Catholic Bible 101

So what do you say to an atheist who says that Christians are dumb?  That more people are killed in the name of religion than for anything else?  That we blindly obey the Pope like sheep, who spoon-feeds us his personal theology?

Well, for starters, you could ask the person exactly what their religious background is.  You will usually find out that the person has no training in scripture or religion.  Just because someone has a degree or two in science or journalism, that does not make him an expert on other weighty subjects, such as theology.  A podiatrist may be a great foot doctor, but that doesn't make him an expert on the true meaning of the Gospel of John.  A politician may know the ways of Washington, but that doesn't make him an expert on the weather 100 years from now.  You will usually find that atheists  are angry people inside; angry at their fathers, angry at their former pastors, angry at anyone who tells them that there are limits as to what they can do, especially in sexual matters.  Tell them that no one is free to do whatever the heck they want to do in this life, whether it’s going 150 mph down the freeway, lying under oath, shooting people you don’t like, raping women, stealing cars, etc.  There are limits imposed on all of us by society, and these limits came from the Bible – Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not lie, Thou shalt not kill, etc.  This is the difference between tolerance and licentiousness.  Tolerance for a vice is not a virtue, it’s licentiousness. 

Atheists are usually very proud (pride was the great sin of the devil) about their "freethinking".  They feel morally superior to those of us who try to follow the Church's teachings as found in the bible.  They say that they "think for themselves", as though that is some kind of virtue. Hitler thought for himself, as did Stalin.   Believe me, salvation is not a do-it-yourself activity.  You won't ever get into heaven singing "I Did It My Way", for sure.  And the real problem with freethinking is that it always seems to degenerate into "me-thinking".  In other words, the ego takes over, and the thought of doing for others out of love always seems to take a back seat to "What's in it for me?"  Remember, as CS Lewis once said, "Hell is full of people who said "My Will Be Done".  Heaven is full of people who said "Thy Will Be Done."  Proverbs 3:5 says it best -Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.

One thing that the atheists love to do is to always look at the bad things that have resulted from religion, and to ignore the truly good things that religion has done.  In other words, all of the free medical care, free soup kitchens, Mother Teresa's work in India, etc., are all ignored, while the Muslim terrorists, the Inquisition, the Church scandals, etc., are all front and center.  This would be like saying that the automobile is truly evil because of all of the people killed in car wrecks every year, while totally ignoring the good that autos do in getting us to work and recreation.  Another slight of hand the atheists do is to lump all religious people together as one - Martin Luther King, St. Francis, St. Anthony, & Mother Teresa are all equal to Mohammed, Buddha, Osama Bin Laden, Jimmy Swaggart, and Jim Bakker.  None of this makes any sense.  Stupid people might fall for these tricks, but truly observant people will call them on it. 

Atheists love to write books slamming the Bible, a book they know absolutely nothing about.  They try to point out apparent contradictions here and there, and then they extrapolate that on the entire bible, saying that if there is one contradiction in the supposed infallible Word of God, then the whole book is suspect.  What they fail to realize is that different books of the bible were written in different genres - some are historical, some are parables that teach important truths, some are poetry, etc., and that apparent contradictions in their limited understanding of scripture  do  not equate to real contradictions.  They are very proud of themselves for pointing out these alleged contradictions to stupid Christians.  The really strange thing is that atheists who do not believe in God have no understanding of His Word, but yet they expect the whole world to take them seriously when discussing it. How many atheists would read a book by Pope Benedict XVI on Quantum Physics, or by Pope John Paul II on Brain Surgery?  None is the correct answer, because atheists would automatically assume that a Pope who is only trained in theology would not know much about subjects out of their field of learning.  But yet, these same atheists expect the rest of us to take them seriously when they write a book about the Word of God that they know nothing about.  Very amusing, to say the least.

For some strange reason, these angry and very unlikable people have decided that if they deny the existence of God in their mind, then therefore God does not exist. It’s as stupid as saying “I do not believe that the Grand Canyon exists, so therefore it doesn’t exist.”  The fact that someone is sincere in their beliefs doesn’t make them right; it only makes them sincerely wrong.  One only has to look around to realize that God made everything.  Why is this?  One reason is because of the timing and order of the earth, the moon, and the sun.  Anytime you find timing and order anywhere, that in itself indicates a superior intelligence creating it. Your computer on your desk didn’t “just happen” all by itself.  The software that runs your computer didn’t “just” happen” all by itself.  No, they were created by a superior intelligence, man.  The same goes for the earth, the moon, and the stars.  The very fact that each day is 24 hours long and doesn’t vary in length all of the time indicates timing and order.  The fact that it takes the earth 365.25 days each year to orbit once around the sun indicates timing and order.  The fact that we know with certainty when and where and how long each solar and lunar eclipse is going to be, as well as when the four seasons begin and end, indicates timing and order.  Timing and order in the universe violates a very fundamental law of physics, the law of entropy. The law of entropy says that “matter will seek its most disordered state”.  One could say that nature always seeks its most ordered state.

For instance, just look at a deciduous oak tree. It provides food for the squirrels in the form of acorns.  The squirrels then bury the acorns, and a new oak tree grows in that spot.  The same oak tree provides shade during the summer for all.  When winter comes, the tree automatically drops its leaves, allowing the sun to come through for heat. These leaves become mulch for the roots, and provide warmth for them so that they can be protected from cold temperatures and continue to grow during the winter. The same dropped leaves then become fertilizer for the roots, which continue to grow in the winter.  In the spring, the larger roots draw more nutrients from the soil, allowing the tree to become larger, thus providing more leaves, more acorns, and more shade.  The oak tree’s photosynthesis process takes in the carbon dioxide that humans exhale, and in return the tree gives off oxygen that we breathe back in.  A casual observer to all of this would have to say that it is an intelligent design by an intelligent creator, and not a random sequence of DNA from a primordial swamp.  All of nature is like that.  The reproduction process, the water cycle, the immune system, etc., all show an intelligent design by an intelligent creator.

The atheists would insist that the world created itself with a big bang.  A big bang may indeed be how the universe got started, but that isn’t the question.  The question is what caused the big bang (a big banger, perhaps?), and does a big bang lead to an ordered universe.  Something had to cause the big bang, as big bangs don’t happen all by themselves. What was that cause anyway? And looking at big bangs in our time, like the fall of the twin towers on 9/11/01, it is painfully obvious that big bangs in themselves do not lead to timing and order, but rather chaos. 

Another fallacy of the atheists is that science cannot explain everything.  For example, why is there such great love between parents and babies, why is there an attraction between a dog and its owner, why do people cry and laugh, why are some people born with the talent to paint beautiful pictures and others are not, etc.  The list is endless, and only religion, not science, can answer these questions.  Why?  The answer is because religion is not so much a matter of the mind, but of the heart.  And since God exists outside of time and space, you can’t prove or disprove the existence of God by putting Him under a microscope.

The atheists say that religion has caused more wars and deaths among mankind than any other reason.  Oh really?  They usually trot out the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Middle East wars today, & the IRA and Northern Ireland to prove their point.  The Inquisition was indeed about religion, but only thousands were killed.  The Spanish Inquisition killed anywhere from 3000 to 5000 people over a 350 year period, which is a horrible number in itself.  But compare that number to the 100 million or so who were killed by the godless atheistic Communists in the twentieth century alone.  It would seem that the Christians and the Spanish government were rank amateurs at wiping out their enemies compared to the atheists.  The other three, the Crusades, the Middle Eastern wars today, and the Irish disputes were more about territory than about religion.  Sure, there are religious overtones, but the Christians of the middle ages defended the territory of Jerusalem from Muslim invaders, which was a good thing.   We’ve seen how Muslims today have desecrated the Church of the Nativity in 2002.  The Middle East wars of today are being fought for the same reason that the Crusades were:  who gets to live in and control Jerusalem. The bible says that God gave that land to the Israelites and to their descendants (Deuteronomy 1:8). The Irish Republican Army, whose terrorist methods were rightly condemned by Pope John Paul II, weren’t fighting to end Protestantism; they merely wanted their land back in Northern Ireland that the Brits took away from them.  Imagine how the Brits would react if the Irish confiscated a piece of British soil and set up an Irish state there.  I really doubt if they would be peaceable about it.

Are Christians somehow stupid for believing in a Supreme Being and Jesus Christ?  I really doubt that anyone who has read the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, St. Paul, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI would say that these guys are stupid.  Only stupid people who probably have never read them would say something like that.  And don’t forget the millions of Christians who are doctors, nurses, engineers, astronauts, teachers, etc.  How can anyone say that these fully functioning members of society who are in skilled positions are stupid?  And are Catholics somehow spoon-fed theology from the Pope?  Is that a bad thing?  Weren’t we all spoon-fed physics, Spanish, algebra, economics, etc., from our instructors?  Would it have been beneficial for us to have rejected those instructions from knowledgeable people out-of-hand, and to “think for ourselves”?  Would we have been smart to say “I think that the Spanish word “casa” means money, rather than house”, because I think for myself?  Would we have come across as brilliant if we had told our prof that E=mc cubed instead of squared, because we think for ourselves, and how dare the professor tell us what to think?  Well no, we would have come across as really stupid; as stupid as someone who thinks that God doesn’t exist, and that there is no afterlife. Psalm 14 even states that "the fool sayeth in his heart that there is no God".

Another thing that atheists bring up is that the Church has stifled science throughout history.  But this is false. Copernicus, the originator of the heliocentric model that Galileo studied during the next century, was a Catholic priest.  Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, was also a Catholic priest.  Isaac Newton was also a Christian.  And what about that huge observatory at the Vatican that regularly studies the stars and the planets?  The only instance that the non-believers can bring up that makes their case in this area is the trial of Galileo.  Galileo believed that the earth revolved around the sun all right, but he couldn’t prove it.  He also believed that the orbit was perfectly round, instead of elliptical.  He was right on the former, but dead wrong on the latter.  The Pope liked his theories, but didn’t want him teaching it unless he could prove it.  He originally agreed to abstain from teaching his unproven theory, until he could prove it, but he then reneged on his promise.  And that is what got him into so much trouble.  The Vatican probably overreacted, but they did so out of a fear that this theory may not be true, rather than out of vengeance for teaching that the earth was not the center of the universe.  It wasn’t until years later that the theory was finally proven true.

One great question to ask the atheists is how an explosion of non living matter (Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen) all of a sudden created living, breathing animals.  Can the non-living morph into living matter?  If they say yes, then please ask for a detailed explanation of this phenomenon, and ask them if they can recreate this in a laboratory. 

And as for blindly following the teachings of the Pope, like sheep, think hard about this.  Jesus is the Good Shepherd, the Lamb of God (John 10:11), who laid down His life for His sheep, us.  The Pope is his duly authorized representative on earth.  He is therefore our earthly shepherd.  If Jesus is the Lamb of God, and we are His followers, then being compared to a sheep doesn’t really seem so bad after all.  The devil’s great sin was pride, in that he wanted to be God.  He used his pride to infect Adam and Eve with it, so that they also wanted to become like gods, knowing right from wrong.  The plan all along, evidently, was for mankind to not know right from wrong, and to be more like little children.  Now that we do know right from wrong, we have to become more like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:3), in conformance with God's original plan.  We also have to decide for ourselves if it is right to follow the teachings of the Church that Jesus Himself started, or not.  If our pride gets in the way, and we do not want to be like sheep following the Good Shepherd, then the alternative is to get eaten up by the roaring lion who goes about seeking to devour our souls (1 Peter 5:8). Choose wisely!

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Some great articles about exposing the myths that atheists spout about religion are as follows:

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Are atheists smarter than religious people?

Does religion do more harm than good? 

Is religion opposed to science?

Is is true that Jesus didn't found a church?

Are atheists as charitable as religious people?

And finally, an actual theologian dissects the recent atheist bestsellers.

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