Theo-Logical or Making “God” Logical

Since the Bible has no Systematic Theology, the twenty thousand plus Christian denominations, sects and cults are eternally trying to make God make sense. That is, the logical God drawn from the conflicts of different authors in the Biblical text must be processed into some form of logic that has the appearance of eternal truth and trust. As such, each Christian group has expressed this subjective cohesion in a theo - logical creation called theology.

To recruit professional defenders for the mental fight (not only with secularist, other religions) but in particular with other Christian faiths themselves; Christian denominations, sects and cults have often tightly controlled and supported schools whose whole purpose is to make the concept of their god appear more logical that the others, or (if you will) schools are called So and So Theo - logical Seminary.

Once the god of a certain Christian group is finally made logical, this form can be sold via preaching to the masses. Or to state it systematically, it has now moved into the second phase of its logical process called “Theology” where the logically created “God“ can now be studied with some form of certainty. This distilled systematized information is usually published in book from for sectarian teaching tools and for the proselytizing of the general public with popular books entitled: “The Theology of the Old Testament / New Testament”. However, in light of the problems of Biblical Theology, most now carry only either “A Theology of the OT / NT” or simply “Theology of the O.T. / N.T.”.

The general Christian can be totally bewildered by the number of “Theologies” of the Old Testament and New Testament with each written from a denominational or sectarian prospective to make some logical sense out of the various views of Yahweh, El, (Hebrew / MT) vs. Theos / Kurios (Greek / LXX) to function with the detached θεός or Logos in Classical and Hellenistic Greek philosophy.

An example here is the Biblical word of divine love ἀγάπη / agapa as used in the New Testament especially in the most famous evangelical Biblical verse, John 3: 16 “Οὕτως γὰρ ἠγάπησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν κόσμον…”. However, the systematic logical use of agapa is totally and completely lost in the LXX which uses agapa in sexual lust and rape context as in the story of David’s children Amnon and Tamar: “…και ηγαπησεν αυτην αμνων υιος δαυιδ.” (2 Samuel 13: 1).

[A great reference to see just how the Greek Bible (LXX) of Jesus and Paul and the authors of the New Testament failed to make sense out of the fragments of “theology” of Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible is to compare the Masoretic text with the LXX. An excellent work is A Concordance to the Septuagint and the Other Greek Versions of the Old Testament by Edwin Hatch and Henry Redpath.]

Another way to correct this deformity in consistency in Biblical thought on the divine, Christian groups have been very creative in making God theo - logical. Some of the theologies in used today are listed below:

1. The Biblical text has been corrupted by heresy and sinful men. (Examples: Mormons, Church of Christ, Jehovah Witnesses).

2. God is made consistently logical over time by an evolutionary process called “Dispensational Theology”. So what may appear as a contradiction is really only a new beginning for God and his covenant (A theology used by a number Protestant groups such as Baptist).

3. There is such a rift between the God in the Old Testament and the God in the New Testament that there simply can not be any reconciliation. That is, the creator God of hate of the Hebrew Bible is not the God of love and Jesus ( Marcion).

4. The Bible only appears to contradict itself, but all problems can be resolved by careful study. This is based on circular reasoning by forcing the Greek concept of “absolute truth” onto God and the Biblical text (Southern Baptists, Independent Baptists such as Bob Jones University, and our own D.S. Harvey Burnett).

5. The Bible and its god can be made Theo-Logical by more revelation (Mormons: Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, Doctrines and Covenants; Moonies, The Divine Principle).

6. The Bible must be read and interpreted ONLY by inspirited ecclesiastical authorities or councils (Catholics: The Magisteium; Jehovah Witnesses: Awake and Watch Tower).

7. Nothing in the Bible is what it seems. Words have hidden meanings (Philo of Alexandria, Gnostics, Eastern Christendom (Orthodox), and Christian Science).

This final section of the Post is a case study section in which I now invite all Christians to make God appear logical or Theo-Logical. The facts are real.

Christians, here is your change to sell a logical god to the masses who may consider the following situation totally illogical and even cruel.

The summer of 1999 was a tragic one for my family as my fourteen year old daughter taken to the hospital with chronic vomiting and nausea only to be was diagnosed with End Stage Renal Failure.

While taking my daughter to dialysis three times a week, he met a 16 year old boy also on dialysis who often did his dialysis in a chair next to hers. He was a strong evangelical Christian who “loved Jesus” and would spent his three hours talking about his love for the Gospel of Christ, his love for the Bible and how he wanted to be a full time Christian minister the rest of his life. He would share the Gospel with any dialysis patient who was placed next to him.

My daughter finally left the dialysis clinic after getting a transplant, but she kept in touch with friends she made there.

After several more years on dialysis, this young sixteen year old preacher too got a kidney transplant and he entered a Christian university to prepare for the full time Gospel ministry. However, within several years of his transplant, his body went in to rejection. With prayers of his fellow Christians appearing to go unanswered his second kidney failed. He received a second kidney transplant at which time he returned to his Christian education to prepare for full time Christian work with the full support and payers of his Christian community.

But sadly, his body when into rejection for the second time. Now, faced with a life of dialysis three times a week plus a life of failing access sites in his circulatory system, this young Christian - who had given gave his life and heart to Christ for full time ministry -opted to go home and die (which indeed happen several years ago).

Now all Christians who want to make and keep God Theo-Logical, let me start you off with some “pat” apologetic explanations:

A. God knew this young Christian would have to face a life of suffering so He called him “Home to Heaven”.

B. There was secret “sin” in this young Christians life. To correct it, God either struck him down or called him to Heaven.

C. Like David and Bathsheba (2 Samuel 12: 15 - 18), his parents sins caused either his kidney failure or death or both.

D. We just don’t understand the mind (Logos) and ways of God. As such, we should not question it. (This is nothing but a justification of fate in the secular world).

E. God used his life as a testimony to the lost world and it severed its purpose: “As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?" Jesus answered, "It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him. (John 9: 1-3).

Now it is your turn Christians. Please use the above case study to see if you can make and keep your God logical or theo - logical.

Ahhhhh!

The argument from clarity as you have never heard it before!

(hat tip Pharyngula)

Spades or honey?

One of my ongoing struggles in relating to the believers in my life is to know how hard to press my convictions on others. All of us here at DC no doubt face this question over and over. Some tend toward the “attracting flies with honey” approach of Carl Sagan, while others tend toward the “calling-a-spade-a-spade” approach of Harris and Dawkins. I generally aim to be courteous, but I have been known to shift from one end of the spectrum to another depending on the encounter.

The “new atheists” have taken a lot of flack from every corner for their unapologetic use of ridicule and sharp wit. I guess it’s a natural action; no one likes to get verbal lashings. Yet in my case it was the forceful, in-your-face tirades of Thomas Paine, Robert Ingersoll and Bob Price that helped push me over the edge. I’m sure, though, that if I hadn’t already experienced internal doubts, I would have responded far more defensively and indignantly. My gut feeling is that the correct approach depends on the target audience: If we’re addressing those who have few or no doubts about their faith, a hard-line tack will be met with a defensive counter-attack and will yield more heat than light. If we’re addressing those who are already struggling, a strong push may be what does the trick. This is somewhat counter-intuitive, and is based admittedly on a small sampling (i.e., my own experience), but I wonder whether others have made similar observations.

As I’m part of a firmly believing family, I feel it’s in my best interest to stick with a soft-line approach so as not to alienate those I hold dear, but apparently Dawkins and Harris have no such commitments. Furthermore, I suspect they have swayed few committed fundamentalists but that they have had influence on the half-hearted middle-of-the road believers. I don’t believe there’s an either-or, one-size fits all solution to this question: it all depends on the target audience and on one’s social commitments.

Interestingly, for all the complaints about the style of the “new atheists,” I’ve seen very few screeds that approach the level of ridicule employed by the scriptural authors themselves:

He cut down cedars, or perhaps took a cypress or oak. He let it grow among the trees of the forest, or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow. It is man’s fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread. But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it. Half of the wood he burns in the fire; over it he prepares his meal, he roasts his meat and eats his fill. He also warms himself and says, “Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.” From the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships. He prays to it and says, “Save me; you are my god.” They know nothing, they understand nothing; their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see, and their minds closed so they cannot understand. No one stops to think, no one has the knowledge or understanding to say, “Half of it I used for fuel; I even baked bread over its coals, I roasted meat and I ate. Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left? Shall I bow down to a block of wood?” He feeds on ashes, a deluded heart misleads him; he cannot save himself, or say, “Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?” (Isaiah 44: 14-20)

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned (Galatians 1:8-9)!

As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate [i.e., castrate] themselves (Galatians 5:12)!

Natural Theology for Chimps

It's long been just understood that humans are unique among all animals in their capacity to engage in altruism, the expenditure of energy and or resources to aid others who are not closely related or otherwise capable of providing reciprocal value. A mother duck will act injured and try to distract an approaching predator away from her ducklings, an unselfish, and possibly sacrificial act, ostensibly, but we understand that this is not really altruistic in the intended sense; her efforts align neatly with the imperative for her offspring (and thus her genes) to survive. In other cases, we observe that some animal species engage in sharing, but this too is accounted for as "self-interested sharing". Sharing food from a kill with others in the group creates a context for reciprocity, and allows the successful hunter who shares to participate in the successful kills of others in the group when he is hungry and did not manage a kill on his own.

Altruism, though, is a kind of shibboleth for humans, and particularly for Christians. Our "better angels" have always been a key distinction for humans, an unbridgeable ontological chasm between the rest of creation, and man, endowed by God with the imago dei. Christian writers from Paul in the first century to C.S. Lewis in the 20th century have made much of this unique sense of man, of which altruism was a distinguishing sign. Man not only knew God was his creator intuitively just by surveying the world around him, man had an innate moral conscience, a built in sense of ought that was utterly intractable as a matter of biology. Christians commonly wonder, bemused at the thought, how evolution could account for something so... self-defeating as selfless charity and self sacrifice. Humans, for instance, send money, food and medicine to the other side of the world, to aid people they've never met, never will meet, and couldn't be more perfect strangers, genetically or otherwise. What's the selective imperative for that, they demand.

This is an important point for Christians, as Christ is understood to be a kind of apotheosis of this idea. God is supposed to have became flesh and sacrificed himself through no fault of his own, perfect in his being, in need of nothing, just giving of himself as a reprieve to (believing) man because that is his nature. Jesus instructed those who listened to love their enemies, another rendering of altruism, becoming less, being vulnerable in services of a higher good on the Christian view. Modern apologists rely heavily on the "moral argument", the idea that man cannot account for his moral sense, or moral convictions without positing God as creator, divinely provisioning them. It's just unthinkable, in contrast, that man would evolve in an impersonal universe with this innate moral sense, in their view.

What do we make, then, of research like this study done last year which investigated and compared the altruistic capabilities and tendencies of chimpanzees and human children? Here's the author's summary of the research:

Debates about altruism are often based on the assumption that it is either unique to humans or else the human version differs from that of other animals in important ways. Thus, only humans are supposed to act on behalf of others, even toward genetically unrelated individuals, without personal gain, at a cost to themselves. Studies investigating such behaviors in nonhuman primates, especially our close relative the chimpanzee, form an important contribution to this debate. Here we present experimental evidence that chimpanzees act altruistically toward genetically unrelated conspecifics. In addition, in two comparative experiments, we found that both chimpanzees and human infants helped altruistically, regardless of any expectation of reward, even when some effort was required, and even when the recipient was an unfamiliar individual—all features previously thought to be unique to humans. The evolutionary roots of human altruism may thus go deeper than previously thought, reaching as far back as the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees.

(emphasis mine)

There are (at least) two important implications of this kind of finding. First, it assaults the ancient shibboleth, the distinction of man as uniquely equipped and aware in the enterprise of altruism. To be sure, the experiment does not find chimpanzees organizing global relief efforts for men or monkeys if far off lands, and by no means would we mistake these findings for some kind of altruism in chimps that places them in parity with humans, by quality or quantity of their altruism. But here you have a structured set of tests that show that our closest relatives manifest behaviors of the kind that has always put man alone on one side of the "moral chasm", with every other living thing on the other. Now, it seems, in light of recent investigations, that maybe we need to make some room on our side of the moral divide for our chimpanzee cousins (and who knows who else might get added to the list).

Second, its hard to read the article and not be struck by the similarities demonstrated between chimps and small (human) children. In both cases, when the researcher doesn't demonstrate distress, chimps and kids aren't distressed either, and don't help out, as ostensibly no help is needed. When the researcher sends clear signals that they need help, help that the chimp or kid might render, they do, much more often then when no "need-state" is in view. We humans, being humans, intuitively understand this; if someone is having trouble, you ought to consider helping, even if there's no reward in view, immediately or ever. As the study affirms, this isn't something we must be taught in class to develop, but something that is innate at some low level.

That's not strange to most humans. But it is strange to see the same kind of response from chimpanzees when your worldview says that that "ought" can only come from God, and can only come to man. For the chimp who has perfectly nothing to gain (on the caricatured view of evolution as seen by most Christians) in helping someone reach something just beyond their grasp, whence the "ought" that prods them to help? Does God spare a little moral sense, sense unto altruism, even if in rudimentary form, for the chimp?

If so, it's a spotty application. Chimpanzees are notorious for their inclination for infanticide, the brutal killing of infants in the group, sometimes resulting in cannibalism of the young as a follow up to the frenzy (see here, for example). If there is some kind of natural theology for chimps, it seems much more compartmentalized that it is even for (allegedly) fallen, depraved humans. I won't even bother to recount the illustrious sex life of the average chimp, Google that up some time if you are not aware and inclined to think just maybe God dished out a helping of the same sense of "objective moral values" he designed for man, to use a favorite (if problematic) term from William Lane Craig.

Infanticide and sexual promiscuity the likes which might make Larry Flynt blanch aren't a problem from a naturalistic standpoint. There are both plausible (and to increasingly evidentially supported) explanations for such features of chimp behavior, and no "moral chasm" to bridge. Man is a moral being and capable of ethical reasoning in ways that no other animal is, as best we can tell. But while we stand apart, we stand apart by degree and by circumstance on the naturalistic view. For the Christian, man stands apart in kind, in essence. If we are to find, as this study suggests, that that degree isn't nearly so different from our closest genetic relatives, it's interesting and informative, but it fits the model. Chimps and man shared a common ancestor some time long ago, and the discovery of chimp altruism just points us back to our common heritage, a developmental history where we shared the "proto-ethics" that later developed into the concrete forms we see in chimps and humans today.

On the Christian view, though, it's hard to know what to make of such findings. There's always the trusty "common design" hobby horse to trot out whenever parallels and isomorphisms are identified in biology between disparate species. But common design, weak as it is, just utterly fails in this case, as mankind is sui generis in terms of his moral conscience, per Christianity, a "bespoke design" as a British friend recently called it. The sensus divinitatus is what makes man different from all other creatures for the Christian, and it is this that man draws upon, even and especially the unregenerate man in acting on moral impulses.

This is why morality as a matter of biological evolution is flatly, unequivocally rejected by Christianity. If morality emerges as the output of evolution, then it's as available to the chimp or the dolphin as it is to man. It's different for the same reasons the species themselves are different: they occupy different ecological niches, and have unique paths that brought them where they are as social animals. The more we learn though, the more the evidence accumulates that works right against the "moral chasm", against the sensus divinitatus, and toward the idea that morality fits right into the unifying principles and dynamics of evolution. If morality is supported as an integral part of the impersonal biological processes of man's development, one of the load-bearing beams of Christian apologetics, and the appeal of Christianity itself, falls apart.

The Warneken et al study is not the final word, of course, but just a piece of the puzzle. Chimps being helpful, even at some cost, without a basis for reciprocity or any kind of compensation, doesn't quite rise to the commitments of say, a Mother Teresa (Hitchens' objections to her notwithstanding). It's representative of the "pebbles" that are ever accumulating into what has grown now to be a significant pile of data that supports the idea that the "moral instinct", or the "moral grammar" as Marc Hauser would call it (with a hat tip to Chomsky), is a natural byproduct of evolution. No imago dei, no sensus divinitatus provisioned by a supernatural deity needed. A very good amount of the moral finger-wagging by Christian apologists depends on this message: you can't be moral without God. Or, more recently, a slightly more sophisticated revision: you can be moral, but you can't justify your morality without God. The more we learn, the more clearly plausible and evident becomes the picture of man as a moral being by virtue of his evolutionary biology.

So long as man is the only "altruist" -- the only one on the "moral" side of the moral chasm -- that's not a big problem for Christianity. A theistic evolutionist can nod at all the evidence for man developing a moral sense in the context of evolution. In her view, God is working, invisibly, behind the scenes, pulling invisible strings to steer man's nature toward its proper, intended moral constitution. But the identification of that kind of moral development, the emergence of even such sublime features as moral, conscious altruism in other animals, is problematic. That kind of evidence is a disconfirmation of the idea that man is unique, alone in his moral endowments. If we find emergent morality and ethics in other species of the very same kind we find more fully developed in man, the chasm is bridged, and this works strongly against the idea that man is ontologically distinct from the rest of life on earth.

Natural theology for chimps is a problem for the Christian worldview.

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Gen. 2:7-3:6, God Should Have Known That Adam Would Disobey.

God was omnipotent, and God must have known the properties and tolerances of everything he created, just like a baker and just like an engineer.
If he was omniscient, then he had foreknowledge and if he didn't have foreknowledge (for whatever reason), he could have made reliable predictions based on his intimate knowledge of his creation and its properties and tolerances. To refute this would necessitate showing why God cannot be expected to have the same capabilities as any other Engineer or Baker.

Stipulating that the story of the Fall of Man is true in some sense, God was an expert in how to make Adam. He understood Adam intimately.

God made Adam as a Man in Gods image, whatever that means. Since god made Adam as a man, Adam necessarily possessed all the qualities that qualify Adam to be classified as a man. From the story, we can see that Adam had desire, cognitive biases (such as trusting someone he liked) but he didn't posses the Knowledge of Good and Evil. So from Adams perspective all options were more or less equal. These choices he made from the options and characteristics that he possessed guaranteed certain outcomes were more likely than others.


6 But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.
7 Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

Since Adam had no family, no history, no education, no culture, no frame of reference with which to view the world, he had to make decisions based on information he picked up from the time of his inception or from what God instilled in him at creation. Since God made him without the Knowledge of Good and Evil, his options would be determined by that frame of reference. If God made him without language, his options would be limited accordingly. If he made him without an opposable thumb his options would be limited accordingly. Based on Adams properties, Adam could be expected to behave in certain ways. For example, we don't expect Adam walked on all fours even though he could have. We expect and assume he walked upright because of his body structure. He, like us, had parameters that made it more comfortable to walk upright than on his hands and knees. He, like us, had desires that made it more likely that had the ability to place value on things and have a hierarchy of preferences. In fact, he did not choose a helper. While its strange that God did not make woman when he made the animals once Adam gave up trying to choose, God made Eve in such a way that it was likely that Adam was going to accept her as a his helpmate. If God had made woman when he made the animals, Adam could have avoided wasting time looking for a suitable helper from the animals.

2:20 The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.
2:21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.
2:22 The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.

If certain conditions are met, we can reasonably expect a certain outcome.

An example from close to home. My grandmother was an expert about what she cooked. When my grandmother used to make biscuits, she used only a certain type of flower, and she added Crisco and other ingredients to make the best biscuits ever. When I asked her for the recipe she said it was in her head, and when i asked her to dictate it to me is was full of dashes and pinches of this and that. She did that with everything and she was a great cook. She knew exactly how each ingredient would affect the outcome of the texture, taste, consistency etc. I imagine that God would have been like my grandmother with Adam. He would have known exactly how each ingredient in each proportion would affect the outcome of Adam and Eve and all the animals that he made from scratch.

Another example are engineers for the space program. They used engineering principles to make predictions and test them to find solutions to problems that never existed before. They used mathematical models to derive solutions, then tested them empirically, and when their collective confidence was strong, they put their plan into action. Without any foreknowledge or omniscience, engineers put men on the moon by ensuring certain conditions were met, and they enjoyed many successful outcomes.

Adam worked with what he had. Generally, a small number of mistakes are expected.

When Adam disobeyed Gods order not to eat the fruit, he was making decisions based within the boundaries of his frame of reference. Being the first human, mistakes should have been expected. Using myself as a standard, with my life experience, and generally knowing Good from Evil, I cannot see myself disobeying a God that I was confident existed. I know this about myself because I choose to abide by the Law and the Law is something less than a God. Since I choose to abide by the Laws of my society, I would likewise choose to abide by the Laws of a God that I believed existed. To me it is obvious that Adam made a mistake because he did not understand what he was doing.

In fact, Adam did not, on a whim, decide to disobey God. There were many other factors that led to that act that should be considered. There is no doubt that he knew that God said not to eat the fruit, but he could not have known it was wrong to trust Eve's new information and revise his options and choices. People that are not capable of flexibility in their decision making are severely handicapped in life and in business. Of course revising opinions and making decisions on the information at hand can lead to mistakes, generally it guarantees more successful outcomes. Adam and Eve revised their thinking based on new information but because they were missing the component that enabled knowledge of Good and Evil, they were mentally incompetent as detailed in the article "Gen. 2:16-3:24: Adam and Eve Were Mentally Incompetent". They did not have knowledge of Good and Evil before they ate the fruit, they possessed desire, exhibited preferences, and exhibited several cognitive biases that put enabled them to be persuaded by the snake.

A list of factors follows leading up to Adams disobedience.

1. Adam Existed
1.a. Adam and Eve had desire built in (Gen. 3:6)
1.b. Adam and Eve were missing some cognitive processes (Knowledge of Good and Evil, experience with bad people) (Gen. 3:7)
1.c. Adam and Eve had Cognitive Bias built in (trusting someone they like) (Gen. 3:6)
2. Adam was put in the Garden
3. Eve existed
3.a No Warning about the snake
4. Snake Existed
5. Tree Existed

These were the factors involved in causing Adam to disobey God. If any one of these factors had not existed, the likelihood that Adam would have disobeyed God would decrease. This is obvious in hindsight, but since God is supposedly Omniscient, and he engineered everything, if he didn't know it, he should have been able to reliably predict it.

Causal Diagram of Adams Transgression.

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Religion and Hate: A Marriage Made in Heaven

We often hear from the Christian evangelicals: “God hates the sin; but God loves the sinner.” (A non-Biblical statement used to gloss over the fact that the “loved” unforgiven sinner will fry like bacon for eternity in the Lake of Fire (Hell) because of “God’s love“). But remember sinner, you sent yourself there, not your loving Heavenly Father.

Or again: If God be for me/us, who can be against me/us?! This statement is simply an excuse to exploit religious bigotry and hatred under the guise of salvation theology. Anyone who doubts this need only read Brad S. Gregory’s Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Modern Europe (Harvard University Press, 1999) and winner of the Thomas J. Wilson Prize of Harvard University Press. The fly cover states:

Thousands of men and women were executed for incompatible religious views in sixteenth-century Europe. The meaning and significance for those deaths are studied here comparatively for the first time, providing a compelling argument for the importance of martyrdom as both a window onto religious sensibilities and a crucial component in the formation of divergent Christian traditions and identities. … Gregory shows us the shifting perspectives of authorities willing to kill, martyrs willing to die, martyrologists eager to memorialize, and controversialists keen in dispute.

Be it in John Calvin’s Geneva, Luther and Melanchthon in favor of death for the Anabaptist, the Catholic Inquisition or the killing of witches in New England; the Hebrew Bible set the precedence in the slaughter of all of God’s non-chosen people in the land of Canaan.

This is followed in the New Testament where even a loving “Gentile Jesus meek and mild” states:

"Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW; and A MAN'S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. (Matthew 10: 34 - 37) and Jesus in the final stage of Salvation History is depicted riding a white horse in Revelation 19: 11 - 21 wheeling a sword to the slaughter:

“And the rest were killed with the sword which came from the mouth of Him who sat on the horse, and all the birds were filled with their flesh.” (verse 21).

Even the Ku Klux Klan’s website proclaims that “Our Entire Group of Sites are Family and Christian Friendly” which is re-enforced by their own Pastor Thomas Robb of the World Church of the Creator:

A racist recognizes within their kindred people a special relationship with Jesus Christ. They recognize that race is but one aspect of living a Christian life, but such an important one that the mingling of the races, will as in the days of mingling in the scripture cause God’s wrath to fall upon his children. Peace on earth for all nations and races can only come about by adhering to Biblical truth. It is we who are the compassionate ones because we understand that true satisfaction and happiness will not be felt by everyone until God’s word and his edicts are felt throughout the land. Our job in the Knights’ is to send a wake up call, to inform our white brothers and sisters of their rightful inheritance and to ask them to repent so that God will bless our nation once again. We want God to use us to bring a message of revival throughout the world.

With Bible courses such as: The Anglo-Saxon Jesus sold in their White Heritage Book Store, the positive side of religious hate can be made very family friendly.

Finally, to show how vicious another monotheistic religious tradition can be, this is from an August 17, ‘08 new paper:

A Saudi Arabian Muslim father cut out his daughter's tongue and lit her on fire upon learning that she had become a Christian.

The child became curious about Jesus Christ after she read Christian material online, the Gulf News reported.
Her father read of her Internet conversation, detached her tongue and burned her to death "following a heated debate on religion," according to an International Christian Concern report. The father is employed by the muwateen, or Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. The muwateen are police tasked by the government with enforcing religious purity. The man has been taken into custody, and his identity has not been released.

The ICC pointed out the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has reported textbooks at the Saudi Arabian government school in Northern Virginia teach, "It is permissible for a Muslim to kill an apostate (a convert from Islam)."
Saudi Arabian oil money is used to export Wahabbism – a version of Islam said to be least tolerant toward non-Muslims – to other nations, including the U.S., ICC notes.
ICC president Jeff King said, "Saudi Arabia has to treat Christians with the same respect that it wants Muslims to be treated in other countries. It has to stop exporting hate and persecution against Christians in other countries."

Does "Walking" exist, Dusman?

Here's a quick response a section in a recent post by "Dusman", in which we find Dusman, a reducing philosophical materialists to absurdities via the magic of presuppositional apologetics.

Dusman advances the following argument:

Argument One:

1. Material things are extended in space.
2. Logical laws are not extended in space.
3. Therefore, logical laws are non-material.
4. Materialism posits that non-material entities do not exist.
5. Therefore, logical laws do not exist.

Just thinking about that, I wonder if Dusman thinks the activity of "walking" is a materialist absurdity:

The "Walking" Corollary:

1. Material things (like legs) are extended in space.
2. "Walking" is not extended in space.
3. Therefore, "walking" is non-material.
4. Materialism posits that non-material entities do not exist.
5. Therefore, for the materialist, "walking" does not exist.

If you've spent any time wading into the rhetorical devices of presuppositional apologetics, you'll anticipate that Dusman might just want to assert that materialist really don't have any basis for believing in "walking" or any similarly derived concept.

Walking, as a concept, has physical infrastructure -- the brain-state(s) that reify the concept in the mind -- and is thus perfectly "real" and extant as a physical entity, but the subject of the concept is abstract.

Logic, like the activity of walking, isn't a physical entity beyond the electro-chemical patterns of the brain that holds the concept. And logic, like walking, is descriptive of natural properties and phenomena. Both are useful abstractions for understanding and describing the world around us, but they are abstract beyond their physical housing as brain-states. When I get out of my chair and walk across the room, I have not created a "walking" when I get out of my chair and walk across the room, nor destroyed a "walking" when I sit down again. The concept in both cases -- "walking" and logical principles -- is just that: conceptual, and thus real and extant in the form of brain-states. The referents of the concepts are real and existent in the straightforward sense; legs are "extended objects" in space/time, and "walking" is an abstraction about the patterns of movement and activity of the legs.

I don't know who the philosophical materialists are that Dusman can get to take him seriously with the argument he presents, let alone find themselves reduced to absurdities, but whoever they are, they aren't philosophically anything much at all, if they are, in fact, actual in the first place. In any case, all the materialist needs to do is show that "walking" doesn't exist under the terms of Dusman's argument, which winds up making Dusman dealing with the absurdities, not the materialist. Does Dusman believe the materialist thinks "walking" doesn't exist, or must disbelieve in walking as a materialist? It's as if the concept of abstraction itself has somehow eluded him, or that he supposes that the concept of abstraction somehow necessarily eludes the materialist.

In any case it's too bad Dusman doesn't make himself available to actual responses to his arguments, to see who is really trafficking in absurdities.

What say you, materialists? Does "walking" exist? Has Dusman removed that from our cognitive reach along with logic?

Richard Dawkins 2002 "Call to Arms"

In February 2002, four years before his book The God Delusion was released in 2006, Richard Dawkins called atheists to arms on TED. Seen here. His talk was first posted by TED in April of 2007. He makes it clear he wants a campaign much like the gays used to gain acceptability in American society. His final sentence was, "let's all stop being so damned respectful." It seems to be working.

Hey Hey Yahweh, How Many Kids ...

The number of children dying in the name of Jesus just keeps going up. As documented in multiple different cases here on DC, there is simply no reliable way for a believer to differentiate rationality from irrationality within the mindset of religion.

Yet it keeps happening over and over. The most recent case is the worst of the lot, for it appears this child wasn't even ill. He was starved to death at the age of 1 because he refused to say "Amen" after meals.

After denying Javon Thompson food and water for two days because he wouldn't say "Amen" after meals, the one-year-old's caretakers waited for a divine sign that their message had been heard: a resurrection.

For more than a week, police say in charging documents describing the scene, the child's lifeless body lay in the back room of an apartment. Queen Antoinette, the 40-year-old leader of a group that called itself 1 Mind Ministries, brought in her followers and told them to pray. God, she said, would raise Javon from the dead.

Instead, Javon's body began to decompose.

The boy's mother, 21-year-old Ria Ramkissoon, and four other people authorities say are members of the group face first-degree murder charges in his death. But Ramkissoon's mother and attorney say that she was brainwashed by a cult and acted only at the group leader's will

You can read the whole awful story for yourself.

The questions I continue to have for believers:

1. What test should "rational Christians" use to differentiate texts in the Bible that should be taken figuratively from texts in the Bible that should be taken literally?

2. How are believers to use their faith? Should they expect supernatural intervention from God on their behalf during their lives, or is this also figurative?

3. At what point can we differentiate rational religion from child abuse and murder? For example, was Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac good, or was it torture? If a modern parent did this to a child, would we allow that child to stay with that parent?

The Rise and Fall of Todd Bentley

On Friday, August 15, the Board of Directors of Fresh Fire Ministries issued a press release, announcing:

We wish to acknowledge, however, that since our last statement from the Fresh Fire Board of Directors, we have discovered new information revealing that Todd Bentley has entered into an unhealthy relationship on an emotional level with a female member of his staff. In light of this new information and in consultation with his leaders and advisors, Todd Bentley has agreed to step down from his position on the Board of Directors and to refrain from all public ministry for a season to receive counsel in his personal life.

For the past couple weeks, there had been controversy and consternation at a previous announcement that Todd Bentley, a Canadian faith healer who had been on a rocket ride to worldwide fame and acclaim in Pentecostal circles for leading the "Lakeland Revival", was official separating from his wife Shonnah under the guidelines provided for by Canadian Law. With the announcement that "Brother Todd" had been involved in an "unhealthy relationship" with another woman, and was stepping down from public ministry, Bentley's start had crashed to earth even faster than it had risen.

Brother Todd, Revivalist Healer

And risen it had. When Bentley showed up in Lakeland, Florida in the first week of April this year, he had travel plans to return at the end of that same week. As it turned out, Brother Todd would stay in Lakeland for the better part of six months, leading a revival that would draw hundreds of thousands to Florida and spawn satellite revivals in places as far away as England and South Africa. Earlier revivals like the Toronto Blessing and the Pensacola Outpouring of the early-mid 1990s did not exploit the Internet; the Lakeland revival was not just daily services with 10,000 attendees to witness "healings" and the "outpouring of the spirit", it was streamed to the world, with Pentecostals all over the planet logging into watch, chat, and get "healed" right through their cable modems.

After a long session of worship music, Brother Todd would get up, and the "healings" would begin. Bentley's signature move was a shout of "Bam!", as he pushed/hit/kicked the faithful into a state of spiritual ecstasy, leaving the anointed writhing on the floor in convulsions, or simply catatonic, "slain in the spirit", in the language of the Pentecostal (watch this video, for example).

Aching joints were miraculously healed. Intestinal problems disappeared. Wheelchair-bound people were miraculously able to walk, or at least not fall down as they stood on the stage with the assistance of a couple fellow believers on either elbow. Cerebral palsy, ruptured discs, spinal problems, all healed, the Revivalists claimed, through the anointing of Todd Bentley, and the outpouring of the spirit he was presiding over in Lakeland (see example report from CBN here from the height of the revival frenzy).

The miracles accumulated and multiplied, and by late June and July, reports where making their way back to Lakeland that Todd's work had unleashed the ultimate work of the spirit -- the raising of the dead (see, for example, this video, this video, or this video ). Brother Todd eventually claimed more than a dozen cases of people being raised from the dead as part of the revival he led. At its peak, the throng exalted in reports like this from Bentley, reading a letter recounting one such resurrection (from this video ):

"My dear brother died, so the medical world thought yesterday. We requested at our all-night wake that GodTV would be on, the revival would be on. And we declared that our brother would not be embalmed. At 2:19 am my brother began to stir in his coffin. My brother sat up in the coffin, praising God and Reverend Todd Bentley. My dear brother all day has been telling us about his journey to heaven and how he thought he would never come back. He thought he would never come back here on the earth to be with us, but then he heard our beloved Reverend Todd and his voice pulling his spirit out of heaven. All of us at the funeral home began screaming and shouting fro more fire. Thank God for the revival on GodTV."

Brother Todd, False Prophet

For all the heady events in Lakeland, the revival was not without its critics within the church. Christian cessationists like the Calvinist bloggers over at TeamPyro have rejected the legitimacy of Bentley and his revival from the outset. Other mainstream Christian continualists like John Piper have now taken time to speak out against the Lakeland Revival, but as Frank Turk notes at TeamPyro, only after the fact, in light of Bentley's fall from grace due to his marital infidelity. How come frauds like Bentley cannot be identified and decried before they've duped tens of thousands of believers and brought shame, ridicule and cynicism to the faith? With Bentley's revelation of his betrayal of his wife and the impending end of their marriage as a result, even many of the once-fervent revivalists have now concluded that Bentley was a fraud all along (see this thread at the Charisma magazine forums, for example). While Bentley's star was on the rise, the gullible hopped on the bus to Florida and the rest of Christianity just watched, silent for the most part, managing a frustrated frown here and there.

It's no mystery why people like Todd Bentley can manage to rise to prominence and world-wide notoriety, despite the frustrations of Christian cessationist "skeptics" like Frank Turk. It's hard for a man with a glass worldview to throw stones, after all. Some forms of Christianity are much more level-headed, evidence-based and skeptical then others, but fundamentally, the epistemology of even the most skeptical Christian makes that term an oxymoron, useful only for gauging various degrees of credulity in a group that is profoundly credulous at its base.

I was a 'healing skeptic' when I was a Christian. Over the years, at many points where I expressed my skepticism about claims of miraculous healings, proponents of the miracles regularly pointed out that I wasn't in a position to say what God had or had not done in healing Aunt Martha, and moreover, if it was divine healing, by denying the miracle, I was denying the power of the Holy Spirit -- a kind of non sequitur as arguments go, and a rather transparent ploy to bring the fear of blasphemy on the doubter. But despite these problems, the core of their retort was a powerful one: Christianity is a subjective discipline, and one Christian cannot appeal to objective analysis of another without undermining their own claims to faith and knowledge of God. Ultimately, I appealed to revelation and supernatural intervention -- externally unverifiable intervention -- as the justification for my belief. I could point to some historical testimonies in scripture and claims about the lives of Christ and his followers, and some intuitive senses I had about God's existence as a brute fact, but without the appeal to my perception of the Holy Spirit's intervention in my life, my basis for belief could not hold up to scrutiny.

Defenseless Against Frauds

Such are the wages of a worldview based on the primacy of subjective experience. Christians who are skeptical of claims like those made by Todd Bentley and friends have to resort to the same kinds of defense for our own claims as Brother Todd does for his. Despite the differences I, or Frank Turk, or John Piper might have had with Bentley, we all embrace the same worldview, and see reality as subject to the magical, unpredictable, and impassible nature of God. For Christian's this is God's universe, and exegetical quibbles aside, God can do anything he wants and does what he pleases. If God wants to miraculously transform some teeth in a revivalist's mouth into gold (see here ) while just a couple miles away, young children languish in St. Joseph's children's hospital, suffering from brain tumors and all manner of other agonies, well, God can do what he wills, after all. To be a Christian is to give up the right to ask why, for many important questions.

With Bentley's fall from grace, people are disowning him right and left, and making much of the misgivings and doubts they had all along, even if they weren't announced or articulated at the time. Christian critics from the beginning, though, can complain all they'd like, and suppose they are "prophets" themselves of a kind, full of "discernment" regarding Bentley. When pressed, however, their skeptical verdicts ended betraying their debt to the stolen concepts of skepticism and evidence-based analysis, which, if applied consistently, debunk them as thoroughly as they debunk Brother Todd. Cessationism is a way to insulate and isolate their own credulity, to stuff all the magic back into the first century, reducing the footprint of exposure to critical analysis. Of course God doesn't shower God dust, miraculously given, down on the worshippers at Ignited Church! But of course the disciples could heal at will! Brother Todd can't do what the disciples did in the book of Acts, because that was then, and this is now.

All of which is a bit of uncomfortable special pleading. Bentley may be laid low for now, but Benny Hinn carries on, flitting hither and yon across the planet on his private jet working miracles and healing in the name of Jesus, as do many others, even if some of them have to console themselves with a first class seat on a commercial flight rather than the pampered leathers and chrome of Hinn's Gulfstream. The rest of Christianity is powerless to mount any substantial critique of Bentley, Hinn, et al. There can be no "Christian James Randi", that exposes Brother Todd, because Christianity, even the "skeptical" kind, is predicated on credulity and subjectivity. Frank Turk wonders how Brother Todd can get away with being such a hypocrite, and shows his own hypocrisy in doing so. This is why so much BS is always being tolerated and ignored in Christendom. It's an ideology built on credulity toward fantastic, unbelievable claims, even for the most conservative believer.

Gen. 2:16-3:24: Adam and Eve Were Mentally Incompetent

This an article to show that Adam and eve did not know the difference between good and evil before they ate the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil therefore could not understand the consequences of what they were doing. It uses a timeline and a matrix for analysis. Points in time are defined and used to document the point along a timeline where one event occurred in relation to another. It concludes that since Adam and Eve were missing a vital element in decision making, were uneducated, had no life experience to speak of and had no reason not to trust anyone, they were mentally incompetent to be held accountable for disobeying God and causing the punishments of Sin and Judgment to be given to every human thereafter.

Another interpretation of "Fall of Man" story is that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is really the tree of all knowledge where the terms Good and Evil are used as a merism ("bookends" or "upper and lower limits") to express a range, in the same manner as the term "young and old". This is considered a common usage in Biblical Poetry. I don't use this interpretation for this document but it wouldn't change the conclusion anyway.

Keep in mind when you read this, that since Adam and Eves situation is counter-intuitive, meaning that no-one but a person with a mental handicap or a child knows what it is like not to understand the difference between good and evil. It may be hard to avoid slipping into a "normal" frame of reference when discussing their state of mind before they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (K, G & E)

TIMELINE OF EVENTS
GENESIS 2:16

Time 01 - Warning about the Tree of G&E
Here is where people become accountable for knowing about the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. At this point they still do not know the difference between good and evil and have never had any other relationships with anyone else except God whom they trust completely. God was being ambiguous and therefore deceptive by saying "you will surely die". He wasn't exercising the principle of clarity in communication.

16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;
17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

T02 - God decides to make a helper for Adam from the animals
18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."

T03 - Adam names the animals and tries to pick a helper
19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.
20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
But for Adam no suitable helper was found.

T04 - Adam did not choose a helper so God decides to make one for him from his rib, effectively making him the first mother.
21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh.
22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
23 The man said,
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman,'
for she was taken out of man."
24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

T05 - They were naked and felt no shame.
25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

GENESIS 3: THE FALL OF MAN

T06 - Eves first experience with someone she shouldn't trust.
Eve is now introduced to her first experience with someone whose intent may be to decieve her and possibly manipulate her, and she doesn't know the difference between Good and Evil. There was evidently no warning about the snake. There are several default reasoning schemes that people commonly use and seem to present naturally. It takes education and experience to be able to overcome these. Presumably, since Eve and Adam were human, uneducated and with no life experience to speak of, they were susceptible to most if not all of these. A partial list of Cognitive Bias and Factors of Persuasion relevant to Adam and Eves situation taken from one of my other articles follows.
- People like stories and are willing to give the teller of the story the benefit of the doubt about the truth of it.
- People are more likely to believe a story if it comes from someone they like.
- People are more likely to believe a story if it fits with what they already believe or want to believe.
- People look for confirmation of what they already believe and disregard things that contradict.
- People are more likely to believe a story if it comes from an authority.

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,
3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "
4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman.
5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Eve took this as new valid information and acted on it. According to the context of the story, it should not be possible to know that disobeying God was Evil. She had no concept of Good or Evil.

The snake told the truth. Even if his intent was to get Eve and Adam to disobey god, he still exercised the principle of clarity better than God did. And Eve did not have any experience with "Bad people" or know the difference between "good and evil" people. Eve gave the snake the benefit of the the doubt, she evidently did not dislike him, what he said fit what she wanted to believe and she undoubtedly took it to be authoritative about the Tree. She exercised her naturally occurring reasoning schemes.

T07 - They eat the fruit.
Neither Eve or Adam had any wisdom or knowledge of good and evil at this point, she trusted the snake because she did not have any reason not to. There is no indication that they had any idea about lying. Adam and Eve both had built in cognitive biases that come into play here, such as trusting what others say, and Desire was apparently built into Eve as described in Gen. 3:6.

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. The bible says, through inference, that she was missing wisdom. She wanted to gain wisdom.
7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

T08 - God calls for Adam and Eve to come out of hiding
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"
10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"
12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."

Because it was likely that he would trust her.

13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

Because it was likely that given the opportunity, this would happen.

T09 - God distributes the punishment establishing the origins and explanations of several things
14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
15 And I will put enmity
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
16 To the woman he said,
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
19 By the sweat of your brow
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...

T10 - Adam names Eve
20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.

T11 - God makes clothes for them
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

T12 - God realizes the fact the Adam might eat the fruit of the Tree of Life
22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from
the tree of life and eat, and live forever."

T13 - Banishment
23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

T14 - Closes Eden off
24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

HYPOTHESIS MATRIX

This is a Hypothesis matrix testing the hypothesis that Adam and Eve didn't know the difference between Good and Evil when they disobeyed God. The data are labeled with a "C" for consistent with the hypothesis, "A" for Ambiguous (it doesn't make a difference but is worth mentioning), and "I" for Inconsistent. The hypothesis that is least inconsistent with the data is the better hypothesis.

Data	Didn't Know	Did know
God is all knowing	A	A
God is all powerful	A	A
T01 Gen. 2:16 Adam can eat the fruit of the Tree of Life, but he doesn't. Evidently he is not interested in it or maybe he doesn't realize what it means. God may have known that he wouldn't eat it although what God says at T12 in 2:22 contradicts his supposed omniscience.	C	I
T01 Gen. 2:17 Commands the man not to eat the fruit of the Tree of K, G&E or he will surely die, but neglected to tell him the truth which is that he will know the difference between good and evil and as a result will realize that he is naked	C	I
Until man eats the fruit he will not know the difference between good and evil	C	I
T02 Gen. 2:18 Adam was alone and has never had any experience with anyone he shouldn't trust	C	I
T06 Gen. 3:4-5 The snake could not have known the difference between good and evil unless it had acquired it from somewhere. If it did, then it had the advantage over Eve. If it didn't know the difference between good and evil then it did nothing wrong by telling Eve the truth. In any case It was smarter than Eve because it knew that she would not literally die. The serpent clearly described what would happen with the Tree of K, G&E better than God did. This is where Eve got the truth about the tree.	C	I
T07 Gen. 3:6 Eve trusted the serpent, evidently because she didn't know not too, she didn't know that dying was bad, or that disobeying god was bad. The desire was built into her and Humans have or acquire cognitive biases that must be unlearned.	C	I
T07 Gen. 3:7 After they ate the fruit, their eyes were opened and they knew that being naked was bad. This is a cultural rule, not a natural one.	C	I

The Hypothesis that "Adam and Eve did not know the difference between a good and an evil act" is the least inconsistent with the data, therefore, I conclude that they were not at fault. They were following the natural cognitive processes that they were born with (untempered by education), and when prompted by a new agent, they innocently did what it suggested. To suggest that Adam and Eve were somehow immune from cognitive biases that have been shown to be commonly naturally occurring in humans is pure speculation. Since it has been demonstrated by the timeline that Adam and Eve were missing a vital element in decision making, were uneducated, had no life experience to speak of and had no reason not to trust anyone, they were mentally incompetent to be held accountable for disobeying God and causing the punishments of Sin and Judgment to be given to every human thereafter.

Further Reading on Cognitive Biases and Persuasion Principles

The Role of Persuasion and Cognitive Bias In Your Church

Denyse O'Leary: God is Evidently Quite Emotional

The wonders of the modern apologetic techniques never quite stop being amusing. In a recent post on her blog, Mindful Hack, Denyse O'Leary discusses a new book by two philosophers. The book, entitled Answering the New Atheists: Dismantling Dawkins' Case Against God is authored by two philosopher cum apologists, Dr. Scott Hahn and Dr. Benjamin Wiker.

The book is certainly not written for a scholarly audience and what Denyse O'Leary takes from it is a delightful twist on the idea of intercessory prayer studies. As readers know I believe intercessory prayer as a concept to be deeply flawed. However, the best studies of intercessory prayer have also found it to be useless, or possibly harmful. The philosophers address this thusly:

The error of the double-blind prayer experiment is that it treats God like some kind of natural cause rather than as a personal, rational Being. In doing so, God is being unjustly subjected to a humiliating attempt to manipulate Him by an experiment. In short, the experiment is an insult, and any rational being, superhuman or not, would treat it as such. That does not, of course, mean that praying for healing itself is an insult; we are speaking only of framing such prayer in the context of a manipulative experiment. (p. 57)

I had to read this three times to be sure that it was actually written out by people who claim to be philosophers, but yep, there it is. Read it again yourself just to make sure you get the gist of it.

My summary: God isn't your monkey. You hurt his feelings when you test him.

I wonder if these fine philosophers, or Ms. O'Leary have read their Bibles. From what I can see of the Bible it's got numerous opportunities for God to have his feelings hurt, but he never seems to. Let's go through some of those times when Yahweh should have felt insulted, although I'm sure this list is not exhaustive.

First, in Exodus we see the story of Moses. God has Moses turn his staff into a snake and turn his hand leprous. Moses shows these signs to the Israelites so that they will believe. Then he does some of the same tricks for Pharoah in Exodus 7:

Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron, "When Pharaoh says to you, 'Perform a miracle,' then say to Aaron, 'Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh,' and it will become a snake."

So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as Yahweh commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts: Each one threw down his staff and it became a snake. But Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs. Yet Pharaoh's heart became hard and he would not listen to them, just as Yahweh had said.

God's feelings were definitely not hurt during this test of his powers.

Next we get to Elijah and the priests of Baal in 1 Kings 17. Elijah challenges 450 priests to a contest, deliberately hurting God's feelings according to these philosophers. He mocks Baal repeatedly and then has the bull he's going to incinerate doused in water to make the event that much more amazing. Elijah was evidently the Doug Henning of his time. Finally Elijah goes for it:

At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: "O Yahweh, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O Yahweh, answer me, so these people will know that you, O Yahweh, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again."

Then the fire of Yahweh fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.

When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, "Yahweh -he is God! Yahweh -he is God!"

Finally we get to the New Testament. While the NT is littered with stories of miracles proving God's existence or the true discipleship of one or another apostle, the best single "test" of God in the NT from my point of view is the story of Ananias and Saphira in Acts 5. Ananias comes in and gives less than he owes to Peter. Peter tells him that he lied to God and then as if to prove the point, God strikes him dead.

The story gets better when his wife comes in:

About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter asked her, "Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?"

"Yes," she said, "that is the price."

Peter said to her, "How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also."

At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband. Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.

Yes, evidently in the 1st century CE, when God was tested he struck people dead out of rage. But now, the 21st century, he just gets his feelings hurt and pouts.

Now it is entirely possible that the God that Drs. Hahn and Wiker are defending is not the Jewish or Christian God. If they are not theists however, they would typically not believe in a deity who answers intercessory prayer to start with, and so I think that it is likely the paragraph quoted is indeed a defense of the God of theism. Therefore I think it is simply incoherent to imagine that his nature has changed from the wrathful Yahweh who strikes people dead, burns stones, bulls, water and dirt, and then has wood-snakes eat other wood-snakes. Do they now really believe he has become a pusillanimous, sensitive gentle being who can't be called out without causing him emotional pain?

Thanks Denyse, that one was a blast!

Scot McKnight and Conversion Theory: Why Apostates Leave the Church

[Written by John W. Loftus] Evangelical New Testament scholar Dr. Scot McKnight has written a very interesting book on conversion theory, called Finding Faith, Losing Faith: Stories of Conversion and Apostasy (with Hauna Ondrey, one of his “finest students”). Here is my review of it: In this book the authors have written four detailed chapter length studies of people who have converted: 1) away from the church to agnosticism/atheism; 2) away from the synagogue to the church, 3) away from the Catholic church to evangelicalism; and 4) away from evangelicalism to Catholicism. McKnight argues that all conversions go through the same process, and even if none of them are identical, they fall into similar patterns. (p.1). His goal is to describe the conversion process with hopes that the patterns that emerge can be used to explain them, with the further goal that scholars and pastors “will work out the implications of conversion theory in the pastoral context.” (pp. 231-236). He writes: "If mapping conversion theory shows anything…it shows the need for grace, humility, and openness to one another as we listen to and learn from one another’s stories. The sincerity of each convert’s (often opposite) experience underscores the need to learn from one’s another’s experience rather than denounce the other’s experience.” (p. 236) While most of us here at DC describe our leaving the faith as a “deconversion,” (which is the usual nomenclature) McKnight argues instead that leaving the Christian faith follows the same pattern of conversion itself. Deconversion stories are about "leaving from," instead of "coming to," but a deconversion follows the same process as a conversion. He writes: “All conversions are apostasies and all apostasies are therefore conversions." McKnight quotes approvingly of John Barbour in his book, Versions of Deconversion, that there are four lenses with which people see their own conversion stories:

"they doubt or deny the truth of the previous system of beliefs; they criticize the morality of the former life; they express emotional upheaval upon leaving a former faith; and they speak of being rejected by their former community.” (pp. 1-2)

Since he deals with several of the Bloggers here at DC (with some notable exceptions in Dr. Hector Avalos, Joe Holman, and Valerie Tarico) let me focus on this particular chapter of his as an example of what he does in the rest of the book (pp. 7-61). In his first chapter he provides an “anatomy of apostasy,” and he includes most of the recognized apostates and debunkers, including me (who’s story he highlights), Ed Babinski, Ken Daniels, Harry McCall, Charles Templeton, Robert M. Price, Dan Barker, Farrell Till, and many others. McKnight observes there is almost always some sort of crisis for the person. “Each, for a variety of reasons, encountered issues and ideas and experiences that simply shook the faith beyond stability.” “Guilt,” for instance, “drove Christine Wicker, a journalist, who covers the religious scene in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from the faith (seen in her well-written memoir, God Knows My Heart). For us apostates there was also a crisis of “unnerving intellectual incoherence to the Christian faith," and he quotes me as saying: “I am now an atheist. One major reason why I have become an atheist is because I could not answer the questions I was encountering.” There are five major elements that are combined to cause the adherent to question the viability of his or her faith, McKnight claims. One) Scripture became part of the problem for us. McKnight writes of Kenneth Daniels that “while on the mission field, he became convinced the Bible could not be inerrant or infallible, walked away from the mission field and became an agnostic.” Of Farrell Till, he “became a skeptic and at the heart of his departure from orthodoxy was a critical approach to Scripture.” Of Ed Babinski, whom he said is “an indefatigable recorder of those who have left fundamentalism,” his problem “was the Bible’s record of Jesus’ predictions and Paul’s own expectations that he think did not come true that undid the truthfulness of the Bible. He pursued every angle he thought necessary to support his faith but his doubts could not be satisfied. ‘I became,’ he confesses, ‘disenchanted with Christianity in toto, and became an agnostic with theistic leanings.’” McKnight, who is a conservative himself, seems to lay blame for our rejection of the Bible because we held to “a rigid view of Scripture.” When we “encounter the empirical evidence of the sciences, particularly concerning evolution and the origins as well as development of life as we now know it, a rigid view of Scripture collapses….For some the whole ship sinks.” Two) The empirical realities of science also demolish our faith, he notes. Ed Babinski was “completely devoted to a six-day creation theory” but eventually “became disillusioned with Christianity and the Bible because of the lack of evidence for what was considered so central to the faith – the scientific accuracy of a simplistic theory of creation.” McKnight opines that “a simplistic theory of origins, along with special pleading theories that are designed to explain away that evidence, when combined then with knowledge of the ancient Near East parallels to both the creation accounts and the story of Noah’s flood not infrequently are the collision point for many who leave the orthodox Christian faith.” Three) The behavior of Christians is another factor in our apostacy. McKnight: “For many, the failure of Christians to be transformed by the claimed grace of God and the indwelling power of the Spirit obliterates the truthfulness of the Christian claim.” Robert Price gained an insight while attending a lecture by Harvey Cox, McKnight pens. Price is quoted as saying: “As I looked at the secular students gathered there, I suddenly thought, ‘Listen, is there really that much difference between ‘them’ and ‘us’?’ I had always accepted the qualitative difference between the ‘saved’ and the ‘unsaved.’ Until that moment … Then, in a flash, we were all just people.” Four) The traditional Christian doctrine of hell is another factor. McKnight points out that “belief in hell has led some to contend the Christian faith is inherently unjust and morally repugnant,” such that his judgment leads him to think the Christian doctrine of hell is “far more fundamental to those who leave the faith than is normally recognized.” Then he quotes me as saying: “The whole notion of a punishment after we die is sick and barbaric. The whole concept of hell developed among superstitious and barbaric peoples, and tells us nothing about life after death.” Five) Apostates also reject the God we actually find in the Bible, who is vindictive, hateful, racist, and barbaric--my words. There are other reasons, McKnight admits. There is the problem of religious diversity in which it’s hard to dispute that “one’s faith is more shaped by one’s social location than by one’s personal choice.” Then there is the problem of evil which causes many to leave the faith. Of course, I’m surprised that these last two reasons are not highlighted as reasons in their own right, especially since I highlight them in my book. But at least he mentioned them. Another suggested reason for our defection from the Christian faith comes out of nowhere, with no evidence for it at all, and guided more by McKnight’s theological persuasions than anything else. His next suggestion is not helpful to a scientific investigation of conversion theory, which I take it, is one of his aims—to merely describe the conversion process. His next suggestion is based, not on anything he’s read, but on his “own intuition,” and even admits he “did not find anyone speak in this way.” He furthermore does not find this a factor in any other conversion stories in his other three chapters, which shows his theological biases. He suggests that “the demand put on one’s life by Jesus, by the orthodox faith and by a local church’s expectations can provoke a crisis on the part of the person who wants to go her or his own way. I am suggesting that behind some of the stories is a desire to live as one wants, to break certain moral codes that are experienced as confining, and that were either forgotten when telling the story or were an unacknowledged dimension of the experience.” Indeed, “one might summarize the entire process of leaving the faith as the quest for personal autonomy, freedom and intellectual stability. These factors seem present at some level in nearly all the stories I have studied.” Christian professor Ruth A. Tucker who wrote the book Walking Away From Faith: Unraveling the Mystery of Belief disagrees with this. In a talk to a Grand Rapids, MI, Freethought group (which I have also spoken for) Professor Tucker listed five myths about people who have abandoned their faith (note # 4):

1) "They are angry and rebellious." She found virtually no evidence for this. Rather, people felt sorrow, initially. They experienced pain, not anger. 2) "They can be argued back into faith." Because the person leaving his/her faith has carefully and painstakingly dissected the reasons behind this major worldview change, the Christian who proffers apologetics is more likely to convert into non-belief in such an exchange. 3) "Doubters can find help at Christian colleges and seminaries." This is not seen to be the case. 4) "They abandon their faith so that they can go out and sin freely." Tucker pointed out that too many people who profess faith sin more often than non-believers and that this argument was not a motivational issue in de-converting from faith. 5) "They were never sincere Christians to begin with." She has come across example after example of the most earnest and devout of evangelical, fundamentalist believers who became non-theists. Dan Barker was mentioned as just one of these erstwhile believers.

McKnight goes on to discuss the “advocates,” meaning those who go on to debunk the faith they left. He finds in us an “animus” in the “constant diatribes” of ours, from Charles Templeton’s “white-hot prose” to my whole book, to Harry McCall resorting “to caricature,” or even to Dan Barker, whom he claims has much “less rancor but still finding a need to tell that story in Losing Faith in Faith.” “The ‘anti-rhetoric,’ or the rhetoric that is so negatively against what they formerly believed, is both a characteristic of all kinds of conversion but especially those whose ‘conversion’ is leaving orthodox Christianity. Not all, however, are as white-hot in their antipathy to orthodoxy.” Of course, if he actually read my book, or my posts on DC, he should know I have no rancor towards Christians and that I treat my opponents respectfully. I suspect he feels the sting of our arguments rather than those other conversions he details in the other three chapters because he is simply a Christian believer, and we argue against his faith. McKnight does acknowledge people should not minimize the anguish we apostates have when going through our crisis of faith. It is not an easy process. It is agonizing. Quoting Dan Barker he writes: “It was like tearing my whole frame of reality to pieces, ripping to shreds the fabric of meaning and hope, betraying the values of existence. And it hurt bad. It was like spitting on my mother, or like throwing one of my children out a window. It was sacrilege. All of my bases for thinking and values had to be restructured. Add to that inner conflict the outer conflict of reputation and you have a destabilizing war.” McKnight also sees an interrelationship between us. Ed Babinski’s “fine collection of stories of those who have left the faith demonstrates an interlocking relationship at times – Babinski himself was influenced by William Bagley and by Robert Price while others were influenced by Dan Barker. There is presently, then, a connection for those who are reconsidering their faith, a connection that is filled with folks who have already traveled that path, know its rocks and its cliffs and who can guide the pilgrim away from faith.” The internet is also an important facilitator in our apostasy, McKnight understands. While doubts are not to be expressed publicly in the churches, the internet is another matter entirely…”many find their way to the multitude of sites, like Positive Atheism or Debunking Christianity, where one can hear arguments against the orthodox faith and apologies for alternative systems of thought and meaning." In the end, those of us who walk away from our faith find a sense of relief and independence when we finally decide to leave it all behind us. McKnight tells us that at some point we just had to decide, and sometimes it meant giving up our positions in life to gain the needed relief. He writes: “Harry McCall, a biblical scholar who voluntarily chose to leave Bob Jones University…chose to abandon his faith because ‘Jesus is so obviously a product of human imagination coupled with arbitrary faith that I chose to simply acknowledge the obvious rather than remain religious.”’ Robert M Price is an example of someone who found his relief akin to being “born again”: “I had to swallow hard after twelve years as an evangelical, but almost immediately life began to open up in an exciting way. I felt like a college freshman, thinking through important questions for the first time. The anxiety of doubt had passed into the adventure of discovery. It was like being born again.” McKnight finally recommends Lewis Rambo’s book Understanding Religious Conversion as “required reading for every minister and theologian.” This is a good, well researched book. I liked it very much. In one way it shows that those of us who have converted away from Christianity are not alone when we factor in the many other people who are also being converted to different theological positions. People change their minds, that’s all, and many of us do it.