When the rivers run dry and a blogger has no idea where his next post is coming from, he takes to spamming other peoples post. Then when he gets bored of that he starts to write posts based on other peoples ideas.

This latest offering from Zoomtard I find intriguing. He in turn is responding to an article by the Archbishop of Canterbury, let me address some of the statements, hopefully not too out of context.

>>You can’t be sure for sure for sure that on one level the new Coldplay album sucked as much as you remembered it nor on another that Jesus is not who he says he is.

This is a monster of a statement. I get an ice-cream headache when people start to define truth as something other than correctly assessed facts, I assume they are trying to pick my pocket. Linking my changing opinion on the Coldplay album with the Jesus stories is nonsense. The Coldplay album is not true or false, it is not something which can been assessed empirically, whereas Jesus either existed or didn’t, either said the things the bible says he says or he didn’t and he was the son of god or he wasn’t. To blur that stark choice is to deceive and manipulate. If a Christian is happy that their Christianity is still valid in the event that the bible isn’t reliable reportage,  this needs explicitly stated.

>> Most people instinctively doubt the claims that me and my type make about him. But your doubt isn’t complete. There are moments when you catch a glimpse of the story reflected in a novel you are reading or in the way that a niece approaches your sister or whatever it is for you that causes a joyous little moment of epistemic doubt. Maybe there is more to this. Maybe this story is the reality.

Therefore Jesus is god. Ok great, we can all go home! The idea of doubt not being complete is another incoherent proposal. It is meaningless. Is the writer happy to say that his doubt isn’t complete in all of the other infinitely possible god/messiah myths?  And is he saying that because the redemption narrative is popular and ingrained in culture (especially in the west) that this is somehow evidence for Jesus? This is ever more circular, metaphorically selling your soul to your hopes and our fears.

>> It can’t be broken down into essential principles. It is a story you have to get into. It’s a plot you have to let surround you. It’s a person who is other-worldly compelling and ground-breakingly relevant. It is not a theory that you subscribe to like gravity and so should not be approached the same way. It is not a system like free market capitalism that needs to advance and so should not be approached the same way. It’s the story of an unprincipled God and his intention to let us know we are more broken than we can admit and more loved than we can believe.

I would ask the writer how many other religions he has completely absorbed himself in to garner their ‘truth’. And I would ask him if he sees any problem with this, is this really the best way to assess the validity of a religions claim, is it really possible to remain objective? don’t you have to be intellectually satisfied with the claims before ‘joining’ as it were? Isn’t this exactly how a cult works? Forget about whether or not the bible is reliable, just let jesus in he’s knocking at your door and he loves you, why? why? would you reject this free gift of love etc etc. He consistently skips past the main event and on to the consequences. He loves the story, almost in the way he might love fiction, great fiction.  But stories like Lord of the Rings and Christmas Carol are great stories too,  immerse, redemptive but  not actual reality. It doesn’t reveal to us anything about actual historical events, it is no evidence that there is actual life after death and while it may inform or progress our ethical understanding it is not sacrosanct… and neither is the bible. Stories and myths are fantastic and we live by mythos as well as logos but when we start to think that these stories actually physically and historically happened we digress rather than progress.

Forget how great the consequences of a story is until you are convinced by the facts of the story is, the former having no influence on the later. This process of convincing requires only cognitive thought, and willingness to take advise from those more learned in the field of literature, history and archaeology, NOT self-feeding theology!.  In Christianity, The claim is not that the gospels are redemptive in themselves, the claim is that Jesus was God and therefore anything he did or said was innately ‘good’.  I find it completely understandable why (most) Christians in the world cling to a literal unfailing historical bible – because without that surety it takes a large dose of faith (wishful thinking) to believe that a loving god would have presented us with a communication so flawed, unimpressive  and unavailable to those who have not been indoctrinated as children or who simply wish maintain their critical rationale in the face of hear-say and delusion.