Child Sacrifice And a Very Nasty God...Very Nasty!

We’ve been discussing child sacrifice here, and at the risk of being accused that I’m changing topics, let me show exactly what kind of God Christians are trying to defend.

We left off discussing Micah 6:6-8, where the divinely inspired prophet wrote these words:

With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow down before God on high. Should I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Does the Lord want a thousand rams, with myriads of rivers of fat? Should I give by oldest son as a sin offering, the fruit of my belly as a sin offering for my soul? He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

What Micah was doing is trying to find the very best ways to please God, so he mentioned what he considered the best things. And it says he considered sacrificing a child along with the other sacrifices God demanded in order to please him. The fact that God tells Micah he only wants justice and mercy does not undercut that Micah believed child sacrifice was acceptable to God, for it’s listed among other types of sacrifices that ARE pleasing to God. Nor does it undercut that God demanded child sacrifices (Exodus 22:29; Ezekiel 20: 25-26). God certainly didn’t condemn Jepthah, and he even requested it of Abraham with no condemnation against the practice. God didn't even chastise Micah for suggesting such a thing, which is what any perfectly good God would do. I would say so to Micah, and I’m not a perfectly good God!

It just appears to me that many Christians take a caviler approach to the extremely nasty God they claim to worship, when he's supposed to be perfected love itself.

Christian, how do you reconcile that view you have of your perfectly loving and reasonable God with the following passage, where it only seems to condemn child sacrifice to "other" gods:

From Jeremiah 19:

"You shall say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I am bringing such evil upon this place that the ears of every one who hears of it will tingle. 4 Because the people have forsaken me, and have profaned this place by burning incense in it to other gods whom neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah have known; and because they have filled this place with the blood of innocents, 5 and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it come into my mind; 6 therefore, behold, days are coming, says the Lord, when this place shall no more be called Topheth, or the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of Slaughter. 7 And in this place I will make void the plans of Judah and Jerusalem, and will cause their people to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hand of those who seek their life. I will give their dead bodies for food to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the earth. 8 And I will make this city a horror, a thing to be hissed at; every one who passes by it will be horrified and will hiss because of all its disasters. 9 And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters, and every one shall eat the flesh of his neighbor in the siege and in the distress, with which their enemies and those who seek their life afflict them.’

Christian, how do you reconcile the God of reason, the God of perfect love, with the ways he dealt with people who worship other gods? This is some very nasty stuff here. He will make them eat the flesh of their children and neighbors! And how do you reconcile the number of lives lost as a result of God's actions with the number of children sacrificed? Let's see, a few children are being killed, so I'll slaughter them all!?!? As a result of God’s actions many more children will die and/or be fatherless, and/or be eaten. It does not make any sense at all. What difference does it make to God whether people sacrifice their children or they eat them? In either case innocent children are still being killed!

Besides, there are much better ways to handle such things, out of love. Merely send them a prophet who can do great miracles in their midst and let him tell them this is plainly forbidden. Better yet, why not just make one of the ten commandments: "Thou shalt not sacrifice or kill any man woman or child to me," and say it as often as needed without also allowing the conflicting messages and lack of condemnation for such practices elsewhere in the Bible, like asking Abraham to do it and not also condemn such a practice, or like letting Jepthah do it without sending a prophet to him to tell him it’s forbidden?

The God we're talking about is based upon the reflections and musings of an ancient superstitious barbaric people, plain and simple.

This is the best and simplest explanation for what we find in the Bible.

Alzheimer's and God's Wrath

March 3, 2008 – At the top of the list of debilitating, incurable diseases humankind seeks to eradicate is the disease we call Alzheimer's Disease. In the quest to cure the ailment, an interesting find has been made by Dr. E.J. Jacobson, PH.D, M.D. and Dr. Jesus Christianson, PH.D, M.D. Both men reside and work in the city of Columbus, Ohio, home to the renowned Columbus Center for Alzheimer's Research. In addition to being medical doctors, these men are Baptist ministers and personal friends of fellow pastor and Republican presidential hopeful, Mike Huckabee.

When asked about their progress in search for a cure to Alzheimer’s, Dr. Christianson said, “Alzheimer’s disease is caused by blockages of a certain protein called beta-amyloid that accumulates between nerve cells of the brain. While there is still much to learn, we are confident that one day the disease will be better understood, and possibly even cured.” Dr. Jacobson then added: “But physicians for so long have been looking to modern medicine for a cure. We should have been looking to God’s Word to consider why the disease surfaced to begin with. The answer was right there all along.”

As our investigating team inquired further, the doctors continued to impress us with their immense medical and biblical knowledge. The most memorable moment during the interview came when Dr. Jacobson handed us a letter, in which was explained the position of both Dr. Christianson and himself. The letter was a response to an email inquiry. Reprinted here with permission from the fundamentalist Christian quarterly known as Christian Medicine Today, we have the position of the doctors…

”Dear Dr. Jacobson,

As a woman of faith, I find it especially trying to face Alzheimers disease and what it has done to my family. It stole my mothers’ identity over a six year period. She passed away last year at age sixty six. Too early for her to go.

It has been hard on us. It was hard to watch my mother deteriorate like that. Facing the usual trials that come with life, like for example why God allows this to happen, is bad enough.

Can you give me a laymen version of what Alzheimers is and why it attacks some people and not others? And can you tell me how much closer you are to finding a cure? Thank you ahead of time.

In Christian love,

Tina Richards, Lovelady, Texas”

Dr. Jacobson responds…

Dear sister Richards,

I am delighted you took the time to write me about this gravely important topic, and I am more than happy to give you an answer.

Alzheimer’s Disease is caused by a build-up of proteins in the brain over time. But there is more to this story than just medical knowledge and terminology. Being that we are not secular, but Christian doctors, we are obliged by God to reject any evidences for anything that even remotely contradicts the Scriptures and any notion not already found in the Scriptures. We have done countless hours of scientific research on this disease, but since we are bound to the Bible as our sole authority, none of the scientific findings are important. Fasting, prayerful meditations, Scripture readings, and supplications to God are all that is important. As we have done on the issue of creation science and determining the age of the earth, so we have done here: we put our research away and just consulted the Bible and let that be our guide. What we found amazed us!

As you well know, Alzheimer’s disease takes away a person’s knowledge, will, and resolve of moral character, as well as their relationships with their family and everyone they know (or knew). This seems to put God in the position of not being able to judge victims of Alzheimer’s for their actions, thoughts, or words. But the Bible says we are always judged by our actions, thoughts, and words (2 Corinthians 5:10; Hebrews 4:12; Matthew 12:37)—and God’s Word cannot be wrong at any time (John 10:35). In the Bible, no one is ever unaccountable to God at any point or under any covenant, and that hasn’t changed today.

Unaccountability is a myth, just like a so-called “age of accountability,” an alleged “grace period” for children wherein God waits to start judging them until they are older. No such grace period exists. It’s not found anywhere in the Bible. Everyone is accountable to God at all times. But Alzheimer’s wipes out the rational faculties of the brain, so how can those afflicted with the condition still be held accountable? Has God forgotten about these poor souls? No, God forgets nothing. Everything He does is done for a purpose, and what this means is that when someone gets Alzheimer’s disease, God intentionally gives it to them for the express purpose of making them unable to repent.

You might be asking, “Where in Scripture do we have an example of God not letting someone repent?” We have a number of examples, one of which we'll look at here that parallels your mother’s case closely. It is the case of Hophne and Phinehas, whom God kept in a state of impenitence so he could feel justified in killing them for their sexual perversion…

“Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because the LORD would slay them.” (I Samuel 2:25)

When rebuked, God made sure of it that both Eli’s sons would not be receptive to the words of their wise father. Why? Because God wanted them dead—plain and simple. God took away their resolve to repent, and we had the same situation with your mother. She got Alzheimer’s and couldn’t repent anymore than Hophni and Phinehaz could.

Now your mother sounds like a sweet person. I’m sure she was. But you may have to accept that she had a side to her that you never saw.

Being a Christian, you know the kind of God we serve. The slightest little mistake sends him into a soul-crushing rage. He even keeps a logbook of every single sin we ever committed and won’t erase a single one without a holy bloodbath, siphoned from the veins of a Jewish zombie who hung on a tree all day. So it wouldn’t surprise me if, like sexually immoral Hophni and Phinehas, God struck your mother with a case of Alzheimer’s for an immoral phase, or a single immoral act committed earlier in her lifetime. Perhaps she served as a mild-manored sex-toy for soldiers in the Armed Forces? Perhaps she danced on tables in Reno, shaking her behind for the menfolk to the “hip” tunes of Little Louie and The Shoeshine Boys? I’m afraid we’ll never know the specifics—and maybe that’s for the best.

That your mother was a promiscuous trollop seems to be the only logical explanation we can draw as to why your mindless mother could no longer respond to the command to repent and confess her sins of go-go girl harlotry from years back (or any other sin for that matter). Too bad for her, just one unwashed sin will be enough to keep her out of heaven. Because she couldn’t continually repent and pray for forgiveness like the Bible demands (I John 1:7), and because she no longer had faith to please God anymore (Hebrews 11:6), she left this life to fulfill her destiny of being ripped apart in the ravenous jaws of hungry, Kujo-like demons in the lowermost bowels of Hell.

Nothing can be done for your mother now. It’s too late for her. But it’s not too late for you to learn from her errors by repenting of any skanky “catting around” you did in your youth before you end up losing your mind and are turned into a hell-bound automaton like she was. But don’t despair. Truth be told, we’re all in a lot of trouble—with the kind of God we serve, we all better hope we don’t die between prayers!

As to how close we are to finding a cure for the disease, we’re nowhere close. But that may well be a blasphemous question on your part – just as our trying to find a cure for Alzheimer’s may be a work of the devil on our part – since it is a known fact that God very often punishes his people with plagues.

Pray for us and we’ll pray for you. The more we beg, the happier God is!

In His Grace,

Dr. E.J. Jacobson

(JH)

The Essential Nuttiness of Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for the Supernatural

There's a new argument some Christians are trumpeting about. I heard an old “Infidel Guy Show” featuring Dr. Gary Habermas recently, and he suggests that near death experiences or NDEs are somehow evidence that there is a supernatural world.

This of course is nutty. First of all, Christians believe that all death experiences are near death, since they believe everyone will be resurrected at some point, and that Lazarus could come back to life after 3 days, Jesus could come back to life after slightly more than 36 hours, Jairus' daughter could come back to life ... and so on.

That a Christian would believe that any death is permanent gives the lie to their stated belief system.

None of the NDEs that they use as evidence these days are nearly so clear cut however, we certainly don't have a Lazarus in the bunch. These stories relate anecdotes of people having knowledge of things they couldn't have known unless they were having an out-of-body experience. One common example is of a woman in Seattle named only “Maria” who claims to have seen a tennis shoe on a hospital roof. The interesting thing about this story is that there is only one witness, and that witness is a social worker, Kimberly Clark Sharp who also had an NDE and who feels that Maria's tale was so compelling she started a foundation to study NDEs called IANDS. Obviously she's the paragon of objectivity though.

However, even this is also nutty. It's time for Christians who believe NDEs are evidence for Christianity to come clean.

First they need to explain exactly what the theory of the soul is. They may say that the soul is an entirely non-physical spiritual entity that is separate from the body. If so, they are obliged to explain what happens to it when someone undergoes anesthesia, or is in a coma, or simply falls asleep? Why then does their soul not show them things while it was out and and about? If it doesn't go out during other losses of consciousness why is the soul coming out during near death? What specific triggers allow a soul to come out of the body and how can they be reproduced?

Second, they need to explain where the soul is going. Is it going to heaven? Where is that? What rate should a soul travel at to reach it? Why do souls always go up? The direction to a fixed point that is not on the earth should vary significantly depending on the time of day, location on the globe, and the season – in fact if heaven is a location, by definition something between 40% and 50% of souls going there should go through the earth and we should be getting reports of veins of gold underneath hospitals as well.

If heaven is indeed a location – can we find it?

Third, they need to explain what mode of interface the soul uses to re-inject its spiritual knowledge back into the brain after the NDE and explain how this is impossible for the soul to do during other losses of consciousness -- head trauma, sleep, anesthesia, etc.

Finally, if Christianity, Hinduism, Islam or any other dominant religion is true, than actual, verifiable near death experiences should result in all people having them affirming the truth of the one true religion, why is this not the case?

I eagerly await the responses of Dr. Gary Habermas, or his boosters. However, pseudoscientific drivel usually just brings out more speculative idiocy, so I'm not optimistic.

In the interests of fairness, however, here's my explanation: Near death experiences are the properties of brains. Like deja vu and other consciousness related neural phenomena, they are primary reactions of the areas of the brain that create consciousness to specific stimuli (in this case hypoxia). The areas involved are primarily the superior and inferior colliculi, the peri-aqueductal grey, and certain other areas of the mesodiencephalon.

If my explanation is true, then under rigorous conditions, people undergoing near death experience should not become aware of any facts that they could not otherwise learn and should not be able to immediately recall them on returning to consciousness.

A simple test would be to place rotating images of seventy common animals on screens above emergency room areas where patients are resuscitated. The screens would be turned toward the ceiling. These images would rotate on a one per minute basis, controlled by a central computer. No member of the ER staff should know the purpose of the screens, what images were on the screens, or that the study was being done in regard to NDEs. Patients should be interviewed by disinterested 3rd parties shortly (within 1 hour) after regaining consciousness after a resuscitation. According to some figures about 12% of patients who are resuscitated will have an NDE.

After resuscitation, patients would be asked simply if they recalled the experience. These recollections could be compared to logs for the resuscitation and an independent 4th party could compare them to the logs of images for given beds in that room. Statistical tests could then be done to determine if any accurate responses were due to more than random chance, the study shouldn't take longer than 10 years given the 12% figure above.

My prediction is that patients will properly identify the situation in the room only rarely (there is a screen above the bed), and only by random chance will they correctly identify the animal image(s) that was/were present at the time they were having their arrest.

In addition, my prediction is that more than 99% of patients with NDEs will “travel up” and “see” things that are above their beds in relation to the earth and that less than 1% will “go down” and report seeing the basement or lower floors of the hospital.

Atheist, YOU ARE NOT ALONE!

Here's a You Tube video showing us some celebrity atheists. Who says atheists don't contribute to society? Ahhhh, but they're all going to hell, eh? Balderdash!



Thanks to Dan Barker on My Space for the link. If the music is offensive to Christians just turn it way down. There isn't any talking in it.

Cheers. ;-)

Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel

I've been doing some study of the Bible and ran across the problem of child sacrifice. Check it out, as well as this link, and that one.

Where is the 800 pound gorilla?

The formative period of Christianity was a turbulent time, to say the least. For several decades, Jews and gentiles, some Christianized, some not, belonged to the same diaspora synagogues. Many contentious issues show up in the New Testament, especially regarding the rules for the inclusion of gentiles. But there is a glaring omission. A pivotal battle which should have been occured didn't take place. To ignore it is literally like not noticing an 800 pound gorilla standing in the corner of a room. The discussion of the battle that wasn't has huge implications for Christian claims.

The writings of the apostle Paul are the earliest stream of Christian thinking available to us today. He wrote from circa 50 CE to perhaps the early 60's. Only the epistle to the Hebrews competes with Paul for primacy in time. Paul never wrote a fully developed theology, nor did he offer much description of the history of his exploits, but in his letters addressing issues troubling particular congregations, we can look over his shoulder and get a feel for the situations he was addressing. His insistence that gentiles be admitted to full membership in the synagogues set off a host of issues since many of them brought some of their customs with them.

Among the problems which distressed Paul were sexual immorality, eating food offered to idols, losing hope, improper observance of the supper, observance of holy days, inter-congregational relations, charity, and the understanding of the means of salvation. But no issue dominated his conversation more than that of the inclusion of gentile believers into the congregation without becoming fully observant Jews. Paul fancied himself as the man tasked with converting the gentiles and bringing them into the true Israel of God. His letter to the churches of Galatia, generally considered to be his first, is targeted directly to this issue.

In the Epistle to the congregations of Galatia Paul takes issue with Judaizers, emmissaries from Jerusalem, who are insisting that his converts become fully observant Jews. The initiation rite of circumcision was used as the term standing for adherance to the whole Torah including following kosher rules for eating, ceremonial washing, wearing proper clothing, observing holy days, etc. While some of the gentile converts to Paul's preaching were willing to follow some of the laws of the Torah, some were not. And the biggest issue was that of circumcision itself. This rite of entrance into the covenant with the God of Abraham was obviously not something an adult male would wish to undergo, sans anesthesia. Yet the Judaizers contending with Paul were convincing some of his converts to undergo the procedure and to become subject to all the rules of the Torah. Those who were resistant were under pressure to submit. Paul was apoplectic.

Historical context must be appreciated at this point. It must be remembered that the crisis with the Greek king Antiochus IV was fresh in the mind of every Jew. In the 160's BCE, in his conquest of Judea, Antiochus disallowed circumcision under pain of death. He intended to force his subjects to receive the blessings of his superior Greek culture, and destroying the temple-state culture of the Jews was paramount in his mind. Parents who circumcised their sons on the 8th day were routinely killed. Many followed the prohibition out of fear. Others continued to circumcize and rose in rebellion eventually throwing off the rule of Antiochus and brutally re-establishing proper Torah observance and the necessity to circumcize (commemorated in the festival of Channukah). Many of those who refused circumcision were circumcized forcibly. Others were exiled, many to the region of Galilee. To the Jews, these events were like yesterday. The issues were fresh. The necessity to be fully observant was no longer a question. The requirements were clear and final. The religious police were actively enforcing the rules.

To Paul, this was a crisis of ultimate importance. To his rivals, the argument was foundational. One must be a full Jewish convert in order to find inclusion within the covenant community. Paul argued strenuously against that necessity, stating that faith alone was sufficient; that the promise to Abraham to be a blessing to all nations (gentiles) through his seed was to be enjoyed without submission to the Torah.

Paul indicates that he had gone to Jerusalem to meet with the pillars, specifically Cephas and James, and received their blessing on the inclusion of gentiles based only on their faith and willingness to abstain from various immoralities. Circumcision and adherance to the entire Torah would not be required. From Paul's point of view, his arguments carried the day.

But as important as the issue of Torah observance was, it pales beside the issue which defined Judaism. That issue is the nature and identity of God. This issue is fundamental to Judaism and preceeds observance to the laws in that the laws proceed from God, and he is recognized and defined in the most important prayer of Judaism. This prayer, and the identity of the 800 pound gorilla standing unnoticed in the corner, is known as the SHEMA.

The Shema is the prayer which begins and ends the day of every observant Jew. It is recited at the time of death. It is the recognition that there is one God, transcendent, above all, and requiring of recognition and obedience as he calls his people into covenant with himself. Here is thereading of the Shema:

שמע ישראל יהוה אלהינו יהוה אחד
Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.
Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. Deut 6:4

Note that the name of God YHWH is rendered "Adonai" (the Lord) so as to avoid accidentally pronouncing the holy name. To observant Jews, the person of God is frequently called "Ha Shem" which in Hebrew means "The Name." The name of God is not to be pronounced, so holy is it. The Shema defines Jews as monotheists. This cannot in any way be minimized. They believe in the one God, the Most High, the Almighty, The Lord, and there is none like him. No image can represent him. Nothing on earth can be worshipped. There is nothing of correspondence between YHWH and his creation.

Now, referring back to the crisis of Greek rule under Antiochus IV, the event which triggered the bloody rebellion of the Maccabean Jews was when Antiochus put his own image in the most holy place in the temple. Antiochus promoted the cult of the living ruler. He proclaimed himself to be the incarnation of Zeus on earth, the supreme God in human flesh. He demanded that the Jews offer worship and sacrifice to his image. The Jews would have none of it. That a man would be proclaimed to be God was the ultimate abomination. The Jews under Judas Maccabee rose up and killed both the Jewish collaborators and the foreign soldiers, reinstituting the worship of the one true God and ejecting the image of the man who claimed to be the incarnation of God.

Why is this an issue, an 800 pound gorilla which no one wants to notice? Because Paul and presumably others were proclaiming that Jesus was God. Next to this claim, the issue of whether or not to circumcize would pale into insignificance. If there was one issue which should have been the ultimate point of contention in the early Christian proclamation, this was it. Where were the Jews ready to take up stones against Paul for blasphemy claiming that a man was God? Where was Paul's argumentation defending the proposition that God had come to earth and lived as a man? Where is the discussion with the Pillars in Jerusalem over this issue? Was the issue of eating food sacrificed to idols really more fundamental than the claim that God had been recently incarnated? A war had recently been fought over that very claim. To claim that anyone or anything in the material realm could have ontological correspondence with the Most High was anathema.

No issue could be expected to come to the fore more than the issue of identifying Jesus as God. Yet, it didn't happen. What are we to make of this conundrum? There are several possibilities:

POSSIBILITY 1. Paul never claimed divinity for Jesus, therefore no battle over monotheism would be expected:

This is not a credible suggestion based upon clear statements from Paul's authentic epistles. Some examples:

"Who (the Son) is the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature: for by him were all things created, that are in heaven, that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him and for him: he is before all things and by him all things consist." Col 1:15-18. This sounds rather God-like. The Son is being presented as the Creator of Genesis.

"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God." Phil 2:5,6. Literally "not something to be held onto." This is in the hymn showing the Son descending and ascending. Again, the claim of divinity for Jesus is clear.

It is apparent that Paul did proclaim the divinity of Jesus. Possibility number 1 is thus null and void.

POSSIBILITY 2. There was a battle over the claim that Jesus was God, however, the record has been lost:

That something so fundamental could have gone unmentioned in the book of Galatians is difficult to believe. Could there have been a battle not mentioned elsewhere in Paul? There are at least two epistles of Paul which are lost to history. His epistle to the Colossians mentions an epistle to the church of Laodicea. We have no information as to its contents. The second epistle to the Corinthians mentions "a letter of tears" which does not seem to be a match with first Corinthians.

Since these have been lost, and since others not mentioned could have been lost, it is possible that a great discussion over the issue of Jesus as God could have ensued, but it cannot be known. If God had been providencially protecting his word, not allowing these letters to be lost might have been a good place to start (this has implications for the doctrine of innerancy). This possibility, however, is difficult to maintain, for it can be safely assumed that such a discussion would have touched all the epistles which were preserved. It is simply too fundamental an issue to have gone unmentioned in the foundational period of Christianity. To claim that a man was God incarnated would have been the ultimate hot button issue and an offense to Judaism. Silence on the question indicates that the battle did not take place.

Therefore we must conclude that possibility 2, while not absolutely falsifiable, is overwhelmingly unlikely.

POSSIBILITY 3. Paul did not assume that Christ Jesus had lived on earth as a Jew just a few years prior to his own conversion. If he did not consider Jesus to have been a man, no battle over monotheism would be expected:

This is not as far-fetched as it may seem at first gasp. Mark's Gospel, the first documented mention of Jesus living in the recent past, would not be written for many years after Paul's epistles. It is nothing more than an inferrance to assume that Paul was envisioning the Jesus of the gospels. He himself is silent on the details of the "Jesus of history."

The questions must be asked, Is it legitimate to read into Paul the beliefs of others from a later time? Since later writers referred to Jesus "of Nazareth" is it a necessary implication that Paul had that personage in mind? Orthodoxy would answer yes to both questions. Those accepting a priori that all writings which were collected into the New Testament were inspired, non-contradictory, and are different aspects of a single truth will feel free to harmonize Paul with the gospels, but if we examine Paul in isolation, his Jesus inhabits a very different universe than did Jesus of Nazareth. Just because Christians of later years would choose to compile a collection of disparate documents together, does not necessarily indicate that they belong together nor that their authors shared a common outlook.

Paul had much to say about Jesus. His Jesus, though, does not share much commonality with the Jesus of the gospels. Imagine for a moment that Mark's gospel had never been written, or like some of Paul's letters, lost. What would we know of Jesus from reading Paul and the other epistle writers? The obvious answer is nothing aside from the activities of a descending and ascending heavenly savior who has created a new Israel through faith.

Where, for instance, does one find in Paul:

A. Any mention of the birth of Jesus
B. The virgin Mary
C. Joseph
D. The family of Jesus
E. The birthplace of Jesus
F. His hometown of Nazareth (a town which may not have existed at the time)
G. His baptism by John in the Jordan river
H. His temptation in the wilderness
I. His healing miracles
J. His exorcisms
K. His preaching ministry in Galilee
L. His cleanshing of the temple
M. His disputes with the Pharisees in the synagogues
N. His disciples
O. His betrayal by Judas
P. His struggle in Gethsemane
Q. His arrest
R. His trial
S. His questioning by Herod
T. His crucifixion in Jerusalem
U. The two thieves
V. His burial in Joseph's tomb
W. The empty tomb
X. The resurrection appearances to the women
Y. The great commission
Z. The ascension before a crowd of witnesses

Many more details of the life of the Jesus of the Gospels are missing from Paul of course, but we've run out of alphabet. That which we are touching on here is The Pauline Problem. The problem is that Paul never locates the activities of Jesus in a particular historical period nor in a particular geographical location. He seems to be completely unaware of the gospel details of Jesus of Nazareth. He specifically says that he received his information about Jesus through direct revelation or interpretation of the Jewish scriptures, not by oral tradition or knowledge via human agency. His Jesus operates in the cosmos.

Is it possible that the reason the issue of Jewish monotheism didn't come to the fore is because Paul wasn't making pronouncements which would be in conflict with it? If that is the case, what would the explanation be?

Judaism in that period was very eclectic, and freely made use of hellenistic philosophy. For instance, God was seen as being so transcendent that some intermediary form was needed to communicate with man. It was not seen as a contradiction of belief in the one God to envision "emanations" or "aspects" of God acting in lower regions of the heavens, even treating them as somewhat separate persons.

Some Jewish writers and poets of the period freely spoke of Wisdom, or Sophia, as an aspect of God, even as the feminized consort of God, or the Spirit of God. She was pictured as being sent forth by God to communicate to man but was rejected and returned to the highest heaven. In some instances she was pictured as being a virgin mother to an anointed (Christ) Son of God who was a savior to those who believe. Philo, a contemporary of Paul and platonic philosopher/theologian and historian, spoke of the logos (word) of God who was God's agent in the creation of the world and cosmos. God Himself was seen as being too transcendent to deal directly with the lower material world; he used an intermediary to create, but still an aspect of Himself. Philo's concepts were the source for the preamble to John's gospel, "in the beginning was the 'logos' (the word) and the logos was with God and the logos was God. Through him were all things made that were made."

The Jewish religious literature of the period is rich with speculation and contemplation of the aspects of God descending through the heavens for the benefit of man. Diaspora Judaism was living in a Greek universe, and was immersed in Platonic thought. The concepts from that literature were the basis for many of the foundational ideas which we find in the NT and other early Christian literature. Many of the Jewish texts eloquently describing the saving aspects of the personified emanations of God sound utterly Christian until one notices that they are not referring to a man named Jesus. Some of the literature makes much of the coming of God's holy spirit and savior and uses the term "the anointed" which in Greek is simply "Christos." Paul's heavenly savior has an apropros name in "Jesus" which literally means Yahweh Saves. To refer to him in Paul's manner as "Christ Jesus" would not be foreign to the Jewish literature of the period, meaning the Anointed One through whom Yahweh Saves. There is no reason in Paul's context that "Christ Jesus" cannot be a title as much as a name. Paul's "Son of God" character did not even receive the name "Jesus" (savior) until he had ascended back to God's side. Phil 2:5-11 (nothing remotely resembling the naming of a baby in Bethlehem)

It is difficult for us moderns to get into the ancient mindset with a seven layered heaven with God in the 7th and highest layer and intermediary levels descending until the first heaven just above us. But Paul believed in it. He even claimed to have known someone who had been to the third level of heaven 2 Cor 12:2, perhaps he was speaking of himself in the third person. The concept of descending and ascending aspects of God was a commonplace to the first century Jewish mind. Aspects of God such as the logos, the spirit, Wisdom, or the son, could easily move through the different levels. The lower the descent, the more they would take on material characteristics and become less spiritual so as to be more understandable to man.

If Paul were referring to Christ Jesus as a descending and ascending Son-of-God savior figure rather than to a man, the problem ceases to exist. We wouldn't expect to find contention over monotheism if Paul were not envisioning a recently living man as God incarnate. Shema, the 800 pound gorilla, would no longer be in the room. Paul would simply be extrapolating the implications of Jewish thought already in vogue in his milieu. He would also be in harmony with the Greek-Egyptian hero/dying and rising sons of God common in the mystery religions of the era; Dionysus, Attis, Osiris, Adonis, Bacchus, et al.

To summarize, the absence of a battle over monotheism vis a vis claims to the divinity of Jesus must be explained. It is too fundamental to first century Jewish though to just gloss over. The need to answer the "WHY?" is overwhelming. The explanation must fall into one of three categories: Early Christians didn't think of Jesus as being divine; The story of the intense battle has been lost; Paul wasn't identifying Jesus as a man who had been his contemporary in Palestine. Only the third theory offers a coherant resolution to the question.

Bart Willruth
March 2, 2008

The Argument from Personal Experience

The argument from personal experience is used by most apologists from Ray Comfort to William Lane Craig. Craig says "Of course, ever since my conversion, I believed in the resurrection of Jesus on the basis of my personal experience, and I still think this experiential approach to the resurrection is a perfectly valid way to knowing that Christ has risen. It’s the way that most Christians today know that Jesus is risen and alive."

The problem for such apologeticists is show how the believer can critically determine when the personal experience she has with God is accurately reflecting the wishes of God, and not those of a hallucination brought on by drugs, delusion, psychosis or social alienation.

Is there any reliable way for believers to warn off people like Andrea Yates, Dena Schlosser or Seung Hi Cho? If there is, why don't apologists include this sort of caveat when talking about the argument from personal experience?

It seems to me that believers and nonbelievers alike have an immense interest in the cessation of religiously motivated killings. I have heard of many ecumenical councils that brought together disparate leaders of many faiths. The most recent one I recall was in Jerusalem, where leaders of Islam, Christianity and Judaism got together to denounce homosexuality. Yet as far as I know, believers have never even discussed the development of a reliable universal method to prevent deluded believers from killing someone.

Another Person Walks Away From Christianity!

Not long ago I received the following email from Ed Owens, who lives in Missouri and attends a Church of Christ there with his wife, who still believes. Here’s what he said:

I'm a 50 year old man from Missouri who preached for almost 30 years for the Church of Christ. Several months ago I read Joe Holman’s article at minister turns atheist and began my study of why he would do such a thing. I am now convinced by my own studies of the absurdity of the book called the Bible. My family on both sides are all members of the church and are now giving me pure hell about it. I'm seeing a psychologist at the request of all the family. They seem to think she will reconvert me, I guess. That's their knee-jerk response; I must be coo coo or something like that.

In another email he added:

I was raised in a Church of Christ family and was baptized at the age of 19 by my sibling brother who is an Evangelist for the Church of Christ. We are the one cup one loaf no Sunday School group. My wife also has the same roots in the Church and still does. My brother and I married sisters. He got the younger and I got the older. He is eight years older than me. My wife is seven years and a few months older than I am. She was married before to the same guy twice while away from the church. When she returned and confessed her unfaithfulness to the church and asked God's forgiveness she was reinstated as a member in good standing.

I began preaching in 1978 at the tender age of 20 and gave it all fervor and conviction that I could muster. My Dad was a preacher for the CofC and an Elder for many years so you could say I was following in his steps as was two of my siblings besides me.

I came across Joe Holman's article on the internet entitled “minister turns atheist” and I couldn't help but wonder what would posses someone who was once a minister to turn to atheism. To make a long story short I studied his arguments and many other atheist arguments and found the Scriptures severely lacking in credibility and accuracy. I've been in touch with Joe and have corresponded quite often in the past few months.

I left the church and had it announced last Wednesday evening of my intentions. It came as quite a shock to some but not to all. My poor wife came unhinged when she began to discover my intentions. She has settled down somewhat in the past week. I told her I would attend with her on Sundays if she wanted and of course she does. How long that will last I have no idea. It is very difficult to set through a service and listen to a message that is full of error and conjecture and not be tempted to jump up and declare, "It is a bunch of hooey!" You know what hooey is, don't you? I thought so. DUNG! MANURE! KA-KA!

When the de-conversion started I was devastated!!! I felt like I had been lied to all my life. I was raised to believe the scriptures were without error and had no contradictions whatsoever. When I took the blinders off and began to see the multitude of errors and contradictions I became angry and tried to point them out to my Evangelist brother, who by the way had been my mentor all my life, and how he might see the truth of all this. You can imagine the result. He began to tell me how deluded I was and not to read that junk, as he called it, it would just confuse me and warp my mind. I tried time after time to illustrate the errors to him but he would not hear of it. He and I no longer speak to each other. He's refused to answer my email because he can't control the situation by his overpowering personality and make me shut up!

I've tried subtly to show others the errors and to no avail. I've even been told to quit trying to proselyte members. Any advice you can give me I sure would appreciate it!!! My wife belittles me at every turn claiming that I'm headed for Hell if I don't change and repent. My brother likewise gives me fits. He is an Evangelist for the church and at one time my dearest and closest friend, past tense!

I told him that until he put his foot down they wouldn’t leave him alone, so he composed the following letter and read it after last Wednesday's services:

It has come to my attention that some folks believe I have lost my mind. I believe the term was mentally ill. Let me assure you each and everyone that is not the case.

I stand before you this evening to set the record straight. I AM NOT MENTALLY ILL.

I am quite sane, I assure you. If this does not persuade you then you may call my analyst, who I have been seeing at the request of family and friends, and will verify what I have just said. I have given written legal permission to divulge my mental state.

People sincerely disagree on a host of issues, from who should be the next President, to which diet is best for losing weight. No one ever thinks to say that people who disagree about such issues is mentally ill. So why should that be the case here? Many of us have decided to walk away from the Christian faith, including former Church of Christ preachers Farrell Till, Joe Holman and John W. Loftus. I no longer believe for the same reasons you don't accept Islam or Mormonism, and no one considers those who don't believe them to be mentally ill for doing so.

Now, that having been said, I wish to make some things crystal clear so that not a single person misunderstands why I am up here.

1. I am no longer a member of the church.

2. I do NOT need reconverting PLEASE RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO TRY!

3. I will not debate, verbally converse, or argue with ANYONE on the issues surrounding my decision to leave the church.

4. If you feel so disposed to chastise me, I reserve the right to respond in kind. When you do, realize that you are only reinforcing my decision by not showing that you care for me as a person.

5. I still love each and every one of you irregardless of your feelings toward me. I really do.

6. I may attend services from time to time out of respect, but I will be attending less and less, since it would be no different for you if you were asked to attend a Jewish service, which you don't believe. I admire your convictions even if I do not share in them.

7. I have been accused of trying to de-convert members with emails. I submit material for consideration by email and when I am told to stop, I DO!

In conclusion, I understand your concern for my spiritual well being. You have voiced it and I have heard. Now, please stop. I am assuming full responsibility for my own actions from this point forward.

You will not appreciate my decision I am sure, but you are going to have to learn to accept it because I am confident upon the ground I stand.

Then the shit hit the fan. Here’s what he wrote me last night afterwards:

I read the letter to the congregation after services had concluded and it was instant fireworks! My brother had to put in his two cents worth.

He claimed the analyst was my own decision, which was a lie, and then shouted that I was dis-fellowshipped. I thought that was really strange since I had just announced my own leaving of the faith. I asked if I was banned from the church assemblies and he said no, there was no need for me to attend ‘cause I would just be a hypocrite by doing so. I should have called him on the carpet right in front of everyone about not following scriptural process of dis-fellowship, but I didn't, I just walked out.

I know I did the right thing but now my wife has no intention of attending that congregation any longer. She says she will attend where my daughter goes.

Thanks again for your support.

Why in the hell do Christians have to make it so hard on us when we no longer believe? I’m proud of Ed. He did what was necessary and right. He's one of our unsung heroes. And I’m also proud of his wife for loving Ed enough to leave that church over it.

He's reading this. Any encouragement or helpful advice would be appreciated.

Does the Recent Pew Forum Data Undermine My Outsider Test for Faith?

Over at Atheism Sucks Mariano is crowing about the atheist "failed" argument that people adopt the religion of their parents, based on the recent Pew Forum Poll, which says: “28% of American adults have left the faith of their childhood for another one. And that does not even include those who switched from one Protestant denomination to another; if it did, the number would jump to 44%.” If correct, this would tend to undermine the basis for the Outsider Test for Faith that I’ve developed, where I ask people to test their faith as if they were an outsider to it, since that’s how they test these other faiths, as outsiders.

However, this poll data does not, I repeat, does not undermine the sociological data that what faith a person adopts is because of "when and where they were born." Our parents have an extremely significant role to play in what faith we originally adopt. This is indisputable regardless of this new poll data. People still adopt the religion of their parents. The fact that they leave it later on in life says nothing against this sociological data, which is proven over and over again in separate geographical areas around the globe.

What's the difference in America then? The difference is that we are now more than ever embracing syncretism, pluralism and pragmatism. These beliefs are the new "religion" in American culture, and so it should not surprise us in the least if American people abandon the religion of their parents. More and more people are treating religion like they do with diet and sex. Variety is the spice of life when it comes to these things. So also is religion. Our American culture doesn't think there is much of a difference between many of the religions. So it stands to reason people will switch church affiliations for a better, warmer pew, with a better building, and where their friends from work attend, that has a better sermon or better music. After all, the moral message still seems to be the same, and that’s what more and more Americans think the value of religion provides anyway.

So until someone can dispute that children adopt the religion of their parents, or until someone can dispute that the dominant beliefs among Americans are syncretism, pluralism and pragmatism, this poll data has no effect on my argument.

Noah, John, Luke, Paul, and Mary

When God speaks to you, He asks you to listen to Him, believe what He says, and follow His instructions. It is a sin to disobey God. Kierkegaard has described the ways that one can follow God when he gives a command that violates your morality in Fear and Trembling. Through its four tellings of the story of Abraham and Isaac, Kierkegaard explores the relationship between what he labels the ethical and what he labels the religious. In the book, Kierkegaard explicitly states that in his opinion one can do something that is ethically wrong, but religiously right.

Kierkegaard felt that one must have an existential stance to follow God in spite of one's ethics. That the voice of God trumped all other characteristics. He has been profoundly influential, and was a major inspiration to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who further refined Kierkegaard's ideas in The Cost of Discipleship.

It is interesting to note that in no description of the religious stance did Kierkegaard describe a method to distinguish between hallucinations and the voice of God. In fact, to my knowledge there has never been a clear instruction given to Christians that allows them reliably to distinguish between the voice of God and a hallucination.

Yet this is not a minor point.

In one cell in a mental institution in Texas, there are two women whom killed their children to please God. The first is Andrea Yates. She believed God had told her to have as many children as is possible, and soon she decided that she was unworthy to bring them up. Her five children, named after Bible characters: Noah, John, Luke, Paul, and Mary, were all at risk of hell because of her failures. In 2001, she became convinced that the only way she could save their eternal souls was to do away with them before they could sin.

A psychiatric examination was ordered for Andrea. One psychiatrist, featured on Mugshots, asked Andrea what she thought would happen to the children. She indicated that she believed God would "take them up." He reversed the question and asked what might have happened if she had not taken their lives.

"I guess they would have continued stumbling," which meant "they would have gone to hell."

He wanted to know specifically what they had done to give her the idea they weren't behaving properly. She responded that they didn't treat Rusty's mother well, adding that, "They didn't do things God likes."

Andrea believed the only way her children could have eternal life that wasn't torment was if she killed all five of them. She believed this after careful study, prayer and consultation with her church. Andrea presumed she knew the mind of God and that he was speaking to her through the testimony of her church and family.

In the cell with Andrea is Dena Schlosser. Dena cut the arms off her baby in 2004. She saw a news report on television about a boy being mauled to death by a lion and decided that it was a sign of the apocalypse. She then heard God's voice telling her to remove her own baby's arms and then her own. After putting on the song “He Touched Me”, she cut the baby's arms off, resulting in his death.

It is clear that both Andrea Yates and Dena Schlosser are ill individuals. Yet it is remarkable that there are two women who did this within 3 years of one another in the same state in America. It is also clear that the primary cause of both of these unbelievable acts of filicide is that both women believed God was very active in the world, that they knew what he wanted them to do, and that they would be punished severely if they failed to do it. My questions to those who believe that atheism is dangerous, that it allows you to “do whatever you want,” and that universal moral values are upheld by religion are these:

Why can God not make it plain that it is wrong to kill your children? Why can he not make that plain broadly, by putting it in bright letters somewhere on every 3rd or 4th page on the books he writes, dictates or inspires? And why can he not make it plain specifically by speaking that information into the diseased brains of psychotics who are already hearing voices and aren't likely to be believed by another living human regardless of what they say God told them?

What possible good comes to the world from the actions of these mothers?

The Answers or the Quest

Those of us who have moved beyond fundamentalism or even Christianity need to help others understand that our changes are spiritual growth, not spiritual abandonment. In fact, I would argue that they honor the moral heart of Christianity more than any adherence to traditional orthodoxies ever can. Let me explain:

One of the most central themes of Judaism and then Christianity is an ongoing hunger, a quest to understand God more deeply and completely. For over 3000 years, our spiritual ancestors have been working hard to figure out answers to life’s most important questions: What is good? What is real (often framed as what is God)? And how can we live in moral community with each other?

Each generation of our ancestors received a package of handed down answers to these questions. This package contained the very best answers their ancestors had to the questions. But those answers were always imperfect. They had bits of timeless wisdom and insights, but they also had bits of culture and superstition that had somehow gotten God’s name on them. In order to grow, our ancestors took these received traditions and asked: What here is mere human construction, what is superstition, and what are my very best judgments about the divine realities that lie beyond the human piece?

The first Hebrew scholars, the writers of the Torah or Pentateuch did this. They sifted through the earlier religions of the Akkadians and Sumerians. They kept parts (some of which are in the Bible to this day), and other parts they discarded as mere culture, superstition or even idolatry.

In the New Testament, the same thing happened. In the gospels, Jesus said that the Law had become an idol in itself. What is an idol? An idol is a something man-made, something that seeks to represent or articulate god-ness and thus to provide a glimpse of that Ultimate Reality. But then, the object itself gets given the attributes of divinity: perfection and completeness, and it becomes the object of absolute devotion.

Instead of simply accepting the old package of answers, the writers of the gospels offered a new understanding of God and goodness. They didn’t throw away everything; in fact they kept quite a bit from the earlier Hebrew religion and from the religions that surrounded them. But they took responsibility to sort through it. They gathered the pieces that that seemed truly wise and sacred to them, and they told a new story about our relationship to God and to each other.

During the Protestant Reformation this process happened again in a very big way. Even thought Martin Luther and John Calvin had some horrible bigoted and violent ideas, in their own context, they genuinely were trying to cleanse Christianity of what they saw as accumulated superstitions, things like worshiping saints and relics, paying indulgences, the absolute authority of the Pope, and the church putting God’s name on the political structure that kept kings and nobles at the top with other people serving them. They scraped away these superstitions, until they got back to a set of religious agreements that had been made a long time before, in the 4th Century when the church decided what writings would go in the Bible and what the creeds would be. Then they stopped there, thinking they had found the most true understanding of God.

But Christianity just kept on growing. During the 18th and 19th Centuries, scientific learning mushroomed with discoveries in fields as diverse as linguistics, anthropology, psychiatry, physics, and biology. By the beginning of the 20th century, with all this new information about ourselves and the world around us, many Christian theologians said, “We need to rethink our understanding of the Bible, Jesus, and the Christian faith.” A new phase of Reformation was born. This generation decided that they should examine every bit of Christianity for signs of human fingerprints. They went way back and opened up even the agreements that had been made by those Church councils of the 4th century. the ones who decided what would be in the Bible. They even began looking at other religions with new eyes and seeing bits of wisdom there.

When this happened, some people fought back in defense of the fundamental doctrines that had dominated Christianity for almost 1500 years, the doctrines that are laid out in the creeds: one god in three persons, original sin and universal sin, the virgin birth, the unique divinity of Jesus, cleansing of sin through blood sacrifice, salvation through right belief, a literal resurrection, a literal heaven and hell. A series of pamphlets entitled "The Fundamentals" said that these beliefs were absolute and off limits to questions. From the title of these pamphlets we get the word "fundamentalism." The fundamentalists said, “If you don’t believe these things, then you can’t call yourself a Christian and besides you are going to hell.” They said that their kind of Christianity was the most true because it was the closest to the religion of our ancestors.

I used to think that, too. But now I realize I was mistaken. By trying to keep the same beliefs as our ancestors, fundamentalism forced me to betray the very heart of Christianity: the quest to better know and serve a God who is Love and Truth. To keep the traditional beliefs of our ancestors we have to abandon their tradition of spiritual inquiry, of “wrestling with God.” We can accept their answers or we can accept their quest, but we cannot accept both

I now affirm that the best way to honor the Christian tradition, to honor the writers of the Pentateuch, and the writers of the gospels and the reformers—and ultimately to honor the Ground of Love and Truth-- is to do as they have done. We need to take the set of teachings they handed down to us, their very best effort to answer life’s most important questions. Then, just like them, we need to continue examining those answers in light of what we know about ourselves and the world around us. For each of us this is a sacred responsibility and a sacred gift, the gift and responsibility of spiritual growth.

It might seem to some like I have abandoned the path I was on, to love and serve God. But I haven’t. I am still on that very same path, only my understanding of God has grown deeper and wider. That is why the songs and preaching and churches that used to fit for me don’t fit any more. And, in fact, even the word “God” seems terribly humanoid and limiting as a term for the astounding Reality that spiritual and scientific inquiry allow us to glimpse.

Religious people, at least Christians, often draw boundaries between believers and non-believers. So do former Christians. But I think we need to talk publicly about a different sort of differentiation, one between those who honor the answers of our spiritual ancestors and those who honor their quest. Even within the boundaries of tribal religion, there are people who honor the former and people who honor the latter. I suspect there are also many who would move from the answers to the quest if only they understood the story at the heart of their own tradition.

Reason and Protestant Christianity in Their Own Words

I have long found William Lane Craig's proclamation of a "reasonable faith" to be deliciously ironic. Since The 95 Theses were first nailed on the door of Castle Church, Martin Luther made it abundantly clear what the role of reason was in the Protestant faith. Note that this was not some uneducated medieval wretch in the 12th century; this is the highly educated Augustinian monk, professor at a prestigious university, and probably the most important founder of the Protestant movement. Shall we take a look?

"Reason is the Devil’s greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil’s appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom… Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism… She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets."

― Martin Luther, Erlangen Edition v. 16, pp. 142‐148

"People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon…This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us [Joshua 10:13] that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth."

― Table Talks in 1539

"Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but—more frequently than not—struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God."

― Table Talks in 1569

"Reason should be destroyed in all Christians."

"Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his Reason."

"There is on earth among all dangers no more dangerous thing than a richly endowed and adroit reason…Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed."

― The Faith of a Heretic

"Heretics are not to be disputed with, but to be condemned unheard, and whilst they perish by fire, the faithful ought to pursue the evil to its source, and bathe their heads in the blood of the Catholic bishops, and of the Pope, who is the devil in disguise."

― Riffel, Kirchengeschichte

And the most delisciously ironic of all:

"Idiots, the lame, the blind, the dumb, are men in whom the devils have established themselves: and all the physicians who heal these infirmities, as though they proceeded from natural causes, are ignorant blockheads…"

In the interest of space, I have left out multitudes of quotes where Luther attributes many things known at the time to be naturalistic as being devils, demons, and witchery (not to mention his virulent anti-Semitism and misogyny).

Protestant Christianity was founded in direct opposition to reason. And now people claim to be able to reconcile the two? It would be funny were it not so sad.

Is This How We Should Do Exegesis?: A Biblical Case Study

Here's but one example of how the New Testament uses a mistranslated word from which a faulty interpretation of the Old Testament is made, adapted from a previous post and highlighted for discussion. Is this not stupid? Is this not a problem for inerrancy?

Let's take a good look at Psalm 8:3-8 (New American Standard Bible, NASB). What we'll find is a mistranslated word, a misinterpreted Psalm, and a pre-scientific cosmology:

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,

The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;

The Psalmist is not conceiving of the type of universe we do today, as we’ve seen…by far.

What is man that You take thought of him,

And the son of man that You care for him?

Notice this is a case of Hebrew parallelism for future reference below. The first phrase is paralleled by the second one, even though no parallel phrase is exactly similar in all respects. “Man" = "son of man”; “thought of” = “care for.” This is basic wisdom literature exegesis here.

So if by the word “man” the Biblical writer thought of the phrase “son of man,” then this same phrase, when applied to Jesus, must mean little more than what it means here. If, however, the phrase “son of man,” when applied to Jesus, means “son of God,” then all human beings should be considered "sons of God.”

According to Bruce Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, "the phrase such as 'son of X' means 'having the qualities of X.' Thus the 'son of man' would mean having the qualities of man, hence human." [Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, 2nd ed, p. 408).

In any case, Hebrews 2 is obviously a misinterpretation of this Psalm, since Hebrews claims Psalm 8 is speaking exclusively about Jesus as the “son of man” in comparison to angels (a comparison made throughout Hebrews), whereas Psalm 8 is really speaking about how human beings rule over creation, who are just a little lower than God himself in status. The Hebrews writer misunderstood Psalms 8 to be primarily messianic, about Jesus, but there is no reason to read it as such in the Psalm itself…none!

The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures (2:784), admits of the Hebrews writer: "No doubt the familiar messianic designation “Son of Man” (v. 6) contributed to this understanding." Or, shall I more correctly say, misunderstanding!

Yet You have made him a little lower than God,

And You crown him with glory and majesty!

Again, a Hebrew parallelism. God is crowned with unique glory and majesty that none other receives, so also God crowns man with glory and majesty no other creation receives.

Here’s how the Hebrew writer understood this verse, according to The Bible Knowledge Commentary: "while total dominion over the created order is not yet His, Jesus is at last seen as crowned with glory and honor because He suffered death. The One so crowned was made a little lower than the angels for the very purpose of dying, that is, that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone. This last statement is best understood as the purpose of the Lord’s being made lower than the angels in His Incarnation." Again, there is no reason to read the Psalm this way…none! If anyone else misinterpreted a text in this manner Christians themselves would laugh at him or her.

Psalm 8:5 uses the word Elohim translated "God" (NASB) whereas the Hebrews writer followed the Septuagint (LXX) in translating this word αγγελους “angels.” Thus in Psalms 8 we find that human beings were created as God’s ruler-representatives on earth, over all his creation, although lower than God. But in Hebrews we read that it's Jesus who was made lower than “the angels” in the incarnation, so that he could redeem mankind. Thus Hebrews interpretation is fundamentally flawed based on this mistranslated word.

Evangelicals want to affirm the fact that since the author of Hebrews (2:7) renders the word "Elohim" (God or gods) as αγγελους (angels) it establishes the intended meaning of Psalm 8:5. But this opinion is nothing different than saying: "The Bible said it; I believe it; that settles it." It’s just illegitimate to claim to have a correct understanding of an original Hebrew word by referring exclusively to a Greek translation of that word. It's also illegitimate to take a particular passage out of context and claim to properly understand that passage. Hebrews 2 is clearly based on a misinterpretation of the text of Psalm 8, as well as a mistranslation of a word in it. Is the LXX inspired when it translates "Elohim" (God or gods) as αγγελους (angels)? Tell me! And does inspiration guarantee that what the Bible says is accurate even when it can clearly be shown to be incorrect? How is this even possible?

Biblical scholar Hector Avalos informs me about the translation of Elohim and wrote this:

The translation of 'elohim’ as "god(s)" in Psalm 8:5 (English; verse numbers may differ in some translations) is not controversial anymore, and is accepted in the following translations:

NRSV: "lower than God."
REV: "less than a god"
NAB: "less than a god"
NJB: "less than a god."

To be more literally accurate, "less than the gods" would be better because Elohim is plural.

This is also the opinion of Mitchell Dahood, the Catholic biblical scholar, in his commentary on the Psalms I:-1-50 (Anchor Bible; New York: Doubleday, 1965), p. 51. He translates it, "Yet you have made him a little less than the gods" on p. 48.

Man was created a little lower than the gods, which reflects a polytheistic religious viewpoint. In order to soften the polytheistic implications of this the translators do some interesting things with this Hebrew word.

You make him to rule over the works of Your hands;

You have put all things under his feet,

Again Hebrew parallelism. Notice the phrase “works of Your hands” here. That phrase can only parallel the earlier phrase “the work of Your fingers” in verse 3 above, and this refers to “the heavens,” which include “the moon and the stars.”

Only one evangelical conclusion about the central role of man can come from for a correct reading of Psalm 8, human beings are the highest creation, above angels, and any other alien life form.

All sheep and oxen,

And also the beasts of the field,

The birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea,

Whatever passes through the paths of the seas.

This is what the Psalmist thought all creation involved. It’s crystal clear he said mankind rules over all the works of God’s hands earlier, and here he tells us what this means. There are no references to aliens or angels or galxies far far away. He just didn’t think of them, or they just didn’t compare to the status of mankind. But it is surely refective of a prescientific cosmology, and as such, considered as disconfirming evidence that there is a God behind the human words in the Bible.

Hear Ye...Hear Ye! Frank Walton is Gone!

He's no longer a contributor over at Atheism Sucks. I will now link to that Blog. It has some better, more respectable Christians on it.

Atheist Morality and the Logic of Jeffrey Dahmer

Jamie Steele wrote a comment about the morality of atheism, and in it quoted the following statement from serial killer and cannibalist, Jeffrey Dahmer: "If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what’s the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing…" [An interview with Stone Phillips, Dateline NBC, Nov. 29, 1994].

Such statements as these from a known killer are very troubling to me and a source for apologists to berate those of us who are atheists. Let me be perfectly frank here. The logic of Dahmer is sound if I grant him two assumptions that I vehemently reject (anyone wishing to quote this sentence of mine must quote it all, not just the first six words).

What are those two assumptions? First, for Dahmer’s argument to work an atheist must assume that the only reasons to refrain from doing evil are because of the supposed eternal horrible consequences he will suffer when he dies because God will hold him accountable for what he does. By this logic if there are no consequences when he dies then there is nothing to keep him from doing evil.

I vehemently deny this assumption. As I’ve argued elsewhere there are plenty of good solid reasons for doing good, being kind, helpful and generous with people, based solely on the consequences in this life, which is all any of us will ever have, Christians included.

Secondly, there are solid reasons based in the psychology of who we are with our survival instinct that leads us all to think being happy and living life in harmony with others demands that we like ourselves first and foremost. A Freudian death wish is simply unhealthy and counter-productive to what makes for human happiness. So for one reason or another Dahmer first hated himself. He didn’t care what would personally happen to him as he pursued his most base desires; desires that are sick indeed and counter-productive to living life in a crime free society, which is what people who desire happiness want.

Beyond these things, Dahmer was a sick man, a deviant, a sociopath. This just proves to me that anyone can use almost anything to justify his or her actions. If he was a Christian he would’ve said, “God told me to do this,” and we have plenty of examples of that kind of rationale, which is also quite logical, given certain assumptions that most reasonable Christians would likewise reject.

I No Longer Believe. What Do I Tell My Kids?

Here is an email I recently received. Any additional helpful advice would be appreciated. [Used with permission]

Hi John,

My de-conversion happened over a 10 year period in full-time ministry. I left ministry 12/31/06 with my integrity in tack. Now I just opened up my de-conversion to my family last summer. My wife, not surprisingly, was relieved. My kids, who we had sent to a fundy Christian school, were disturbed. I assured them I was not going to hell and that I still believed in “God” as much as I thought was possible to believe anymore. That comforted them for a while until we stopped going to church. My oldest child is very spiritual. She enjoys church and misses the Christian school. I too and a very spiritual man. I’ve found some solace in exploring Buddhist philosophy and I enjoy what I’m learning. I’m not fully come to an atheist I’m more agnostic but I’m not a believer in the God of the Bible.

I’ve been reading, devouring many books about the lies of Christianity. Sam Harris’ books have been huge eye openers. As was the DVD “The God Who Wasn’t There.” All of these just conformed my suspicions about my faith. I bought into a fairy tale in 1983 at the age of 15. I had a radical conversion and after high school I began the path toward full time ministry. After a stint in the Army to get some college money, I went to Bible college and seminary. I served in 2 churches as youth pastor. I ran a growing and successful AWANA program. I served on full-time missionary staff with Campus Crusade for Christ from 1996-2001. I launched and ran my own campus church/ministry from 2001-2006. From 1994-2006 I had growing doubts.

In the last ten years I began to see that no matter how much faith or belief I had God was and did not work. Oh I thought he did. I pretended he did. I duped myself in to believing on some level that he was really there for me. In that time a dear friend who de-converted in 1999 asked me this question: “Steve, what has Jesus really done for you this week, this month, this year?” I came up empty. All the trite answers I could give him were just fluff… stuff I had really stopped believe after many, many disappointments with God.

So I found a way out of ministry without going public with my agnosticism. Christians are so mean when someone falls away. I know I was mean myself a couple of times more than I want to remember. I became a financial advisor and I love it. But I played the game for a while because I deeply feared that I would be outcast. That fear is slowly drifting away.

Here’s my dilemma… I love my kids and I raised them in the Christian way. I really strove to live the life I was “called” to live. I didn’t leave because of “sin” in my life. I wasn’t really looking to leave. I just kept searching for reasons why God was not answering my prayers and helping us. So I left because I could not believe it any more. I could no longer tolerate the let downs. But my kids are feeling the pain of it because they still have “childlike faith.”

Do you have any advice? Are there resources for guys like me to help me free my kids from the God/Jesus myth? I do want to encourage my kids to be spiritual. But I just don’t know how.

Any words you would have for me would be appreciated.

Peace!

Steven A. McDowell

Here is my advice:

Steve, you're not alone.

From what I can tell this book will help you and your wife.

You should get a subscription to Michael Shermer's Skeptic Magazine, since it contains a nice sized section written just for kids.

Beyond that there are skeptical meet ups that may be in your area. Get your kids to meet and play with non-believing kids. Do a search for these groups here.

There are also skeptical groups associated with Center for Inquiry that would help introduce your children to skeptical children.

With your permission I'll post this at DC to see if anyone else has some helpful suggestions.

Best to you,
John W. Loftus

God is a Sadistic Egotistical Monster and I Can Show This With Just a Few Questions

The question was raised in a somewhat different context, “Did God need to create a physical universe at all?” Jason flippantly and callously responded by quipping, “Who cares? He did.” It still surprises me at the simplistic non-answers we get from some Christians. Here’s my response…

Just think for one moment, okay? Don't just spit out what you were taught to believe, which is what you do. What did God lack before creation that made him want to create in the first place? Take a moment to truly reflect on that question. I'll repeat it again so you do. What did God lack before creation that made him want to create in the first place?

I know your answer. The answer is that God lacked nothing, as in NOTHING. So what reason would cause God to want to create anything? There was no lack, no want, and no need. That which causes a reasonable person to act is a lack, either his own, or someone else's lack. And even given that God wanted to create something, anything, why did he create this particular world? These are significant questions if you'll take a moment to reflect on them, rather than spitting out proof texts and the blind faith results of your proof-texting.

Your God is supposedly a God of reason. Everything he does is reasonable. Well then, what's his reason for creating something, anything?

There can be no good reason for doing so, not even with an omniscient God, for an omniscient God must still act according to reason. Unless by his logic he can do what is illogical, or by his reason he can do that which is unreasonable, there is no reason for God to have done so.

Even if we grant that God wanted to create something, anything, why would he create this particular world? It is a huge mess. And it is likewise a non-answer to say it’s Adam and Eve’s fault.

If God foreknew this world would become a mess when he had no good reason to create anything in the first place, then why create this particular one?

What kind of world is this one? It's a world where most people wind up in hell. Why create a world like this when most people in it will be punished for an eternity? Consider what Ivan Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s character, said: “Tell me yourself—I challenge you: let’s assume that you were called upon to build the edifice of destiny so that men would finally be happy and would find peace and tranquility. If you knew that, in order to attain this, you would have to torture just one single creature, let’s say a little girl who beat her chest so desperately in the outhouse, and that on her unavenged tears you could build that edifice, would you agree to do it? Tell me and don’t lie!”

If there was no need to create anything, none, and if you foreknew people would suffer in this world and eventually do so for an eternity, would you create this particular world for your own glory, which is what Biblical theism asserts? Would you do so for YOUR OWN GLORY, especially when you already had all glory and there was no need to do so in the first place? Answer the question and do not lie!

Only a sadistic egotistic monster would even consider doing so.

-----------------------
Other types of similar arguments can be found in my book.

Was It Necessary For God to Create this Vast Universe, per Hugh Ross?

Some creationists, like Hugh Ross, claim God needed to create such a vast and old universe in order for the earth to exist with the right conditions to support human life as we know it. Here's my response from a recent post, singled out for discussion:

But this is an extremely lame argument. Why? Because Ross and other Christian theists believe God is omnipotent such that he created the laws of the universe in the first place! So if God is this omnipotent deity and if he created the laws of the universe in the first place, then he could’ve merely created a small planet containing human beings, and that's it. This is just obvious to me. But even if I grant them their point, it doesn’t even matter, for this same God is a miracle working God. Even if it was metaphysically impossible for God to create the earth as it is without a vast universe because he couldn't create nature's laws differently, then this says nothing at all against God performing perpetual miracles. If he is a miracle working God he could indeed have created a terrestrial biosphere that would sustain human life even if the laws of nature would not allow it. All it would take are a few perpetual miracles. As far as theists know, the laws of nature are themselves just perpetual miracles created by God anyway.

My Case Against Christianity

If you want to read my case against Christianity. It's here.

My Deconversion

Through childhood and adolescence I had absorbed the intense Seventh-day Adventist religion of my family. I went to church schools from the beginning, only had friends from my church, and was forced to attend services with the fervor and frequency that only someone with a devout mother can understand fully.

I studied the Bible with interest but always found it a little boring (especially the Pauline epistles). If I had to read it, I would always go back to the books of Judges, Joshua, and the writings of the kingly epoch. I loved the stories of Jael and Siserah, of Joshua stopping the sun, of Saul and David. I loved to read about David collecting foreskins from the Philistines (and show it to my friends, giggling about how it was in the Bible). I was a believer in biblical inerrancy and a young-earth creationist just like all those around me. I was the best in my age group at Bible trivia (we called them Bible sword drills) to the point that our Sabbath School teachers would keep me from playing because it wasn't fair to the other kids.

In high school some of my friends were growing disillusioned with our church and I listened to their arguments but didn't find them compelling until I got to college. I wanted to go to medical school eventually, but I initially declared a major in Religion while taking all the science prerequisites needed for my premed aspirations. The second quarter of my freshman year, I took a class in Jesus and the Gospels. This was the first exposure I had had to higher literary criticism of the Bible and my exposure to the textual theories about the Gospels astonished me, and made me realize the all-too-human nature of the text. This also led me to investigate other German theories regarding the Bible including Graf/Wellhausen, which confirmed my concerns.

My study of religion abolished my faith in biblical inerrancy and I changed my major to biology.

I began to see strong evidence for evolution, even though all my professors were young earth creationists. In my junior year I started doing research into theories of taxonomy and their relationship to the creation/evolution debate. It was at this same time I took a course in cell and molecular biology.

It was fascinating to study up close the nuts and bolts that made cells function the way that they do, and to notice that not only was there no evidence of design, there was positive evidence against design. The endosymbiotic theory of Margulis had not yet been fully accepted, but it seemed to me to be the most compelling evidence against young-earth creationism that anyone could imagine.

The facts are this. Briefly, life is divided into several domains, bacteria, archaeans and eukaryotes. All the eukaryotes have a nucleus that separates their genes from the cell substance (cytoplasm). Animal and plant cells are all eukaryotes. Any eukaryote that can live in oxygen uses energy by oxidizing carbohydrates, such as sugars and starches.

All animal and plant cells that use oxygen burn it in a controlled fashion with an organelle called a mitochondrion. The mitochondrion has its own membrane. The mitochondrion has its own genome. The mitochondrion splits into two and divides by fission like a bacterium does. All plant cells that do photosynthesis do this photosynthesis using chloroplasts. Chloroplasts also have their own membranes and genomes and also split into two and divide by fission like bacteria do. The most curious part for me was this: there are cells that are eukaryotes but they do not have mitochondria or chloroplasts and they use energy by fermenting sugars and starches.

Fermentation happens in the cytoplasm of all eukaryotic cells but the burning of oxygen happens only in the mitochondrion. It became obvious to me that all multicellular life arose from a lucky symbiosis. When it became necessary to burn oxygen, eukaryotic cells were simply cobbled together out of two other cell types, one that fermented and one that oxidized. It seemed absolutely clear to me when I discovered this fact that life itself, down to its cellular level, was the product of accidents and was in fact an elaborate contraption. It was marvelous indeed in its function, but any appearance of design seemed to completely evaporate. After the scales lifted from my eyes it became clear what a confidence game young-earth creationism was. Life's function was entirely explainable by natural (as opposed to supernatural or vitalist) processes.

So I had lost my young-earth creationism and my belief in biblical inerrancy, but I still had the same family: a father and brother who were pastors, and a devout mother. My sister had abandoned religion very early in her life and I was worried that if I did so as well, it would hurt the structure of my family.

For many years I tried to pretend I was a “liberal” Christian, who believed in morality inspired by a remote, semi-deist God, but the more I studied works of theology and philosophy the more I realized there was no fact universally agreed upon, no doctrine beyond dispute, and no practice that didn't bring opprobrium from someone within Christianity and approval from someone else within Christianity. In short, “liberal” Christianity was a pseudonym for “humanism that won't scare your parents”.

Shortly after finishing my residency I was assigned to live in Turkey while I served time in the military. This experience clinched my conviction that religion was wholly man made. There I encountered the same false certainty, the same fervor for dogma, the same disputation over the meaning of holy texts, and the same lack of agreement that I found in Christianity, even the same platitudinous and empty bumper sticker sloganeering and the only thing different was that the religion was now that of Islam. Every argument that Christians make to convince you of the truth of their religion has a mirror image in Islam.

While living there, I was frequently asked what I believed. Since I was unable to defend Christianity, the existence of God, or any evidence of design in the universe, I decided to answer affirmatively, “I am an atheist.”

Here is My Friend Again, a Deluded Man.

May I present to you Dr. William Lane Craig, again:


Vinny noticed this and said: "Let's not forget what Craig said in his argument with Peter Slezak in 2002":

So when then does the absence of evidence count as evidence that something does not exist? Well theorists of knowledge agree that the lack of evidence for some entity X counts as positive evidence against X’s existence only in the case that if X did exist then we should expect to see more evidence of X’s existence than what we do see....Now apply that to the case of God, the absence of evidence for God’s existence counts as evidence against God’s existence only in the case that if God did exist, then we should see more evidence of his existence than we do in fact see."

Okay then. What kind of God is Dr. Craig arguing for here? He's arguing specifically for a God who reveals himself, who wants us to know him personally, who wants us to believe he did something in history in order for us to be saved from the horrors of hell. That's the kind of God Craig is arguing for. Given this God we should expect a good deal of evidence that he exists. To say otherwise is to end up denying the very kind of God Craig is arguing for. Because Craig cannot have it both ways! Either this God wants us to know him or he doesn't. If he does, then he should give us enough evidence to believe, otherwise this God is not a revealing God who wants us to know him personally, and so forth. Q.E.D.

And given the passion Craig has in arguing for this God, Craig would literally jump for joy about a new piece of evidence or a new argument to show this God exists. In fact, I am certain Craig prays for God to help him come up with better arguments using better evidence too. But God does not help him, even though he could easily do so. It would seem that Craig's passion to help the rest of us see the truth about God is not shared by God himself! Bill, doesn't that trouble you in the least? I mean really, God tells you to evangelize and then hamstrings you by not offering you enough help for the task? Surely, if you could help an evangelist/apologist like yourself wouldn't you want to give him more evidence and better arguments if you were God? Then why doesn't your God? You say that you don't know why? Then what exactly can you expect from God if he doesn't at least help you argue effectively that he exists? Isn't that the minimum expectation you should have for a God like that which you argue for? If not, why not?

It's abundantly clear there is not enough evidence for the existence of Dr. Craig's God, the God of evangelical Christianity, which is the God he needs to conclude from his arguments. Just look at the demographics, for example. 2/3rds of the world rejects Christianity. That's 4 billion people just counting the world population today, and not down through the ages. Since an evangelical like Dr. Craig would not grant that everyone who calls herself a Christian is a true Christian, then these figures are way too low to begin with. And he still wants to maintain God has indeed given mankind enough evidence to believe? On the contraire, it is very strong evidence against Craig's assertions.

Besides, what Craig defends, in the final analysis, is a particular Occidental concept of God, and such a concept by definition must solve all problems if it's to be worthy as a concept of God in the first place. But just like the Ontological Argument is faulty, so also is it the case that just because we can come up with a particular concept of God does not mean that such a God actually exists.

Here is My Friend, a Deluded Man.

May I present to you, Dr. William Lane Craig:


Look at how confident he is. I'm sorry but he reminds me of the moonies.

It's not that we demand that God provides x, it's that we need for God to provide x. Without x we don't have evidence to believe. And if we cannot have any reasonable expectations about what God does, then how can we have a reasonable faith? How can a smart man just not get these two rudimentary points?