It’s probably safe to say that most of the people in the world are not, at any given moment, shopping for a new religion. Catholics, Baptists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, etc. aren’t thinking, “There’s gotta be something better than this.” If nothing else, religion is tradition, and most folks go with what they’ve been taught. Nonetheless, there are aggressive sellers in the religious marketplace, hoping to wear down those who aren’t shopping.
“The Bible is the Word of God.” This is an idea that Christians don’t take seriously—come on, not by along shot. If wisdom from God were right there for the taking, you couldn’t get them to stop reading it. But they do stop reading it—they neglect reading it—because the wisdom of God doesn’t exactly pop out at you. Indeed, Christian theologians have argued endlessly about meanings and interpretations. Pick out almost any Bible text, and you’ll find disagreement and controversy about applications in the modern world.
However, Zevit makes a claim that is difficult to accept or understand linguistically, exegetically, and medically. In so doing, he is engaging in “retrodiagnosis,” the practice of providing modern medical categories and descriptions for conditions unknown or of no interest to ancient writers (Arrizabalaga; Muramoto). Critiques of retrodiagnostic approaches are now numerous in scriptural studies, and these include those of Hector Avalos, Joel S. Baden, and Candida R. Moss.
Typically, such approaches seek to diagnose a condition mentioned in the Bible in precise modern medical terms. Debra A. Chase attributed one condition mentioned in the Mesopotamian creation epic known as Atra-∆as•s to Kwashiorkor-Marasmus, which is associated with starvation.
Malcolm Gladwell (13-14), a popular writer who is not a biblical scholar, believes that Goliath suffered from “acromegaly—a disease caused by a benign tumor of the pituitary gland.” For Gladwell, this condition explains why Goliath has poor vision and so asks David to come to him in 1 Samuel 17:44. S. Levin attributes Isaac’s blindness in Genesis 27:1 to diabetes.
I’m pretty sure that even the most devout Christians experience flash episodes of atheism; that is, they see for a few moments, with clarity, that God doesn’t exist. One of the most famous of these flash episodes actually made the news some years ago. In March 1996, a gunman massacred 16 kids and their teacher at a school in Dunblane, Scotland. The United Kingdom was stunned, and in the days following thousands of flowers were placed as a memorial outside the school. One bouquet was accompanied by a Teddy Bear, with a note attached: “Wednesday, 13 March 1996—the day God overslept.” (Reported in the New York Times, 23 March 1996.)
A few decades after its inception, the Ancient Jesus Mystery Cult produced writers who had a knack for fantasy literature. The apostle Paul was the first to write about Jesus Christ—as least his letters are the earliest documents that have come down to us—but he said almost nothing about Jesus the Galilean peasant preacher. Paul had hallucinated his way into the cult, i.e., he had visions of the dead man, and bragged that he received no information about Jesus from human sources.
I have been helped by reading and trying to incorporate the commands and/or language used from other attempts to better the Ten Commandments, as suggested by Bertrand Russell, Christopher Hitchens, Valerie Tarico, David Madison (in his chapter for my anthology The Case Against Miracles), the Seven Satanic Precepts, and a few I wrote in my book How to Defend The Christian Faith: Advice from an Atheist.
By doing this I am suggesting God was ignorant, incompetent and inconsiderate when he gave us his ten big ones! Had he given my suggested commands instead, he would have saved untold numbers of lives, immensely decreased the amount of suffering in the world, and exponentially increased human knowledge, and with it produced a safer, healthier world to live in.
Criticisms and suggestions are appreciated.
One of the most common criticisms of Christianity is that its claims are incoherent: they do not cohere; they don’t hang together. Those of us on the outside say, “Wait a minute, that doesn’t make sense. You can’t believe both those things at once.” Professional Christian apologists have come up with hundreds of excuses attempting to obscure, to rub out, the many inconsistencies.
Francis Collins, who headed the Human Genome Project, is a respected scientist who has taken a stand for God. Not just a Creator God, but one who wants intimate relations with humans. He wrote this in his 2007 book, The Language of God:
“If God exists, and seeks to have fellowship with sentient beings like ourselves, and can handle the challenge of interacting with 6 billion of us currently on this planet and countless others who have gone before us, it is not clear why it would be beyond His abilities to interact with similar creatures on a few other planets or, for that matter, a few million other planets.” (p. 71)
In ancient times, all over the world, the idea caught on that some humans were gifted with knowledge of the spirit world. So many things happen in life that people didn’t understand—lightening, earthquakes, mental illness—surely unseen powers were at work. And it was cool that some humans knew how to manipulate these powers—or so they claimed. Innumerable gods were imagined, whom countless priests and priestesses flattered and served.
The perils of comparing the gospels
Once upon a time four gospel writers got together at a bar in Corinth. They had all submitted their gospels to the Canon Approval Board, and had been told the time when the decision—which gospel was the winner—would be announced. These authors didn’t actually like each other, but this was a special occasion; each one looked forward to gloating, and seeing the downcast faces of the others.
 |
| Prof. Henry Munson |
Writing book reviews is no facile task. A reviewer must be familiar with the subject matter, and also show some familiarity with the ancillary issues that a book might raise, especially those that are outside of one’s immediate field. That is why I am usually very grateful that someone even deigns to read one of my books.
Dr. Henry Munson, a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Maine, reviewed my latest book, The Reality of Religious Violence: From Biblical to Modern Times (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2019) in the prestigious Journal of the American Academy of Religion 88, no. 3 (September, 2020): 900–902.
Caravaggio brilliantly captured the moment when the Risen Jesus invited his disciple Thomas to touch the sword wound in his side. But what’s wrong with this picture? Certainly nothing is wrong with the painting; it is one of Caravaggio’s masterpieces, and I chose it for the cover of my book because it helps expose some of the theological nonsense in the New Testament. There is so much to unpack here, but let’s give it a shot.
Auntie Em—Dorothy’s aunt in The Wizard of Oz—wanted so much to tell off Miss Gulch: “Almira Gulch, just because you own half the county doesn't mean that you have the power to run the rest of us. For twenty-three years, I've been dying to tell you what I thought of you! And now...well, being a Christian woman, I can't say it!” Which means that Auntie Em wanted to live by the Golden Rule, “do unto others…” We applaud her for that, but it’s not uniquely Christian. How do we know exactly what constitutes Christian morality?
I’m sure Christian commitment can be rated, perhaps on a scale of 1 to 10. Those whom we would rate as “tens” are fervent, unshakable in their belief: they are the untouchables, the unreachables—in terms of getting them to grasp the incoherence of Christian theology. But then there are those at the other end of the scale, who would earn a “one” rating; even “lukewarm” would be a generous description. They would walk away from the faith—and many probably do—with little hesitation or regret.
There are those in the middle of the scale, the “fives,” who are regular churchgoers, but who admit—at least to themselves—that they have doubts. They go along with it all because church is what they do. But the right argument, or the wrong personal tragedy, might puncture faith, temporarily or forever.
The author who said too much There are so many Bible episodes that could be in the running for biggest embarrassment. Certainly the story of Noah has to be in the Top Ten. God is so annoyed by human sin he decides to kill everyone on earth except one family—even most of the animals have to die. How many millions of toddlers and babies were drowned? It’s sad that Bible writers thought this was good theology. Who needs a genocidal god with extreme anger management issues? But—there’s a way out: the Noah story didn’t happen, of course. It’s folklore, borrowed from other ancient folklore.
