2019-02-13T19:41:15-08:00

Last updated on: February 13, 2019 at 7:41 pm   By

Let’s conclude our look at the tactics Christian apologists use to respond to embarrassments in the Bible and Christianity. How well do they work? Let’s find out. (Part 1 here.)

Tactic 7: Contradictions? That’s a Good Thing!

Some Christians respond to contradictions within the Gospels by saying that that’s actually a good thing, because if they were identical, we’d suspect collusion. A few inconsistencies are the hallmark of honest eyewitness accounts. Jim Wallace of the Cold-Case Christianity ministry was a detective and used his reputation to give this tactic credibility.

But by making two categories indistinguishable, this creates a new problem. Category one is what they’re referring to, accounts that are honest attempts at accurate reporting with inadvertent errors or different editorial choices. Category two has accounts that aren’t bound by what actually happened but are written with a religious agenda. How do we know which bin to put a contradiction into?

Here’s an example. The synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) have the Last Supper as the Passover meal, so Jesus is crucified after the Passover meal. John has the Last Supper one day earlier so that Jesus is crucified before the Passover meal. With this change, John can make a deliberate parallel between the unblemished lambs being killed for Passover concurrent with the death of the perfect Lamb of God. Maybe that’s just how things worked out . . . or maybe John, the last gospel, deliberately changed the tradition to make that theological parallel.

This tactic mixes the two categories, and agenda-drive theology hides behind the skirts of history. Honest seekers would want those to be as distinct as possible.

Tactic 8: They’re both right

I used to be impressed when Christians would come up with some rationalization for a Bible problem, but I’ve seen it so often that now I just expect it. After all, the Church has had 2000 years to hear the problems and think up answers.

This tactic attempts to directly rebut the problem. Did Jesus heal two blind men near Jericho (Matthew) or just one (Mark and Luke)? Both are correct. Did Sennacherib attack Judah in the third year of Hoshea’s reign (2 Kings 18:1) or the fourteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign (2 Kings 18:13)? Both are correct. Was Jacob buried in Shechem (Acts 7:15–16) or near Mamre (Genesis 50:13)? Pick a contradiction, and this tactic will argue that they’re both right.

I’m sure that a few of the Bible’s many contradictions can be resolved this way, but I’m skeptical that this tactic works everywhere it’s applied.

Tactic 9: Patience

This tactic tells us that some things in the Bible are confusing and that we’ll just have to wait until we get to heaven to understand them. For example, the Christian might explain away Christianity’s inability to make sense of the Trinity by calling it a divine mystery. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God.”

But if the Trinity can’t be explained so that we understand it, don’t bring it up. What sense does it make to present mysteries when the purpose of the Bible and Christianity are to educate us here, not in heaven?

(As an aside, it is extraordinary to see Christians who, in one breath, humbly admit that they don’t understand the mind of God then, in the next breath, suddenly regain their confidence and proclaim God’s very clear views on homosexuality, abortion, or some other social issue.)

Conclusion

Search Amazon for “Bible contradictions.” Half of the books will explore those contradictions from a skeptical standpoint, but the rest will pat you on the head and assure you that those contradictions don’t exist or aren’t important. Popular books defending the Bible include The Big Book of Bible Difficulties, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, and Demolishing Supposed Bible Contradictions. With titles like these, at least we’re in agreement that the Bible has many problematic passages.

While the contradictions might turn potential converts away, the contradictions can actually be a plus. They make the Bible malleable. You can emphasize some verses and ignore others to create one message and then change the mix as social conditions change. When slavery is fashionable, the Bible supports it, and when slavery becomes unpopular, the Bible supports that position as well. God is merciful or strict; God is loving or violent; God is forgiving or demanding—it’s all in there. (More.)

God becomes the Christian’s sock puppet, mouthing what the Christian wants to hear while speaking with the authority of the Bible.

I always refer to the Bible as the world’s oldest,
longest-running, most widespread,
and least deservedly respected Rorschach Test.
You can look at it and see whatever you want.
And everybody does.
— Richard S. Russell

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2018-12-20T15:55:23-08:00

Last updated on: December 20, 2018 at 3:55 pm   By

This is the concluding post looking at popular arguments against same-sex marriage. Conservative radio host Frank Turek provides most of them. (Part 1 here.)

17. Christians are obliged to reject same-sex marriage!

Frank gives society some tough love:

If we celebrate harmful behavior we are being unloving. Love requires we tell people the truth, even if it upsets them.

We’ve already established that homosexuality is no more inherently harmful than heterosexuality (see argument 15). Franks “harm” is simply a caution against unsafe sex.

You can imagine that God creates homosexuals and then somehow is disgusted by his own creation, but it’s curious how God’s views seem to line up so conveniently well with your own—so conveniently that I wonder if you’re playing “God” like a sock puppet.

First show that your severe god and his supernatural world exists. Only then will worrying about his desires make sense. Until then, I have no respect for your fantasy.

18. Society will collapse!

Frank considers same-sex marriage in society and doesn’t like the orgy that he expects it to cause within the straight community.

Legally equating [straight and same-sex] relationships breaks the link between marriage and childbearing which leads to higher illegitimacy and a chain of negative effects that fall like dominoes—illegitimacy leads to poverty, crime, and higher welfare costs which lead to bigger government, higher taxes, and a slower economy.

So same-sex marriage lets slip that it’s actually sex that produces babies, not marriage? That’s already obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention. Frank concludes that this insight will cause straight people to have more sex outside of marriage, and that will produce more illegitimate children, but how does that follow?

Ignoring the incoherence of the orgy argument, it sounds like he’s confusing illegitimate children with unwanted children. Illegitimacy can simply be redefined. If illegitimacy causes problems, encourage society to define the problem away. As for unwanted children, I get it—that is indeed a problem. For that, I urge Frank to stop making abortion more difficult (more here).

19. There is no genetic basis for homosexual desire!

Frank gives us the benefit of his years of research into the biology of homosexuality.

After many years of intense research, a genetic component to homosexual desires has not been discovered. Twin studies show that identical twins do not consistently have the same sexual orientation. In fact, genetics probably explains very little about homosexual desires.

That may be right, but so what? We could wrestle with why someone is homosexual (one source: “Scientists hypothesize that a combination of genetic, hormonal, and social factors determine sexual orientation”) but that’s off topic. Frank wrongly implies from this incompletely answered question that no one is homosexual. I wonder if he’ll next tell us that, since he isn’t left handed, left handedness doesn’t exist.

Though conversion therapy (the conversion of someone from a homosexual into a heterosexual) still exists, its reputation is poor today, and it is illegal in some states. If people call themselves ex-gay and are satisfied with that self-image, that’s fine. Sexual identity is a spectrum, and a bisexual person might see themselves as gay one year and ex-gay the next. Just don’t conclude that homosexuality is bad, that it should be suppressed, or that no one is homosexual.

Exodus International was a Christian ministry devoted to conversion therapy. It operated for almost 40 years before disbanding in 2013. Its president admitted that their work had changed almost no one.

20. But same-sex marriage is unnatural. Just think about it. . . yuck!

[Marriages of this type are] alliances so unnatural that God and nature seem to forbid them.

Hold on. No, that’s my bad. This is actually from an 1878 Virginia Supreme Court decision, and the marriages that so bothered the judges in this case were mixed-race marriages.

But this is basically identical to what modern opponents to same-sex marriage say. Here is the 2003 view of Anglican archbishop of Nigeria Peter Akinola:

I cannot think of how a man in his right senses would be having sexual relations with another man. It is so unnatural, so unscriptural.

First off, homosexuality is natural. It has been documented in 1500 species of animals, including all great apes (of which humans are a part).

Second, if it freaks you out to think about two guys doing it, then don’t think about it. There are straight couples that do the same thing, and quite possibly in larger numbers—does that bother you?

You think gay sex is yucky? What’s yucky is the Christian as imaginary voyeur, peeking through the window into someone’s bedroom to criticize what they’re doing.

Third, let’s not put that much stock in whether something is supported by scripture or not. Slavery, polygamy, and genocide have clear support in scripture. Christians happily condemn those practices today, so the Bible obviously no longer binds us.

Fourth, the Bible says nothing about same-sex marriage. Even the widely cited verses arguing that homosexuality is wrong make a weak case.

Fifth, marriage was invented by humans. It’s changed in important ways in my own lifetime (see argument #3), and the legality of same-sex marriage is just one more change.

Finally, consider IVF, abortions, surrogate mothers, and modern technology that saves the lives of premature infants. Add to that erectile dysfunction pills, birth control pills, morning-after pills, and testosterone pills and tell me that there aren’t plenty of unnatural elements of sex within marriage already. And the focus of marriage laws is to a large extent on unnatural things like property rights.

Final thoughts

In the 1996 Romer v. Evans case, the Supreme Court struck down a state law that prevented any local government from recognizing homosexuals as a protected class. It stated, “If the constitutional conception of ‘equal protection of the laws’ [from the Fourteenth Amendment] means anything, it must at the very least mean that a bare . . . desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot constitute a legitimate governmental interest.” When we consider them, we find that the arguments raised by the anti-same-sex marriage crowd either have no legitimate governmental interest or are simply factually wrong.

To any Christians who may be having second thoughts on their opposition to same-sex marriage, let me suggest a graceful exit. Stop parroting conservative politicians and instead follow the lead of Jesus. We have no record of Jesus scolding homosexuals for what they did between the sheets, but we read much about his concern for the poor and sick. “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Homosexuality isn’t a lifestyle choice, but hateful Christianity is.

Despite Obergefell, the June, 2015 Supreme Court case legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide, Frank Turek is still flogging this dead horse because it benefits him. He has an audience who will pay him to pat them on the head and assure them that their prejudice is not only reasonable but God given.

We can find a parallel in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. In the lead-up to the games, Russian president Vladimir Putin caused waves with his anti-gay pronouncements. With Russia in the spotlight, why would he make his country look bad within the international community? But Putin’s intended audience wasn’t the international community; he was grandstanding to the folks back home who rewarded a tough-on-gays attitude.

In a similar way, I doubt Frank cares much what outsiders think. I doubt he expects to convert many liberal Christians to his way of thinking. He just wants to please his conservative Christian constituents. Frank is the anti-gay Pied Piper, leading nervous Christians who are delighted to follow someone who will assure them that the sky is indeed falling and eager to pay for the privilege of being in his club.

If Jesus wants to perform an impressive miracle, he could get these Christians to focus on the actual problems in the world. God knows there are hundreds more important than this one.

“Every human being [already] has the same right to marry someone of the opposite sex”? That’s seriously the empty and heartless sentiment you want to be remembered for, Frank?

History is listening.

How ironic that most of the same people squawking,
“You can’t redefine marriage”
have been trying to redefine “murder” since 1973.
— commenter Sven2547,
referring to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/21/15.)

Photo credit: Wikipedia
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2018-12-17T10:24:38-08:00

Last updated on: December 17, 2018 at 10:24 am   By

What do you call the magic words and curses, relics and charms, prophecies, potions, divination, numerology, and more that godly people have (and still do) use? How about “magic”?

In this conclusion, we’ll look at curses, magic words, divination, and numerology used by the players in the Christian story. (Part 1 here).

Curses

God cursed Cain (Genesis 4:11). Noah cursed the descendants of Ham (Gen. 9:25). Elisha cursed the boys who insulted his bald head (2 Kings 2:23–4). Jesus cursed a fig tree (Mark 11:14).

The Psalms are full of curses on enemies. Here’s a fragment from Psalm 109.

May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.

May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes.

May a creditor seize all he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.

May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children.

And on and on it goes. Fun fact: these old curses can be dusted off and used today. (In polite company, these are called “imprecatory prayers”—so much nicer than “curses.”) For example, pastor Wiley Drake in 2009 publicly declared that he called down a curse on President Obama. That’s right—he asked God to kill President Obama. The assassination of abortion doctor George Tiller weeks earlier had been, in his mind, an answer to his prayers. Jesus does talk about turning the other cheek, but who has time for that when there’s righteous smiting to be done?

I suppose the logic is, if you can pray for good things for people, why not bad things? And if you can imagine that prayers for good might nudge the Almighty to grant your wish, you can imagine the same for the prayers for bad. There’s no need to feel bound by the ordinary laws of nature when Jesus promised, “Whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these” (John 14:12).

More on prayer here.

Magic words

Then there are words of the “abracadabra” variety. For example, God spoke the universe into existence (“Let there be light,” etc.). Jesus healed Lazarus with words. The gospel of Mark, written in Greek, carefully noted the Aramaic words Jesus used to heal a mute man (7:33–5) and raise a dead girl (5:35–42).

Missionary John Chau’s personal introduction to the Sentinelese people, “My name is John, I love you, and Jesus loves you,” was in English, which suggests that he was hoping for divine assistance. Perhaps he wanted the magical eloquence that God promised Moses when Moses protested against public speaking (Exodus 4:12).

We find the idea of magic words in English when we say “God bless you” after a sneeze (originally, a shield against evil). “Goodbye” originally meant “God be with ye,” expressing the wish that God keep you safe on your journey.

Divination

This is the “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” category. Several Bible passages tell us that sorcery and related arts are forbidden:

Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. (Deuteronomy 18:10–11)

The story of the Witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28) also paints witches in a bad light.

And yet the Bible also speaks favorably about divination. Joseph foretold the future by interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams (Genesis 41), and we learn that he could read the future by scrying with a silver cup (Gen. 44:5). The high priest used the Urim and Thummim, magic stones that divined God’s will (Exodus 28:30, Numbers 27:21, 1 Samuel 14:41–2). The disciples of Jesus cast lots (cleromancy) to determine the successor to Judas (Acts 1:26).

Numerology

Nutty Harold Camping believed in numerology, the idea that numbers have magical meaning. He predicted that the end of the world would happen on May 21, 2011, which was, by his reckoning, (5 × 10 × 17)² days after the crucifixion. That number may seem like an odd bit of trivia, but Brother Camping used the biblical pairing of numbers with meaning.

Do you remember on what day God rested after creating the world? It was the seventh day, and 7 is the number of completion. Noah’s 40 days and 40 nights of rain? The number for a long period of time is 40, and we see it in Jesus’s temptation in the desert (40 days) and the Israelites’ wandering in the Sinai (40 years).

Back to Harold Camping: biblical numerologists say that 5 = atonement, 10 = completion, and 17 = heaven, so the number of days from crucifixion to May 21, 2011 was (atonement × completion × heaven) squared. (Events didn’t work out as Camping planned.)

A few years ago, Paula White decided that the verse du jour was 1 Chronicles 22:9. This verse was particularly important because 229 would (in dollars) make a nice stretch goal for her followers. So she spun that verse into an appeal for $229, ignoring that the division of the Bible into chapters and verses wasn’t done by the original authors and is in fact a fairly recent addition (verses were first labeled in the mid-1500s and chapters a few centuries before that).

Conclusion

And there’s more.

  • Jesus commanded demons, and some denominations do exorcisms today.
  • Holy water acts like a potion.
  • The laying of hands onto a sick or possessed person is thought to have magical power in some denominations.
  • Moses and Aaron got into a magic contest with Pharaoh’s magicians, and once the ten plagues started, the magicians even tried to duplicate them (Exodus 7:22).

And so on.

How is an imprecatory prayer different from an incantation? How is a miracle different from magic? Calling supernatural results “miracles” for God and Friends and “magic” for everyone else is just a groundless Christian conceit. You can define the words that way, but know that that’s an expression of your agenda and not how Merriam-Webster defines them.

This is another instance of Judaism and Christianity looking pretty much the same as all the other religions. Yes, the Bible has its own unique take on magic, but none of this is fundamentally new. The Bible borrows the magical ideas from related religions. If all religions were manmade except for Christianity, Bible magic wouldn’t look like that of neighboring religions.

If Christians really have the 100% direct poop
on what’s moral and what isn’t,
directly from God’s lips to their ears,
how come they can’t agree on what it is?
— commenter RichardSRussell

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Image from Leonardo Yip, CC license
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2018-10-28T20:07:20-07:00

Last updated on: October 28, 2018 at 8:07 pm   By

The authors of the 2014 book Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart: Rewriting the Ten Commandments for the Twenty-first Century sponsored a competition for a new set of atheist Ten Commandments. Here are the winners:

  1. Be open minded and be willing to alter your beliefs with new evidence.
  2. Strive to understand what is most likely to be true, not to believe what you wish to be true.
  3. The scientific method is the most reliable way of understanding the natural world.
  4. Every person has the right to control over their body.
  5. God is not necessary to be a good person or to live a full and meaningful life.
  6. Be mindful of the consequences of all your actions and recognise that you must take responsibility for them.
  7. Treat others as you would want them to treat you and can reasonably expect them to want to be treated. Think about their perspective.
  8. We have the responsibility to consider others including future generations.
  9. There is no one right way to live.
  10. Leave the world a better place than you found it.

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We could tweak the wording, swap out a few, or maybe add a few more (what’s magical about ten?). Overall, though, I think it’s a great list.

But not everyone was pleased. At Glenn Beck’s The Blaze, conservative commenters objected in various ways, and I waded through hundreds to get the major themes. I didn’t notice any Christian commenters applaud the general idea. Instead, they all dug in their heels in various ways.

As I go through these categories, I’ll respond only briefly, but feel free to add your own comments.

Quibbles. Some complained that they aren’t all commands—numbers 3, 4, and 5, for instance. Some are similar and could be combined—6 and 8, for instance. One commenter asked, “What is the penalty for violating these ‘Ten Suggestions?’” (I doubt he wants to go there. The Old Testament gives death as the punishment for almost all of the original ten.)

Some of this is subjective—for example, what does it mean to leave the world a “better” place?

And that’s the problem when using the format of immutable laws from an absolute dictator as a structure for enlightened advice. Fair points, I’d say, but they (deliberately?) avoid the issue. As for the concern about subjectivity, yes, we may have different directions we’d like society to move in. Welcome to the real world.

Defiant or petulant. One commenter winsomely said, “I seem to like the original version, atheist can kiss my @ss!” Another: “They don’t seem to get that their way of life is so illogical even though they claim to be such superior intellects.”

If you’re frustrated but have no concrete complaint, I suppose this is what you’re left with. I get empty “You’re wrong! And also stupid!” comments of this sort regularly at this blog.

Atheists are hypocritical. Sure, you atheists will follow rule #1 and alter your beliefs … “unless it points to God.” You’ll follow #2 and reject that which has no evidence … “unless it’s what you think is true.” You’ll follow the scientific method … “only if it fits [your] agenda.” Summing up, “These sound like liberal commandments for others, not for themselves.”

Are atheists imperfect? Of course. But I see none of the hypocrisy that they imagine. I strive to follow these rules and would encourage those in my life to point out where I fall short.

Atheists are arrogant. “My primary argument with atheists is that they are so arrogant as to not consider that there may be a higher power than themselves.”

I’m happy to consider that. In years of searching, I’ve found negligible evidence, but I continue to seek out good arguments in favor of Christian claims.

Your list is incomplete. “Not a single word against killing, stealing, diddling someone else’s spouse, catting around while your spouse isn’t looking, being greedy or being excessively prideful. So basically, ‘Anything Goes!’”

You need commandments to be reminded not to kill someone? Anyway, #7 (“Treat others as you would want them to treat you and can reasonably expect them to want to be treated”) covers that. “Anything goes!” is neither the point of this list nor the philosophy of any atheist I know.

Where are the absolute consequences? “What happens if you break these atheist commandments? You go to not-hell? What’s the punishment? I see no reason to follow any of these if there is no God.”

“What is the incentive to be good when evil is more fun and profitable?”

Penn Jillette had a great response:

The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine.

I’ve yet to see any compelling argument for objective morality (that is, moral claims that are true whether anyone believes them or not). There are lots of enthusiastic and confident claims, but no good evidence.

Anyway, there are plenty of consequences right here. Society imposes legal or social sanctions for poor behavior. Atheists happily acknowledge the obligations they have to their family and friends. Christians who think that they’d rampage through life without God to constrain them hasn’t thought this through.

Atheists wouldn’t worry about God unless they knew he existed! About nativity displays on public property: “I would have no problem if I had neighbor who worshiped turnips, and put up a yearly display. I wouldn’t try to prohibit his freedom to do so. Why are atheists offended by religious displays? I suspect they, deep down, know and refuse to acknowledge the Divine Designer.”

So atheists are really all believers? Nope.

As for nativity displays, I don’t know why the War on Christmas® is that big a deal (except for Fox News ratings, I mean). I have no problem with a neighbor who puts up a yearly display for turnips or Jesus, just don’t do it on government property. Show respect for your Constitution. Why is this hard? The separation of church and state that prevents Christian-only displays on public property also prevents only Muslim prayers in your kids’ classrooms.

It’s all the atheists’ fault. “Back in the 60’s before prayer was kicked out of school and the teachers had a copy of the 10 Commandments on her board you never heard of any kids killing kids.”

Not really. When you look at social metrics, you find that belief is inversely related to social health. The godless Scandinavian countries embarrass the U.S. with statistics on lifespan, divorce, life satisfaction, murder, and so on.

10 atheist commandments? Must be a religion. “Funny how the supposed sect of the nonreligious has to make their ‘thoughts and beliefs’ in a form that parallels another religion.”

“If they’re trying to make themselves not a religion they’re a doing a terrible job at it.”

It’s quite a stretch to call anything within atheism a religion when atheism is a rejection of supernatural claims. As to the logic of this project, it looks to me like a reasonable and interesting challenge to take the constraints of the well-known 10 Commandments and see what it would look like if reason and evidence were the guiding principles.

Other commenters looked down their noses at Humanist chaplains and atheist church services, but there is no inconsistency. Take chaplains and church, remove the supernatural, and what remains can be useful.

Double down on Christianity. “To believe in a non belief.. So sad for them to believe that when we die, there is nothing. I choose Heaven.. These people have lost all hope.”

“You Atheists are starving. Like petulant children who stomp their feet because they resent the thought of someone being ‘in control’ other than they, themselves.”

No evidence here, just Bible quotes, Christian theology, an opportunity for proselytizing, handwaving about how great heaven will be, and Pascal’s Wager. In short: Christianity, just because.

There is more—atheists love abortion, atheism = communism, Stalin was an atheist—but you get the idea.

(I’ve written more about the Ten Commandments: about their irrelevance to modern society, how the ten that we’re familiar with aren’t the correct ten, and about an American Atheist monument put up in response to a Ten Commandments monument on (you guessed it) public property.)

Christianity has 45,000 denominations. Christians can’t even figure out their own Bible.

The intellectual and emotional energy it takes
to figure out how God fits into everything
is far greater than dealing with reality as it presents itself to us.
— Ryan Bell (“Year Without God” blog)

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/2/15.)

Image credit: Hartwig HKD, flickr, CC

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2018-09-17T19:30:48-07:00

Last updated on: September 17, 2018 at 7:30 pm   By

God can’t defend or even explain his policies, but he has self-appointed people eager to put words in his mouth.

Christian apologist Greg Koukl was given the opportunity to stand up for God since God never bothers, and Koukl didn’t disappoint. He was asked this question (audio @21:05):

If you [a Christian] found yourself on Judgement Day standing next to an unbeliever you cared for and liked and Jesus offered to either annihilate you both or send you to heaven and your friend to hell for eternity, which would you choose and why?

God knows best, I guess

Koukl unsurprisingly chose option two. His justification: “because that’s God’s system” and God knows best.

So we’re supposed to accept an insane interpretation of justice—infinite punishment in hell for finite crimes here on earth—and just assume that God must have good reasons? This does nothing to justify the Christian position and would be satisfying only to Christians (and maybe only some of those).

This question is like God’s demand that Abraham sacrifice Isaac—it looked like an obedience test, but it was actually a morality test. The correct response for Abraham was: “No, of course I won’t sacrifice Isaac.” And this wasn’t presumptuous of Abraham. Since Man was supposedly created in God’s image (or the gods’ image), Man’s understanding of morality should be in sync with God’s, and the natural instinct of revulsion against killing one’s own son should be reliable.

Now apply that attitude to this question of annihilation vs. heaven for you and hell for your friend. Any mentally healthy person would be horrified at the idea of anyone, let alone a friend, being tormented forever and would immediately choose the alternative. Besides, this hypothetical assumes that “God’s system” has suddenly become flexible, so that your choosing is allowed, and your God-given sense of morality would be an appropriate response.

Koukl has unwarranted confidence in his interpretation of God’s wishes. Christians can’t explain the logic behind the Trinity, they’re divided over hell (eternal torment vs. “the gates are locked from the inside”), they can’t agree on whether Christianity is at odds with science or not, and so on. Christians have found loads of contradictory interpretations of the Bible to justify various attitudes toward slavery, civil rights, same-sex marriage, abortion, health care, and so on. That Koukl is comfortable with his particular set of responses to the dozens of questions that divide Christians says a lot about him but little about what the Bible says.

(Aside: this clumsy justification reminds me of Koukl’s dancing around the issue of whether women getting abortions should be punished, here.)

Consequences in heaven

Koukl moves on to the question of how this will affect heaven. Will knowing about a friend (or billions of people) writhing in agony “tarnish our enjoyment of heaven”?

Yeah, that’d be a shame if someone else’s anguish rained on his enjoyment of heaven. He explained that when we get heavenly enlightenment, we will understand that “God’s judgments are just.”

Yet again, I’m not sure how humans can be so radically out of sync with God’s “morality” when we were supposedly created in his image. You’re an enlightened being in heaven (presumably greatly elevated from your flawed, limited human shell on earth) and you know about the billions in torment and you’ll be okay with it??

“We [in heaven] will rejoice in the good,” Koukl tells us, but what kind of Bizarro World are we talking about, when Christian belief obliges them to label as “good” a punishment system that makes the 11 million deaths in the Holocaust look like a church picnic? It’s pretty much the most inhumane situation conceivable, and it’s held up as a divine good.

And Christians wonder why atheists are occasionally peeved at Christian dogma.

But plenty of other apologists have no reluctance in celebrating God’s perfect inhumane plan. Here is thirteenth-century theologian Thomas Aquinas doubling down:

That the saints [in heaven] may enjoy their beatitude more thoroughly and give more abundant thanks to God for it, a perfect sight of punishment of the damned is granted them.

(More on the history of Christians not tap dancing way from but celebrating the idea of hell here.)

If you’re in hell, it’s your own fault

As usual, we can’t demand that God answer for his barbaric justice. God is a fragile baby, and it would be too harsh to treat him like an adult. Luckily, we have Christian apologists happy to pull the strings on the God marionette and speak for him. Koukl defends God’s system:

On this system, forgiveness is available and [the damned] did not avail themselves of it, and they are justly punished for what they did and I am unjustly . . . forgiven.

See, I told you! If you’re roasting on a spit in hell, too bad, because it’s your own fault.

Let’s reconsider this claim that forgiveness is available, because it’s not available to me. Who can believe the unbelievable? I need evidence, and Christianity has pretty much none. The Christian can demonstrate to us how this is supposed to work by believing in leprechauns. When they show me that believing in the unbelievable is possible, then we can move on to the question of whether it’s a smart thing to do.

And let’s just ignore the claim that Jesus taking on our sin with substitutionary atonement makes any sense (more here).

Is Koukl being selfish?

Koukl anticipates the charge that he’s being selfish, that he’ll make the other person go to hell just so he gets heaven.

It is the consequence of the plan that God has put in place, and it’s an expression of two appropriate things, justice being done to somebody who deserves it and grace being extended based on God’s plan and purpose, both good things.

“Justice”? Ask anyone if hell is the justice they’d impose if they were the boss. Koukl here is judging God’s plan as reasonable and good when it obviously isn’t according to any human interpretation. Hell would make a sadist recoil. If he means that hell only sounds brutally unjust, but we must trust God, then he should (1) admit that it sounds crazy and that he doesn’t understand and (2) justify why that trust in God would be justified.

He’s done nothing to help his Christian audience defend hell. God’s Marvelous Plan® still sounds like Bronze Age insanity.

God never fails, because he never tries.
He’s not even a loser.
He doesn’t show up to the game.
— Jack Baynes, Sandwichmaker

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Image via Giovanni, CC license
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2018-07-25T09:32:57-07:00

Last updated on: July 25, 2018 at 9:32 am   By

Let’s continue our list of reasons why Christian hope is not a good thing (part 1 here).

3. Complacency

Christian hope can be beneficial, but it’s beneficial like a pain killer, not like medicine that can cure you. This was Karl Marx’s point when he said that religion is the opium of the people. Marx agreed that religion helped but only in the same way that opium does, by reducing pain. Opium (and religious hope) do nothing to solve the problem. They produce complacency, an acceptance of the status quo.

Religious complacency encourages believers to leave things alone and make do rather than become impatient with the status quo and improve it. And the religion meme likes it that way.

Religion thrives in poor social conditions. Improve the conditions, and the need for religion fades. Religion is the opposite of the canary in the mine, and thriving religion is our warning that social conditions are poor.

George Bernard Shaw said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” Society doesn’t benefit when its citizens use opium (or religion) to dull the pain of social problems to quiet the desire for progress.

4. Magical thinking makes you easier to take advantage of

You want hope? There are televangelists happy to sell you hope. They simply ask in return for you to remain dependent on their message. (And they’d also like “your most generous love offering,” weekly if at all possible.)

As a specific example of televangelists making ridiculous claims, consider John Hagee’s hysterical declaration, “God is literally screaming at the world, ‘I’m coming soon.’ ”

The slow-motion fireworks—four “blood moons” (lunar eclipses), six months apart—came and went three years ago. Where’s my apocalypse? We got no evidence of God, just evidence that Hagee is an opportunistic fraud. (More on Hagee’s greedy stunt here, here, here, here, and here.)

Another example is the annual War on Christmas®. Ah, what I wouldn’t give for some brave politician to take the tough stand and make it legal to say “Merry Christmas” again . . .

Politicians are another group eager to take advantage of Christians. It’s easy for them to tune a conservative message to an eager audience—they just handwave about imminent social disaster and declare that they are the only hope. Just give your vote to the candidate and lots of money to their campaign. For example, in the 2004 Bush/Kerry presidential campaign, voters said that of seven areas of concern, the biggest concern was “moral values” like same-sex marriage and abortion. Economy and jobs came in second place.

Abortion makes baby Jesus cry, so apparently Christian voters must step into the breach since Jesus is just a baby and can’t do anything about it. But notice the irony: the last thing conservative politicians want is a society with no abortion because they thrive on anxiety about abortion. If they couldn’t claim that the sky is falling, these Chicken Littles wouldn’t know how to rally their base.

While this political strategy might seem fairly new, it’s actually a well-worn path. Social critic H. L. Mencken said a century ago, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed—and hence clamorous to be led to safety—by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Here’s another way of seeing the enemy that politicians push against. Christian and conservative political leaders play up the imagined threat of gays, liberals, women, foreigners, Muslims, science, and so on to keep their group focused inward. They need someone to push against, lest they fall over. We must circle the wagons, people! Michael Shermer illustrated this with the rhetorical question, Who needs Satanic cults? Answer: “Talk-show hosts, book publishers, anti-cult groups, fundamentalists, and certain religious groups” [1].

Being a sheep can be comforting, but remember that sheep can be led to slaughter. There are costs when you let someone else do your thinking for you.

If the world will end in your lifetime, why bother about long-term issues like the environment, third world health issues, or infrastructure projects? Contrast that with the attitude of the Greek proverb that says, in a great society old men plant trees under which they know they will never sit.

Continue with reason 5: anxiety.

Why can’t God just defeat the devil?
It’s the same reason a comic book character
can’t defeat his nemesis—
then there’s no story.
If God gets rid of the devil, there’s no fear.
No reason to come to church.
— Bill Maher

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[1] Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things (Freeman, 2002), page 106.

Image via rizuan.j, CC license

2019-08-18T09:53:04-07:00

Last updated on: August 18, 2019 at 9:53 am   By

Let’s continue with our exploration of stupid arguments Christians shouldn’t use (Part 1 here).

Stupid Argument #17: Failure to acknowledge the incredibleness of the Christian claim.

So you think the Big Bang just happened? And you accept evolution saying we got here by chance and life came from nonlife? That’s crazy—I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist!

Correcting the many confidently asserted scientific errors isn’t our goal at the moment. The problem I’d like to focus on is apologists expressing doubt over a naturalistic explanation when their God hypothesis—that a supernatural being created the universe and came to earth as a human and that this was recorded in history—is perhaps the most incredible explanation imaginable.

That the conclusions of science offend their common sense is irrelevant and unsurprising. If science were nothing but common sense, no one would need to spend years getting a PhD. Unfortunately, none of these science skeptics seem motivated to end their perplexity by reading a textbook on the relevant subject.

Science has given us plenty of surprising explanations—the earth goes around the sun, germs cause disease, plate tectonics, quantum physics, and so on—that aren’t on Christians’ radar only because they don’t step on their theological toes.

And when apologists object to a natural explanation for some aspect of the Christian story (the resurrection, say) they ignore that not only is their supernatural explanation less likely than even an outlandish natural explanation, there isn’t even an accepted category of supernatural events that we can all agree to. Science has found the evidence to reject countless supernatural explanations in favor of natural ones, but the reverse has never been true, even once.

The plausible natural explanation always trumps the supernatural. (For a response to Geisler and Turek’s book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, click here and here.)

Stupid Argument #18: Christians are better people.

Christians give more to charity (or are nicer or have fewer divorces or have fewer abortions or are better looking or have fewer weeds in their yards or whatever).

In the first place, many of these proud claims wither under closer scrutiny.

A study by Gregory Paul compared 17 Western countries on social metrics (homicides, suicides, STDs, and so on). The U.S. came out at the bottom of this comparison of social metrics but on the top in religiosity (more). Proving a causal link is difficult, but Paul suggests that poor social conditions cause the high religiosity, and religion remains the opium of the masses, helping people deal with their pain.

I have no interest in getting into a citation war, where you show me studies that rebut any of the points above. Select any subset of the population, and you can probably find at least one thing on which they’re better than average. I’m confident we could find one or more positive traits that Christians have to a greater degree than atheists.

But so what? “Christian belief gives benefits; therefore God” is the pragmatic fallacy. This fallacy argues that if it is beneficial, it must be true.

Perhaps I’m just old fashioned, but I first want my beliefs to be true. I think I can handle the consequences of believing true things.

Stupid Argument #19a: God’s making himself plainly known would impose on your free will.

You couldn’t then make a free choice to follow him or not. As C.S. Lewis observed about God making himself known, “[God] cannot ravish; he can only woo.”

Knowing of the existence of no one else offends my free will; why should it be different for God? Satan knows about God in great detail, and he’s still free to not follow him.

The Bible record many instances of God imposing on people’s free will. “God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden” (Romans 9:18). He hardened Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 9:12), for example, and he gave ungrateful humans over to “shameful lusts” (Rom. 1:26). “The Lord foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples” (Psalms 33:10). Following the Ten Commandments and the rest of the 613 Old Testament laws is mandatory, which was a substantial imposition on human free will.

And these Christians will be quick to say that belief is the work of the Holy Spirit, so even coming to belief is not something we do freely.

This is a pathetic attempt at avoiding the Problem of Divine Hiddenness and celebrating faith (that is, belief without sufficient evidence). Faith serves no purpose in any other part of life and is always the last resort. Defending an invisible God and celebrating faith is precisely what Christians would do if their religion were manmade (more).

More in response to this free will argument here and here.

Stupid Argument #19b: “All that are in Hell, choose it” (C.S. Lewis).

People send themselves to hell—don’t blame God. God is a gentleman, and he won’t impose himself on people. If they don’t want to be with him, he respects that. The gates of hell are locked from the inside.

Are we talking the same God who imposes genocide? Not much of a gentleman.

I understand the motivation to downplay the eternal torment that the loving God has planned for the majority of his greatest creation, as C.S. Lewis does with his quote above. There may be Bible verses by which liberal Christians imagine a kinder, gentler hell, but the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus gives the traditional view. When the rich man is sent to hell, he says, “I am in agony in this fire.”

That’s one person who wouldn’t be in hell if he could choose otherwise, and Lewis’s argument fails.

Continued in part 6.

If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it,
however helpful it might be;
if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it,
even if it gives him no help at all.
— C.S. Lewis

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 10/13/14.)

Image via Scott McLeod, CC license

 

2018-05-24T19:58:47-07:00

Last updated on: May 24, 2018 at 7:58 pm   By

Christian apologist Mikel Del Rosario raised three hard-hitting points (and by “hard-hitting,” I mean “childish”). I want to examine them to show what passes for good apologetics. Read part 1 of my response here.

Let’s wrap up the response to his point #2.

Point 2. The Problem of Evil Doesn’t Mean There’s No God

The Christian worldview gives us another option that atheists often leave out of the equation. . . . God can have good reasons for allowing evil—even if we don’t know what those reasons are.

This error is so common that it needs a name, so I’ll name it: the Hypothetical God Fallacy. Sure, if we presuppose an omniscient God, this gets us out of every possible jam in which God looks bad. Haiti tsunami? God could’ve had good reasons. A young mother, beloved in her community, dies suddenly and leaves behind a husband and three children? A result of God’s good reasons. Genocide demanded and slavery accepted in the Old Testament? World War? Plane crash? Missing keys?

God.

This short article is peppered with this comforting yet ludicrous fallacy:

If God is good and evil exists . . .

The mere fact that I can’t figure out why God allows some of the things to happen that he does . . . is not warrant for the conclusion that he’s got no such reasons.

It actually takes some humility to admit the role of human finiteness in understanding why God allows evil.

Just because something might seem pointless to us, doesn’t mean God can’t have a morally justified reason for it.

I hope that, as you see more examples of this, it becomes like fingernails on a blackboard.

Yes, bad things in the world don’t force the conclusion that God can’t exist. Fortunately, I don’t draw such a conclusion. And yes, if God exists, he could have his reasons for things that we don’t understand.

The Hypothetical God Fallacy is a fallacy because no one interested in the truth starts with a conclusion (God exists) and then arranges the facts to support that conclusion. That’s backwards; it’s circular reasoning. Rather, the truth seeker starts with the facts and then follows them to their conclusion. (More here.)

If God exists, he could have terrific reasons for why there’s so much gratuitous evil in the world. The same could be true for the Invisible Pink Unicorn (glitter be upon Him). Neither approach does anything to support a belief chosen beforehand.

Point 3. The Problem of Evil Isn’t Just a Christian Problem

The Problem of Evil isn’t just a Christian problem. Evil is everybody’s problem!

Then you don’t know what the Problem of Evil is, because it is precisely just a Christian problem. The Problem of Evil asks, how can a good God allow all the gratuitous evil we see in our world? Drop the God presupposition, and the problem goes away.

You could ask the different question, how does an atheist explain the bad in the world? Quick answer: shit happens. Some is bad luck (mechanical problem causes a car accident), some is natural (flood), some is caused by other people (jerky coworker badmouths you to the boss and you don’t get the promotion), and some is caused by you (you should’ve gotten the flood insurance). Adding God to the equation explains nothing and introduces the Problem of Evil so that you’re worse off than when you started.

Del Rosario again:

If atheism is true, there’s no basis for objective moral values and duties.

Sounds right, but why imagine that objective moral values exist? What many apologists perceive as objective moral values are actually just shared moral values. That we share moral values isn’t too surprising since we’re all the same species. Nothing supernatural is required. (More here.)

Del Rosario stumbles over another issue with morality.

You couldn’t have any kind of real, moral grounding to call it objectively evil—if atheism is true.

He’s using “real” to mean ultimate or objective. And here again, the ball’s in his court to convince us of his remarkable claim that objective morality exists and that everyone can access it. (Suggestion: find a resolution to the abortion problem that is universally acceptable. If there’s not a single correct resolution then it’s not an objective moral truth, and if we can’t reliably access it, then it’s useless.)

As for the ordinary, everyday sort of moral grounding, the kind that both Christians and atheists use, you’ll find that in the dictionary. Look up “morality,” and you’ll read nothing about objective grounding.

We have one final challenge:

The atheist position’s got another problem to deal with: The Problem of Good. In other words, naturalism has the challenge of providing a sufficient moral grounding for goodness itself—in addition to making sense of evil in the world. And that’s a pretty tall order for a philosophy with absolutely no room for God.

What’s difficult? We’re good because of evolution. We’re social animals, like wolves and chimpanzees, so we have cooperative traits like honesty, cooperation, sympathy, trustworthiness, and so on.

The God hypothesis adds nothing to the conversation, and we must watch out for it being smuggled in as a presupposition (the Hypothetical God Fallacy). And we’re back where we started from, wondering where the good Christian arguments are.

You don’t need religion to have morals.
If you can’t determine right from wrong
then you lack empathy, not religion.
(seen on the internet)

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/8/14.)

Photo credit: Wikipedia

 

2019-07-31T20:50:14-07:00

Last updated on: July 31, 2019 at 8:50 pm   By

The influence of C. S. Lewis on modern Christians in the West is hard to overestimate. Few stories of apologists coming to faith don’t include a mention of Lewis’s Mere Christianity.

Lewis was a student of Norse, Greek, and Irish mythology since his youth. He knew mythology and, he felt, knew reality by contrast. Here’s his critique of the overall feel of Christianity as he compares it to the two possibilities, myth and reality.

Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have. So let us leave behind all these boys’ philosophies—these over simple answers. The problem is not simple and the answer is not going to be simple either.

Simple as a test for religion

Lewis is making several points here, one that simplicity isn’t what we should expect to find in Christianity. Lewis says earlier in the book, “It is no good asking for a simple religion. After all, real things are not simple.”

While it’s true that natural things are often messy and complicated, a supernatural God could answer, clearly and unambiguously, the big issues Christians fight over in a single page.

Christianity has much to be confused about. Look at the long list of Christian heresies about the nature of Jesus, the role of Mary, and so on. These have been resolved by mandate and tradition, not by objective evidence. Look at modern debates over morality (same-sex marriage, abortion, euthanasia). Look at the second coming, the Trinity, justification for God’s abominable actions in the Old Testament, and other murky issues. Look at the 45,000 denominations of Christianity that exist today. When Christianity can get its act together, get back to me.

No, complex is just what made-up religions look like. Religions, especially the old ones, are usually quite complicated. Simple is a reasonable thing to ask for.

Queer? That can be tested, too.

Let’s return to the point that I think is more interesting. Lewis said, “[Christianity] has just that queer twist about it that real things have.” It’s an instinctive reaction, so let’s label this argument Lewis’s Appeal to the Gut. Christianity just feels like reality rather than myth.

Let’s pursue this. Lewis says that myth feels one way, and reality feels another way. All right, Clive—formalize and quantify this “queer twist.” Give us an algorithm for reliably telling myth and reality apart in a document. Does it have to do with passive vs. active voice? Is it dynamic vs. passive action? Male vs. female characters? A direct storyline vs. one with tangents? Word choice or subject matter or archaic language or sentence length? Turn this feeling into something that can be tested.

Challenge 1. Let’s take this powerful tool on the road. Test your algorithm on biographies, hagiographies (a biography written to flatter), legend, mythology, and so on. See if it accurately separates Myth and Reality.

Challenge 2. See how it does with religious writings. Does it put the Bible (and only the Bible) into the Reality bin?

Challenge 3. Now use your algorithm to invent a supernatural story that has the traits of Reality. This is a supernatural story that you know is false (because you made it up), and yet you are compelled by your genre argument to declare it true (because that’s how you know Christianity is true). You’re obliged to believe this story as strongly as Christianity by your own argument.

But if you reject this invented story, you’ll need to reject your test as well. Maybe “if the genre feels right, then the story is believable” isn’t so useful after all.

Lewis has company

Early church father Tertullian (died ca. 240) said about the resurrection, “it is wholly believable because it is absurd.” The New Testament says, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18).

That’s right—it is both foolish and absurd, but that’s not something to celebrate.

That’s not how the adults do it

Instead of the feel test, may I suggest that we follow the lead of the experts? We already have a scholarly discipline devoted to deciding what happened in the past. It’s called History. It uses principles shaped over centuries that do a good job of synthesizing what actually happened from what is invariably insufficient or contradictory evidence. Spoiler: history is no friend of the supernatural. The consensus view of historians scrubs the supernatural from the record.

The resurrection, the Trinity, hell—there’s plenty of nonsense within Christian dogma that has just that queer twist about it that legend has. Only by inverting Lewis’s argument does it make sense.

For more rebuttals to nonsense from C. S. Lewis, check out these posts:

When we remove all the unevidenced beliefs
[from supernatural thinking]
we are left with naturalism.
And when we remove all the unevidenced beliefs
from naturalism,
we are left with naturalism.
— commenter Greg G.

Image via KMW2700, CC license

2018-01-10T18:18:35-08:00

Last updated on: January 10, 2018 at 6:18 pm   By

What Would Jesus Do?

The WWJD acronym became popular in the nineties as a way to imagine Jesus approaching a moral problem. Would Jesus smoke that joint? Would he skip his homework? Would he stop to help that person? Many young Christians wore a WWJD bracelet to keep the question in mind.

The problem is that this question delivers contradictory answers. Ask Fred Phelps what Jesus would do, and he would’ve said with confidence that Jesus would be preaching, “God hates fags.” Ask Harold Camping, and he would’ve said that Jesus would be warning people about the coming end. Pro-lifers think that Jesus would be picketing abortion clinics. Televangelists say that Jesus would want you to give them lots of money.

Many conservative Christians think that Jesus would reduce taxes, demand Creationism in public schools and prayers in city council meetings, make same-sex marriage illegal, and deny climate change. Many liberal Christians think that he’d welcome gays to church, celebrate the scientific consensus, encourage sex education to minimize unwanted pregnancies, and help the neediest people.

Pick any contentious social issue—abortion, same-sex marriage, gun rights, euthanasia, our obligations to the needy, and so on—and you’ll have millions of thoughtful Christians taking each of the many contradictory positions.

What good is it?

WWJD is a useless slogan because it’s ambiguous. It’s a synonym for “In your most moral frame of mind, what would you do?” The Jesus of the Bible is a sock puppet who says whatever you want him to say.

BOB: Say Jesus, I was thinking of putting a little extra in the offering plate on Sunday for the food bank collection.

JESUS sock puppet (in squeaky voice): Good for you, Bob! After all, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

BOB: And speaking of church, I thought that Frank from across the street was a decent guy until I found out that he’s gay. I think I should give him the silent treatment from now on.

JESUS: You’re right there, Bob! Remember that “I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother.”

The problem is pretending that Jesus really is feeding you lines. Dropping this pretense may feel like tightrope walking without a net, but “Jesus” in this case is just a synonym for “conscience.” Yes, you should pause to ask if your action is something you can be proud of, but don’t delude yourself that the source of your morals was ever anyone but you.

Two hands working
can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.
— Unknown

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/2/14.)

 

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