Subject: Is it a Fact that the Biblical Background is Original?

Below is how I now understand salvation and Christianity and why I'm not worried about a future life in a Heaven or Hell. You will not find this taught in church supported schools (Bible colleges or conservative seminaries) nor mentioned in Sunday School classes as these facts would totally be counter productive in any development of faith.

As a non-Christian (one who was never saved (John Calvin) or one who lost his salvation (Jacobus Arminius)…I’ll leave that up to the theologians to debate) I feel very fulfilled with my life and find the concepts of eternal reward or punishment meaningless now in light of the environment. But just to clarify my view, below is the central reason why I left Christianity.

Some Major Biblical Facts

A. Every major Greek theological term and concept the New Testament and Early Church used to create his or her religious doctrine was taken directly from the Classical “pagan” world. Here are a few: God (Greek: Theos) Church, Faith, Prayer, Salvation, Gospel, Heaven, Hell, Sin, Soul, Spirit, Demon, Forgiveness, Sacrifice, Blood Atonement, the concept of “god” as father, divine punishments and rewards and so on. These terms and concepts were loaded words pregnant with meaning from the so-called “pagan” religious traditions and applied by the early followers of Jesus to their up start religion(s) (Christianity is a “catch all” term for all early Jesus movements whether latter accepted as orthodox or not). As proof, look up any of the above words in Oxford’s Classical Greek Lexicon (A Greek-English Lexicon, Liddell, Scott, Jones) and watch how the word is reapplied latter by the authors of the New Testament in A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature, Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich, Funk and finally the exclusive use in the Christian tradition in Oxford’s A Patristic Greek Lexicon, Lamp. These “pagan” religions used these same terms and concepts for hundreds to thousands of years before Jesus which enabled people like St. Paul proselytize based on the foundations of Classical religious traditions (Paul needs this foundation to preach at Athenians: Acts 17). It is little wonder Christianity was given its name and had great success in Classical pagan Asia Minor while the teachings of Jesus (as found in the Synoptic Gospels and taught by such Jewish-Christian sects as the Ebionites whose terms and concepts where base the Semitic Aramaic language) had mostly died out in Roman Palestine by 400 CE.

Even the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine, minted coins with a cross on one side and Apollo, the Sun god, on the other. The New Testament’s concept of judgment where God is seated on a throne with Jesus either standing or seated at His right hand is drawn directly from the court of the Roman Emperor with his son or favorite general seated or standing to his right and set the stage for the imperial cult worship of the Emperor.

Symbolic numbers such as 3, 6, 7, 12, 40, 72 are also given divine meanings and are used repeatedly by Jesus and the writers of the New Testament (especially in the book of Revelation) to reveal divine mysteries. These same six numbers can be found as symbolic and magical numbers in much older stories and religious texts from ancient Semitic language families such as Akkadian, Phoenician, and Ugaritic. In light of this fact (as argued by Christian apologist) to claim that “God” uses known symbols and terms of the ancient pagan world only begs the question as to the exclusive truthfulness of both Judaism and Christianity.

The West Semitic language of Hebrew (of the Israelites) is a direct dialect of the hated Canaanites reed stylus script: Ugaritic (Note: The late Hebrew alphabet script compared to the ancient reed logographic script proves which came first). The symbol used in the Book of Revelation of the seven- headed beast (Rev. 13) was a concept already about 1000 years old when the writer of this Christian book chose to plagiarize it (see: Ancient Near Eastern Text in Pictures Relating to the Old Testament, Princeton University Press). Thus the New Testament writers often depended on, and needed popular pagan symbols to create accepted and factual bases for their new faith so the Christian tradition would fit right in to a competing “pagan” religious context.

In a world in which most people were poor and illiterate, with few living past the age of thirty (where a simple abscessed tooth could cause death), the austere teaching of the Synoptic Jesus on wealth (Matt. 13:22, Mark 10:25, Luke 6:24, 16:19-31) is replaced with promises of “health, wealth and prosperity” in latter works such as the Gospel of John where the faithful will be given many rooms (Greek: mona) in Heaven (John 14:2) or, in the books of Revelation, where the righteous walk on streets of gold in an emerald city (Rev. 21: 9-21).

Even recent major archaeological discovery now shows, more than ever, that the Hebrews are themselves part of their hated neighbors: the Canaanites. The lack of any archaeological sites that are linked to the Israelites in the Sinai over their forty year journey under a man called Moses are proving there was never an exodus form Egypt as stated in the Bible (for a review of the facts see: America’s leading archeologist William Dever in his book: Who Were the Israelites and Where Did They Come From? Eerdmans, 2003). In fact, the old lunar calendar of the Canaanites and their religious festivals to their gods is the same basic calendar of dates for many of Israel’s major festivals: Rosh ha-shanah, Sukkot, Pesach and Shavu’ot. Shav’uot.

It’s very interesting that while so called Bible Believers (as such, Bob Jones University) claim to accept the Bible at face value and follow Jewish tradition (and that of Jesus himself) that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, they never explain why an earlier text such as Deuteronomy 18:10 is not followed or accepted by Yahweh Himself in a much latter time/text such as the burning of Jephthah’s daughter in Judges 11:29-40 (and notice that the English word used here: Lord is the direct rendering of Hebrew Yahweh in the Masoretic Hebrew text ). Even if the text of Deuteronomy 18 is dated into the Josianic reforms, Yahweh Himself has both prohibited and accepted human sacrifice as a burnt offering! It’s now just a small step from accepting a human burnt offering (that of Jephthah’s daughter) to the human crucified offering: Jesus. One thing being equal, Israel’s god Yahweh and the Canaanite gods (Baal / El) both accepted human flesh and blood as a sacrifice!

What Best Explains the "Embarrassing Elements" in the Gospels?

I'll comment later, but what do you think about this argument?

The Ache of Christmas

I am an agnostic on my best days, and an atheist on my better days. But when Christmas comes around, I ache inside.

I miss the meaning of the music, which in my opinion is the best and most moving choral and common music ever written. I miss the mystery of the moment, when God incarnated Himself in humanity. I miss the power of the myth...incarnation in a poor, forsaken Jew, living in occupied territory, born with a murder threat over his head and the head of his family.

I have been to Israel. I have stood in the cave under the Church of the Nativity. I have stood in the Shepherd's Cave. I have looked out over the fields where the shepherds watched their flocks at night. I looked up in the expanse of sky above my head, where those shepherds saw angels singing "Hosanna, peace on earth (not hardly), good will to mankind (yeh, well...)." I visited the little excavated home in Nazareth, swallowed up by a modern cathedral, where Mary raised the little Messiah to be. (OK - I am pulling a Paul here, trying to cite my credentials for the benefit of my attackers).

I even learned on that visit - and received it with a skeptical mind and heart because I was anointed of the Holy Spirit, and walking in faith - that those sites had absolutely no historic merit, but were consigned that identity by Catherine and the ambassadors from Constantine that marked off the Holy Land for Christianity in the fourth century.

Hell, I even miss Santa Claus, in my mind - now - a myth equal to the myth of Jesus and possibly more rooted in fantastical realism. The gifts under the tree, the Christmas Eve dinner, the singing of carols, the celebration with wassail...all of those things seem somewhat empty to me now that I have given up the Ghost.

It is not easy being agnostic at Christmas. HP Lovecraft - admittedly not the philosopher or intellect that is often quoted here, but a man of keen insight and a philosopher's vision - looked up at the stars and saw a cold, heartless, meaningless universe. John Loftus compared our plight on planet earth to a Monte Carlo card game...Bill Gnade took him up on it and an interesting argument ensued. Bottom line...when one embraces agnosticism, or atheism, one embraces a cold, heartless, meaningless universe that has no regard for humanity or the plight of humans or the destiny of individuals. Chuthulu may as well be out to destroy us for no reason other than that we, as a species and a race, are in his way. Doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter that I am agnostic, or that at one time I stood on the cliff overlooking Shepherd's Field and wept with wonder at the immensity of that alleged night.

The hardest truth of all...it does not matter. There are probably atheists and agnostics out there who will deny that they ever feel the emptiness of that truth. Or perhaps they don't ever feel that...and I envy them. I feel the ache, and Christmas just makes the ache of that reality more poignant. But as one who once worshipped the Babe in the Manger, and now does not...I am convinced that it is better to find a way to embrace the ache and get on with it, than to live in a delusion that - like the truth about Santa - may cause more damage than good.

So, it's midnight...and things are clear.

The Pagan Development of Christianity

A. The ministry of Jesus the Jewish Reformer and his traditional 11(12) apostles were failures. From the death of Jesus (between 30 -32 CE), it took 30 to 40 years for the first Gospel of Mark to write a life of Jesus. The very limited function of (Saint) Peter the Jew is totally eclipsed by the Hellenistic / Greek Paul (or a school of Pauline thought) wrote half of the New Testament. By Acts chapter 14, the last apostle (Peter who was to have been taught by the master Jesus himself) is totally drop in favor of the Greek Jew, Paul who redefines a limited Jewish Jesus into a universal and gentile "Christ". The rest of Jesus’ Jewish apostles appear only in non-canonical pseudepigraphic and apocryphal literature...

B. Only Christianity as it survived in Greek Asia Minor (the home of Paul or the philosophical east) and Rome (the seat of power) was accepted as orthodox as defined at the Nicaea Council in 325 CE. From 325 CE onwards, Christology is defined by the later church councils directly from the rhetoric and philosophy drawn from Neo-Platonism. This mode of thinking becomes the language to the orthodox Church Fathers and of salvation. This is particularly true in light of the Hebrew Bible’s concept of Sheol or the Land of the Shades where all decent in the after life. Platonic philosophy as found in the Phaedo has the soul returning to above spiritual world of absolute true: The Forms. Thus, eternal life for the righteous soul based on a philosophical understanding of Christ is moved from underground Sheol / the Pit to accent in the heavens / Heaven. Sheol is now Hell (since down is bad, thus the place for the fall of the soul in Plato and the land of the Forms is now Heaven (since up is good and the source of divine light in Plotinus of which we all seek to return to). Paul’s accent into the “third Heaven” (2 Corinthians 12:2) is attested from a structure of the Plotinian Universe. Further, Paul’s exclusive concept of a Jewish midrash reading of the Genesis’ story of Eden and the talking snake (Genesis 3) provided the foundation for what the Church Fathers defined as Original Sin (as derived from Plato’s Phaedrus).

C. The limited anthropomorphic god of Israel is given expanded attributes such as "all knowing", "all loving", "all present", "all powerful", and any and all other positive absolutes are drawn directly from the Classical Greek philosophical traditions of Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus as a ultimate philosophical universality (again note St. Paul’s theology). Little wonder there is no known Greek or Latin manuscript used in the translation of the New Testament where the name of Israel's god Yahweh is recorded. The Hebrew Yahweh as a historical actor is now dead and the Greek philosophical and Classical term theos or “God” is now front and center.

D. In the late Gospel of John, Jesus is the "logos" (Greek for word) pulled by the writer of this gospel directly from Greek philosophy. This logos or word has no birth, but always was from the beginning (John chapter 1). The old Greco-Roman myth where a god impregnates a woman (as record in Mathew and Luke) to make a half man and half god (such as in the case with Heracles and many other Greco-Roman demigods) was rejected as crude myth in the Platonic view. Thus, the Classical myths with their flawed gods and demigods are given the boot in favor of the pure term logos. This logos is now totally identified as God or the Classical Greek generic term for the highest level of pure universal of concept of light and mind (John 1:9). In this Fourth Gospel, Jesus (unlike in Matthew, Mark and Luke) has no parables to tell, but is made to speak as a Greek philosopher. In fact, the word faith used so often in the Synoptic Gospels never occurs in John. The famous statement use by Evangelicals and most likely formed by the writer of John as recorded in John 3:16 (For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that who so ever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life." is a statement where the limited Hebrew god Yahweh and his chosen people (the Israelites) are now cast out being replaced by the universal absolutes of Platonic philosophy. This God of Philo of Alexandria and the Gospel of John have been totally transformed from the God of Noah (Genesis 6 -9) who hated his own creation to universal logos of love.

For those Christians who argue that God never changes need only to study the ancient world of Judaism and Christianity more openly and objectively in dialogue with the text of the ancient Near East and the Classical worlds. (Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever. Hebrews 13:8) Really?

Harry McCall

Bill Gnade and the Origins of Existence

In a discussion that started here, Bill Gnade has asked some very good questions which bear repeating and answering...

Bill said…

If we are here by pure chance, then we are not here as a result of some Monte Carlo game. For a Monte Carlo game is a system that is itself neither random nor is it created ex nihilo; any Monte Carlo game is the result of a creating intelligence. There is nothing ultimately random either about the existence of the game or the results of the game as played. Your analogy assumes intelligence, even intelligent design. Moreover, you intend to use this analogy rationally; you don't intend to use it irrationally. Hence, you do believe that there are rational metaphysics, namely yours. You DO explain existence: we are a number that came up in a drawing, and this is a "brute fact" that prevents us from explaining existence.

Agreed. All analogies break down somewhere, and I was using words to describe something that probably cannot be described, only that we just don’t know how we got here. When it comes to why anything exists, all we have are brute facts, and I find that extremely interesting and maddening at the same time. The brute fact that will be more reasonable to accept will depend upon the one that has the fewest ad hoc hypotheses, agreed?

We either start with an unexplainable “quantum wave fluctuation” or we start (from the Christian perspective) with a triune God, even though the no sense of the trinity can be made that is both orthodox and reasonable; who as a spiritual being created matter, even though no known point of contact between spirit and matter can be articulated; who never began to exist, even though everything we experience has a beginning and an end to it; who never learned any new truths and cannot think, since thinking demands weighing temporal alternatives; is everywhere, yet could not know what time it is since time is a function of placement and acceleration in the universe; and if timeless this God cannot act in time.

Plus, depending upon what you believe in the Bible this God commanded genocide, witch, honor, heretic killings, and demanded a perfect moral life when such a life is not possible given that we are fleshly creatures with an “epistemic distance” from knowing God’s true love and power; became incarnate in Jesus, even though no reasonable sense can be made of a being who is both 100% God and 100% man; found it necessary to die on the cross for our sins, even though no sense can be made of so-called atonement; will return to earth where every eye will see him, which assumes an ancient pre-scientific cosmology; and will judge humanity by rewarding the “saints” in heaven by taking away their free will to do wrong, and punishing sincere doubters to hell with their free will intact so they can continue to rebel.

I prefer the simplest brute fact, period.

Bill again...

Moreover, since you call this existence "absurd," I am led to believe that you don't believe your own assertion, for to know what is absurd one must first know what makes sense; and since what makes sense is the rational, you must stand in the rational, or else you could not discern the absurd from what is not. Hence, you have not really shown what is your ultimate view of reality, couched as it must be in sensibility and reason (and even sanity); you have not shown us how you KNOW this existence is absurd.

What I believe, after moving off of the default position, which is agnosticism, is based upon a measure of faith.

Bill said…

Somehow, for some reason, I have not given in to my ultimate doubts.

I make no predictions about this, nor do I personally care if you do. All I’m saying is that I did, and I have offered reasons for why I did.

Bill said…

You are probably right about the Ontological Argument, though I hope you recognize that the argument is at least logically valid.

Yes it is. But what do you do when two valid arguments lead to mutually contradictory conclusions? John Hick used the same formulation of the Ontological Argument that Plantinga uses, except that he concludes that an evil Supreme Being exists.

Bill said…

But Will Hawthorne's question opens up a very important idea, namely, that the existence of the universe is not "known;" hence, at best, our acceptance of the universe as known is based on faith (forgive me Mr. Hawthorne if I've said too much). And if faith is the first principle of knowledge, then I believe any argument against Christianity as "faith" is silly.

Agreed. Reason can lead us to the default position, but reason cannot move us off it. It’s faith that moves us off of it. So the only question is which movement off of the default position entails the least amount of faith, and the least amount of ad hoc hypotheses? I think I know.

Cheers.

Eddie Tabash on the Separation of Church and State

Even Christians can support the separation of church and state, okay?

Christians Gain Little From Antony Flew’s Change of Mind

Antony Flew changed his mind on the God-hypothesis, which was announced in an interview published in December of 2004. To answer his critics he wrote an article for the Journal of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists, called The Open Society (Summer 2005, Volume 78, Number 4), titled What I Mean by Atheism, pp 8-9. In it we see why Christians gain little from his change of mind...

In this article Flew rambles, and what he wrote seems contradictory. In the first place, why is the article titled, “What I mean by atheism,” if he now believes? He also states that “I am myself delighted to be assured by biological-scientist friends that protobiologists are now well able to produce theories of the evolution of the first living matter and that several of these theories are consistent with all the so-far confirmed scientific evidence.” Why would he say that if he has accepted the Intelligent Design hypothesis? And why would he answer the question of whether we need a God to explain the origin of life by writing, “the work in this area which I have now read and on which I am presently relying for my conclusion on this matter is Victor J. Stenger's Has Science Found God?: The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe? Stenger’s answer to that question," Flew writes, "is, of course, an emphatic ‘No’."

But Flew does say this: “Probably I should always have called myself an agnostic.”

In an earlier article Raymond Bradley asked, “You say that you have abandoned atheism for belief in God. But the God of which religion? Pantheism? Deism? Or of some non-Mosaic version of theism?” Flew’s answers by writing “My answer is clear and confident. It is the non-interfering Aristotelean God of Deism and, most emphatically not the God of any revealed religion.” How much clearer can Flew be?

To emphasize this point, Flew wrote: “Albert Einstein was once asked – ‘to settle an argument’ – whether he believed in God. He replied that he believed in Spinoza’s God…No doubt many orthodox Christian and Jewish readers were reassured to think the great physicist was at one with them on this most fundamental matter.’ But of course, in Spinoza’s usage ‘God’ and ‘Nature’ were synonyms. Of course there is…a quite fundamental difference between an Aristotelian God who is the First Cause and Einstein’s Spinozistic ‘God or Nature’. But I don’t see why anyone else should be much interested in that question just so long as any God who is believed to exist is not Himself interested in human behaviour.”

Here’s my problem. In this essay we see Flew rambling and even making what seems to be contradictory claims in 2005. That should surely be an indicator that two years later he probably has other lapses in thinking and writing. It is not the clear and well written stuff he used to do. Nonetheless, in it he distances himself from any revealed religion. Why are Christians getting so much reassurance out of this? I don’t see it.

I think soft-agnoticism ("I don't know") is the default religious position. In this article Flew even says as much by saying he should've always affirmed agnosticism. Anyone leaving the default position must offer arguments in doing so. That's why I argue that moving from that initial position to a full-blown fundamentalist Christianity is as hard to do as flying a plane to the moon. That's why Christians of the fundamentalist type, gain little from his "conversion."

Flew’s viepoint is a very small step off that initial position. He affirms very little. Since the smaller the claim is, the easier it is to defend, his view is a much more reasonable position than fundamentalism, and harder to debunk. I too make a small move off the default position, but in the opposite direction, to atheism. However, his Deistic view offers him nothing...no hope...no morality...no helping God. A distant God like that is no different than none at all. Once I grasped this I became an atheist, for even if there is a God, it makes no difference to believe he exists.

I think all attempts to figure this existence out end in practical absurdities. Some people embrace those absurdities and punt to mysticism and mystery as pointers to the ultimate. Existentialists do so. Pantheists simply claim all is maya, an illusion.

But when I reflect on what best explains this absurd existence, then I offer a meta-explanation. Since no explanation is rational, I offer a meta-explanation for why this is so. It's because chance events, by their very nature, cannot be figured out. Our number came up in a Monte Carlo game. The universe is a brute fact, and this best explains why we cannot figure out why we exist.

Videos From the AAI 07 Conference

Link

The Bible and the Christian Tradition are Irrelevant

Let's just face it. The Bible and the people who produced it were barbaric and superstitious. The only redeeming qualities about the Bible or the Christian tradition are those things that civilized people agree with them about, and hence they are irrelevant to modern scientifically literate people. To see this argued for you must read this book!

Why Faith?

A few weeks ago, John Loftus (the esteemed founder and moderator of this blogsite) and I had a disagreement about my use of the concept of “belief.” John challenged my understanding of belief, and after some study and reflection, I came to agree that he was right....

We all experience “belief” – it certainly is not unique to Christianity. Indeed, even after careful, reasonable consideration, “belief” is about the best most of us can muster when it comes to just about anything, including scientific theory or postulate.

What I came to understand is that my problem was – and is – with “faith.” Faith is what is unique to Christianity - even more so than in other religious systems, for Christianity boldly declares “without faith it is impossible to please God,” and “we are saved by grace, through faith…and that not of ourselves, lest any one should boast”. Faith is the willing suspension of disbelief, or the willing choice to believe in the face of either a lack of supporting evidence or contrary evidence.

After spending a few months at this and other sites that challenge Christian faith, I have concluded (or at least arrived at a “soft” conclusion) that faith is not the end result of reason, or philosophical consideration, or logical process. I am amused and somewhat mystified by some of the cold, analytical arguments made here – by both atheists and Christians – about issues like chemical origins of species, cosmological and quantum theory applications to origins, yada yada. As intellectually stimulating and informative as these debates are, they don’t seem to go very far in dislodging or debunking Christians, or disguising the passion that most atheists/agnostics feel about challenging the faithful and the faith.

Why is that? Because (and admittedly it has been dealt with by other posters on this site) faith is not about reason. Reason may inform faith, or challenge it. But faith is something other. Christians claim that faith itself is a “gift of God”, which, for those Christians who tend towards the theory of election, puts the lie to the concept of free will. In other words, you can only be saved by faith, and faith is a gift of God given to the elect or chosen…therefore, you are screwed if you are not elect and free will is not a concept that applies to you. You may have chosen to sin but you cannot choose to be saved. The Wesleyan Christians believe in “prevenient grace”, which basically claims that when Jesus died, a gift of grace was given to the human race, so that all would be able to have a faith that could lead to salvation and enabling all to choose it if they want.

But ultimately, why faith? (Calvinists probably don’t have much to say to this, but…) Why choose to willingly suspend disbelief, or choose to believe in the face of lack of supporting evidence or contrary evidence? I do not accept that most Christians choose faith because they have studied all the philosophical, historical, and scientific data and dispassionately conclude that this is the best reality offered. In fact, reading the vehemence and passion of their response on this site, I can conclude that they choose faith for some other reason, one much closer to the heart, to the sense of self and significance.

In 25 years of Christian faith and service (which was in the evangelical tradition), I saw that most people got “saved” because of an emotional need that drove them to choose faith. I experienced that in my own life. Once that experience occurred, reason was subject to faith and served faith. Faith was my defining border. I see that in today’s so-called Christian scholars…they use science, history, philosophy, etc., to support definitions and beliefs and postulations that are either formed by or controlled by faith. But faith represents a border beyond which most of them dare not go.

Again, why? Because – I postulate – they have experienced “salvation.” In other words, “I once was lost and now am found.” They have experienced a subjective phenomenon that cannot be measured except by their own loyalty to the experience and the claimed results. How do you define “lost”? Unhappy? Confused? Suicidal? Addicted? Faith is chosen as a way out of lostness, and then one is “found” – happy, clarity of thought, glad to be alive, free from addiction, whatever. Of course, those results aren’t exclusive to salvation…they can occur as the result of psychotherapy, or your favorite team winning the World Series. But Christians claim it is “faith”, and the promise of God given as a reward for faith. They have pleased God, and now they experience the promise of God to those who believe in Him and that He rewards those who seek Him.

Again, why faith? Why make that choice? What are the reasons? I don’t accept that faith is the result of a deliberate reasoning process. In fact, for most who begin a deliberate reasoning process, the end result is loss of faith…i.e., a lack of willingness to suspend disbelief, and choosing not to believe in the face of lack of or contrary evidence.

There may be Christians out there who are Christian without choice (??? – can such a thing really exist?). But I will say that all who are Christian (certainly in the evangelical tradition, which is the target of our debunking activity) made a choice to be. They chose faith, even in the face of overwhelming arguments and evidence against it. Why did you do it?

Liberal Christianity: A Dangerous Pretend Game.

We’ve been discussing Liberal Christianity here lately, something rare at DC. Some interesting and provocative thoughts have emerged from it. I have to agree with Wounded Ego who said this about Liberal Christianity: "It is, to my mind, like a giant role playing game - only for keeps…I think an excellent illustration of the kind of illusion you are describing can be seen in the excellent flick 'The Village.'" But let me say more...

James McGrath wrote: But when I ask myself "Why not be an atheist?", I come back to a number of things. The power of an experience that really did change my life. The teaching attributed to Jesus that we do to others what we want them to do to us. The inspiring paradigm (which may owe as much to the author of Matthew's Gospel as to the historical figure of Jesus) that there is a third way of resisting injustice that avoids either passivity or taking up arms.

McGrath knows well enough that religious experiences like he’s had are experienced by people with differing faiths, so he also knows that such experiences provide little or no evidence for his particular faith. HE KNOWS THIS! He’s playing pretend, and like the paranoid schizophrenic who thinks the CIA is out to get him, McGrath actually believes these experiences to be real without any evidence for them.

Richard M wrote: Joseph Campbell said somewhere that fundamentalists say religious stories are the truth, atheists say they are a lie, and liberals say they are metaphor.

Actually atheists say these religious stories are delusionary, or false. I do not question the sincerity of the claims of believers, just like I don’t question the sincerity of paranoid schizophrenics. They aren’t lies intended to deceive, they are simply false. And liberal Christians are simply playing pretend with these falsehoods.

Think of it this way. Christmas is coming and parents will tell their children that Santa Claus will bring presents to them. They tell their kids Santa sees if they “are naughty or nice.” When my kids were growing up I told them about Santa, but I also told them we were playing a pretend game. They might not have initial understood me when I told them “we’re playing pretend,” but as they grew older and asked me if he really existed, I would always say “No.” Children love to pretend. It’s their nature, I think. So do adults, especially if they role play while having sex. Is there value in playing pretend? Yes. It provides spice to our lives. People pretend when they think positively, too, especially sports fans who sit in the same seats, order the same food, and wear the same jerseys to the ball games, as if that’ll help their team win.

This discussion has made me think about playing pretend. I liked the movie “Toy Story,” produced by Disney. The character Buzz Lightyear actually thought he had supernatural powers and could fly. When he learned the truth he was depressed to the point where he didn’t try to help others out for a while. As the movie progresses he learned to do what he could without any of his special powers. I was going through my period of doubt when I first took my kids to that movie, and I asked myself, is Buzz Lightyear better off knowing the truth? I think so, and the reason is clear. Buzz Lightyear could’ve gotten himself killed by bouncing around on spoons and acting like he could fly through the air when he really couldn’t fly. He could’ve hurt himself…badly. The truth is always better, come what may.

Some pretend games are foolish, period. Some provide the needed spice to life. But when pretending crosses over to the point where a person actually thinks the pretend games are real, then I see dangers…many of them, depending on the game being played.

So the question I put forward is whether or not pretending the game of Christianity is playing a dangerous game. I think it is. Sure, it may provide a certain spice to life, since having a heavenly father figure can provide comfort, but it also sacrifices the intellect, encourages others to do likewise, and buttresses the claims of other religious people to maintain their faith who do evil in the name of religion.

Richard M says, “this is my main objection with the views if folks like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. Much as I respect them otherwise, I think they err grievously when they lump liberal religionists with conservative ones. Atheists and secular humanists will find no better friends in the world than reform jews, unitarians, and the like -- they will be the ones who join atheists to vote for atheist candidates, push to keep ID out of schools, promote critical thinking and science education, support liberal social causes, welcome Hindu prayers in congress, support physician-assisted suicide, support same-sex marriage, ban coercive prayer from public schools, and jump at the chance to send Pat Robertson a one-way ticket to Sheol.”

Agreed! However, religious thinking adds several new areas of conflict to life. We already fight over money, our kids, our spouses, our jobs, our races, our genders, and our nationalities. But religions also provide additional areas of conflict over sacred spaces, books, traditions, leaders, and gods. Granted, the liberal is probably not going to fight over these things, so she has a benign type of faith, for which I can be thankful for. But when the liberal participates in surveys where it’s claimed, say, that 60-80% of the people believe in God, this bolsters those fundamentalists who do fight over sacred spaces and gods. There has been a great deal of harm done in the name of Christianity. So it’s like claiming to be a member of the KKK while openly disavowing the beliefs of the KKK. Why do that?

Dr. James McGrath on "Why I Am a Christian."

He writes about it here....

He says:

I am a Christian in much the same way that I am an American. It is not because I condone the actions of everyone who has officially represented America, or that I espouse the viewpoints of its current leaders. It is because I was born into it, and value the positive elements of this heritage enough that I think it is worth fighting over the definition of what it means to be American, rather than giving up on it and moving somewhere else. In the same way, the tradition that gave birth to my faith and nurtured it is one that has great riches (as well as much else beside), and I want to struggle for an understanding of Christianity that emphasizes those things. And just as my having learned much from other cultures is not incompatible with my being an American, my having learned much from other religious traditions doesn't mean I am not a Christian. Christians have always done so. Luke attributes to Paul (in Acts 17:28) a positive quotation from a poem about Zeus (from the Phainomena by Aratos [sometimes spelled Aratus].

Why am I a Christian? Because I prefer to keep the tradition I have, rather than discarding it with the bathwater and then trying to make something new from scratch.

My question is whether this is a reasonable conclusion to make. I think not. A liberal Jew, or Muslim, or Hindu, or Buddhist, could say the same things. She could say, I don't agree with the historical underpinnings of my faith, nor the intellectual reasons for my faith, but since I was born into it, I'll stick with it. Sorry to insult Dr. McGrath, but this is nonsense (again, sorry). If one no longer accepts the historical or intellectual underpinnings of her faith she should look for a different one, or none at all.

I have been dealing with Liberal theology beginning here.

To continue reading the next post in this series see here.

Part 1, The Problem With Liberal Theology

My focus is on Debunking Evangelical Christianity for several reasons outlined here. Let me stress at this point that one of the reasons I do is to dislodge the evangelical Christian off of center. I say this is the hard part because it is. Liberals will say that I’ve chosen an easy target. It’s easy only so far as the arguments are against it. But it is also extremely tough to do. Once dislodged from this center, former evangelicals can go in several theological directions. But no matter what direction they travel, they are less of a threat to people with differing opinions because they know what it’s like to realize they were wrong. They will also cease quoting a Bible verse to answer every problem, and learn to think through the issues at hand.

The evangelical already rejects many cults, liberalism, pantheism, Islam. So by leading them to reject their faith some will jump ship entirely and embrace either agnosticism or atheism. That’s not what they all do. I didn’t initially. I embraced liberal theology in varying degrees for several years first. I even described myself as an existential deist. Later on I described myself as a soft-agnostic, and later still as an atheist.

For me, once I abandoned evangelical Christianity I started on a slippery slope which ended in atheism. It’s hard to remember how long it took me because as I was struggling with my faith, I still sought to maintain it. And I kept my struggles to myself, remaining in the church. But it was several years.

Now granted, Christians on this slippery slope do not slide down to agnosticism or atheism like I did. But many do. Let me mention a few of them: Robert M. Price, Gerd Luedmann, Hector Avalos, Bart Ehrman, William Dever, Michael Shermer, Farrell Till, Dan Barker, Ed Babinski, and me. There are other Christians who deeply struggle to maintain their faith in the onslaught of philosophical and scientific knowledge, like Ruth Tucker, James F. Sennett, and Terence Penulhum, seen here. I have also heard that Howard Van Till has rejected Calvinism and adopted “a more ambiguous position on religion.”

In a future post or two I’ll try to respond to liberal versions of Christianity and show why they should be rejected as well as the evangelical views. I won’t spend a great deal of time on this subject since to adequately do justice to it I should take on one theologian at a time. I intend instead to lump them all together for the most part, and in so doing it will appear superficial to the liberals out there, but that’s the most time I want to spend on it for reasons I’ve specified earlier. The bottom line will be that if evangelicals don’t have much by way of evidence for their faith, liberals have even less evidence to believe.

Part 2 can be found here.

Part 2, The Problem With Liberal Theology

As an atheist I am no longer in the habit of telling Christians what they should believe. I tell them to hammer it out between themselves and come back to inform me of the consensus, since I’ll be waiting in the wings to debunk what’s left over. I agree with the criticisms the social trinitarians offer against the non-social trinitarians, and vice versa. I agree with the Calvinist criticisms of Arminian interpretations of the Bible as well as with the Arminian criticisms of Calvinistic interpretations of the Bible. I agree with the Protestant criticisms of the Catholics as well as the Catholic criticisms of the Protestants. And I also agree with the fundamentalist criticisms of the liberals as well as the liberal criticisms of the fundamentalists. When they criticize each others views I think they’re all right! What’s left is the demise of Christianity as a whole. After they fight out to a draw in each disputed case there is nothing left for me to debunk except their shared common belief in God (a non-trinitarian one) along with their religious experiences as a pointer to God.

When it comes to the liberal/fundamentalist debate, I thought about starting a Blog to let the liberals and fundamentalists fight it out! But then it dawned on me that the liberals would win that debate, at least in my mind (the only mind that counts is what each one of us thinks, correct?). In fact, in my book I use the writings of the liberals to debunk evangelical Christianity much of the time. They simply are on the side of truth. They have better scholars.

Without wanting to do a great amount of research at this time on liberal theology, let me begin by quoting from Wikipedia on it:

Liberal Christianity, broadly speaking, is a method of biblical hermeneutics, an individualistic method of understanding God through the use of scripture by applying the same modern hermeneutics used to understand any ancient writings. Liberal Christianity is not a belief structure, and as such is not subject to any Church Dogma or creedal statements. Unlike conservative Christianity, it has no unified set of propositional beliefs. The word liberal in liberal Christianity denotes a characteristic willingness to interpret scripture without any preconceived notion of inerrancy of scripture or the correctness of Church Dogma. A liberal Christian, however, may hold certain beliefs in common with traditional, orthodox, or even conservative Christianity.

Liberal Christianity was most influential with mainline Protestant churches in the early 20th century, when proponents believed the changes it would bring would be the future of the Christian church. Despite that optimism, its influence in mainline churches waned in the wake of World War II, as the more moderate alternative of neo-orthodoxy (and later postliberalism) began to supplant the earlier modernism. Other theological movements included political liberation theology, philosophical forms of postmodern Christianity such as Christian existentialism, and conservative movements such as neo-evangelicalism and paleo-orthodoxy.

The 1990s and early 2000s saw a resurgence of non-doctrinal, scholarly work on biblical exegesis and theology, exemplified by figures such as Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, John Shelby Spong, and Douglas Ottati. Their appeal is also primarily to the mainline denominations.

The father of modern liberalism is widely considered to be Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), and Norman Geisler’s description of his theology is good enough for now:

As the father of modern liberalism, he influenced most major liberals after him, among them Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889), Critical History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation; Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), What is Christianity?, and Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918), who wrote Introduction to the History of Israel in which he defended the J-E-P-D hypothesis of authorship/ redaction of the Pentateuch.

For Schleiermacher, the basis of religion is human experience, rather than divine existence. We must have it before we can utter it. The locus of religion is in the self. The inner is key to the outer. The object of religion is the “All,” which many call “God.” And the nature of religion is found in a feeling (sense) of absolute dependence, which is described as a sense of creaturehood, an awareness that one is dependent on the All, or a sense of existential contingency.

The relation of religion to doctrine is that of a sound to its echo or experience to an expression of that experience. Religion is found in feeling, and doctrine is only a form of the feeling. Religion is the “stuff” and doctrine the structure. Doctrine is not essential to religious experience and is scarcely necessary to expressing it, since it can be expressed in symbol as well.

As to the universality of religion, Schleiermacher believed that all have a religious feeling of dependence on the All. In this sense there are no atheists. In this he foreshadowed Paul Tillich.

Being primarily a feeling, religion is best communicated by personal example. It is better caught than taught. Religion can also be communicated through symbols and doctrines. But doctrines are accounts of religious feeling. They are statements about our feeling, not about God, his attributes, or his nature. So there is an endless variety of religious expression, due largely to personality differences. The pantheistic expression results from those who delight in the obscure. Theists by propensity are those who delight in the definite.

The aim of religion is the love of the All, the World-Spirit. This is achieved through loving other human beings. The result of religion is unity of life. And its influence is manifest in morals. Religion produces a wholeness of life, but it has no specific influence on individual acts. We act with religion, not from it.

Likewise, the influence of religion on science is not direct. One cannot be scientific without piety. For the feeling of dependence on the All removes presumption to knowledge, which is ignorance. The true goal of science cannot be realized without a vision arising from religion.

No wonder fundamentalists attack the liberals for what they are left with...not much. Their attack centers on why liberals even bother with the Bible itself. Why not the Koran, especially since Hector Avalos, a Harvard trained Biblical scholar, has shown that the liberal deconstruction of the Bible has made the Bible irrelevant to modern people. He claims they have made an end to Biblical studies and they did it to themselves. I agree.

Okay so far?

For the next installment on Dr. James McGrath's reasons for being a Christian read this.

Why My Focus is On Debunking Evangelical Christianity

A recent Barna Poll shows that Most Americans Take Well-Known Bible Stories at Face Value. That is one reason I focus on that which I do...

According to Barna, two-thirds of American adults take well-known Bible stories at face value. That's a lot of people; 200 million of them! So I take aim at a very large audience, including evangelicals, mainline Protestants, AND Catholics who believe the Bible.

Former Blog member Caleb Wimble described why we at DC have chosen to debunk evangelical Christianity in these words:

Not only is fundamentalist Christianity the greatest threat in the United States to science, tolerance, and social progress, but it is also the most prevalent form of Protestant Christianity to be found in our nation, whether you like it or not. It is the fundamentalist religious right that holds the reigns of the Republican party (which currently controls the nation, in case you didn't realize), and it is this same fundamentalist religious right that lobbies for the teaching of lies in public school and fights against funding for embryonic research that could potentially save the lives of millions.

Whether you like it or not, it is this flavor of Christianity that makes the loudest, most obnoxious, most dangerous impact on the world today, giving us plenty of good reason to direct the brunt of our attacks in its vicinity.

Maybe others will share why they think evangelical Christianity is a bigger threat. But at bottom it's precisely because they are fundamentalists!

I can, and I do argue against mainline and even Catholic Christianity. It's just not my focus. My focus is on fundamentalism because the majority of Christians believe the "literal" passages in the Bible, and because they have a zeal for pressing their views upon me through economic and political power. Liberals are not that much of a threat, period. They do not blindly accept what they read in the Bible, and that's being more reasonable than fundamentalists, who have a Bible verse for every problem, intellectual or social. I can agree with liberals on this, so why bother with them?

My goal is to dislodge the evangelical Christian off of center. That's the hard part. That's the challenging part. I like a big challenge. Once they are knocked off center they will be less cocksure and less of a threat to my personal liberties. They will begin to think for themselves without blindly accepting what they read in the Bible.

I can argue against liberal theological views! I was once a liberal Christian on my way to atheism. Is that too hard for people to understand?

Sharing the Good Nudes, and Bad Neuters, of Christianity (& God's love for harp playing male virgins)

Sixty residents of the Seminole Health Club nudist camp near Miami comprise a Christian mission that worships twice a week in the nude. According to leader Elijah Jackson, "We're not trying to start a cult here, but I think nudity adds something to Christianity." -- News of the Weird, "Weird Clergy"

In the past another group of Christians worshiped in the nude called "Adamites." They believed that Jesus's grace allowed them to draw closer to God in their nakedness, unlike Adam and Eve who were ashamed and withdrew from God in the garden because of their nakedness. They also cited the verse in which Job reminded his listeners that we all entered and exited life naked, and used that to argue that we will all face God naked. Besides which King David lost his robe in a religious dancing frenzy and danced naked for the Lord. The only trouble I can see with worshiping naked in church is having to set the temperature neither too hot nor too cold and keeping the seats from getting sticky.

Christians who worship naked, and the Bible verses they focus upon, are not to be confused with Russian Skoptzie Christians who focused on Jesus's words, "Some have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven." (Mat. 19:12) The Skoptzie avoided the "lust of the eyes" and "of the flesh," via the use of a knife. All for the kingdom. (Another example of a Christian who made himself a eunich for the kingdom of heaven was the early church father Origin. Incidentally, he believed in the restoration of all things, except perhaps for the thing he cut off.) Will we behold in heaven naked dancing genital-less men -- made eunichs either on earth by their own hand, or transformed into genital-less angel-like beings after death by God?

The author of Revelation mentions "144,000 men... not defiled with women; for they are virgins," who are granted a prominent place in front of God's throne to play their harps. That's what God likes most I guess, harp playing male virgins. (Revelation 14: 2-4)

Old Testament authors seem to concur with at least the necessity of celibacy in the presence of Yahweh, since Exodus 19:15,17 taught that Israelite men must "NOT to come at your wives" prior to "meeting the Lord."

Paul likewise hailed celibacy as a holy virtue, but added, concerning those who could not rise to practice such a virtue, "it is better to marry than to burn" (a verse not often heard at Christian marriage ceremonies today, I wonder why, it's biblical):

"It is good for a man NOT TO TOUCH A WOMAN. For I would that all men were even as I myself. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I. [i.e., celibate] But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn... I suppose therefore that this is good for the present distress, I say, that it is good for a man so to be. Are you loosed from a wife? seek not a wife. The time is short: it remains that they that have wives be as though they had none... He that is unmarried cares for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: But he that is married cares for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife. There is difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman cares for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married cares for the things of the world, how she may please her husband. And this I speak for your own profit, that you may attend upon the Lord WITHOUT DISTRACTION." (1 Corinthians 7:1,7,8-9,26-27,29,32-35)

But Augustine's commentary on Paul's verses is especially ripe:

"In the first times, it was the duty to use marriage. chiefly for the propagation of the human race. But now, in order to enter upon holy and pure fellowship. they who wish to contract marriage for the sake of children, are to be admonished, that they use rather the larger good of continence. But I am aware of some that murmur, 'What if all men should abstain from all sexual intercourse, whence will the human race exist?' Would that all would. Much more speedily would the City of God be filled, and the end of the world hastened. For what else does the Apostle Paul exhort to, when he says, 'I would that all were as myself;' or in that passage, 'But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remains that both they who have wives, be as though not having: and they who weep, as though not weeping: and they who rejoice, as though not rejoicing: and they who buy, as though not buying: and they who use this world as though they use it not. For the form of this world is passing away.'" (Saint Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, Sections 9-10)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THE LATEST "NUDES" ON THE CHRISTIAN NUDIST EXPERIENCE

Christian Nudist Convocation, Planning their Summer 2008 conference:

The periodic Christian Nudist Convocation took place in July at the Cherokee Lodge nudist camp in Tennessee, and according to a dispatch in Nashville Scene, the group evokes skepticism not only from most Christians (who dislike the flaunting of naked bodies, even if innocently done) but from most Cherokee Lodge members, who see them as too intense for naturism's laid-back attitude. One CNC attendee acknowledged that many Christians would not approve of Cherokee Lodge, but to him "It's Jerusalem." Another compared his work at nudist camps to missionary work: "Some people get sent to Africa, some people get sent to South America and the Lord was like, 'I want you to go to nudist resorts.' And I'm like, 'Wow, what an assignment.'"
SOURCE: News of the Weird

Christian nudists to build village in Florida by Phil Barnoti Wahba (Columbia News Service Dec. 6, 2005)

"Naked Before God," cover story in Nashville Scene. Christian nudists hit the church-and the hot tub-for three days of wet and wild worship in the backwoods of Tennessee by Elizabeth Ulrich

The compatibility of Christianity and nudism is detailed in "Nakedness and the Bible," a self-published book by Canadian author Paul Bowman. The book cites key biblical events, including God's order to the prophet Isaiah to go naked for three years, and states that, contrary to popular belief, Jesus was naked when he washed the feet of his disciples, when he was baptized and when he was crucified and resurrected. "Nakedness and the Bible" states that nothing forbids nonsexual nudity and that misinterpretations of the Bible stem from faulty translations of ancient Hebrew words for nudity. For example, Jim T., Natura's spiritual adviser, and his wife, Shirley, believe the apostle Paul's call for modesty targeted ostentation, not nudity. Besides, said Shirley, 55, women in church wearing "designer clothes and $90 haircuts" are the immodest ones.

Christian nudists have long organized their own services and prayer groups. Carolyn Hawkins of the American Association for Nude Recreation, which was founded in 1931, said most of its 270-member clubs offer Sunday services, including one in North Carolina where they are led by a member who is a Baptist minister. Nathan Powers, a 50-year-old Texan, begins his day praying naked in his backyard. Nakedness intensifies his dialogue with God, he said. "I feel closer to God. It's an act of humility. It is absolutely spiritual."

Jonathan Palmiter was enjoying a recent Sunday morning stroll through a lush yard full of trees and Spanish moss--naked as was Adam in the Garden of Eden. A 59-year-old born-again Christian, Palmiter was visiting Natura, a development 40 miles north of Tampa, Fla., that, when it opens up next summer, will become the first nudist community for devout Christians in North America.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Transgender Televangelist: Sister Paula Nielsen the world's first and only transgender televangelist. Unfortunately, Sister Paula's show is only available on the cable system of -- you guessed it -- West Hollywood.

I Am Not a New Atheist!

The only thing new about my atheism is that I've adopted it within the last few years before reading or knowing about the "New Atheist" authors. Let me explain further:

David Marshall published a book called The Truth Behind the New Atheism: Responding to the Emerging Challenges to God and Christianity. Recently I saw an interview where he describes those who are called “New Atheists” (NA) in these words.

This new cohort of atheist writers tends to have several things in common. They are trying generally to apply the theory of evolution in new ways to social science, including religion and morality. Secondly, they draw on new "Jesus spin" -- what I call neo-Gnosticism, along with the Jesus Seminar stuff and some even more hoary "Jesus was a mirage" theories. Third, the New Atheism arises in a new context -- after 9/11, when many skeptics want to see a symmetry between radical Islam and home-grown "Christian fundamentalism." Some people did this during the Cold War, too, trying to make out that Christianity was "just as dangerous" as communism.

I want to comment on the last (or third) tendency of what he describes as NAs.

Jason Pratt, over at CADRE, claims that in light of this third tendency

NAs tend to promote the notion that faith is intrinsically antithetical to reason. NAs tend to promote the notion that religious believers refuse to ask tough questions about their own beliefs. Skeptical questions are presented as if they are supposed to be staggering revelations to believers who have never considered such things before or who simply ignore the questions as being too dangerous to think about. Often the questions themselves are presented as if merely asking them is (or should be) enough to undermine a religious belief. NAs have at least a minor tendency to describe religious belief as having been arrived at, and held, without evidence.

Identifiable NAs are Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and especially the Rational Response Squad. Old Atheists include Bertrand Russell, and J.L. Mackie, and it should also be noted that there are still Old Atheists out there, like Michael Martin, Nicholas Everitt, Graham Oppy, Quentin Smith, Theodore Drange and J.L. Schellenberg, along with others like Michael Shermer, Jeff Lowder, Dan Barker and myself.

When people visit Debunking Christianity they might naturally assume that I am a NA too (other team members can speak for themselves if they want to). But I chose the name of this blog carefully. It was to grab people’s attention and at the same time accurately tell what I wanted to do. My dictionary says this:

de•bunk: (past and past participle de•bunked, present participle de•bunk•ing, 3rd person present singular de•bunks) vt show something to be false: to show that something is wrong or false. Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Just for future reference let me distinguish myself in some ways from the NAs. I am a very respectful atheist. I treat my intellectual opponents with human dignity and respect. I am not militant in using the belittling tactics that some NAs use or in trying to offend believers. I even capitalize the word “God,” and refer to him in masculine pronouns. I like to learn from others. I enjoy the discussion. This is proved beyond a doubt every single day here at DC (with very rare exceptions when provoked). I think all religions are false and delusional but they are not held irrationally. I’m not sure what it can even mean to say Bill Craig, Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne are irrational. They are clearly very bright, intelligent, and educated men. For this reason I’m against the suggestion that atheists should call themselves “Brights.” I dislike this term and won’t use it because it’s simply not true.

I do think believers are deluded. Jason Pratt has attacked me because I use this word, as if using it makes me an NA. However, just because someone shares some characteristics with a NA does not a NA make. I’m also a male atheist, but that doesn’t make me a NA. Besides there is a big difference between the meaning of a word and its significance. The meaning of a word is its dictionary definition. The significance of a word is something that is person-related based upon his or her own personal experiences with the word. My dictionary says this:

de•lude: (past and past participle de•lud•ed, present participle de•lud•ing, 3rd person present singular de•ludes) vt lead into false belief: to persuade somebody to believe something that is untrue or unreal.Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

When it comes to the belittling and harassing tactics of the NAs, I do not participate or approve of their tactics. But as a pragmatist I can see the results, and the results are positive for what I believe, since they have raised awareness about atheism in our culture just as gay people raised awareness of their cause by similar belittling and harassing tactics. I can appreciate what has been accomplished by them without approving how it was done. I think it’s unfortunate that atheists had to grab people’s attention in this manner, but it worked. Now there is a shelf in Borders Bookstores labeled “Atheism,” and I hope my forthcoming book finds its way on that shelf when it’s published. Many old atheists fail to understand the nature of the media (which reports on oddities), and the value of radicalism (which gets things done).

Furthermore, I think radical Islam is much more dangerous to civilization than perhaps any other religion, especially more dangerous than Christianity. There are four things that make Christianity less dangerous than Islam in my opinion.

One) Christianity has a Virgin Mary who helped bring in the redeeming Messiah. The Catholics have even made Mary a co-redeemer. This feminine Biblical example exalts women to some degree. Women aren’t entirely worthless chattel. Islam only has an Eve, who is known for being a temptress to Adam. She is weak, needing to be ruled over, who can be blamed for bringing upon the earth such misery.

Two) Christianity has its Jesus, who is basically seen as non-violent and who laid down his life for humankind. Islam has no corresponding figure. Mohammed was a political ruler, whereas Jesus had no earthly political power. So the Koran reflects the political goals of religion, whereas in Christianity it’s merely implicit.

Three) Christianity has gone through an Enlightenment beginning in the 16th century with the rise of science and modern philosophy. The only version of Christianity we see in today’s world is one reflecting various degrees of this enlightenment. As a result the only Christians we see are “cherry-picking” from the Bible based upon their modern experiences and understandings. They do not take the Bible literally. They do not think it honors God to stone adulterers, kill witches, or keep women in submissive silence at home. By contrast, Islam has had no Enlightenment. Muslims still take the Koran at face value, and there are some pretty hateful things said in it about infidels, Jews, and women, along with some barbaric ways to punish criminals.

Four) Christianity does not have the same political power that Islam has within any country in the world today. There are whole countries ruled by Islamic law. There are no countries ruled by Christian law, although there is a heavy influence of Christianity in America, the most powerful nation in the world. Even many Christians think it’s best to have the separation of church and state. But in this nuclear age with WWD's, all it would take to destroy millions of lives is a rogue Muslim state or a small group of militant Muslims who gained access to them.

The Temptation of Faith

I want to believe. I want to have faith. I want to live like a child again, believing in things like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and in fantastical worlds where one could wrap a cape on their shoulders and fly through the air, invulnerable to pain or threat...

But the truth is...well, we see it when we read these posts, and consider these arguments. We see and read Christians using convoluted arguments to either justify the lack of evidence or consistency in their religion...one which I used to revel in with them. Their theology, use of science, philosophy...all impressive. But I hear in their voices and arguments an anger at something...which I think may be the loss of innocence in their religion. They no longer share the magic of belief...they have encountered the reality of failed or non-existent evidence, God has failed them, so now they fall back on circulur, sophomoric arguments. They attack their opponents, they insult or challenge without reason the methods of discourse...all because their God has failed them, or they have lost the simple, innocent child-like quality of simple belief.

I understand. I wish I could believe. I wish I could:
- pray, and believe God was going to answer;
- pray, and actually see an answered prayer;
- lay hands on the sick and watch them recover;
- speak to mountains and watch them move into the sea (or, as an environmentalist, speak to deforested and denuded mountains and watch them become green again)
- raise the dead
- walk on water (hell, I can't even ski)
- command weather, save New Orleans
- walk through the valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil
- do these other things, even greater things, that Jesus did (and promised I could do)
- tithe, and see prosperity returned to me
- speak in tongues!
- prophecy about the future
- have visions (without pharmaceutical help)
- believe that a questionably historical figure actually died for my "sins" and that it meant something; and that it wasn't such a crazy idea to be so appealing
- absolutely know that my existence will continue when I die, or that my father is in heaven, ready to meet me when I get there (wink, wink).

I could go on and on. The promises of religion...no 72 virgins for Christians, but promises just the same...are multitudinous. But that one time, that first time, when the believer prays - not a shallow, vacuous prayer like "please let me be on time" but, with tears, "please heal my father" or "please save that nation"...and nothing happens...the dominoes begin to fall, and what is left is high-sounding arguments of convoluted philosophy. What I hear is a "melancholy, long-withdrawing roar."

The loss of faith is heartbreaking. The temptation of faith is strong.

Why Is It So Hard to Reject Christianity?

A Blogger named "Stan, the Half-Truth Teller" commented on this topic here, which you can find below....

Depending on one's level of indoctrination, turning away from the religious mythos can be likened to espousing the initial concept of a spherical Earth. Every scrap of "evidence" available to humans at the time said the Earth was most decidedly flat, yet a new version of reality is introduced which claims otherwise.

There was never any true evidence of a flat Earth, but the anecdotal evidence was clear: The Earth is flat.

It's worse, though, for aside from being branded a heretic, describing the Earth as a sphere brought no other real punishment - certainly nothing as severe as disavowing Christianity.

Condemning oneself to an eternity in Hell is hardly a trivial undertaking...

For myself, I was raised in a Christian home, and as such was a staunch promoter of all things Christian up until High School, after which I had various encounters with the real world, including alcohol, marijuana, and sex.

Lucky for me, I am a genius, and I was able to quickly determine that what I had been taught was a lie. Even when closed, my mind was unimpaired. I decided that I would refuse to believe in anything half-heartedly - which is precisely what "faith" is, no matter how well sugar-coated:

No evidence, no adherent.

I recognized that what I had been taught was in practice no different that what any other child in any child-indoctrination scheme anywhere on the planet had been taught: Our way is true, all other ways are false. Our way will find reward, all other ways will find only punishment.

I saw that had I been raised in any of these plethora of alternative indoctrination schemes, I'd have been exactly as convinced of my dogma's righteousness, and the deserved damnation of all others'.

Such nonsense does not deserve my support, nor that of any other.

I was able to ignore a potential fate in Hell because I recognized that the odds of my indoctrination being correct were not good enough to place a bet of any kind, much less one consisting of my immortal soul.

Since then I have come to realize that no evidence could possibly convince me to unabashedly "worship" anything. I can reasonably conceive of a technology so advanced that it would seem magical, and I recognize that no matter how much "evidence" such a mystical being could contrive, I could imagine a yet-more-powerful being.

There are still today times when I wonder whether a religion can be correct (and if I've really relegated myself to an eternity in Hell), but I fend off such thoughts by reminding myself that if God is that much of an asshole, then I'd rather burn.

Metacrock's Liberal Atonement Theory

Over at Metacrock's Blog Joe takes evangelical atonement theories to task and then offers his own, called Participatory Atonement. According to him "Christ died in Solidarity with victims." I both "love" and "hate" liberal theologies. I love them because they argue with me against evangelical Christianity. I hate them because they are used to maintain a faith that doesn't make a difference and cannot be rationally defended as being specifically Christian. Here's my response to his atonement theory....

Your answer is cherry-picking and choosing from the Bible, it doesn't sufficiently answer the question why Jesus suffered, nor does it answer the problem of evil, nor does it answer the problems of the incarnation and the trinity.

The best way for God to show his solidarity with victims is to do for them what he commands YOU to do, and that is to help them out of their misery rather than to suffer with them. If I chose to go to jail with you in order to participate in your sufferings, for instance, then how does that help you? It might make you feel better about your sufferings, but it should instead make you question my sanity. Can you actually imagine my helping any victims in tangible ways by suffering with them, especially if, like God, I had the power to allieviate their suffering and didn't?

If like Process Theologians your God doesn't have that kind of power, then neither does he have the power to help victims by suffering with them. Why should victims care for God if all he can do is to suffer with them? He's impotent. Besides, he got us into this mess in the first place by selfishly creating us for his own pleasure with our evil tendencies. What good does it show you that God loves you if he cannot do anything for you except to suffer with you? Big deal, I would say. Do something about our suffering and then I'll be impressed, and then I'll care, and then I'll think God knows what he's doing.

It's obvious to me Joe, that you're working from within a given Christian tradition that if you weren't already inside of it, you wouldn't come to accept it in the first place. This is so obvious to me. You initially became a Christian because you thought otherwise of the atonement, but with further study you rejected that initial evangelical atonement view, for good reasons. But rather than rejecting your faith, you try desperately to hang on to it by replacing it with something you never would've accepted in the first place.

Two "Liars for Jesus" and an Aging Philosopher.

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.

The 39th Carnival of the Godless is Up.

Link. Enjoy!

An Early Review of Bart Ehrmans New Book

Stanley Fish gives us an early glimpse at Bart Ehrmans soon to be published book, God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer. Ehrman is quoted as saying: “I could no longer reconcile the claims of faith with the fact of life . . . I came to the point where I simply could not believe that there is a good and kindly disposed Ruler who is in charge.” “The problem of suffering became for me the problem of faith.” “If God tortures, maims and murders people just to see how they will react – to see if they will not blame him (as in Job's case), when in fact he is to blame – then this does not seem to me to be a God worthy of worship.” “If he could do miracles for his people throughout the Bible, where is he today when your son is killed in a car accident, or your husband gets multiple sclerosis? . . . I just don’t see anything redemptive when Ethiopian babies die of malnutrition.”

Carrier Speaks About Flew's New Book

Link.

What's With all the Whining about Truth?

My book, The Dark Side has an in-your-face subtitle: “How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth.” It’s in your face and so, not surprisingly it triggers push-back. One of the questions I get is a wearisome post-modern “What is truth, anyways? What is all this whining about Christian dogmas violating truth like you have some higher standard? (Implied: As if any perspective could lay any more valid claim to truth than any other.)”

Whenever this question comes up, I have to fight the urge to say: Go put your left ankle on a train track and come ask me again after a long freighter goes by.

Why do I have this urge? Because at one level, it’s a dumb dope-smoking question. People who are being tortured or dying of cancer or, I would assume, getting their feet crushed by locomotives don’t spend a whole lot of time speculating about whether the experience is real.

Why do I resist? Because at another level the question is valid. And so I try to answer it –for the questioner, but mostly for me.

Being a psychologist and citizen rather than a philosopher or theologian, my interest in truth is practical–even utilitarian. I don’t really care whether the world that I (or my clients or elected representatives) live in real in some absolute sense. I don’t care if it is “merely” phenomenology or a dream or an ancestor simulation. Those questions are fascinating, but not important. If it’s a dream, I’m in it till I wake up. If it’s a simulation, I have no way of knowing what’s on the outside.

Whether my self-conscious existence is the product of a god or a big computer, I’m inside the game. And inside the game, some kinds of phenomenology are different than others. No matter how well a Buddhist monk has transcended hunger, if he doesn’t eat, he dies. If someone puts a gun to his head while he’s meditating and pulls the trigger, he doesn’t meditate any more. To insist that it is “all in our heads” denies the reliable, predictable and useful distinction between a monk meditating and a monk without a brain. That’s how it is, inside the game. And to date everybody who claims to know what is on the outside makes those claims using faulty inside-the-game evidence.

So, the definition of truth I care about is this: Within the game, what are the rules? What are the cause and effect contingencies that affect the things I value – like my left foot. As soon as we acknowledge that we care about anything, even something so basic as preferring existence to non-existence, then a whole set of outcomes (and by implication, cause-effect relationships) become important. This is where the freight train response is actually on target. It brings into sharp relief the fact that few dope smokers or philosophers if dragged to the track would consider the ankle and locomotive in the same category as their dreams or academic speculations. Being human means, by definition, we have some things we care about, because people who don’t aren’t around long.

My insult to the fields of philosophy and theology is conscious. Both fields have sneered down their elegant noses at empiricism for literally thousands of years. In consequence, neither ultimately has been more generative than masturbation. This is not to say that masturbation, or philosophy, is useless. But let’s do say what’s real. Neither produces new life. Introspection, unencumbered by data, failed to generate a coherent understanding of human mental processes, let alone a vaccine or a solar panel. So did theology, that vast web of semi-logic that brilliant humans built on top of ancient ritual and oral tradition. Theology utterly failed to heal disease (despite millennia of prayers, exorcisms, and sacrifices) and never even considered a green revolution or a sky scraper. By claiming knowledge of what lay outside of the game, theology failed to discern what lay within.

The rules of the game itself began emerging only when a few early monks and philosophers stuck their soft clean fingertips in the dirt. That’s when knowledge began to accumulate. It’s when we humans started gaining shared power to predict and control the contingencies we care about. The scientific method of inquiry has been called, quite simply, “What we know about how not to fool ourselves.” That’s all it is. Very basic. To make things worse, it’s not perfect, and in fact, has been subject to continuous refinement for hundreds of years. But accountable, empirical—in other words, scientific-- inquiry has made the difference between horse carts and space travel.

This is what I’m talking about when I accuse Christianity of violating its own proclaimed value on truth. It puts forward a set of ideals that have to do with health, prosperity, freedom and social harmony as well as love and joy. What does Yahweh give his people? A land flowing with milk and honey. How does Jesus minister? He heals. What does Paul promise? Love, joy and peace. What is heaven? Riches, health, and eternal bliss.

Christianity espouses these values and then it gets the in-the-game contingencies wrong. It articulates a psychology, a biology, a physiology, a geography, a physics, a political science, and a moral contract each of which is –should this surprise us?—as primitive as our bronze age ancestors who plagiarized the Torah, and our iron age ancestor who laid down that hallucinatory classic, the book of Revelation. In addition, it violates the most elementary principles of “what we know about how not to fool ourselves.” This means that it is inevitably procedurally prone to stagnant self-deception.

So, truth. My truth.

We can spend our time taking philosophy and theology courses, either refraining from any assertion of truth, or asserting absolute Truth and then dying in tangential superiority. Or we can roll up our sleeves and ask ourselves, What do I care about and what power do I have to make it happen? And not just what do I care about but what do we care about together? What are the core shared dreams of my people, and what truths do we need to discover to make them real?

I’m a woman with a life mission that focuses on the well-being of the web of life that gave me birth and my fellow human beings within that web. Within the priorities set by this mission, there are enough real-world contingencies to be explored that I suspect they’ll keep me busy for the rest of my life. And if I’m wrong, if I run out, I imagine I can figure out where to get some good dope.

This article is reprinted from ExChristian.net, where it stimulated interesting dialogue.