Monday, April 11, 2011

Dear A.C. Grayling:

Please get your own title for your book and do not steal ours. If you want to write a book for atheists that makes you feel good about humanity, have at it. But do not call it the Bible or any kind of Bible. It is not the Bible. The Bible contains scriptures for Christians. We believe it. If you do not believe it, or think it is important, do not steal its name and profit from it. Let your book stand on it's own.

Or is it that you cannot just compile a book of great thoughts, you must also jab at Christians? A little insult to stimulate some sales, possibly?

Grayling said "The Bible would have been “a very different book and may have produced a very different history for mankind had it drawn on the work of philosophers and writers as opposed to prophets and apostles." Certainly the Bible would have been a different book. Instead of being words inspired by God, it would be a collection of philosophies from men. I hate to say it to a Ph.D. but the best response to that statement is "duh".

It would not, however, produced a different humanity. All of the writings in your book have been available to millions of men and women through centuries of history and have not changed the fundamental nature of them. Aristotle's Greeks committed all the same atrocious acts as every other culture. The reason is not the book, it is the nature of men and women.

Human reason cannot create a better society, for each human reasons his way to a different vision of society based on his own desires. A philosopher may dream of a world where people spend their time thinking and writing in peace. However, another dreams of conquering the world and finds philosophers to validate his stance.

You go so far as to rip off the structure of the Bible. You begin with your own Genesis, a garden scene about Isaac Newton, the British scientist who "discovered". Ironically, Newton was a Christian who studied the Bible and wrote commentaries about it.

I'm glad you admit that the hunger for a spiritual connection continues. However, you cannot, as you maintain, satisfy for many by taking a walk in the country. Nature's beauty speaks of nature's creator. Involve man in it, and he throws cigarette wrappers and beer cans in it. He does not respond spiritually.

If he has spiritual yearnings, nature will not fulfill them. That is why, as many have turned away from Christianity due to attacks from atheists like you, they have tried to fill the void, not with humanism, but with other modes of spirituality, such as Eastern religion, mysticism, paganism or combinations of all of these.

So, I wish you would call your book what it is: not the Bible or the Good Book, but another futile scream in the dark saying "there is no God and I hate him".

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