This video is a clip of Dinesh D'Souza (Hindi: दिनेश डिसूज़ा, Urdu: دنیش ڈیسوزا) speaking at the California Institute of Technology against the mendacious motion, often propagated by militant atheists: "The World Would Be Better Off Without Religion." Dinesh D'Souza is president of The King's College and author of What's So Great About Christianity. A policy analyst in the Reagan White House, D'Souza served as an Olin fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and as a Rishwain scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. His most famous books include "What's So Great About Christianity," published in 2008, and "Life After Death: The Evidence," published in 2009.
"And who can deny that Stalin and Mao, not to mention Pol Pot and a host of others, all committed atrocities in the name of a Communist ideology that was explicitly atheistic? Who can dispute that they did their bloody deeds by claiming to be establishing a 'new man' and a religion-free utopia? These were mass murders performed with atheism as a central part of their ideological inspiration, they were not mass murders done by people who simply happened to be atheist."
—Dinesh D'Souza
In the Holy Bible, the inspired Word of God, many spiritual truths are revealed through the common literary mechanisms of allegory, parable, simile, metaphor and hyperbole that were never intended to be taken literally . Such mechanisms serve to "paint a mental picture" of ideas not easily expressed in words. The Bible reveals timeless spiritual truths about God, love, salvation, faith, morals and ethics that transcend the realms of science and history. We can appreciate the beauty of a sunrise whether or not the sun literally "rises" above the earth. In the same way, we can understand and appreciate the lessons of the Holy Bible which were written with intent of being an allegory. Many of the early Church Fathers, such as Origen, wrote:
"For who that has understanding will suppose that the first and second and third day existed without a sun and moon and stars and that the first day was, as it were, also without a sky? . . . I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance and not literally" (The Fundamental Doctrines 4:1:16 [A.D. 225]).
Many militant atheists, however, dishonestly quote verses from the Holy Bible in isolation, without mentioning their literary genre or context, in order to deceive the innocent and further their cause militant atheism, rather than to convey historical truth about the text. Common literary techniques like parable, metaphor and allegory do not negate the Bible's message, nor do they threaten the Judeo-Christian faith. The Holy Bible's teachings stand on their own merits, whether or not those teachings are delivered via stories that are intended to be taken literally. The important thing is that we understand what God is telling humanity through the Bible and that we do not let arguments about the literal truth of the Bible distract us from that goal. Perhaps, with a bit of humility, we can admit that only God has all the answers: "Our knowledge is incomplete and our ability to speak what God has revealed is incomplete" (1 Corinthians 13:9 GW).
Article on the Interpretation of Scripture: http://biologos.org/questions/interpreting-scripture
Article on the Archaeology and the Historical Reliability of the New Testament by Peter S. Williams: http://www.bethinking.org/bible-jesus/advanced/archaeology-and-the-historical-reliability-of-the-new-testament.htm
More Information at:
http://conservapedia.com/Militant_atheism
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1121/p09s01-coop.html
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/atrocities.html#.UF41JrJlQf4
http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_the_suppression_of_science
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