Showing posts with label Liars for Jesus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Liars for Jesus. Show all posts

Christians Are Not Credible Witnesses So Christianity is Not Credible Either

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"'You are my witnesses,' says Yahweh" (Isaiah 43:10). Jesus even prayed that based on the Christian witness the world would know God sent him (John 17:20-23). I think it's demonstrably the case that his prayer has never been fulfilled. It's exceedingly probable it will never be fulfilled in the future either. Even if it will be answered in the future it doesn't change the fact that people all over the world have been sent to hell because it hasn't been answered yet. Christians are not credible witnesses. You'd think if the credibility of what they believe is on the line their God would do something about this. But he doesn't do anything discernible at all. So let's rehearse some of the facts.

The Old Testament Caught in Lie, After Lie, After Lie

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Each segment is 51 minutes long. If you don’t have time, please just watch the summation in video 4: The Book (I would love to see WL Craig try debate either Israel Finkelstein or Neil Silberman over the truth of the Bible! These videos will be a foundation for my forthcoming post.) "In God We Trust" . . . Like Hell!

The Bible Unearthed 1.The Patriarchs

The Bible Unearthed 2.The Exodus

The Bible Unearthed 3.The Kings

The Bible Unearthed 4.The Book

Why Josephus’ So-called Testimonium Flavianum Must be Rejected

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The acknowledged authority on the life and works of Josephus is Louis H. Feldman of Yeshiva University.

Education: B.A. (Phi Beta Kappa, Valedictorian), Trinity College, Hartford, 1946; M.A. (in classics), Trinity College, 1947; Ph.D. (in classical philology), Harvard University, 1951 (diss.: "Cicero's Conception of Historiography"); L.H.D. (honorary), Trinity College, 1998.

Teaching Positions: Ford Foundation Teaching Fellow in Classics, Trinity College, 1951-52; Instructor in New Testament Greek, Hartford Seminary Foundation, 1951-52; Instructor in Classics, Trinity College, 1952-53; Instructor in Classics, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, 1953-55; Instructor in Humanities and History, Yeshiva and Stern Colleges, 1955-56; Assistant Professor of Classical Civilization, Yeshiva College, 1955-61; Associate Professor of Classical Civilization, Yeshiva College, 1961-66; Professor of Classics, Yeshiva University, 1966-present; Abraham Wouk Family Professor of Classics and Literature, Yeshiva University, 1993-present.
Fellowships and Awards: Guggenheim Foundation, Fellow; American Council of Learned Societies, Senior Fellow; Selected to conducted seminar for college teachers, National Endowment for the Humanities, "The Greek Encounter with Judaism in the Hellenistic Period," at Yeshiva University, Summers of 1980, 1983, 1985, 1989, 1992; "Classical and Christian Roots of Anti-Semitism," Summer of 1987; Award for excellence in teaching the classics, American Philological Association, 1981; Judaica Reference Book Award, Association of Jewish Libraries, 1985; Fellow, Annenberg Research Institute for Judaic and Near Eastern Studies, Philadelphia, PA, 1988-89; Elected Fellow, American Academy for Jewish Research, 1993; Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 1994.

Of his fifteen books on Josephus and 138 articles on Josephus and Judaism, I would like to quote what this Josephian scholar says about the Testimonium Flavaianum taken from "Josephus (CE 37-c.100)," in William Harbury et al., ed., The Cambridge History of Judaism vol. 3 (1999) pp. 911 - 912.

“We may remark here on the passage in Josephus which has occasioned by far more comment than any other, the so-called Testimonium Flavianum (Ant. XVIII. 63 - 4) concerning Jesus. The passage appears in all our manuscripts; but a considerable number of Christian writers - Pseudo-Justin and Theophilus in the second century, Minucius Felix, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Julius Africanus, Tertullian, Hippolytus and Orgen in the third century, and Methodius and Pseudo-Eustathius in the early fourth century - who knew Jeosphus and cited from his works do not refer to this passage, though one would imagine that it would be the first passage that a Christian apologist would cite. In particular, Origen (Contra Celsum 1.47 and Commentary on Matthew 10.17), who certainly knew Book 18 of the Antiquities and cites five passages from it, explicitly states that Josephus did not believe in Jesus as Christ. The first to cite the Testimonium is Eusebius (c. 324); and even after him, we may note, there are eleven Christian writers who cite Josephus but not the Testimonium. In fact, it is not until Jerome in the early fifth century that we have another reference o it.

The principal internal argument against the genuineness of the Testimonium is that it says that Jesus was the Christ, whereas Josephus, as a loyal Pharisaic Jew, could hardly have written this. To be sure, there was several claimants to the status of Messiah in this era, and those who followed them were not read out of the Jewish fold; but in view of the fact that Josephus nowhere else uses the word Christos (except in referring to James, the brother of Jesus, Ant. XX.200) and that he repeatedly suppresses the Messianic aspects of the revolt against Rome because of the association of the Messiah with political revolt and independence, it would seem hard to believe that he would openly call Jesus a Messiah and speak of him in awe. The fact that Jerome (De viris illustrious 13) read that ’he was believed to be the Christ (credebatur esse Christus) would suggest that his text differed from ours. Another objection to the authenticity of the passage is that it breaks the continuity of the narrative, which tells of a series of riots. Those, such as Eisler, who regard the passage as interpolated, suggest that the original spoke of the Christian movement as a riot.

Pines (An Arabic Version of the Testimonium Flavianum and Its Implications (Jeruslame 1971))has created a considerable stir by bringing to the scholarly world’s attention two hitherto almost completely neglected works containing the Testimonium, one a tenth-century history of the world in Arabic by a Christian named Agapius and the other a twelfth-century chronicle in Syriac by Michael the Syrian. There are a number of differences between Agapuius and our Testimonium, notably in the omission of the statement ‘if one ought to call him a man’ and of Jesus’ miracles and of the role of the Jewish leaders in accusing Jesus, and, above all, in the assertion that Jesus was perhaps the Messiah (‘was thought to be’ in Michael). Since Agapius declares that ‘This is what is said by Josephus and his companions’ and indeed includes a number of other details not found in Josephus, we may conjecture that he used other sources as well. Inasmuch as there are changes in the order of the statements of the Testimonium in Agapius and Michael, we are apparently dealing not with a translation but with a paraphrase.”

So, by the account given by Louis Feldman, Christians are not above forgery and lies to give credence to Christianity!

Two "Liars for Jesus" and an Aging Philosopher.

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In the names of gods all manner of moral boundary crossings become conceivable. In the service of a biblical god or the Bible-as-God, they all too often become real.

For Evangelical Christians, the greatest good in the world is winning converts. A Christian who wins a convert saves a soul that would otherwise be condemned to eternal torture. According to traditional Roman Catholic theologies in which modern Evangelicalism has its roots, only true believers are exempt from this fate.

With stakes so high, intellectual and moral slight of hand in order to win converts or keep people from deconverting becomes a lesser evil than leaving souls to suffer damnation.

Evangelical missionaries, often genuinely decent people driven by compassion, choose this lesser evil even if it means they have to engage in distasteful manipulation or deceit. As they should! That’s what moral reasoning is about: being able to weigh the consequences of our actions and choose the lesser evil or the greater good.

The problem isn’t that Evangelicals, like the rest of us, weigh alternatives on a sort of moral balance. The problem is that fundamentalist dogmas simply outweigh normal moral constraints on behavior. If one truly believes in a God who demands sacrifice (a white dove, an unblemished lamb, Abraham’s son, Yeshua-born-of-a-virgin) in order to forgive sin; if you believe that the only way out of Hell is to partake of this sacrifice, most anything becomes justified in order to get other people to drink the blood.

Through history, orthodox believers have taken this responsibility very seriously. Conquistadors reportedly baptized native infants and then ran them through with swords on the outside chance that they might have human souls. Public torture of apostates helped to keep the Faithful faithful during the Middle Ages. Even today in India and Africa, Evangelical missionaries stage “miracles” or manipulate desperate people with education, medical care, or even basic necessities like drinking water as here-and-now rewards of conversion.

On the scale of such zeal, most home turf moral transgressions in the service of faith seem small indeed. Sins that catch the public eye include things like evangelists rewriting American history so that the founding fathers appear to be “biblical” Christians, friendship missionaries targeting vulnerable foreign students without revealing their ulterior motive, a filmmaker fabricating an anti-Semitic snuff film based on outdated Catholic doctrine, or born-again officers bullying Air Force cadets to accept Jesus. Behaviors like these might seem worthy of little more than an eye roll. But such behaviors offer us an opportunity to understand how mind-controlling dogmas can get good people to do ugly things, large and small.

A recent New York Times article by Mark Oppenheimer (The Turning of an Atheist; NYT Magazine; 11/4/07) ; exposes a good example of this pattern in action. About four years ago, British philosopher Anthony Flew, a life-long atheist now in his eighties announced that he believed in some sort of god. Possibly this god was simply a prime mover, possibly it was a person-god. Flew’s public statements were sometimes contradictory. Nevertheless, Flew made a published appeal in support of intelligent design, among other things, and over the course of several years he became the darling of evangelicals in search of a credentialed ally. Flew was a “catch,” courted hard and won. Recently, two public defenders of literalist Christianity, self-funding apologist Roy Varghese and evangelical pastor Bob Hostetler even helped the aging philosopher write a book There is a God , which tells the story of how and why he converted from atheism to a fuzzy deism with theistic overtones that are fuzzier yet.

There is a catch. Anthony Flew, possibly for several years, has been showing signs of dementia. Looking back on the second election of Ronald Reagan, my psychologist friend Geoff comments: “How could the American public have voted for that guy? His Alzheimer’s was obvious by the end of his first term.” In hindsight it was. The same may someday be said of Flew. When he first announced his reversal, fellow atheists were dismayed and believers thrilled. But it is only in hindsight, in a context of unambiguous dementia that Flew’s recent years can be understood.

The DSM-IV, the diagnostic manual used by psychiatrists has this to say about Alzheimer’s: The course of Dementia of the Alzheimer’s Type tends to be slowly progressive, with a loss of 3-4 points per year on a standard assessment instrument. Various patterns of deficits are seen. A common pattern is an insidious onset, with early deficits in recent memory followed by the development of aphasia, apraxia, and agnosia after several years (any one of the three is sufficient to make the diagnosis). . . The average duration of the illness from onset of symptoms to death is 8-10 years.

Oppenheimer interviewed Flew, offering no diagnosis but simply reporting what he saw. If his observations are reported accurately, the characteristic symptoms of Alzheimer’s are present in interviews, Flew’s recent public appearances, and written conversations between Flew and atheist author, Richard Carrier. The article reads like a mental status exam:

• Memory impairment: could not recall the identities of old colleagues (e.g. Brian Leftow, Paul Davies) when given their names, could not recall the content of his earlier books (John Leslie), forgot and then remembered timeless philosophical arguments—conclusions were swayed back and forth in beliefs by most recent conversations or changes in recall.
• Aphasia: halting diction, loss of technical vocabulary (e.g. abiogenesis) self-described “nominal aphasia.”
• Disturbance in executive functioning: manifest confusion responding to abstract argumentation--demurring, passive assent, contradictory statements, didn’t write and couldn’t maintain content awareness of book published in his name.

Some of these symptoms can be seen in an interview of Flew by Lee Strobel, evangelical apologist, available on YouTube. With this level of observable dementia, and with a decrement of 3-4 IQ points per year, one might hypothesize that Flew is nearing that decade mark. In fact, having begun with a particularly robust mind and level of mental activity, it is possible that he has been fending off debilitation even longer. Symptoms such as those described by Oppenhiemer, even if they are currently patchy and inconsistent, let us know what to expect in coming years. Apraxia means losing the ability to carry out motor activities. Agnosia means losing the ability to recognize or identify objects, including people you love. Alzheimer's is a fate no-one would wish on anyone but an enemy and few would seek to exploit to their own advantage.

Is it not incredible, given this state of affairs, that people who claim to serve the God of Goodness and Truth would put Flew’s name to their own cherished arguments about what is right and real? If Flew showed symptoms of dementia like those witnessed by Oppenheimer and Carrier and then someone convinced him to donate his financial assets rather than his good name to their cause, criminal charges could apply!

For me, the real curiosity in the Flew story in not whether a once-brilliant philosopher caught in the throes of cognitive decline dies professing atheism or some form of faith-based belief. Rather it is the fascinating psychological question the story raises: Why would men who earnestly care about god concepts and goodness engage in the shameful behavior of manipulating and then speaking on behalf of an elder with diminished capacity?

One simple answer is that such behavior works. In evangelical circles, "Flew's" book will receive wide distribution, and few readers will be the wiser. It will be an effective tool for proselytizing young skeptics and arming campus missionaries. All’s fair in war, they say. And surely, if one seeks only dominion, any manner of behavior can serve the cause. Questions of good and evil are in some ways irrelevant to the end. But if one seeks, truly, to serve Love and Truth, then questions of good and evil, of decency and fairness and integrity are the end. Roy Varghese and Bob Hostetler, at least from their public statements, are not Machiavellians who generally insist that the end justifies the means. Rather, something has gotten them to violate what one might assume are their own deeply held principles.

Oppenheimer offers a partial explanation: “An autodidact with no academic credentials, Varghese was clearly thrilled to be taken seriously by an Oxford-trained philosopher; it may never have occurred to him that so educated a mind could be in decline.” This seems credible. Varghese has little to gain and much to lose from one simple punch line that emerges along with evidence of Flew’s impairment: How can you tell an Oxford philosophers is senile? He announces there is a god.

But beyond this partial explanation lies another. Bear with me while I try to lay it out.

Evangelism requires certitude. It simply doesn’t work to send out missionaries who say, “My best guess is that my God is real.” Or “The evidence is mixed, but some parts of the Bible seem divinely inspired.” Fortunately, the Evangelical narrative is beautifully adapted to provide the needed certitude.

The powerful emotions and personal transformation that can sometimes accompany conversion, worship and prayer in any religion get interpreted as unique to Christianity. They are evidence of God’s love, personal salvation, and the presence of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s mind. Doubt, in Evangelicalism, is evidence of weak faith or even temptation by Satan, the Father of Lies. In the most sophisticated Evangelicals, it is something to be admired—and overcome. “Tolerance” means being fuzzy headed about good and evil. It means moral relativism or moral indifference of the worst kind. Developing attachments to unbelievers, except to convert them, is seen as dangerous—being unequally yoked. Contradictions within the faith are relabeled as divine mysteries that make belief all the more wondrous.

Maintaining appropriate Evangelical certitude, then, requires that one cultivate certain habits of the mind—an aversion to some kinds of inquiry, a will and ability to close mental doors, a faith in faith itself, a subsuming of curiosity to the higher cause, a wariness of seeing the world through the eyes of another, a funky sort of disconnect between compassion (good) and empathy (dangerous).

If we consider these habits of the mind in combination with the atonement-salvation-damnation doctrines mentioned earlier, we get a sense of how Varghese and Hostetler could fall into the trap they did. Combine a theology of desperate urgency and a mindset that actively disables the limited human ability to protect ourselves against self-deception, and the best among us are vulnerable. The weakness is not in the men but in man. It lies in our vulnerability to specific kinds of dogmas and in the ways that the Evangelical complex (and others) have developed immunity against self-correction.

Varghese and Hostetler sought to advance human wellbeing by advancing Evangelical Christianity and they instead did harm to both. Why? Because it is not enough to be well intentioned, we must also be right. What I mean by right is anchored to the real world contingencies that govern human well-being and the well-being of the world around us. The only protection any of us has against doing harm in the service of good is a set of mental habits that remind us that we may be mistaken and force us to ask those questions that can show us wrong.

These habits require that we cultivate a child’s delight not in mystery but in discovery and that we maintain an adult’s grudging appreciation for correction. The scientific method, which has been called “what we know about how not to fool ourselves” seeks to systematize these habits of mind. Our great wisdom traditions including Christianity seek to elevate them under the name of humility. Among other things, humility demands this: When looking at the shameful plight of someone like Varghese or Hostetler, I seek to understand the forces that bind them and to remember that there, but for grace, go I.

Valerie Tarico, Ph.D. is a psychologist and the author of The Dark Side: How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth. Her essays are available at www.spaces.live.com/awaypoint.