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Are You Tolerant?

Wednesday 15 February 2023

While jogging this evening, I listened to a video by Prophet of Zod called “Do We Get Offended Because Christians Believe in Truth?” The entire video is below:

It’s a critique of another video, this one by Impact 360 Institute, a Christian apologetics organization. The original video is here:

It’s a ridiculous caricature of how non-believers view Christians, suggesting that non-Christians feel threatened and offended because Christians believe the things they believe, and these caricature atheists suggest in the name of tolerance that shouldn’t be tolerated. It’s as mind-numbingly stupid as it sounds.

However, there was a link to a set of questions designed to determine if one is tolerant or not. Intrigued, I went ahead and provided my email address (Gmail will sort out any of the spam the organization sends me as a result) and went through the questions.

Question 1: No one has the right to disagree with or criticize another person’s life choices.

The first question is a slow pitch that is based on the premises of the video: atheists are supposedly intolerant in the name of tolerance, and this first question is directed to that assumption. I don’t know of anyone who would agree with this.

Question 2: College students should be protected from hearing ideas they disagree with because that would make them uncomfortable.

There is a fairly robust effort, it seems, to shut out voices that college students seem to disagree with, but it seems to be from the students themselves and not from the institute. The passive construction of the statement (“students should be protected”) only suggests that it’s the college itself that’s doing the protecting. From what I’ve seen, it’s the students who raise a stink. Sometimes, granted, the college caves, but often they don’t.

Question 3: People should have the freedom to believe and publicly promote that two men or two women should be allowed to get married.

Notice the wording: it’s saying that people should be able to promote it. Christians will say they have no issues with people advocating it. When it comes to implementing it, though, they will, as we have seen time and time again, vociferously disagree and fight it in the courts. Which leads to the next statement:

Question 4: A wedding photographer should be forced to use her artistic talents to celebrate and memorialize a same-sex wedding even though it violates her conscience and deeply held religious beliefs.

This is such a loaded, biased question that it’s difficult to know where to start. First, we have the idea that the photographer “should be forced,” which makes it seem like a draconian, totalitarian state that’s behind it without coming out and saying it. It does this through the use of the passive voice. No one is suggesting that a photographer be forced to do this. If the photographer doesn’t want to do it, she doesn’t do it. It does mean, however, that can no longer be a photograph because they are denying their services in a discriminatory fashion. Some will say this is the same as forcing, but people have to do things in their jobs all the time that they don’t really want to do. It’s not, I suspect, that they don’t want to “celebrate and memorialize” a same-sex wedding; they’re homophobic and don’t want to witness this wedding. Fine — don’t. But you can’t withhold services because of that. We can frame this racially and see how bigoted it is: “A wedding photographer should be forced to use her artistic talents to celebrate and memorialize a [mixed-race] wedding even though it violates her conscience and deeply held religious beliefs.” Suddenly, it looks different — except that it doesn’t.

There’s also the word “celebrate.” The wedding photographer is not a guest. She’s not celebrating anything. She’s recording the event. That’s it. By doing so, she’s not approving or disapproving of it — she’s taking pictures. If she’s not willing to provide her services to anyone who wants to pay for them, she needs to find another line of work.

Question 5: No one should be compelled to embrace any religion against his will.

This is meant to help the individual (most likely a Christian since it is an apologetics site) feel good about their religious views: “We’re not interested in forcing our religion on others!” Except if you’re trying to outlaw (to use the previous example) same-sex marriage, you are attempting to force that particular tenant of your religion on everyone. You’re compelling everyone to follow that particular part of your religion.

Question 6: People should have the freedom to publicly promote their view based on science that unborn babies are genetically distinct, living, and whole human beings and that their human rights should be protected by not aborting them.

Talk about stacking the deck: their view is “based on science.” “We’re just basing our views on science — how can you argue with that?” Unless we bring up all the science they don’t like — evolutionary theory and global warming come to mind.

Question 7: Parents should have the freedom to believe, publicly promote, and teach their children that God designed marriage for a man and woman for a lifetime.

Now we’re back to same-sex marriage — isn’t that what it’s always about? Obviously, parents have the right to teach this, but implicit in this is the notion that they want to be able to support draconian laws to stop same-sex marriage. And that’s fine, I suppose: it wouldn’t be freedom if you couldn’t be free to be a bigot. (Yes, I am aware of the loaded language I just used.)

By the same token, they have to accept that some of us are fine with same-sex marriage and think it might even be — gasp! — a question of equal rights.

Question 8: Muslims should have the freedom to believe and publicly promote that Allah is the one true God and Muhammad is his prophet.

What an out-of-left-field question! I really have nothing to say about it.

Question 9: It’s not OK to respectfully challenge the truth of another person’s sincerely held beliefs.

Christians themselves don’t seem okay with this. “Why are you trying to push your atheism on us?!” they decry when all atheists have been doing is pushing back on centuries of the majority trying to stop them from “respectfully challenge[ing] the truth of another person’s sincerely held beliefs.”

Question 10: People of faith should not be forbidden to worship God according to their conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions.

That depends, doesn’t it? What about snake handers? They claim that three verses in the Bible allow, even call for, the handling of snakes as evidence of faith:

  • Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you. (Luke 10:19)
  • And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. (Mark 16:17-18)
  • And when they were escaped, then they knew that the island was called Melita. And the barbarous people shewed us no little kindness: for they kindled a fire, and received us every one, because of the present rain, and because of the cold. And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks, and laid them on the fire, there came a viper out of the heat, and fastened on his hand. And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on his hand, they said among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live. And he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm. Howbeit they looked when he should have swollen, or fallen down dead suddenly: but after they had looked a great while, and saw no harm come to him, they changed their minds, and said that he was a god. (Acts 28:1-6)

Yet several states have legislation on the books that forbids this. Isn’t that a restriction of their right “to worship God according to their conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions”?

My Result

I answered as one might expect a left-leaning moderate atheist to answer. The response:

Congratulations, you are a truly tolerant person! In a culture that operates with a confused view of tolerance that thinks “real tolerance means agreeing that everyone’s moral, religious, or social viewpoints are equally valid and true,” you have rightly rejected this false tolerance because it’s unlivable. True tolerance respectfully allows others the right to be wrong because we disagree with them. The good news is you have strong beliefs about the way things should be. Continue to courageously and respectfully make your case and let the best ideas win. Is it messy? Yes. But true tolerance is the only way we will discover the truth about questions that matter.

Yet I’m sure in discussion, the makers of this “quiz” would determine that I am, in fact, not tolerant.

Why Don’t I Believe?

Tuesday 24 January 2023

I was having an exchange on Twitter (I would say “conversation,” but that would be a terribly inflated label given the medium) about my disbelief. “Do you know why the Bible says you don’t believe?” my interlocutor asked.

I was confident I’d hear Romans 1:20: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” It’s a favorite among apologists, so I was ready to hear my questioner suggest that I really had no excuse, that I did believe but was just hiding the fact — probably because I “just want to sin.” These moves are as standard as any established chess opening.

Taking that all into consideration, I responded, “I have a hard heart. I refuse to see despite the evidence all around me. Lay the verse from Romans on me, baby! I’m ready!”

Instead, the fellow replied with a verse I’d never really noticed: “He has blinded their eyes and he hardened their heart, so that they would not see with their eyes and perceive with their heart, and be converted and I heal them” (John 12:40).

How could I have not noticed this verse before? This passage presents a positively damning view of this god, and I pointed this out: “He then is responsible. Your god created me, blinded me, then damned me for being blind. Do you guys not see how sick this is? Do you guys not understand it’s perverse thinking like this that prompts so many to question their faith?”

I was expecting an explanation for how this can make the New Testament god appear to be heartless and even capriciously cruel, that preventing someone from believing and then punishing him for that disbelief is in fact some unfathomable mystery that ultimately will work to this god’s “greater glory” (what an immature, insecure being this god of Christianity is, always demanding praise and worship and smiting those who don’t fall in line — sounds a bit like North Korea). Instead, I got another verse:

But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the [veil] is taken away in Christ.

2 Corinthians 3:14 (New King James Version)

That “Old Testament” bit sounded a bit strange, so I looked it up to find other translations:

  • But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. (New International Version)
  • The people were stubborn, and something still keeps them from seeing the truth when the Law is read. Only Christ can take away the covering that keeps them from seeing. (Contemporary English Version)
  • But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. (New Revised Standard Version)

I suspect this translation to “Old Testament” instead of “old covenant” is to create a sense of continuity between the New Testament and what it views itself as replacing in some sense — a propaganda move, in other words.

Still, I resisted the urge to comment on that (and thus radically derail the topic under discussion) and stuck to the point: “So your god blinds me and then punishes me for being blind. How can you not see how perverse that is?”

He, however, had no qualms about radically changing the topic, which I see as another typical apologetic move. Instead of dealing with what I said, he replied, “I see someone who fights tooth and nail against God. What makes you more deserving? You are already under the judgement [sic] of God.”

“It’s like you willfully misconstrue my objection,” I concluded.

Fences and Guardrails

Thursday 19 January 2023

“God just puts these laws in place for our protection!” seems to be a common apologetic response to criticism of the laws of the Bible and the sense of absurdity some of them engender. There’s even a cartoon about it.

This is such a silly cartoon — it shows the absurdity of the argument better than apologists recognize. Most basically, the things that this god’s law supposedly protects us from were created by that god himself! He made all the universe, according to apologists. He created all the laws of physics. He created all the contingencies and consequences. In other words, to relate it back to the cartoon, he created the fence (“guardrail”) and the cliff. And he put the guardrail right at the edge of the cliff.

To turn it back to Christianity itself, this god created the laws and the consequences for breaking them (i.e., eternal damnation). If it were any other way, he would be dealing with something he didn’t create.

This also plays into the idea of Jesus’s salvific sacrifice. He’s saving us from the consequences of breaking some god’s laws. The trouble is, according to the doctrine of the trinity, he is that god! He’s saving us from himself.

No matter how many times I point this out to believers, they just don’t see it. They bring up free will and all that: “God created us with free will, and we can abuse it and reject God.”

“Yes, but this god put in place the laws and their consequences. He’s the one sending you to hell and then saving you from it,” I reply.

“Yes, but he loves us so much that he sacrificed himself for us, to pay our debt.”

“Our debt to him!” I want to scream.

If I am beating a child and then stop beating that child, I haven’t saved him any more than the mafia, when receiving payment, is not saving you from anyone other than themselves.

How do they not see this?

Slippin’ and Slidin’

Tuesday 10 January 2023

Got into a discussion on Twitter with a Christian about morality. I made the point that Christianity invents the idea of sin (the transgression of a diety’s law) and then sells the solution (Jesus). My interlocutor quickly moved to the “you have no grounds for morality if you don’t believe in a god” argument. I said,

I know what you’re getting at. I’ve seen it all before. It’s a tiresome road to travel down. Your god commands the stoning of incorrigible children (Deut 21:18-21), so I don’t think believers in the Bible can take the moral high ground as you’re trying to do.

The interlocutor replied,

What you just cited was never Carried out. Even the Talmud says this. This was stated by Moses to put fear into GROWN children to obey the commandments to love their mother and father.

To which I responded,

Carried out or not, it was commanded. By your god, no less. You can’t deny that. The fact that it wasn’t carried out goes against your assertion that morality comes from your god. If it wasn’t carried out, it means people realized it’s a sick command.

To which she replied,

How could my God command it if he doesn’t exist?

I answered,

Just because I say “Juliet made a bad decision” doesn’t mean I have to believe she existed. I’m working within the framework of your holy book. It’s that simple.

What I learned from this exchange is the slithery, slimy nature of religious discussions. One topic slides off to another and to still another. Exhausting.

Babcia’s Candle

Thursday 5 January 2023

Any time the sky began growing dark with threatening clouds, Babcia would always shuffle to the kitchen, light a votive candle, and place it in a plate of water.

The motivation behind the small plate of water was obvious: it was protection against an unintentional fire. The bottom of the candle could get quite hot, after all — an entirely reasonable precaution.

The candle itself, though, was to ward off the approaching storm. I’m assuming prayers accompanied the candle, but they must have been silent because the only thing I ever heard Babcia say was, “I must light a candle to keep the storm away.”

If the storm never appeared or the clouds dissipated completely, I’m sure this felt like confirmation of the ritual’s effectiveness. But it didn’t always work. What then?

Looking back on it, this is the same approach Christians take to prayer in general. When a believer prays for something and God appears to have answered the prayer, then it’s confirmation of prayer’s effectiveness. But what happens when God doesn’t seem to have answered the prayer? Most Christians simply move the goalposts.

Let’s say a young child runs out into the road after an errant ball toss and gets struck by a car. The child’s family rushes out to the child lying on the street, praying all the way. If the child gets up, the prayers were answered: God saved the child from all harm. If the child gets taken to the hospital but survived, the prayers were answered: God saved the child from serious harm. If the child ends up paralyzed because of the accident, the prayers were answered: God spared the child’s life. If the child ends up dying, the prayers were answered: God has taken the child into eternal bliss.

This type of thinking persists in the conservative Christian community, and it begins to affect how they view other things. Just look at the followers of the MAGA movement, in particular Mike Lindell and his pronouncements that soon his lawyers will present information that will change everything about the 2020 election. He gives a date by which everything will change; that date comes; nothing changes; he grows silent; after a while, he gives a new date, and the cycle repeats. He’s been doing it for nearly two years now, and those who follow him and believe him give him a pass each and every time.

What can we make of this mentality? If nothing counts against a claim, then it’s not rational in any sense. Unfalsifiable claims are meaningless, and because they’re unfalsifiable, nothing counts against them. But in the case of prayer and the My Pillow guy, they have been falsified, time and time again, and yet believers hold fast. The belief itself, the faith itself, is more important, it seems, than truth.

The Priest

Tuesday 6 December 2022

Priests in the Catholic church have always been afforded special status. Priests in Poland have almost god-like status. Why is this? A post on a Catholic social media stream might offer some insight:

If he is “another Christ” and “God’s Representative,” how could his status increase except by being declared an actual god?

Election 2022

Tuesday 8 November 2022

It was a little after six when I realized I hadn’t gone to vote. I’d been putting it off all day, spending the day working on our yearbook for 2022, taking the kids on a bookstore outing, and learning that the $3,000 we spent to fix our outdoor HVAC unit was completely wasted. So, a mixed bag.

The line for voting stretched into the parking lot, but it was moving fast. Even if it wasn’t, I was going to stick it out: “Vote like democracy depends on it” has been an idea consistently popping up on social media, and I’m likely to agree. The radical GOP (which stands for Gaslight Obstruct and Project) seems determined to destroy our democratic institutions, and their traitorous support of a man who tried to overturn a fair election has made me say numerous times, “I’d vote for Satan himself before I’d vote Republican.” Besides, the Republican party of the past is just that: they are, by and large, a bunch of conspiracy theory anti-democracy grifters who take their supporters to be naive children who don’t remember what they said five minutes ago.

As I entered the voting booth, I clicked on the option to vote for the entire Democratic ticket, then clicked through the options to check each selection. It was only then that I realized how many races were one-person (usually one-man) races, with only a Republican running. In all of those races, I cast no vote, though I thought about writing in myself.

What an amusing situation that creates, though: so many Bible-belt Christians here are so anti-communist that they see communism where it doesn’t even exist. They equate anything left-leaning with socialism, which they in turn equate with the very worst version of it (i.e., the Soviet Union). However, elections in the USSR looked more like elections in South Carolina than Republicans here would probably like: one option, and one alone.

If the modern GOP had its way, that’s exactly what they’d enforce.

5 Shocking Proofs of Jesus’ Resurrection?

Friday 4 November 2022

Apologist Allen Parr posted a video in which he made the following bold claim:

Have you ever wondered whether the resurrection of Jesus really happened? I get it. I mean, how can we know FOR SURE that the resurrection of Jesus was an actual event in human history? Or have we been believing some myth or fable that has been passed down about the resurrection of Jesus for nearly 2000 years? In this video I give you 5 undeniable proofs of Jesus’ resurrection.

Video Description

Undeniable?! That’s a strong term. Let me see what I can do with them.

Proof 1: The Precautions of the Romans

Parr suggests that “[i]n order to prevent Jesus’ body from being stolen, the Romans took three precautions (Mt. 27:64-66),” which he lists a guard, a stone, and a seal.

According to Parr, the Romans “posted a squad of 10-30 soldiers to protect and guard the tomb where Jesus’ body was laid.” This suggests that the Romans were worried that someone would steal the body. This seems like a legitimate precaution to prevent theft of the body. In addition, the Romans “placed a stone weighing close to 3,500 pounds in front of the tomb preventing people from coming in or out.” Again, a wise precaution if they’re worried about grave robbing. Finally, the Romans “placed a Roman seal across the stone that, if tampered with, was punishable by death.” This is all very logical.

There’s only one small problem with all this: it depends solely on one source, the Bible. This is a problem not because we have reason to doubt that Romans would not have set guards; it’s problematic because we have reason to doubt that they would have disposed of Jesus’s body in any other way than was customary: a mass grave.

Proof 2: The Faith of the Disciples

This is a favorite among apologists: Parr asks, “WHY WOULD THEY RISK THEIR LIVES FOR SOMETHING THEY KNEW WAS A LIE?” (The all-caps screaming was from him not me.) Parr’s reasoning goes like this: “Before Jesus’ crucifixion, the disciples were fearful and ran for their lives (Mt. 14:50). After the resurrection, they became fearless, willing to get beaten, burned, beheaded, sawed in two, stoned and crucified!”

Yet it doesn’t follow that the only other option to “Jesus was really resurrected” is “The early Christians knowingly promoted the like that Jesus was resurrected.” In other words, this argument rests on a false dichotomy.

Furthermore, there’s very little evidence that anyone died because they were Christians who refused to renounce their faith. Certainly, Nero persecuted the Christians, but this was because they were a convenient group to scapegoat. It’s not at all clear that Christians could have saved their lives by renouncing their faith. Furthermore, the persecution of the Christians was, at least to some degree, an exaggeration developed later in Christian history to back up the notion Jesus taught that people would be “persecuted in [his] name.”

Proof 3: Jesus’ Post-Resurrection Appearances

Parr here makes two simple points. First, he says, “The Bible teaches that Jesus spent 40 additional days on earth after His resurrection making convincing proofs that He was alive (Acts 1:3).” Again, the only source for this is the Bible, which is not exactly an unbiased source of unquestionable authorship. Much of the New Testament was written two or more decades after the events it supposedly narrates, and the gospel authors are completely anonymous.

Parr’s second point is that in addition “to appearing multiple times to His disciples, Paul recounts when Jesus appeared to over 500 people at one time who were still alive to give testimony at the time of Paul’s writing (1 Cor. 15:6).” This is a second- or third-hand account at best and even if they do exist, these 500 are completely anonymous.

Proof 4: Secular History Confirms It

Parr argues that if “the Bible was the only book that recorded the resurrection, people might criticize us for using circular reasoning.” He insists that “it is well documented in SECULAR history books,” then lists two: Josephus, The Words of Flavius Josephus and Thomas Arnold’s History of Rome. These are problematic for several reasons, including the most basic being that Josephus didn’t write anything called The Words of Flavius Josephus. He wrote The Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews, and these works appear in The Works of Flavius Josephus. It might just be a typo, but it certainly wears at the credibility. But what does Josephus actually say about Jesus?

About this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was the achiever of extraordinary deeds and was a teacher of those who accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When he was indicted by the principal men among us and Pilate condemned him to be crucified, those who had come to love him originally did not cease to do so; for he appeared to them on the third day restored to life, as the prophets of the Deity had foretold these and countless other marvelous things about him, and the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day.

Yet the bit about “He was the Messiah” is clearly a Christian addition as Josephus was a Jew and would not have accepted Jesus as the Messiah.

There is a second mention of Jesus in Josephus, but it is weaker than the first:

Having such a character [“rash and daring” in the context], Ananus thought that with Festus dead and Albinus still on the way, he would have the proper opportunity. Convening the judges of the Sanhedrin, he brought before them the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, whose name was James, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned.

It’s not even about Jesus but about his brother, James. What’s important to note, though, is that neither of Josephus’s passages deals with Jesus’s supposed resurrection. We might use them to confirm that Jesus existed but nothing more.

As far as Thomas Arnold’s History of Rome goes, I’m not even sure why Parr would suggest that this is pertinent in any way since it was published in 1838, a full 18 centuries (or if we’re going to put it in the context of the Old Testament, 180 decades) after Jesus’s death. That Parr includes this is simply laughable.

After this, though, Par includes a list of “ATHEISTS WHO BECAME CHRISTIANS”

  • Frank Morrison, Who Moved the Stone?
  • Lee Stroebel, The Case for Christ
  • Josh McDowell, The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict

I have no idea why he included this — it has nothing to do with secular historians confirming Jesus’s resurrection.

Proof 5: The Missing Body Was Never Found

Parr’s final argument is the weakest: the body never turned up. He argues, “If Jesus never rose from the dead, then the Romans could have produced the body, thus destroying Christianity forever.” But this assumes that the first-century Romans cared enough about Christianity or viewed it as any threat to do something like this. Remember: this is just after the supposed resurrection. How many Christians were there? How much of a threat did the Romans think they posed? Apocalyptic sects were all over the place: why would they have cared about this particular one?

Parr concludes, “But…the body was never found in the tomb because Jesus rose from the dead!” Or maybe because it was tossed in a mass grave like all other crucifixion victims’ bodies.

Key Takeaway

Parr writes in his “Key Takeaway” that the “reality of the resurrection will not only give you more confidence about what you believe, but also give you the knowledge and ammunition you need to silence those who are skeptical about the Christian faith.” If this is the best he’s got, I’d advise his followers not use these arguments on any vaguely-informed skeptic.

Original Video

More Predictions

Wednesday 21 September 2022

Dave Pack is at it again. He’s predicting Jesus’s return within the next nineteen hours:

19 Hours

In case that’s not clear, that’s tomorrow:

2 Choices (Tomorrow)

We can forgive him for not having figured it out sooner — after all, no one else has figured this out:

Figured it out

He’s figured out lots of other things, so we should be grateful for that.

Tickle

He’d predicted this earlier, and it didn’t come to pass, but in the end, he was just a day off. A day and nine years:

9 Years off

Still, it’s a relief to know the return of Jesus is happening tomorrow.

At least, that’s what he said on 17 September…

Exchange

Sunday 18 September 2022

But God is NOT a commanding officer, now is He??

Of course, he is.

Who made him commanding office? One of higher authority had to do so. So who was it?

Don’t be silly with semantics. You know what I meant.

As you do mine. God IS and IS in command. So why do you rebel against your commander? And don’t pull this crap that He’s not YOUR commander.

But he’s not. Sorry — had to pull it.

What any rebel should say. Any treasonous rebel. Any delusional, treasonous rebel.

I’ll bet you just can’t wait to be in heaven watching me writhe in hell, right?

But what about YOU??? Evidently you wrote and then deleted. Afraid of your own lie? Yeah it’s hard work figuring new ways to ignore truth. Why are you avoiding the issue?

I originally said that there’s no hate like Christian love. You’re a great example of that. Then I thought you’d probably say something like, “I look forward to watching you roast,” or some such nonsense. I’m not afraid of anything; I’m not ignoring the truth; I’m not avoiding any issues. I just don’t believe. But I’m not dripping with only slightly concealed hatred like you are.

Why is it “hatred” to say you are a rebel against God? Or why is EVERYTHING that is a contrary view labeled “hatred” by you people?? It’s like the only verb you know.

So many Christians can’t see themselves as others see them. It’s a form of hatred because it’s a judgment made on a personal standard that insinuates that joy I suggested you feel when you contemplate me in hell. It suggests that you will stand in judgment alongside your god and say with mock sadness, “Lord, you know best, but of course, I can’t say anything about this miserable wretch other than to say he’s rebelled against you — which of course you already know, Lord,” all the while anticipating getting watch me get my dues. “I told you so!” you can say. So on second thought, perhaps it’s not hatred as much as childishness.

And how others see is always right and correct, huh? So we must cater to what YOU think? How bout non-Christians can’t see themselves the way God sees them? And once again, the unbeliever makes a shambles of Christian doctrine while congratulating himself in his mockery. Dude…we were ALL rebels. We say nothing about you that we couldn’t say of ourselves.

“How bout non Christians can’t see themselves the way God sees them?” — See? You’re speaking for your god, standing by his side and passing judgment, eager to see your so-called enemy cast into the flames. As for “And once again, the unbeliever makes a shambles of Christian doctrine while congratulating himself in his mockery.” — I don’t even see where that came from. I watched a couple of your videoes, so I know you have a real persecution complex like so many Christians, and you’ll read into things persecution that’s not even there, but I wasn’t even talking about any Christian doctrine. I was talking about your attitude. This whole thing started with me making an off-hand comment about the Christian god being a sort of commander-in-chief (You know, like “Onward Christian Soldiers”?), and you’ve blown this up into — I don’t even know what. I’m just shaking my head in disbelief: I don’t get you or your attitude. I never said anything derogatory about Christians or Christian beliefs. I just made a silly comment. Calm down, man. This has gotten way out of hand: you’re frothing at the mouth.

No I’m nailing you to the wall for bring so flippant. You make it sound like you’re not even referring to Christianity. Liar. Persecution complex? Not here, bud. You don’t know what that is anymore more than you understand rebellion.

I read that imagining John Wayne was saying it. Very effective.

Please identify this “hate”. You make reference to it but do not state what you consider hateful.

I did. A few comments ago. (That comment didn’t sound so great in a John Wayne voice. I was hoping for more “nail you to the wall” kind of bravado.)

Genocide

Thursday 15 September 2022

The commands to genocide in the Old Testament are particularly troubling for most people except for the most basic, literal-thinking fundamentalist (Protestant or Catholic). For them is simple: God said it, so it’s morally right. Most other Christians take a little more nuanced approach — at least the ones who know about the passages and want to deal with them honestly.

Capturing Christianity — a YouTube apologetics channel — invited Dr. Randal Rauser, who describes himself as “progressively evangelical, generously orthodox, rigorously analytic, [and] revolutionary Christian thinking,” to discuss the troubling passages. He wrote Jesus Loves Canaanites, a book that deals with the various Christian attempts to explain these passages. I listened to the interview on my run this evening, and two things stood out.

How do we make sense of the fact that God is supposed to be love and yet he commands all these awful things? Surely this creates some cognitive dissonance that Christians want to deal with. How do we deal with it?

Rauser explains that, in dealing with these passages, Christians need to “develop different reading strategies to minimize the cognitive dissonance that is created when we read these passages.” Earlier he mentions a new convert who discovered these passages and found them troubling, and Rauser suggests that new converts who haven’t been “inculcated” with these reading habits might find these passages to be stumbling blocks to their faith. It’s interesting that he uses the word “inculcated” because the definition Oxford is “instill (an attitude, idea, or habit) by persistent instruction.” Persistent instruction — drilling this into one’s head. So in order to deal with these issues, one has to have drilled into one’s head certain reading habits. What are these habits?

One of them is to ask if a given interpretation develops a love of God and man. If it doesn’t, it’s not the intended interpretation. But this puts the cart before the horse: one should not have to read the Bible with an ideal interpretive framework in place that automatically defaults to erring on the side of the Bible. That’s not critical study; that’s mindless acceptance.

Another reading technique is to apply what we know about God and ask if a certain interpretation reflects that.

He uses the extreme example of Dena Schlosser, who in 2004 used a knife to amputate the arms of her eleven-month-old baby because it was a sacrifice God had asked her to make. Rauser insists that

the vast majority of people today, we don’t even give it a moment’s consideration that God possibly willed such a thing to happen because we believe it is fundamentally inconsistent with who God is. And we would say, maybe she was influenced by a demonic entity or she is mentally ill, schizophrenic or something else, but what we don’t think seriously is that God maybe or possibly commanded that.

Yet I don’t see why we can’t imagine God commanding that: he did command Abraham to do just the same thing. If we’re going to accept that Abraham was justified in what he did, we have to at least consider that Schlosser was justified in what she did. After all, who are we to say that God wasn’t talking to her?

But of course, we will say that because it’s the only thing we can say. To suggest that God might be getting back into the business of having people slaughter each other at his bidding opens up such potential chaos and terror that it’s unimaginable.

A favorite question of skeptics when the story of Abraham and Isaac comes up is to ask the Christian, “What would you do if God commanded you to kill your child?” Most Christians will hem and haw and suggest that they’d have themselves checked into a hospital to check for mental illness and yet at the same time deny that possibility for Abraham.

I commend Rauser for dealing with the issue, but like Trent Horn, he seems just to be offering possible ways out that allow a Christian some breathing room from the crowding cognitive dissonance that rattles thinking Christians’ faith.

Strawman

Wednesday 14 September 2022

This whole discussion starts with a sort of ad hominem attack on Harris, suggesting his view is “naive” and (later) silly. That’s amusing since all Harris was doing was paraphrasing the basic core of the Biblical account of the ascension and second coming. There’s a literal up motion and a down motion: Up toward the sky for the ascension, down toward earth for the second coming. All this “vast” and “rich” and “nuanced” theory that Davis presents is simply modern apologists’ attempts at recasting these events in a way that doesn’t so clearly contradict science. The fact is simple: for most of Christian history, a literal upward motion to heaven above us and vice versa was the only understanding. If you’re criticizing Harris’s view, you are in fact criticizing the Biblical account. All the theories Davis presents are simply speculative apology that has absolutely no support in the Biblical text.

Sapiens Thoughts

Monday 12 September 2022

I’ve been reading Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, and two early passages have led me to see religion in a whole new way. Unfortunately, neither epiphany is ultimately flattering for religion, but at least one thought from the book got me thinking that religion was a useful tool in our development.

The first realization comes from the argument religionists make about the existence of morality being ultimately due to the existence of a law-giver that created a conscience in us all that is somewhat similar. Murder, theft, and lying seem to be universally bad — how could this be unless some god “wrote that on our heart” to use a Christian apologist metaphor. Harari points out, however, that because we Homo sapiens walk upright, our hips have to be narrower, which led to an evolutionary preference to earlier birth. But human babies need much more care and development time than babies of other species, and this necessitated help from others. This need, in turn, led to evolutionary selection for people more likely to cooperate and live together peacefully. And this would eventually result in a moral system that prized compassion and cooperation — without the need for a god.

The second realization came from Harari’s contention that Homo sapiens development into a species that can coexist in large groups, much larger than our closest evolutionary relative, the chimp, has to do with our ability to use language to describe things that aren’t actually there. To create fiction, in other words. He writes, “Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths.” He continues,

Two Catholics who have never met can nevertheless go together on crusade or pool funds to build a hospital because they both believe that God was incarnated in human flesh and allowed Himself to be crucified to redeem our sins. States are rooted in common national myths. Two Serbs who have never met might risk their lives to save one another because both believe in the existence of the Serbian nation, the Serbian homeland and the Serbian flag.

This common myth enables large-scale cooperation that doesn’t appear in the societies of other apes.

The problem, though, is that we are at a point in our development in which the competing myths can go to war with each other with catastrophic effects for the entire plant…

Friday Night Football

Friday 2 September 2022

When I was in high school, Friday night football was, during the beginning of the year, the highlight of the week. Everyone would arrive early to stake out their seats and make sure all the lowly freshmen got the worst seats. Friends saved seats for each other, and had cell phones existed then, they likely would have been texting each other, asking where they were, demanding that they hurry.

All the students went to cheer on the team, to hang out, to escape parents, to escape the everyday. The cheerleaders led everyone with raucous, taunting chants, and the marching band took the spotlight during halftime. The football players looked, and probably felt, a bit like stars.

My next-door neighbor played on the football team, and though we were not close, I’d wish him luck with the game if I saw him that day. The neighbor across the street also played, but even though I was closer to him than my next-door neighbor during our childhood, by the time we reached high school, we rarely talked.

Win or lose, spirits were always high. While everyone wanted the home team to win, it wasn’t just about the game’s outcome. It was about the friendship and closeness that everyone experienced.

At least I’m assuming it was, for I never went to a Friday night high school football game as a kid. Not once. It was in part because of a lack of desire, I suppose: football was never really something I loved except for a short couple of years when I was in second and third grade. (Or was it first and second grade? Or third and fourth grade? Hard to remember.) The main reason I never went was because it was off limits: growing up in a sabbatarian sect, we observed Friday night sundown to Saturday night sundown as the Sabbath, and all worldly cares and events went by the wayside. A Friday night football game was most certainly out of the question.

I never really wanted to go, but I wouldn’t have been able to even if I did want it.

Or I tell myself that. Could my inability to go, my knowledge long before I could develop a desire to go that I would never be allowed to go, my certainty that there was something deeply and spiritually wrong with going to watch a football game on Friday night — could that have tempered my desire before it ever developed?

I tell myself that I would not have felt comfortable there even if I did go because most of that crowd — the in-crowd, the popular crowd — felt uncomfortable. But why? If I’m honest it’s because I was always distancing myself to begin with: I knew I could never really do any of the things they did on the weekend even if I was invited, even if they begged me because they thought I was the most amazing person to be around, even if I were king of homecoming (which I could have never been because, well, it’s probably obvious). I’d never been terribly close to any of them outside of school (and perhaps playing in the neighborhood after school) during elementary school, and that moved with me into junior high where it settled into a sort of permanent quasi-outsider sense that I carried with me into college.

So at tonight’s high football game — the first I, at nearly fifty years old, had ever been to in my life — I found myself wondering how different my light might have been if I had not grown up in what can only charitably be called a sect. I’m not bitter about my childhood; I don’t regret that life; I appreciate what I got in return for Friday night and Saturday events.

But I still can’t help but wonder…

A Short Response

Wednesday 31 August 2022

I’ve been listening to a discussion between Alex O’Connor, an atheist, and Trent Horn, a Catholic. At one point, an audience member asks Horn a simple question: what level of evil would have to exist in the world for you to think that perhaps it’s an unjustifiable level of evil that thus counts as evidence against the existence of a god. His answer was revealing, so I made a one-minute response video.

Here’s the whole discussion:

Belief Revisited

Friday 19 August 2022

It’s a quote I’ve used twice here:

[Belief] may be the battle of your life, but emotionally and intellectually, it could also be the most exhilarating one you’ve ever engaged in. Whether you experience God’s reality or are just intellectually intrigued by the idea, God can be a very real force in peoples’ lives – spiritual, emotional, supportive – that almost no other system can offer. But you must gird yourself for a fight and know that you’re going to have to try to reconcile very difficult things. Or at least hold them in suspension and bounce them back and forth and get tired. There’s no quick fix, but we have the benefit of drawing on thousands of years of religious thinking. You can’t learn it over a weekend. It’s an engagement for the rest of your life.

Burton Visotzky

I originally included it while discussing Winifred Galligher’s Working on God, in which it’s originally quoted.

Belief

I also reposted the quote on its own a few years later, undoubtedly just to have an easy way out of keeping up some artificial posting streak:

Burton Visotzky

In some ways, I think I admired that quote, but now, I view it so very differently.

Visotzky writes that believers are “going to have to try to reconcile very difficult things. Or at least hold them in suspension and bounce them back and forth and get tired.” I originally read this very ambiguously, not really thinking about what exactly one must reconcile. As I’ve returned to my skeptical positions of the past after a sojourn in faith, I see it simply: you’re going to have to reconcile contradictions or ignore them. Contradictions between faith claims and scientific claims. Contradictions between various faiths’ claims. Contradictions between claims of omnipotence and omnibenevolence and the evil we see around us. Contradictions within traditions’ holy books. You might “get tired,” he suggests. I think that’s what happened to me: I got tired of the continual cognitive disonance.

Far from being a wise quote, I see this now as the dysfunctional heart of faith itself: it’s seeing one thing that has an abundance of evidence and believing another that has little to no real evidence.

Connected to Christ

Saturday 13 August 2022

There’s an infographic I’ve seen several times on several social media platforms. It’s meant to encourage Christian parents to take concrete steps to make sure that their children stay Christian.

The fact that such an infographic exists let alone that it has gone somewhat viral speaks to the crisis in which contemporary Christianity finds itself. The “Nones” are the fastest-growing demographic in the States. This has a lot to do with the explosion of social media in the last decade. Skeptics have made good use of these media and present opposing viewpoints that churches were otherwise historically able to keep somewhat hidden from young people. No more — now skeptics are explaining why Christian theology makes little to no sense and young people are listening. Additionally, Christianity’s historic position on gay rights and its relative opposition to science (the Catholic Church’s weak protests notwithstanding) leave young believers out of step with church teachings.

If they’re connected with Christ, why are there so many people involved in this? If Jesus is real and the connection is real, why does it need to be so supported socially? Each one of these is a social connection. Each one is an example of what sociologists call plausibility structures. The more people someone has around them supporting their beliefs, the more likely they are to hold those beliefs.

If we look at the wording of each one, we see that it’s obvious how this is using social psychology and sociology to enforce belief systems.

  1. Ate dinner with family
    This is critical for the initial creation of plausibility structures. Doing it five to seven times a week gives it the repetition necessary for it to remain relevant. This will be key for young children.
  2. Served with family in ministry
    Again, doing the same thing together with the same underlying motivation will increase the likelihood that an individual accepts as valid that motivation.
  3. Had one spiritual experience per week in the home
    This one is a little vague: what is that one experience? How do we determine that it is spiritual? Most likely this will occur through the instruction of the parents. This will enforce what children learn in church: that warm feeling you get sometimes when listening to “praise and worship” music or reading the Bible is the Holy Spirit at work. The experience itself cannot be questioned; the cause of it can. This makes sure that that cause always leads back to a deity.
  4. Entrusted with ministry responsibility at an early age
    This begins the transfer from trusting others’ interpretation of your inner experiences (i.e., labeling them as coming from a god) to making it your own. In treating you like an adult, you become an adult, and when this is tied to “ministry,” that ministry becomes part of your adult identity.
  5. Had one non-familial faith-based adult in life
    Again, this is adding plausibility to the belief structure. Step one (dinner as a family) will work with children; this step will be key for teens, who don’t necessarily want to listen exclusively to the family because it’s part of growing up. A close relationship with a non-familial adult will help the transfer process from “their worldview” to “my worldview.”

I, of course, rose to the bait when this appeared on a friend’s feed:

If Jesus is real and the connection is real, why does it need so much social support? These are all examples of what sociologists of religion call plausibility structures: the more people you have around you believing the same thing and suggesting, directly and indirectly, that such belief is plausible and logical, the more likely an individual is to accept that belief as such.

The individual who posted this meme responded:

[H]ow long can one coal burn (even with regular blowing) apart from the rest of the fire? We aren’t closed systems…the World, the Flesh, & the Devil are actively pulling us away from God. Driftwood doesn’t move upstream…it must be acted upon.

It’s interesting that this response doesn’t deny the fact that these are, in essence, plausibility structures. Instead, the response only highlights it. Sociologist Peter Berger suggests that the only way to maintain a given belief in the face of competing beliefs is to surround yourself with like-minded people. He calls this a “cognitive ghetto.” The response posits that just such mental sequestration is necessary to keep out the three enemies:

  1. The World
  2. The Flesh
  3. The Devil

Of course, in such a Christian’s worldview, these three can all be subsumed under the last one: the devil. But attributing one’s loss of faith when confronted with conflicting viewpoints to the devil does little: it’s an untested and unfalsifiable hypothesis without evidence, and as such, it can be dismissed without evidence.

Another person asked,

[D]on’t all relationships require some sort of support to survive? The very word relationship indicates two or more things, factors or people.

I replied:

I just don’t understand why a relationship with a supposedly omnipotent being needs support. It seems to me that the omnipotent being could make it so obvious to the believer that it would be folly to reject it. As it is, in my experience with a believer, I only had my own inner experiences and other people’s assurances that those experiences were of God.

My interlocutor did not respond.

Who Commanded What

Wednesday 10 August 2022

I really don’t know why I do it. I follow some of these Catholic groups online for no good reason, I think. Am I there just to pick a fight? I guess.

Today, this one popped up as a joke.

Everyone was laughing about it, so I guess humor is the new way of dealing with the awful things God commands in Leviticus. Of course, I replied: “But both come from God. Both are commands from God. That’s the problem.”

A user named Joseph responded, “no there is no problem. None of the levitical laws are valid anymore. Thus any command from Chirst is superior.”

People just don’t get it, though. Jesus might have done away with these laws, but because of the trinity doctrine, it was Jesus who created the commands in the first place. I responded to Joseph:

But the fact that they were commanded in the first place — that’s the problem I’m referring to. That God commanded his people to stone to death incorrigible children, stone homosexuals, stone people for breaking the sabbath — THAT is the problem. Whether or not he did away with those laws is not as troubling as the fact that he made them in the first place.

At this point, Jesse jumped in to help:

[I]f you listened to the first couple of episodes, Fr. Mike clarified it. Some laws were “allowed”, just as what Jesus said about the law on divorce. Also that some must be understood that they were given to a savage, nomadic, tent-living, and with frequent streaks of going astray kind of people who lived thousands of years ago.

I’ve heard this so many times I’m sick of it. No one sees the problem that the same god who gave us the kinder, gentler Jesus also gave us these commands in Leviticus! In fact, because of the trinity, it’s the same being! I tried to explain this:

No, that doesn’t fly. God didn’t allow those laws. He didn’t see them stoning people and say, “Well, I’ll let you do that for a while.” It was God who COMMANDED the stoning. Why does no one get that distinction?

There were a few more responses — I replied to them all. And then everyone just stopped responding to me. Questions are unwelcome, I guess, and even more so follow-up questions.

Two Problems

Tuesday 24 May 2022

I’ve been working on my own “Why I Am Not a Christian” a la Bertrand Russell’s piece of the same name. There seem to be two logical problems Christianity encounters from the very beginning before taking anything else into account.

The two main issues I have with the Christian worldview are the problem of suffering and the nature of Christian salvation. The best way to highlight these problems is to reframe them in strictly human terms to see how much sense it would make for humans to do what the Christian god supposedly does.

The problem of suffering is simple: if there is a loving god who is omnipotent, it would want its creatures to live free of meaningless suffering. There is meaningless suffering in the world. Therefore, this god is either not loving, not omnipotent, or doesn’t exist. Christians will likely quibble over the definition of “meaningless suffering,” pointing out that that it is a value judgment and that we are in no way to determine if a given example of suffering is meaningless or not (that’s their god’s decision). Here it becomes useful to put it in concrete human terms: put simply, if I had the power to stop a child from being raped, I would. No questions, no hesitation: I would just stop it from happening if I could. If I had the power to stop a child from starving to death, I would. If I had the power to stop a child from being beaten, I would. The god of Christianity doesn’t stop these things from happening. In fact, the supposed representatives of this god are all too often the ones inflicting this suffering on children.

The common apologetic response here is to suggest that the Chrisitan god’s ways are not our ways, that we cannot know what good can come from this suffering. That might be so, but that supposed good that can somehow justify the evil and make it in fact a good — that is merely speculation. What is not speculation is the suffering itself.

In response to this, apologists in turn bring up free will. Their god gave us free will, and we can use it, or we can abuse it. Their god lets us do whichever we wish because to do otherwise would be to limit our free will.

Another example shows the absurdity of this thinking. Imagine you walk in on your twelve-year-old son beating your three-year-old daughter to death with a length of two-by-four. Would you stop it? Of course, you would. But imagine you decide that to do so would be to violate your twelve-year-old’s free will, so you let it happen. The authorities find out and charge you. At your trial, you make the defense that, because we all have free will, you are not ultimately responsible and that you were merely allowing your son to exercise his free will. Would the jury accept that defense? If the roles were reversed, and you were on that jury, would you accept that defense?

Thus, reframing the problem of suffering in strictly human terms leads to a strange outcome: we realize that we hold ourselves to a higher moral standard than we hold our idea of a god. We allow a god to get by with things we would find abhorrent in our own behavior by suggesting that we’re just not smart enough to see the good that raping a three-year-old can bring.

At this point, the Christian apologist will likely suggest that this is all a moot point anyway because all this is due to the Fall, and then suggest Jesus’s sacrifice solves this problem (i.e., the Fall). We might point out that the evil still exists but at least Christians have a way to explain where it comes from: we’re flawed in our very nature due to the Fall. Jesus solves all this, the apologists assure us.

What happens when we examine that solution in human terms? Imagine my wife and I have a rule in my home: no one is to spill food while at the dinner table. The penalty for spilling food is three cuts on the forearm with a sharp knife. One night, predictably, my young son spills food. I take his arm and tell him that because of the rules, I have to make three cuts on his arm. However, because I love him so much, I’m going to take that punishment for him. I hand the knife to my wife, and she makes three deep cuts in my forearm. I look at my son lovingly and say, with tears in my eyes, “Do you see, son, how much I love you? I took this punishment for you. This should fill you with an incredible love for me!”

You, as an outside observer, would think all of this is quite absurd. You might question why I had such a strict punishment for such a relatively insignificant “crime.” You would likely suggest that it was inevitable that my child would spill some food and ask why I had that rule in the first place. And finally, you would probably think the whole blood-letting for forgiveness was ridiculous: “Why not just forgive the kid if that rule has to be in place?” you’d ask before pointing out yet again that I was the one who created the law in the first place and that it was completely unnecessary to begin with. As for my suggesting that my son should love me all the more because I took his punishment, you’d likely think that it was a highly traumatizing event for my son.

Yet this is just what Christians think Jesus does for them: he takes a punishment that they deserve and in doing so, earns our undying love. However, Jesus is, according to the doctrine of the trinity, God, so this god set the rules himself as well as the punishment. He could have just forgiven us, but for some reason, he’s insistent on a blood sacrifice to make up for sins that we didn’t even necessarily commit, so Jesus steps in to fulfill that obligation.

At this point, Christians explain that their god would like to forgive us but because of his perfectly righteous nature, he can’t. This is some bizarre argument: the nature of this god apparently restricts this god.