Jesus As an Anti-Establishment Lazy Bum

Let me be frank here. I strongly feel the average person (religious or not) including any “Joe the Atheist”, who is married (supporting a wife and / or children) is one hell of a better person than the jobless wondering irresponsible single wisdom preacher the Gospels call Jesus.

This we do know about Jesus as drawn form the Gospels traditions:

Jesus was a jobless drifter who avoided work. Although, Matthew’s Gospel tells us Jesus' father was a “Tekton” or one involved in a technical trade (οὐχ οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ τοῦ τέκτονος υἱός), there is no evidence Jesus ever hit a lick at a snake or did an honest day’s work in his life! 55 “Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not His mother called Mary, and His brothers, James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? 56 “And His sisters, are they not all with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” 57 And they took offense at Him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.” 58 And He did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief.” (Matt. 13: 55 - 58)

Jesus only recruited men who would leave their jobs which in turn meant leaving their families destitute to be feed by and cared for by Jews who honored the Torah. “16 As He was going along by the Sea of Galilee, He saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net in the sea; for they were fishermen. 17 And Jesus said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” 18 Immediately they left their nets and followed Him. 19 Going on a little farther, He saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who were also in the boat mending the nets. 20 Immediately He called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and went away to follow Him.” (Mark 1: 16 - 20).

Jesus tells his disciples to be irresponsible bums just like himself: 3“Go; behold, I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. 4 “Carry no money belt, no bag, no shoes; and greet no one on the way. 5 “Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house.’ 6 “If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; but if not, it will return to you. 7 “Stay in that house, eating and drinking what they give you; for the laborer is worthy of his wages. Do not keep moving from house to house. 8 “Whatever city you enter and they receive you, eat what is set before you; 9 and heal those in it who are sick, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 10 “But whatever city you enter and they do not receive you, go out into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your city which clings to our feet we wipe off in protest against you; yet be sure of this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’ 12 “I say to you, it will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city. (Luke 10: 3-12).

Irresponsible free loading is what Jesus expects of all who want to follow him: “57 As they were going along the road, someone said to Him, “I will follow You wherever You go.” 58 And Jesus said to him, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” 59 And He said to another, “Follow Me.” But he said, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.” 60 But He said to him, “Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God.” 61 Another also said, “I will follow You, Lord; but first permit me to say good-bye to those at home.” 62 But Jesus said to him, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9: 57- 62).

And as to Jesus’ complaint “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” My reply: Man, get a job you free loading bum!
Be a responsible Jew for at least once in your life!

Jesus expects free food and gets mad and attacks a fig tree when he does not get his way: 18 Now in the morning, when He was returning to the city, He became hungry. 19 Seeing a lone fig tree by the road, He came to it and found nothing on it except leaves only; and He said to it, “No longer shall there ever be any fruit from you.” And at once the fig tree withered.” (Matt. 21; 18-19, see my discussion on this temper fit here)

Jesus sizes on every opportunity to get a free meal and lodging: “1 He entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 And there was a man called by the name of Zaccheus; he was a chief tax collector and he was rich. 3 Zaccheus was trying to see who Jesus was, and was unable because of the crowd, for he was small in stature. 4 So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree in order to see Him, for He was about to pass through that way. 5 When Jesus came to the place, He looked up and said to him, “Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” 6 And he hurried and came down and received Him gladly.” (Luke 19: 1 - 6)

Jesus is a party-hardly animal who makes himself present if there is food and alcohol around as noted by the religious Jews who saw moderate use of food, fellowship and wine as not sinful, but criticized Jesus' over indulgence: “The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, 'Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!'“ (Luke 7: 34).

Likewise, Jesus is on top of the fermentation process for increased alcohol content and knows his wines: “"And no one, after drinking old wine wishes for new; for he says, 'The old is good enough.'" (Luke 5: 39)

Plus, Jesus, as a jobless miracle working party animal was the one to approach to keep the alcohol flowing and it should not go unnoticed that partying and alcohol is known as Jesus’ first so-called miracle: “1 On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there; 2 and both Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does that have to do with us? My hour has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it.” 6 Now there were six stone waterpots set there for the Jewish custom of purification, containing twenty or thirty gallons each. 7 Jesus said to them, “Fill the waterpots with water.” So they filled them up to the brim. 8 And He said to them, “Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter.” So they took it to him. 9 When the headwaiter tasted the water which had become wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the headwaiter called the bridegroom, 10 and said to him, “Every man serves the good wine first, and when the people have drunk freely, then he serves the poorer wine; but you have kept the good wine until now.” 11 This beginning of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him. (John 2: 1 - 11).


Jesus and his disciples are so broke from free loading they can’t even afford a sword except they sell their clothes: “Then he said to them, "But now, whoever has a purse, let him take it, and likewise a wallet. Whoever has none, let him sell his cloak, and buy a sword”(Luke 12:36) The result was probably the naked man in Mark 14: 51 - 52: “51 A young man was following Him, wearing nothing but a linen sheet over his naked body; and they seized him. 52 But he pulled free of the linen sheet and escaped naked.”


Jesus use for women is that of role reversal: Women should provide for him! Jesus is constantly seen as an irresponsible Jewish man who will not hold down a job, family and the responsibilities that all religious Jews expected of a real man as required in the Torah. Thus, the Gospel tradition gives us a Jesus sponging off Martha and Mary and even encourages Mary for not working: 38 “Now as they were traveling along, He entered a village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to His word. 40 But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she came up to Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; 42 but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10: 38 - 42).

Jesus is heals Peter’s mother-in-law so she can wait on him: 14 “When Jesus came into Peter’s home, He saw his mother-in-law lying sick in bed with a fever. 15 He touched her hand, and the fever left her; and she got up and waited on Him. (Matt. 8: 14 - 15)

Jesus sends his disciples into Jerusalem to find FREE room and board for them to free load on for the Passover: 12“On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb was being sacrificed, His disciples said to Him, “Where do You want us to go and prepare for You to eat the Passover?” 13 And He sent two of His disciples and said to them, “Go into the city, and a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water; follow him; 14 and wherever he enters, say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher says, “Where is My guest room in which I may eat the Passover with My disciples?”’ 15 “And he himself will show you a large upper room furnished and ready; prepare for us there.” 16 The disciples went out and came to the city, and found it just as He had told them; and they prepared the Passover. (Mark 14: 12 - 16 any God fearing responsible Jew would have worked and earned his Passover lamb!)

The birth narrative (in Matt. 2: 11 “After coming into the house they saw the Child with Mary His mother; and they fell to the ground and worshiped Him. Then, opening their treasures, they presented to Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”) was probably a failed attempt to try and explain why Jesus never had to hold down a job in his life; or, as we would say, Jesus was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

By contrast to a free loading Jesus, in 2 Thess. Paul emphatically states that the religious loafer and free loader who will not work, should not be given food to eat either: “For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example, because we did not act in an undisciplined manner among you, 8 nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with labor and hardship we kept working night and day so that we would not be a burden to any of you; 9 not because we do not have the right to this, but in order to offer ourselves as a model for you, so that you would follow our example. 10 For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either. 11 For we hear that some among you are leading an undisciplined life, doing no work at all, but acting like busybodies. (2 Thess. 3: 8-11).

Paul supported his own ministry as a tent maker and even headed up a collection for the poor Jewish in Jerusalem in Acts 15, by contrast, Jesus was a free loading bum who to sponged off society and claimed his life style was proof God would protect and provide for anyone who did the same.

In the final days, Jesus’ free loading ride in life finally caught up with him and fell though as both the Torah loving Jews and the Roman authorities finally had enough of this free loading trouble making bum.

He ended up crucified and his jobless disciples had to leave, once again becoming responsible Jews returning to support themselves and their families; some, such as Peter and Andrew, returned to fishing.

God Tolerates Slavery

Pastor Kenneth Rodriguez, Senior Pastor at Nations United Cathedral of Faith in Times Square, has been a leading voice in the charismatic community against the atrocious practice of human trafficking for the past 15 years. The 37-year-old pastor’s work has centered on places like Asia and Africa, places where human trafficking is a major issue. “Slavery, in principle, is unbiblical.” says Pastor. “To enslave another human being created in God's image is a sin like murder. It violates the Golden Rule and is an affront to decency.” Sounds like something right in line with what any other man of God today would give an “amen” to.

The surprise didn't come until a correspondence began between Pastor Kenneth and a nine-year-old girl from Beijing named Kaitlin. Kaitlin was abducted and forced to serve as a sex slave a year and a half ago. Cunningly gaining email access, she reached out for help from Pastor Kenneth. Pastor Kenneth's advice to her became the focus of a firestorm of criticism. He didn’t help her escape, and he didn’t encourage her to seek help. What he did is considered by most to be unthinkable and criminal. He told her to break off contact with him and to live as a slave like she was!

“I told little Kaitlin to live as a slave and to do what her captors want her to do and to be obedient in all things as the scriptures teach servants should do. Ephesians 6:5 is abundantly clear, ‘Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.’ I Peter 2:18 says, ‘Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.’ It doesn't say for the slaves to run away or to rebel or to call the law to set them free. No, it tells slaves to submit to their masters, even to harsh masters. That's what little Kaitlin is having to do for the monsters who abducted her. I hate that she is being used as a sex slave by Hong Kong business men on their down time. She will without a doubt get diseases and suffer crushing emotional trauma from her experiences, but God’s word is God’s word. It has been like this for countless centuries.”

Being aware of the controversy his words brought on, Pastor Kenneth made clear, “I am not justifying slavery. God is going to judge those wicked slaveholders. But God's words on how to handle the situation are not hard to understand. God says if you are a slave, you are to abide in the calling wherein you are called (I Corinthians 7:21, 24). I am praying for little Kaitlin. She is worshipping the Lord in her heart in between having to service men. All we can do is support her and encourage her. It is the Bible that tolerates slavery, and sadly, there are times when we must as well. When Kaitlin is being mounted from her backside by a sinning, lust-driven client of her owners, she will reflect on Jesus Christ and to how his back bore the scars and the cross for her sake. And who knows…maybe Kaitlin will lead those lost slave-owners to Christ? I believe God has a plan for everything.”

When asked if it bothers him that his words have become the target of attack, Rodriguez said, “Maybe a little. I've long been a big opponent of slavery and an advocate for human rights, and so it hurts me that those who have followed my preaching for years would not know where I stand. But I am speaking where the Bible speaks. God takes every nation from where they are in their knowledge of his word. God allowed polygamy and he is still, in some places, allowing slavery. By having a multitude of slave laws in the Bible, God is telling us he wants those who are unfortunate enough to be slaves to be good at it for Christ’s sake and to serve well. There are even instructions in Exodus on how to sell one's daughter into slavery (Exodus 21:7-11).”

When asked if he had any final comments, Pastor stated, “Yes, I think all these pastors who keep accusing me of justifying slavery need to read the Bible again. Maybe they will learn something about God's character.”

(JH)

The "Hidden" Moral Imperative of Rationality

When utilizing rational thought, it is common to claim that rationality does not entail a moral judgment. A claim that thus-and-so must be blue does not entail a moral approval or disapproval of the fact that thus-and-so is blue, it is merely a statement of fact separate from moral judgments. Non-theists typically find ourselves making this distinction quite often when arguing with theists, pointing out the "is-ought" fallacy when charged with such villainy as loving the fact that survival of the fittest entails the death of the weak, or of wanting people to die for pointless or false reasons as opposed to a true faith. However, rationality does contain a moral judgment that is often left unspoken, and this moral assumption sometimes seems to be a key area of misunderstanding between theist and atheist.

Rationality is based on the moral assumption that a truth is inherently preferable to an untruth. Now for some of us, such a moral assumption may seem so basely shared as to be unworthy of comment. However, I am quickly becoming convinced that this moral value is NOT shared nearly as widely as some might suspect, and perhaps it shouldn't be.

"Atheism can't be true, because then anyone can do what they want as there would be no arbiter of morality."

"If I accept atheism, then when I die I'm dead, end of story. Why would I want to believe that?"

"Atheism leads to Hitler, Pol Pot, and Stalin."

Every time someone, whether theist or non-theist, uses or accepts an Argument from Consequences or Wishful Thinking, they are implicitly affirming that they do NOT consider a truth to be inherently preferable to an untruth. Rather, they find the truth preferable only for its utility in reaching some other goal. In the case where a lie is more useful in reaching that goal, the truth is NOT to be preferred. Now rational thinkers throughout the centuries have succeeding to some extent, I think, in making Wishful Thinking a dirty word, and something that is just not done in respectable company. But, much like racism, there is a large disconnect between making something publicly unacceptable and eradicating it from the general mindset. While many may claim that they are most interested in the truth, the continued success and appeal of Arguments from Consequences such as those listed above is prima facie evidence that some people do NOT value the truth of an idea over its other utilities.

This inherent moral disconnect is not just some unrelated esoteric moral dilemma. Rather, it gets to the heart of why two groups of people often seem to be speaking past one another. Rationalists will go into an argument with the notion that if they can demonstrate that something is untrue (or, at least, unsupported by fact), they can sway their opponent. However, this is not enough for non-rationalists, nor should it be. The failure of a rational argument to sway a non-rationalist is NOT a failure in the cognitive skills of the non-rationalist; rather, it is a moral disconnect between what an idea ought to do. A rationalist thinks an idea ought to approximate a metaphysical reality as closely as possible. I value truth in my ideas over other utility because, by better understanding reality, I can better bring my faculties to bear to shape reality in a fashion that makes my happiness more likely. A non-rationalist thinks that an idea has another utility more important that modeling truth.

Rationalists are not obligated to accept or respect a non-rationalists' moral view of the utility of ideas. However, those here who know me know I am, above all, a pragmatist. I don't come here to practice my typing or because I have a lot of free time to kill; I want to convince people to come around to my way of thinking, find a superior way of thinking that I can adopt, or failing all that, better understand my opponents. So, while I think that rationalists are not obliged to accept non-rationalists' moral view of ideas as valid, I think that we must engage this idea in order to hold mutually productive arguments (similarly, non-rationalists must realize that it is non-productive to point out to a rationalist all of the bad utility that stems from a belief unless you can point out that the belief does not represent reality).

My point in all this is to justify and expand upon something that I have said previously: in our attempts to Debunk Christianity, it is often insufficient to show that Christianity is false (or, at best, unsupported). Rather, we must also show that it is not useful. While some here have addressed, others demonstrate a disdain towards it that I think is unproductive and perhaps unwarranted. By examining why we value truth over other utilities, we might better understand why others might not have the same moral value, and therefore why Arguments from Consequences might sway them more strongly than the most rigorous proofs. I can damn well guarantee you that Evangelical pastors fully understand the power of emotional appeals and Arguments from Consequences, and history has shown that they will not hesitate to use them.

I know some find such arguments beside the point, as do I. As a rationalist, it is often hard for me to sympathize with those who think that their belief should do something other than represent reality as accurately as possible. We often fall into the trap of thinking that our discourse must rise above such "petty" concerns. However, such concerns are only "petty" to those who value truth over all else, and that group of people is far from all-inclusive. We must decide if we are going to be in the business of academic debate or in the business of convincing people, and we must recognize that the two are not wholly overlapping sets. As a pragmatist who believes in moral subjectivity, I can appreciate that my value of the truth is not universal. I can also recognize that there is utility to me in being able to persuade those who place secondary value on truth. Finally, I have recognized that we have already managed to convince a disproportionate number of those who already place primary value on truth in ideas. While it's important to continue to spread appropriate facts to those who remain ignorant of them, it is not enough. If we wish to cease speaking past those who value other utilities in ideas, we must be prepared to either speak towards their values or convince them that their values are wrong.

Two Excellent PBS Programs Now Online

Plan some time to watch these two PBS programs. The Bible's Buried Secrets is a two hour long program, which Hector Avalos reviewed here. The four hour program From Jesus to Christ, has just been released. HT: Ed Babinski

Atheists Will Be In Heaven!

Don't believe me? Then check this out.

Most Americans think we will!

Charles M. Blow of the The New York Times wrote:

In June, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published a controversial survey in which 70 percent of Americans said that they believed religions other than theirs could lead to eternal life.

This threw evangelicals into a tizzy. After all, the Bible makes it clear that heaven is a velvet-roped V.I.P. area reserved for Christians. Jesus said so: “I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” But the survey suggested that Americans just weren’t buying that.

The evangelicals complained that people must not have understood the question. The respondents couldn’t actually believe what they were saying, could they?

So in August, Pew asked the question again. (They released the results last week.) Sixty-five percent of respondents said — again — that other religions could lead to eternal life. But this time, to clear up any confusion, Pew asked them to specify which religions. The respondents essentially said all of them.

And they didn’t stop there. Nearly half also thought that atheists could go to heaven — dragged there kicking and screaming, no doubt — and most thought that people with no religious faith also could go.

What on earth does this mean?

One very plausible explanation is that Americans just want good things to come to good people, regardless of their faith. As Alan Segal, a professor of religion at Barnard College told me: “We are a multicultural society, and people expect this American life to continue the same way in heaven.” He explained that in our society, we meet so many good people of different faiths that it’s hard for us to imagine God letting them go to hell. In fact, in the most recent survey, Pew asked people what they thought determined whether a person would achieve eternal life. Nearly as many Christians said you could achieve eternal life by just being a good person as said that you had to believe in Jesus.

Also, many Christians apparently view their didactic text as flexible. According to Pew’s August survey, only 39 percent of Christians believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, and 18 percent think that it’s just a book written by men and not the word of God at all. In fact, on the question in the Pew survey about what it would take to achieve eternal life, only 1 percent of Christians said living life in accordance with the Bible.

Now, there remains the possibility that some of those polled may not have understood the implications of their answers. As John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum, said, “The capacity of ignorance to influence survey outcomes should never be underestimated.” But I don’t think that they are ignorant about this most basic tenet of their faith. I think that they are choosing to ignore it ... for goodness sake.

Picture this if you will: me, sitting in heaven next to some of the most obnoxious Christians on the web. Yeah, that'd be hell for me. Good thing the majority can be wrong.

Now, about the majority opinion concerning the Christian faith itself...

;-)

If You have Faith Now, Sex and Wealth Are Yours in Heaven!

We atheists are often accused of not having morals or ethics and, since this life is all we have, atheists are considered as indulging in all the sensual pleasures we can cram into this short life time.

But both the text and traditions of the two major monotheistic religions (Christianity and Islam) prove that if the faithful - especially Islamic men- are deterred by the stick (Hell) and lured by the carrot (Heaven), then much of what is labeled sin in the here and now can be part of the eternal lustful reward in Heaven.

Lets look at a few so-called earthly sins in the Christian-Islamic religious traditions.

Sexual Desires on Earth in Islam: Very Bad!

In conservative Islamic countries, men are not to look at woman in the eyes for fear of exciting sexual feelings and urges. Thus, women are often confined to their houses, denied an education and, if they leave their houses, they must (in many conservative religious Moslem countries) be covered often with the berka from heard to toe to keep men from any sexual lustful thoughts.

Covering of the female can be a basic hijab to the full face covering of the burqa. Woman are not to be seen except by her husband and as one Pashto phrase states: “A woman belongs in the house - or in a grave.”

Sexual Desires in Heaven in Islam: Very Good!

“Two points need to be noted. First, there is no mention anywhere in the Koran of the actual number of virgins available in paradise, and second, the dark-eyed damsels are available for all Muslims, not just martyrs.”

…and…

“Modern apologists of Islam try to downplay the evident materialism and sexual implications of such descriptions, but, as the Encyclopaedia of Islam says, even orthodox Muslim theologians such as al Ghazali (died 1111 CE) and Al-Ash'ari (died 935 CE) have "admitted sensual pleasures into paradise". The sensual pleasures are graphically elaborated by Al-Suyuti (died 1505 ), Koranic commentator and polymath. He wrote: ‘Each time we sleep with a houri we find her virgin. Besides, the penis of the Elected never softens. The erection is eternal; the sensation that you feel each time you make love is utterly delicious and out of this world and were you to experience it in this world you would faint. Each chosen one [ie Muslim] will marry seventy [sic] houris, besides the women he married on earth, and all will have appetising vaginas.’”

[I must admit that after reading the statement “Besides, the penis of the Elected never softens. The erection is eternal; the sensation that you feel each time you make love is utterly delicious and out of this world and were you to experience it in this world you would faint.” the Lord immediately started dealing with my heart. I really think the Lord is calling me to be a Moslem!] (Quoted from here)

Wealth on Earth in Christianity: Very Bad!

The Jesus of the Gospels is an itinerate preacher who owns nothing (Jesus said to him, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." Matt. 8: 20).

Tells anyone who follows him to do the same (Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, "One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me. But at these words he was saddened, and he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much property. " Mark 10: 21-22).

Warns about loving wealth and getting into Heaven (“For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Luke 18: 25).

Jesus teaches a “Social Gospel” on sharing of wealth the Jewish punishment if you don’t (19 “Now there was a rich man, and he habitually dressed in purple and fine linen, joyously living in splendor every day. 20 “And a poor man named Lazarus was laid at his gate, covered with sores, … Luke 16: 19 -31).

Wealth in Heaven in Christianity: Very Good!

God has a mansion in Heaven with a dedicated room for each faithful believer (2 “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places (Greek: rooms); if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. 3 “If I go and prepare a place for you… John 14: 1-3 Talk about Circular Reasoning!)

While the faithful are forbidden to love and horde wealth on earth, in Heaven greed is king as the faithful’s material lust is filled to over flowing (19 The foundation stones of the city wall were adorned with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation stone was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, chalcedony; the fourth, emerald; 20 the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, topaz; the tenth, chrysoprase; the eleventh, jacinth; the twelfth, amethyst. 21 And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; each one of the gates was a single pearl. And the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass. Rev. 21: 19 - 21).

Jesus said: “Rejoice and be glad because you have a great reward in heaven!” (Matt. 5: 12a)

Yea, right! Unlimited sex for the faithful Moslem and unlimited wealth for the faithful Christian.

Do I see religious hypocrisy here or is it just because my atheistic mind is not warped by religious righteous thinking?

Preacher Dane Eidson Declares Himself an Atheist!

Dane credits Joe E. Holman for giving him the courage to do so and he recommends my book.

Dane wrote:

Many of you know me as the Rev. Dane Eidson. Others of you know me as the former President/CEO of a 501(c)3 non profit Organization "Because of Calvary, Inc." Others know me as the former host of a local cable TV program called "Out of the Box" that was seen in the southeastern parts of Georgia and anywhere through the internet.

What I am about to state is honest and not a sudden decision on my part. This has been my belief for years. I been living and preaching what I knew was a lie. I have denied and ran from my belief because I was scared to admit this publically. I was afraid of hurting my family and friends and did not want to face what my family would think of me. I was afraid of what could be the consequences of making public my belief.

Okay...Here's the "big announcement." I am an atheist. I do not believe in God or any other type of diety. I do not believe in a Supreme Being. I once did. But no longer. There is no God, there is no afterlife, there are no spirits. We exist purely by chance and by accident. We are the products of an evolution of a great event, "The Big Bang." Evolution is a fact and belief in a god is the product on man himself.

IDQ Flaw of Meaninglessness Representation In The Bible

Very little in the Bible can be understood as it is written. To be understood as relevant and applicable to today necessitates speculation, interpretation and pre-processing for general consumption. The Bible, as it is written, has become meaningless even though Church leaders try to speculate, interpret and derive meaning from it. Since Christian leaders don't agree, large portions of the data in the Bible is demonstrably meaningless which is a result of the Information and Data Quality flaw of "Meaningless Representation".

This Article is part seven of the series of articles applying Information and Data Quality (IDQ) Principles to the Bible. The purpose of the series is to show that the Bible is not a reliable or trustworthy source of information about God because it has problems from its origin identified in Information and Data Quality research as causing inaccuracy and unreliability. Links to the previous articles are listed below.

1. How Accurate is the Bible?
2. Applying Data and Information Quality Principles To The Bible
3. Applying IDQ Principles of Research To The Bible
4. Overview of IDQ Deficiencies Which Are Evident In Scripture
5. Jesus As God From IDQ Design Deficincies
6. "Son of Man" As Jesus From IDQ Deficiencies

A brief review of Meaningless Representation(1) follows.

Meaningless representation
When the information system contains superfluous information then it can lead to a situation where the Information System does not accurately represent (map back to) a real world state. For example this can occur by the use of too many descriptive terms, undefined terms or some minor addition to the story intended as an elaboration. Meaningless states can still represent Real World states properly, however it is not a good design in principle to include meaningless data if for no other reason than users may expend resources and make commitments based on the data only to later discover the data to be meaningless. For example, the ancient Greek historian Heroditus, while accurate to a large degree, is known to have exaggerated and to have uncritically included information from apparently unreliable sources.

Figure 1 illustrates this point by showing two instances of data represented by spheres in the column labeled RW (Real World) and three instances of Data in the D column. One instance of an information state is not represented by or does not map back to a real world state .

Figure 1



Operation Deficiencies - Garbling:
Meaningless State
In human terms, garbling occurs at the point of "consumption" or reading and interpretation. In Information Systems, it occurs at operation time or when the database is being accessed. Garbling occurs when a Real World state is incorrectly mapped to a wrong state in the Information System. There are two cases in which this occurs. If a meaningless state exists, then Real World mapping will be to a meaningless state, or the mapping might be to a meaningful but incorrect information state. This can occur as a result of inaccurate data entry or omissions of real world states at the creation or origin of the data. Analogous examples of this type of garbling are legends, folktales and the "Artistic License" of the author or originator.

Figure 2 illustrates this point by showing two instances of data represented by spheres in the column labeled RW (Real World) and three instances of Data in the D column. One instance of an information state is not represented by or does not map back to a real world state and a Real World state in incorrectly interpreted as being represented by the superfluous datum.

Figure 2


GENESIS 1-11 IS REGARDED BY SOME LIBERAL CHRISTIANS AND JEWS AS BEING METAPHORICAL
The terms "Divinely Revealed" and "Divinely Inspired" have no consensus therefore they are meaningless terms with respect to the Bible. Additionally, the Bible contradicts established knowledge about such things as the principles and laws of physics of the Universe and Biology. If the Bible was divinely revealed then the fact that its metaphorical should have been divinely revealed. If it was divinely inspired, what does that mean? There is no consensus so it is meaningless. Christianity is meaningless because of its ambiguity, sliding windows and moving goalposts of criteria and definitions. I heartily endorse every Christian to take up their Bible and read it two or three times cover to cover and THINK HARD about what it says. Use your own brain to figure out what it means. Don't let anyone do your thinking for you.

Below are a few lines starting at the beginning of the Bible to ask some critical questions and do some thoughtful elaboration. Please follow along in your Bible.

GENESIS
1:1. So where did God come from? If a creation is evidence of a creator, and if everything that exists is created, then if god exists, he is evidence of his creator or he is "a special case" with no precedent and no extra-biblical evidence or God is a result of apologetic "special pleading" fallacies.
1:2. Is similar to pre-existing Egyptian creation myths
1:3. Where did the light come from without suns? Some speculative "Pre-light"?
1:4. Darkness is the absence of light. To say that light and dark "can be separated" is meaningless.
1:5. This depends on Gen 1:4 being true so its meaningless as well.
1:6. The ancients thought there was as much water in the sky as on the earth somehow being prevented from falling.
1:7. Depends on Gen. 1:6 being true so its meaningless
1:8. Also depends on Gen. 1:6 being true so its meaningless as well.
1:9. This is similar to the pre-existing egyption creation myth of Atum creating a hill out of the watery chaos to become the Egyptian city of Heliopolis so he could stand and then have his temple built on it. The Bible neglects to mention that there is more water than land and there are more than one land mass, which makes it meaningless to "gather the water into one place so that land can appear".
1:10. God named the land and the sea. But that presumes there was and always has been one original language, when it is known that this cannot be true due to the variety of fundamental differences and mutually exclusive features of the languages of the world. Communication between members of a species is not unique to Human Beings. And should there have been an original language that God spoke, then to guarantee its preservation to this day would have been a reasonable and efficient way of guaranteeing the integrity of the Data recorded in the Bible.

As one goes line by line through the Bible elaborating and assessing the information contained within, its mythological character should become undeniable to most people. If we take the Bible to be 100% true when we start reading it, then as we go through it and find statements that we know to be false and we find statements whose truth depends on false statements, then we should reduce our percentage of belief with every fact shown to be false.

Below is an overview of some major but not all inclusive problems with the remaining chapters of Genesis up to chapter eleven. Why is Genesis important? Because it lays the foundation for the human necessity of redemption by way of the Human Sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross.

GENESIS 1 continued
* Genesis 1:1-25 Is An Amalgam of Near Eastern Creation Myths
* Genesis 1:26-1:27, Creation of Humans in Near Eastern Myths And The Paleolithic Era

GENESIS 2
ADAM AND EVE
The Story of Adam and Eve is considered a metaphorical story in Liberal Christian Circles. Several disconfirming facts are listed below with links to my articles elaborating on them.
- Being made in the image of God is meaningless, there is no consensus on what "the image of God" is.
* Disqualifying Adam and Eve. There is no reason outside of the Bible to accept this story as representing a Real World event.
* Adam and Eve and the Problem of Evil. Shows how the Christian Tenet that humans are "incompetent" nullifies any reliable interpretation of the Bible or any knowledge supposedly gained through flawed Human reasoning.
* GENESIS 1:28-2:4a, Be Fruitful And Multiply, Founder Effect and Genetic Diversity. Shows how lack of Genetic Diversity would prevent the establishment of a Robust and Healthy population.
* Genesis 2:4b-20: Man Made From Earth Is Folklore, Conflated River Elements and the Myth of Adapa. Discusses a correlation between Hebrew and all other Folklore typologies regarding the first humans.
* Genesis 2:21-25: Woman From Rib and Mother Goddesses of Near Eastern Myths. Discusses a correlation between Hebrew and all other Folklore typologies regarding Eve.

GENESIS 3: THE FALL OF MAN
- Killed an animal and made clothes for them, the eyed-needle first showed up about 45,000 years ago with the Cro-Magnons(7).
* Adams Sin Was An Emergent Behavior. Shows how the physical makeup of the first Humans guaranteed the emergence of the behavior they subsequently got punished for.
* Gen. 2-3, Normal-form Game Matrix Shows That God Chose The Worst Outcome. Shows that the omniscient God Character in the Bible chose the worst possible outcome for his creation guaranteeing all the problems that subsequently occurred.
* Gen. 2:16-3:24: Adam and Eve Were Mentally Incompetent. Shows how Adam and Eve did not have enough life experience to make good decisions.
* Gen. 2:7-3:6, God Should Have Known That Adam Would Disobey.
* Gen. 2:6-9, God Ignored Adams Admonishment Option. Shows that using effective principles of parenting, Adam and Eve's transgression warranted nurturing correction rather than expulsion and the handicap of being cursed by a God.

GEN 4 CAIN AND ABEL
- Founder effect. Due to lack of genetic variation, the effect of the small percentage of natural mutations are amplified in a population generally reducing the efficiency of the organism and increasing the probability of birth defects.
* GENESIS 1:28-2:4a, Be Fruitful And Multiply, Founder Effect and Genetic Diversity
- Where did the other people come from, where they all first and second generation relatives?
- 4:17 he built a city and called it Enoch. People first lived in caves then around 28,000 years ago starting building shelter structures out of Mammoth bone(7). How did they go from cavest to bone structures to cities in one generation?

THE MARK OF CAIN
- The Mark of Cain is meaningless. There is no clear consensus on what it was.
- It was thoughtlessly regard by some as Black Skin, justifying racism. However all Cains offspring would have been destroyed in the Flood if the Flood had really happened. Any critical analysis of the text would have revealed that inconsistency.

GEN 5 DESCENDENTS OF ADAM
- no one lived that long, the human body cannot support it. Accumulated DNA Damage guarantees that.
* Wikipedia, DNA Damage Theory of Aging

GEN 6 CORRUPTION OF MANKIND
- Nephilim? Very similar to the Greek Titans.
- Similar to Babylonian myths, Enuma Elish
* Wikipedia, Enuma Elish
- Mathematically and Logistically, the Ark doesn't add up.

GEN 7 THE GREAT FLOOD
- Similar to Babylonian myths, Enuma Elish
- Where did all the water come from and go?

“The book of Genesis says of the Flood that ‘… all the high hills that were under the whole of heaven were covered…’ Taken literally, this seems to indicate that there were 10,000 to 20,000 feet of water on the surface of the earth, equivalent to more than half a billion cubic miles of liquid! Since, according to biblical accounts, it rained for forty days and forty nights, or for only 960 hours, the rain must have fallen at a rate of at least fifteen feet per hour, certainly enough to sink any aircraft carrier, much less an ark with thousands of animals on board.” - John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy, (Collins Publishers, 1988), p. 13.

GEN 8 THE FLOOD SUBSIDES
- God evidently changed his mind and said that he would never do that again even though "every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood". God cannot logically change his mind if he knows everything from the beginning. Once he knows the future, the future is set. If the future changes, then he didn't know it. If he knew of a finite number of outcomes, he should have know which one would happen, thereby making all other outcomes irrelevant.
- The earth would be a big marsh after that.

GEN 9 COVENANT OF THE RAINBOW
- Founder effect again.
- The rainbow is a refraction of light and can be reproduced in the lab. It would have been present before the flood unless the physics of the world was different prior. Since God set it up as a "note to self", God cannot be omniscient.
- Noah was mad at Ham so he cursed his son Canaan? All Ham did was tell his brothers that Noah was Naked. Any other interpretation is pure speculation.

GEN 10 DESCENDENTS OF NOAH
- Founder effect again.

GEN 11 TOWER OF BABEL
- How does an ancient Zuggarat no more than 170 meters tall threaten a god and space travel doesn't?
- There was never a single language. The exact definition of Language differs from one theory to another, but it is evident that other species have forms of communication, therefore, it is likely that communication and language develop within a culture, therefore independent of each other.
Wikipedia, Origin of Language
- DNA Damage guarantee humans can't live much more than 120 years.
- God didn't know everything because he was evidently surprised by how capable humans were to build the Zuggarat.

MEANINGLESS ITEMS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
If the Bible was Divinely inspired or Divinely revealed, then its truths should be timeless, not just applicable to the the time frame they were written. Apologists will tell you that the authors were speaking to people of their time, but that excludes any influence that an omniscient being would have had. In fact, plenty of "truths" originating from the ancients have survived relatively uninterpreted and sound to this day, specifically mathematics. Likewise, an omniscient being could be expected to do just as well as its human creations in creating and preserving ideas.

The New Testament is full of meaningless things. Here are a few examples.

DO CHRISTIANS NEED TO LIVE UNDER OLD TESTAMENT LAW OR NOT?
It seems clear that Jesus intended Christians to keep the old testament laws without apologetic equivocation.

17 "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.
18"For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
19"Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK, ON ITS FACE, IS BAD ADVICE
It enables bad behavior to continue. The middle ground is the more appropriate where harm is minimized and less harmful behavior is nurtured. As it is written, it is meaningless without some further interpretation and speculation on the intention behind the speaker, namely God as Jesus. And who is qualified to interpret the intentions of God?

38 "You have heard that it was said, 'AN EYE FOR AN EYE, AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH.'
39 "But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.
40 "If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also.
41 "Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two.
42 "Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.

Are Christians saved by Faith, Works or Both?
Depends on who you talk to. There is no consensus therefore it is meaningless.

JESUS COMMITS A FALLACY
"Whoever is not with me is against me" and "whoever is not against us is for us". Logically this is mutually exclusive and it is a fallacious reasoning scheme. If you have three groups of people, committed, rebellious, and ambivalent, then Luke 12:30 would exclude 66% percent while Mark 9:40 would only exclude 33%. Luke would exclude the Middle while Mark would include them. What happens to those that don't care one way or the other? Who knows? Therefore its meaningless and logically inconsistent coming from the mouth of God.

Luke 12:30 "He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me scatters."
Mark 9:40 "For he who is not against us is for us."

Is it possible that God revealed his word to Joseph Smith?
Again, it depends on who you talk to. There is no logical reason that it could not have happened, especially if it presumed that Gods interaction in peoples lives is ongoing to this day.

PRAYER IS MEANINGLESS
My article on "The Promise of Prayer"
Why does one pray? God should already know what is desired. People should not be able to influence God if he has a plan and already knows everything in advance. Does he need or want praise? How does a perfect being need or want anything?

I invite the reader to continue to apply what they already know to elaborating and evaluating the data in the Bible.

References and Further Reading
1. Anchoring Data Quality Dimensions in Ontological Foundations
2. GENESIS 1:28-2:4a, Be Fruitful And Multiply, Founder Effect and Genetic Diversity
3. Wikipedia, DNA Damage Theory of Aging
4. Wikipedia, Enuma Elish
5. John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy, (Collins Publishers, 1988), p. 13.
6. Wikipedia, Origin of Language
7. Human Prehistory and The First Civilizations, Brian M. Fagan, The Teaching Company

My Criticisms of Genesis One through Three consolidated.
Highlights the characteristics and typologies of Near Eastern folklore in the Bible and points out where it deviates from what we know about history and nature.
1. Genesis 1:1-25 Is An Amalgam of Near Eastern Creation Myths
2. Genesis 1:26-1:27, Creation of Humans in Near Eastern Myths And The Paleolithic Era
3. GENESIS 1:28-2:4a, Be Fruitful And Multiply, Founder Effect and Genetic Diversity
4. Genesis 2:4b-20: Man Made From Earth Is Folklore, Conflated River Elements and the Myth of Adapa
5. Genesis 2:21-25: Woman From Rib and Mother Goddesses of Near Eastern Myths

Criticisms of the Story of Adam and Eve (AKA Adam Bombing).
1. Adam and Eve and the Problem of Evil
2. Disqualifying Adam and Eve
3. Gen. 2:16-3:24: Adam and Eve Were Mentally Incompetent
4. Gen. 2:7-3:6, God Should Have Known That Adam Would Disobey.
5. Gen. 2:6-9, God Ignored Adams Admonishment Option
6. Adams Sin Was An Emergent Behavior
7. Gen. 2-3, Normal-form Game Matrix Shows That God Chose The Worst Outcome

Skeptical Study Corner

The deeper I get into my study of the Christian religion, the more information I discover is left to be unearthed, and the more I find out that I lack even a fistful of sand out of a vast mountain of knowledge within many areas outside my current strengths. Thus ...

... I am going to open up a personal blog dealing with subjects that are of an elementary nature, or that have more relevancy with understanding or discussing a theologicol (or an atheological!) argument, with the ultimate aim of reaching a higher personal standard of scholarship in my weaker areas when I blog here at DC and present my arguments elsewhere. Such topics may include the nature of God, the Calvinism vs. Arminianism debate from theological perspectives, assessing methodology of history, learning theories about Biblical manuscripts and Early Church beliefs, and so on.

I will continue to post arguments stemming from my own strengths and research in this past year here at DC; the "learning portion" of my relatively newer interests will be posted at my new blog. Wherever we meet, I am looking forward to discussing and debating all aspects of this universally important topic.

-Darrin

http://skepticalstudies.blogspot.com/

I Try My Very Best to Focus on What's Important and to Be Fair and Balanced With the Arguments.

If there is one thing about me you should know it's this: my aim is to be fair and balanced with my intellectual opponents. Now I know such an aim is probably impossible, but I aim at this anyway. If someone can show where I mischaracterized his or her arguments I'm the first person who wants to know.

What grates on me to no end is people who don't give a damn to do likewise with my arguments. These people, on both sides of the fence, get little more than my distain. I have been known to berate them, ridicule and taunt them. I probably shouldn't do this, but sometimes I cannot resist. That's just who I am. That's what I sometimes do with people who are intellectually dishonest with what I say.

I am first and foremost a freethinker. That's who I am. I left the cookie-cutter mentality of defending the party line when I left the church. Whether you are a skeptic or a Christian if your arguments are lame I will probably point them out. Why? Because I am interested in the truth. If you don't like this then I cannot help you. If I am wrong show me. Unlike many people who debate these issues I am willing to listen. I really am. But you must be respectful; you must not purposely (or ignorantly) mischaracterize my arguments; you must try to be objective with the evidence; and you must show yourself to be willing to think through the issues rather than quoting from proof-texts.

Recently I have been defending the belief that there was an apocalyptic doomsday prophet in the first century named Jesus who was the basis for the Christian cult itself. I could be wrong. If I'm wrong show me. I'm interested in every issue but I can only focus on the important ones. Some of the vitriol coming from the skeptical crowd reminds me of how Christians have divided into separate denominations over and over about mere trifles. I guess we're all just humans after all. We want everyone to agree with us. If someone is out of line we want him to get in line. If that person doesn't do this we tend to write him off as being ignorant, because we tend to think it's because of ignorance he disagrees. This saddens me to no end. I have no solutions to this type of fundamentalist thinking, but it is fundamentalist thinking! It's probably just part of the human condition. We want people to think exactly like us, even on unimportant trifles. And if they don't we write them off, even if we agree with them 90% of the time. Is that stupid or what? There I go myself. *slap* Why can't we at least be smart enough to choose our battles wisely and focus on the majors rather than on the minors? Knowing the difference between them is a mark of an educated person, although not even that seems to be enough.

C.S. Lewis's Theory of Atonement in The Chronicles of Narnia

I'll confess I haven't read Lewis's book, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, but in the cartoon version as well as in the blockbuster movie they agree with each other. Upon researching further I found that the theory expressed is the Ransom Theory of Atonement which has been recently defended by Charles Taliaferro. It's known as the "classical view" in that it was the one adopted by theologians up until St. Anselm. To see it explained and criticized read through this (just skip the ad).

Criticisms of this theory:

The Ransom theory, as well as other violence-based atonement explanations, suffer from an inconsistency in Christian teaching: The church has traditionally taught that a person is responsible for their own sin, and that a person cannot morally be punished for the sins of others. Of course, they deviated from this teaching, as when they taught as late as the mid-20th century that modern-day Jews were responsible for the execution of Yeshua (a.k.a. Jesus Christ). But in general, people were not held responsible for the sins of others.

The church has also historically taught that the default destination for all humans currently living, after death, will be Hell because of the Adam and Eve's transgression in the Garden of Eden when they ate the forbidden fruit. All will be tortured in Hell, unless they are saved through sacraments and/or good works and/or faith. The sin of Eve and Adam were imputed to the entire human race. More liberal Christian faith groups have deviated from this belief and teach universalism -- that nobody will spend eternity in Hell.

Most liberal and many mainline Christians believe that Adam and Eve were mythical humans. That is, they didn't exist as actual people. Without that belief, this atonement theory collapses.

Some Christians note that Eve and Adam were created as proto-humans without a sense of sin. After all, they ate the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in order to develop a knowledge of good and evil. Being without a moral sense, they cannot be responsible for eating the fruit any more than an animal might. Again, if the first parents are not responsible for eating the fruit, the atonement theory collapses.

Phil Johnson, Executive Director of Grace to You states that there is no support in the Bible for the concept that Satan has a legitimate claim on sinners. He suggests that the "Biblical word ransom simply means 'redemption-price;' it does not necessarily imply a price paid to Satan."

Several passages in the Bible imply that Christ's death was a ritual sacrifice to God, and thereby not to Satan: Isaiah 53:10: "Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand."

Ephesians 5:2: "And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savour." The reference to a sweet smelling savor is seen throughout the Hebrew Scriptures in reference to animal sacrifices in the Temple being cooked at the altar, with the fragrance wafting upwards towards Heaven where God was seated on his throne. The ancient Hebrews believed that Heaven was only a few hundred feet above the earth.

Origen's version requires that God acts in a deceitful manner. That is does not match the traditional Christian belief about the justice, honesty, and truthfulness of God.

Many versions of the ransom theory assume that Satan is unaware of the magical powers of Yeshua. The later version assumes that Satan is deluded into thinking that he is more powerful than Yeshua. Yet Satan is portrayed in the Bible as a dedicated, intelligent, and evil angel, not a quasi-deity who is so disconnected from reality that he is unaware of Yeshua's capabilities. Satan is not described in the Bible as suffering from delusions of grandeur.

The entire concept of Satan as a living entity is rejected by many Christians today; they view Satan as a symbol of evil, not as an actual person. If Satan is not an all-evil quasi-deity, Origen's theory collapses.

The Bible identifies Satan as a created being; a fallen angel who disobeyed God. Similarly, humans are commonly portrayed as created beings who have disobeyed God and fallen. There is no obvious rationale for assuming that Satan had control over all of humanity any more than the reverse might have been true.

Since God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnibeneficient, just, and ethical, it is illogical to assume that he would be willing to allow his son to be tortured to death if there were another way to achieve atonement. God might have, for example, simply forgiven Adam and Eve for their sin. According to the gospels, Yeshua repeatedly taught that extending forgiveness is to take the moral high road.

Professor of Philosophy Michael Martin writes:

"Since, on the ransom theory, after Jesus' death and resurrection, human beings were out of the devil's clutches, it would seem that the way to salvation would simply be to follow a life free from sin so as not to fall under the devil's control. What has faith in Jesus got to do with this? The ransom theory supplies no answer."

There are three additional criticisms of the Ransom Theory which also apply to other atonement theories. They attribute to God the same sort of cruel, hate-filled, punishing behavior seen in the lives of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, etc:

There is no obvious mechanism whereby a person can achieve salvation and atonement with God by simply expressing faith and/or trust in Yeshua.

If trusting Yeshua were the only path to atonement and salvation, then those who have followed a non-Christian religion would not achieve salvation and atonement. They would be sent to Hell after death for what is basically the commission of a thought crime -- believing in the wrong God or in no God. Current moral belief systems -- both religious and secular -- consider punishment for thought crimes to be immoral and unjust.

The ransom theory would also route many non-Christians to Hell after death for the simple reason that they have not had the opportunity to learn of Yeshua, Christianity, or the gospel message. Being ignorant of Yeshua, they could not trust him as Lord and Savior and be saved. The Ransom Theory punishes non-Christians for not having made a decision in favor of someone of whom they are unaware. This appears to many people to be irrational, unjust, and immoral.

Movie Review: Religulous

This review is late, way late! The release of Religulous was on October 1, 2008 and only now am I getting to review it. Why is that? Because down in the south where I live, even we movie critics couldn’t get it because we’re in the Bible Belt and most theatres wouldn’t carry it. We have the always tolerant, loving, and nonjudgmental Jesus-courters to thank for that. What I had to do to finally get a demo copy of the film was quite disgusting. It involved me in the back seat of a 1996 Buick Skylark getting down and dirty for 35 minutes with a tranny hooker named Philecia.

Okay, now that I made you chuckle, I’m about to turn the floor over to a real comedian, Bill Maher, creator of the hilariously offensive documentary. Being an avid and outspoken atheist myself, it would be biased of me to put a grade on Religulous unlike the rest of my reviews at holmansmoviereview.com. To say that I agree with Maher’s conclusions should be obvious. So, I’m sitting this one out and letting Bill Maher do the promoting of godless activism for right now.

Maher’s travels for the project took him to Israel in Megiddo, the Mt. of Olives, to Italy to the Vatican where he was thrown out, to the Netherlands to visit a weeded-out “God” junkie, and to some other places in the United States (including the Mormon Temple in Utah where he was bounced from the property) to get feedback on those coats of many colors called God and religion.

What’s the problem with the world? The problem is religion and timing: “Before man figured out how to be rational and peaceful, he figured out nuclear weapons and how to pollute on a catastrophic scale,” says Maher. It is the intolerance generated by religious convictions that gives man the false assurance that he is right and cannot be wrong.

Maher makes a lot of people uncomfortable, and sometimes you even want to sympathize with them. Take, for instance, a chapel for truckers in North Carolina where Maher stops in to ask some questions. Within minutes of filming, one of them says: “You start disputin’ my god, then you got a problem.” But the problem with people like that is not disputing God. There’s no critical thinking going on. “I’m promoting doubt.” Maher says. “The other guys are selling certainty, not me.” How should we think? We should learn from our mistakes and realize that nobody has all the answers: “History is just a litany of getting shit wrong.” And “Religion is dangerous because it allows people who don’t have all the answers to think that they do.”

Dr. Francis Collins, one of the world’s leading DNA experts, is questioned on his adhering to Christian convictions while 93% of all scientists in the National Academy of Sciences are either atheist or agnostic. I would like to have seen more of the interview with Dr. Collins, which I felt was a bit too heavily edited.

Other interviews were gut-busting-ly funny, sometimes to the point of being awkward, like Maher’s interview with “ex-gay” pastor John Wescott. Just watch, and if you don’t cringe, I’ll give you a dollar! Democratic senator Mark Pryor is on tape admitting that the earth might be 5,000 years old. The creationist movement’s Ken Ham is interviewed just after a shot of a triceratops with a saddle on it.

After getting booted from the Vatican, Maher’s interview with a crotchety old priest is a gem. Being questioned about the church’s condemnation of sinners to Hell, the priest says: “That’s all nonsense. That’s the old Catholic church.” Well, that’s good to hear!

Brilliantly incorporated archived footage of political coverage, televangelists, and world events gives the presentation an extra-outrageous appeal. One of those is of Kirk Cameron and his usual spewing forth of ignorance, this time on making converts. The believer must “learn to circumvent or go around the person’s intellect.” Yep, that’s what the religious must do to convert anyone. If you think about it, it all falls apart. Don’t think! Just believe!

Religious idiocy is cleverly exploited as Rabbi Schmuel Strauss is interviewed. The man works for The Institute of Science and Halacha, inventing products that allow for modern conveniences without breaking the Sabbath. A phone is showcased that can dial itself. If you put a stylus in a number of the number you want to dial, the phone will stop inhibiting dialing at the number, which it tries to do automatically every second, so as to not violate one of the 39 prohibitions set by modern Jewish leadership against pushing buttons, and therefore, allowing the use of a phone on the Sabbath. Things get more comical with a wheelchair propelled by air thrust to avoid anyone having to push it on the Sabbath.

Maher interviews Jose Luis De Jesus Miranda, a man with 100,000 followers worldwide who believes himself to be the second incarnation of Christ. A radical Muslim Aki Nawaz is interviewed, a man who raps about and openly believes in suicide bombings, and upholds the death threats made against Salmon Rushdie.

On faith, Maher says “Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking.” And “Those who preach faith and enable it and elevate it are intellectual slaveholders.” It is religion that destroys mankind. “Religion must die for mankind to live.”

The conclusion is that religion is crazy – crazy funny – but mostly just crazy. Religious people are crazy. Their religion makes them that way. Religulous is about getting the world humble enough to admit that anyone can be wrong—adored religious saints and their holy books alike. If the things religious people believe were found in any other book, they’d be denied and called fairy tales. But since those things are in the Bible, they’re given a pass on conforming to rationality. None of their proponents know what they are talking about and have no more certainty in answering life’s big questions as their fellow religious loudmouths or your local “I’ll believe it when I see it” village atheist.

Religulous is 100 minutes and 56 seconds of realism with comic relief where Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others all get roasted. Spliced in with the interviews are charts, facts, and movie clips that will probably have you rolling laughing. The open-minded and non-fundamentalist religionists are encouraged to see the film as it will provide great entertainment. If you are a closed-minded, straight-laced fundamentalist, run. But if you do decide to see it, be prepared to throw a shoe at the screen.

(JH)

Ancient Mythic Origins of the Christmas Story

Valerie Tarico interviews Dr. Tony Nugent, scholar of world religions. Dr. Nugent is a symbologist, an expert in ancient symbols. He taught at Seattle University for fifteen years in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies and is an ordained Presbyterian minister.

Most Americans know how Christmas came to be celebrated on December 25: The Emperor Constantine chose the date because it was winter solstice in the Julian Calendar, the birthday of dying and rising gods like Mithra and Sol. Some people also know that our delightful melange of Christmas festivities originated in ancient Norse, Sumerian, Roman and Druid traditions - or, in the case of Rudolph, on Madison Avenue.

But where does the Christmas story itself come from: Jesus in the manger, the angels and wise men?



The familiar Christmas story, including the virgin conception and birth of Jesus, is found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Scholars have pointed out that these stories are somewhat disconnected from other parts of these Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. In fact, by the time he is a young boy in the temple, Jesus's parents seem to have forgotten the virgin birth. They act surprised by his odd behavior. There is never any other mention in the New Testament of these incredible events! These stories seem to be an afterthought, written later than the rest of the gospels that contain them.

To make matters more interesting, the stories themselves have inconsistencies and ambiguities - contradictory genealogies, for example. Our Christmas story (singular) is actually a composite. Or consider the idea that Mary is a virgin. The Greek writer of Matthew quotes Isaiah as saying: "a parthenos shall conceive and bear a child." The Hebrew word in Isaiah is "almah," which means simply "young woman." But the Greek word parthenos can mean either a virgin or a young woman, and it got translated as "virgin." Modern Bible translations have corrected this, but it is a central part of the Christmas story.

That's a lot of added complications. If the rest of the New Testament doesn't refer to these stories or need them, then how did we end up with them? Where do they come from?

One part of the answer comes from Hellenistic culture. (It is no accident all New Testament books written in Greek.) In this tradition, when a man did something extraordinary there was the assumption that he did this because he was different, either divine or semi-divine. They would make up a story about how he came to be divine. Almost all Greek heroes were said to be born of a human woman and a god--even Alexander the Great, Augustus and Pythagoras. The father typically was Zeus or Apollo. The god would come and sleep with the woman, pretending to be the husband or as a bolt of lightning, or some such. Greek mythology also shows up in the book of Genesis: the gods lusting after the women and coming down and mating with them.

Why were they added to the Christian story?

Jewish Christians - the first Christians didn't believe in the virgin birth. They believed that Joseph was the biological father of Jesus. Part of their Christology was "adoptionism"--they thought Jesus was adopted as the unique son of God at some time later in life. There were disagreements about when - Mark suggests the baptism, Paul suggests the resurrection.
Over time, gentile Christianity replaced Jewish Christianity. There were Jewish-Roman Wars. The Jewish Christians were marginalized and oppressed. The Gentile branch became dominant. Eventually we get the gospel of John which pushes the sonship of Jesus back to the beginning of time. This writer is at the other end of the spectrum from the Jewish Christians. But Matthew and Luke think that the Sonship of Jesus began at birth. And they want to tell a story that reinforces this point. Matthew and Luke are the source of the Christmas story as most of us learned it.

Why didn't the writers do a better job of cleaning the contradictions?

They did, some. This is called the "orthodox corruption of scripture." (Bart Ehrman article , book) . But it appears that these birth stories were added toward the end, so scripture got frozen before they could get integrated.

I was raised that the bible was the literally perfect, "inerrant" word of God, essentially dictated by God to the writers. What you are saying about the Christmas story sure calls into question this point of view.

Which Bible?! There are thousands of manuscript variations. Most biblical stories are probably fiction, not non-fiction. They are mythology in the deepest sense of the word. But we need to get beyond issue of whether biblical reports happened in the historical, physical sense to understand what they mean spiritually and mythically.

Ok. Back to Christmas. Of all the images from the Christmas story, the one that people fall in love with most is angels. The Christmas story is full of angels, beings of light. Is this because of the solstice tradition?

Actually it comes from the Hebrew Bible, the Jewish scriptures that were eventually adopted into the Christian Bible as the Old Testament. It also comes from the Jewish literature written between the Old and New Testaments that didn't get into the biblical canon. Some of these are even quoted in the New Testament, for example Enoch, from the 2nd Century BC. It's all about angels.

What are angels in these stories? Who are they?

The Bible calls them the sons of God, the Divine Council. The word used for God in parts of the Hebrew Bible, Elohim, is plural implying a family of deities. Angels are the lesser gods of the deposed pantheon of ancient Israel. They are under the rulership of Yahweh. Together with Yahweh they are part of Elohim, a plural word that we translate "God" in the book of Genesis. Elohim/God says "Let us make humans in our image." Christians understand this to refer to the trinity, but that is a later interpretation. These angels came from the ancient pantheons of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Many of these gods come from stars. There is a strong astral dimension. "Heavenly Hosts" are stars.

The Luke story focuses on one angel specifically: Gabriel. Is he the archangel? Gabriel is the Angel of the Lord. He is one of two angels who are named in the Jewish canon and the Christian canon outside of the apocrypha: Gabriel and Michael. They are the angels of mercy and judgment. Gabriel means "Strong One of El." He is first named in Daniel.

If you go into an Eastern Orthodox church you have two icons on the north and south. Michael is on the North to fight with Satan who lives there. Gabriel is on the south. He is more like what the angels originally were, which is messengers of the gods. That is what angel means. The idea that God has a special messenger is exactly what we read about in the Middle Eastern mythologies. Each of the earlier gods has his own special messenger. Enki, who becomes Yaweh, has Isimud. The goddess Inana has Ninshubur. Each high god will have an envoy or assistant, who is a lesser god. The angel of the lord is the same thing. The distinction between angels and gods came later.

Is he a star person? Or one of those semi-divine descendents of gods and women?

He is one of the gods who would come down to earth.

Why do you say that?

The offspring of the gods mating with women are called Gaborim--from the same root as Gabriel. In the second century, Gabriel appears in the Epistula Apostolorum. It talks about Jesus and these secret teachings that he gave to his apostles after the resurrection. One of the secrets is that he is actually Gabriel. After Gabriel took on flesh and united with Mary, then he becomes Jesus. The idea that Christ was an angel was extremely popular in the early church. Later we find this really strict separation between humans and angels; between gods and angels. (more)

We have time for just one more favorite Christmas story: The Star of Bethlehem and the Magi.

The Magi are astrologers. They are Zoroastrian priests. Just to the east of the Roman Empire was the Persian Empire, which was Zoroastrian. They see this star at its rising (the better translations don't say in the East). The astrologers paid a lot of attention to this. It is likely that what this refers to was a heliacal rising, which is the first time that a star appears over the horizon during the course of a year. They thought this was a sign of the Jewish messiah. Scholars speculate that they would have been living in Babylon, where there were lots of Jewish merchants. The Jews had been there from the time of the Jewish exile from Babylonia. We have cuneiform records from them.

Are you assuming that this story is historical?

Think of it as a frog and pond. The pond is real, the frog is not. They are fictional stories in a real setting. They don't always get the details of the setting right, but they are fictional characters in real places. The Magi follow their star from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. The author has in mind a real star that would be in front of you in this situation. There are two candidates, Canopus or Alpha Centauri. Those two stars are visible for approx 6 mo of year, Canopus from about the fall equinox to spring equinox and Alpha Centauri from about November to May.

Remember what I said about the Heavenly Host being stars? The star in Matthew and the angel in Luke are two variants of the same mythology.

My former fundamentalist head is spinning. Is there anything else you'd like to say in closing?

We need to be able to appreciate these stories as myths, rather than literal histories. When you understand where they come from, then you can understand their spiritual significance for the writers and for us.

That sounds like another interview. Thank you.

Valerie Tarico is the author of The Dark Side: How Evangelial Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth (available in the Debunking Christianity bookstore) and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org.

Christianity is Wildly Improbable To Me

Evangelical Christian beliefs seem so wildly improbable to me that the best description of them is that they are bizzaro. Christians must defend too many beliefs, any one of which, if incorrect, would be fatal to their whole worldview. These beliefs are based upon the conclusions of historical evidence which is extremely problematic given the nature of that evidence. Then they have the additional problem of showing why these historical conclusions are supported by science (as in creation research) and can be made sense of by philosophy. But the historical evidence alone defeats their set of beliefs! I claim Christians do not believe the Bible! They gerrymander and cherry-pick from it over and over.

Christians will respond, like one scholarly friend of mine did, that it’s “far from obvious” he should look at his beliefs as an outsider. But then what does he tell Mormon scholars who might say the same thing as Alvin Plantinga does, that they don’t have to investigate their faith or Scriptures with methodological naturalism (it is, after all, only a method unlike ontological naturalism)? What if they maintained they are within their epistemic rights to base their science (and archaeology) on their own worldview? Why the double standard here? And why is it that methodological naturalism has made this modern world possible, achieving astounding results from the computer chip to the internet to modern medicine to forensics to meteorology to plate tectonics to nuclear technology, and so on and so forth, but that when it comes to investigating an ancient collection of superstitious writings with obvious pseudonymous interpolations that we shouldn’t apply that extremely fruitful method to those writings?

My friend asked if God is to be blamed for creating this world and for wanting people who freely love him. Yes, most definitely yes, until or unless he can tell me why a supposedly reasonable triune completely self-fulfilled God wanted this in the first place (“grace” is not an answer at all); why libertarian free-will is such an important value to God when compared to the sufferings that have resulted from this so-called gift; whether human beings actually have free-will if God created us with our specific DNA and placed us within a specific environment (an environment that actually obstructs many people from receiving the gospel because of the “accidents of birth”); why God suspends some people’s free choices (i.e. Pharaoh) but not others; why God even cares to have free-willed people who love him, knowing full well the consequences for the billions of people who wind up in hell (the collateral damage), and why God will allow sinners in hell to retain their freedom but take it away from the saints in heaven (and who subsequently completes the sanctification process for these saints without their own free choices doing it).

When it comes to Jesus, my friend directed me to Boyd/Eddy’s excellent book, The Jesus Legend. That first chapter makes some unique arguments. The authors argue when it comes to the historical past that to be truly critical we should be open to everything—that "everything is fair game"--since anything might be possible. In making this argument they claim we should be open to the possibility of the miracles in the Bible. But I find that position to be impossible and extremely gullible. No, of course not, everything cannot be fair game, otherwise historians would fall prey to every claim of a statue of the Virgin Mary that wept, and every medieval claim that witches flew through the night to have orgies with Satan (should we really be open to these claims?). No, historians must look at the past from the perspective of the present--the one they know. In fact, they cannot do otherwise, Boyd and Eddy included. Boyd and Eddy read the Bible through modern eyes too. That’s why I claim Christians in today's world don’t believe the Bible. They don’t, not by a long shot. They have merely reinterpreted it over and over again in light of the advancement of scientific, philosophical, economical, political, and social understandings.

When will Christians see this for what it is? When will they actually think about what they're saying? When will they actually answer my arguments? Nothing, and I mean nothing, has come close to truly engaging them. They have faith, therefore I must be wrong. Really? *shrugs his shoulders*

A Link to My Amazon Reviews

I've written several book reviews on Amazon, seen here. Enjoy.

The United Bible Society’s Greek New Testament; the Book of Mormon and BYU’s Prof. Stephen E. Robinson

In the religious academic world, college and university degrees (especially on the advance master and doctoral levels) are usually given to show that the candidate has achieved some level of scholarship and objectivity. One such individual is Stephen E. Robinson, a Mormon scholar and apologist and head of the department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University.

Robinson earned his PhD under James H. Charlesworth at Duke University (now of Princeton), and worked with Charlesworth on the Syriac text and translation of the Odes of Solomon. Thus, Professor Robinson was the scholar I thought could answer a textual question on the Book of Mormon (see below).

Some Back Ground Information:

For twenty years (1981 - 2001) I attended the Greenville First Ward LDS Church as a non-member while I studied the social and religious organizational structure of the Mormons and what happened to newly proselytized converts as they were taught this new “religious truth” .

Towards the end of my two decades with the First Ward, I had a acquired a leather bound “Scripture” (a term LDS members collectively call the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price and the Doctrine and Covenants) heavily highlighted and notarized. Plus, I have lost tract of the number of times I had met with Mormon Elders / Missionaries in discussions and in friendly debates.

What most non-Mormons fail to understand when discussing theology with LDS members is that their doctrinal authority is built on an ascending level of authority. Here is the level they accept from the lest authoritative to the most:

The Old Testament is on the bottom and is subject to the New Testament which is subject to the Book of Mormon which is subject to the Pearl of Great Price which is subject to the Doctrines and Covenants which is subject to the General Authorities of the Church who themselves are subject to the living Prophet / President of the Church. This is one reason why a Protestant or non-believer who tries to debate Mormon elders using the Bible only method will find themselves up against a wall. In other words, what we have here is a process of religious dogmatic evolution from the lowest doctrinal forms (the Old Testament) to the highest level; the living Prophet of the LDS Church.

Secondly, I learned from a former professor of religion at Brigham Young University that Mormons are simply not interested in the historical Joseph Smith, but only the Joseph Smith as understood and presented by the writings of their Church. In other words, the LSD Church controls the image of a mythical Joseph Smith over a historical Joseph Smith to support their faith. This is one reason why LDS Mormons are warned about reading historical books on the Prophet Joseph Smith or as one LDS Apostle once stated about non-Mormons: “They lie in wait to deceive!” To counter this attack, Mormons are read only publications printed LDS approved publishers.

Moreover, since Jesus Christ has now restored the true Church under Joseph Smith, all other churches are viewed as false and even considered under the direct leadership of Satan himself.

Fact is, since there are still five remaining Book of Mormon churches left (out of the 15 sects that were struggling for the right to be the true and original restored “Church” at the death of Joseph Smith), the LDS Mormons (the name of the largest 15 million plus group Utah sect) tried unsuccessfully to get exclusive use of the term “Mormon” as a registered Trade Mark in the U.S. Patten office to keep its use away from other Book of Mormon sects . So, even if one believes that Joseph Smith is a true prophet who restored "The True Church", and one believes the Book of Mormon was translated from the Golden Plates, these individual Book of Mormon sects will attack and evangelized one another as fast as they will proselytize people who do not believe in the Book of Mormon.

In the Mormon Church, all men and most women (usually between high school and college age) are expected to complete a two year mission in either a distant state or country of which fifty percent is financed by the family of the mission elder and the other half is paid for by the LDS Church. For those youths who have never gone on a mission (especially the men), they are continually made to feel like a Protestant Christian who believes in Christ, but like a believer who had never been baptized.

Since I had done two lectures and slide presentations on the early life and times of Joseph Smith (Translating and Revealing the Word of God: Joseph Smith and the Formation of the Mormon Church and a detailed lecture on the five belief systems of the remaining “Book of Mormon Churches”) I could spent a dozen posts and still not relate all the details even most LDS Mormons themselves don’t know.

Mormons strongly believe that not only did Joseph Smith restored the "True Church of Jesus Christ", but since the Bible was not “translated correctly” it was corrupted by the false Christian churches. In this light, the Book of Mormon is the considered the most accurate translation of any book.

Thus, the topic of my post:

Fact: In the Book of Mormon, Jesus Christ comes to America to teach the Lost Tribes of Israel (3 Nephi). In 3 Nephi 13: 9 -13 Jesus is in America and teaching the Nephites the same Lord’s Prayer. One reading this account will notice that this version of the Lord’s Prayer is the same prayer as in Matthew 6: 9-13 of the King James Bible.

Problem: If, as Joseph Smith claimed, the Book of Mormon is the uncorrupted and pure text / translation “translated” from the Golden Plates, then we should have a textual witness independent of the textual problems and corruptions of the standard Greek texts that make up the Textus Receptus (the bases for the 1611 King James Bible / New Testament) a received Greek text which has as been labeled by Bruce Metzger has one with “blatant errors” (A Textual Commentary; p.10).

In the United Bibles Society’s Greek New Testament (as well as the Nestle Aland Greek New Testament), the earliest witnesses confirm this prayer ends with the phase “but deliver us from evil.” and that the King James inclusion of the longer ending “For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen” is a redaction composed from I Chronicles 29: 11 - 13 “in order to adapt the Prayer for liturgical use in the early church.” (A Textual Commentary; p. 14). The certain criteria that the original text ended with “evil” was given an “A” rating by the U.B.S.G.N.T. 4ed. Textual Committee.

When I point this out to the mission elders of the LDS Church, neither they nor their state mission president had an answer to the problem. However, they assured me that the Book of Mormon was not wrong, nor was it at this point simply Smith copying the Lord’s Prayer from the King James Bible.

The Elders told me that the scholars at the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies at Brigham Young University were the textual scholars who could answer my question.

Since this was a New Testament Greek textual question / problem, I decided to contact Professor Stephen Edward Robinson, PhD a Mormon scholar and apologist who is head of the department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University. And since both Robinson and I were members of the Society of Biblical Literature, I could use the Society’s Member Handbook to get his office phone number.

I called Robinson’s faculty number at BYU only to get a recording at which time I left my name, pone number and that I had a Book of Mormon question requesting him to kindly return my phone call. After a week and two unanswered requests for Professor Robinson to return my calls, I told the Elders that I was not having any luck with the Dept. of Ancient Scripture a BYU.

One of the Elders told me that he could get the home phone number of Dr. Robinson (an unlisted number), but he wanted me to assure him he would remain anonymous (which I agreed to).

That night about 7:00 pm Utah time, I called Prof. Robinson’s home and got his wife. I told her that I had a textual question on the Book of Mormon in 3 Nephi and would like to ask Dr. Robinson about it. Mrs. Robinson said he was not in at the time, but “may come in latter“. About and hour later I called again and got their five year old daughter (as listed in the faculty description). She told me she was alone and that both mommy and daddy were not there. As she paused for some time to give me more information, I could tell she was being coached as to what to say. I told her I hoped her mom and dad would return soon as she was too young to stay at home alone. In about forty-five minutes I called back and got Mrs. Robinson on the phone again. When I asked her if Prof. Robinson was there, she angrily stated he was not home and that “he is never coming home as for as you are concerned!” and hung up.

While I’m sure most all LDS Mormons strongly believe the Book of Mormon is true and correct just as Joseph Smith claimed it to be (a true and perfect translation of what both the Lost Tribes of Israel and Jesus Christ said and did), the facts speak for themselves when a Temple Mormon family must lie to run from the truth (as the Robinsons did), the world and claims created by the Prophet and Founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Satins can clearly be seen as a concocted “Made in America Religion” invented to give people in the early nineteenth century Burned Over District in up state New York a new direction in the confused world of the Bible and freedom of religion in the United States.