Portland State University professor Peter Boghossian hates Jesus. He thinks Christians are no better than atheists.
In his own words:
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Faith comes with an almost moral edifice that people are expected to buy into. If somebody makes faith-based claims, that somehow means they're "better people," or good or virtuous people. I'm doing my best to undermine that notion. That's just not true.
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And why does he hate Jesus? Because Jesus tells people what to do, and Christians then tell people like him what to do:
Quote:
It affects our public policy today. You see it with the treatment of homosexual individuals. This is real. These are real people. These are people who are being denied civil rights on the basis of a book that was written in the freakin' Bronze Age. The creator of the world actually cares about where people put their penises? Just think about that from an objective point of view: We go to some planet and we see these green blobs. And half the green blobs have a celery stalk and the other half don't. Some of these green blobs start sticking their celery stalks in some other holes and everybody's up in arms. The creator of the universe doesn't want the celery stalk in this hole. How do you respond to that? That is outside the bounds of reason. The only thing you can say is "go to the children's table." Those are the sorts of things that come up when we as a society don't value critical rationality.
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But Boghossian's approach isn't to go after Jesus directly. No, he's much too clever for that! He goes after FAITH.
He teaches that faith is a non-productive "way of knowing". He claims that faith is making a factual statement without evidence, and is therefore a LIE.
Yes, he has called us all liars, because we make a claim of knowledge without "objective evidence".
He compares Christianity to homeopathy. People believe homeopathy works, but in reality it's just sugar pills that do nothing. And it's been proven not to work. But people have "faith" in homeopathy.
Then he goes even further and says that religion fits the definition of "delusion" in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual . . . or would, but for an exception for common religious beliefs. And he and a "student" (that is, acolyte) of his are working on a paper intended to change that!
How can we combat this new "critical thinking"/"rationality" approach to undermining Christianity?