Robert H. Nelson is a Professor of Public Policy, University of Maryland. In his book, God? Very Probably, he shows how the poverty of his own imagination leads him, again and again, to a singular conclusion. The question any half cognizant reader is left to ask is simple, however: why does he only ever conclude there is a God, when the evidence is so undeniably ambiguous?
Probably because he wants you to buy his book. And no one buys books proving God more than those who already wish to "believe" that God exists already. And Nelson probably knows this, and is laughing about it all the way to the bank. But that's something true "believers" who buy such books, simply refuse to believe.
Consider this excerpt from his recently published article to see this poverty of imagination in action, and notice how he preys upon the biases of his audience to not only mask his assumptions, but to lure his audience into accepting those assumptions as virtual facts that cannot be contested. What a serpentine sense of reasoning he relies on indeed. He states:
Different Forms of Worship
"In his commencement address to Kenyon College in 2005, the American novelist and essayist David Foster Wallace said that: “Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.”
REPLY: Saying that "everybody worships" is to offer an unverifiable assumption as an undeniable fact. If humans have been around for roughly 200,000 years, how could we ever verify that "everybody worships"?
And by "worships," do we mean simply "believes" the same way so many Christians today "believe/worship" capitalism or even whatever political ideology they think superior to the rest? And worse, to what extent does "everybody worship" because religion has, for so many thousands of years, forced people to "worship" on pain of death, as well as the threat of eternal hell? The habit we may have to "worship," then, might only be a product of human conditioning imposed by religion itself, more than anything else.
Nelson continues:
Even though Karl Marx, for example, condemned the illusion of religion, his followers, ironically, worshiped Marxism. The American philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre thus wrote that for much of the 20th century, Marxism was the “historical successor of Christianity,” claiming to show the faithful the one correct path to a new heaven on Earth.
REPLY: There were and probably are, people who "worship" Marxism, just as much as there are people who "worship" Christianity (especially the kind that is the very opposite of Christ) and even more who now worship Christianity's political counterpart, capitalism. But there are undoubtedly plenty of others who do not "worship" any of these "religions," which is a fact that Nelson just sweeps under the rug.
He continues:
REPLY: There were and probably are, people who "worship" Marxism, just as much as there are people who "worship" Christianity (especially the kind that is the very opposite of Christ) and even more who now worship Christianity's political counterpart, capitalism. But there are undoubtedly plenty of others who do not "worship" any of these "religions," which is a fact that Nelson just sweeps under the rug.
He continues:
In several of my books, I have explored how
Marxism and other such “economic religions” were characteristic of much
of the modern age. So Christianity, I would argue, did not disappear as
much as it reappeared in many such disguised forms of “secular religion.”
REPLY: This is largely true, but not because Christianity is in anyway demonstrably true, in and of itself, as Nelson and so many others seek to suggest, but because Christianity itself is simply plagiarized from many other "religions" and philosophies. That we only live less than a hundred years, while "beliefs" exist for thousands of years at a time, means humanity always exists in a state of amnesia of sorts. And it is this very amnesia that religion, for purely selfish reasons, exploits to its own financial and political benefit.
He concludes:
REPLY: This is largely true, but not because Christianity is in anyway demonstrably true, in and of itself, as Nelson and so many others seek to suggest, but because Christianity itself is simply plagiarized from many other "religions" and philosophies. That we only live less than a hundred years, while "beliefs" exist for thousands of years at a time, means humanity always exists in a state of amnesia of sorts. And it is this very amnesia that religion, for purely selfish reasons, exploits to its own financial and political benefit.
He concludes:
That
the Christian essence, as arose out of Judaism, showed such great
staying power amidst the extraordinary political, economic, intellectual
and other radical changes of the modern age is another reason I offer
for thinking that the existence of a god is very probable.
REPLY : This is by far the greatest lie ever told! Christianity showed such "great staying power" because it was by far the most genocidal and torturous religion on the planet. It ONLY serves as evidence for the existence of God if by "God" Nelson means the devil himself.
REPLY : This is by far the greatest lie ever told! Christianity showed such "great staying power" because it was by far the most genocidal and torturous religion on the planet. It ONLY serves as evidence for the existence of God if by "God" Nelson means the devil himself.
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