the psychological section
persuaded me to write on this topic more in depth. Although this alone was not
enough material for a complete book, negative reader responses on other topics
provided me with more than enough material to complete the project.
5. Why do
you hate God?
I can’t easily provide a response for such a complex
question. I suppose that I can sum up my feelings by saying that I hate the god
in the Bible about like I hate the villain in a movie. Think about it.
6. Why do
you misrepresent Christianity? It isn’t like that.
Most of my writing does not deal with mainstream
Christianity, and this much should be obvious to discerning readers. I’ve often
argued that mainstream Christianity should essentially be renamed Salad Bar
Christianity since almost all Christians pick and choose the parts of the Bible
that they want to follow and ignore the parts that they don’t like. After
mainstream Christians make a dish of the religion that they prefer, they pass
their conclusions down to their children who, in turn, pick
and choose from those beliefs before passing them on. This practice is
so rampant that the overwhelming majority of those who call themselves
Christian know next to nothing about the Bible. I have no problem with those
who follow only the better principles of the book, but the notion that
something is moral or factual just because supporting passages can be found in
the Bible directly contradicts the practice of Salad Bar Christianity (not to
mention ethical behavior as a whole).
7. Haven’t
you read anything by Author X? He/she explains all of the so-called “problems”
you mention.
While it’s not possible for
one person to answer every claim and review every supposed solution to every
discovered problem, whomever Author X happens to be at the moment, a few things
almost always remain true:
1. X began with the conclusion that the Bible is true
and worked backwards to find only supportive evidence.
2. X is not interested in the most likely conclusion,
only the most likely conclusion that doesn’t invalidate the Bible.
3. If X was born with
religion Y instead of Christianity, X would be just as confident that religion
Y was correct.
4. There are countless Xs in every
religion who claim to be able to prove that each of their belief systems is
true.
5. X is skillful at making an argument seem valid but
eventually looks foolish if you just do some unbiased research.
If you wanted safety information on a used car, would
it be wiser to trust the word of a used car salesperson or the findings of a
consumer report? I hope that you would trust the consumer report over the
salesperson because the salesperson has a vested interest in the quality of his
products and an even larger one in getting you to accept his opinion on his
products. The consumer report, on the other hand, would likely have no interest
in advancing a one-sided view of any product. Similarly, if you wanted to
obtain information on the historicity and veracity of Islam, would you ask an
Islamic scholar who has been taught about Islamic
sanctity since childhood, or would you ask a secular scholar with no emotional
investment in Islam? Would you not also do the same for Hinduism, Mormonism,
Buddhism, etc? If you utilize the same reasoning and choose the unbiased
scholar in each instance, as you very well should, why make an exception only
for Christianity? People who study a concept in which they have no emotional
investment are going to offer more reliable conclusions than those who want the
concept to yield a specific result. You may want to begin your quest for
enlightenment here.
8. May I
link to your page? Will you link back to my website?
You may include all the links to my website that you want,
but please be sure that there is a link to the main page. I don’t
have a links page and do not plan on adding one at the moment.
9. I want to
share your work with my friend. Is it okay if I copy and paste something from
your book?
Yes, but please sure that you follow
rules of fair use. Also, include a direct link back to the page from
which you copied the excerpt. If copying from the physical book, make sure you
provide proper attribution. Otherwise, you’re really
going to upset my publisher as well as the author.
10. What
religion are you?
Many readers have noticed that while I am enormously
concerned with the illegitimacy of the Bible, I never take the time to talk
about my own religious perspectives. I originally chose not to do so because
they were not relevant to the veracity of the Bible. To put the matter to rest,
I will declare that I do not follow any particular religion. Since I do not
subscribe to a specific religious belief, I pretty much find myself following
the basics of secular humanism as a moral guideline. In other words, I base my
decisions and actions upon reason and observation rather than religious
convictions and ancient superstitions. I ask myself what is right and what is
for the greater good–not what a man said that God said he wanted us to do,
which anyone can of course ascertain from one of the many books written during
the height of human gullibility. I do what is right because it is right–not
because an omnipresent voyeurist is going to reward me for doing so.
Even though I meet the classical definition of an
atheist, I also frequently refer to myself as agnostic because I know of no way
to be certain about supernatural existence–I can only eliminate possibilities.
Now that is not to say that I am uncertain whether the Judeo-Christian God
exists. I am in no more doubt on that issue than the existence of any of the
hundreds of other gods invented in the era. I simply will not rule out the
(unlikely?) possibility of a higher power that is beyond the scope of human
understanding–the Thomas Jeffersonian God, if you will.
More than one reader has suggested that calling
oneself a secular humanist is a thinly veiled attempt to avoid the term
atheist, but it is not a matter of what term one prefers because the two
schools of thought are independent and sometimes even contradictory. Atheism is
a religious stance that there is insufficient evidence to declare the existence
of a god; humanism is a philosophy that one should do what is for the greater
good without the expectation of a supernatural reward. Since there are a number
of Christian individuals who belong to humanist groups, it would not make much
to sense to call them Christian atheists. Many Christians (and perhaps a few
atheists) use the term interchangeably because they simply do not know the
difference. I hope that this practice will soon cease.
11. Are you
working on a new book?
Hopefully this will be the last one.