Lenny's Sermons.

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Lenny, I've downloaded, printed and read both your sermons
(on If not the Bible then what & God did that !), and tried to
analyse them over a period of time. I am aware that they
are written for people who already believers, but you have
placed them into a different environment, so they must stand
on what you write.

You must remember that I (and many others) don't believe the
Bible to be true. There are many many arguments that just
assume the truth of the Bible. As the aim of sermon (i) is to
use the Bible as a Moral Standard and (ii) to justify God's
actions, this is a (real) circular argument. The majority of
apologetics preachers would use non-biblical arguments, as
they realise that using the Bible to prove the truth of the
God (because the God says the Bible is true) is not going to
gain them very much.

There are several problems with them, but the main ones are that
you take too many "leaps of faith" and your conclusions simply
don't follow for your arguments. Look at the conclusion to your
Bible Morality sermon "If not the Bible then what - there is no
answer" is simply untrue. It is not demonstrated by the rest of
your sermon. (The remainder of the conclusion is Biblical
quotes)
 
You've missed out umpteen ethical systems which you
could get from any half decent philosophy text. Another
later example is that "Majority is usually wrong" (coupled
with a few selected examples, and the emotional argument
about Hitler). 

[Incidentally it is highly debatable as to whether
the majority of the German People (or even the German
Government !) supported the extermination of the Jews,
fear kept the majority from opposing it.]

The second one which you recommended to us is much
worse, however. For example the "Justice requires that
Sin be punished" is arguable, depending on your definition
of sin.  "We don't think much of  a liberal judge that sets 
a child rapist free" is an appeal to at least three prejudices. 

I actually doubt that any judge would do such a thing, I 
believe this statement makes a prior assumption of guilt 
(common in Child Abuse cases). 

However for you to then claim that justice requires God 
to severely punish the Caananites requires you to 
demonstrate that their "sin" deserved it.
You don't do this, except to say the "defiled God" and other
non-explicit phrases. What did they actually do ?

The worst paragraph by far is the "The Lord had the total 
Good in mind". 

"A. We are very short sighted, God sees the beginning and
the end." is the same argument as "the end justifies 
the means".(e.g. the end result is what matters, not the
methods used to get there)

"B. A doctor is not cruel who.... to spare the whole body
from dying" makes the assumption that the doctor has to
do this. If a doctor cut a leg off when only an aspirin was
necessary, then we would think him cruel. God , being 
apparently omnipotent, should have been able to come up
with a better solution than wiping everyone out.

"C. God is not cruel when he removes and destroys a 
fatally diseased society of people who would corrupt others
if left alone" is exactly the same argument Hitler used 
against Jews (or Gypsies or anyone else). It could come
straight from Mein Kampf !  Blame everything that is 
wrong on one group and then wipe it out. The idea of
"a fatally diseased society of people" is abhorrent to me.
It is an appalling grouping and tagging of people. 

Interestingly you use "cleanse" later on to describe this. This
is used all the time by dictators. Ever heard the term 
"ethnic cleansing" ... its a polite euphemism for Genocide.

The children example seems to be very similar to the famous
Popal quote "Kill them all, let God sort them out".

All this behaviour is apparently sanctioned because God is
wise,pure and just (backed up by Biblical quotes whose
authentication is provided by God apparently). 

I'm afraid your sermons might impress people who already
accept every word the Bible says as being true and your
basic prejudices (about "liberal judges" for instance), but
it looks much worse in print when read by people who do
not automatically believe what they are told.

Thank you for trying, however.

Paul Robson (autismuk@aol.com)

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