Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens are among the most intelligent, witty and persuasive atheists currently writing. Although Harris tends to attack theism from a philosophical standpoint, and Hitchens prefers consulting history and using religions’ own texts against them, both have beautifully articulated a strong, unanswerable argument against Christianity (and every other religion currently vying for loyalists among people who ought to know better). I shall call it The Argument From Mundanity.

In the minds of many Christians, the Bible was written (or, at least, inspired) by the creator of the cosmos. This fantastical entity, children have been inculcated to believe, is comprehensively aware of the thoughts and inner conflicts of every individual roaming the planet. Certainly, considering its author, one might expect the Bible to be full of dazzlingly specific information (of which none of its readers previously had been aware). Considering the author, it should be the pinnacle of intellectual achievement, featuring innumerable accurate tidbits about events and discoveries yet to come. Yet, this certainly is not the case.

What do Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens do in all their books, they try to disprove Christianity. They don’t write about Math or Science. You claim they are intelligent, so I must ask, why haven’t they written anything about Science or Math? Why haven’t they written a textbook on any subject? Why doesn’t Homer (The Greek, not the cartoon) talk about anything else in the Illiad besides a story? Simply, When someone writes a book, their purpose in writing determines what they write. God’s purpose in the bible was not to convey new scientific knowledge to people. We can even make the claim that the majority of the Old Testament was specifically written to record the history of the Jewish people and focuses on how they should live. The Old Testament fulfills it’s purpose in being written, and therefore does not need to do anything else.

Further, if it did mention these scientific facts, you would probably make the claim that people discovered them and then recorded them in the Bible as God discovering them. Or you would point to another ancient book which had something similar and say the Bible copied it.  I don’t think the inclusion of scientific events would be suffiecent for you to believe in God and are therefore not needed.

More articulately than I could, Sam Harris makes the point in Letter to a Christian Nation, writing, “…just imagine how breathtakingly specific a work of prophecy would be, if it were actually the product of omniscience. If the Bible were such a book, it would make perfectly accurate predictions about human events. You would expect it to contain a passage such as ‘In the latter half of the twentieth century, humankind will develop a globally linked system of computers—the principles of which I set forth in Leviticus—and this system shall be called the Internet.’ The Bible contains nothing like this. In fact, it does not contain a single sentence that could not have been written by a man or woman living in the first century. This should trouble you.”

Indeed, it should.

Again, the Old Testament in concerned with the Jewish people, and so makes predictions concerning them. The New Testament is concerned with the Church. No part of the bible is concerned with the world. The bibles main reason for being written is not to show prophecies about the world.

The Old Testament also specifically mentions Cyrus the Great, by name and mentions events that he will do. Josephus tells us that it was after being shown these documents that he gave the Jews the decree to return to their homeland. You may claim that this is an addition made years later, but the point is that you can’t prove this. Logic shows this would be unlikely, for if the Jews added one thing, why not a lot more things, and a lot more people by name. There are also no copies which don’t have the events concerning Cyrus.

We then move on to the prophecy of the restoration of Israel. (Ezekiel 36 - 39). Claim whatever you will about the passage about dry bones, but the point here is that this was in the text prior to 1948. The passage was also determined to mean that Israel would be restored, prior to 1948. Israel didn’t exist when the prophecy was written (Remember, there is a difference between Israel and Judea) and no united kingdom had existed for a very long time. One would not expect Ezekiel to make this claim, when there was no reason for him to think that a united kingdom called Israel would ever exist again. History has proven that only the Jewish nation of Israel has ever been restored after 2000+ years. I know of no nation to ever be restored after it was destroyed. The Holy Roman empire is not the restoration of the Roman empire. Valtaire (sp?) made the claim that the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy nor Roman. Also the eastern half of the Roman Empire (which wasn’t destroyed) still claimed to be the Roman Empire.

The reference to the first century immediately should grab one’s attention. It is easy to forget just when modern religions, such as Christianity, came into being. The Bible was written around 2000 years ago (obviously with some texts older and some more recent). During the time Jesus is alleged to have walked the earth, our species suffered from embarrassing, comprehensive ignorance. The most basic of scientific truths eluded our distant ancestors, who concocted a vastly smaller universe of which the earth was the center, a demon theory of disease and a meteorological paradigm from which rain dances sprang. The most “knowledgeable” person in the first century now would be a pitiable fool.

Most fifth graders are smarter then Isaac Newton. The real question is can you offer proof that anything in the bible is not scientifically accurate? Also, not every passage of the New Testament mentions that demons are responsible for every disease. If my memory serves me correctly, the NT does not even claim demons are responsible for one disease.

 

Christopher Hitchens makes the observation in God Is Not Great, writing, “One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody—not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms—had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would like to think—though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one—that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.”

I would also state that they probably haven’t taken the time to explore Christianity for themselves.

The Bible presents plenty of positive assertions that are plainly false, and these have been mined by atheists for decades, if not centuries. I shan’t regurgitate those.

The book “The God Delusion” presents plenty of positive assertions that are plainly false, and these have been minded by theists since the book was published. I shan’t regurgitate those. (Your point is pointless without examples)

The bible does not present plenty any assertions that are false.

This essay’s focus is Christianity’s sins of omission, the punishment for which should be universal apostasy among all intellectually honest individuals.

Omission does not mean something is false. If so I could claim anything done by the authors you’ve mentioned is false because they have omitted refuting every claim by Christianity and have omitted many religious all together. If they are intelligent, they should have been able to refute every claim and every religion.

Let’s start with Genesis, which has been corrupting the United States’ science classrooms for much too long. Hitchens demonstrates the level of ignorance Genesis reveals.

Why, he asks, can Genesis be proven the mundane work of ignorant humans in merely a paragraph? “Because,” he writes, “man is given ‘dominion’ over all beasts, fowl and fish. But no dinosaurs or plesiosaurs or pterodactyls are specified, because the authors did not know of their existence, let alone of their supposedly special and immediate creation. Nor are any marsupials mentioned, because Australia—the next candidate after Mesoamerica for a new ‘Eden’—was not on any known map. Most important, in Genesis man is not awarded dominion over germs and bacteria because the existence of these necessary yet dangerous fellow creatures was not known or understood. And if it had been known or understood, it would at once have become apparent that these forms of life had ‘dominion’ over us, and would continue to enjoy it uncontested until the priests had been elbowed aside and medical research at last given an opportunity.”

Dinosaurs would fall under beasts. So they are mentioned, under beasts. Gen. 28 “Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." Every animal is included here. Germs appear to not be mentioned. However one can simply say that man was not to rule over germs and is why they are not mentioned. This part of Genesis is written prior to the fall, so one could also claim germs aren’t mentioned here because they didn’t exist yet.

Do men rule over germs? I would say no, we don’t. So obviously they are excluded in something we are suppose to rule over.

Sam Harris continues the argument, making the salient point that a great deal of human misery could have been wiped out had the Bible simply provided a single nugget of previously unknown medical knowledge.

A great deal of human misery could have been wiped out had Adam decided to not eat a piece of fruit. A great deal of human misery could have been wiped out had God not allowed any disease to ever exist. The point is Christianity isn’t false because God didn’t include any previously unkown medical knowledge. The bible isn’t a medical book, the OT is generally a historic (of the Jewish people) and prophetic book. The NT deals with the Church and Jesus.

The bible does not even contain medical knowledge that was known.

 

“Why,” he asks, “doesn’t the Bible say anything about electricity, or about DNA, or about the actual age and size of the universe?

This was not the point of the author. If you want anything else, your going to have to ask God since I’m not qualified to tell you why anyone does anything except myself.

In God’s eye, electricity, DNA, the age of the universe, etc. is not important.

What about a cure for cancer? When we fully understand the biology of cancer, this understanding will be easily summarized in a few pages of text. Why aren’t these pages, or anything remotely like them, found in the Bible? Good, pious people are dying horribly from cancer at this very moment, and many of them are children. The Bible is a very big book. God had room to instruct us in great detail about how to keep slaves and sacrifice a wide variety of animals. To one who stands outside the Christian faith, it is utterly astonishing how ordinary a book can be and still be thought the product of omniscience.”

You assume we will one day be able to cure cancer. You then assume this cure will be able to be written on two pages. So what if we can’t cure cancer or it can’t be written on two pages. How do you know Cancer has always existed?

Here, one thinks of the approximately 10,000 distinct religions infecting our otherwise-sophisticated species. Of all the religious texts I have ever read or heard of, none has been the source of new knowledge about natural principles or the miraculous impetus for a scientific leap.

The bible doesn’t care about natural principles or science. It serves it’s purpose to record the history of the Jewish people and to reveal God to those who seek him.

Rather, each has been the work of mere humans, serving up large doses of primitive superstition, baseless moralizing, useless commandments and promises just beyond the reach of confirmation. If one religion of the 10,000 actually were true, I should think its veracity would be proved by its unique ability to reveal (think ‘revelation’) factual information before scientists can discover it. Then, religion would spread by the power of its evidence, rather than by parents’ talent for indoctrinating defenseless young.

God could also send an angel to every single person and tell him the bible is true. He has chosen not to. 

To this point, I have presented The Argument From Mundanity mostly from the perspective of Christianity’s failing to reveal accurate information about the natural order. Let’s now take a different tack.

Although no scientifically aware individual would even give Christianity’s metaphysical claims (human resurrection, talking animals, et al.) a second look, (I think this statement can be proven false without much work. Since any person interviewed in the “Case for a Creator” by Lee Strobel proves it false, unless your going to claim they are not scientifically aware, and if so go ahead and prove it.)

some such people might previously have credited the faith with some measure of creativity and imagination. Sadly, this no longer can be done. Virgin birth, to take just one example, turns out to be a cheap knock-off of pre-existing lunatic derangements. Human parthenogenesis turns out to be the height of mundanity.

Hitchens sets off with a verse from the book of Matthew, “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.” “Yes,” Hitchens begins, “and the Greek demigod Perseus was born when the god Jupiter visited the virgin Danaë as a shower of gold and got her with child. The god Buddha was born through an opening in his mother's flank. Catlicus the serpent-skirted caught a little ball of feathers from the sky and hid it in her bosom, and the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli was thus conceived. The virgin Nana took a pomegranate from the tree watered by the blood of the slain Agdestris, and laid it in her bosom, and gave birth to the god Attis. The virgin daughter of a Mongol king awoke one night and found herself bathed in a great light, which caused her to give birth to Genghis Khan. Krishna was born of the virgin Devaka. Horus was born of the virgin Isis. Mercury was born of the virgin Maia. Romulus was born of the virgin Rhea Sylvia.”

The book of Genesis mentions that the messiah will be born of a woman only. Given this is true, then all the ones you’ve mentioned could have copied this idea. (I realize there is probably some fancy Latin word to describe my answer, but given Christianity is true, my statement is true, and therefore not any “ad” thing.)

Also if I’m not mistaken, several, if not most or all, other virgin birth stories are not true virgin births. They usually involve the “god” coming to earth and having sex with the girl. In all cases the “god” is still considered the father. Christianity differs, for the baby in the womb is not simply the son of God, but is God come in flesh. This baby was God and existed with the Father for eternity (at least since the beginning).  Hence Jesus could not be called a demigod, for he is God.

So, now, not only do we have infinitely various god characters, boasting infinitely various skill sets, demanding infinitely various behaviors, promising infinitely various rewards (and haunting impressionable children with infinitely various punishments),  

we also have a historical landscape (perhaps, in this instance, ‘fairyscape’) littered with virgin births and fatherless offspring. Advocates of one man-one woman households would be aghast—were they biblically literate. Let it be declared: The Bible is not imaginative, even on the level of a book of ancient Jewish folklore. Rather, it is tiresome, pernicious, obnoxious and—most unforgivably—utterly mundane.

A shockingly brilliant man called Carl Sagan, whom the world misses greatly, took great interest in UFO abductees’ tall tales. The aliens described, far more advanced than we, always related the most humdrum drivel to those they took aboard their spacecrafts. They neglected to mention HIV to abductees taken in the late ’70s. They carelessly omitted Saddam’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction when they abducted individuals in the late ’90s.

There are several claims that the WMDs were there and was shipped into Syria. But that isn’t my point here.

It seems the only knowledge they wish to impart is that which humans already have—or philosophical platitudes of which we have too many. They never divulge new information for which scientists had been struggling mightily. Sagan, in fact, suggested the following request for anyone who ends up meeting a highly advanced alien: Ask it to deliver a short proof of Goldbach's Conjecture. To my knowledge, E.T. has been stumped so far.

Next time you read the Bible, which allegedly was inspired by the creator of the cosmos himself, remember this: Its utter mundanity betrays its decidedly terrestrial origin.

And yet this “mundane” book, is still the world’s best seller having sold more than 5 billion copies, a lot more then any other book in history. Also most of the top ten are religious in nature. 

 

I don't know what is going on here. I wrote everything in MS Word and then posted it here and now it won't let me edit the colors or anything.