Creation Ministries International on Atheists

I’m subscribed to Creation Ministries International’s newsletter, because I like to subject myself to some idiocy in my life. Without a dose of insanity every now and then, I don’t have anything to compare myself to. Last week In their newsletter they had an article titled ‘What All Atheists have to Believe’, being an undeniable atheist myself, I figured I should have a look at what they’re saying about me.

They start with a hypothetical example of a gradual de-conversion of a Christian. Then they say that “every instance of the journey from professing Christian to apostasy must include certain intellectual steps (unless the apostate just shuts down his/her thinking!). Their use of the word apostate really shows their position; they seem to treat non-Christians as an enemy. They then give three example of the ‘steps’ one must go through.

1. Belief that God’s Word (The Bible) cannot be trusted as plainly written
2. Belief in millions of years of time having occurred in the past
3. Belief in biological evolution of some sort.

Unfortunately for them, none of these are pre-requisites for being an atheist. All that is actually required is to not believe in gods. An actual understanding of the bible in my opinion leads one down the path to unbelief. It is simply that they are adamant on reading it literally, which is quite frankly, stupid. What does ‘believing’ in millions of years have to do with being an atheist? Most theists ‘believe’ in millions of years, billions in fact, because it is an established scientific fact. The same with their third point, it has nothing to do with atheist, in fact the atheistic religion Raelianism doesn’t believe in evolution, because they believe our life was created by aliens. On top of that, most 'sophisticated' and educated Christians also accept the scientific fact of evolution.

They stress the point that the bible as plainly written actively teaches against the concept of an old earth. I am fine with that fact, if you read the bible literally it does seem to advocate that. It’s their problem if they want to deny reality in favour of their mis-reading of ancient religious texts.

There are many aspects of this article that I find plain amusing, one of them is that they criticise other Christians who are embarrassed by them.

“It’s as if they think, in our modern scientific age, a belief in a plain reading of Genesis 1-11 (young earth, dinosaurs and man co-existing, a global flood, a talking serpent) is just too fantastic to believe, and so us biblical creationists insisting that the Bible is describing these things as reality brings shame on the gospel and impedes our witness to non-believers.”

It’s almost too funny; they are making my case for me! Their justification for believing these childish things; is that the rest of the Bible is just as ridiculous! They cite talking donkeys, raising the dead and virgin births as evidence that the Bible is meant to be taken literally. They cite P.Z. Myers (but they do not provide a link to him, so I will not link to them) saying that Francis Collins is a clown for being a theistic evolutionist, and use that as a mouthpiece for saying they will still be considered intellectually backward if they believed in evolution. They seem so close to getting it, but so far away... The reason Francis Collins is a clown, is because he wants to inject God into biology. He isn’t content on studying biology simply as science, but wants there to be a spot for his god too. He’s actually a great scientist, no one denies that.

Perhaps the most humorous part of the entire article is the last section, where they claim that people are not Christian/apostates don't believe because of sin or emotional hurt. Please, give me a break. No one in my church did anything to hurt me in any way; I left the religion for purely intellectual reasons. The religion just didn’t add up, in particular, creationism didn’t add up. They say that creationism is “one of the best immunizers against the atheistic worldview”. Bullshit. Creationism was one of the things that caused me to question my faith in the first place, because anyone with an inquisitive mind who isn’t a gullible idiot will see through the facade that is creationism. Keep deluding yourselves because you’re only hastening your demise.

Edit: This wasn't from their newsletter last week, I started writing this post several months ago, and had to stop reading the article because it was too stupid, I just picked it up again today and finished it.