In my days as a minister, I would point out to potential converts the vast qualitative difference between the biblical account of creation and those of other world religions. For example, one world religion posits the idea that the world rests upon the back of a turtle, which in turn floats in a sea of milk.

I only supposed that a major world religion describes the earth this way because some preacher said it; I never took the time to confirm that this was so. In any case, I ridiculed and belittled these fantastic and unbelievable ideas taught by non-Christian religions and explained that the Bible's descriptions of reality are in line with scientific knowledge.

The fact that I was being intellectually dishonest is borne out by another fact: The Bible also contains fantastical and unbelievable descriptions of reality. For example, there is the account of giants, and gods having sex with humans:

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. (Gen. 6:4)

So, what's the diff?

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Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life - March 13, 2009

Contrary to recent media reports suggesting that the country's economic troubles have led to higher levels of church attendance, a Pew Forum analysis of polls by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press finds that while the Dow Jones Industrial Average has shed over half its value since October 2007, there has been no increase in weekly worship service attendance during the same time period.

Original article

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I had a minor brainwave yesterday. It occurred me, not for the first time, that Christians generally don't believe their own hype about prayer. Here's what I mean: Listen to any Christian organization asking for help and you'll notice how prayer is always thrown in as an afterthought. They need your money. They need you to join. They need you to write letters and emails. They need you to attend. And, oh yes, please pray for us, too.

Why don't they ask only for prayer? Pray for us to be able to pay our bills! No need to send actual money, because prayer will get us the money. Like that.

When I was a child, we used to play a game in my dad's car. We pretended that we were racing all the other cars on the road behind us. When another car seemed to be gaining on us, we pushed on the back window to get them to fall back. And damned if it didn't work some of the time. How exciting to push on the glass and see the competing vehicles respond to our efforts by slowing down! It was a feeling of such power and control. Oh sure, a lot of the time it didn't work, but that was OK, as long as our method was successful some of the time.

Need I say more? Obviously, pushing on the glass had nothing to do with the acceleration or deceleration of the other cars. But we quickly built a connection in our minds when it seemed to work. Just like prayer. We have a ready explanation for the gobs of times it has no effect, and we take great delight whenever it seems to be effective. Oh, to be a child again.

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