Founder of The Awakening HourDr. William R. Crews is a native of Starke, Florida. In his early life he was a professional pool hustler who later became an alcoholic. After being saved out of a life of deep sin, the Lord called him to preach the Gospel and to teach the Word of God. He has pastored churches in Texas, Arkansas, Georgia, South Dakota, and South Carolina. He has taught on both the Bible College and Seminary level. He has served as Seminary President and interim Seminary President.
Dr. Crews shares the vision of a famous preacher of the 18th century who said, “The world is my parish”. In pursuit of the spirit and goal of this vision, he is constantly, aggressively, and prayerfully going forward attempting to obey the commission the Lord has given him to take the Gospel message to every part of the globe. The Bible tells us “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” (Proverbs 29:18)
For thirty-two years he was the speaker on a national radio program “Bible Study Time”. He has published more than 60 Bible study booklets on religious subjects – materials that he presented on his national media outlets. He has been listed in “Outstanding Young Men of America” (1970 edition), “Outstanding Personalities of the South” (1973 edition), and “Who’s Who in Religion” (1985 edition). He has an extensive religious library of approximately 18,000 volumes, many of which are books by old Puritan writers. He has collected all the books available by Charles Haddon Spurgeon who perhaps has had the greatest impact and influence on Dr. Crews’ life and ministry. He is a pilot holding the private pilot’s rating, the twin engine rating, and the instrument rating. He and his wife currently reside in Spartanburg, SC.
Up Date on Dr. Crews from Last Night’s News
William Crews Arrested, Jailed on Criminal Domestic Violence Charges
Published: August 7, 2008
William Crews, 73, was arrested for criminal domestic violence on July 29, according to reports from the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office. He was released on July 30.
Spartanburg County Dispatchers received a 911 call from Freda Crews at 7:16 p.m. on the date.
Freda told a deputy who responded to the scene that William came to the house drunk while she was sleeping. Freda said she and William began to argue and she came to fear for her safety.
She became so frightened, she told officers, that she locked herself in a bathroom with a gun. She then called her daughter and told her to call 911.
Freda told the deputy that it wasn’t the first time William had been violent with her, but it was the first time she’d called. Sheriff’s Office reports stated there were no visible marks either Freda or William.
William admitted to officers that he’d been drinking and also admitted there was a gun in the dash of his car.
Here is an up date to the above post:
Embattled Evangelist Charged With DUI
Published: August 12, 2008
The Highway Patrol says evangelist Dr. William Crews put lives in danger on the interstate, two days before his arrest on domestic violence charges.
Crews is the pastor of Unity Baptist Church in Moore, but is better known as the host of the internationally broadcast religious program “The Awakening Hour”.
On Tuesday, News Channel 7 learned Crews faces charges of driving under the influence and violating state liquor laws. A spokesperson for Highway Patrol Troop 6 says Crews was arrested on I-95 in Dorchester County on July 27th. The spokesperson says motorists called 911, saying Crews’ car was swerving across lanes and “driving very fast” near mile marker 55. The spokesperson says a state trooper caught up with Crews at mile marker 72 and pulled him over. He says Crews “appeared to be intoxicated” and failed field sobriety tests. He also says there was an open liquor bottle in the pastor’s car.
73-year old Crews was booked into Dorchester County Detention Center and released the next day on $1250 bond. The spokesperson would not say what Crews’ blood-alcohol level was at the time of his arrest because it will be used as evidence in his prosecution.
Crews denies driving drunk, but admits that he drank wine before getting into his car that day.
“I have a heart condition called atrial fibrillation,” said Crews in a phone interview. “I have found that the only way I can control it is by drinking a little alcohol.”
Crews says he drank “less than a half a bottle” of wine and put the empty bottle in his car before getting behind the wheel.
“I wasn’t drunk,” says Crews. “I didn’t drink enough to make me drunk.” When asked why motorists reported him swerving across lanes of traffic, Crews says he was trying to dial a number on his cell phone and lost control of his vehicle. He claims he was not speeding. And he says he never took a field sobriety test.
“The trooper never made me take a test,” says Crews. He claims he was charged with DUI without proper cause and will fight the charges in court.
Two days after the DUI arrest, Crews was arrested at his Inman home on a charge of criminal domestic violence. An incident report from the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office states that Crews came home intoxicated and got into an argument with his wife. In the report, his wife states that he became enraged and threatened her, making her “fear for her safety” so she grabbed a pistol and locked herself in a bathroom. She called a relative who called 911. Later she told the deputy that Crews has hit her in the past but she has never reported it.
When reached for comment, Dr. Freda Crews, the pastor’s wife, did not wish to comment on the domestic incident itself, but stated that the argument was the result of her husband’s recent DUI arrest. She says she and her husband have agreed to live apart for the time being. Crews tells News Channel 7 he is now attending classes for anger management and alcohol abuse.
The website for “The Awakening Hour” says the program is seen in 125 countries. It states that early in his life, Dr. Crews was a professional pool hustler who became an alcoholic before being saved and entering the ministry. He has pastored numerous churches throughout the south, including East Gaffney Baptist Church.
DJ Grothe interviews author of
"50 Reasons People Give For Believing In A God." The author is very respectful to believers and lets them have their say without judging. Its a type of Comparative Religion study. Its good for both for believers and non-believers.
A Personal ProjectAbout a year ago now, I began a major personal project. As a devout Christian husband and father of six children, I was unhappy with the "drifting" I had been doing. We had not attended church regularly for over three years at that point, and while we were still actively involved in a weekly small group/Bible study, my disillusionment with Evangelical Protestantism was such that while I remained committed to my belief in God and my faith in Jesus as my redeemer and savior, Christian faith tends to atrophy and even die when it is not connected to a the support systems of church and faith-based community, in my experience.
The "major personal project", then, was the rebuilding and fortification of my faith and beliefs in such a way that I could, along with my family, "swim the Tiber", and become committed, permanent members of the Roman Catholic Church. I embarked on the effort with some enthusiasm; while I still had some major issues to confront in order to become a Catholic, fully committed in good conscience, these issues seemed surmountable, and at the conclusion of this effort, I expected to begin RCIA with my family, and begin the happy process of settling into our new "spiritual home", where we belonged all along, as Catholic friends regularly reminded me.
I took a "first principles" approach, as a means for really doing the thinking and reasoning that would lay the foundation for decades to come as a faithful, enthusiastic and effective Catholic. For the first time ever, I think, I purposely put everything I believed on the table for review, and went to some length in making careful notes and comments in an MS Word Document and an Excel spreadsheet to keep things organized. My faith in God wasn't in question, but I "cleared the decks" as a kind of "provisional atheist", that I might clearly identify the grounding and basis for "non-negotiables" of my belief. The last thing I wanted was to lead a family move to the Catholic church, only to become a dissident there again, as I had become for so many parts of the Protestant faith and culture I lived in presently. More than anything, I wanted clarity about these issues that would stick.
My efforts quickly became a case study for the caution that one should be careful what one wishes for. I wished for clarity and durability in my beliefs about God and religion, and I got it (durability being tentative just a year in, of course). In forcing myself to do a tabula rasa accounting of what I believed and why, I ended up with undeniable clarity on two propositions: my 30+ years of Christian faith were predicated note on verifiable interaction with God and reasoned justification for the truth of the Bible, but instead 1) an (nearly) overwhelming desire for Christianity to be true in some form and 2) cowardice in confronting the prospects of unbelief in my life.
I had pages and pages of outline items documenting the usual historical (claims) of evidence for Jesus' divinity and the resurrection. I had the standard cadre of philosophical arguments in there - the Ontological Argument, The Transcendental Argument, the Cosmological Argument, etc. I had a list of the "miracles" and events in my life I believed represented supernatural intervention and interaction. One by one, though, all of these fell apart under skeptical, honest review. For instance, I had become concerned several years ago at the frankly pathetic state of Intellectual Evangelicalism. In discussing this with friends, they pointed me at C.S. Lewis and William Lane Craig. I was intimately familiar with Lewis, of course, who was the closest thing I had to an intellectual hero of the faith (Chesterton was appealing too, but not nearly in the way Lewis was).
Immersing myself in the books, articles, and debates of Craig, though, just exacerbated the problem. If Craig was even representative of Intellectual Christianity, never mind being one of its best examples, the situation was much worse than I had previously thought. Reading Bahnsen, Frame, Poythress, Plantinga and rest of the Reformed philosophers made the picture bleaker still, a kind of demon-apologetic wearing a cross, and carrying a Bible.
Provisional Agnosticism
Over several months I worked through philosophical and historical arguments from a new, hypothetical perspective. Rather than presupposing God, and synthesizing what I read and heard accordingly, I was now to a point where I began Craig's Reasonable Faith and Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus without extreme prejudice.
At that point, I was still a believer, but on the horns of a very serious dilemma. My project was backfiring, my "first principles" strategy aimed at shoring up my beliefs and convictions was seriously destabilizing them. If I continued, I understood the potential outcome, and the ramifications were quite troubling. If I aborted the effort, no one else would be the wiser, and I could return to my comfortable faith. But I would still know, and would have to live with the knowledge that I bailed out because of my fear, and an unwillingness to be fully honest and self-critical.
It seems "right for the story" to relate my struggle over that dilemma, and how I struggled over time to be deeply honest and transparent with myself and others about the justification and reasonableness of my faith. I did choose to pursue critical examination, the path of honesty, but as it happened, no sooner had I realized the dilemma I was facing, then it was over. I awoke in the middle of the night, and prowled the house through the rest of the night, agonized, exhilarated, shocked and in despair over facing the facts. I did not have a good basis for my beliefs, and the nature of my faith as an expression of my desires and my fears laid open to see, undeniable. I was a Christian because I was raised to be one, and I remained one because it's what I wanted. Moreover, I remained one because it seemed the only choice available in terms of my social connections and relationships. I was an evangelical homeschooler, deeply embedded in my church, thoroughly immersed in my faith, identified by it. I was a "godly man", and a good man because of my faith in God, which I was never shy about or ashamed to admit.
That night, with the realization of how motivated and determined I was, subconsciously or otherwise to tell my own story to myself and the world in terms of am active, powerful relationship with a living God, the creator of the universe, I for the first time faced the reality of God as a creature of my own invention. I "inherited" it in a way, being raised in a fundamentalist Christian home, but I had made the illusion my own, and I now had no way to deny my own self-deception. God was God because that's the way I wanted the truth to be. I wanted to live forever. I wanted a neat clean way to resolve the problems of my immoral and unethical actions. I wanted an easy clear-cut basis for right and wrong. I wanted to think I was special, cosmically-special, just like all my Christian friends and family members. I wanted to think that all men will see judgment day, after death, as a way of relieving the despair of seeing evil triumph on earth, and as a way of abdicating my own personal responsibility to do my part to see justice served; God would fix everything in the end, so I could do what I managed or wanted to do, and sleep easy at night because God would make up any cosmic differences, and ultimately right all wrongs.
I read parts of the book of Job the next morning, which has always been one of my favorite books of the Bible, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Rather than just man being used as cosmic chits in a bit of gamesmanship between God and Satan, I saw man creating God is his own image. I had a daughter die during delivery several years ago (so really, I should probably always say I have seven kids, with one that's dead to be fair and respectful to her), and though I didn't realize it until much later, it was a kind of "Jobian" experience for me. The anguish and pain of losing a child in the delivery room -- her heartbeat and vital signs were terrific at a doctor's checkup at 9am that very morning -- was powerful in reinforcing my conviction this was NOT the end, and that I would see my daughter again some day, beyond this life. It was the only right way for the world to be, and what a happy, hopeful thing to be a Christian, where I did have that very expectation and assurance! If I hadn't ever believed in God until that day, I suppose I would have been quite motivated to invent God, and his heaven, and the afterlife on my own, very much in the mode of Job declaring "And in my flesh I shall see God", out of sheer emotional rejection of the idea that death is final, and some losses are never recovered, some injustices are never set right.
The insight into the plausibility, and the reasonability of my decades of faith being accounted for as imagination, exaggeration and credulity borne of desire caused the full collapse of my faith. I no longer believed, and had achieved a broad, if excruciating, view of why my faith was unfounded and why I had embraced and promoted it still for so long. I knew that I could not prove to myself of anyone else that God did not exist, but I now had a reasonable basis for understanding not just the poverty of evidential arguments for Christianity and the disingenuous dishonesty of the various philosophical arguments for God, but also an explanation for my experiences, and my interpretations of the Holy Spirit and his perceived mediate influence in my life. I had arrived at atheism in my application of honesty, introspection, and fair appraisal of the evidence and issues involved.
I was an atheist.
Costs of De-conversion
My wife is a believer, and has been since before we were married. My family is fundamentalist Baptist. My social circles are dominated by my faith community. I have plenty of non-Christian colleagues and friends through work, but even years after "dropping out" of regular church attendance, my social peers remain members of our last church, and similar churches. We homeshool our children, and so a large part of our lives revolves around the activities of our homeschool co-op. As you might imagine, our homeschool group is a hotbed of religious zeal and fundamentalist/evangelical fervor.
My conclusion, then, or perhaps it's more accurate to say my discovery, was a terrifying one. In a way that is difficult to articulate, the discovery was profoundly relieving, a fact that attests, I think, the latent, subliminal anxieties and stresses that accumulate for thinking Christians and the inevitable cognitive dissonances they must bear. Maybe it captures something of the moment to say that felt supremely honest and open, the liberating effect of renouncing the "sin" of my self-deceptions and indulgences of desire and caprice. But the overriding reality at that point was, in fact, fear. I no longer believed in God, or in anything supernatural as far as I knew, but I very much believed in the value and preciousness of my marriage, and my relationship with my wife. I've been fortunate in many respects in my life, but nowhere so fortunate as I have been in finding and developing the relationship I have with my wife. I've since met a couple men who've confessed to me that they are "closet atheists" who go to church dutifully every Sunday, leading AWANA on Wed. night, and showing up regularly for men's Bible study on Monday evenings. For them, they simply see their atheism as a threat to that which matters most to them, their marriages.
It's easy from outside of that situation to sniff and snort and decry the dishonesty of that kind of "double life", and for what it's worth, it is dishonest, and in a way, quite cowardly. But having been in that same position, those men will find no condemnation or judgment from me. When push comes to shove, I can understand keeping my atheism tightly concealed as a means of preserving stability and continuity for a marriage. One of the best things about my marriage has been an unusual level of honesty and frankness, and this was highly problematic. The most painful experience in all of this was the .... distance I felt from my wife in those few days where I had become an atheist, but not let her know. It didn't take long for the pain of that to outweigh the fear of turmoil and disruption -- I let it all out in a long, difficult night just a few days after the collapse.
It's been a painful, hard year. I'm sure many atheists have a story that relates their de-conversion as mostly "upside". For me, it is fundamentally, upside as well, but the cost of "coming out" is big, unpredictable, and long lasting. I'm happy to say that my marriage is intact, and as good as ever. My kids are aware, and although mostly unhappy about it and feeling a bit betrayed (which they should, given the unfounded things I've been indoctrinating them with sense birth), and of course dislocated. I've been "disfellowshipped" by some Christian friends, and have caused a major uproar in the homeschooling groups and forums where I have related my story. The Christian myth that morality and ethical "goodness" is predicated on the belief in God, and either impossible without, or at best accidental, runs very deep in the evangelical/fundamentalist community. So, many who learn of my de-conversion wonder, often aloud, what happens now that I'm free to cheat on my wife, steal, or do any number of things worse than that. It's been an eye-opening experience, and my de-conversion is a kind of Rorschach test for Christians, I think. When they confront my rejection of Christianity for atheism, one gets a sense of what they imagine themselves to be in their "native" state. They say they are wondering about my actions as an atheist, but I'm a year on into this as my usual self, a faithful husband, engaged father, hard worker, etc., and what they are often telling me is what they suppose they would be like if they had to develop and execute their own moral and ethical principles. I don't really agree with this, as I think the truth as truth is an important good in its own right, but many Christians I know make a good case for embracing Christianity, even if it is false; by their own accounts, the kind of person they would be without their invented gods and demons and heaven and hell is often downright scary.
Worst Case Scenario
In cases like mine, inevitably, there are questions raised and suspicions launched about the actuality or sincerity of my faith in the first place. For what it's worth, I claim to be an atheist who was a deeply committed, "sold out" believer for decades. Raised in an extremely devout Baptist home, I "accepted Jesus into my heart" as a gradeschooler like any good, rational kid does who has grown up with hellfire and brimstone on one side, and felt-cloth Jesus on the easel, welcoming the children into his arms, on the other. I was baptized at 12 years old, had a solid string of ecstatic, powerful "mountain-top" spiritual experiences at Christian youth camps and retreats as a teen. I hit a bit of brick wall in college, as I was set up by my parents to embrace young earth creationism, and allowed to continue in my folly right into enrolling in university. That shook my faith badly, as I'd been betrayed and lied to by many of the people I'd trusted most, but that crisis triggered a transformation for me toward a more mature, thoughtful, and personal faith in Jesus Christ. Through the child raising years, and founding several tech startups that failed badly, then one that did well and eventually got bought by a large Internet company in the dot com days, church was my life outside of work (and inside it, too, often enough!), and I continually identified God's hand in influencing and shaping the world around me and in me according to his will. In the last decade when we've been fortunate enough -- blessed by God, as I saw it at the time -- to have the means, my wife and I have gotten involved with our hands and our funds in church planting and church growth as part of our commitment to reifying the Kingdom of God on earth through the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I was not a pastor like John, or Dan Barker. I never went to seminary, and my most impressive "official" credentials in the church were nothing higher than "guitarist in the worship band", but I was a "died-in-the-wool" believer. I never heard God "speak" in an audible way, but I saw many things I considered miracles, many events I interpreted as God's special message of reassurance, love and hope to me. I was an avid student of theology, a circumstance which had faith-building and faith-destroying ramifications for me over the years. In any case, I was not a "lukewarm Christian", one of those who slowly drifted out of the faith. My faith did not fade away, it came crashing down, quite unexpectedly, and frankly not of my own choosing (at least at the start). I was a cradle Evangelical fully immersed, well-read and fully on board. As a poster on a forum for (Christian) homeschoolers commented recent in a large "discussion" over my atheism: it's the "worst case scenario". Such is the dissonance for many who have known me, a good share of them have decided I've just been lying or faking it all these years, or I somehow just was never saved, never a Christian that "took".
A Moral Imperative
The irony for me, given all the indoctrination I've received along with so many other evangelicals and fundamentalists over there years about the necessity of God as an underwriter for moral values, is that while my faith collapsed out of reasoning and skepticism, my eventual rejection of Christianity on a lasting basis was predicated on realizing the moral poverty of Christianity. Some come to disbelief in God out of moral outrage toward God, and understandable but dubious path to knowledge. I came to realize my belief was sublimated desire and fear, and that I just did not have any foundation for believing in God's existence, even (especially) in light of my own subjective experiences, which I overlaid on the bare scaffolding of dubious history and incoherent philosophy/theology. I disbelieved first, but freed from my Christian presuppositions, Christianity took on a much more complex, problematic moral character; for whatever good elements remained, the God of Christianity on many fronts represented cruelty, viciousness, caprice, abuse, injustice, and moral incoherence. I did not believe there was any Christian God, or any gods at all, but if the Christian God somehow was real, and I was badly mistaken, I realized I would have to resist his authority and power on moral grounds, as a matter of good moral conscience.
With that, the matter was decided. I had no remaining basis for belief, and Christian belief had become morally problematic, even if I did have basis for it. In the past year, despite all the pain and stress that necessarily comes from someone in my position renounces his faith, I feel like I have a new lease on life, and life itself has value and moral meaning for me that it never did before. There's a lot of adjustment to do when you've come into your life thinking yourself just a "sojourner" here on Earth, making a brief stop on the way to eternal life with God. But as St. Paul said, "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child". At 40 years old, I had done well professionally, had a happy, healthy, growing family and a great marriage, but I was stilling clinging to childish thinking and emotions when it came to God, my faith, my moral foundation and the principles I was passing on to my children. Like many Christians, I find great comfort and pleasure in indulging in dreams of living past my death, and living forever. But this past year has been the year -- better late than never -- to put away childish things, and to embrace reality as it is, and live in such a way as to take full advantage of the precious moments I have in this life, and to build a life of virtue, making my little part of the world a better, more just, happier, and humane place for my kids, their grandkids, and all they will share their world with.
-Touchstone
(I wish to thank Robert B for listing all the many references to human sacrifice in the Old Testament / Hebrew Bible as he did in an earlier comment to a post. Great work Robert! However, for time’s sake, I have limited my study mainly to the books of Genesis and Joshua.)
I. The Primitive Epic
A. Yahweh Battles the Gods of Nature and the Hymn of His Annual Enthronement in the Temple as Warrior-King
A description of one of the ancient annual fall enthronement is found in the Hebrew poem of Psalm 24: 7 -10:
Lift up your heads, O Gates, And be lifted up, O ancient doors!
That the King of glory may come in!
Who is the King of Glory?
Yahweh strong and mighty,
Yahweh mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O Gates,
And lift them up, O ancient doors,
That the King of glory may come in!
Who is this King of glory?
Yahweh of Heaven, He is the King of Glory.
(Note: since the Hebrew “יהוה” is rendered into English as “the Lord”, I have used the personal name of the deity “Yahweh” instead. The problem of equating Yahweh with the universal theistic term θεός / God in the New Testament is a major problem I plan to address on a future post.)
One of the best Sitz im Leben of this ancient poem is given by Frank Cross:
“We may see reflected in this liturgy the reenactment of the victory of Yahweh in the primordial battle and his enthronement in the divine council or, better, in his newly built (cosmic) temple.
Such an interpretation assumes a Canaanite myth-and-ritual pattern standing behind the Israelite rite reflected in the psalm. Yamm, deified Sea, claimed kingship among the gods. The council of the gods assembled and, told of Yamm’s intentions to size the kingship and take Ba’l captive, made no protest. They were cowed and despairing, sitting with heads bowed to their knees. Ba’l rases and rebukes the divine assembly, and goes forth to war. In the (cosmogonic) battle he is victorious, and he returns to take up kingship (CTA 2 & 4). Presumably he returned to the assembled gods and appeared in glory, and the divine assembly rejoiced. In a later text (CTA 4) Ba’l’s temple, symbolic of his new sovereignty, is completed, and the gods sit at banquet celebrating. Ba’l is king.
Similarly, in Tablet VI of the Babylonian Creation Epic, Marduk, after battling the primordial ocean, Tiamat, and creating the universe out of her carcass, receives from the gods a newly constructed temple where the gods sit at banquet celebrating his kingship. The Babylonian account of creation in the Enuma elis is not too remote a parallel since there is some evidence, collected by Thorkild Jacobsen (The Battle Between Marduk and Tiamat” JAOS, 88 (1968), 104 - 108) that the battle with the dragon Ocean is West Semitic in origin.” The Divine Warrior” in Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel by Frank M. Cross (Harvard University Press,1973) p.93.
B. The Warrior-King Yahweh and his Chosen People: The Israelites
Let me begin by stating that of all the ancient Near Eastern texts which we have translated today, the Hebrew god Yahweh is the only deity that keeps a “chosen” race alive so he can lead them and slaughter them as his bi-polar mental state changes a from manic חסד (hesed or loving kindness) to one of depression and rage such a expressed in Numbers 11: 1:
“Now the people became like those who complain of adversity in the hearing of Yahweh; and when Yahweh heard it, His anger was kindled, and the fire of Yahweh burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp.”
This characterization of Yahweh is derived from the nose of a snorting and raging bull. Once Yahweh changes into this murderous deity, Moses must try and reason with him; even offering himself to be consumed as an atonement for sin:
“Now Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families, each man at the doorway of his tent; and the anger of Yahweh was kindled greatly, and Moses was displeased. …So if You are going to deal thus with me, please kill me at once, if I have found favor in Your sight, and do not let me see my wretchedness." (Numbers 11: 10 & 15).
The rage Yahweh can become so great that his consuming thirst for blood and death must be satisfied and, once again, we find this god raging like a bull with a flaming nose from his fierce anger:
“Yahweh said to Moses, ‘Take all the leaders of the people and execute them in broad daylight before Yahweh, so that the fierce anger of Yahweh may turn away from Israel.’" (Numbers 25: 4)
Yahweh is pictured as an unstable and very abusive adult who just can not understand the short comings of his children and, if this god not controlled or at least reasoned with, he can slaughter the entire human race (women, children, the unborn, along with animals which have none nothing in the way of “sin” as in the flood story (Genesis 8 - 9). Thus, animals and humans are viewed often as equal which carry life in the early accounts of “J” as both can be blamed and both can be sacrificed to stave off Yahweh’s craving for blood and life. (For example, an animal forced into an act of sex with an Israelite must be killed along with the human as Yahweh considers both defiled with sexual sin (Leviticus 20: 15 - 16). Revealed here is the fact that, just as in the story of the “Fall from Eden” with a curse placed on the serpent and the slaughter of all the animals / humans for being evil (Genesis 6: 5 - 7), so too are humans and animals, considered flesh and blood that can be sacrifice to satisfy Yahweh anger as well as his need to feed on the smoke of the burning flesh.)
II. Beginning the Demand for Human Sacrifice: The Story of Cain and Able in the Yahwistic or “J” Account.
With the creation stories of Genesis 1 and 2 in place and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, the “J” account uses one verse (Genesis 4:1) to tie the lineage of the first humans couple to a section of theology on sacrifice which is more important in the editor’s thinking than how the earth got populated. In fact the epic moves so fast towards the cultic ritual of sacrifice that no sooner is the reader introduced to Eve giving birth, then these two men are now mature adults who, for the first time in Hebrew history, have a presumed knowledge of the Jewish sacrificial system and the theology of the Torah as to why it must be done.
For the general reader in the synagogue or church today, he or she is totally caught off guard by trying to maintain Genesis 3 with the expansion of the population of the earth after the man (Adam) and woman (Eve) are totally alone in the newly created earth / “the land” “הארץ ”, after they are expelled. (see: Richard Hess, “Splitting the Adam: The Usage of Adam in Genesis I - V,” in Studies in the Pentateuch, edited by J. A. Emerton (E.J. Brill, 1990) pp.1-15)
The religious reader of the early Genesis account who believes that Genesis contains the absolute truth on the earth creation and population has often asked: “Where did Cain get his wife?” or “Where did the other people come from who Cain claimed would try to kill him?”
The answer to his problem is that this section of text has nothing to do with the Toledo / generations of the earth by Adam and Eve, their children or their future generations, but is a section dealing with the first and proper way to sacrifice to God. It also tells the religious reader what the diety really wants and, if given it, that a Covenant of protection will be extended to those persons who do give Yahweh (God) blood and the life that is sustained by it in its death.
Although Adam is cursed to be only a tiller of the ground (Genesis 3:17 - 19) Able is introduced as an experienced herdsman who anachronistically offers “the first and best of his flock and their fat portions” (Gen. 4:4) as, again required by the latter Torah. Though both Cain (The Law of First Fruits: Ex. 23:16, 19; 34: 22, 26 Numbers 13:20) and Able bring God their sacrifices as proscribed in in the law of sacrifice (Numbers 18:17) Yahweh chooses the one that requires the taking of life whose fat is to be burnt to fed him on his throne in Heaven via the smoke.
Since the text Abel brought an animal and Cain brought his grain to sacrifice as proscribed under the Law, the Jewish reader, for whom this story was written, would be very familiar with both the law regarding grain and animal sacrifice. However, what is important here to the Priestly writer is that Yahweh chooses Abel’s offering over Cain’s in that the young animal’s blood which carries its life along with its fat portions can be burnt as a “sweet smell to Yahweh”. The choice of animal sacrifice over grain goes back to the time of hunters and gathers when the “Hebrews” lived in the highlands of Canaan in contrast to the rich and more advanced, but sedately agricultural life of the Canaanites along the coast.
To get the odious smell of cooking meat that rise up toward “the sky” הַשָּׁמַיִם
Hasmyrime where the gods along with Israel‘s Yahweh lived; two demands were needed to accomplish this:
A. Slaughtering / killing of the animal.
B. Burning of its body parts or fat meat so Yahweh can smell it as the heat of the fire carries the smoke upward to where the warrior deity or Yahweh sit on his throne and can now feed on the burnt flesh. (This sacrifice ritual is highly important in the Priestly redaction in Genesis 8: 21; Exodus 29: 18, 25; Lev. 1: 9, 13 ,17, 2: 2 ,9, 12, 3: 5, 16, 4:31, 6: 15, 21, 8:21, 8: 28, 17: 6, 23: 13, 18, 26: 31; Numbers 15: 3,7, 10, 13, 14, 24,18: 17, 28: 2, 6, 8, 13, 24, 27, 28: 27, 29: 2,6, 8, 13 Ezekiel 6: 13, 16: 19, 20: 28, 41. It is repeated again and again so there is no question as to how to get the sweet odor to Yahweh, the slaughtered meat must be burnt to put it into a form Yahweh himself could enjoy.)
Since Abel’s sacrifice deals with blood and death, Yahweh chooses it over the grain offering of Cain. Thus, it is in anger (Gen. 4:6) that Cain kills Abel, but (as noted above) the epic story with its set Laws / Torah regarding sacrifice are anachronistically applied as a teaching tool for latter Jews to this primitive history of the of the first people.
Even though Abel’s murder is also anachronistically known to be against the Mosaic Torah (Exodus 20: 13), Yahweh is only put out by the fact that Cain’s blood is wasted on the ground (Gen. 4: 10 & 11. While the blood of some murdered people “cry out from the ground” (Job 16: 18), the problem here is that Abel’s blood spilt on the ground away from Yahweh’s alter (see: J. Milgrom, “Sacrifices and Offering in the Old Testament” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible: Supplementary Volume (edited by K. Crim, Abingdon Press 1976) pp. 763 - 771). The fact that Abel’s life is understood as simply equal to that of an animal sacrificed away from the altar is the reason that Yahweh is upset. (This point is noted in a related code by the Priestly editor as stated by W.W. Hallo: “Under the Levitical dispensation, animal slaughter “Except at the authorized altar” is murder”. The animal too has life (older version: “a soul”). its vengeance is to be feared, its blood must be “covered” or explained by bringing it to the altar.” (William W. Hallo, “The Origins of the Sacrificial Cult: New Evidence from Mesopotamia and Israel,” in Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank M. Cross (edited by P. Miller, P. Hanson and S.D. McBride Fortress Press, 1987) pp. 3-13)
This story of the first sacrifice ends when Cain kills his brother Abel by the shedding of blood. Yahweh then both curses and protects him at the same time. In the end, Yahweh / God got what he needed and wanted; the slaughter of life by draining its blood done twice. Yahweh’s protection for Cain is given by the use of the ancient Near Eastern divine number “7” which is a common magical and religious number in Semitic text such as those, not only from Ugarit, but text written in Akkadian. (see: Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3 edition, edited by J.B Pritchard (Princeton University Press, 1969). Biblical numbers of 3, 6, 7, 40, 70 are understood as divine number that not only influenced the Gospels and Revelation, but by even Jesus himself!) This numerology is amplified more so in Genesis 4: 24 when Lamech cries out:
“If Cain is avenged sevenfold, Then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”
In summary, what we have depicted in Genesis 4 is an epic tale projected back in time, about NOT how the second generation of descendants of Adam and Eve populated the earth, but why the slaughter of life and the draining of its blood is more pleasing to Yahweh then the sedentary fruits agriculture. As characteristic with the general Hebrew sacrifice (where the animal is killed and the blood drained before it is burnt) Abel’s animal sacrifice, along with its “fat portions” is simply regarded by Yahweh in the text by וַיִּשַׁע which the LXX renders as “και επειδεν” but the meaning is not clear. The LXX makes it plain that Cain’s sacrifice was not on the same level a Abel’s by “ου προσεσχεν”. Thus, Cain is cursed to leave the sedentary life which had just been cursed on Adam by Yahweh himself (Gen. 3: 17 - 19). Cain then takes on the wandering life of a herdsman that can then supply the sacrifices of animals whose blood and flesh are more pleasing to Yahweh.
This story tells us why Yahweh demands life; be it animal (as in the case of Abel’s offering or the killing of Abel as done by the agrarian Cain). Also, that its acceptance by Yahweh is revealed with a cultic divine mark of protection on Cain. The section ends with two deaths (both animal and human) with the ancient deity pleased with both. (The problem of these sacrificial offerings not being burnt is a challenge the Yahwist (J) in that he / she could not fit into the story of fire to burn the sacrifices with since he did not even know or how to anachronously inserted a concept like the stealing of fire as the Greeks did with Prometheus (See both works by the late C.H. Gordon: The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (New York, 1965) and his Homer and Bible: The Origin and Character of East Mediterranean Literature (New Jersey, 1967). This is brought up to date by the master of ancient Greek religion; Walter Burkett: Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions (Harvard University Press, 1998) where both humans and animals function in the role of sacrifice to the Gods to remove the guilt of sin.
III. Empirical Texts Telling of the Wars of Yahweh and the Slaughter of Men, Women and Children (as animals) to Satisfy Yahweh (God’s) Craving for Blood and Life
Apart from the Tetratuch, the book of Joshua forms one of six sections of the Deuteronomistic History (Joshua - Kings) that conveys the epic story of Israel. The redactor of the epic in Joshua wanted to portray the Israelites as having destroyed completely all the inhabitants of Canaan(contra to that of the text of Judges which has the inhabitants of Canaan living within the land along side the Israelites) in a massive sweep under the divine concept of Holy War / Divine Warrior (Modern terms given to the context where Yahweh Himself leads the Israelite armies into battle during Holy War. of the LORD (Yahweh):
"It shall be, when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the balsam trees, then you shall act promptly, for then the LORD (Yahweh) will have gone out before you to strike the army of the Philistines." (2 Samuel 5: 24) (An excellent discussion of this concept can be found in Frank M. Cross: Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel. See the chapter on “The Divine Warrior“, pp. 91 - 111 and P.D. Miller, The Divine Warrior in Early Israel, (Harvard Semitic Monographs V, 1970).
As Divine or Holy Warriors, the Israelite men would ready themselves for war by consecration in reframing from sex and not cutting their hair (Judges 5:2 plus the figure of the Nazirite Holy warrior: Samson) which is record in the ancient poetic text of Judges 5 or what scholars call “The Song of Deborah”.
This is again reiterated in 2 Samuel 11: 6-14 in the story of King David and Uriah when Joab brings Uriah home to sleep with Bathsheba to cover up David’s sexual sin. But as a dedicated Holy Warrior, Uriah refused sex (2 Samuel 11: 11). Although Nathan foretells David of his coming crisis 2 Sam. 12 1-15, the section ends when Yahweh kills the innocent child of David and Bathsheba as a crude sacrifice for sin. (However, once the first child slaughter is accepted as the atonement for David’s sin, Yahweh can then bless them with a second child who will became famous: Solomon (vs.24)). I have used the term “slaughter” in the context that David’s first born, just like in the epic context when Yahweh himself slaughters the first born of both the Egyptian’s children and animals in the covenant of Passover to be taught as a sign for all future Israel:
“For the LORD will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when He sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to smite you. When you enter the land which the LORD will give you, as He has promised, you shall observe this rite. And when your children say to you, 'What does this rite mean to you?' you shall say, 'It is a Passover sacrifice to the LORD who passed over the houses of the sons of Israel in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians, but spared our homes.'" And the people bowed low and worshiped.” (Exodus 12: 23 - 27).
The above elements are brought together in the epic tale of the fall of Jericho where both the concepts of Holy War and the Divine Warrior are incorporated with the common ancient Near Eastern magical number seven:
“Also seven priests shall carry seven trumpets of rams' horns before the ark; then on the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. "It shall be that when they make a long blast with the ram's horn, and when you hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people will go up every man straight ahead.” (Joshua 6: 4 - 5).
With the city wall destroyed, the human slaughter of all the men women and children along with their animals could begin under the ancient concept of Holy War where Yahweh, as the leading Warrior-King deity of the Israelite army, demands all the booty of the city from the death of all living things to its gold, silver, bronze and iron as his portion of the הרס or “harem” or the BAN.
“They utterly destroyed everything in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword…They burned the city with fire, and all that was in it. Only the silver and gold, and articles of bronze and iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD. (Joshua 6: 21 & 24)
{Word study: שָׂרַף as used in this context is associated with בָּאֵשׁ as the text reads
“שָׂרַף בָּאֵשׁ” or “to burn with fire”. This is a cognate of the Akkadian ina isati sarapu “to destroy by fire” as in relation to burning figurines in magic rituals.
The word שָׂרַף as used in this study is associated in the Priestly work of Leviticus in the burning of animal sacrifices (see also Numbers 17:4, Judges 7: 31, 19: 5 and 2 Kings 17:31). However, most importantly, פרש is used in the Hebrew Bible in the context of children burnt to the gods: Duet. 12: 31, Jeremiah 7: 31, 19: 5, and 2 Kings 17: 31.
Thus, all life, both human and animal life of the city of Jericho, is ritualistically slaughtered and then Yahweh can feast on the smoke from the blood and bodies of the victims, the city is “שָׂרַף בָּאֵש” or burnt with fire.}
The cultic magical elements flow full and free in Joshua 6 - 7. But the victory is short lived due to hidden sin! Unknown to Joshua, Yahweh is denied his full booty; not the precious lives of the non-combatant: All the innocent women, children, babies, the unborn and animals (which Yahweh again equates the innocent human life), but Yahweh greed is for the material metal wealth; that is the gold, silver, bronze and iron that could be used in his tabernacle. (In the book of Jonah, after Jonah preaches in Nineveh, Jonah 4:11 tells us that both humans and animal repented.)
With the murder of all life in Jericho completed and the everything burnt to Yahweh (Notice that the cultic proper killing of life of both humans and animal in Jericho means that their blood must be drained. Thus Joshua 6: 21 makes it a point to tell the Jewish reader of this epic that death was to be by “the edge of the sword” before the ritual / sacrificial burning 6: 24 could take place.)
To seal the future fate of the city, an divine curse is placed on anyone who tries to rebuild it:
“Then Joshua made them take an oath at that time, saying, "Cursed before the LORD is the man who rises up and builds this city Jericho; with the loss of his firstborn he shall lay its foundation, and with the loss of his youngest son he shall set up its gates." (Joshua 6:26). (again, the curse here is much like we find in such major This is like many general ancient Near Eastern Akkadian texts such as the epilogue to the Code of Hammurabi. Thus, Yahweh’s curse in verse 26 has set the stage for the slaughter of Achan and all that belonged to him.
Since Yahweh was denied his booty of gold and silver, Yahweh must take his vengeance out on the 3,000 Israelites by not marching into Holy War against Ai:
“So about three thousand men from the people went up there, but they fled from the men of Ai. The men of Ai struck down about thirty-six of their men, and pursued them from the gate as far as Shebarim and struck them down on the descent, so the hearts of the people melted and became as water.” (Joshua 7: 4-5)
The reason given to Joshua is that “Israel has sinned” by taking Yahweh’s gold and sliver:
"Israel has sinned, and they have also transgressed My covenant which I commanded them. And they have even taken some of the things under the ban and have both stolen and deceived. Moreover, they have also put them among their own things.” (Joshua 7: 11) Thus, all of Israel must consecrate themselves to be made holy (as in a divine ritual for Holy Warriors and priests):
“ 'It shall be that the one who is taken with the things under the ban (harem) shall be burned with fire, he and all that belongs to him, because he has transgressed the covenant of the LORD, and because he has committed a disgraceful thing in Israel.'" (Joshua 7: 15).
Since Yahweh was cheated out of his gold and silver, human slaughter must sacrificially be feed to Yahweh to quench his hunger for blood and life:
“Joshua said, "Why have you troubled us? The LORD will trouble you this day." And all Israel stoned them with stones; and they burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones.” (Joshua 7: 25)
Again, the slaughter of men, women, children, babies along with the unborn are an atonement for the original booty of gold and silver God was denied. As such, Achan’s whole extended family is sacrificed by stoning (death caused by blunt force trauma
associated with both external and internal bleeding) then, just like Jericho, the slaughtered families are sacrificed to Yahweh to feed on by fire and its smoke.
To mark the spot as holy, an altar built of stones was set up there to honor Yahweh:
“They raised over him a great heap of stones that stands to this day, and the LORD turned from the fierceness of His anger. Therefore the name of that place has been called the valley of Achor to this day.” (Joshua 7: 26)
With Yahweh’s hunger for human blood and flesh satisfied, he again marches with the Israelites into Holy War; this time against Ai. But, unlike before, Joshua cuts a deal with Yahweh to make up for their defeat the first time by Achan’s hidden sin. Thus, Israel will get to keep all the “spoils and its cattle” (8: 2), but again, all the human life of 12,000 souls must be sacrificially killed and burnt to Yahweh:
“…then all Israel returned to Ai and struck it with the edge of the sword. All who fell that day, both men and women, were 12,000-- all the people of Ai. For Joshua did not withdraw his hand with which he stretched out the javelin until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. … So Joshua burned Ai and made it a heap forever, a desolation until this day.” (Joshua 8:24c - 26 and 28)
III. The Slaughter of Christ
To keep this post from futher excessive length, I’ve listed some of the reasons that Jesus, as the Christ, fails to qualify as a true sacrificial offering. To get Jesus to a point where he can be both a human sacrifice and a retuning Warrior-King; the term Messiah had to be totally degraded. It‘s little wonder St. Paul states:
“For the message about the cross is nonsense to those who are being destroyed, but it is God's power to us who are being saved. … For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know God, God was pleased to save those who believe through the nonsense of our preaching.” (1 Corth. 1: 18 & 21)
A. The Roman method of crucifixion, which included the beating before Jesus was nailed to the cross, was done by pagan gentile men who were neither consecrated as holy in God’s sight, nor was Jesus’ beating and crucifixion generally any different from the thousands the Romans had made examples out of earlier (Josephus, Jewish Wars 2: Ch.308; Philo Flacc 72: 84 -85).
B. No animal in the Hebrew Bible was made to suffer as an atonement to God. The animal was ritualistically killed usually with a knife and then it bled to died quickly. Aftewards, its whole body was brunt or only its fat and organs burnt with the sweet smell in the form of smoke of the bruning flesh rising up to God.
In contrast, Jesus was made to suffer under Roman law and was neither quickly killed by proper bleeding nor burnt. Even the innocent women, children and babies who were slain with the sword at Jericho died quickly and then were burnt so Yahweh could enjoy it.
C. No sacrificial animal, be it human or beast, could still be alive (resurrected) after the act of sacrifice and still be a true offering to God. Its life (as carried in the blood and burnt body) were sealed in death to God forever into the heavens by the rising smoke.
D. Again, since Jesus was not burnt as human sacrifice as in the Hebrew Bible, God could feast upon the smell of the smoke.
F. No one single offering atoned once and for all the sins of the Jews much less those of the entire future world (conta Paul’s theology in Romans). That Jesus is said to be sinless is only a relevant truth: To the educated religious Jews, he blasphemer. To the Christians, the sinless lamb of God.
I could continue, but enough for now. I’m sure this post will be a hotly debated subject in the comment section.
Shalom,
Harry
One of the most interesting creationists to ever push his head out of the Discovery Institute is a neurosurgeon by the name of Michael Egnor. Dr. Egnor gained his recognition by penning an essay
about why he wouldn't want his doctor to understand evolution. He went about proving that he himself certainly didn't know about evolution.
The most interesting line in his otherwise unremarkable essay came when he said the following:
If you needed treatment for a brain tumor, your medical team would include a physicist (who designed the MRI that diagnosed your tumor), a chemist and a pharmacologist (who made the medicine to treat you), an engineer and an anesthesiologist (who designed and used the machine that give you anesthesia), a neurosurgeon (who did the surgery to remove your tumor), a pathologist (who studied the tumor under a microscope and determined what type of tumor it was), and nurses and oncologists (who help you recover and help make sure the tumor doesn’t come back). There would be no evolutionary biologists on your team.
To be honest, this is largely true and mostly on point. Certainly nobody would want an evolutionary biologist working on their tumor. However, if you were the family member of the person with the tumor, you might have a very different opinion about it all.
The new science of genomic medicine is looking to allow us to trace our personal genetic heritages back hundreds of thousands if not possibly millions of years. One of the most important findings in cancer research, something that I hope even Dr. Egnor would not be "Egnorant" about is the importance of family history in the assessment of cancer risk.
There are tumors that are caused by genetic problems, yet some of these are quite common. From Dr. Egnor's point of view, all he can point to to explain this huge life-changing problem in the lives of his patients is God's will, or perhaps sin (which is also God's will). However the explanations open to the evolutionary biologist are numerous and not only that, the evolutionary biologist can use the knowledge we have of the human genome and the differences between our genome and those of our simian, primate and mammalian relatives to try to find ways to cure or prevent these horrible tumors.
Poor Dr. Egnor will be left where he is now, in the operating room, thinking that there's nothing evolutionary biology has to offer him, but this simply isn't the case even if he looks at the patient he just operated on.
You see the cancer that he is removing also evolved within the patient he is removing it from. Almost all malignant tumors must first lose the gene p53 which would otherwise cause the cell to stop dividing and suicide itself. This is something that each cell contains, so before a tumor can grow, it must first evolve a loss of this gene. To quote the article referenced above:
It seems that DNA damage itself is not the critical event that leads to cancer, as long as the oncogenic-stress pathways that activate p53 are intact. Furthermore, these results underscore the need to ensure that the relevant upstream pathway for p53 activation is intact, possibly even enhanced. For example, drugs in development enhance the function of kinases that activate p53 in response to DNA damage.
To clarify, it is critical that we understand how the gene p53 works to develop drugs that can fight, or even better prevent the cancers that Dr. Egnor is trying to remove. One of the most important components of that understanding comes from studying this gene in other organisms to whom we are related.
Even more interesting is the program for a symposium held in Copenhagen earlier this year. Titles include:
100 Million years of evolutionary history of the human genome
David Haussler, Professor, Director of Center for Biomolecular Science & Engineering, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz
Selection and population sizes in the human lineage inferred from primate genome sequences
Mikkel Heide Schierup, Associate Professor, Bioinformatics Research Center, University of Aarhus
Genome Wide Association studies bring new responses about diabetes and obesity global epidemics
Philippe Froguel, Professor, Chair in Genomic Medicine, Division of Medicine, Imperial College London
Yet to Dr. Egnor, this is all irrelevant. Dr. Egnor represents the worst of the creationist mindset. He doesn't even want to understand the earth and the histories of his patients. He doesn't want to find ways to prevent a disease. He just wants to keep doing what he's always done, ignorant of the greater march of science around him.
In all "civilized" countries in the world, Human Sacrifice is unlawful. The reason it is unlawful is that it is murder. I have seen it argued that a law against murder is one of the Ten Commandments because it is an aspect of a universal moral that proves Gods existence. I think we can all see the irony and logical inconsistency in that.
[Revised Aug. 8, 2008 to add the "Human Sacrifice Algorithm" to the bottom of the matrix]
This article uses a Matrix to show that Jesus was a human sacrifice. While some Christians may find nothing wrong with this, I know that some do. In my early days in the church, the sight of that cadaver hanging on the cross with blood pouring down its face and a bleeding gash on the side along with the old "this is my body and blood" at the communion presented a formidable stumbling block to me. I will even go so far as to say that I had to overcome a natural revulsion to accept those aspects of Christianity. [Click on the picture of the lamb to enlarge it to see the stream of blood pouring out of the gash on the left side.]
Since I expect that some Christians will attempt to concentrate on one datum or some philosophical spin to discredit the conclusion and/or "poison the well", I opted to present the data in a matrix because it is a data analysis tool that presents data in a way that makes it easier to avoid focusing on one datum and to consider, compare and contrast all the data at a glance.
In the Hypothesis Test Matrix, a datum that is consistent with the two categories of comparison are labeled with a "C", a datum that is inconsistent is labeled with an "I", and a datum that is ambiguous is labeled with an "A". In Hypothesis tests, usually there are competing hypotheses but in this case, I couldn't think of any competing hypotheses. Therefore there is nothing that is inconsistent or ambiguous, especially since Paul and John speak of Jesus death as a sacrifice of atonement. In a real Hypothesis Matrix, the winning hypothesis is the one that is least inconsistent with the data.
| Hypothesis test: "Jesus was a Human Sacrifice" |
|
|
| Data | Jesus | Human Sacrifice |
Wikipedia on the "Lamb of God":
Lamb of God (Latin: Agnus Dei) is one of the titles given to Jesus in the New Testament and consequently in the Christian tradition. It refers to Jesus' role as a sacrificial lamb atoning for the sins of man in Christian theology, harkening back to ancient Jewish Temple sacrifices in which a lamb was slain during the passover (the "Paschal Lamb", Hebrew: Korban Pesach), the blood was sprinkled on the altar, and the whole of the lamb was eaten. In the original Passover in Egypt, the blood was smeared on the door posts and lintel of each household (Exodus 12:1-28). | C | C |
The Lamb (in early Christian Symbolism) from The Catholic Encyclopedia:
The next step in the development of this idea of associating the Cross with the lamb was depicted in a sixth-century mosaic of the Vatican Basilica which represented the lamb standing on a throne, at the foot of a Cross studded with gems. From the pierced side of this lamb, blood flowed into a chalice whence again it issued in five streams, thus recalling Christ's five wounds. | C | C |
Romans 5:8-11:
"8. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
9. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
10. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.
11. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement." | C | C |
Atonement from Answers.com:
"1 Amends or reparation made for an injury or wrong; expiation.
2.a. Reconciliation or an instance of reconciliation between God and humans.
b. Atonement Christianity. The reconciliation of God and humans brought about by the redemptive life and death of Jesus." | C | C |
John 3:16-17:
"16 For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
17 For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. "
[this is the atonement, or reconciliation between god and man, jesus paid the price for mans sin with his life blood.]
| C | C |
Without the atonement no one, moral or not, gets to heaven. Jesus Sacrifice was a prerequisite requirement.
| C | C |
Jesus was killed (more or less) during the same time frame as the passover lamb was supposed to be killed. The Passover is a Jewish ceremony that contains rituals of cultural rememberence.
| C | C |
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia on Human Sacrifice:
"Offering of the life of a human being to a god."
| C | C |
Human Sacrifice from Wikipedia:
"Human sacrifice is the act of homicide (the killing of one or several human beings) in the context of a religious ritual (ritual killing). Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals (animal sacrifice) and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practiced in various cultures throughout history. Victims were typically ritually killed in a manner that is supposed to please or appease gods, spirits or the deceased." | C | C |
www.allaboutjesuschrist.org says it explicitly:
"Approximately 1,500 years later, on the 14th day of Nisan, the Passover Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, was sacrificed upon a wooden cross for the sins of all mankind. When the Day of the Lord comes, those who have covered themselves in the blood of the Lamb by accepting Christ will be kept safe while the world pays for their rebellion against God." | C | C |
Revelations 5:12:
Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.
| C | C |
| Humans do something to offend god, | C | C |
| Humans need to do something to propitiate, apppease, pay, remdiate, reconcile, pick the synonymous word you prefer or come up with one of your own. | C | C |
| A human sacrifice is chosen | C | C |
| A human sacrifice is performed | C | C |
| A human Sacrifice is made as part of a ritual | C | C |
| Sometimes the sacrifice victim is willing | C | C |
| The god is appeased, the "wrath" in this instance is all wrapped up and put away. | C | C |
Considering that it is so easy to find Christian sites that support the hypothesis, it is not a good hypothesis to test with the matrix because there really are no other competing hypotheses that I know of. However, I have been challenged and seen Christians deny that Jesus was a human sacrifice while acknowledging all the premises required to support the conclusion. I expect that this article will turn into a debate with some Christians about "definition", "meaning" and "distinctions" with liberal use of "special pleading" where they argue that it is not murder or human sacrifice because the Christian God was involved, while they wrestle with the cognitive dissonance that occurs when two values come into conflict.
Further Reading:
Answers.com: Human Sacrifice
Answers.com: Ritual Killing
Answers.com: Atonement
The Catholic Encyclopedia
Wikipedia: Lamb of God
www.allaboutjesuschrist.org
This post was begun as a return rely to a comment I made on John's last post. Since it is so valid to what we discuss here at DC, I felt it would make a discussion for a new thread.
Rev. Phil stated: “I do have one question though, cannot you position your point to any ideology? Science or politics or humanities all make various claims that they have the "truth" for whatever they may be addressing and yet have widely differing and even contra-dictionary views internally?”
Thanks for your question, Rev. Phil.
OK, lets take science. The one of the main reasons I left Christianity for a career in electronics is over the issue of truth. In science, truth is relative on many levels based on our knowledge at the time.
Lets say there is a power supply whose output dropped form 12 VDC to 7 VDC. As a fellow electronic tech, you claim you know it’s in the filtering circuit (lets say the capacitor) while I claim it’s in the regulator circuit (lets say one of the bias resisters on the Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor or MOSFET). We both strongly believe our knowledge as to the power supply’s malfunction is 100% right; that is our truth. In other words, we both have an opinion based of our understanding of electronics which equates truth with knowledge. However, unlike religion / theology, with just a voltmeter (DVM) or and oscilloscope, we can prove truth in a matter of minutes; thus KNOWING who was wrong and who was right.
The same can be said about relative truth in science. For over 60 years vacuum tubes were the absolute truth. That’s how we understood electronics; it was the only way we understood truth and it worked great in our radios, TV’s and early computers. Then, Bipolar Transistors were the “truth” of the day as developed by Bell Labs. Now it’s the Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor that is our truth and they are used in large scale integration as in the computer you are reading this post on.
The same now out dated absolute “truth” is replacing our analog TV technology which is being relatively up dated in February 2009 with Digital High-Definition TV HDDTV); a totally new kind of electronic truth that is also totally incompatible with the old analog TV truth.
As an example, the other day I went to a musical instrument store with my brother who wanted to get an electric guitar. I noticed the guitar room had a number of vacuum tube amps costing over 3 times as much as a MOSFET amp ($3500.00). I commented to the salesman as to why would anyone would want old technology and pay $3500.00 for a tube amp that is fragile (tubes can break and the control elements can warp or shake loose), needs high voltages (tube plates running at 600 VDC and upwards) and tubes are subject to audio phonics (the speaker can shake the vacuum tube elements causing output distortion).
His reply: “No Sir! No Sir! These amps are designed to avoid all of that. Plus you will not get as high a quality of sound from any solid state amp.”
I asked him if I took an audio analyzer (a test equipment that sweeps a pure known range of frequencies into the amp under test’s input and then compares these audio frequencies to the amps output for the total percentage of distortion induced by the amps circuit) and the MOSFET amp’s signal was equal to the vacuum tube amp or better, would that prove my point, sir?
Salesman: “No Sir! All that fancy test equipment can not replace the trained musical ear which knows true fidelity when he hears it.”
Again, I tried to reason with him and asked him if vacuum tube amps were indeed better, why does not NASA used them to tract their space probes.
Salesman: “NASA needs to cut cost plus the U.S. government gets supports the newest fade in electronics and not from the best proven technology."
Then the salesman demanded: “And just what makes you knowledgeable in this area anyway? You don’t play a guitar do you?” I had hit a wall!
With a background in religion, I felt I was arguing theology. Plus, without the means to prove our facts at the time, it was simply what I said vs. what the salesman (in ignorance) said. We were debating the absolute truth (vacuum tubes now, vacuum tubes forever) vs. relative truth of advancing facts / logic.
You want to know something funny; within 50 feet I walked into the keyboard room and asked another salesman there why none of the keyboards used vacuum tube amps?
Keyboard Salesman: “Hu? I don’t know what your are talking about!”
When I told him what the guitar amp salesman said about vacuum tube amps, the keyboard salesman said that THE REASON MUST BE that vacuum tube amps work better ONLY with guitars.
I started to again explain the logic behind modern technological advances as I had just done with the guitar salesman, but I said to myself: “What the Hell! I’m now in the world of religion and theology.”
The above situation is religion in a nut shell. The problem is that Bible believers are the vacuum tube faithful whose truth is an absolute which can never be surpassed since it was the “truth" that was “Once delivered to the saints”.
As such, the Bible is a vacuum tube manual (but with the Old Testament equal to a Spark Gap Generator) where the true Bible believer is just like those guitar pickers who are willing to pay over 3 times as much for out dated technology (truth) and are also willing to argue their pseudo facts as to why it is so much better than anything secular humanity has today. And when the non- believer objects their flawed logic, we are told just as the guitar salesman told me about not being able to have any valid logic on vacuum tube amps since I did not pick a guitar, or as we so often hear her at DC: “Why should anyone listen to anything you say? You are not a Christian believer!”
As the old independent, fundamental, Bible believing, Bible preaching evangelist once told me about the 1611 King James Version of the Bible: “Brother, if it was good enough for Peter and Paul, it's good enough for me!”
Hi everybody,
A while ago I posted a notice about a weekend workshop we are offering soon. I'm pleased to say we have some space available for some "pay what you can" participants. The room and board would still be $125 but beyond that is negotiable. So get in touch soon!
Kind regards,
Marlen Winell
Here's the notice again:
LEAVING YOUR RELIGION?
It's not the end of the world! Join us at a recovery retreat.
"RELEASE AND RECLAIM"
August 15-17, 2008, with Dr. Marlene Winell
Do you feel alone in your struggle for healing? Come to a supportive and powerful weekend with others who can understand you -- an oasis from dogmatic teachings and judgmental groups. We'll rant and rave, tell our stories, discuss the issues, visualize, role-play, dance and draw – whatever it takes to think for ourselves and reclaim our lives. A joyful, empowered life is your birthright and you can start now.
WHEN: FRIDAY, Aug. 15, 7PM - SUNDAY, Aug. 17, 3PM.
WHERE: A beautiful house in Berkeley, California,
with hot tub and other amenities.
COST: $320 for the workshop, $125 for room and board. Financial need considered & options available.
TO REGISTER: Call 510-292-0509 or send an email to recoveryfromreligion@gmail.com. Register soon as group size is limited.
Dr. Marlene Winell is a psychologist & author of "Leaving the Fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists & Others Leaving their Religion." She has a practice in Berkeley & also counsels individuals by phone. For more info, mailing list, comments about retreats, & Youtube link, visit: www.marlenewinell.net. Or call Dr. Winell for a complimentary discussion about your interest.
For new people to this site (and we get many of them everyday) I've written a book that can be ordered right now on Amazon and shipped in seven days. A link to it along with some blurbs
can be found here. I've noticed a kind of glee that Christian apologists have had with the so-called new atheists to date, who are lining up to answer them. They claim to be winning the argument hands down, easily, in the popular culture.
I have a funny feeling their job just got harder.
Subtitled, "
Dr. Paul Copan: Apologist for Genocide"
by Dr. Hector Avalos
*Unless noted otherewise, all biblical translations are those of the RSV.
In an blog essay titled,
Is Yahweh a Moral Monster?: The New Atheists and Old Testament Ethics,” Dr. Paul Copan, a well-known Christian apologist, attempts to combat the New Atheists, and their dim view of biblical ethics. However, it soon becomes apparent that his critique repeats factual errors and biases found in earlier biblical apologists. Dr. Copan reveals himself as just another Christian apologist who supports biblical genocide and other injustices.
On Sunday, July 12, my oldest (13-year-old) son was baptized in a swimming pool. My other son (11) and daughter (9) had already been baptized at a Bible church two years ago while my oldest son was away on a Boy Scout campout. I wasn’t sure whether he would ever choose to be baptized: he has (understandably) expressed confusion to me about what to believe, and he doesn’t like to be in the public spotlight.
Though I continued attending an evangelical church with my family for four years following my deconversion, I dropped out in 2004. The rest of the family attends a local Bible church on most Sundays, but about once a month they meet at a “home church” with some friends in the neighborhood. Though I don’t attend the services, I do join the group for the Sunday noon meal afterward. It was at this home church that a spontaneous offer went out for anyone to be baptized at a nearby pool. I learned at the meal that my son had assented to be baptized (though I have reason to believe it was more out of social pressure than conviction). He expressed concern to me about the kind of questions he would be asked. I really didn’t feel like I could say much, so I told him it was up to him.
We all took off to the pool after the meal. There, the leader of the home church baptized a younger boy and then my son. The only question asked was, “Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that he died for your sins?”, to which my son somewhat replied “Yes,” then received a dunking.
Afterward the leader (who knows what I believe) told me “Thanks,” to which I (as one who generally likes to be nice to others) instinctively replied, “Thank you.” Later I wondered if I had performed an initiation rite to another religion (or to atheism) for one of his sons, would he have said, “Thank you”? I doubt I was bothered as much by the situation as he would have been bothered by the converse. My own baptism at age 12 didn’t prevent me from leaving the fold later in life, nor does this recent event in itself mystically lock my son into anything irrevocable. Perhaps also I’m cognizant of the fact that I started out my marriage and family as a believer, so I don’t feel as peeved about it as if I had been a skeptic all along and my son had been pulled into fundamentalism out of the blue. Still, it’s a reminder of the fact that religion is relentlessly striving to claim as many as possible of its own, and that someday my son will be forced to make a decision about his direction. If I sit idly by, he will likely take the path of least resistance under this pressure, even if he remains inwardly confused about what to believe.
Even so, I’m not super worried: I was able to find my way out of faith without the support of either parent; at least my children have my example. And if they never see things my way, I can’t say that’s the outcome I desire, but I’ll love them all the same.
I’m sure I’ll hear from some who think I should take a harder line. It’s difficult to say what’s best, but one thing is sure: I love my wife and kids and don’t want anything to jeopardize our union. I will not hesitate to continue gently presenting my views to my children, but I will not force the issue to the detriment of our relationship. That’s the difference between my approach and that of Jesus, who said,
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household’ (Matthew 10:34-36).
I received this email and not being an expert on this subject thought I'd listen to the collective wisdom of people who are. What do you think?
I have seen that much of the articles and commentaries in many of the atheist blogs relate to religion as it's practiced in America now. I have a few questions and I hope someone can help me out here.
I am currently a pentecostal from South India (Kerala) but since last year I have been very critical of Christianity. Pentecostal christianity in India is slightly different from the American version. They forbid jewelery, movies, secular songs etc etc (I know there are branches of Christianity in America that practise this too) and there is a lot of 'miracle work', personal prophecy and revelations and steer quite a lot towards personal piety. However, reading the bible and really thinking about it, the whole thing brings forward way too many holes for christianity to be a one stop shop for truth. I have slowly started to move away from christian beliefs and have been inching my way towards atheism. And in most areas I have started to find answers that gives me some clarification.
However there is one aspect that stumps me and I have not been able to find any solid articles regarding it. It's about prophecies. And by prophecies I mean the ability of some pastors to know secrets of a particular person. We have quite a lot of that in India. Predicting the future is nothing big, cause I have read about self fulfilling prophecies and such. But the following has me researching online frantically but not finding anything yet. There's quite a lot of 'supernatural' prophecy phenomenon and miracles (mostly unverified and quite a lot of them involves doctors just doing their job) in South India.
1. I recently had an interesting conversation with my sister and she told me about a pastor who visited her college and revealed things about her that he couldn't possibly have known ever. He did this again with her friends who weren't Christians that turned out to be true. These are things their friends didn't know but he was able to reveal it to the person privately and sort of 'call them to action'. For example, he told a Hindu friend that she has a weak heart and that she should consider surgery. No one except my sister and another friend knew about this. And it seems unlikely that someone else told him about her. (Again, this is what the hindu friend told my sister after the so called consultation, it's not likely again that she should have to lie about it).
2. She again tells me of a couple of students from a college prayer group who meet with a pastor they never knew at a church meeting. The pastor tells them that there is one student in the prayer group who cries out at night. It turns out that a student was going through quite a lot of personal problems and he used to cry at night after prayers. This student accepted christ eventually and was worried about his brothers who weren't saved. He prayed quite a lot and one day saw a vision of a large book and he sees the names of his brothers in the book. The next day he gets a call from his brother and the brother tells him that he accepted Christ last night (the night the student saw that vision). This is what the student told my sister and I have no way of verifying whether he exaggerated or just plain lied.
3. A girl was pondering over questions of God's existence over several months almost tiring herself out. One morning she goes to a church with my sister and friends and the preacher speaks exactly 'what she needed to hear'. After the service, the preacher comes over to the group and suddenly points to her and says 'today's message was directed to you'. No one had told him anything about her.(Incidentally, this pastor's father is thought of as a false prophet by quite a number of people that I know personally)
4. I personally have had prophecies told about me. Most of them were predictions of my future which I could point out as self fulfilling and I could argue against it.
These are unverified but these are testimonies from my sister, who has no reason to lie because she herself is a bit of skeptic, although not as much as me. She does believe the 'holy spirit' reveals things but I definitely can't believe that unless it's verifiable. And there are just too many holes in Christianity to reconcile it with this apparently supernatural phenomenon. I do think this is an area that needs some serious scientific research. If it's being done already please point me to articles regarding this.
Is it the unknown power of the mind? Would anyone at DC know anything in-depth about this? Have you gone through this experience?
Do you think young people are vulnerable enough for people to look into their minds easily?
Link, then scroll down below his picture to listen. He's also speaking in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, if you're nearby. I'll be there as well.
I've personally skipped most of Craig's opening statement (since I've heard it before) to "Part 3" where John Shook starts at 2:10.
Here is the link
Dawson Betrhick of the Incinerating Presuppositionalism blog posted an excellent essay on the alleged post resurrection appearances listed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. Mr. Bethrick's style make his critique worthwhile reading. Here is the link to
Is I Corinthians 15:3-8 ‘Too Early’ to Be Legend?
Here is the link to Is I Corinthians 15:3-8 ‘Too Early’ to Be Legend?
Students of biology know with as near a certainty as knowledge is capable of that all organisms on earth are related. All use DNA or RNA as their genetic code. The code for turning DNA into protein is hugely similar in all cases and identical in most cases, and the records of fossils leave no doubt that the timespan involved in the creation of modern multicellular life has been about 3.5 billion years, most of which was spent with only unicellular creatures inhabiting the earth.
If humans are descended from a non-human ancestor, which biology shows definitively, then the story of Adam and Eve is wrong in its particulars without question. It is not even a valuable metaphor for people who don't accept it as true, because it suggests that humans have some special status beyond that of other creatures. Additionally, it suggests that we have "dominion" over the earth, which is a terrible idea that has created a very dangerous mindset in many human beings.
What is the evidence then, for common descent?
In a word, it's overwhelming. We'll look at it in greater detail now.
The most important evidence for common descent can be appreciated by anyone who does a broad survey of the existing kinds of life on earth. What we see are gradations of forms with variations on various types. This is what we would expect if the process of speciation were of a branching nature, with new forms coming from established ones.
However, there are molecular evidences that are real "smoking guns". This happens when an animal has a functioning gene that becomes inactivated. The animal will sometimes die, but occasionally environmental factors allow it to survive with the gene no longer active. When this happens, all the descendants of that animal will carry a "pseudogene" on their genetic code that looks very much like an active ancestral form but no longer functions. We'll focus on the most important one that establishes without question that humans are descended from other primates.
Simians and anthropoids (including chimps, orangs, baboons, gorillas and humans) are unable to make their own vitamin C (ascorbic acid). The reason for this is that the normal mammalian enzyme that makes vitamin C (called gulonolactone oxidase) is impaired from functioning properly in these animals. There was a deletion mutation and multiple point mutations that keep it from being functional.
Interestingly, the other wet-nosed primate groups, lemurs, monkeys etc., do indeed make their own vitamin C and they are capable of surviving without this as a portion of their diet.
Here's where the story becomes interesting. The mutations that create the inactive enzyme in humans are nearly identical with those of the simian apes. We can see minor variations but the main sequence remains amazingly similar. However there are other mammals that also don't make vitamin C. These include bats and also guinea pigs.
This seems like a monkey wrench in the system. Are we suggesting that these other mammals also descended from prosimians? A closer look reveals the answer. When we examine the actual sequences of the genes of mammals for gulonolactone oxidase we see a clear pattern. Humans, chimps and orangs have nearly identical sequences. Guinea pigs have very different sequences however. Don't take my word for it, scroll down on this page and look at them yourself.
This is exactly the pattern we would expect if it happened by adaptive radiation from a common ancestor. If we assume that the common ancestor of all prosimians ate a diet high in fruits and other foods high in ascorbic acid, the mutation would not have been limiting to life in that ecology. However, we must also assume that for most animals living on a diet that did NOT include ascorbic acid, the mutation would be lethal.
Thus, all the mammals that exist with a mutation in gulonolactone oxidase eat foods high in ascorbic acid, or they die. However, they do not have the same mutations unless they are otherwise closely related. Thus, the mutations in guinea pigs are the same as other guinea pigs. The mutations in apes and anthropoids are the same as other prosimian descendants. Although I am not aware of bats having gulonolcatone oxidase sequencing done at this time, we can assume pending the results that the same pattern will appear.
Scurvy is a horrible disease and has been a great plague to man whenever he takes long trips through hostile territory. Many humans have died for lack of ascorbic acid.
Therefore, the idea of a loving God, who made Adam and Eve with his hands is defied by the simple fact that monkeys could seafare easily on a diet of fish and clams, but we cannot. We must have vitamin C. Yet it would have been trivial for God to give us back the enzyme that makes vitamin C for us.
You can believe many different things, but to believe God exists, and he created Adam and Eve and all their descendants lovingly, you also have to believe he created them in a way that would make them horribly sick if they went without ascorbic acid for a period of time. To me this makes him seem a monster. A much simpler and more rational explanation is that there was no Adam and Eve and that our ancestors were a population of fruit-eating mammals who lost an important enzyme.
