No Apologies for Apologetics - A Brief Look at Laughable Logic

Answers in Genesis is always good for a laugh. I was digging around over there this evening and happened upon this little gem, meant be a sweeping defense of the Bible against us evil atheists who might say that it contains contradictions. Much of it is just the usual apologetics and foot shuffling, such as claiming that a skeptic's idea of a biblical contradiction is “The Bible can’t be trusted because it contains accounts of miracles, and miracles are clearly impossible.” (That's directly quoted from the article.) Fair enough - an argument like that is meaningless. Of course, you don't actually see that argument from skeptics that have made it out of elementary school.

The author further goes on to explain that some contradictions are simply matters of skeptics trying to apply "sweeping generalizations" when such an application is not intended. To use the author's own example, when a skeptic notes that the Bible says "thou shalt not kill" even though Yahweh and his henchmen spend much of the Bible punting people left and right, what the Bible actually means is "thou shalt not kill except in war, to punish extreme crimes, or if Yahweh gives you a note saying it's okay". It's not a contradiction, it's just that when God said not to kill, he didn't really mean it. That's an interesting position for a Christian author to take, don't you think? One of the Ten Commandments can be qualified at will to justify any action taken on behalf of God and we can't oppose that logic lest we be guilty of applying sweeping generalizations. And to think atheists are accused of moral relativism.

The most dazzling facet of this sparkling gem of pathetic argumentation, however, comes under the heading of "The Law of Non-Contradiction - A Problem For Non-Christians". Lest you think I'm manipulating the author's words, I'm going to quote him wholesale:

The critic asserts that the Bible is false because it contains contradictions. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this claim is that it actually backfires on the critic. The reason is this: only if the Bible is true, would contradictions be unacceptable!...

According to the Bible, all truth is in God (Colossians 2:3; Proverbs 1:7), and God cannot deny (go against) Himself (2 Timothy 2:13). So, it makes sense that truth cannot go against itself. Since the sovereign, eternal God is constantly upholding the entire universe by His power (Hebrews 1:3), the Christian expects that no contradiction could possibly happen anywhere in the universe at any time. The universal, unchanging law of non-contradiction stems from God’s self-consistent nature.

But, apart from the Bible, how could we know that contradictions are always false? We could only say that they have been false in our experience. But our experiences are very limited, and no one has experienced the future. So, if someone claimed that he or she has finally discovered a true contradiction, the non-Christian has no basis for dismissing such a claim. Only in a biblical worldview can we know that contradictions are always false; only the Christian has a basis for the law of non-contradiction.

Basically our friend has put forth the claim that only by believing in an ancient Palestinian sky deity can we deduce any facts about the universe. Our friend, who only a few paragraphs before was sternly warning us against assuming our conclusions, has just told us in effect that "The Bible is true because it says that God is the force that makes the universe make sense, and because God establishes the baseline for what does or does not make sense, anything in the Bible that appears not to make sense, for example a Biblical contradiction, actually proves that it does make sense because we have been able to judge that it doesn't make sense only by applying the baseline of sense-making provided by the existence of God."

Freakin' REALLY?

I'm not sure you could ask for a better example of assuming one's own conclusions, plus it gets extra points for trying to hide it by stretch the (non)argument out for three paragraphs. I hate to call Poe's Law on every single piece of apologetics I come across, but the last couple of sections of that article come across like a Landover Baptist spoof. Now the article we've been looking at is apparently meant to be the first in a series of AiG discussions about Biblical contradictions, so it's with a certain morbid fascination that I look forward to seeing what kinds of grotesque logical contortions our friend is ready perform in subsequent entries.

The Revelation of Gabriel: A Basis for the Story of Jesus?

One of the weirder arguments that I sometimes encounter when debating Christians about the literal reality of Biblical accounts goes a little something like "Why would the early Christians make up a story about Jesus dying and being resurrected when there's no ancient Jewish tradition about the Messiah undergoing death and resurrection?"* There's kind of an implicit statement there that early Christians couldn't possibly have concocted form whole cloth any stories about their prophet/messiah/deity. "After all," some folks will claim, "liberal scholars (whatever that means) think of accounts of Jesus as drawing from the OT and old Jewish mythology, so why would the most important part of Jesus' life not have been drawn from an old Jewish source but rather from a contemporary invention?"

That argument has never made a lot of sense to me, since ultimately I think that at some point somebody made all of it up out of whole cloth. Furthermore, both Judaism and by extension Christianity were influenced by other regional religions (See Greenberg for a full discussion.) and the cultural phenomenon of "resurrection deities" is well attested to throughout pre-Christian mythology, including the ancient Middle East. (Mithras, Horus, and Osiris are salient regional examples.) Well, one way or another that argument may soon lose what little weight it had because of a pre-Christian Hebrew tablet that has come to be referred to as "Gabriel's Revelation". The tablet appears to depict the death of a Messiah figure named Simon and make reference to his resurrection three days later.

If true, this would indicate that the story of Jesus may simply be a natural extension of a phase of Hebrew myth-making.

To be fair, the exact translation of the tablet, which is not an engraving but instead written in ink, is open to speculation. As one may suspect, 2,000 year-old ink writing hasn't held up perfectly and the stone itself is broken. Some of the key passages are regarded by some scholars as illegible, but author and scholar Israel Knohl of the Tel Aviv University, believes that the tablet's overall meaning is clear. It should probably also be noted that Knohl wrote a book in 2000 that centered on the examination of pre-Christian messianic traditions, and thus some less iconoclastic scholars are concerned that he may simply be seeing what he wants to see in some of the tablet's more difficult to read passages.

That being said, how this plays out in the coming months should be very interesting and could potentially have far-reaching ramifications for religious scholarship, especially if other scholars independently verify Knohl's translations and share in his interpretations. (Though I imagine it will pass right by the man on the street.) I've been anxiously awaiting Ray Comfort's statement on the matter, but I suspect that none is forthcoming, since actually talking about the details of his religion is something that I've never actually seen him do. That being said, there's an interesting discussion on the subject going on at IIDB, including a marvelously snarky comment by one poster who notes that he "can't wait for [apologists] to pronounce it both "prophecy" and "forgery" in the same breath".

* This statement is often made, inexplicably, alongside claims that Jesus' tribulations were actually prophesied in the OT book of Isaiah by way of its passages about the "suffering servant". See Ehrman's God's Problem for a discussion of how these passages are meant as a metaphor for the Hebrew people rather than a specific holy individual.

Faith Healing Kills Another Child...

A 16 year-old Oregon boy named Neil Beagley is dead from complications of a treatable urinary tract blockage because he refused to seek medical treatment for the disease. Beagley, a member of Oregon's Followers of Christ church, instead opted to rely on faith-healing to fix the problem. It did not, leaving him to an excruciating death due to organ failures. A simple catheter would have saved his life.

Beagley's parents don't face charges in this particular case because Oregon laws allow children 14 and older to refuse medical treatment for themselves. Now, I believe in the right of adults to refuse medical treatment or even elect to be euthanized if their afflictions are untreatable, but let's think this through a little bit. A 14 year-old kid can't drink, smoke, drive, vote, drop out of school, or legally have sex - If they can't be trusted in these matters, why should they be trusted in matters of their own life and death? The Supreme Court has found that minors do not have the full set of rights as an adult - For example, in the 2007 Morse vs. Frederick case, the Court found that minors do not necessarily enjoy full freedom of speech rights in certain situations. Thus, one may rationally conclude that if minors do not necessarily have a full compliment of rights, it is logical to withhold above all the right to refuse medical treatment. While there is apparently no legitimate way to prosecute Beagley's parents because of Oregon laws, this case should be sufficient cause for the Oregonian legislature to reconsider whether or not children can be trusted to act in their own rational self interest with regards to matters of their own mortality.

Oregon has done quite a bit over the past few years to destroy legal shields by which parents who kill their kids by refusing them treatment for religious or other reason can avoid prosecution. Interestingly, the case Beagley's own cousin, 15-month old Ava Worthington, who died in March from from untreated pneumonia was the first case to be prosecuted under this new set of laws. Worthington's parents intend to use a religious freedom defense in the case, but Oregon laws will make that a tough sell.

For those of you keeping score, the government generally contends that it has a pertinent interest in stopping parents from condemning their children to agonizingly painful deaths due to willful negligence. Religious convictions are not a trump card to parental responsibilities (and homicide laws), no matter how you try and dress them up. To my way of thinking, refusing a child medical treatment in favor of prayer is child abuse on the scale of intentionally starving a child to death.

Bart Ehrman Books at Meijer...?

I'm pretty sure that this has been covered elsewhere and earlier, but I was up at Meijer the other night and happened to notice while strolling through the book section that Bart Ehrman's excellent new book God's Problem was being sold there. Soak that up for a second: A book of biblical textual criticism written to challenge the traditional Christian notions of Yahweh because of the lack of a coherent biblical explanation for evil in the world is being sold at a major box retailer in Kentucky. How unexpected. Keep in mind that I'm not holding up Meijer as some sort of bastion of enlightenment, because Ehrman's book was sandwiched between works by pseudo-psychic con woman Sylvia Browne and feel-good televangelist Joel Olsteen, but this was certainly an attention-grabbing step in the right direction.

I read God's Problem back when it first came out and I was pretty impressed with it, so I've got give it my recommendation. Ehrman takes readers on a tour through several different biblical explanations for the problem of suffering in the world and explains how they all come up wanting. Especially interesting is his dissection of the story of Job, in which God smites down one of his most faithful followers with torment after merciless torment in order to prove to Satan that Job will remain faithful no matter how many of his family members God kills (all of them), how many of his animals God kills (all of them), how much of his worldly wealth God destroys (all of it), or how many sores God afflicts him with (many, all of the weeping and gory). Also interesting is Ehrman's study of the Book of Ecclesiastes, a work allegedly (but almost certainly not) written by King Solomon in which the author notes that ultimately everyone dies, good and evil alike, and since we can't count on much in the way of an afterlife* an extremely high value should thus be placed on the simple pleasures of life such as dining with family and friends.

God's Problem is definitely worth a look, whether you get from Meijer or elsewhere.

*The author of Ecclesiastes mentions the old Jewish concept of an afterlife in Sheol. It should be remembered that Sheol is not to be confused with Heaven - it's much closer to the Greek concept of Hades, wherein some vague soul persists but the sense of self is gone.

Credit where credit is due...

I'm bothered sometimes when people "thank God" for that magnanimity of other human beings. Over the weekend I was watching one of the myriad variations of The World's Most Gruesome Animal Maulings Caught on Tape which contained footage of some lady being smote down by a polar bear at a zoo. She had jumped two guard rails and leaned into its cage to get a picture of the animal, and the bear, correctly noting that she was made of meat, made a truly heartfelt attempt to rip her leg off in return. Luckily for the woman, several zoo workers and other passers by leapt into action, fighting the enormous animal with sticks and their bare fists for several minutes until it eventually let go.

While the interview segment isn't available on the Youtube clip of the incident, the version I saw included several minutes of the lady talking about how she had just "looked up to heaven and begged God to make that bear let go". She then went on about how it was a miracle that the bear turned her loose, seeming to completely miss out on the fact that there were actually other people there, strangers, risking getting their own faces ripped off to save her from her ursine assailant. All in all I suppose that's a pretty minor example, but give credit where credit is due. This lady isn't alive because an ancient Palestinian sky god saved her, she's alive because a bunch of other human beings, none of whom knew her, were willing to put their own lives on the line for the sake of a stranger.

Another formulation of this comes up almost every single time that survivors are interviewed after some sort of disaster. The most egregious example I can think of is an interview I once saw with the mother of a survivor of the Columbine school shootings. "I just can't thank God enough for pushing my baby out of the way of those bullets," she said repeatedly. The unspoken flip side of that coin, unmentioned and perhaps completely absent from her train of thought, is that if God was pushing bullets away from one child, where was He when it came to the other children that were injured or killed during the attack? It would be foolish to begrudge a life spared, but there's a maddening implicit arrogance in those sorts of statements. After all, this woman's child was special enough that the Creator of the Universe intervened on their behalf even as others were slaughtered all around them.

In the scheme of things I suppose this is a relatively minor and idiosyncratic concern of mine, but it seems to me to be just another manifestation of the arrogance of the saved.

A New Business Model...?

Are you worried that you might be left behind to face tribulation when the Rapture comes? I'm not either, but maybe you know someone who is. Apparently that whole scene is a major concern for a fairly large chunk of Americans. A couple of quick Google searches indicate that a lot of Christians are afraid that they're not actually saved - that is to say, they're afraid they only "think" they're gonna go to heaven and that when the end of the world arrives Jesus is actually gonna wallop them with a sack of doorknobs and throw them into hell. Folks are also worried that the same fate awaits their families, as evinced by this article about what to do if your family is hellbound.

Most of this talk revolves around trying to "save" the individual in question (kind of like my one friend's son was trying to do when he plastered one of my books with sticky notes about Ray Comfort.), but there's an emerging trend of just giving up and accepting that your sinful friends and family just won't get Raptured. If only there was a way to say "I told you so" after the fact. Then they might accept Jesus and retroactively get into heaven after Armageddon.

Yeah, if only there was a way...an expensive way...

Oh wait, there is! For a mere pittance of $40 a year You've Been Left Behind will send up to 62 of your friends and family members a nagging message of your own devising after the Rapture. It seems like a risky gambit though. The e-mail messages will only be sent out if 3 of the 5 administrators for the site fail to log in for something like 5 days in a row. Presumably they won't log in because they've been Raptured, but isn't that being pretty optimistic about what percentage of people are going to be Raptured?

Lunatic writer Tim LaHaye estimates that maybe 50% of Americans will be Raptured, but a number of other lunatics disagree, claiming that the number will be much, much smaller. * You've Been Left Behind is premised on the idea that at least 60% of its administrators will be Raptured, but how can believers rest assured that this will happen? What if none of them get Raptured? Then a whole bunch of believers will be out a ton of cash and their friends won't even know that the world's ended! They'll never get that last soul-saving e-mail, they'll go to hell, and all the righteous folk will be out $40. Poor bastards.

Luckily your old pal Skippy has a solution. As a filthy, stinking atheist, I'm guaranteed not to get Raptured even if it were actually real. Listen up, Bible Believers - for a mere $15 a year I'll keep a list of all of your suspected sinner friends. Then, if I wake up one morning and there's an army of demons marching down the street, I'll send them a "Holy crap, it's real!" e-mail the instant I'm done putting on a clean pair of pants. How could it possibly go wrong?

*My own prediction is that somewhere around 0% of people are going to be Raptured, but that's just me.

This is Kentucky, after all...

As I've said on here before, it wouldn't be spring around here if there wasn't a big fat Christian guy with a megaphone standing on the corner of Greenwood Road and Dixie Highway (right in front of the Frisch's) shouting at cars. This year, in fact, he also has two friends with him. One holds a Bible, the other holds a plastic Ten Commandments yard sign, and they are also in the business of shouting at cars.

Now maybe I'm spoiled on the idea of arguments with, I dunno, a little bit of nuance, but I just can't wrap my mind around the idea of anyone decided to convert to a religion because a trio of red-faced yahoos at a bus stop were yelling "accept Jesus!" out across a busy intersection. Hell, maybe it works. Maybe I ought to stand out on the opposite corner with a megaphone and shout something like "Doing good for the sake of helping your fellow human beings live better lives is more moral than being good simply to avoid divine punishment and secure divine rewards!" Or maybe not. I'm not even sure I got get that all out before the traffic light changed. Hmm, maybe I should be happy that my philosophy of life can't be condensed into a handful of megaphone sound bytes.

Yesterday was an unusual day for my street-preaching friend because his usual set of accouterments had been augmented by the addition of a gigantic cross made of 2x4s. I have precisely no sense of scale, but it seemed to me like it was at least a good 8 feet high, maybe closer to ten. Weirdly, however, it was just propped up precariously against a telephone pole, just laying in wait to get bumped and fall on a passer-by. Seems like that would be a liability issue, if not in the minds of the preachin' folk then in the minds of the people that own the Frisch's. Maybe I've hit on an interesting angle for a get-rich-quick scheme...

I encountered a second set of preachers at the flea market yesterday. See, there's a large regional flea market that pops up at the fairgrounds every month or so where you can go to buy cheap socks, mysteriously low-priced electronics, and occasionally llamas. And, thanks to a proselytizing booth that has been set up there (conveniently located between a guy that sells socket wrenches and a lady that sells polished rocks), you can also get some good ol' Ray Comfort-flavored Diet Apologetics.

I bring Ray up not out of a simple desire to snipe at him, but because these folks really are just using a canned set of Ray Comfort products - "Are You A Good Person?" banners and tests, a video of Ray bushwhacking people for Jesus, tons of Ray Comfort fliers, and smattering of his books. They also give out pressed pennies (You know, like the ones you can get out of machines at theme parks.) that say...well...something. There's a limit to how much you can write on a penny, and they've exceeded it. The penny I looked at read the same way that grown-ups in Charlie Brown cartoons talk.

I collect oddball religious pamphlets, so I was milling around looking for something new (alas, nothing) when one of the booth workers came up and started talking to me. I was able to actually avoid getting a spiel by showing that I'm aware of Ray Comfort and mentioning that I've spoken to him on his blog a time or two. The guy was nice - none of the shouting and histrionics of my street corner friend - and offered me numerous pamphlets that I've already got. I asked him if they had Ray's new book about evolution (The same morbid curiosity that drives me to read Sylvia Browne books just to see how dumb they are will ultimately sell me Ray's book.), to which he replied that no, they hadn't come in yet. As I was moving to leave, he asked if I came from a Christian background. I told him that nope, I'm an atheist. The guy said he'd figured as much - why else, he asked, would I be talking to Ray on his blog?* Then he asked me what I think will happen when I die.

"I don't know," I told him. "But I'm not at all convinced that I should be placing all my bets on this."

He didn't have anything to say to that, to my surprise, and just kind of moved on to someone else. Now, I'm aware that that wasn't the strongest argument I've ever made, but that kind of goes back to my point about not being able to say everything I want to say in a short little spiel. The implication I was getting at what that Christianity has no stronger evidence in its favor that other world religions, but that discussion is rather too long for a brief chat at the flea market.

I wonder sometimes if the main reason that atheists interested in deconverting others have a difficult time of it is because most of the intellectual and philosophical bases for atheism can't be articulated with a few pithy sayings or a slogan on a t-shirt. Meanwhile, the basic tenets of evangelical Christianity can be tossed out with a minimum amount of verbosity: "God good!", "You do what God say, God give presents!", "People who aren't like you are bad!"

That being said, I think I'd rather rely on more complex arguments than ones that appeal directly to our tribal caveman impulses.

*Yeah, that line of reasoning strikes me as just a little peculiar too.

The National Day of Pandering is Upon Us...

Today is the National Day of Prayer, an event sponsored by our federal government to pander to the all the religious folks. Yay. Now, technically, if your really want to stretch things, the government can establish "days of prayer" and whatnot so long as they're so limp-dicked and ecumenical that they aren't specifically endorsing any religion. That's also one of the strategies that some states have used to try and sneak prayer into public school. That was the original strategy of the National Day of Prayer folks, but it has metamorphosed relatively quickly into a purely Evangelical Christian event that is headed by James "Focus on the Family" Dobson's wife Shirley.

The National Day of Prayer was Harry Truman's cross-eyed brainchild way back in 1952, and 20 years later it began to become a more organized affair with committees and taskforces and everything else that smacks of both needless bureaucracy and "excessive entanglement". Again, it was originally intended, nominally, to be a "holiday" for all faiths, as well as "spiritual people with no organized religion", but it has turned, predictably, into just another Christian Dominionist enterprise, defended by it's adherents not on Constitutional grounds but by sheer naked assertion that the United States should not be seperated "from our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob".

Wow, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Real ecumenical. Honestly man, even religious folks should be concerned about this kind of government involvement. Do you honestly want the government in charge of the way you worship, even peripherally? The NDoP website even has a special section to remind its thralls how to pray.

In any event, as this particular farce carries on, today is also the National Day of Reason, which happens to fall every year on the first day of May. The traditional activity for we secularists on the National Day of Reason is to donate blood, since, you know, that actually does something to save lives.

Local Flavor Pt. II: The Angel of Jeffersonville

There's a small cemetery about five minutes away from where I work in Jeffersonville, Indiana with a bit of a peculiar reputation. You see, one of the headstones is shaped like a pyramid, save for a large metal eagle stuck to the top of it like a wind vane, and local rumor has it that every Easter a number of people eagerly wait around the grave in anticipation of either its occupant's resurrection or the end of the world itself. It's an odd thing, but most of the local folks take it in stride, because the guy buried there was a bit of a celebrity in Indiana some forty years ago. His name was William Branham, and according to his followers he was a mighty prophet and maybe, just maybe, an angel.

Convinced by childhood hallucinations and astrologers (seriously) that he was meant to do the work of God on earth, Branham eventually set up a faith healing ministry where he did pretty much the same things as every other faith healer in the country. He also claimed to have received visions of the future from God Himself, though the ones that actually had any detail to them (for example, "Franklin D. Roosevelt will run four terms and take America into a second world war.") were only revealed to his followers after the fact. His vaguer prophecies, which were basically along the lines of "America will fall" and "Jesus will come back", were naturally proclaimed loudly and constantly.

Branham's ministry consisted primarily of a religious philosophy that he made up as he went along - Both astrology and the Great Pyramid (for whatever reason) were also the divine word of God (though the KJV Bible had supplanted them), the Bible is the infallible word of God but is subject to amendment by the angels with whom he regularly conversed, he might be "the seventh angel of the Lord", Cain was the result of Eve having sex with "a devil-possessed serpent" and thus women shouldn't get the vote, etc. Branham was also an ardent believer in UFOs, though it is unclear whether he thought them to be the result of aliens or demons. In any event, he preached that they had something to do with the Rapture and whatnot.

As part of his "prophetic gifts" Branham also claimed to have predicted the death of Marilyn Monroe, a claim his followers repeat to this day. Just for fun, let's have a look at that particular prophecy:

"...And then, back there one night, I saw a vision. And it was of a lovely, pretty young woman running; she had her hand here, and she was perishing with a heart attack, a beautiful woman. And she dropped and was gone. And the Angel of the Lord said, "Now, when you hear of this, remember, they're going to say that she committed suicide, but she died in a heart attack. And it's almost four, so you just say four o'clock," and then he left me."

Okay, so let's make a list of the details:

1.) Beautiful young woman.
2.) Drops dead while running.
3.) Died of a heart attack.

Now, Marylin Monroe died of an overdose of barbiturates while in bed, so let's tick off the correct details of this prophecy:

1.) There was beautiful young woman.

Wow! Branham successfully predicted that there was a beautiful young woman somewhere in the world. Everything else was flat out wrong. The best part of course, is that Branham's followers rationalize all this by saying that the claims that Monroe died of a drug overdose are hoaxes. Absolutely delicious.

Well, one way or another, Branham died in a car accident in 1964 (according to his followers he died shortly after using his magical powers to resurrect his wife from the dead). Some of his higher ranking followers tried their hand at resurrecting him from the dead, but apparently they just didn't cut the mustard. Thus, William Branham, who foretold himself to be the one who would preside over the entire "last age of the church" before the end of the world, is planted in the ground up in Jeffersonville, inexplicably followed by a set of peculiar folks who still believe in him.

Oh, and one last thing: Branham predicted that the world would end in 1977. 31 years later, here I sit making fun of him. Now, just like with Marylin Monroe, Branham's followers have an explanation. You see, Branham said he "predicted" the end of the world in 1977, he didn't say he "prophesied" it, meaning that he wasn't quite sure. This is doubly delicious because Branham himself had to jump through some theological hoops shortly after making the claim, noting the while Jesus said no one would know the "day or the hour" when the end of the world would come, he didn't say anything about knowing the year. (That, by the way, is exactly the same explanation given by Edgar Whisenant, another loon, as to why he knew that the world would end in 1988...and then again in 1989 after it didn't end in 1988.) Branham's followers also claim that he's somehow correct in his prediction because Jesus actually returned in 1963(?!) in "Word form".

If you ever want to blow your mind on stupid, check out the main William Branham wesbite here. Wait, or was Branham a dangerous heretic?

Ray Comfort is...Evil...?

My own opinion of Ray is mostly that he's kind of a lame apologist, but that he seems like a decent enough guy. If the rumors that he has a robot monkey are true then his stock goes up accordingly. On the other hand, some guy named David J. Stewart thinks that Ray is actually leading people to their eternal torment in hell. Stewart runs Jesus-is-Savior.com, and he's concerned that Ray is emphasizing acts over faith, thus guaranteeing that Jesus is going to stomp a mudhole in Ray and all of his followers after the time comes.

Granted, this whole acts vs. faith thing (Phrased simply: Do you get into heaven by way of good deeds, pure faith in Jesus, or both?) is among the most boring non-schisms in modern Christianity, but Stewart has banged out several pages about it, including two articles about Ray. (Here and here.) To my way of thinking, it's akin to asking if a Lawful Good fighter can equip a Holy Avenger +5 sword even though he isn't a paladin*, but apparently some Christian thinkers are incredibly interested in this topic. I suppose it is meant to be a matter of heaven vs. eternal doom, but jeeze.

By the way, don't mistake me for agreeing with Stewart here. Jesus-Is-Savior.com is a fiery quasi-Protestant site that reiterates, more shrilly and largely without cartoons, most of the positions that Ray himself takes. I'm just interested to see how one sanctimonious guy paints another sanctimonious guy from the same religion as leading people headlong into hell. I've not seen Ray talk about Stewart at all, though I have every reason to believe that he's aware of him, since I mentioned him on Ray's blog this morning (though that post seems not to have made it through the moderation process for some reason...)

Anyway, it seemed worth a giggle to me. I'd love to see a response from Ray, but I doubt one is forthcoming.

*The answer is yes, but he only gets a +2 bonus on attack and damage and doesn't radiate Protection From Evil.

Debating Christians on the Bible...

One thing Ray Comfort will not do is make any concrete statements of his views on complicated biblical issues like authorship, dating, and archaeological support. There is, however, one fellow on Ray's blog who will; a guy named Garret who is quite well versed in apologetics. In general this guy is pretty pleasant to talk to, because among other things he's at least pretty consistent and seems knowledgeable about his material. Whether he intends to be or not, he's Ray's bulldog who goes on the attack whenever someone asked a biblical question Ray won't answer (read: whenever someone asks a biblical question). He and I have recently been butting heads.

Something that has become problematically apparent is that we dispute the authority of one another's sources almost completely. Some of his sources, like Josh McDowell, are avowed literalists who are well outside the mainstream of scholarship. Others, like Gregory Boyd, who I have some respect for due to his public rejection of dominionist claims, either make pretty familiar arguments or argue subjects that do not necessarily address the point at hand (Boyd is tremendously interested in arguing for the legendary view rather than historical view of Jesus.) I prefer sources like Ehrman, Metzger, and Friedman - all of whom he seems to lump into a class of "liberal theologians" whose arguments he believes to have been "brutalized" by "conservative theologians".

Another situation has cropped up regarding the Johannine Comma, a bit of text in 1 John 5:7 that represents the only explicit delineation of the Trinity in the Bible. It is extremely poorly attested to in Greek sources before the time of Erasmus (Eight references, four of the obvious write-ins, none of them dating earlier than 10th cent. CE.) but it appears in a number of later Latin translations. It currently exists in the modern KJV that the Baptists around here trot around. There is some evidence that it was being referenced by theologians in a time period before we have direct manuscript evidence of it. In the process of glossing over the issue for someone else, I (foolishly) simplified the issue by saying that it did not appear in the Greek before Erasmus. Garret called me on the carpet over it and referred me to this link.

Now, the link is from Logos Resources, a typical apologetics site, and it lays out an argument for why the Johannine Comma is awesome and folks should "regard it as authentic and employ it as the clearest proof-text in the Scripture for the doctrine of the Holy Trinity." I don't think that it was unreasonable of me to take this as a defense of the Johannine Comma on his part, so I typed up a long, kind of grumpy, refutation. But wait, amazingly I was somewhat indignantly informed that the Johannine Comma is a textual aberration (something on which we both agree) and he wouldn't be caught dead with it in his NIV and NASB Bibles - but he was using a source defending it tooth and nail to correct me on the dating. A strange misunderstanding ensued, with me claiming that he used a lame source and Garret asking "where is there a problem" and then proceeding to make the weirdest argument about biblical inerrancy I've ever encountered.


I'm going to post it in his own words because I like the guy and I don't want to be accused of putting words in his mouth:

They [the books of the Bible] are inerrant in their ORIGINAL manuscripts, which no longer exist, but textual critics pull out the original with estimated 99.5% accuracy

I'm not sure where he's pulling the 99.5% accuracy thing from. I've heard it put in Bart Ehrman's mouth, but I've never seen it in his texts. I've seen him use the term "with reasonable accuracy", something with which I would probably tend to agree, but 99.5% is laughable. Maybe that's an assertion of the "conservative" scholarship that I'm just not familiar with. I've asked him to clarify and I imagine he will when he gets the chance. What bothers me more is the perfect out he's crafted for himself with this "inerrant originals but errant copies" thing.

When he says "inerrant", he means (quoting again) "conservative evangelical, bible thumping, hell fire and brimstone preaching, potluck picknicking, homeschoolin' definition of inerrancy" - I think it's fair to say that he subscribes to the "inspired word of God" school of thought. BUT if you can always appeal to an inerrant, perfectly correct original, doesn't that mean you ALWAYS have an out if there's a problem in the modern versions? Sure the Bible says bats are a kind of bird and that there are four-footed flying things (Keizer Ghidorah?) - but the ORIGINAL manuscript had it right. Sure the Bible says pi = 3 and that there were tribal Hebrew armies larger than than the modern U.S. army - but the ORIGINAL manuscript had it right. That's problematic to me, and it should be problematic for him too, for myriad reasons. It's the very definition of special pleading.

I've actually found the whole exchange disheartening because he's obviously a smart guy, but he puts his faith blinders on when it comes to issues of (among other things) comparative religion and the refutations of some apologetics - "I have heard them all, and no objections bug me." I've asked him about egregious archaeological issues, notably the Flood, but he has yet to respond. (Can't be helped- Comments on Ray's blog aren't real time so he can edit them if someone says a no-no.)

I'll grant him that I shouldn't dismiss his arguments out of hand, and I have to admit that I came across that way a couple of times in our recent discussions, but there's also an extent to which I'm rankled by the "no objections bug me" thing - it seems to me like he's reserving the right to reject all interpretations that aren't in line with -his- out of hand. After all, when you can, with a straight face, claim that you have 99.5% inerrant knowledge from the creator of the universe, how can you lose?

The Arrogance of the 'Saved' Part 2

Ray's post from earlier has been jangling around in my brain all day like a handful of nickels in a washing machine. Declaring something a miracle simply because you don't understand it is so arrogant that it's almost awe-inspiring, and it has stuck in my craw much more so than I would have imagined. Likewise the arrogance of those who fancy that the all-powerful creator of the universe is taking an interest in their day-to-day affairs, helping them find parking spaces, arranging lovely vistas, and, once supposes, causing cows to lactate solely for the benefit of the faithful. It must be fun to live in such a self-centered world.

Christianity in particular and the monotheistic religions in general play hosts to a strange dichotomy. First, believers are taught that they are lowly, sinful, useless creatures who couldn't sit the right way on a toilet seat, much less conduct their lives in this big scary world, without their deity to protect them. Meanwhile, they are simultaneously taught that the all-mighty, all-knowing creator of the universe is at their beckon call, ready to answer their prayers and bend to their will. Alternating delusions of worthlessness and abject grandeur constitute symptoms of schizophrenia.

Honestly, think about it for a few minutes. Here are folks who, for example, are content to call the process of lactation a miracle rather than look at the underlying science because their god tells them they have all the answers, yet they're also afraid to make decisions in their own life without begging the same god for answers about the most piddling stuff. (For example, check out this page of Christian dating tips, courtesy of P.Z. Myers' awesome blog. I never expected anyone to seriously ask if their erection was honoring god.)

I have to draw parallels between some subspecies of Christians these days and the weird UFO subcultures such as the Unarius Society that have sprung up over the years. Both are equally hilarious because of the bollocks they spout and the self-contradictory nature of many of their beliefs. I don't dwell on the UFO stuff quite as much because the UFO True Believers don't constitute a major a voting constituency, but sometimes it can be pretty instructive to compare the two.

When life gives you Lemons

Once upon a time in the a faraway land called "Pennsylvania", in a faraway time called 1968, there was a legal dispute that ultimately evolved into the U.S. Supreme Court case known as Lemon vs. Kurtzman. At issue was the question of whether or not the Superintendent of Public Instruction could be allowed by the state to reimburse private schools for textbooks, teacher salaries, etc. using public tax money. For example, would the state of Pennsylvania be allowed/obligated to reimburse a Catholic school for its textbook expenses, or would that violate the Constitution's Establishment Clause?

In 1971 the Supreme Court, headed by conservative Nixon appointee Warren E. Burger, struck down the Pennsylvania law and established what is now called the Lemon Test as a shorthand method of examining whether or not a government action may be in violation of the Establishment Clause. In short, it states that in order to be in keeping with the First Amendment, a law must meet three criteria.

1.) It must serve some clear secular purpose.
2.) It must neither advance nor hinder religion.
3.) It must not result in excessive government entanglement with religion.


The Lemon Test has sadly been used only inconsistently by the Court in the intervening years, but it is still worth using by us lay folk who want to examine the goings on of our increasingly theocratic American government. For example, let's use the Lemon Test to look at Tuesday's House Resolution 847. Now, I'll grant that both Congress and the various state legislatures pass all kinds of silly resolutions stating that this, that, or the other is awesome. However, given the current climate of "culture war" and religious fervor going on in the U.S. today, H.R. 847 poses a special threat to the legacy of government secularism that our founders intended. Anyway, on to the test:

1.) Does H.R. 847 serve a clear secular purpose? Hardly. Heck, most of these generic resolutions in support of Christmas or Karate or Ultraman or whatever else hardly serve a clear purpose of any kind. 847 compounds its general meaninglessness with explicit statements in support of Christian Theology.

2.) Does H.R. 847 advance or hinder a religion? Seems like. Numerous conservative sites are already touting it as an endorsement of a Christian America.

3.) Does H.R. 847 excessively entangle the government with religion? Almost certainly. By explicitly stating, for example, the government's gratitude to Jesus for dying for our sins, the government is taking on a priestly tone that is far from consistent with the views of the founders.

So, clearly, H.R. 847 fails the First Amendment test that was first established by a Nixon appointee to the Supreme Court. Yet it's being met with adulation rather than abject horror by most of our populace. The founders would be appalled.

The Golden Compass

Well, I made it out to The Golden Compass the other night, and I have to say that it's not the ferocious atheist recruiting tool that it has been made out to be by various aspects of the Christian Right. It was, in fact, a decent enough movie, though I can't see myself paying to see it again in the theaters. It seems to be the case that fantasy just isn't my schtick these days. Don't get me wrong, I don't feel like I wasted my money or anything, but it wasn't a film that really stuck with me past the closing credits.

The funny part, of course, is that now some of the rightists are complaining that it isn't ferociously atheistic enough. What!?! Well, it turns out that since the film's anti-theistic message has been toned down from the books, it's now an insidious atheist trap to trick Christian children into reading the books and therefore going to hell. No lie. Check out the Christian Spotlight on the Movies review here. This "review", such as it is, spends the first half dozen paragraphs or so shrieking and moaning about Phillip Pullman and only talks about the film as a bit of an afterthought at the end.

What it comes down to is this- Atheistic views, whether stated in a fierce and forward fashion or in a circumspect and "inoffensive" way, will always be loathed and hated by the religious folk. Somehow it will always be somehow "unfair" and "persecutorial" for atheists to say what's on their minds. I'm inclined these days to agree with P.Z. Meyers - if speaking our minds quietly is unacceptable anyway, then we may as well just speak our minds as loudly as possible.

Quick, pander harder!!!

Well, Congress is working as hard as possible to kiss Christian ass yet again. I'm letting tact fall by the wayside here because this is just so freaking asinine. House Resolution 847 went before Congress today, forcing members to agree or disagree with a statement noting that Christmas is awesome. It's full of platitudes for the Christian right, droning on and on about the "sacrifice of Jesus Christ". Also note number 4 down there, which will surely be trotted out by every rightist out there in the coming months and years. If this does not constitute a government endorsement of a specific religion, WHAT DOES? Would that Thomas Jefferson was alive so that he could put an end to this silliness.

Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith.

Whereas Christmas , a holiday of great significance to Americans and many other cultures and nationalities, is celebrated annually by Christians throughout the United States and the world;

Whereas there are approximately 225,000,000 Christians in the United States, making Christianity the religion of over three-fourths of the American population;

Whereas there are approximately 2,000,000,000 Christians throughout the world, making Christianity the largest religion in the world and the religion of about one-third of the world population;

Whereas Christians identify themselves as those who believe in the salvation from sin offered to them through the sacrifice of their savior, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and who, out of gratitude for the gift of salvation, commit themselves to living their lives in accordance with the teachings of the Holy Bible;

Whereas Christians and Christianity have contributed greatly to the development of western civilization;

Whereas the United States, being founded as a constitutional republic in the traditions of western civilization, finds much in its history that points observers back to its roots in Christianity;

Whereas on December 25 of each calendar year, American Christians observe Christmas , the holiday celebrating the birth of their savior, Jesus Christ;

Whereas for Christians , Christmas is celebrated as a recognition of God’s redemption, mercy, and Grace; and

Whereas many Christians and non-Christians throughout the United States and the rest of the world, celebrate Christmas as a time to serve others: Now, therefore be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives–

(1) recognizes the Christian faith as one of the great religions of the world;

(2) expresses continued support for Christians in the United States and worldwide;

(3) acknowledges the international religious and historical importance of Christmas and the Christian faith;

(4) acknowledges and supports the role played by Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States and in the formation of the western civilization;

(5) rejects bigotry and persecution directed against Christians , both in the United States and worldwide; and

(6) expresses its deepest respect to American Christians and Christians throughout the world.

Parallel Worlds...

One of the weird things about some species of Christianity is their propensity to take things that became popular in the mainstream years ago and mutate them into Christianized dopplegangers. A few months ago, even Youtube got a Christian mimic, Godtube, on which the faithful get the chance to post in the name of their fearsome deity without the risk of accidentally stumbling across some evil secularist's videos.

At the end of the day there is, of course, absolutely nothing wrong with all that, even if a lot of the Christian output seems pretty freakin' goofy. After all, secularists make parodies of Christian symbols, and are in turn parodied right back and so on. As long as everyone is laughing and no one is getting all that hot under the collar, then everything is wavy gravy. The real problems start when discussion and good-natured ribbing (and, yeah, that's a legitimate part of most discussions) break down and folks start having conniption fits.

Of course, people on all sides of religious issues have conniption fits more often than would be optimal. (Honestly, just Google "William Donohue".) Sure, the internet gives a lot of people enormous amounts of keyboard courage, and video exchange sites are rife with puerile videos about how religious folks are dumb or how atheists are lame, but them's the breaks. Problems only really come up when people start claiming that they have the right not to be questioned or insulted. Threats of violence are rare from most mainstream religious groups, but we still have enough Pat Robertsons and Islamic Jihadists who are more than happy to advocate doom and despair for their detractors. And, of course, we'll always have Bill Donohue, who has enough free time to write a 23-page pamphlet (available for a mere pittance of $5) about how a film involving talking polar bears is "most dangerous movie of all time."

All that being said, when the last time you saw anyone carrying a sign that said "Behead those who insult Darwin"...?