Lawmaker asks court to ban Almighty from 'harmful activities,' 'terroristic threats'.
A Nebraska state senator is moving forward with a controversial lawsuit against his maker, requesting "a permanent injunction ordering [God] to cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats."
State Sen. Ernie Chambers I-Omaha, appeared before Douglas County District Judge Marlon Polk in a scheduling hearing against God on July 28.
Chambers, an atheist, requested that the court acknowledge the presence of God in the courtroom so he wouldn't be required to "serve notice" of the trial, according to the Omaha World-Herald.
The court had previously told Chambers the lawsuit would be thrown out if he was unable to serve notice to his Creator.
Chambers responded by arguing he attempted to contact God on multiple occasions and he should not be required to verify his existence when the U.S. government acknowledges him by printing "In God We Trust" on its currency.
The complaint drew widespread criticism when Chambers filed the lawsuit against God last year for creating "fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects and the like."
Chambers also blames God for causing "calamitous catastrophes resulting in the wide-spread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants including innocent babes, infants, children, the aged and infirm without mercy or distinction."
According to the lawsuit, the Creator "has manifested neither compassion nor remorse, proclaiming that defendant will laugh" when disaster strikes.
Chamber began his grievance as a way to call attention to "frivolous" lawsuits after several senators authored bills barring them. He said the Constitution mandates open courthouse doors to everyone – even those who seek to sue the Almighty.
"This started out as an exercise in the workings of the judiciary," he said. "My point and the crux of the matter is that everyone is entitled to their day in court. That's the whole crux of the matter, and I think people get caught up in the religion end of it – but that's not what this is about."
While Chambers hopes the court will rule against God, he doesn't expect any earth-shaking results from the decision.
"Once the court enters the injunction, that's as much as I can do," he told the World-Herald. "That's as much as I would ask the court. I wouldn't expect them to enforce it."
On a private email loop, I've been getting bits and pieces of Vox Day offered by way of theistic argumentation. In particular, theistic friends find Mssr. Beale's "take down" of Dawkin's complaint that "A God capable of calculating the Goldilocks values for the six numbers would have to be at least as improbable as the finely tuned combination of numbers itself”[1]. Now, I've only read just a few pages of the opening of The Irrational Atheist, and have now read through Chapter VIII, "Darwin's Judas" just as means of familiarizing myself with the arguments being advanced on the email loop, and I guess I've been out of the loop for a while with respect to the mensa-punk-apologist groove that's happening out there. There's a lot of the book I haven't read yet, but just from what I have, I can say... that is one target-rich environment for fisking.
Anyway, it's easy to poke fun of the smaller, tangential blunders Day makes - in response to Dawkins' complaint, for example, Day says:
"Third, does Dawkins seriously wish to argue that Martin Rees is more complex than the universe? We know Rees calculated the Goldilocks values, so if he can do so despite being less complex than the sum of everyone and everything else in the universe, then God surely can, too. "[2]
Day apparently thinks that "calculating", or maybe just reading a physics textbook describing these parameters' values, is what Dawkins is pointing to in his objection. Hah! Calculating, say, the weak nuclear force is no small feat, and one wonders if Day, even as confused as he is here, supposes that Rees calculates these values on his own, apart from the enterprise of science?
I think it's safe to say that Dawkins would laugh at this kind of response, the idea that calculating a set of parameters' values represents the kind of complexity Dawkins is referencing, and rightly so. It's the machinery (for lack of a better metaphysical term) that unifies and interrelates these parameters that implicates something fantastically sophisticated, complex. Like Day supposes that Rees has matched the complexity of an automobiles design(er) by figuring out the car's design parameters: gas mileage, horsepower, number of gears, number of tires, etc.
As Day works through the "Fractal Intelligence and the Complex Designer" section, though, the errors become more fundamental, and less silly. Day continues on page 153:
"There is no reason why a designer must necessarily be more complex than his design. The verity of the statement depends entirely on the definition of complexity. While Dawkins doesn’t specifically provide one, in explaining his “Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit,” he refers to the Argument from Improbability as being rooted in “the source of all the information in living matter.” Complexity, to Dawkins, is therefore equated with information." [3]
Day can be forgiven here for his frustration; Dawkins does not spell out a formal definition of organizational or algorithmic complexity in his book. But you don't have to be a super-genius to get familiar with the concepts as they are used in science and information theoretic application. I haven't read Day's section of "theistic bodycounts" from wars versus "atheistic bodycounts", but Day's supporters on my list regale me superlatives of Day's phenomenal research capabalities. If he's got such capabilities, he shot all his efforts in previous chapters; Day simply punts here and decides to equate complexity with information.
Oops. That's a really major blunder. Just in casual terms, complexity is a description of the "number of discrete and differentiated parts", and information is "reduction in uncertainty". Complexity and information are related on some level, and those terms do often occur together in computing and information theoretic contexts. But complexity is not information, any more than mass is acceleration.
Day then gets ready for his example, which he intends to use in refuting Dawkins thusly:
"But as any programmer knows, mass quantities of information can easily be produced from much smaller quantities of information. A fractal is perhaps the most obvious example of huge quantities of new information being produced from a very small amount of initial information. For example, thirty-two lines of C++ code suffice to produce a well-known fractal known as the Sierpinski Triangle."[4]
Now, a recursive algorithm can produce arbitrary large amounts of output; so long as it continues to recurse, code for rendering Sierpinski triangles is stuck in an infinite loop, with each iteration produce a new level of rendering. But, complexity is not information, and while code for Sierpinski triangles and Mandelbrot set fractals (the other example Day invokes here) can generate enormous, unlimited amounts of output, both Sierpinski triangles and fractals are classic examples of precisely the opposite of what Day understands: minimal complexity.
Day has the clues right there in front of him on the page. He's proud of the fact that in just 32 lines of C++ code, he can produce staggering amounts of output. But complexity in information terms is measured by the size of the smallest program required to precisely the output. That means that a 32 line program is, by the very definition of complexity, not complex at all, and is in fact a very elegant example of simplicity. The essence of a fractal is self-similarity. Recursion simply applies this features of itself to itself, on a different scale.
A 1,000 x 1,000 pixel grid of random pixels, on the other hand, isn't as pretty to look at as a rendering of the Mandelbrot set, but it is much more complex -- maximally complex, as it turns out (which is part of why it's not as appealing aesthetically as a fractal image!). It's counterintuitive to people who don't work with information theory and algorithmic complexity, but its a fact of the domain: randomness is the theoretical maximum for measured complexity. You can't get any more complex than purely random. In a random grid of pixels, we cannot guess anything about any pixels at all. In a rendering of Sierpinski triangles, or the Mandelbrot or Julia set, as soon as we see one level of rendering, prior to any recursion, we no everything about the rest of image, and can reproduce the fractal to any depth of detail without the original program.
What does all this mean? Well, at a high level, it means Day has no idea what he's talking about in this part of the book. Worse, in a book that's held up as a treatise against slipshod reasoning and sloppy argumentation, this section indicts the author rather than his subjects. Dawkins' argument may not stand on its own, and may prove unsound in some regard. But Day's refutation is an example that works in Dawkins' favor, if anything, and Day doesn't even know it.
Intrigued by the profoundly amateurish analysis in this section, I did a little googling, suspecting that Day's "expertise" comes on the cheap thanks to a DSL line and a web browser (and even that must be done in a lazy, half-ass fashion, as even nominal effort with Google will unearth simple, straightforward treatments of this subject that would have shown Day how confused he was). The reader can judge for themselves what the likelihood is of this connection, but consider: here’s a paragraph from the Wikipedia article on “Fractal”:
“Because they appear similar at all levels of magnification, fractals are often considered to be infinitely complex (in informal terms). Natural objects that approximate fractals to a degree include clouds, mountain ranges, lightning bolts, coastlines, and snow flakes.”[5]
Note the similar phrasing used in the Wikipedia text, and Day’s quote above from page 155:
“considered to be infinitely complex”, and “not only considered to be complex, but infinitely complex”.[6]
Also notice Day’s use of “approximate fractals”, a term used in the Wikipedia text as well. That by itself may not be compelling, but considered with the list of examples provided --- clouds, mountain ranges, lightning bolts, coastlines and snowflakes -- all of which Day names in his list, except for coastlines (which Day may be identifying indirectly with his mention of ‘other natural examples’)... one cannot read the Wikipedia text beside Day’s discussion on page 155 without recognizing them as cognates. See for yourself:
Day, page 155:
“Nor do they require human intelligence or computers to produce them, as approximate fractals can be found in clouds, snowflakes, lightning, mountains, and other natural examples.”[7]
Wikipedia, “Fractal”:
“Because they appear similar at all levels of magnification, fractals are often considered to be infinitely complex (in informal terms). Natural objects that approximate fractals to a degree include clouds, mountain ranges, lightning bolts, coastlines, and snow flakes.”[8]
Now, there’s nothing wrong per se with getting clued in by a Wikipedia page, or cribbing from its text in discussing fractals or other topics, but please note that there’s an important clue in these juxtaposed quotes. If Day is working from this Wikipedia article as his source here, it’s significant that he left out a key qualification - “(in informal terms)”. It’s parenthetical in the text, as it should be apparent to the informed reader, and is superfluous for readers familiar with formal concepts of complexity. But just in case, the text helpfully notifies the reader, and perhaps Day, if my conjecture is right, that fractals are “infinitely complex” only in a casual sense.
Day emphasize that Sierpinski triangles are not just complex, but "considered to be ... infinitely complex". He conveniently leaves out the key qualification that such characterizations obtain only in informal terms, why? Because it eviscerates his argument! In terms of actual, measured complexity, Sierpinski triangles aren't complex at all, they are 'complexity poor', as Day documents himself in his own arguments by noting that the output requires less than three dozen lines of code to produce.
All of this gets wrapped up with a new brand name that Day is proud to introduce to the reader: the argument from "Fractal Intelligence", as defeater for theoretical problems Dawkins identifies in a Complex Designer (if complex things require designers, then who designed God?). But because Day is thoroughly confused about the basics of complexity as a concept, he ends up writing comedy, rather than refutation. Unfortunately, because information theory and algorithmic complexity are outside the conceptual frameworks of most of his readers, Christians gobble this up, credulous, enthused by the prospects of Dawkings getting refuted. I have no idea how widespread Vox Day's books, articles or ideas are -- I'd not heard of him until he was brought up on my discussion loop a couple months ago -- but his gobbledygook is getting approving nods and applause in some Christian quarters, apparently, since I am seeing Chapter VIII of his book being seriously offered as a refutation of Dawkins objections on the complexity of God requiring his own Designer.
-Touchstone
[1] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Mariner Books), p. 143.
[2] Vox Day, The Irrational Atheist, p. 153.
[3] ibid., p. 153.
[4] ibid., p. 153
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal
[6] Vox Day, The Irrational Atheist, p. 155.
[7] ibid., p. 155.
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal
Last weekend at the pool, in response to some of my critical questions about pagan cannibalism and communion, one of my family asked me if I was an Atheist. Yikes!
We were hanging out in the pool. The local preacher lives close by and he was blaring some Old Ancient Medieval Church music and we were commenting on it. Someone said it reminded them of taking communion. I make it a habit of asking critical questions about religion whenever I find the topic comes up but I don't usually give my opinion other than "I don't get it". So, I asked the critical question about the "body and the blood", cannibalism and pagan ritual. That was when they asked me if I was an Atheist. This was a turning point, an engagement that I wasn't sure I wanted to have especially on the weekend in the pool, but to deny it would obviously be lying so I had to "frame it" properly to do damage control. I said
"I don't believe a God Exists".
and they said
"Well, I'm not sure if I do either".
and another said
"Well, I do."
and that was it. We went back to splashing around and talking about summery, pooly stuff. My milestone was surprisingly anti-climactic. I guess I could say it went swimmingly. I think my strategy of asking critical questions and giving them food for thought paid off for me. What a relief. Now I am officially out of the closet.
I’ve listed below some of the reasons why Jesus fails to qualify as a sacrificial offering or as the Messiah / Christ. To get Jesus to a point where he can be both a human sacrifice and a retuning Messiah Warrior-King (as in the book of Revelation); the Jewish concepts of both Messiah and sacrifice had to be totally degraded and forcibly hooked together.
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 Corinthians. 1: 18 & 21)
Reasons to reject Jesus as a sacrifice:
A. The Roman method of crucifixion, which included the beating Jesus received before he was nailed to the cross, was done by non-consecrated pagan gentile men who were not set apart as holy in God’s sight, but Jesus’ beating and crucifixion generally was not 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 tortured and made to suffer as an atonement to God. The animal was ritualistically sacrificed with a knife, thus it bled to death very quickly. Afterwards, its whole body was brunt or only its fat and organs were burnt with the sweet smell in the form of smoke of the burning flesh rising up to God.
By contrast, Jesus was purposely made to suffer under pagan gentile Roman law (not the under God’s law as found in Leviticus 1-18 (see Jacob Milgrom’s excellent article “Old Testament Sacrifices and Offering“, The Interpreter‘s Dictionary of the Bible: Supplementary Volume (Abingdon Press,1976)pp.763-771) and was neither quickly killed by proper bleeding nor was he burnt.
Even the innocent women, children and babies who were slain with the sword at Jericho and Ai died quickly and then were burnt so Yahweh could enjoy it. As such, Jesus’ death failed to qualify as a consecrated sacrifice under any of the Priestly laws of the Hebrew Bible. Again, since Jesus was not burnt as a human sacrifice as required in the Hebrew Bible, Yahweh (God ) not could feast upon the smell of the smoke. Instead, the God of the New Testament is pattern after patriarchal cycle of Abraham who must offer up his son Isaac.
C. No sacrificial animal, be it human or beast, could still be alive (resurrected) after the act of sacrifice and remain a true offering to God. Its life (as carried in the blood) wase sealed in death to God forever in the heavens by the rising smoke from the burning sacrifice.
F. No one single offering atoned once and for all the sins of the Jews much less those of the entire future world (contra Paul’s theology in Romans). That Jesus is said to be sinless is only a relevant truth: To the educated religious Jews; he was blasphemer. To the Christians; he was the sinless lamb of God.
The problem of Jesus bleeding to death as he was crucified between two criminals crucified the exactly same way caused medieval artists to paint these two men as only being tied to their crosses as contrast to Jesus who was nailed to his cross to leave no doubt that it was only Jesus who shed his blood for sin.
To Summarize:
First, the theology and concept of Jesus as a sacrifice to God to atone for all the world's sin is a totally a foreign and perverted concept to the Hebrew Torah.
Secondly, the concept that the Messiah would be a Warrior-King anointed by God to deliver Israel from foreign rule, plus return Israel to its eternal covenant with God was totally abused by Paul and the Gospel writers in order to force a false thesis or theology on to this famous Jewish apocalyptic ideal. This can be even more understood by the fact that it was in the Greek Hellenistic world where this new theology gained most of its following and where the people who accepted this deformed theology were first called Christians in Antioch: Greek Asia Minor.
In conclusion, the whole concept of Jesus as either a sacrifice or the Messiah is a total perversion of both historical Jewish concepts. It’s little wonder the disciples really never could figure out just who Jesus was or what he was up to.
By contrast, it was Paul, a man who most likely never saw or heard Jesus in the flesh, who systematized the theology of the early church in order to save it and make it function. Thus, no “Plain of Salvation” can be taught from the Synoptic Gospels, but certainly from Paul’s letters (especially his final account of Romans) that are load with a systematic theology of salvation.
I regularly encounter pseudo-skepticism -- reflexive doubt in response to criticism of credulous belief -- on the question of how the legend of Jesus could have developed in the period between Jesus' death and the writing of the synoptic gospels. Many Christians just don't see how or why such fantastic inventions arose from the crushing disappointment of the crucifixion of the man they supposed the Messiah (assuming here, arguendo, the historicity of Jesus and his crucifixion by the Romans at around the time commonly supposed)? "Why would these people die for a lie?" goes a common retort.
That's a fair question, even if it is offered pseudo-skeptically. But I don't think it's nearly as difficult as Christians commonly suppose. Even granting the dubious claims that all of Jesus disciples except John died a martyr's death (and indeed, this is precisely the kind of narrative we might expect as a later bit of legendary embellishment), we need not suppose a deliberate, coordinated conspiracy of lies is demanded of the situation. Rather, we need only look to the social capacity and disposition toward legend-making.
Inevitably, the pseudo-skeptic demands an example. I've suggested the legend and folklore of King Arthur, and pointed to the invention of "Newton's apple" by Voltaire as casual examples of the tendency to mythologize and embellish real people and events that capture our passions and imaginations. Reading a bit about Andrew Dickson White this week, intrigued by his provocative phrase "an asylum for Science", used in reference to his ambitions for Cornell University, a school he co-founded, I came across White's book A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (which title I believe is familiar to me from the words of Bertrand Russell?). In the book, White recounts the case of Francis Xavier, co-founder of the Jesuits, patron saint of missionaries, and the man the Catholic church credits with converting more souls to Christianity than any other since Paul.
White's book (which can be read here, or at Google books complete with footnotes here) has a chapter on Xavier, in which he details the progression and development of legends -- miraculous legends -- about Xavier in the aftermath of his death. Here is why White chose to examine the case of Xavier:
"We have within the modern period very many examples which enable us to study the evolution of legendary miracles. Out of these I will select but one, which is chosen because it is the life of one of the most noble and devoted men in the history of humanity, one whose biography is before the world with its most minute details - in his own letters, in the letters of his associates, in contemporary histories, and in a multitude of biographies: this man is St. Francis Xavier. From these sources I draw the facts now to be given, but none of them are of Protestant origin; every source from which I shall draw is Catholic and Roman, and published under the sanction of the Church. " [1]
White provides his basic claim for the chapter here:
"During his career as a missionary he wrote great numbers of letters, which were preserved and have since been published; and these, with the letters of his contemporaries, exhibit clearly all the features of his life. His own writings are very minute, and enable us to follow him fully. No account of a miracle wrought by him appears either in his own letters or in any contemporary document. At the outside, but two or three things occurred in his whole life, as exhibited so fully by himself and his contemporaries, for which the most earnest devotee could claim anything like Divine interposition; and these are such as may be read in the letters of very many fervent missionaries, Protestant as well as Catholic."[2]
White continues with an example:
"For example, in the beginning of his career, during a journey in Europe with an ambassador, one of the servants in fording a stream got into deep water and was in danger of drowning. Xavier tells us that the ambassador prayed very earnestly, and that the man finally struggled out of the stream. But within sixty years after his death, at his canonization, and by various biographers, this had been magnified into a miracle, and appears in the various histories dressed out in glowing colours. Xavier tells us that the ambassador prayed for the safety of the young man; but his biographers tell us that it was Xavier who prayed, and finally, by the later writers, Xavier is represented as lifting horse and rider out of the stream by a clearly supernatural act. "[3]
(emphasis mine in both quotes above)
According to White, Xavier is both quite keen on identifying diving providence, but claims or even mention of miracles is conspicuously missing from his writings. Not only are miracles absent from Xavier's own accounts, the man who knew Xavier best, fellow Jesuit and historian of the order Joseph Acosta, positively denies the presence of miracles in the Jesuits' missionary enterprise of the time:
"But on the same page with this tribute to the great missionary Acosta goes on to discuss the reasons why progress in the world's conversion is not so rapid as in the early apostolic times, and says that an especial cause why apostolic preaching could no longer produce apostolic results ``lies in the missionaries themselves, because there is now no power of working miracles.'' He then asks, ``Why should our age be so completely destitute of them?'' This question he answers at great length, and one of his main contentions is that in early apostolic times illiterate men had to convert the learned of the world, whereas in modern times the case is reversed, learned men being sent to convert the illiterate; and hence that ``in the early times miracles were necessary, but in our time they are not.''[4]
Over the course of the decades following Xavier's death, admiring biographers and sponsors for Xavier's canonization produced a rapid "evolution" of miracles and supernatural works that got attached to Xavier, increasingly fantastic as time went by. Here, White recalls the situation 70 years after Xavier's death:
"In 1622 came the canonization proceedings at Rome. Among the speeches made in the presence of Pope Gregory XV, supporting the claims of Xavier to saintship, the most important was by Cardinal Monte. In this the orator selects out ten great miracles from those performed by Xavier during his lifetime and describes them minutely. He insists that on a certain occasion Xavier, by the sign of the cross, made sea-water fresh, so that his fellow-passengers and the crew could drink it; that he healed the sick and raised the dead in various places; brought back a lost boat to his ship; was on one occasion lifted from the earth bodily and transfigured before the bystanders; and that, to punish a blaspheming town, he caused an earthquake and buried the offenders in cinders from a volcano: this was afterward still more highly developed, and the saint was represented in engravings as calling down fire from heaven and thus destroying the town.
The most curious miracle of all is the eighth on the cardinal's list. Regarding this he states that, Xavier having during one of his voyages lost overboard a crucifix, it was restored to him after he had reached the shore by a crab.
The cardinal also dwelt on miracles performed by Xavier's relics after his death, the most original being that sundry lamps placed before the image of the saint and filled with holy water burned as if filled with oil.''[5]
This is just a small sample of the inventory provided by White in the chapter. What is striking is not just the breadth and depth of the body of legend associated with Xavier in the years following his death, but the "whole cloth fabrication" of the stories. For most, and possibly all of the miraculous accounts given later, there doesn't even seem to be the "seed" used for later embellishment, but a kind of ex nihilo creation of a miraculum vitae for Xavier (one can feel the account of the crab returning Xavier's crucifix resonating with Paul's miraculous survival of the viper's bite on Malta in Acts).
The import of the example of Xavier, and the spontaneous appearance and evolution of miracles attributed to him should be obvious to the Christian, to the pseudo-skeptic; given a couple decades, and a cult following, the invention and development of miracle accounts -- accounts of fantastic miracles -- isn't implausible, or even novel, and relevant examples are found right inside the history and culture of Christendom itself.
I do note that White's book is now well over a hundred years old, and as science proves, a lot can be discovered over the course of a hundred and more years. I've done some googling on this, but have not found anything that indicates that White's claims in the book have been overturned by the discovery of new evidence from Xavier's writings or reports by his contemporaries that substantiate the miracles later attributed to him. If readers are aware of such a case, I stand to be corrected. But as it is, I commend the case of Xavier and his admirers to the pseudo-skeptic, as a vivid historical example of "legendation" in action, the kind of inventions and embellishments we see accounting for the death of Jesus circa 30CE and the legend of Jesus emerging over the next 50-60 years.
[1] Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (Prometheus Books, 1993), lib ii, cap XIII, p. 5.
[2] ibid., p. 6.
[3] ibid., p. 6.
[4] ibid., pp. 9-10.
[5] ibid., pp. 14-15.
On a forum someone said this: "Atheism is not a belief, rather it is the absence of a belief, and it is beliefs which need to be justified." I responded as follows:
Atheism simply describes a "non-theist." Since the word “atheism” is a negative one, meaning “not a theist,” it doesn’t specify much of anything else except that a person who is an atheist is a non-believer. A non-believer in what? When the question is whether a person believes in any God, an atheist is someone who does not believe in any of them. However, I want to add that when the question is whether a person believes in, say Christianity, an atheist is someone who does not believe in the Christian God. Christians themselves were called atheists in the first century C.E. because they did not believe in the gods and goddesses of the Roman Empire, even though they clearly believed in a God. So when I say Christians are atheists with regard to all other gods but their own, I am being accurate by calling them atheists with regard to those other gods, even if they are not atheists with regard to whether any God exists. It depends on the question and the context what the words atheism/atheist mean.
An agnostic will agree with the atheist against all religious accounts, but she will go on to argue against atheism, claiming it can give no sufficiently justifiable account of the natural world either.
I cannot make too much sense of the idea that atheism, in the context of our debates, means a lack of a belief in God. My position is that agnosticism is the default position, the position that merely says, "I don't know" (which can probably best be described as soft-agnosticism). ANYONE WHO LEAVES THE DEFAULT POSITION HAS THE BURDEN OF PROOF, whether it's a theist or an atheist. When faced with the theist claims an atheist denies them. She doesn't merely say, "I don't believe you," for then she would be an agnostic, the default position. An atheist says "there is no god" (again, depending on the question being asked). And the strong atheist claims she knows this with a great deal of assurance while the weak atheist claims she knows this weakly.
So when an atheist says, "there is no God," or "this God does not exist," those are indeed stated beliefs. If it isn't a stated belief then what is it? And all beliefs must be justified sufficiently to the person making the claim. Non-beliefs must be those things we have never heard about or taken a position on.
I get this question so frequently, I’ve decided to make a better effort to reply. To be honest, I don’t like the question because it presumes we know what those words mean. Here are some responses, touching on more or less serious aspects of the topic.
1. Which god? Do you mean Zeus, Baal, Athena, Shiva, Allah, Jehovah, or some other? If you mean one of those, then no. I am not a theist. I don’t believe in an individual being that created and now controls the world.
2. What is belief? Is it a cognitive conclusion that I have reached based on logical consideration of evidence?
That would assume I have access to all the information, and I do not. Is it an emotional feeling for something beyond myself? Well, my emotions vary, and some days are hopeful, other days are dark. Emotions are a rocky basis for “belief.” Do I make a leap of faith, not knowing anything really, but simply wanting to “believe,” and putting stock in a “scripture” to give it support? This is also difficult because knowing about the origins of “scripture,” I know the complexity; they were not simply dictated. Also, the strength of my blind faith can also vary and I’m not sure how completely I am supposed to convince myself in order to say I “believe.”
3. The concept of “God” usually meant by this question is some sort of being that exists “out there.” The god of the Bible is very separate, superior to humans, but anthropomorphic in many ways. Other gods are also considered “out there” and have controlling powers we do not have. A more New Age notion of god includes “the divine” in all of us, and still involves the notion of “spirit” infusing people. There is an assumption in most approaches to spirituality of a kind of “force,” which can be called by different names, but which is a thing in a universe of other things. As such, I do not resonate with this idea of “god” as an entity.
2. What is belief? Is it a cognitive conclusion that I have reached basic on logical consideration of evidence?4. If I must use the concept at all, I would equate it with the “nature of being.” This is close to “ground of being,” a phrase coined by John Robinson many years ago in Honest to God. For me it involves a perception of existence grounded in the profound science of modern physics. Most ordinary people do not know much about this. Yet, we now know from findings in both relativity theory and quantum physics, that the universe is much more strange and incredible than we ever realized. It calls for massive humility because there are things no one understands, yet we now have good reason to question all of our basic assumptions about “reality.” The difference is bigger than finding out the world is not flat. We have evidence for questioning our ideas about matter, linear time, cause and effect, and more. String theorists agree there are eleven dimensions. Yet the general population operates all day every day assuming things that are completely out of date. The knowledge has not reached the masses. This is akin to having everyone act as if the earth is still flat. The issues are intensely profound, with implications for everything we do. The big words for me are “mystery” and “possibility.” Feelings are humility, awe, and excitement. There is no religious description of “god” that matches the grandeur of the universe as it is – elusive, ever-changing, impossibly mind-boggling. And this includes us. We are part of the fabric; there is no separation. If this is believing in god, then by all means, a hundred times YES! But I’m still not drawn to the language.
A couple of quotes that I find consistent with this:
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant’? Instead they say, ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.’ A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”`
-Carl Sagan
“I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
-Albert Einstein
5. Dispensing with the “god” word, it makes a little more sense for me to address “spirituality,” although this word has often meant a focus on other-worldly things. I prefer to describe spirituality as a way of living which is here-and-now. These are attributes rather than a definition. They involve feelings and perceptions and experiences which depend on openness. This openness can be chosen and developed. Rather than escaping into a different realm, I think of spirituality in terms of how we live our lives – the choices, the consciousness, the texture of daily life. There are several aspects of this:
Accord. This is the experience of feeling attuned with the rest of existence - a feeling of belonging on earth, being a part of the rest of nature, and in harmony with everything around. When you are in accord, you move along with the vast river of evolutionary change, feeling connected in a fundamental way with the harmony and power of the whole. You feel as though you are tapping into a rich resource that is beyond you, much larger than yourself. Your inner spring of god-within connects with the vastness of god-beyond, a "deeper power" rather than "higher power," a subterranean aquifer connecting all of life. This produces a sense of trust and safety, a knowledge that you fit, that you have a place.
Awareness. With awareness you are alive and awake, fully experiencing life. This means being totally grounded in the here and now. Your sensory experiences are vivid, and you notice what is happening when it is happening, both around and inside you. You do not reject uncomfortable experiences or deny pain; you are open and embracing of all that life has to offer. This makes it possible for you to enjoy things more intensely and to learn from difficulties. You are not trying to be on some other plane of existence, but are willing and happy to be here now, like a curious child.
Growth. Growth is a natural process. You are not static or inert; you are a changing, growing being. And your experiences can propel you to develop further. As a plant needs the attention of water and food to grow, you need to attend to your needs and consciously make opportunities to learn and change. This aspect of spirituality is active, complementing the more receptive elements of accord and awareness. As humans we are granted the exciting option of making conscious loyal commitments to move in positive directions. Learning will often occur anyway, as a neglected plant will often survive, but informed with a sense of accord and awareness, you can take action on your own spiritual behalf.
Transcendence. There are moments of awe for us in life, those times of being overwhelmed with wonder at beauty, or love, or natural power. At these moments you get clues about the immensity of the cosmos, like pinpricks in the veil around your limited consciousness. You are humbled and thrilled as you gaze at a sunset or a torrential waterfall. A moment of pure love can be ecstatic. Let your vision extend into the night sky, and you may experience a blissful dissolving of your individual ego. Not needing to understand or control, you can experience a sense of total Mystery. These moments are gifts that reflect your spiritual capacity, gifts that become more available as you open to your sense of the ultimate. This is not ultimate in the sense of above or better, but simply beyond your usual mode of consciousness. These are moments of realization knowing that the sense you have of “god” within is not only in contact with but one and the same as the transcendent “god”-beyond. You are a wave in the ocean, individual in a sense but also part of something much bigger – the immensely huge and powerful ocean of existence. You don’t understand and you don’t need to understand. All of this is multiverses away from “believing in God.”
So even though I would have to say I don’t believe in God and I am an atheist in the true definition of the word, ie, not a theist, I obviously feel compelled to question and reclaim the language being used and make this rather inadequate stab at describing my lived experience. It’s a bit defensive and that’s because the stereotype of the cold, shallow, hedonistic, selfish atheist needs to be challenged. In my opinion, it’s all about how we live, and not what we “believe.”
What do you think?
Kind regards,
Marlene Winell, Ph.D., psychologist and author of "Leaving the Fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving Their Religion" and facilitator for retreats for religious recovery called "Release and Reclaim" The next one is Aug. 15-17 in Berkeley, CA
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
