the timboucher experience

This being “The Lord’s Day” I caught a few minutes of the local Christian channel, while waiting for my food to cook. I don’t remember what the show was called, but it was one of these ones where they have a sort of a debate about the Bible. I say a “sort of a debate” because it’s not really a debate at all. What it actually consists of is a Fundamentalist Christian host, an audience of Fundamentalists, a special guest Fundamentalist preacher, and ONE single dude who they labelled as a “secular humanist“.

In other words, it was a witchhunt disguised as free and open debate. The same type of thing you see on the regular news all the time. It’s really quite brilliant in its effectiveness and simplicity. The secular humanist was very nice and very fair - he made all kinds of concessions, saying that he couldn’t disprove any of the Christian story, but that in order for him to believe it, he would need to have it historically corroborated. Of course, the host and his Fundamentalist guest jumped all over him any time he said anything like that.

They would say things incredulously like: “What more proof do you need than the testimony of Christ’s disciples?”

And the secular humanist would try to say something like, “Well, Jesus isn’t documented in other historical records of the time.”

And then they would fire back, “The Bible is the most important, most accurate historical record of all time.”

There was just nothing he could do or say to counter their arguments. He kept saying how he thought people should read the Bible as they would any other book, and look for inconsistencies across the Gospels. And the other guy would be like, “I encourage you to do that as well, and allow Christ to come into your heart and transform you.”

He really didn’t seem equipped with the ability to use the right types of arguments to reach these people, which is weird, because I just found out who he was. His name was Dr. Paul Kurtz, and he is supposed to be one of the leading Secular Humanists in the world. Apparently, he also founded the fairly famous Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. Ah, a professional skeptic… that’s the problem, right there. Now I see better why the dynamic of that show was occurring. To a Fundamentalist, skepticism just looks like a disease to be rooted out, rather than a tool for enquiry, which is how the skeptic sees it.

• God is a Heretic
• Are Occultists “Better” Than Fundamentalist Christians?
• Was Jesus a real person?
• Building Spiritual Communities
• RELAX!