The Apostle Paul’s use of Analogy

The Jewish historian Hyam Maccoby argues in his book “The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity” that Paul could not have been a trained Pharisee. He argues this through multiple lines of evidence, but one line of evidence that was interesting to me was that Paul did not reason carefully on many occasions. Maccoby thinks this indicates that Paul didn’t have Pharisaic training. One example he cites is the passage Romans 7:1-6.

¹Do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to men who know the law—that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives? ²For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. ³So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.

⁴So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. ⁵For when we were controlled by the sinful nature,[a] the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. ⁶But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

Here Paul is making the analogy that when a husband dies; the wife is free to remarry. This is to illustrate how Christians are free from the law and can now be the bride of Christ. On one side of the analogy, we have a woman/bride, a deceased husband, a new bridegroom. On the other side we have the Christian (who died and was raised with Christ), the Torah, and Christ (who died and was raised).

But for the analogy to work, he needs to keep straight who is the widow and who is the deceased. In his illustration it was the husband’s death that made the wife free. But the Christian is the “Bride” and the Torah is supposed to correspond to the husband. The one who is free to remarry in the first scenario is the one who didn’t die. The Torah is the only thing in the second analogy that didn’t die. But he isn’t making a point about the Torah being free to take a new groom. In order for the analogy to hold the law has to be what died, not the bride and/or the groom.

Apparently Paul is introducing the idea that our own death frees us from the law. But if that is the case, why isn’t he talking about the freedom of the dead husband? Shouldn’t Paul have talked about how the husband is now free from the wife to make the analogy work? Of course, freedom usually entails the power to do something. Either to do what is desired or what we should be done. Power and freedom are not properties normally associated with the dead. (Of course zombie weddings probably would not be common experiences for Paul’s readers, so the correct illustration would have been difficult.)

This apparently confused analogy leads to several questions. If God were to inspire a collection of books, wouldn’t he want them to reflect his nature? If there is a God, I would expect his intellect would be much greater than ours, and he could certainly guide his servants to make clear arguments and analogies. Why shouldn’t flawed analogies and arguments disqualify Paul’s writings as scripture?

Steve Hays of Triablogue, The Discomfiter, and Stephen Colbert

On the Christian blog, "Triablogue," I found a thread titled, "The Discomfiter," that discussed a new blog of that name by someone who claims he has deconverted from Christianity and become an atheist seemingly overnight, but whose arguments are mere parodies of the atheistic types of arguments at "Debunking Christianity." After reviewing the blog of the "The Discomfiter," Steve Hays at "Triablogue," wrote, "The only plausible alternative is that The Discomfiter is legit, but out of his mind."

Is that the only "plausible" alternative? Maybe for Steve, who already views all non-Christians as insane in some sense in God's eyes, but anyone with a lick of commonsense could tell "The Discomfiter" was NOT legit from the start. Apparently Steve's legit-o-meter is broken. Makes me wonder whether he watches "The Colbert Report" and finds the "only plausible alternative" to be that Stephen Colbert is a genuine Right Wing fanatic?

If you need further evidence that "The Discomfiter" isn't legit listen to his radio interview on Unchained Radio where The Discomfiter imitates Jack Nicolson (or maybe Robert M. Price) and says that logic, time, and evil, don't exist, and adds, "poison can be harmless one day and deadly the next, that's how ruled by chance the cosmos is" (my paraphrase). The folks who "called in" were also "plants," with phony questions and phony personas like "The Discomfiter" himself. It was a total joke in a Stephen Colbert vein.

One irony this brings up however is the fact that unlike "crazy atheists" like "The Discomfiter," there's far more crazy Christian stories in the news, i.e., from people falling over themselves to see everyday objects that look like Jesus; to Christians being scammed out of billions via "religious affinity" scams (as reported in Christianity Today where the Christian investigator admits, "Religious scams are among the most common and Christians are easy targets.") See also Baptist Leaders Caught Fleecing the Flocks). Or see The North American Securities Administrators Association report, "Preying on the Faithful: The False Prophets of the Investment World," that describes one outfit that cited the blessing of the tribe of Asher by Moses in Deuteronomy that “the feet of the people will be bathed in oil” as the basis for drilling for oil. Or just google, "Preying on the Faithful." (I guess the Biblical promise that God will give "wisdom" to all who pray for it, doesn't work, because I bet a lot of scammed Christians first prayed to God asking whether they ought to hand over their money and signatures to these other folks or not. The scammers themselves are often Christians with far too much faith in both God's ability and their own to multiply monetary blessings for His brethren.)

Equally devastating are the stories of devout Christian heads of mega-corporations. Have you read about the ones involved in the two biggest corporate scandals in recent times, the heads of Enron and WorldCom. They were truly devout believers. Read the above pieces about their faith and belief in their Bible-God's directing hand by clicking on Enron and WorldCom.

Or have you read the latest articles chronicling Protestant ministers who abuse kids or other reports of clergy sexual abuse (even in the Boy Scouts, another firmly theistic group, whose history of abuse goes way back and who have obstructed the release of files on the matter), not to mention THE LARGEST CASE OF CHILD PROSTITUTION IN U.S. HISTORY, that involved Reverend Tony Leyva, Pentecostal TV-evangelist who used to wear a Superman costume and carry a Bible, nicknaming himself “Super Christian,” and who was in the Guinness Book of World Records (for four years) for preaching the longest known sermon (72 hours straight), and who was hired by a Georgia television station to replace Jimmy Swaggert’s show, was arrested by the FBI, along with three of his fellow fundamentalists, on charges of transporting boys across state lines for the purposes of prostitution or criminal sexual activity. Reverend Leyva railed in public against “filth” and “smut.” In private he sodomized more than 100 church boys, and was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in 1989. [See Brother Tony’s Boys: The Largest Case of Child Prostitution in U.S. History]

Or how about cases of Christians murdering other Christians during exorcisms (you'll have to ask me to send you those, from different sources); or devout Christian wives murdering their sons and daughters (I'm not talking about taking a "morning after pill," but killing already born children); or serial killers like the Son of Sam and Jeffrey Dahmer claiming they had become "born again" in prison.

Then there's fiascos like the mega-church that spent a quarter of a million dollars to build a replica of the Statue of Liberty, but their version holds a cross aloft instead of a torch and clutches the Ten Commandments to her breast. What about the guy in the rainbow colored wig who used to hold up signs that read, "John 3:16" at televised sporting events? Do you know what happened to Rockin Rodney? Or how about a famous evangelist (Arthur Blessitt) who is currently raising money to launch a cross into outer space so it circles the globe.

So the world of religion remains crazier, wilder(and far funnier)than the world of atheism.

But one of the craziest things in my opinion is the fact that the earliest Christians didn't stop writing tales about Jesus and Paul and other apostles with the New Testament's books and letters, but continued to write additional Gospels and Acts and fake letters of Paul and Peter (including descriptions of visions they allegedly rec'd). Some scholars of course doubt that Paul and Peter wrote everything attributed to them in the Bible itself. Talk about early Christians being devout liars, who may have even thought they were inspired to collect and write down such tales. (The New Testament itself, in the book of Jude, even cites an ancient literary forgery as if it contained a genuine "prophecy" from "Enoch the seventh from Adam.")

Christians continued lying over the centuries concerning what famous non-believers and/or heretics said on their death beds, faking stories about what Voltaire said to what Darwin said.

Wild crazy Christian urban legends have also been passed around by Christians for decades, like the "sound of hell, taped from the bottom of a well drilled deep below the earth's surface." Or "end times" madness. Or "man-prints found inside dinosaur prints." I haven't even scratched the surface of the Pentecostal world and its crazy tales. Or nudist Christians down in Florida. (Yup, Christianity includes folks who like to cover their bodies like Amish and Catholic nuns, but it also includes naked clergymen and naked congregations who preach the good NUDES about Jesus Christ.)

More fun info below! Be discomfited!

Christianity runs the gamut...

From silent Trappist monks and quiet Quakers--to hell raisers and serpent-handlers;

From those who “hear the Lord” telling them to run for president, seek diamonds and gold (via liaisons with bloody African dictators), or sell “Lake of Galilee” beauty products--to those who have visions of Mary, the saints, or experience bleeding stigmata;

From those who believe the communion bread and wine remain just that--to those who believe the bread and wine are miraculously transformed into “invisible” flesh and blood (and can vouch for it with miraculous tales of communion wafers turning into human flesh and wine curdling into blood cells during Mass);

From those who argue that they are predestined to argue in favor of predestination--to those who argue for free will of their own free will;

From those who argue God is a “Trinity”--to “Unitarian” Christians (including not only Unitarian-Universalist churches, but some backwoods primitive Baptist churches, and Messianic Christian-Jewish denominations, not to leave out God’s chosen people in the earliest “testament” in the Bible);

From those who believe nearly everyone (except themselves and their church) will be damned --to those who believe everyone may (or will) eventually be saved;

From those who taught/teach that heretics and apostates ought to be executed [some Reconstructionist Christians still teach it would be good to bring back the practice] -- to Albigensian and Cathar Christians who outlawed violence and taught that the shedding of blood and the killing of any living thing, even the slaughtering of a chicken or ensnaring a squirrel, was a mortal sin (a belief they based on the spirituality and metaphors of Christ's meekness and forgiveness in the Gospel of John). [See The YellowCross: The Story of the Last Cathars’ Rebellion Against the Inquisition 1290-1329 by René Weis]

From Christians who view Eastern religious ideas and practices as “Satanic”--to Christian monks and priests who have gained insights into their own faith after dialoging with Buddhist monks and Hindu priests;

From castrati (boys in Catholic choirs who underwent castration to retain their high voices)--to Protestant hymns and Gospel quartets--all the way to “Christian rap;”

From Christians who reject any behavior that even mimics “what homosexuals do” (including a rejection of fellatio and cunnilingus between a husband and wife)--to Christians who accept committed, loving, homosexual relationships (including gay evangelical Church groups like the nationwide Metropolitan Baptist Church);

From Catholic nuns and Amish women who dress to cover their bodies--to Christian nudists (viz., there was a sect known as the “Adamites,” not to mention modern day Christians in Florida with their own nude Christian churches, campgrounds and even an amusement park), and let’s not forget born-again strippers;

From those who believe that a husband and wife can have sex for pleasure--to those who believe that sex should be primarily for procreation--to those who believe celibacy is superior to marriage (i.e., Catholic priests, monks, nuns, and some Protestant groups like the Shakers who denied themselves sexual pleasure and only maintained their membership by adopting abandoned children until the last Shaker finally died out in the late 1900s)--all the way to those who cut off their genitals for the kingdom of God (the Skoptze, a Russian Christian sect);

From those who believe sending out missionaries to persuade others to become Christians is essential--to the Anti-Mission Baptists who believe that sending out missionaries and trying to persuade others constitutes a lack of faith and the sin of pride, and that the founding of “extra-congregational missionary organizations” is not Biblical;

From those who believe that the King James Bible is the only inspired translation--to those who believe that no translation is totally inspired, only the original “autographs” were perfect--to those who believe that “perfection” only lay in the “spirit” that inspired the writing of the Bible’s books, not in the “letter” of the books themselves;

From those who believe Easter should be celebrated on one date (Roman Catholics)--to those who believe Easter should be celebrated on another date (Eastern Orthodox). And, from those who believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (Roman Catholics)--to those who believe it proceeds from the Father alone (Eastern Orthodox view as taught by the early Church Fathers). Those disagreements, as well as others, sparked the greatest schism of church history (the Schism of 1054) when the uncompromising patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, and the envoys of the uncompromising Pope Leo IX, excommunicated each other;

From those who worship God on Sunday--to those who worship God on Saturday (Saturday being the Hebrew “sabbath” that God said to “keep holy” according to one of the Ten Commandments)--all the way to those who believe their daily walk with God and love of their fellow man is more important than church attendance;

From those who stress “God’s commands”--to those who stress “God’s love;”

From those who believe that you need only accept Jesus as your “personal savior” to be saved--to those who believe you must accept Jesus as both savior and “Lord” of your life in order to be saved. (Two major Evangelical Christian seminaries debated this question in the 1970s, and still disagree);

From those who teach that being “baptized with water as an adult believer” is an essential sign of salvation--to those who deny it is;

From those who believe that unbaptized infants who die go straight to hell--to those who deny the (once popular) church doctrine known as “infant damnation.”

From those who teach that “baptism in the Holy Spirit” along with “speaking in tongues” are important signs of salvation--to those who deny they are (some of whom see mental and Satanic delusions in modern day “Spirit baptism” and “tongue-speaking”);

From those who believe that avoiding alcohol, smoking, gambling, dancing, contemporary Christian music, movies, television, long hair (on men), etc., are all important signs of being saved--to those who believe you need only trust in Jesus as your personal savior to be saved;

From Christians who disagree whether the age of the cosmos should be measured in billions or only thousands of year--whether God pops new creatures into existence or subtly alters old ones--even some who disagree whether the earth goes round the sun or vice versa;

From pro-slavery Christians (there are some today who still remind us that the Bible never said slavery was a “sin”)--to anti-slavery Christians;

From Christians who defend the Biblical idea of having a king (and who oppose democracy as “the meanest and worst of all forms of government” to quote John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, with whom some Popes agreed, as well as some of today’s Protestant Reconstructionist Christians)--to Christians who oppose kingships and support democracies;

From “social Gospel” Christians--to “uncompromised Gospel” Christians;

From Christians who do not believe in sticking their noses in politics--to coup d’etat Christians;

From “stop the bomb” Christians--to “drop the bomb” Christians;

From Christians who strongly suspect that the world will end tomorrow--to those who are equally certain it won’t.

All in all, Christianity gives Hinduism with its infinite variety of sects and practices a run for its money.

E.T.B.
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The Christian God--or gods? For out of Paraguayan Catholics, Vermont Congregationalists, Utah Mormons, and New Zealand Anglicans, sprout as many gods as are carved on a Jain temple wall.

John Updike
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In practice, Christianity, like Hinduism or Buddhism, is not one religion, but several religions, adapted to the needs of different types of human beings. A Christian church in Southern Spain, or Mexico, or Sicily is singularly like a Hindu temple. The eye is delighted by the same gaudy colors, the same tripe-like decorations, the same gesticulating statues; the nose inhales the same intoxicating smells; the ear and, along with it, the understanding, are lulled by the drone of the same incomprehensible incantations [in the old Catholic Latin mass tradition], roused by the same loud, impressive music.

At the other end of the scale, consider the chapel of a Cistercian monastery and the meditation hall of a community of Zen Buddhists. They are equally bare; aids to devotion (in other words fetters holding back the soul from enlightenment) are conspicuously absent from either building. Here are two distinct religions for two distinct kinds of human beings.

In Christianity bhakti [or, loving devotion] towards a personal being has always been the most popular form of religious practice. Up to the time of the [Catholic] Counter-Reformation, however, the way of knowledge ("mystical knowledge" as it is called in Chrstian language) was accorded an honorable place beside the way of devotion. From the middle of the sixteenth century onwards the way of knowledge came to be neglected and even condemned. We are told by Dom John Chapman that "Mercurian, who was general of the society (of Jesus) from 1573 to 1580, forbade the use of the works of Tauler, Ruysbroek, Suso, Harphius, St. Gertrude, and St. Mechtilde." Every effort was made by the [Catholic] Counter-Reformers to heighten the worshipper's devotion to a personal divinity. The literary content of Baroque art is hysterical, almost epileptic, in the violence of its emotionality. It even becomes necessary to call in physiology as an aid to feeling. The ecstasies of the saints are represented by seventeenth-century artists as being frankly sexual. Seventeenth-century drapery writhes like so much tripe. In the equivocal personage of Margaret Mary Alacocque, seventeenth-century piety pours over a bleeding and palpitating heart. From this orgy of emotionalism and sensationalism Catholic Christianity seems never completely to have recovered.

The ideal of non-attachment has been formulated and systematically preached again and again in the course of the last three thousand years. We find it (along with everything else) in Hinduism. It is at the very heart of the teachings of the Buddha. For Chinese readers the doctrine is formulated by Lao Tsu. A little later, in Greece, the ideal of non-attachment is proclaimed, albeit with a certain, pharisaic priggishness, by the Stoics. The Gospel of Jesus is essentially a gospel of non-attachment to "the things of this world," and of attachment to God. Whatever may have been the aberrations of organized Christianity--and they range from extravagant asceticism to the most brutally cynical forms of realpolitik--there has been no lack of Christian philosophers to reaffirm the ideal of non-attachment. Here is John Tauler, for example, telling us that “freedom is complete purity and detachment which seeketh the Eternal...” Here is the author of “The Imitation of Christ,” who bids us “pass through many cares as though without care; not after the manner of a sluggard, but by a certain prerogative of a free mind, which does not cleave with inordinate affection to any creature.”

Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means: An Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals and into the Methods Employed for Their Realization
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Live long enough and you’ll encounter a lot of folks who say you are not really a Christian for a host of reasons. I’ve found the “no-true-Christian-would-do-or-believe-XYZ” game one of the more popular among, well, Christians.

Jonathan ( jge642000@yahoo.com ) at the yahoo group ExitFundyism
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People have an amazing ability to fool themselves. Even Christian theology teaches that there are those who think they are believers but aren't. But just watching, as I have, an Islamic music group from Malaysia makes one realize how similar their actions are to those of a Christian music group. To see a man standing in deep meditation outside of a Shinto temple in Japan makes one wonder how belief comes about. To see a woman with great concern on her face burning a huge number of incense sticks at a temple in Hangzhou, China (one of my very favorite pictures) tells one that fervent prayer (and belief in the efficacy of prayer) is not the sole province of the Christian. To see how devoted Tibetan Buddhists are to their beliefs when compared with levels of devotion shown by many western Christians to theirs, makes one wonder why so many of us are less committed than them; same with the Islamacists who are willing to die for their beliefs while much of the West is not interested in self-sacrifice.

Glenn Morton [Evangelical Christian], American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) Email Discussion Group (June 16, 2006)
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In my journeys in Christianity both in America and abroad I’ve run across a myriad of believers, a mosaic of Christianity:

I remember a converted Christian who used to be a “Satanist ,” saying, “What’s the big deal about smoking marijuana?”

A Pentecostal pastor in Holland sat crying at a street side cafe worried that one of his woman parishioners was going to hell since she had stopped coming to church and was now wearing make-up.And as he cried, his tears rolled off his cheeks into his beer. (Many Pentecostal Christians in the U.S. ascribe to an ethic of absolute abstinence from alcohol.)

I’ve known Christians who won’t own a TV; others who won’t allow playing cards in their house, and others who drink alcohol liberally and have every material possession imaginable. Others attempt to memorize the Bible to such an extent that it blocks most of their own personal original thoughts about anything; others who are social activists who take up causes like opposing abortion or picketing a Marilyn Manson concert; others who are simple and humble and feed the poor and house the homeless; others who are missionaries in third world countries suffering hardship for the “cause of Christ.” There was a sub group, however, in my institute who were King James Only--they believed the KJV was the only true inspired Bible for today and that all other versions were corrupted. As a group, they were radically enthusiastic and were proud to be KJV ONLY, and often fueled arguments over alternate translations. Heaven forbid they should catch anyone reading or enjoying The Living Bible (a modern English paraphrased translation of the ancient Hebrew) which they viewed as “the Devil’s work.”

Karl Arendale at the Yahoo Group, ExitFundyism
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Theology is a comprehensive, rigorous, and systematic attempt to conceal the beam in the scriptures and traditions of one’s own denomination while minutely measuring the mote in the heritages of ones’ brothers.

Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic
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The Omniscience Defense

Vic Reppert has weighed in on my suggestion that God could’ve created us with wings by using the best possible Christian response, which I’ll call The Omniscience Defense. Most other Christians, with the exception of Layman, have been critiquing my suggestion by actually denying that God could create human beings with wings, which I think I’ve sufficiently responded to here. It amazes me that some critics who think God is omnipotent are actually taking the Non-Omnipotent Defense, as I call it, since that’s what my argument has forced them to do. These Christians might as well join the ranks of panentheists right now.

Anyway, Vic is at least smart enough to provisionally grant for the sake of argument that God could’ve created humans with wings. At least that avoids panentheism. He can stay in the Christian community for now. ;-)

Reppert replied: “Let me grant, for the sake of argument, that I can't think of any good reason why God couldn't have given us all wings. Exactly what does that buy the atheist? Why is this any different from the argument that says ‘There are gaps in the fossil record, I can't see how evolution could have make these transition, therefore there is no naturalistic explanation for these transitions and a creator must exist.’"

If you’ll notice, Vic doesn’t initially argue his case when he poses a different problem for the atheist. If I say "you have a problem," and my “conversation partner” (i.e. politically correct definition of antagonist or opponent) says, "yeah, well you too have a problem," he has not answered his specific problem. As far as my specific problem goes, I am not a specialist in science, especially when it comes to evolution, and I’m not required to be a specialist in every area about that which I generally think is the case. Though I do present a good case for not believing in the Biblical God here at DC on other grounds. Just start reading here to see my reasons.

Vic again: “Let's take a humbler example. Many Monopoly players try to make the game more fun by collecting all the payments to the bank from various sources and putting them on Free Parking. Then when someone lands on Free Parking, they get all that money. And there is nothing wrong with changing the rules in that way. However, there is a reason why the game itself doesn't do that, which was explained in The Monopoly Book. Monopoly games tend to be long, but the game ends when all but one player goes bankrupt. Taking money that would otherwise have gone into that bank and putting it back into the hands of players slows down this process and makes the game even longer. Now, I had never thought of that. What looked like an improvement to the game of Monopoly had a downside I didn't realize until it was pointed out to me. So what about my [John’s?] suggestions for improving the universe? The makers of Monopoly are mere mortals. What about a being of infinite intelligence? Is it not at least possible that from the point of view of Omniscience our proposed improvements for the universe really might not turn out to be improvements after all. Think about that next time your opponent lands on Park Place when you have a monopoly there.”

This is the most intelligent objection that a Christian can make against my argument. But it fails miserably…miserably. Since I am preparing to have a public debate on the problem of evil with David Wood of www.answeringinfidels.com this October I do not want to tip my hand too much here. The short answer is that the Omniscience Defense cannot overcome the fact that more knowledge does not mean a suspension of the knowledge one has. Let’s say that I fell off a bridge while working on it and ripped my arm off in the process because I didn’t have wings to fly. I would be in a great amount of pain if that took place. That is knowledge that I personally have about the pain of losing an arm. And it is knowledge about the future prospects of living life without an arm. Call this possible world X. The Christian theist is arguing that world X (for me or for humans in general) is better than if my arm was not amputated in this manner if I had wings. Call this preferrable non-amputated arm existence, possible world Y. What would it take to make world X better for me (or humans in general) than world Y? Nothing in this world, I’ll tell you that right now. Nothing. That’s my judgment, as it would be your judgment if it happened to you.

In fact, I cannot conceive of world X ever being better than world Y no matter if I won a lawsuit and became rich because of it, or if I won the sympathy of the woman of my dreams because of it, or if I became famous as a result of it. I would not trade my arm for anything. Now along comes a theist who tries to argue that God knows why he didn’t give me wings and that I should trust him. But then I take a look at my arm and I cannot conceive of world X being better than world Y. I cannot even conceive of any possible reason why this God might have for not giving me wings, given the nature of world X. So without even being able to conceive of a possible reason for not giving me wings, I can legitimately ask why I should trust the Omniscience Defense in the first place. More knowledge will not help, unless that knowledge is contrary to how I judge things. That’s right. It’s not just more knowledge we’re talking about here. God must have contrary knowledge that I cannot even conceive as to the reason he didn’t give me wings. But if his contrary knowledge is not something that I can conceive, then I have no reason whatsoever to trust that he exists or that he knows something about world X such that it’s better than world Y, for it is much more reasonable to trust what I can conceive than what I cannot conceive.

Ed Babinski has often quoted Voltaire on this subject who said: "The silly fanatic repeats to me... that it is not for us to judge what is reasonable and just in the great Being; that His reason is not like our reason, that His justice is not like our justice. Eh! How, you mad demoniac, do you want me to judge justice and reason otherwise than by the notions I have of them? Do you want me to walk otherwise than with my feet, and to speak otherwise than with my mouth?"

Again, Why Couldn't God Create Us With Wings?

Let me respond to a critic who has mocked my suggestion that God could’ve created us with wings here. In the first place I chose this particular example knowing it's not the best example I can conceive of to be different in our world, for a reason. If I can defend this lesser example then it will be even more defensible when I defend other, better examples. But I can defend this change, and I will do so here.

My critic wrote:
But is that practical from an engineering standpoint? You can’t just graft a pair of wings onto a human being and make it fly.

No I can’t. Are you saying that God can’t? Why? Why can’t he? He’s God. Do you really think God is omnipotent or not? Could God have created us so that we could levitate? Yes or no? Could he have created the laws of the universe such that they allow for levitation or not? Is he in charge of the laws of the universe or not? Or is God limited in what he couls create by these laws such that God must create a universe within the bounds of certain laws of creation which he never created? Let’s say he cannot do this by natural means because he never created the laws of nature. Then who did? To say God is limited in his creative power by the laws of the physical universe is to say he did not create the laws of the universe. Then who did create them? Where did they originate from?

Furthermore, if God cannot create just anything in the natural world because of these laws, then why can’t God merely supercede these laws? Let’s say that God couldn’t create fleshly creatures who could levitate by virtue of the supposed fact that he cannot change the laws of nature. Then why is it that God couldn’t cause us to levitate whenever we thought about levitating, much like Superman flies through the air by thinking of flying without any known propulsion? Why can’t God do this? He can and any Christian who thinks otherwise is just not thinking. He could do anything in the physical world irregardless of whether he can create the laws of the universe or not. He can make human beings who have wings and could fly. He could make us look every bit like we do with operational wings.

God could do this naturally by reducing our body weight like birds if he wanted to, or increase the muscles in our wings so that we could fly, or he could just make us fly when we thought about flying. Did you know that God could reduce the size of this universe, this whole universe, by 10 times, or 100 times, or a 1000 times and we would not know the difference since everything will look the same size to those who have been reduced in size? So, if our body weight is too heavy to fly then he could cut our body weight in half or more by merely reducing the whole size of the known universe? Or he could have reduced the size of planet earth (or whole solar system) and the gravitational field would make us lighter in weight (like the gravitational field on the moon). Or he could have just made gravity such that even with the present size of earth it would allow us to fly with wings. And if by changing the present force of gravity may cause other unforseeable problems in the universe, then God could fix those things too. Or God could maintain a perpetual miracle at some point, which would fix any problems with a less intense gravitational force. For those who say God must create and maintain a natural universe with no perpetual miracles I wonder why that must be the case. Does this God ever get weary? Would maintaining a perpetual miracle make him tired somehow? Then how can he truly be omnipotent?

But my critic has further objected to what I argued for in this way: “If you modify a man, at what point does he cease to be a man?” What can be made of this? This presupposes that God must make a man. Is this because God must make man in his physical image or something? Hardly. If the English word “man” only applies to presently existing human beings, then with a major winged change that English word no longer applies to us, of course. But we would still be able to redefine the English word “man” to include a human being with wings. What is essential to the Christian for there to be free willed creatures who decide their destiny apart from God’s directly felt presense, anyway? Why do we have to be warm blooded creatures who can’t fly? Why? I see nothing about such creatures that requires that we must necessarily be warm blooded creatures who cannot fly? Nothing. All that’s necessary is that we are thinking creatures who have free will, from the Christian perspective.

Reppert on Ridiculing One's Opponents.

One of the most intelligent Christan bloggers is Victor Reppert who recently commented on those who comment on Christian and atheist blogs. To see all that he said go here. I totally agree with him when he wrote: "I really dislike ridicule, from either side of the fence." He also said, "I consider the ridicule heaped on atheists that I see on some blogs to be a bad witness." I think the same as he does when it's the atheists who are doing the ridiculing. I'm not saying there isn't a place for some of it in some forums specifically addressed to the proverbial "choir" for venting and/or entertainment purposes. It's just not something I pander to here at DC from either side of the fence.

What Could God Have Done Differently?

David Hume argued that if he could come up with one improvement to God's purported creation that it would call into question God's goodness. He suggested four things, one of which is that God could've created us with a greater propensity to work (more energy). So let me open this up for discussion. If you were God, what would you reasonably do differently to make this a better world with less suffering?

Let me be the first to suggest an improvement. God could've created human beings by adding a pair of wings to our backs so that we could fly. There would be no more falling to our deaths. We would have better transportation such that there would also be fewer fatalities on our roadways and airways. Such a winged improvement would result in less suffering than our present bodies. We know God could've done this because there are naturally existing birds in this world who fly. So why didn't he?

From Religion to Reason

I was born in March of 1978 to a young Christian couple. My dad was a divinity student at a Bible college in San Jose and my mother was on medical leave, herself a student. I was raised in a very conservative Christian family. My dad was a minister and my mother was a housewife and music leader for our Church. When we were growing up, like many other Christian families, we were taught never to question the faith. Religion was never considered a matter of reasoning or logic but we were taught to believe it based on authority; religion was not something that was backed up by historical or any other kind of scientific evidence or any sort, but rather, it was true because my dad said so.

I was first baptized at 13. I really didn't have a deep grasp at what being a Christian was all about. It wasn't so much that I really understood what Christians described as a "relationship" with Jesus Christ. Rather, I had convinced myself that I committed a sexual sin and sought relief from the guilt it created. Some time after I was baptized, I backslid for a year or so. In the summer of 1992, my dad moved our family to San Francisco. My dad was the only pastor at a First Christian Church and the Board of Trustrees had decided to prepare a house they owned next door to be a parsonage for my family. My mother didn't want to go but my dad wouldn't hear of it. After much arguing my dad moved us over there, having put his foot down.

My dad decided to enroll my brother Dan and myself in a private Christian high school. I recall meeting an English teacher who was a committed Christian. Impressed by his character, I decided to devote my life to Jesus Christ. This time I wanted a relationship with Jesus. Things went well for some time. But soon enough I began to have doubts. How did I know Christianity was really true? I believed it wholeheartedly but I began asking myself how did I know it was true, though? What got me to question it, I am not sure but I did. And the doubts crept in, especially when I once heard a guest speaker at my high school give a talk. Did I handle my doubts in a calm, rational, and objective manner? Far from it! I hit the panic button! I recall the first time I ever had doubts, rather than try to rationally analyze them and treat it as a problem to be solved, I tried a silly superstitous ritual to revitalize my faith. It worked and I was able to stave off doubts for some time. But, like a pesky poltergeist, they would return.

I never really talked to my dad about doubts I had or trials I seemed to go through. He seemed to get rather angry that I would even doubt or question the faith. I recall one time I asked a very innocent question to my dad. I was fascinated with theology and asked him a simple question because I thought he was the best resource. My dad could've replied "That's an interesting question, Matt. I never really studied that a lot. Tell you what-why don't you go down to the library or a Christian bookstore and see if there are any books on the subject?" His actual response was in angry frustration: "I don't know and to tell you the truth, I am not really worried about it!" Offended by such a response I recall saying "Geez..you're a grouch!" "You have no right to call me that!!!" he yelled, snapping back at me. I recall leaving the living room thinking what a jerk he was.

After this and similar experiences I decided not to go to my dad for help. I couldn't go to my mother because she would simply refer me to my dad and it seemed like every time I had a problem or trial in my life my dad would make me feel very guilty or stupid for letting a problem "get to me". As far as my religious problems went, I knew I was on my own. Sometime after my freshman year, I became interested in "apologetics". Apologetics is the art of defending the Christian faith. Now, one might assume that I would simply go to the nearest Christian bookstore and stock up on Josh McDowell, Paul Little, and other Christian apologists, right? Well, not exactly.

Inspired by a television show, I decided to manufacture my own proofs of God's existence. All from the Bible! What a naive young teenager I was! When I was in my sophomore year of high school, I decided to test my "proofs" out on my history teacher. You can imagine the expression on my face when he saw right through them! But problems got worse. That year marked my first deep exposure to the theory of evolution beyond a mention of it in a history book from my freshman year. I recall reading my dad's college biology textbook on the "evidence" for evolution and I recall reading the first chapter of Romans and about how men exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and creatures. Somehow I just knew Romans was right but I had no clue how to explain the "evidence" for evolution.

About a week before Thanksgiving of my sophomore year, I was jumped at the public high school I had been going to. The administrators at Galileo High couldn't assure my parents that I would be safe from the gang-related activity so I was withdrawn. My parents decided to homeschool me. That proved to be a mistake as well. By that time I had gotten interested in apologetics. My dad decided to try to talk me out of it. According to my dad, instead of being interested in apologetics, I should think about becoming an inventor. That way I could make a lot of money. But I wasn't interested in making any money at that time. I was only 15-16 for Pete's sake! I wasn't going to make up for what I later thought was my dad's or grampa's lost dreams of being rich and very wealthy. Yet my dad thought that Christians should be trying to make a lot of money and preach Christ crucified to their friends.

My dad didn't like the thought of apologetics very much. My dad thought that a good testimonial of the joy that Jesus gives someone should be more than sufficient proof that Christianity was true. My dad expected us to believe the faith was true mostly because of his testimonial ( the irony, of course, was that my dad was just as often grumpy and grouchy as he was joyful as I was growing up). But there was something odd about testimonials. I couldn't put my finger on it right then and there but there was something fishy about it. I would learn a short time later that many different religions as well as atheism, pantheism, deism, and agnosticism had glowing testimonials and using glowing testimonials to argue for Christianity was special pleading at best. Never-the-less my dad believed that a testimonial was the only correct proof that anyone could need or want that the faith is true. My dad just couldn't see how anyone who was not a Christian, after meeting him, could not want to become one.

That Christmas, I got McDowell's tome Evidence That Demands a Verdict. Here was the miracle tylenol that I needed to quench my doubts! I recall devouring the chapters on the historical reliability of the Bible and the chapter on fulfilled prophecy. So impressed with this book, I decided to write to the ministry and express my struggles with evolution. I was sent a book by McDowell on the subject of evolution (yes, the very one that Glenn Morton had ghost-written the section on evolution for!) I had at this time became fascinated with "creation-science" and started odering books from the Institute for Creation-Research and The Bible-Science Association, if I recall correctly.

It was at this time that my dad was considering moving out of the city. My mother was happy because we had a family meeting and my dad was strongly considering it, especially after he had played a game of basketball with my younger brother Dan in the backyard. Everything was going pretty good it seemed. Or so I thought.

I don't know what it was but my dad made some decisions that he didn't explain to us. My dad thought that it was a mistake to take me out of public school and so the next year, I learned, I would be going back to public school and he decided that we were not moving out of the city. My dad not only didn't expain it to us ( he felt he didn't need to explain his decisions; we just had accept them without question) but his personality seemed to take a turn for the worst. Over the next couple of years my dad seemed to become more grumpy and much more domineering. He fancied himself the unquestionable father figure.

I recall going to Pt. Magu naval base (near Santa Barbara, California) to visit my uncle Bruce and his family. When I went there, my grandmother made me a grandiose offer; she offered for me to go up to Oregon and stay there and even go to a Christian high school. As much as I loved the opportunity I turned it down. My dad wouldn't even hear about it. I just knew it. My dad wouldn't even discuss it, wouldn't hear of it, just put his hand up and look the other way.

Soon enough I found myself back in high school. I went to Arroyo High school in San Lorenzo. I was determined this time to get straight A's. I tried and I tried but I barely got above C's or B's. I tried my hardest but I felt that my hardest was far from good. I couldn't go to my dad for help because I felt that he would get angry. I didn't even want to go for help. I had this stigma of going to help for my studies. I felt that the only proper way to learn anything was to do it all by yourself without anyone's help whatsoever. Help was the whimp's way out. It was a complete academic cop-out. It was my responsibility and mine alone to get good grades without anyone's help.

I never achieved academic excellence. Nor did I ever meet my dream girl. Throughout junior high and high school, as far as I could tell, I always wanted a girlfriend. All the other kids seemed to have a romantic partner, including Christian kids, so why not me? Why shouldn't I be privy to the same kinds of blessings as other kids? I recall sitting in a chemistry class at Arroyo and looking at the girl, Heather, sitting behind me. It dawned on me that no girl would ever like me, especially not in high school. My junior year of high school was the year of hell for me. However, my senior year of high school wasn't so bad. In fact, it was much better! I not only finally made honors but I decided to dress differently, to try to fit in. I thought that if I dressed like my brother Dan, I was bound to get a girlfriend. So I dressed like my brother. All the girls seemed to adore him. The girls thought he was so cute. I so envied him. I graduated from high school with honors that semester. Everything seemed to be going well except that Mrs. Right never came along. What happened?

In my freshman year of college, I encountered a different atmosphere. I joined the Los Positas College Republicans and became the treasurer. It was going good for a year. I managed to do well, but not quite honor material. Still the girl of my dreams didn't show up. I managed to do well until the next fall. My whole life then fell apart. I was feeling more lonely than ever. I decided to stop dressing like my brother because I wasn't fooling anyone and I wasn't being myself. I decided to go back to being nerd-boy.

It was in the fall on my sophomore year that I fell swoop into deep clinical depression. I recall taking a chemistry class and I became very suicidal. All I could think of was my dream girl. It wasn't fair. I was missing out on so much! So I ended up withdrawing from all my classes. When I finally told my dad he exploded. I enrolled back into my college but it wasn't the same. I tried to ward off depression as much as I could but my emptiness consumed me. I was still very deeply depressed. At that time something interesting happened. I had ordered a book by a Christian astronomer who argued that the universe was very old. I read this book and became persuaded that the universe was indeed ancient and so I became a progressive creationist. I even recall a fellow Christian trying to persuade me to become a young-earther again. Didn't happen though. Then came graduation day. A girl in the Christian club named Eunice graduated with highest honors. What the hell?! That was no fair! She is as happy as can be and a straigh A student while I was a miserable and a mediocre student.

I pretended to be happy for my graduation but I was feeling miserable. I couldn't see the fairness in any of this. I didn't go to a university that fall. My father suggested that I take a year off from school because my parents reasoned I was feeling burnt. Well not really. I was depressed because of some stingy deity who was playing favorites with people and tormenting others purely for the hell of it.

It was after my graduation that my family moved from San Francisco to Manteca. My dad got so sick of my mother's griping and about how miserable she was in the city that he resigned from the ministry and my family moved. I was so happy to leave that Church. I started attending a contemporary Church in Manteca, called "Calvary Community". I decided to seek Church counseling for my depression. Who knows? Maybe I would even meet a lovely Christian girl there.

First I went to the worship service with my parents and then to my parents' Church-of-Christ. Soon after, I went to Calvary exclusively. I became friendly with the worship team there and some of the pastors over time. They got a new pastor there named Dan. He was a great guy, someone you could really laugh with. I recall discovering at that time the websites that attacked "creation-science" and so I wondered if there were any that attacked the Christian faith. I decided to go through the google search engine and found a site attacking biblical inerrancy by a former Christian named Fred.

Upset by this, I went out to Barnes and Nobles near where I worked, and purchased Gleason Archer's book Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties. I challenged the skeptic to a debate. I was so cocky-sounding and determined to make a fool of this atheist. I found out that Archer had made a mistake and I found myself apologizing to this skeptic for my rude behavior and feeling that I had my clock cleaned, I didn't want to debate any further. He was grateful for my apology and told me not to feel so bad.

My depression didn't lift at all. In fact, it grew worse if anything. I was feeling constantly suicidal. No amount of counseling helped me. Around this time I went to look for more sophisticated apologetics. I don't recall how but I soon hit upon the Secular Web. I found Jeffrey Jay Lowder's anthology debunking McDowell's book. I decided to take a second look at McDowell's book and I was shocked to discover many errors and logical fallacies I didn't see addressed on the "Jury is In". Soon enough I began to realize that Christian apologetics was falling apart. Not only was McDowell's book shot through with errors but the progressive-creationist books were flawed as well. It was at this time I began having serious doubts. I read some blistering essays by Robert M Price. He wrote a kick-ass review of Bill Craig's book, which he entitled "By This Time He Stinketh". I was troubled by what Price and others wrote. I recall reading that a narrative or two in the Bible was not in the earliest manuscripts. This troubled me. If stories such as Jesus and the women caught in adultery were not in the earliest manuscripts, what was? What might be in the earliest manuscripts that might not have been in the original autographs? If these stories were added to subsequent generations of manuscripts, then that meant one thing: the Bible had been tampered with. I began wondering if the Bible was tampered with on these points and if it was..what else had been tampered with? On top of deep depression I began to wonder if the faith really was true.

I was attending a college youth group at the time. I told a youth minister named John Hoppis that I was considering taking a leave of absence to tackle my questions. John persuaded me to stay and share my concerns to the youth group. I guess I was expecting a warm and understanding atmosphere. What I got instead was an judgemental and icy reception. When I went there, I encountered a self-righteous jerk named Jason Wallenberg who attended the group with his girlfriend Liz. I explained my doubts and Jason tried to argue a confession out of me that I was looking for reasons to be self-serving. What the hell??? Another guy named Mike Mercer tried to help me but was utterly clueless. While I loathed Jason for his self-righteousness, I thought Mike was well-meaning but a moron. I tried explaining my intellectual doubts to him but he thought that the reason I had doubts was because I was not doing daily devotionals with prayer! Presto! That was it! I just wasn't pronouncing "Abbra-Ca-Dabbra" correctly or snapping my fingers as I was doing it! It was so simple, wasn't it Mike? All I had to do was click my heels three times while chanting "There's no place like home, there's no place like home!"

The solution was ludicrous! Why would I continue to pray and read the Bible when I wasn't so convinced that the Bible was God's word after all? What the hell kind of stupid solution was that? I wasn't going to continue praying or reading the Bible until I found out why on earth should I even believe it was God's word. I wasn't going to pray or read it until I knew what historical evidence existed to back up the faith's claims! I wasn't going to pray or do devotionals until every contradiction or error was solved to my satisfaction! I wish I had discontinued to go there. Hell, I wish I had began reading the Bible more closely and critically. I would've noticed the contradictions and errors earier and I would've left the faith earlier. But, no, like a fool I stayed.

I began to realize that most Christian apologetics had very little substance to it. I found that the last reasonable reconciliation of Genesis with science was the Days of Proclamation theory, championed by Alan Hayward and Glenn Morton. This theory stated that each day of Genesis was literal but was a day of proclamation or fiat. Thus we have a literal creation week followed by billions of years of astronomical, geological, and biological evolution which fulfilled the creative proclamations of Genesis! The flood of Genesis, I came to conclude, was a local flood and the Garden of Eden was where the Mediterranean Sea now was. It made so much sense now!

I came to the conclusion that Christian apologetics was in need of deep reform. It was around this time that I became aware of the Skeptical Review and the SkepticsAnnotatedBible. But I only read critiques of the Skeptical Review, never really read many of the articles themselves. As for my depression, it was still there. I was still deeply depressed and still to a large extent suicidal. I recall once deciding to end my life. I looked up a gun store in the Yellow Pages and found one on Yosemite Ave. I started down there. My plan was to find out how much a 45 semi-automatic handgun cost. I would then go to Bank of America and withdraw the necessary funds from the ATM.

As I was going down there, I noticed the family car pulling up and my dad asked me if he could give me a ride somewhere. I couldn't tell him I was going to blow my brains out. Knowing a Bank of America was near, I told him that I was going there to get a withdraw. He showed me a B-of-A machine nearer to our house. It amazed me how close I came to ending it all that day. Now my dad wasn't expecting to find me there nor did he know of my plans. In fact, it was purely coincidental that he pulled up to where I was. I attributed the aborted plan to divine intervention and so I tried to get closer to God. I tried to pray to him. I tried harder and harder. Nothing seemed to work. I could be out on the backlawn trying to pray and it would be interruped because an ant would crawl on me.

I would be trying to pray in my room but at times I would encounter a cold, deafening silence. My faith was on very weak grounds. After having someone else's romance rubbed in my face, I would sometimes go into my room screaming at God "Why do you hate me?!?!?!" No answer. Just a stubborn silence. Near the summer and then the fall of 2002, I discovered Deism. I really liked it. A belief in a Creator based solely upon reason! Sounded absolutely delicious. But no. I knew better. The Christian faith was backed up by solid evidence. I printed out some essays online from a few Christian apologetics websites. I also had some debate books in which Bill Craig seemed to kick skeptics' asses on the resurrection.

I was absolutely miserable at this time. Like it or not, the Christian faith was backed up by historical evidence. No matter what pleasant, freethinking alternative was available, some Christian apologist be it William Craig or James Patrick Holding always had a rational rebuttal to it. At the end of the day, I was always left with the conclusion that the faith was true. I was miserable and I began to hate apologetics. I hated it to death! I was "stuck" with apologetics now matter how miserable trying to be a Christian made me. I loved Deism on the other hand. I recall a week or perhaps days before my deconversion thinking "I could be a Deist right now if the resurrection wasn't backed up by historical evidence!" I was infuriated. Sadly, no one knew of the deep turmoil I had inside. No one knew of the misery I faced deep inside.

I recall reading one anti-apologetics website that absolutely intrigued me. A skeptical historian named Richard Carrier noted that he wasn't going to be responding to an apologist, James Patrick Holding, whose arguments I was "stuck with". Apparently, Carrier explained:

"I see no need anymore to respond to Holding. His method is typically polemical, childish and disrespectful, he rarely comprehends anything I or any opponent says or means, and he has a nasty tendency to make wild, unsubstantiated claims about antiquity, and then, when he is called on it, deletes or alters his essays without notice, and modifies them to suit research he conducted only after his lack of research was pointed out.

"In this case, his argument against me is simply bizarre. He says that a story about a man who died and came back to life and founded a religion wherein believers went to eternal paradise has no parallel with Christianity. That is to engage in some pathetic special pleading, and I think it is patently absurd to any reasonable observer."

Carrier also noted:

"The rest of his points fall to the same objections: wild generalizations about antiquity that he does not back up with any scholarship, and which are seriously suspect to anyone familiar with the actual literature of the period; complete disregard for how my evidence actually relates to my point; misunderstanding of even the simplest things I said; and addressing details as if they refute my point when in fact they have nothing whatever to do with it."

I think it was because of this, I decided to give the Skeptical Review another look. A closer, deeper, honest look. I was amazed at what I read. The resurrection accounts contradicted each other, Jesus was supposed to be God, and yet Jesus was tempted despite the fact that James says God can't be tempted. I decided to take a closer look at how the Field of Blood got its name. The accounts contradicted each other. Finally, I decided to go to the Skeptical Review website. I read some debates that Farrell Till had with a Christian apologist who calls himself "James Patrick Holding". I thought Till had really hammered this apologist badly. Till demonstrated to my satisfaction that Jesus made an error in Mark 2:26 in reference to Abiathar being high priest when David went to Nob when it was his father Ahimelech was high priest.

I recall the last pieces of my faith evaporating in one night. I felt free. I had a crush on Deism so I decided to become a Deist. Within a day or so I felt that my depression had completely lifted. I had a newfound sense of confidence, a newfound sense of joy. Hell, my sense of humor even improved. I remember signing a manifesto for my deconversion stating that I had become a Deist. I was a freethinker and I loved reason.

This is not to say that I didn't have any second thoughts on the subject. On the contrary, I had several second thoughts. I found out that in a debate, Farrell Till had made a huge anachronistic mistake, especially arguing that guilt really did exist in biblical times (I consider this very unlikely given that the ancient Mediterranean was an honor-shame societ). This made me wonder if his arguments about Mark 2:26 were indeed mistaken. I recall having panicky sensations and made some dumb mistakes. I even recall if I gave up on the Mr. Turkel too easily ( I recall embarrassingly having expressed this on Till's discussion list and he got the misleading impression that I was pulling their legs the whole time about having deconverted). I eventually came to conclude that the only way I was going to resolve any remaining questions is if I became a Bible scholar. So I decided to do just that.

It's been four years since I deconverted. Since then, I have managed to stabilize myself. I have discovered what I believe to be several more errors and contradictions along the way, not to mention failed prophecies. The resurrection narratives contradict, the virgin birth narratives contradict, Peter's denail accounts contradict. Jesus made a mistake about men being with David. Yahweh's land promise failed and there never was an eternal kingdom for King David. As of today, I consider myself an atheist. I disbelieve that any gods exist and I consider myself an agnostic about the supernatural, generally speaking. I no longer have second thoughts. My second thoughts were just those and nothing more. It wasn't easy giving up on Christianity and the faint fear that I was going to go to Hell. I had second thoughts and there were nights I recall having cried myself to sleep begging Jesus to forgive me and take me back. However, the next morning I realized that I was still a Deist and still a skeptic. I was tormented by second and third thoughts.

Then came the point of no return! I recall reading a book on biblical inerrancy which was edited by Norman Geisler, called Inerrancy. I read an essay called "Higher Criticism and Biblical Inerrancy" by J Barton Payne. I read the following in a passage which took me aback:

"Put more concretely, until a scholar becomes willing to accept the lordship of Jesus Christ over his life and thought, it is futile to try to argue him out of Wellhausen's literary analysis of the Pentatauch, which, to the naturalistic mind set, is the only viable option" (pg. 111)

This struck me like a bolt of lightening! I thought to myself , Why does a scholar need to accept the lordship of Jesus Christ in order to be persuaded to abandon Wellhausen's Documentary Hypothesis in favor of the traditioanl Mosaic authorship? If the Pentatauch was written by Moses for the most part, then shouldn't historical evidence alone be enough to convince any scholar, regardless of where his/her religious commitments lie? Why does one have to be willing to accept the lordship of Jesus to be able to consider the traditional authorship claims? If the Bible was divinely inspired or if the traditional Evangelical claims about the Bible were correct, then shouldn't historical evidence by itself be enough to persuade a scholar to accept it? Why does one have to become a Christian first or be willing to accept the gospel? But reality came crashing down on me like a ton of bricks and I had a profound realization: Christian biblical apologetics is based on historico-grammatical method while Higher biblical criticism is based on the critical-historical method. The former presupposes biblical inerrancy while the latter presupposes that natural claims require natural forms of evidence and supernatural claims require supernatural forms of evidence. Higher biblical criticism didn't rule out the possibility of miracles or the supernatural, it rightfully demanded evidence of such in porportion to the strength and type of the claims made. You claim something supernatural happened, you need supenatural forms of evidence to back it up!

I recall after having read this chapter (as gross and appalling as it was to stomach such antireason and antiintellectual crap like this!) I went online and reread Price's essay "By This Time He Stinketh". What an eye-opener it was! It all made sense now! I clearly concieved of the difference between biblical apologetics and biblical criticism! The former supposes its conclusions first and looks for evidence to back it up, having already decided in advanced what is allowed to be true and what is not, while the latter started with the evidence and sought to follow it honestly, whereever it went! I decided that biblical criticism, based on the critical-historical method is the only intellectually honest way of approaching the biblical texts. If I was going to be a Bible scholar, I was going to devote myself to being an advocate of biblical criticism and a staunch defender of the critical-historical method. I devoted myself to just that. I had reached the point of no return and I walked confidently through the door. I could never go back to fundamentalism, never go back to Evangelical Christianity, and never go back to apologetics. I had entered the door and passed the point of no return!

The Religious Right needs informed opposition as well as Christian evangelists. Even if I was wrong and the Christian faith was true, I could never became a Christian again. Not after what I went through.

Am I happier now? Absolutely! Have I made some mistakes and errors of judgement? Sure. But I have realized that I am human and I must rely on my powers of reason. No personal deity loves me or will help me. It's up to me to love myself and love others. I can do so because I have discovered reason.

Matthew Green

The Three Things About Evolution That Revolt Creationists The Most

I suspect there's more than just logic behind the way some Christians react to the idea of evolution. There's also a conscious or unconscious revulsion to evolution going on, THREE of them in fact:

REVULSION #1 "I ain't no Monkey's Uncle!"

"1996 presidential contender, Pat Buchanan, said something along the lines of `You may believe that you're descended from monkeys, but I believe you're a creature of God.' I guess that Buchanan hadn't considered that one of the basic tenets of Christianity is that God is the Creator of everything, including `monkeys.' It seems to me that one of the basic reasons behind the so-called `creationism' is the feeling that somehow parts of God's creation are not worthy of being our ancestors."
TOM SCHARLE

However, Christians like C. S. Lewis were not threatened by the thought of a species of thinking religious animal:

"When the rationality of the hross tempted you to think of it as a man... it became abominable--a man seven feet high, with a snaky body, covered, face and all, with thick black animal hair, and whiskered like a cat. But starting from the other end you had an animal with everything an animal ought to have... and added to all these, as though Paradise had never been lost... the charm of speech and reason. Nothing could be more disgusting than the one impression; nothing more delightful than the other. It all depended on the point of view."
C. S. LEWIS, OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET (a Christian science-fiction novel)

And certain ironies arise from denying so vehemently that one is not a "Monkey's Uncle," while affirming that humanity was created from the "dust of the earth," because, isn't it just as respectable to be a "modified monkey" as "modified dirt?" Or as Will Rogers put it during the Scopes Monkey Trial in the 1920s:

"The Supreme Court of Tennessee has just ruled that you other states can come from whoever or whatever you want to, but they want it on record that they come from mud only!... William Jennings Bryan tried to prove that we did not descend from the monkey, but he unfortunately picked a time in our history when the actions of the American people proved that we did... Some people certainly are making a fight against the ape. It seems the truth kinder hurts. Now, if a man didn't act like a monkey, he wouldn't have to be proving that he didn't come from one. Personally I like monkeys. If we were half as original as they are, we would never be suspected of coming from something else. They never accuse monkeys of coming from anybody else... You hang an ape and a political ancestry over me, and you will see me taking it into the Supreme Court, to prove that the ape part is O.K., but that the political end is base libel... If a man is a gentleman, he doesn't have to announce it; all he has to do is to act like one and let the world decide. No man should have to prove in court what he is, or what he comes from. As far as Scopes teaching children evolution, nobody is going to change the belief of Tennessee children as to their ancestry. It is from the actions of their parents that they will form their opinions."


REVULSION #2 "If you teach people they're monkeys, they'll act like monkeys."

A second revulsion is related to the question of the origin of ethical values. Ethical values like "forgiveness," are assumed to be mysterious and sublime ideas that we owe primarily to a few millennia of Judeo-Christianity. However as Frans de Waal pointed out:

"Monkeys, apes, and humans all engage in reconciliation behavior (stretching out a hand, smiling, kissing, embracing, and so on), so such behavior is probably over thirty million years old, preceding the evolutionary divergence of these primates... Reconciliation behavior [is thus] a shared heritage of the primate order... When social animals are involved...antagonists do more than estimate their chances of winning before they engage in a fight; they also take into account how much they need their opponent. The contested resource often is simply not worth putting a valuable relationship at risk. And if aggression does occur, both parties may hurry to repair the damage. Victory is rarely absolute among interdependent competitors, whether animal or human."
FRANS DE WAAL, PEACEMAKING AMONG PRIMATES (see also, Morton Hunt, The Compassionate Beast: What Science is Discovering About the Humane Side of Humankind; and, Alfie Kohn, The Brighter Side of Human Nature: Altruism and Empathy in Everyday Life; and see especially the chapter on "Kindness" in de Waal's latest work, OUR INNER APE.)

One irony of this particular revulsion is pointed out below:

"Creationists criticize evolutionists for the demeaning idea of `coming from apes' and say that man is more noble than that, and then have sermons where man is called a miserable worm worthy to be burned eternally in hell."
WILLIAM BAGLEY


REVULSION #3 "Do we have an eternal soul, or not? Animals don't."

A third revulsion is related to the fact that animals die and we assume they never rise again, so if we are directly related to animals then maybe our lives will also cease with death:

"We do not like to be reminded of the ways in which we resemble animals. We sinners like to think our motives are more holy than those of animals. And since we generally assume animals cannot have eternal life with God, thinking about animal deaths and about our own place in nature frightens us."
ED FRIEDLANDER, CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVES ON EVOLUTION

A similar doubt is given expression within the pages of the Bible:

"I said to myself concerning the sons of men, God has surely tested them in order for them to see that they are but beasts. For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same. As one dies so dies the other; indeed, they all have the same breath ['...all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life' Gen. 6:17; 7:15,22, both man and beasts] and there is no advantage for man over beast, for all is vanity. All go to the same place. All came from the dust and all return to the dust ['...till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return' Gen. 3:19]. Who knows that the breath of man ascends upward and the breath of the beast descends downward to the earth?"
ECCLESIASTES 3:18-21

And an irony of this revulsion is pointed out below:

"A preacher thundering from his pulpit about the uniqueness of human beings with their God-given souls would not like to realize that his very gestures, the hairs that rose on his neck, the deepened tones of his outraged voice, and the perspiration that probably ran down his skin under clerical vestments are all manifestations of anger in mammals. If he was sneering at Darwin a bit (one does not need a mirror to know that one sneers), did he remember uncomfortably that a sneer is derived from an animal's lifting its lip to remind an enemy of its fangs? Even while he was denying the principle of evolution, how could a vehement man doubt such intimate evidence?"
SALLY CARRIGHAR, WILD HERITAGE

Why Do Some People Hate Frank Walton?

Frank Walton complains about being harrassed by atheists in the comments section here, when he said:

Since having gone public with my website and blogsite I had threats hurled at me, racist comments made against me because of the color of my skin, my wife's name and our home address and phone number publicly published on a website and blogsite (I have this all documented by the way). I received one threat (via e-mail) so disturbing (he talked of raping my wife and lynching me) I had to call the police to see if we can find the guy.

Not only that but agnostic Ed Babinski has hounded me for not giving out personal information about myself (where I'm from, what school I go to, my major, etc.). I told him that I didn't want to give out said information because I crave a certain amount of anonymity. It's for my protection from any fundamentalist atheist who may lash out at me or harass me. Guess what? Babinski didn't care. Instead of respecting my privacy, he continued to send me e-mails over and over and over again requesting personal info about myself. He went so far as to go to a Christian forum and accused me of "avoidance apologetics" and to provoke some personal information about myself!

[To read Ed's response see Ed's side of the story].

Poor Frank Walton. There's just something about him that causes atheists to hate him. He maligns and disrespects and berates us at every opportunity. Then when he reports how mad atheists get over his tactics the story gets even further twisted to make it sound much worse than it really is. He may have a persecution complex for all I know. He wants to be hated for Jesus' sake, so he hates. He hates those who attack his God, and any tactic including lies and exaggerations and half truths in defending his God from our arguments is his mission. He brings most all of it on himself, and I do not believe him when he claims he's been persecuted like he says he has, either. I believe he's a fabricator of the truth and a liar.

The truth is that atheists and Christians alike can bring people to hate them for being offensive and for personal attacks. People cannot take personal attacks for long before they get mad. And in this sense Walton brings it on himself. It's just hard to ignore someone who is this obnoxious and this stupid.

So here's Walton's strategy everyone: Provoke atheists by calling them names, by sidetracking conversations, by quoting them out of context, by belittling and berating them, and when they finally respond he plays the sympathy card. Even a puppy dog can be provoked to bite back, Walton.

I know I should ignore him, but it's just tough to do, since he constantly dogs my steps. His tactics deserve to be exposed for what they really are...sick. No one on his website is as stupid or as vile as he makes them out to be. Furthermore, anyone who will reasonably discuss what we write here at Debunking Christianity receives a polite discussion in return, as everyone who regularly reads my Blog knows full well. It's just that when it comes to us here at DC Walton and some others of his ilk personally attack us. I expected it. But I don't like it. There is a fortress mentality among some Christians that when they see us attempt to debunk their faith it's seen as a serious personal affront to themselves and to their God. We don't see ourselves intending anything personal here. We just disagree, that's all.

Walton's whole tactic is to poison the well.

Once Walton was so bad that he was forced to remove objectional material from his website.

"Loving Our Neighbor" Means Loving Atheists Too!

One of the most intelligent Christian blogs can be found on our sidebar under Christian links called CADRE Comments . In a recent post BK condemned beating, shunning, and threatening atheists. We are your "neighbors" whom Jesus said should be loved.

Jesus on Getting to Heaven

Jim Lippard at The Secular Outpost pointed out something kinda funny for us at YouTube here, on what Jesus said to get to heaven.

What We Have Here is a Failure to Think Critically!

I once came across an article that stated how the smell of crayons has actually been observed to momentarily reduce blood pressure in adults by several points. Many other smells which were associated with our early childhood experiences, the article said, can have the same noticeable effects. And I don't think there are many of us who would deny that those cosy feelings that come over us when we think back to the good old times make us feel better. The days before car payments, electric bills, and eviction notices certainly bring back some excellent memories for me!

I was never a deprived child. I had my share of good things and great times. One such time was my eighth birthday when I decided to celebrate at Chucky Cheese and watch the singing, dancing puppets, along with every other grade-schooler pal I brought with me. That year I received a special toy. It came right on top of my birthday cake. It was a little action figure, an alien robot with two great big claws for hands and two small yellow eyes. It came to be my favorite toy. Clawbot, I called him!

As I played it out, Clawbot was from a far away world and had powers beyond the imagination. He came from a race of the most technologically advanced beings anywhere. His metal was invincible. He could walk around in the sun and it wouldn't even come close to damaging him. He could be standing on the moon and reach down and rip it apart with his mighty claw hands. He was invulnerable to all manner of attacks...sound, heat, mental, magical, electrical, you name it, Clawbot could not be stopped! My little friends and I would get into spats over how unfair I was being because I would never let clawbot lose any battle to their own made-up superheros. Ah, precious memories!

You know, I think if I looked hard enough, I'd find clawbot stashed away in some box in my attic. Perhaps I'll have to take a look one day.

Clawbot may have had a big place in my heart, but as I got older, he kind of seemed a little silly to me. I mean, first off, if clawbot was the product of a technologically advanced alien race, more advanced than humans with the ability to manipulate their environment, why would Clawbot have been constructed with claws - very awkward and clumsy appendages to manipulate anything - much less be able to use buttons, controls, tools, or weapons, things an advanced species would no doubt use? How would Clawbot, who stood six feet tall, pull apart a planet or a moon? Wouldn't the ground just give way around him where he was trying to pull? How would he even have the reach to pull such a large object apart? And then, why and how would the creators of clawbot make him invincible? Since he was a robot, he required software of some kind to be operational. What happens if clawbot malfunctions and goes haywire? How will his creators keep control over him? How will they get in his head and modify the program to correct the problem? And if they can correct a faulty clawbot, doesn't logic dictate that clawbot could be "hacked" by those who are smart enough to figure out his program codes and manipulate him for evil purposes? And what about clawbot's invincible metal? How is metal invincible seeing as how the elements that make the different metals are themselves created in stars? All metals can be superheated and are destructible, otherwise there would have been no way for them to soften up clawbot's metal and get it on him in the first place. Why didn't I realize these things? Why didn't I catch these oddities as a child? Perhaps it was for the same reason I didn't catch the logistical oddities of the Santa Claus story.

For a while there, I never wondered why, but then matured enough to begin asking why Santa Claus never visited Jewish children, even though many of them were obviously very good like those of any other race. Could Santa be racist? I often wondered why Santa's handwriting so closely resembled dad's on the neatly wrapped presents we got -- amazingly, packaged in the same casings you see them in when you buy them at your local toy store! I also had plenty of questions as to how a fat man fits down houses with chimneys with fires still burning in them, and houses with very small chimneys that only a squirrel could fit through. And what about those houses with no chimneys at all, or what about my friend Brian's house with two big Doberman guard dogs who could hear the slightest peep of an intruder? How could he get in? And how could he hit all those houses inside of one night anyway? The unsatisfying, catch-all answer to these questions was, "He's magic!" But as a little kid, it was good enough for me!

The older I got, the more problems I began to see. As I matured, my critical thinking skills developed. Objections that never occurred to me before were now impassible barriers to belief. I could no longer believe in those things anymore. They were far too infantile to even be considered by rational adults.

Now how would you react if you met a grown man or woman today who still believed in Santa, or their own version of Clawbot? You would not only be shocked, but you would feel downright sorry for them, knowing they didn't mentally develop like they should have.

Well, you've met not one such person, but scores of them. Chances are, your neighbors and most of your friends believe in God, the grown up's version of Santa. This adult version of Saint Nick has just as many, if not more logical problems than the original child's version, and just as unsatisfying an answer as to how this "Santa" has his powers--God is magic too! Miraculous, magical, call it what you want. Even as adults, believers in this Santa, just like their children, are admonished not to think too much or ask too many questions. Come to think of it, a "miracle" is just a word that means, "Don't think, quit trying to explain how it happened, and just accept that it did!" So in case you were wondering why neither Santa Claus in the North Pole, or God in heaven can be detected by radar and located to be bugged to death with questions from the media and their fans, don't ask! You already know you'll get an answer like, "He's magic!"

Some world we live in where we find fully grown adults, sometimes genuinely smart, successful people who still seek the comforts of childhood fantasy. They remain ignorant and uninformed, believing in a position just as unbelievable as that of Santa Claus. And just like small, elated little children, awaiting a fat man in a red suit to come and drink milk and cookies after leaving lots of great stuff, these adults refuse to think critically, not because they can't but because they won't. They refuse to scrutinize the world. It does not occur to them that life demands caution against ignorance and misinformation, and that being ill-informed allows us to see that much less of the real world and prevents us from standing in awe of what really deserves our veneration -- the natural order with it's incredible complexity and splendor. These people have chosen not to see the world as it really is. They would rather have the more flattering delusion of self importance to the cold, hard truth of an indifferent existence. Yes, the old adage is proven true, Ignorance is bliss!

Funny how life turns the tables on us though. Years passed, and sure enough, I found myself on the receiving end of the ignorance, now that Clawbot's legacy has long since ended.

As I found myself watching a little cousin of mine play the Hulk, I mockingly squared off against him as a genie. I quickly turned the hulk into a light-bulb. My cousin confidently said, "But he can break out!" I then tried to get him to understand that if you are the light-bulb, you cannot break out of yourself! But my efforts were to no avail! I had to have my genie lose that fight! Clawbot was back, just in a different form, this time fighting against me, no doubt because I had eaten the forbidden fruit of knowledge!

(JH)

The Religious "Off" Switch

I used to delight in asking my Christian brothers and sisters why they believed the things they said they believed. The most common answer was simply, "That's what I've always been told." That always disturbed me. You could pull a wisdom tooth with a piece of string easier than you could get a straight answer out of most of these people. I decided it was my purpose, indeed my calling, in life to teach the foundations of Christianity to all these people who didn't seem to know why they were even believers in the first place. I wasn't exactly successful.

But I tried for 18 long years to instill a love for God's word in people who claimed to love him wholeheartedly but weren't terribly interested in any of the reasons why. My religion was my life, I was a man of God. I was anointed, Spirit filled, chosen and called for the work of the ministry. I loved the life. I loved the purpose it gave me. I had no desire to question it or ever leave it.

Then one morning I had a stroke.

Oxygen deprivation can do horrible things to your body and your brain. It can kill you (which I obviously avoided), it can maim you, it can make you forget how to walk, it can leave you unable to speak or communicate, it can paralyze you and basically ruin your entire life. In my case, it left me able to move, to speak, and to function, but with the added joy of never ending pain. It cost me my job of 23 years and destroyed any hope of having any kind of retirement. It changed the way I think and the way I feel; I have no emotional reactions to anything except an incredibly intense but fleeting anger. I literally lost the ability to care about anything. Add intense pain that never lets up (for 8 miserable years now) and you have a seriously distorted view of life that you never expected or wanted.

But even stranger than any of that, you discover that your faith which you thought was unshakeable was not only shaken but eliminated entirely. As simply as flicking a light switch but with some profound complications. You soon discover no one believes you or has the slightest idea what you're trying to tell them. Certainly no pastor or holy man has an explanation other than an attack of Satan. I felt that God had abandoned me.

But one thing hadn't changed. I still wanted to know why.

I began reading things I never would have looked at before on the internet (this was 1998.) They would have caused doubt and doubt is something no man of god can allow himself to have or even consider. Doubt destroys faith. It brings guilt and condemnation. It ruins your fellowship with god. Doubt cannot be allowed. But I was already convinced that god tossed me to the dogs and then checked out of my life altogether, I couldn't find him anywhere.

There had to be an explanation and the proverbial test of faith was unsatisfying. Jesus promised to be with me always but apparently he lied or he wasn't talking to me in the first place. So I started reading things; things written by people who were religious but had opposing doctrines to my own. Surprisingly they made sense in some regards even though I never would have considered them before. Gradually, I started moving into the secular realm. Then one day I discovered an atheist blog written by an intelligent young man who had gotten free of Jehovah's Witnesses. I found his deconversion story inspiring and began to seek after others.

A major breakthrough occurred when I found EbonMusings and started reading all his articles. One of them made references to people who had religious alterations caused by brain damage. Several of the case histories he quoted sounded remarkably like what happened to me in one aspect or another. I was amazed that an atheist had such insight into the nature of faith and belief and what sort of physical things could influence it. I began to devour more and more atheistic writings.

When I finally began reading about biblical inconsistencies I knew I had finally found my answer. The bible wasn't the perfect, inerrant word of god that I believed it was. The contradictions weren't there because my understanding was flawed, they were there because the book itself is flawed. Once I was able to accept that, it was no great leap to accept that there is no god, no living Jesus. No wonder I couldn't find him.

I've condensed the hell out of my story because it is extremely complicated and covers several years. I was a true believer, now I'm not. The stroke cut me off from my religion, it severed the emotional and intellectual ties. I stayed away from church and consequently got away from guilt. That right there will free your mind tremendously. I always knew something was wrong with the bible but, like I had been trained, I assumed it was my own lack of understanding. Fortunately I never lost my desire to know why. Studying the writings of people who used reason to escape from Christianity opened my eyes to the truth.

I had a religious "Off" switch. I wonder if you do, too.

Let's have done with Lewis, shall we?

CS Lewis has shared the fate of all moderates as popular Christianity drifts toward extremism; you hear less about him. But he is still read by millions of people and the Narnia movie resurrected his old argument about Jesus' divinity; that Jesus was divine because He said He was.

Really! That's the load-bearing wall of the thing. I'd written about it before on my own blog but didn't get much debate. So with apologies to anyone who has read this before, let's see if we can expand on Lewis' trinity of possibilities for Jesus' divinity...

In the Narnia movie, the younger brother tells the professor that he does not believe his younger sister’s story about a magical land in the back of the wardrobe. The professor says (best I can remember from the movie) “I don’t know what they’re teaching as logic these days. If your sister is not lying, and she has not gone mad, then logically she must be telling the truth. So why don’t you believe her?”

This is a mini-version of Lewis’ famous “Lunatic, demon, or God” argument (see notes below for full text). In brief, Lewis says Jesus must be God because if he were not, he could only be a madman or a demon.

I can’t remember the technical term for this fallacy, but Lewis is forcing a conclusion from too few possibilities. The full range of possibilities for Jesus’ claims runs more along these lines:

* Jesus was a great human teacher but the Bible adds claims he never actually made
* Jesus was a great human teacher but also a bit touched in the head
* Jesus was barking mad and his teaching got tidied up a bit by followers
* Jesus never existed - he’s a fictional rabbi invented to present revolutionary ideas in Judaism without getting the author into possibly fatal trouble with the authorities
* Our understanding of Jesus’ claims, either by cultural context or translation, is incorrect
* Jesus was a huckster and a liar
* Jesus never existed - he’s a bunch of myths mixed up with the life of some rabble-rouser from a turbulent period in the history of Judaism and Classical/Roman mythology
* Some combination of the above
* Jesus was the Son of God borne to a virgin Jewish girl
* Jesus was a demon
* Jesus was an alien
* Jesus was a time-traveller

Certainly the range of possibilities is wider than Lewis presented. But even within his own construct, is it necessary to believe that Jesus is the Son of God? Lewis thinks so, mainly for the reason that he is not ready to entertain his own alternatives (let alone the wider range I have presented here). He does not like the notion that humans may be responsible for constructing a workable ethical standard, or that the universe may have no more meaning than its own inhabitants can accumulate in their brief lives.

Lewis’ reasoning may be valid for one’s person’s own philosophical satisfaction, but not as normative constructs. If you want to make a compelling argument for belief, you will have to do better than that.

Nothing I have said here stands against anyone believing in God, or even in the way of liking C.S. Lewis, which I certainly do. But let’s not get too misty-eyed about his status as a logician. He was a Medaeval historian and a reasonably good storyteller.

The range of possibilities I have listed above is not in order of probability. The actual probability you might assign to each one depends on your frame of reference.

Notes:

You can decide for yourself if I am being unfair to Lewis if you read Mere Christianity and some of his other didactic works. Here is the full text of his argument about Jesus’ credibility.

I am trying here

to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but i don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon, or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
- Mere Christianity, First Touchstone Ed. 1996, p.56

That's making a lot of assumptions, Clive.