Shooting blanks

Aaron Kinney said:

“There can be no more depressing worldview than one that endorses the concept of ‘original sin’.

Where can a lower self-esteem come from than from the person who says ‘Because of original sin I was born a worthless wretch, guilty since the moment I took my first breath.’”?

i) It’s true that unless you take your theology from Robert Schuller or Norman Vincent Peale, self-esteem is not the core message of the Gospel.

However, the gospel is a message of good news as well as bad news.

It’s depressing to be diagnosed with cancer. But it’s encouraging to be told by your oncologist that you have a non-aggressive, stage-one form of a very treatable form of cancer with a high survival rate.

Likewise, it’s depressing to be addicted to a compulsive, self-destructive behavior.

But if it’s possible to be weaned from that behavior, then the possibility of healing is a source of encouragement.

ii) Notice that Aaron is trying to change the subject. Carr originally insinuated that Craig was depressed because he was a teenager.

However, Carr offered no statistical data to show that teenage boys are normally depressed.

So, now, to deflect attention from the factual vacuity of original claim, Aaron changes the subject from teenage depression to a depressing worldview.

Is this an admission on his part that Carr’s original contention was baseless?

iii) Incidentally, original sin does not imply that human beings are “worthless,” but unworthy. Quite a difference.

“Consider also that Christianity is over-represented in prison populations and mental hospitals”

i) Where is Aaron’s statistical data to back up this claim?

ii) It’s true that many prisoners convert to Christianity due to such parachurch ministries as Prison Fellowship. But that’s after incarceration, not before.

iii) Islam is also heavily represented in prison population. So what?

iv) How does Aaron know that mental patients are disproportionately Christian? Do they register as Christians?

“But underrepresented among intellectual circles,”

How does Aaron define “intellectual”?

“nobel laureates”

i) How does Aaron happen to know the religious affiliation, if any, of Nobel laureates? Do Nobel laureates have to put this down on their application (as it were)?

ii) More Nobel prizes in literature have been awarded to Swedish writers than Russian writers. I suppose that just goes to show that Sweden has more great novelists than Russia. Uh-huh.

Either that or it might possibly have something to do with the fact that this prize is awarded by the Swedish Academy.

Or consider the illustrious roster of Nobel peace prize laureates like Ho Chi Minh, the guerilla warlord; Yasser Arafat, the granddaddy of international terrorism; Kofi Annan, who twiddles his thumbs in the face of genocide (Rwanda, Srebrenica, Sudan), and Mohamed El Baradei, head of the UN’s watchdog agency on nuclear proliferation, under whose eagle eye India, Pakistan, and North Korea all got the bomb, with Iran on the brink of going nuclear.

The Nobel Prize tells you less about the laureate than it does about the politics of Swedes and Norwegians.

“And academia.”

Ah, yes, academia. He must mean the splendid specimens of intellectual respectability showcased by David Horowitz in his new book The Professors.

http://dangerousprofessors.net/

“Consider also that religious belief is higher in areas where crime, divorce, and drug abuse are higher.”

i) Religious belief? Which religion are we talking about? Any religion?

I thought Christianity was the issue.

ii) Areas? What’s the exact correlation, here? Does Aaron have direct statistical evidence that Christians are more likely to commit crime or do drugs?

iii) Why does Aaron bring up the subject of divorce? Does he think that divorce is a barometer of character? Are unbelievers who divorce immoral?

iv) It was liberals who liberalized the divorce laws.