To an Evangelical Christian on New Testament debunker Bart Ehrman

Daneille BYou might look up Bart Ehrman…

Daneille Beaudelaire Yes, but none of that is dispositive, not logically. I also condemn his atheism — I am a fierce enemy of atheism, and write frequently about NDEs (Near Death Experiences) which basically disprove atheism. (In fact, I constantly promote the excellent true-to-life NDE movie “Miracles from Heaven.”)

.

But his personal wrong choice can serve as a diversion from his arguments, because his atheism does not disprove his assertions.

.

(Nobel Laureate Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web, and he is an atheist. But you obviously use the Internet, whether an atheist created it or not, because here you are on Facebook. In fact, the main inventor of the computer, Konrad Zuse, also was an atheist, and so was the Swede Alfred Nobel, who came up with and funded the Nobel Prizes.)

.

And many of the things Ehrman says, as he admits, were first asserted by the German theologians of the 19th century, who were not atheists and not anti-Jesus at all, just “anti” the perceived “myths” about Jesus.

.

(A lot of people, including mainline Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, etc. believe in God, in the afterlife, in love, repentance, forgiveness, humility and selfless service, but not in the literal inerrancy of the Bible.)

.

Actually, some of these issues and objections by Ehrman, which he first read himself in those German theologians, had already been raised in ancient Roman times by pagan philosophers who were highly educated and often not atheists either. They were not disproved then either. Instead, certain Roman emperors, very Roman-style ones such as Theodosius, took the road of overt brutality, shuttering pagan temples and decreeing the death penalty for paganism — just as their predecessors, ironically, had once done for Christianity.

.

You can look up about the very beautiful and truly brilliant female scholar, mathematician and astronomer Hypatia of Alexandria, Egypt  to see an example of Christians literally murdering pagans.

.

.

Fact is that this Ehrman is not only a serious scholar, but he also was a devout and committed Evangelical Christian, and he graduated from the very “the Bible is literally true” Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. You can see videos of Evangelicals debating him and they take him seriously; they have to.

.

What I do find bizarre about Ehrman is he admits that Jesus’ miracles and those of his apostles were a key factor in the spread of Christianity. Well, where did they get that power to perform miracles?

.

In my experience, and statistics bear this out, atheists are usually liberal Democrats (delusional, pro-Biden, pro-Kamala, and “woke”) and also frankly, as people, “stuck up.” They want there to be no one above them, and they use the existence of evil to say “this shows there is no God.” (So they demand a god who makes us into law-abiding robots, and there is no free will. And then you end up in communism, with which many liberals have an open sympathy.)

.

Atheists secretly enjoy looking down on “the little people” who, as Obama once infamously said to a gathering of Hollywood jews, are “small-town people who cling to their religion and their guns.”

.

So, please do not misunderstand me. I am not endorsing Ehrman’s atheism! I see more and more scientific proof that God does exist, and I have myself had supernatural experiences of a loving kind, most recently since my wife of 17 years died of throat cancer.

.

.

……Miracles from Heaven