Bible Blunders & Bad Theology, Part 6

Copycat theology is a bad idea

 

“The Bible is the Word of God.” This is an idea that Christians don’t take seriously—come on, not by along shot. If wisdom from God were right there for the taking, you couldn’t get them to stop reading it. But they do stop reading it—they neglect reading it—because the wisdom of God doesn’t exactly pop out at you. Indeed, Christian theologians have argued endlessly about meanings and interpretations. Pick out almost any Bible text, and you’ll find disagreement and controversy about applications in the modern world.

Bradley Dalton Reviews My Magnum Opus!

“Why I Became An Atheist” (WBA) was revolutionary for me. I first read it in 2016 when I was 18 years old. I had been doubting my faith for awhile and came across a lot of different resources debating atheism vs theism. One day I was watching The David Pakman show and he interviewed John Loftus. I used to minister to youth groups in high school. So, seeing someone like Loftus who was once all in for Jesus, become an atheist intrigued me. Out of curiosity, I decided to purchase WBA.

It was the final nail in the coffin for my faith and has led to my ever growing interest in religion in politics than I’m engaged in to this day. I grew up in a Pentecostal Church. My faith in Jesus meant the world to me. I read the Bible cover to cover in High School, I prayed daily, and I wanted to help bring people to the Lord. I was a genuine believer at heart.

When I first read WBA, I was blown away by the level of knowledge that Loftus had on Christianity. I had never seen anything like it before. I enjoy the book so much that I’m reading it for a third time. I’ve also read and reviewed several other John Loftus books. I believe that this is his best work.

A Penis Bone in Genesis 2:21? Retrodiagnosis as a Methodological Problem in Scriptural Studies

Ziony Zevit is the Distinguished Professor in Bible and Northwest Semitic Languages in the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University. He has done widely respected work on the religion of ancient Israel (see Zevit 2001; 2013).

However, Zevit makes a claim that is difficult to accept or understand linguistically, exegetically, and medically. In so doing, he is engaging in “retrodiagnosis,” the practice of providing modern medical categories and descriptions for conditions unknown or of no interest to ancient writers (Arrizabalaga; Muramoto). Critiques of retrodiagnostic approaches are now numerous in scriptural studies, and these include those of Hector Avalos, Joel S. Baden, and Candida R. Moss.

Typically, such approaches seek to diagnose a condition mentioned in the Bible in precise modern medical terms. Debra A. Chase attributed one condition mentioned in the Mesopotamian creation epic known as Atra-∆as•s to Kwashiorkor-Marasmus, which is associated with starvation. 

Malcolm Gladwell (13-14), a popular writer who is not a biblical scholar, believes that Goliath suffered from “acromegaly—a disease caused by a benign tumor of the pituitary gland.” For Gladwell, this condition explains why Goliath has poor vision and so asks David to come to him in 1 Samuel 17:44. S. Levin attributes Isaac’s blindness in Genesis 27:1 to diabetes.

Holy Relics, Batman!

Please stop wasting our time and energy

 

I’m pretty sure that even the most devout Christians experience flash episodes of atheism; that is, they see for a few moments, with clarity, that God doesn’t exist. One of the most famous of these flash episodes actually made the news some years ago. In March 1996, a gunman massacred 16 kids and their teacher at a school in Dunblane, Scotland. The United Kingdom was stunned, and in the days following thousands of flowers were placed as a memorial outside the school. One bouquet was accompanied by a Teddy Bear, with a note attached: “Wednesday, 13 March 1996—the day God overslept.” (Reported in the New York Times, 23 March 1996.)

Holy Propaganda, Batman!

Tales from the cult

A few decades after its inception, the Ancient Jesus Mystery Cult produced writers who had a knack for fantasy literature. The apostle Paul was the first to write about Jesus Christ—as least his letters are the earliest documents that have come down to us—but he said almost nothing about Jesus the Galilean peasant preacher. Paul had hallucinated his way into the cult, i.e., he had visions of the dead man, and bragged that he received no information about Jesus from human sources.

What’s Wrong With Using Bayes Theorem to Evaluate Miracles?

In a previous post I spoke on the topic, Miracle Claims Asserted Without Relevant Objective Evidence Can Be Dismissed. Period! At the end I had some closing thoughts about Bayes Theorem and miracles. I'm highlighting it for thought below.

What’s Wrong With Using Bayes Theorem to Evaluate Miracles?

Now I want to end by talking briefly about Bayes Theorem. In his writings and talks Richard Carrier does a good job of explaining it.

Introducing A Much Better Ten Commandments Than God Allegedly Gave

I have been helped by reading and trying to incorporate the commands and/or language used from other attempts to better the Ten Commandments, as suggested by Bertrand Russell, Christopher Hitchens, Valerie Tarico, David Madison (in his chapter for my anthology The Case Against Miracles), the Seven Satanic Precepts, and a few I wrote in my book How to Defend The Christian Faith: Advice from an Atheist.

By doing this I am suggesting God was ignorant, incompetent and inconsiderate when he gave us his ten big ones! Had he given my suggested commands instead, he would have saved untold numbers of lives, immensely  decreased the amount of suffering in the world, and exponentially increased human knowledge, and with it produced a safer, healthier world to live in. 

Criticisms and suggestions are appreciated. 

Donald Trump's Faith Advisor

In case you haven't seen this.

Bible Blunders & Bad Theology, Part 5

Protecting the Bible: God wasn’t paying attention

One of the most common criticisms of Christianity is that its claims are incoherent: they do not cohere; they don’t hang together. Those of us on the outside say, “Wait a minute, that doesn’t make sense. You can’t believe both those things at once.” Professional Christian apologists have come up with hundreds of excuses attempting to obscure, to rub out, the many inconsistencies.