The Atheist Blogger

I honestly didn’t want to cover this story, not because so many others had already done so, but because it literally chilled me to the bone, and I find myself sickened whenever I read it. However, Evan over at the Debunking Christianity blog wrote an investigative story on the subject, which I couldn’t ignore.

For those who are unaware of the story (which is probably a minority), I will give a brief description. 11 year old Madeline Kara Neumann (pictured above) died from diabetic ketoacidosis, a perfectly treatable condition, and one which the majority of people do not die from. I’d like to say that her illness was the primary cause of death, but sadly that is not the case. Madeline Neumann was murdered by her parents, who were so ignorant of the situation around them, they decided that the power of prayer, not medicine would save their daughter.

Madeline saw a doctor at age 3, and would not see another until her body was examined at the local hospital, a good few hours after she died. She had been off her medication for most of her life, but when her illness became too great, she fell unconscious and died. All the while her murderers refused to take her to hopsital, and in fact a 911 call that eventually alerted the hospital came from a relation outside the immediate family.

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This week at my university, the Christian Union are holding a “Jesus Awareness Week” (J.A.W) and although I am only involved in one of the events (a debate on Thursday), I am trying to attend as many as I can. Last night’s talk was on the Bible (as the title of this article suggests), and the speaker was the son of Michael Howard. He came up with a list of reasons why people should trust the Bible:

The Bible proves itself to be trustworthy. It’s so obviously true that we don’t need to question it’s trustworthiness.

Yes, he actually opened his argument with that one. The standard circular argument that goes against all common sense and justification. It wouldn’t have been such a big deal if he hadn’t stated that that reason alone should convert you to Christianity. If it were so “obviously” true then rational people wouldn’t reject it, or go and worship other Gods.

The Gospels are based off eyewitness accounts from people who were alive at the time of Christ.

John was written around 90A.D, and he used this as an example. Given that the average life expectancy of people back then was much lower than it is today, the chances of someone actually seeing Jesus perform a miracle, and then living to be over 70 (if we take it as read that they would have to have been around 10 years old at the time of Jesus’ death) are remote at best. Even if this did happen, the eyewitness accounts of a child are rarely 100% accurate, and so we would have to find an eyewitness who lived to be around 76 at least, which 2000 years ago would have been even more miraculous than walking on water.

Not one of the gospels mentions the destruction of Jerusalem in 70A.D, so they must have been written before 70A.D.

This point was filled with pure inaccuracies, as I have already mentioned that the Gospel of John was written around 90A.D, and the Gospel of Mark was written after 70A.D since it does contain references to the fall of Jerusalem.
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