I was poring through the internet the other day and stumbled across one of Mark Twain's (Samuel Clements) writings - Letters From Earth, originally written in 1909. It's a relatively short piece and I enjoyed it immensely.
Effectively, what Charles Darwin and latterly people like Dan Dennett, Christopher Hichens, Richard Dawkins etc. have done to develop our knowledge of evolutionary biology, and in the process expose the myth of religion, Mark Twain did brilliantly with this piece in the early 20th century. He adopts a stance of belief in the bible, exactly as it is written - and then goes on to satirically demonstrate the ridiculousness of the proposition that the bible as a work can be taken with anything other than a giant grain of salt - purely because believing it literally, just produces so many outrageous conclusions.
As one reader put it : "Dripping with sarcasm about religion, it would make Christopher Hitchens proud. Although, Mark Twain was much less rude than Hitchens, I suspect that Hitchens enjoyed this book as much as I did..."
I expect that if the average bible-believing reader applied their minds critically to the texts they were reading, they might themselves start to see that all wasn't kosher in the (Un)holy lands of yore, or the text that purports to be a god-inspired true account thereof. But that would mean there would be considerably fewer bible-believing readers, wouldn't it? Maybe that's not a bad thing.....
I wonder if it might be possible to convince any of them to actually read this text and give it some thought?
Ta-Ra! Fanfare of trumpets from the heavenly host! Enjoy Letters From the Earth
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