What Happens With A Proper Exegesis? Exit, Jesus.

(Cross posted at God Is For Suckers!)

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived." - Isaac Asimov

"So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You'd better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can't rearrange the universe." - Isaac Asimov, Nightfall

There is no doubt that we've all heard that nonsense, the 'prophecies concerning Jesus', in various guises in the blogging world.

I've pretty much slaughtered this whole nonsense, and torn some Old Testament folderol into confetti. Oh, and lest I forget, I pretty much trashed the entire New Testament, in accordance with the book's own rules. (For those interested in my amateur exegesis that lead me to where I'm at today, my personal 'trilogy' that grants some insight can be found at one, two and three - but be forewarned: they're somewhat on the long-winded side, but I fancy them entertaining.)

These would be mind-boggling feats, except that

A. It's been done before, and
B. it's fairly easy, for anyone with any sort of a critical mind. (I mean, really! Christians snort and scoff at others, yet don't realize that their miserable little fairy tales are just as outrageous.)

And the patterns are fairly predictable. We hear about the 'odds' about these alleged 'prophecies' coming true, yet we're criticized when we point out how these allusions are taken completely out of context. Then the claim is that we're the ones who are quote-mining (talk about Tu Quoque!).

And for my efforts, I've been deemed 'evil'. I must confess, my favorite is the old 'retreat behind the trilemma' tactic (which is, of course, easily debunked by adding a fourth option: LEGEND). This is usually a tactic used when the 'logic' of the elocutor is sliced to ribbons by the audience (that is to say, when a creationist comes into an atheist blog and starts babbling in tongues, claiming the world's only X amount of years old, you know the drill).

Religion seems to be a form of voluntary hemispherectomy - a form of voluntary lobotomy where logic is disabled, and the naturalistic fallacy (or a form thereof) is engaged.

It is to weep, sometimes.

It is a world of wonder we live in: there is no need for supernatural fairy tales to awe us into submission. The universe is wild, wooly place indeed. Chock full of mysteries, replete with content enough to fill our lives and eyes. Who then requires a divine hand to stir the pot?

Not I.

Till the next post, then.