Today, science is prevailing, but throughout most of recorded history, religion strangled scientific inquiry and often tortured and executed those who advocated the scientific method.
It is no coincidence, therefore, that Christianity’s longest period of sustained growth and influence occurred during what historians refer to as the Dark Ages.
Shroud of Turin
INTERVIEWER: So how do you explain the Shroud of Turin?
MILLS: You have cited a perfect illustration of how religious belief absolutely paralyzes the critical reasoning of Christian apologists and Creation “scientists.” Back in 1988, the Shroud was tested in three separate laboratories using radiocarbon dating techniques. All three laboratories, in Arizona, Oxford and Zurich, reported independently that the Shroud dates back only to the Middle Ages. This radiometric timeframe for the Shroud’s origin coincides precisely with the first historical references to the Shroud, which likewise first appear during the Middle Ages. Any rational person would therefore conclude that the Shroud had its origins during the Middle Ages, not during the time of Christ.
Galileo, remember, was nearly put to death by the Church for constructing his telescope and discovering the moons of Jupiter.
The Crusades, the Inquisition, the witch burnings, the torture of “infidels” were all carried out in the name of the Christian God.
Protestant Fundamentalists believe, moreover, that non-Christians are necessarily ethically inferior to Christians. Such “thinking” leads inevitably to bigotry, prejudice and Holy War.
“Extraordinary claims,” said Carl Sagan, “require extraordinary evidence.”
The Bible—both Old and New Testaments—is filled with instances in which God, in various incarnations, supposedly orders people and armies to be murdered or to commit murder.
Did you know that plants suffer cancer too? So while Nature is at times beautiful and purposeful, it is just as often vicious and chaotic.
I am an atheist because no more evidence supports the Christian god than supports the Greek or Roman gods. There is no evidence that God—as portrayed by any religion—exists.