God and His Word Mocked Again

[Soldier4Christ]

There sure is a huge effort to attack God and His word in this world today.

The Lost Spiritual World is an appropriate title as the true spiritual world has indeed been lost in these books. True fiction at it's worst. The author says "fundamentalism is impacting public life with a narrow view of religion." As we are told in the Bible "narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." This author has assuredly not found it and seeks to lead others astray.

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New 'Bible' says Christ born of gorilla, not virgin 
'If Jesus was alive today, he would understand that his ancestors ... were beasts'

A new, lavishly illustrated book – described by its marketer as a "postmodern" edition of the Bible – takes Darwin's theory of evolution as gospel and presents Jesus as being born, "not to a virgin, but to a gorilla."

According to Ruth Rimm, Bronx school teacher and book artist, her version of the Scriptures – titled "Lost Spiritual World" – "explores the emergence of a new global spirituality that mixes the best of each wisdom tradition with the latest findings in psychology, quantum physics, neuroscience, and linguistics."

It is a "Bible for skeptics, seekers, and people of different faiths."

The first volume in the series – which will eventually present the Torah, Bhagavad Gita, Buddhist sutras, and Sufi mysticism – covers the Gospel of Mark.

Rimm, however, includes parables not found in Mark, such as the Parable of the Dolphin, the Parable of the Snow Leopard and the Parable of the Gorilla, which are illustrated in a series of irreverent videos to be made available on YouTube as part of the book's marketing campaign.

The Parable of the Gorilla begins with a Renaissance painting of Mary and baby Jesus. The voice over by a standup comedian begins:

    He was born in a manger a long time ago – not to a virgin – but to a gorilla. What's so funny? Who did you expect his ancestors to look like, Tom Cruise?

    But wait. I'm not making fun of Jesus. I'm not mocking religion. In fact, from the deepest wellspring of my heart, I'm despairing something we've lost in our scientific culture.

    Yes, if Jesus was alive today, he would understand that his ancestors, just like ours, were beasts.

    No, he wouldn't run around claiming he was born of a virgin.

    And, brilliant rabbi that he was, he would likely ask us to understand the miracle stories metaphorically – as morality tales – but certainly not as literal truth.

"There may be a profound message behind the miracle stories, but the big bang and evolution implore us not to read things literally," Rimm said. "Most Americans would rather discover the spiritual truths behind the religious metaphors, especially given how fundamentalism is impacting public life with a narrow view of religion."

Despite it's focus on Mark's gospel, "Lost Spiritual World" includes quotes from the Dalai Lamai, Rabbi Michael Lerner and self-help gurus Wayne Dyer and Tony Robbins.

"We all want to be a part of a spiritual community and to do good works," said Rimm. "And science, for all its accomplishments, has yet to find a replacement [for religion]."

Rimms unconventional Bible is reflected in its design as well as its content.

"The rectangular format of most books just doesn't capture the majesty of the text," said Rimm.

"'The Lost Spiritual World' is unlike any book you've ever seen," she said on her website. "For one thing, it's not shaped like a rectangle. In Greek, the word orthodox means 'straight thinking.' But according to the fundamentalist thought police, I don't think straight. I'm a 'heretic.'

"That's why I created the wavy shape. It immerses you into the quantum field, showing you how to explore the interconnection of seemingly opposite perspectives. This is the mystical, the 'mysterium tremendum,' the divine spark that gave birth to our religions."

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Time is nearing. "Stand fast, , and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle."

[HisDaughter]

Dawkins, Darwin, and the Battle of Worldviews
Albert Mohler
President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary


July 23, 2008

The Times [London] is out with an article headline that reads, "Dawkins Slaps Creationists into the Primordial Soup."  Now that grabs your attention.

Dawkins, pleased to be known as "Darwin's Rotweiller," has been given a new three-part television series in Britain, known as "Dawkins on Darwin." The British press is fawning in its applause, and Dawkins appears to be in rare form.

As reporter Kate Muir gushes:

Richard Dawkins is that rare specimen, a public intellectual, a knight of the mind who goes into battle against the ignorance and foolhardiness of the populace. Unlike the French, who worship their public intellectuals, giving them pet names such as les intellos, and airing them regularly on serious television and in print, the British like to shove academics into a musty corner, or laugh at them. This was not always the case: the Victorians, with their public lectures and royal societies, gloried in debate and celebrated the thrills of fresh knowledge.

That is a fairly representative understanding of the elite media. Those who do not accept the Gospel according to Darwin (or Dawkins) are simply ignorant, invincibly ignorant perhaps, and Dawkins is thus "a knight of the mind" who battles ignorance.

That approach is a blatant attempt to dismiss all debate over Darwinism or evolutionary theory. The methodology is simple to grasp -- just reclassify all opposition to evolution as ignorance and establish evolutionary theory as the only acceptable worldview. Muir paints Dawkins as an apostle for atheism, rescuing the public from ignorance. "In these barren, thoughtless times, Dawkins gives people something substantial to chew on," she writes. "His audience is surprisingly grateful, and also relieved to see someone slapping creationists about and tossing them into the primordial soup, as well as explaining atheism positively."

This is the approach Dawkins himself admits taking, as Muir reports:

Dawkins says that natural selection is "the most important idea to occur to the human mind", the slow change of species over millions of ideas disproving the religious theory of intelligent design by God.

That we are still trying to sell evolution to a large part of the public bothers him. "It is weird in many ways that natural selection is still debated," he says. "But it is not debated by anyone who knows anything about it." Indeed, Dawkins refuses to share a stage with creationists. "I don't like giving them the oxygen of respectability, the feeling that if they're up on a platform debating with a scientist, there must be real disagreement. One side of the debate is wholly ignorant. It would be as though you knew nothing of physics and were passionately arguing against Einstein's theory of relativity.

At this point Dawkins is characteristically helpful in exposing the real worldview of evolution. In his words, evolution disproves "the religious theory of intelligent design by God."

In other words, Dawkins has as little respect for "theistic evolutionists" as he has for creationists. The theistic evolutionists believe themselves to have escaped the hatred of the Darwinists by trying to have it both ways. Dawkins will not allow that. His Darwinism allows for no intelligent design at all, and yet that is the very core of what is called "theistic evolution." The claim is that God "used" the process of evolution to create the cosmos, and living organisms in particular. The claim is extended to the human being with the argument that God intended the process of evolution to lead to this special creature.

Dawkins sees through all that, and dismisses the idea of any divine intelligence whatsoever. Any design violates the basic principle and mechanism of evolution.

He also sees something of equal importance -- that Christianity has no coherence without the biblical doctrine of creation. As Muir explains:

For Dawkins, there is a tree of life; not the one featuring Adam and Eve, but the one tantalisingly sketched by Darwin with the two words "I think" written above, showing how different species branch slowly off from each other over millions of years, until fish are on one branch, and apes on the opposite. If creationism falls, so, logically for Dawkins, does the rest of religion piled upon it.

This is another basic point of agreement.  If the biblical doctrine of creation falls, the entire storyline of the Bible falls apart.  The very essence of theological liberalism is to discard what the modern world finds offensive and save what parts of the Christian message can be preserved or salvaged.  Dawkins understands what many theological liberals do not -- that there is no way to save any coherent form of Christian truth without the biblical doctrine of creation.  Those who would abandon the biblical account of creation undermine the entire Christian truth claim.

It shouldn't require a "knight of the mind" to see that.

[Soldier4Christ]

"Darwin's Rotweiller" has no teeth.

Dawkins gives people something substantial to chew on

Yep and without teeth it is pretty hard to do so. Dawkins was raised in a Christian family and taught the ways of the Lord. He is one of those by the wayside that will have much to answer for. Unfortunately his worldly intelligence is getting in the way of wisdom and true knowledge and it is also unfortunate that many will follow him right over that cliff.