Steven Carr

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/...icles/barr.htm

Yes, the author follows the example of his Lord and Saviour by calling people he doesn't like 'rabid, 'lunatic hatred.' 'true fanatic', etc.

Curiously the author denies totally the claim that Jesus was God Incarnate 'Certainly Dawkins could have learned, without much effort, that Christianity has never held the position, from which it might “move on,�? that God is corporeal.) Guess the author has a lot to learn about Christianity.

And the author repeats the tired old Christian mantra that materialism means there are no people 'To a materialist, we are just congeries of atoms; and atoms must go whithersoever they are driven by the laws of physics and blind chance.'

Sorry, Mr. Barr, people do exist, even if they are composed of atoms, and not ectoplasm, or whatever non-answer theists give when asked what on earth a soul could possibly be.

'Religion has led to hateful ideas, but has any Christian writer ever published ideas as hateful as the social Darwinism of H. G. Wells?'

Gosh, I wonder if Luther ever published anything hateful.

I wonder if the author of Joshua or Deuteronomy, with his chilling praise of genocides of people who happen to be living in lands that God's Chosen People wanted, I wonder if their ideas were hateful.

And the author regards animals as mere machines, to be slaughtered at will, as they have no souls. 'That soul is indeed a blessed gift. It is precisely “what is so special about humans.�?

Of course, Mr. Barr will say , on the one hand, that we should treat animals well, while denying in the same essay that things without a soul are any different from machines, no different from (presumably) cars, which we can scrap and alter at will.

So if a soul really is so special and only humans have it, why should we not set cocks and pit-bulls to fight each other? After all, according to Mr. Barr, this setting of one machine against each other, really can't be so different from an episode of Robot Wars - good , family entertainment.

I wonder if Mr. Barr will ever realise that science has never found any trace of a soul. That he cannot give any coherent explanation of what a soul might be, or why God never wanted to give gorillas and chimpanzees souls.

Instead, we are left with Mr. Barr complaining that science cannot find any wizard behind the curtain, and without a wizard behind the curtain, who is running the show and giving orders, and telling people that people like Mr. Barr is absolutely right and others are absolutely wrong?