An Honest Sermon about the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 5

More episodes of pious superstition to boost holy hero Jesus

It would seem that one of the primary goals of the author of Mark was to promote the idea that Jesus was a superior being from the spiritual realm. Indeed the Christian church would eventually claim that Jesus is a part of god himself, that is, he is one of the persons in the Holy Trinity. And Mark told stories to make this seem vividly real—stories that are clearly rooted in ancient superstitions. 
 
For people with the least grasp of how the world works—even devout Christians—Mark 5:1-20 has to be an embarrassment. It is a patch of scripture they can do without, because it’s just too deeply rooted in beliefs that can no longer be defended.

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Religions Survive Because Magical Thinking Thrives

The devout don’t seem to notice or care

In my article here last week I mentioned the Catholic sacrament known as the Eucharist, in which the wafer and wine—through the miracle of transubstantiation—actually become the body and blood of Jesus. So the church claims, based on really creepy Jesus-script in John 6:53-58. We’re dealing here with magical thinking, that is, the body and blood become magic potions that guarantee eternal life. Holy Water, which supposedly has healing power because it has been blessed by a priest, also reflects magical thinking. Hence baptism also falls into this category: the sprinkling of blessed water on an infant while reciting sacred words, protects the child’s soul. In 1981, following the assassination attempt on Pope John-Paul II, the pope had one of the bullets added to the crown of the Virgin Mary at Fatima. He was sure that Mary, Queen of Heaven, had diverted the bullet to miss an artery. This is crazy, illogical magical thinking: why didn’t the Heavenly Queen Mary divert the bullet to miss the pope altogether?

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2nd Edition of God and Horrendous Suffering Is Coming!

I'll tell you more as we work on it. For now here's the scoop.

"If There Is No God, Then We Don’t Know Anything." Arguing the Negative: John Loftus. From Loftus vs Randal Rauser, in their co-written book, "God or Godless?"

There are precursors of our own reasoning abilities found in animals. There is morality, consciousness, tool-making, learning, problem-solving, community, and communication. 1

At some point human beings could comprehend that an A(pple) is an A(pple) and not an O(range), so A=A and A≠O. 

They also comprehended something we must all do to stay alive.

1. If we want to stay alive then we must eat.
2. We want to stay alive.
3. Therefore we must eat.

The above is a logical argument known as modus ponens, which is one of the most basic rules of logic. I see no reason to think we need a God to know this. All we need is an information processor that computes the steps. And we have one: a brain. Evolution explains where that came from quite simply.

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It’s Hard for a Pope to Have a Great Legacy

When he’s the leader of a dangerous cult

I have often wondered why membership in the Catholic church isn’t down to zero by now—and I’ve voiced this curiosity quite a few times in my articles here. The Catholic church to date has paid out 3 to 4 BILLION dollars in legal fees because of child abuse/rape by its clergy. Why haven’t Catholics abandoned the church en masse? When Pope Francis was elected in 2013, and was welcomed as a breath of fresh air, the best thing he could have done was hold a weekly press conference to explain all the measures he had taken to get rid of pedophile priests—how many had been expelled from their positions and turned over to the police; what improved screening processes had been initiated to prevent such men from being ordained; what ongoing counseling programs had been established to help priests behave—including high ranking clergy who have transferred offending priests to other parishes. Of course, sexual abuse has come to light in many other Christian brands, but this hideous scandal qualifies the Catholic church as a dangerous cult.

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Who Created God? Where Did the Universe Come From?

I was asked by a Christian theologian to comment on "Who Created God?" OR "Where Did the Universe Come From?"

See what you think:

1. God exists in our thought world because he (and others) were created by prescientific superstitious peoples who didn't have a clue about the universe, how it works, or how it all might have originated.

2. The options are that something popped into existence out of nothing, or that something has always existed. Both options seem irrational, but one is correct and the other is false.

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An Honest Sermon on the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 4

The author of Mark wrote to coach the Jesus cult

 
For any faithful Christian today, this chapter must represent a profound stumbling block—at one point it blatantly defies common sense. Indeed, devout scholars have agonized over it for a long time. In the first nine verses of this chapter, we find Jesus-script—“he began to teach them many things in parables”—about the parable of the sower. The seed that landed on the path, or on rocks, or among thorns, was wasted. But the seed that fell on good soil produced abundant grain. This is wrapped up with the advice: “If you have ears to hear, then hear!”

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Apologist Daniel Ray One More Time, Part 2

Part 1 was previously published here. For Part 2 I'm linking to the comment section of a recent post. LINK. What Ray wrote provoked the following comments. [See how patient I am, yeah, right!!]

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Discussing Reason & Evidence With An Apologist

Here's a good discussion I had with a Christian Apologist:

APOLOGIST:

Consider. If an atheist like yourself claims to be using "reason" why do you trust it? For no doubt you thought you were using "reason" when you believed Christianity was true. What reason do you have now to suppose your reason is leading you to the truth? If it deceived you before, why would you think it was trustworthy now? 

Thanks, John! 

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The New Testament Itself Sabotages Belief in the Jesus Resurrection

We don’t have to ask science to explain why it didn’t happen

It is so hard for Christians to grasp that—a very long time ago—their religion fell down a deep rabbit hole of superstition and magical thinking. It doesn’t require very much study and critical thinking to figure this out. The clergy, across the wide range of Christian brands that don’t agree, have developed considerable show business skills in the structuring of worship events. That is, they have mastered razzle-dazzle—with the use of music, ritual, costuming, art, and architecture—to disguise and deflect attention from beliefs that are deeply superstitious and dependent on magic. Televangelism comes to mind especially; the phony clergy who run these events know how to put on spectacular displays. And the Catholic church, for centuries, has built impressive cathedrals to function as sets for their rituals—and it wins the competition for outrageous costumes! All this helps boost confidence among the laity that the proclaimed theologies must be true.

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Evangelical Apologist Daniel Ray Objects To Atheism, Part 1

It's not unusual for apologists to argue with me. But I have met and talked with Daniel Ray and his objections are real. I'll let him introduce his 3-Part blog post series (so far) that objects to several of my arguments:

Recently I had the delightful opportunity to sit down to breakfast with the formidable atheist internet infidel and prolific author John W. Loftus. John came down to Texas for a visit recently and our ministry, Watchman Fellowship, invited John to participate in our Atheist & Christian Book Club. John is a good friend of our ministry’s president James K. Walker and has been on our book club as a guest at least three times, if memory serves me correctly.

Let me say up front that John is truly a gentleman and likable fellow. He was both thoughtful and respectful throughout our conversation about faith, epistemology, and several other topics pertaining to atheism and Christianity. You might disagree with John’s conclusions about God and Christianity, but one thing you cannot say of John is that he hasn’t thought much about why he no longer believes in God. We even spent some time discussing Latter-day Saint beliefs and my recent trip to Utah for the LDS spring General Conference. John asked me all about how I approach engagement with Mormons in Utah. And he listened. He wasn’t just pontificating atheism over hash browns and coffee, John genuinely seemed interested in why I believe Christianity is true.

One thing any engagement with John’s work will do for you is to make you check yourself as to whether or not you are just “parroting” your beliefs or if you really have examined and looked into them and have sound epistemological reasons for holding to your belief. John knows the Bible rather well, knows a lot of apologetic arguments for Christianity and was once a student of Christian philosopher William Lane Craig.

As an atheist, John has popularized the “Outsider Test for Faith” which you can find here. It is a test that has unfortunately caused not a little trouble for some folks who haven’t really examined the epistemological side of their faith in God. “How do you know what you claim to know?” If you have never examined that aspect of your beliefs, it can be a little intimidating, especially if you’re confronted by an atheist on the street who asks you this question.

And I can attest, that even though John might disagree with your conclusions if you are a Christian, he will respect your answers to his questions if you can demonstrate you have thought about why you believe what you believe.

John asked me over breakfast to check out some of his essays on The Secular Web. Since we chatted briefly about Mary, I thought I would have a go at responding to some of John’s points in his 9,000-plus-word essay on why he thinks Mary cannot be the mother of Jesus.

I don’t here claim I’ll be able to do justice to everything John mentions in the essay, and this may end up being a couple of posts, but this is why I like to write. I often have no idea where I’ll end up!

Below is a link to Part 1, plus our comments back and forth. As usual, there isn't enough time to comment on everything, or in great detail. Check it out and make your own observations.

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Luke's Gospel Rejects Matthew's Previous Gospel!!

Luke's Gospel begins with this preface:

1 Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us, 3 I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received. [NABRE - New American Bible (Revised Ed.)]

Luke's Gospel rejects significant stories told in Matthew's previous Gospel!!

Biblical scholarship shows us that Luke's Gospel follows after Matthew's Gospel, which followed after Mark's first Gospel. This is very significant. Luke says he has investigated what has been written before him, and is putting it down in chronological order. For anyone interested in biblical inspiration you have a huge problem. Anything Luke omits from Matthew means Luke probably didn't think it happened. When we look at it all, it's as if Luke was rejecting and correcting the Gospel of Matthew on some important issues. Here are seven of them:

1. Joseph's dream (Matthew 1). As evidence that Mary was telling the truth about her pregnancy dreams offer us nothing. Dreams cannot provide any evidence as to the truth of a divine virgin birthed child.

2). Matthew's genealogy (Matthew 1). It traces the Messianic lineage of Jesus to Joseph. But Joseph was not the father of Jesus. To correct this, Luke's Gospel (Luke 3) invents a different genealogy to show the messianic lineage ends with Mary, the mother of Jesus. But this still leaves the problem of the male chromosome required to produce a human baby. In addition, any baby cloned from female DNA would only produce another female.

3) Matthew's Bethlehem Star (Matthew 2), which makes no sense because no one had seen such a star pointing down to a specific location.

4) The massacre of the innocents (Matthew 2:16-18), which no one had seen taken place nor heard about. It’s clear that the first-century Jewish historian Josephus hated Herod. He chronicled in detail his crimes, many of which were lesser in kind than this alleged wholesale massacre of children. Yet nowhere does Josephus mention this slaughter, even though he would have been in a position to know of one had one happened, and even though he would have every reason to mention it.

5) The faked "prophesies" from Isaiah (Matthew 1:22) and Hosea (Matthew 1:14-15) which had no basis in the original Old Testament texts.

6) Matthew's unbelievable story of the soldiers who were told to guard the tomb so no one would steal the body of Jesus (Matthew 27:62-66; 28:11-15). Is Pilate really expected to believe these soldiers, that the body of Jesus is missing because he arose the grave? Pilate would conclude no such thing. He would sentence them to death for dereliction of duty.

7) Luke's gospel also eliminated the unbelievable story (in Matthew 27:51-53) that Old Testament saints were resurrected with Jesus and walked around Jerusalem, which no one had ever seen, nor attended their funerals upon dying a second time.

Do you see any others?

To read more about the first five deletions above see my Secular Web Page article, Hail Mary: Was Virgin Mary Truly the Mother of God’s Son?

On Quoting The Consensus In Order to Support the Consensus

David Pallmann is a young interesting evangelical Christian apologist who is willing to question beliefs based merely on the consensus of scholars. Given that on Facebook he shared a picture of the three big conservative apologists, Gary Habermas, Michael Licona, and William Lane Craig [on the left], I take it he's aiming for them:

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"In any field of research, but especially in biblical studies, be very careful about uncritically accepting something as true just because it is widely assumed to be true within that discipline. Unjustified ideas can become cemented within scholarship and then reinforced by peer pressure within subsequent generations of scholars. What I've found is that many of the individuals within various fields accept the consensus uncritically. When called upon to defend the consensus, they will often just refer back to the consensus to support the consensus. Either that, or they will list some stock arguments for the conclusions of the consensus. But when asked to defend those arguments against criticisms, it often becomes clear that they are incapable of doing so.

This is one of the main reasons why I dislike the modern fad, with which so many Christian apologists are infatuated, where one stresses that their arguments for, say, the resurrection of Jesus, are based upon scholarly consensus. The assumption seems to be that if the arguments are based upon scholarly consensus, then there must be good evidence for the premises. But that's simply a bad assumption. Scholarly consensus is frequency based upon the flimsiest and most vapid reasoning I've ever seen. What's more, scholarly consensus is generally not terribly friendly to Christianity. For this reason (and many more) Christian apologists would do better to challenge the scholarly consensus, when appropriate, rather than constantly cozying up to it."

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I couldn't have said it better. Now let's see some consistency. The whole history of Christianity is basically quoting from one theologian to another, to another, based on theological consensus.  

A Christian Defends Popular Theobabble with Amateur Theobabble

Religious personal opinion doesn’t replace epistemology 

 

In my article here last week, I explained exactly why He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands—popular though it might be—is nonetheless theobabble. It makes no sense whatever when we honestly admit that there is so much pain and suffering in the world. But devout folks have devised ways to divert attention from these realities. It was no surprise, therefore, a Catholic jumped into the debate. One of his earliest comments was:
 
“God has a plan. Human beings act freely within that plan. People committing acts of violence and mass murder are acting against God’s Plan. God’s divine providence makes sure that good comes from the evil. So basically, if had not been for Gods plan, the human race would have destroyed itself long ago.”

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A Classic with a Renewed Relevance: Anti-intellectualism in American Life (1964)

A Classic with a Renewed Relevance: Anti-intellectualism in American Life (1964):

Figure 1: My copy of Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1964) by Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970).

New reading material. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963) by Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970). Although written more than 60 years ago, this book has a renewed relevance, today, given the distinctly anti-intellectual movements of MAGA, Christian Nationalism, Climate-change denial, etc. One cannot understand American anti-intellectualism without understanding its brand of Christianity, which is why Hofstadter devotes three whole chapters to critiquing American Evangelical Christianity.

America still, overwhelmingly, practises a religion that extols the virtues of sheep and unthinking little children; that tells its adherents not to be taken captive by philosophy; and that tells them to not lean upon their own understanding. The “carnal mind”—i.e. the mind as explained by neuroscience—is something to be distrusted, in Evangelical circles. As Dennis McKinsey (1940–2009), points out: it is impossible for America to remain a secular enlightened democracy, when millions of Americans think—or rather refuse to think—this way.

Figure 2: The late great Dennis McKinsey (1939–2009), the author of The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy (1995). McKinsey believed that the time and money spent trying to shore up secularism in the courts could be better spent on trying to deconvert more Christians. In the letters section of his periodical, Biblical Errancy, he and Dan Barker discussed a difference of tactics in this regard.

To attempt to understand American anti-intellectualism without understanding its anti-intellectual religion would be dishonest, and Hofstadter, to his credit, does not shy away from critiquing Christianity in his exploration of American anti-intellectualism.

Anti-intellectualism is a puzzling phenomenon. Americans would rather vote for people who loudly and proudly vaunt their ignorance—as though that were a virtue!—rather than for people quietly confident in asserting what they know from years upon years of reading and study. Hofstadter uses the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) as a case in point. The brilliant intellectual, Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965), Eisenhower’s opponent, is whom the American electorate would have voted for, if they valued brains. However, the American public turned down Adlai Stevenson in favour of Dwight D. Eisenhower… twice!

Figure 3: Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965). According to Hofstadter, he was the choice of the intellectual classes… but the American electorate had other ideas.

Hofstadter points out that the American populace has been at war with the life of the mind for a very long time.

Hofstadter points out that anti-intellectualism causes the ‘vulgarization’ of politics. Is anyone more vulgar than Trump?

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Ciarán Aodh Mac Ardghail (Ciarán Mc Ardle) is a digital creator from Ireland. Here is his linktree. Here is his YouTube Channel. Here is his LinkedIn. Here is his Instagram.

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Video: The 3rd Creation Account in the Bible:

The 3^rd Creation Account in the Old Testament:

Introduction:

Jennifer Bird PhD asked, in a thumbnail, the question: How many creation accounts are there in the Bible?

Video 1: In the above video, Jennifer Bird PhD asks how many creation stories there be in the Christian Bible. I think that the correct answer is “3”, although, unfortunately, I have not yet viewed this video.

I know of three. I discuss all of them in the below video, but, in particular, the lesser known 3^rd creation account, where the Jewish god slays a female sea-monster called Rahab, and fashions the created world with her body. I call attention to the Egyptian sky goddess Nut or Nuit who, seems to me to resemble Rahab, in some respects.

Figure 1: The Egyptian Sky Goddess, Nut. According to wikipedia, Nut features in the creation myth of Heliopolis. credit: Eternal Space. Creative Commons.

Video 2: My video on the 3^rd creation account in the Old Testament. In the thumbnail, pictured, the scroll, in the top left reads:

Figure 2: An Isaiah Scroll that I drew. Written on it in Hebrew is: ‘סֵ֫פֶר־יְשַׁעְיָ֫הוּ‚, or, transliterated: ‘sḗp̲er-yəšaʿyā́hû’, which means: ‘the Book of Isaiah’.

The scroll in this thumbnail reads, in Hebrew: ‘The Book of Isaiah’ wherefrom I read in this video, and, in particular, from ch. 27 v.1. I employ the Legacy Standard Bible, in this video, because, as Kipp Davis points out: we really ought to translate the tetragrammaton as ‘Yahweh’ and not as ‘LORD’. The LSB is to be commended for doing this.

My Video Transcript:

(My video transcript for this video may be viewed as a word document.)

CIARÁN AODH MAC ARDGHAIL: “The third creation account in the Bible: and the version of the Bible that we are reading is John MacArthur’s Legacy Standard Bible and the reason why I use this is because Kipp Davis says that ‘LORD’ is really a mistranslation whenever we see yod hey vav hey [יהוה], in Hebrew, we should really translate that as ‘Yahweh’ and not as ‘LORD’. Most Bibles translate the tetragrammaton— tetragrammaton [τετραγράμματον] is really a Greek word that means: ‘four-lettered-thing’ ‘tetra-’ [‹τετρα-›], in Greek, means: ‘four’; ‘grắmma’ [‹γρᾰ́μμᾰ›], in Greek, means ‘letter’, and: ‘-on’ [‹-ον›], in Greek, means ‘thing’, so the ‘tetragrammaton’ is: ‘the four-lettered thing’, and the four letters are the Hebrew letters yod hey vav hey, and whenever we see yod hey vav hey, I agree with Kipp Davis we should translate it as ‘Yahweh’ and not as ‘LORD’, and the Legacy Standard Bible does this admirably and there are at least three creation accounts in the Bible. Jennifer Bird recently did a show: How Many Creation Accounts Are There in the Bible? and if you are a Fundamentalist or an Evangelical who adheres to biblical inerrancy, then you most likely would say ‘one’, however if you do not adhere to biblical inerrancy then it’s quite obvious that in the Book of Genesis there are two conflicting creation accounts: the Elohim creation account and the Jehovitic or Yahwistic creation account and these two accounts are completely contrary to one another. One creation account takes seven days whereas the other one takes only one day. I think the second creation account, which I think is the Jehovitic creation account: it begins with ‘in the day when God created the heavens and the Earth...’, whereas the previous creation account; the Elohim creation account; it takes 6 days and then God rests on the seventh day, which is ‘shabbath’ [‘שַׁבָּ֫ת‚] or ‘sabbath’ or ‘Saturday’ and that’s why the Ten Commandments tell us to keep Saturday . ‘Sabbath’ is a mistranslation. ‘shabbath’ [‘שַׁבָּ֫ת‚] means ‘Saturday’, so it’s not keep... the Commandment is not: ‘keep the Sabbath!’ it’s ‘Keep Saturday!’ or ‘keep the...’ ‘keep the seventh day!’ so I mean these people want to hang the Ten Commandments everywhere: they breach at least one of them because they don’t keep Saturday and I think even in the wording of the Ten Commandments it says ‘You must keep Saturday because on Saturday God rested!’ God didn’t rest on Sunday, indeed Sunday was the day he began the creative work... however that is its own tangent... so there are at least two creation accounts in the Bible and these are found in the Book of Genesis, [in] the opening two chapters, however there is also a third creation account in the Bible, and this is an account where the Jewish god slays a Great Serpent and then I think creates the ‘firmament’ the ‘raqî́yan͡g’ [‘רַקִ֫יעַ‚] or the ‘sky’ with the body of this great sea serpent and this great sea serpent is called ‘רַהַב‚ or ‘Rahab’, so this is another creation account and it’s very similar to the Egyptian creation account where I think it’s the goddess Nuit, one of the Gods takes goddess Nuit and puts her up in the sky and she becomes the sky... so there is another creation account in the Bible and we see glimpses of it... I think the redactors tried to get rid of it but they didn’t get rid of it completely, and here we see in Isaiah chapter 27:

‘In that day Yahweh will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent,
With His fierce and great and mighty sword,
Even Leviathan the twisted serpent;
And He will kill the dragon who lives in the sea.’

so there is this myth referred to periodically in the Old Testament of Yahweh killing a great sea dragon and I think the biblical Scholars say that this is in reference to the earlier creation myth where the Jewish god killed Rahab and then created the sky with her body and that was the means in the Book of Genesis: it talks about God stretching out the heavens and dividing the waters that are beneath the [‘רַקִ֫יעַ‚] ‘raqî́yan͡g’ or ‘firmament’ and the waters above the [‘רַקִ֫יעַ‚] ‘raqî́yan͡g’ or ‘firmament’ and perhaps this is how he did it: he killed Rahab and he used Rahab’s body to divide the waters from beneath the firmament from the waters above the firmament and so I just thought that I would discuss this because Jennifer Bird has already discussed it and I find it extremely interesting.”

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Ciarán Aodh Mac Ardghail (Ciarán Mc Ardle) is a digital creator from Ireland. Here is his linktree. Here is his YouTube Channel. Here is his LinkedIn. Here is his Instagram.