Judgemental Christians:
There's much less to comment on here, really. Much of the content is directed at Christians about how to be a better Christian. As an outsider, I am far less relevant to the conversation. Obviously, I can support the underlying thesis that a more constructive approach is preferable to a more judgmental one, particularly when seeking to help your friends and family do and be better.
The sermon ends with a video segment of a testimonial of a woman whose life has been turned around by her new-found faith. She does a wonderful job presenting herself and her deeply sympathetic story. I do not doubt for a moment that her life has been radically improved by her Christian beliefs, that they have been a profoundly valuable tool in her personal development. Which is in no way evidence that her beliefs are factually accurate.
There's this nuance to having recovered from Christianity where, you occasionally encounter people who are probably better off, in the near-term, continuing in belief. I was always the sort of Christian who was in it because I thought it was true, rather than for the emotional benefits. When it became apparent that the fundamental claims of the vast majority of Christianities are demonstrably false, while I found deconversion emotionally unpleasant in the short term, I also found it inevitable. But I know that that other sort of Christian, who cares more about how faith makes them feel than about actual facts exists. Has every right to exist. I tend to casually avoid religious conversations with these people, unless they're actively propagating malignant ideologies.
Next week they've decided that it's sensible to give the topics Dinosaurs, Premarital Sex, and End Times a third of a sermon each. I'm sure I'll have much more to say then.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Sermon 2b: Singleness
In Jon Weece's second sermon from the "You Asked For It" series, he addresses two topics, Abortion, and Singleness. I've discussed his treatment of Abortion in the previous post. I find his treatment of singleness largely unobjectionable. It strikes me as substantially in line with what the Bible says about marriage and singleness. I agree that either state represents an opportunity, each with its own unique concerns.
Sermon 2a: Abortion
In his second sermon in the
“You Asked For It” sermon series (delivered March 16, 2014), Jon presents
comments on the topics of Singleness and Abortion. This post will address his position on
abortion, and a subsequent post will comment on his treatment of
singleness. Jon’s treatment of abortion
hinges on three claims, that his position is Pro-Baby, Pro-Woman, and
Pro-Scripture. His position is none of
the above. The content of his sermon
runs directly contrary to the best interests of mothers and babies and society,
and, further, runs directly contrary to the Biblical position on abortion[1].
Restrictive abortion laws
do not have fewer abortions[2]. They just increase the rate of dangerous
abortions[3]. Jon’s failure to address these facts
massively undermines his claims to be “Pro-Woman” and “Pro-Science”. Restricting access to abortion simply makes
people’s lives worse, at no benefit to anyone, not even to fetuses.
Contrary to Jon’s claims,
there is not necessarily a contradiction between a law that allows abortions
and a law that allows fetuses to inherit property, or for people who kill
fetuses against the wishes of the mother to be tried for manslaughter. He is not arguing for equal human rights for
fetuses, he is arguing for special rights for fetuses at the direct expense of
mothers. If a person, an adult, with
full rights and standing in society is unable to survive unless you give them a
kidney, or you give them your blood, or you donate any of your body to their
survival, you have every right to deny them that. If Jon still has two intact kidneys, that
does not make him a murderer, even if he could literally go to the hospital
today and save someone’s life by donating one of them. Similarly, refusing to carry a fetus to term
is in no way murderous.
But Jon presents the claim,
currently fashionable in evangelical Christian circles[4],
that Jehovah reads abortion as an example of murder, and, relatedly, that He
begins human life at conception. As it
happens, the Biblical treatment of these subjects runs directly contrary to his
claims.
Jon cites several verses
that indicate that Jehovah takes an interest in the unborn. Such as:
Even before I was born, God chose me and called my by his
marvelous grace.
-Galatians 1:15 (NIV)
All of which are directly
in line with another passage, that he didn’t cite:
The word of the Lord came to me, saying,
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
- Jeremiah 1:4-5 (NIV)
The
Jeremiah passage makes it clear though, that the Jehovah of the Bible takes no
special interest in the moment of conception.
All of the passages that talk about an interest from before birth talk
equally about an interest from before conception. They claim that Jehovah had an interest in
these particular individuals from before we were even conceived. They do not speak at all to the issue of
abortion, or to life beginning at conception.
Jehovah’s law, presented
in the Old Testament, clearly directs that murders should be executed:
Anyone who hits and kills a
fellow human must be put to death.
- Leviticus 24:17 (MSG)
Compare that with this:
“When there’s a fight and in the fight a
pregnant woman is hit so that she miscarries but is not otherwise hurt, the one
responsible has to pay whatever the husband demands in compensation. But if
there is further damage, then you must give life for life—eye for eye, tooth
for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise
for bruise.
- Exodus 21:22-25 (MSG)
Explicitly, Jehovah treats
fetuses as property, which, if destroyed, lead to a debt of compensation, just
like any other possession, and unlike the mother. If the mother is harmed, then a life debt is
incurred. In the eyes of Jehovah as
presented in the Bible, a fetus is not a human life.
Jon in this sermon actively avoids mentioning the
one passage of scripture that explicitly deals with the abortion, which I’ll
explore in detail here. It’s a passage
that I have never heard any contemporary Christian mention in any context. The official party line seems to be to just
pretend that it doesn’t exist. Here’s Numbers
5:11-29:
“If any man’s wife goes
astray and behaves unfaithfully toward him…[5]if
the spirit of jealousy comes upon him and he becomes jealous of his wife, who
has defiled herself[6];
or if the spirit of jealousy comes upon him and he becomes jealous of his wife,
although she has not defiled herself- then the man shall bring his wife to the
priest… The priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel and take some of
the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle and put it into the water… And
the priest shall have in his hand the bitter water that brings a curse. And the
priest shall put her under oath, and say to the woman, ‘If no man has lain with
you, and if you have not gone astray to uncleanness while under your husband’s authority[7],
be free from this bitter water that brings a curse. But if you have gone astray while under your husband’s authority[8],
and if you have defiled yourself[9]
and some man other than your husband has lain with you… the LORD make you a
curse and an oath among your people, when the LORD makes your thigh rot and
your belly swell… Then the woman shall say ‘Amen, so be it.’… When he has made
her drink the water, then it shall be, if she has defiled herself and behaved
unfaithfully toward her husband, that the water that brings a curse will enter
her and become bitter, and her belly
will swell, her thigh will rot, and the woman will become a curse among her
people. But if the woman has not defiled
herself, and is clean, then she shall be free and may conceive children… Then
the man shall be free from iniquity, but that woman shall bear her guilt[10][11].”
-Numbers
5:11-31 (NKJV)
To reiterate the content of the text: If you[12]
get jealous and think your wife has cheated on you and she’s pregnant, take her
and with a shame offering (to emphasize to everyone in your community how
shameful she is) to the priest. When you
get there, in addition to horrifically shaming her, the priest will force your
pregnant wife to ingest an abortifacient.
If the baby dies, she’s a cheat, and will, for the rest of her life, be
utterly shunned by society. If the baby
doesn’t die, she’s not a cheat, and you’ve just publicly humiliated her,
terrified her, and tried to kill off her fetus for nothing, but at least you
know the baby’s yours… and since you’re a man, there are no negative
consequences whatsoever to you for any of this.
So, this text presents contemporary Christians
with a dilemma. In my experience, again,
they solve the dilemma by never ever ever acknowledging that this verse
exists. I spent, at a bare minimum, two
hours a week, every week, for decades in my young life in church. It easily adds up to over two thousand hours
of exposure to Christian propaganda on a wide range of subjects while
particularly young and impressionable, and it featured a perversely
disproportionate emphasis on the subject of abortion. And these verses were literally never
mentioned. They are absolutely
everything the Bible says directly about abortion. And in all that time they weren’t mentioned
once. Anyway, on to the dilemma: there exist only two possible answers to the obvious
question ‘does the magic abortifacient actually work in the way the Bible claims
that it does?’ The possible answers are
‘yes’ and ‘no’.
Socially conservative Christians who claim to take
the text literally (like Jon) will tend to lean ‘yes’. In which case, if the magic abortifacient
works as described, if it genuinely uses Jehovahan magicks to never endanger
fetuses that got half their chromosomes from their mother’s husband, but kills
fetuses that got half their chromosomes from a married woman and half from
someone other than her husband, then Jehovah stone cold kills fetuses. There’s no trace of mercy or acknowledgement
that the circumstances of its conception are no fault of the fetus. This Jehovah is an enthusiastic aborter. Bastard?
Dead. So sayeth the Tetragrammaton. And, as it happens, that’s the less malignant
option.
Christians of a less literal bent may lean toward
‘no’, possibly seeking to avoid blaming Jehovah for the monstrous framework
presented by Scripture as law. But if
the magic abortifacient is a lie, the framework’s implications get even more
horrific. There are two possibilities
for how this will play out, if the aborting dustwater doesn’t work as
advertised, and both of them are terrible.
If Jehovah isn’t magically directing the dustwater to be a perfect
paternity test, it still either does or does not have abortifacient
properties. Maybe the priest’s dust just
makes the water taste bitter and has no abortifacient effects at all. In that case, accused innocent women who miscarry
for any reason after taking the infidelity test will be shunned for the rest of
their life. The test will ruin their
life, irredeemably and forever, all on a lie from Jehovah. Also, the husbands of cheating women who
happen not to miscarry will invest untold resources in raising some other man’s
child in a society where social identity centers on lineage, and will continue
living with and trusting a cheat, also, all on a lie from Jehovah.
Worse still, what if the dust actually is an
active abortifacient, but is in no way imbued with magic (despite the spell the
priest said over it)? Then Jehovah
through His priests is killing or sparing women’s fetuses indiscriminately,
legitimate and illegitimate alike, while also indiscriminately ruining the lives
of women cheaters and non-cheaters alike.
So, to Christians, the question is “which monster
do you think you worship”? The bastard-fetus
killer, or the life-ruining liar? I
think my beliefs about Jehovah are actually much kinder to Him than the options
open to Christians here. I see Jehovah
as a fictional deity imbued by his authors, through no fault of his fictional
own, with their own eccentric, misogynist monstrosity. Which strikes me as significantly less
malignant than the theist alternatives.
[1] Jon
often throws around statistics and data without citations. In so doing, he’s directly denying his
audience the opportunity to fact check him and his sources. He includes citations to bible verses when he
quotes scripture; it would be no more work to include citations to his
scientific or statistical claims. In
this sermon, for instance, he misuses the uncited statistic “84 percent of all
expecting moms decide not to have an abortion after seeing the ultrasound of
their baby.” He’s trying to support
forcing women who seek an abortion to look at an ultrasound of their baby, but
his statistic presumably includes women who planned and wanted their
pregnancies.
[2] Sedgh,
G., Singh, S., Shah, I. H., Åhman, E., Henshaw, S. K., & Bankole, A.
(2012). Induced abortion: incidence and trends worldwide from 1995 to 2008. The
Lancet, 379(9816), 625-632.
[3]
Grimes, D. A. (2003). Unsafe abortion: the silent scourge. British Medical
Bulletin, 67(1), 99-113.
[4]
This anti-abortion stance hasn’t always been fashionable among
evangelicals. For a discussion of how it
fell into vogue, see:
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/30/my-take-when-evangelicals-were-pro-choice/
[5] You
should always be skeptical of ellipses in quotes. They implicitly mean ‘trust me, I’m not
leaving any important context out’. And
the last person you should trust is anybody who says ‘trust me’. So I’m explicitly saying the opposite
here. Don’t trust me. Dig out your Bible, or point your browser to
biblegateway.com. Read the whole
text. Interrogate everything. Ever. I
feel that I’ve included all of the relevant content in the quotes. But don’t take my word for it when I do it,
and certainly don’t accept the word of a preacher when they do it.
[6]
Seriously? “Defiled herself”? No blame for the man involved in this
extracurricular defilement? What the flaming
crap, Bible? It’s almost as if you were
written by men, for men, in a world where women aren’t yet even second-class
citizens or something.
[7]
I’m just going to go broken record if I keep footnoting all the marginalization
of women in all the Bible quotes. But
then if I don’t footnote every glaring instance, we’ll all just go back to ignoring
how the anti-woman sentiment utterly permeates the entire book, which is even
worse… so, footnotes it is, I guess.
[8] Women,
man. They just can’t catch a break in
this book.
[9] See
Footnote 2, again.
[10]
If your wife (always your wife… you are never the wife… the Bible never adopts
the woman’s perspective: it remains of, for, and by men throughout), who can
under no circumstances divorce you, ever has sex with anyone else, she’s 100%
guilty. And you’re not. Completely regardless of how you’ve treated
her. You are 100% innocent. Because you’re a man. This was all clear already, from the content
of the chapter. The Bible just wanted to
reiterate it here in the last verse. I
want to say out of spite, but that’s not quite right. It’s really just for emphasis. Like when you add exclamation points and big
arrows in the margin next to text you’ve already underlined and hit with your
highlighter.
[11]
Note that if the magic infidelity test comes back negative, there’s no shame
whatsoever directed towards being a paranoid husband and publicly, permanently,
humiliating your wife by falsely accusing her of cheating on you.
[12]
Again, ‘you’ are always the man; the phallicentrisim is in the original text. I feel like I should add (pic) for
“Phallicentrism In Source” everywhere this comes up, like (sic) for spelling
errors in quotes, but I’ll resist the urge.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Sermon 1: Gay Marriage and Biblical Contradiction
You Asked For It
Head pastor (or, as he puts it, "Lead Follower") Jon Weece has just begun a six week sermon series entitled "You Asked For It", in which the sermon topics were chosen by popular vote by his congregation. These are the subjects that matter most to the audience that gives his professional life meaning, the topics that give his (fellow) followers the most difficulty, cause them the most concern in their daily lives. And he's decided to preach just half a sermon on the first two of them. He decided that half an hour of his pulpit time was too much to spend on the most important topics in these Christians' lives, and to give, in Week 1, 15 minutes each to the massive topics of Gay Marriage and Biblical Contradiction.
Ground Work
Ground Work
Jon
opens this sermon series by laying out some principles from which he plans to
work. He suggests that we, as readers
must not take verses in isolation, but in the context of the Bible as a whole. And I’m happy to work within that
framework. Then he suggests that we
should read the Bible with an awareness of its history, seeking a sense of what
the verses meant to their authors, and to the people who first read them. And I like that guideline as well. But then he goes on and states that a
fundamental premise of his reading of the Bible is that “the Bible is without
error.” The Bible contains lots of
errors, lots of false claims, lots of demonstrable contradictions with both
other parts of the Bible and observable fact.
His fundamental premise is untenable, which systematically undermines
his ability to read the Bible clearly and then to apply it to contemporary
life.
Gay Marriage
Jon
claims to present what Jesus said about gay marriage. At no point in the text of the Bible does Jesus
ever say anything about homosexuality. But
Jon, massively overreaching, presents Matthew 19: 4-6 as if it’s a direct
condemnation of gay marriage. It’s
not. It’s a condemnation of straight
divorce. Here it is with a bit more
context:
The Pharisees also came to Him,
testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for
just any reason?”
And
He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the
beginning 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man shall
leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become
one flesh'? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God
has joined together, let not man separate.”
They
said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and
to put her away?”
He
said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to
divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever
divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits
adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.”
-Matthew
19:3-8 (NKJV)
Jon
claims that these verses present Jehovah’s one valid framework for human
sexuality, one man, one woman, within the bounds of monogamous marriage. But in so claiming, he’s willfully ignoring numerous
other models of marriage presented in the bible. Biblical Kings, including both David and
Solomon were polygamists with many, many wives.
Other biblical patriarchs, including Abraham, kept concubines. Neither Jehovah nor His prophets raise an
objection to this behavior, though they do object to other behaviors by these
kings. Indeed, the law makes specific
provision for multiple wives, demonstrating that they are permitted[1],
that the Jehovah of the Bible does not solely endorse sexuality within the
context of monogamous straight marriages.
Jon
tells a story from personal experience of having seen an angry Christian family
protesting a gay pride parade. He tells
this story in an effort to contrast his own behavior (which he presents as
correct Christianity) against their behavior (incorrect Christianity). He says he's not a bigot for thinking and for
saying that homosexual behavior is detrimental to people emotionally,
physically, and spiritually. And he's
not. He's a bigot for being against
extending basic human rights to people based on their membership in a minority
group, for begrudging the social progress that is, painfully slowly, putting an
end to the bigoted discrimination of the laws of the past.
He says
if a gay couple came and asked him to perform their marriage, he’d decline, in
all cases. Clearly, as a pastor, he has
every right to perform or not perform whatever weddings he chooses. But I notice that he doesn’t also say that
he’d decline to perform any second marriages, or any marriages where one person
isn’t a born-again Christian (both of which, unlike gay marriage, actually are condemned
in the New Testament[2]). He says nothing whatever to demonstrate that
his marriage policy isn’t uniquely discriminatory against gays, even compared
to marriages explicitly condemned by the very passage he misuses to condemn gay
marriage.
Leviticus
calls gay sex an abomination[3]. And Leviticus calls eating shrimp an
abomination[4]. And Jon only ever preaches against one of
these things. Jon would only prefer to
live in a country that denies basic human rights, including marriage, to people
who do one of these things. And Jon
only presents one of these things as a sin, because Jon’s ideology has less to
do with what the Bible says than it has to do with perpetuating contemporary
American church culture. That’s not
necessarily a bad thing. Actually basing
your belief system on the actual Bible would be monstrous, but I still object
to the pretense, to the claim that this is about the Bible.
He
closes the gay marriage portion of his talk saying “if you consider yourself a
tolerant person, you will love and accept me, the way that I love and accept
you.” And he’s wrong. If I cut off my love and tolerance the way he
does I would never be able to consider myself a tolerant, loving person. So I’ll go much farther. I won’t begrudge Jon’s marriage. I won’t pretend that it’s somehow less valid
than anyone else’s. I won’t delight in
or pursue the denial of his right to marriage, or adoption, or inheritance, or
to visit his loved ones when they’re sick in the hospital. I will, when he says that he finds his
marriage spiritually, physically, and emotionally rewarding, take him at his
word. I will not suggest that his
primary human relationship is a blasphemous lie.
Biblical Contradiction
To open
his Biblical Contradiction sermon, Jon presents an extremely weak example of
Biblical contradiction, and then successfully refutes it. He rightly points out that when Matthew says
that two blind men were sitting by the roadside[5],
and Luke says that a blind man was sitting by the roadside[6]
that does not present a contradiction.
In any situation where two blind men are sitting by the roadside, it can
be accurately stated that “a blind man was sitting by the roadside”. Jon compares the Biblical perspectives on
events to the multiple cameras used to record a football game: all accurately recording actual events from
different, but completely factual, perspectives. In another weakness to his chosen example,
the number of blind men present isn’t particularly important to the
narrative. One or two, it doesn’t change
the themes or the message of the story in the slightest. In using this supposed example, Jon is
actively implying that all of the instances of internal contradiction in the
Bible are of this “not really a contradiction, and even then it’s just
meaningless details that are in disagreement” sort. He’s presenting the very weakest kind of
example of Biblical contradiction, successfully arguing its irrelevance, and then
claiming to have demonstrated the internal consistency of the Bible. This represents a profound intellectual
dishonesty.
Jon
didn’t talk about any of the clear examples of Biblical self-contradiction in
narratively significant contexts, but I will.
In the interests of space and time, I’ll pick just one example out of
the many Biblical contradictions. I’d
like to discuss the two incompatible deaths of Judas. The
Gospel of Matthew presents the story this way:
“Then
Judas, His betrayer, seeing that He had been condemned, was remorseful and
brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders,
saying, 'I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.'
And
they said, 'What is that to us? You see to it!'
Then
he threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and
hanged himself.
But
the chief priests took the silver pieces and said, 'It is not lawful to put
them into the treasury, because they are the price of blood.' And they consulted together and bought with
them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in.
Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day.”
Matthew 27:3-8
The
critical aspects of the story are that Judas felt remorse at having betrayed
Jesus Christ, tried to return the payment he received for the betrayal, and was
refused by the priests. He left the
money at the temple and then committed suicide, hanging himself. The priests then bought a field with the
money he tried to return to them, which they used to bury strangers. From then on, the field was called The Field
of Blood, because it was bought with “the price of blood”, the blood in
question being that of Jesus Christ.
Now
this man purchased a field with the wages of iniquity; and falling headlong, he
burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out. And it became known to all those dwelling in
Jerusalem; so that field is called in their own language, Akel Dama, that is,
Field of Blood.
-Acts
1:18-20 (NKJV)
In this telling, Judas
displays no remorse; he made no effort to return the money, and *he* bought the
field himself, for himself with the money he made for his betrayal. He died, not of hanging at his own hand, but
of falling and bursting open (possibly from divine retribution for his
betrayal), and the field was named the Field of Blood not in reference to the blood
of Christ, but in reference to the bloody entrails of Judas Iscariot. These two tellings are mutually incompatible thematically. The first is about remorse and a failed
attempt at redemption, where the second is about justice against the betrayer. But more
than that, they’re mutually incompatible factually. In the one, the death was suicide, where in
the other it was either accidental death or, in better keeping with the context
of the story, Jehovahn wrath. In the one, the priests bought the field, in
the other, Judas bought the field. And
remember that in the Matthew account, the field isn’t presented as the place
where Judas died at all, it’s just what the priests did with the money he
left. And the stories contradict one
another about whose blood the name of the field represents.
The usual claim among
Christians who maintain that the Bible lacks any contradiction is to merely
state that it’s possible, hypothetically, for a man to hang himself in a field,
and for that body to later fall from its rope and burst open in a field, that
is, to claim that this example of contradiction is, like that of the number of
blind men by the road, a simple case of the presentation of different sets of
non-contradictory facts about a situation[7]. But this position
completely fails to address at least half a dozen other contradictions in the
story. If the facts are as the Matthew
account presents them, the Acts account is simply wrong, either because it is
based on false information, or if the author knew the facts of Matthew and
presented them as he does in Acts, as an act of willful deception. The differences, unlike those in Jon Weece’s
cherry-picked example, are clear, and critically important to the meaning of
the text.
This website presents an
interactive visualization of hundreds upon hundreds of separate contradictions
in the Bible. Some of them are
relatively minor, and fairly easy to handwave away, like, for instance, Jon’s
example. Many of them are not:
After failing to seriously
address any of the substantive contradictions within the Bible itself, Jon goes
on to fail to address any of the serious, direct contradictions between
Biblical claims and basic observations of world we live in, either scientific
or historical. He begins his
staggeringly brief treatment of this huge body of evidence against reading the
biblical accounts as factual stories by positing that it’s a mistake to treat
Genesis as a science textbook. He
continues:
“Genesis
focuses on who created the world and why the world was created, which is very
important, but it does not focus on how the world was created and when the
world was created… I think, personally, that faith and science can be great
dance partners without having to step on each other's toes.”
-Jon
Weece
The Genesis accounts of
the origins of the universe directly contradict the observable evidence of the
world. The biblical origins story is in
error. And Jon is in error in claiming
that Genesis isn’t about how the world was created. The story goes into detail presenting a
fictional, incorrect order of creation.
It presents, not just a Who and a Why story, but also a How, and the How
that it presents is demonstrably incorrect[8]. And I
disagree about science and religion being great dance partners[9].
The clearest example I
know of are the two incompatible answers presented by religion and science to
the question “Is faith a good thing or a bad thing?” I don’t mean faith in the
sense of a synonym for religion here, I mean the act of faith, the act of
holding a belief in the absence of evidence.
So far as I can see, the religious answer is that belief in the absence
of evidence is good. And the scientific
answer is that belief should be proportional to the strength of the evidence,
that, in the absence of evidence, anything beyond the most tentative belief is
bad. The scientific response to the
unknown, to any unknown, is to generate a hypothesis, a potential answer to the
pressing question. And then develop a
method by which to test that hypothesis.
And then run that test. And then
develop a new, better hypothesis based on the evidence of the results. And repeat.
Until the hypothesis fits all of the available evidence. And if new evidence comes to light that
undermines the existing hypothesis, be ready to begin the cycle again to
generate new explanations that can address the new evidence. At no point should faith enter the process.
I’d like to respond
directly to Jon’s position that the Bible presents historical fact. Again for the sake of space and time, I’ll
present just one example. Many of the
stories in the Bible directly contradict with historical facts. The historical example I’d like to present
here is the Census of Qurinius, an actual, historical census conducted in 6/7
CE, which was later fictionalized in the account of the birth of Jesus Christ
in The Gospel of Luke.
Here’s the Luke
presentation of the story:
“And it
came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all
the world should be registered. This
census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. So all went to be registered, everyone to his
own city.
Joseph
also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city
of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of
David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child.”
-Luke
2:1-5 (NKJV)
The first major problem
here is that this is not how censuses work.
Ever. The idea of making people
go back to the home of their ancestors to count them, rather than counting them
where they live now is completely antithetical to the whole point of a census[10]. And it’s
not how the actual historical census of Quirinius worked; it was a standard, functional,
real, count the people where they live sort of census.
And the second major problem
with the this Biblical story is that the Census of Quirinius occurred in 6/7
CE, which is why many Christians claim that Jesus Christ was born in 6 or 7
CE. And the Bible also claims that Jesus
Christ was born during the rule of Herod the Great. It’s not just a throwaway line about Herod,
there’s a whole story about him trying to use the wise men to find and kill the
baby Jesus[11]. The problem
here is that Herod the great died, in the year 4 BCE, a full decade before the
Census. The Historical events presented
by the authors of Bible in an attempt to tie their stories of Jesus Christ to
actual Historical facts, lending credence to their claims ultimately do
precisely the reverse. If, as Matthew
claims, Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great, then Luke’s claim
that he was born during the Census of Quirinius at least 10 years later must be
false. And vice versa.
Jon goes on to
inadequately address the possibility of translation errors in the Bible. He flatly states “we have the original
manuscripts of the Bible”. This is
ludicrously false. I have no idea why he
would make this claim. I have no reason
to believe that he’s just lying through his teeth. If nothing else, this would be a profoundly stupid,
easily disproven lie to tell. And it
seems like he’s studied enough to know that this is just dead wrong, but then
listening to it, it doesn’t sound some casual a slip of the tongue, it sounds
like it’s in the script as written.
Since I have no idea how to interpret what Jon was trying to do here,
I’ll just go ahead and present the facts.
We have every reason to believe that, for instance, the Apostle Paul was
a real person. And that that real person
really did write real letters to, for instance, the church at Corinth, if not
by his own physical hand, by dictating the letter to another actual person, who
was actually in the room with Paul at the time of the letter’s
composition. But that letter, that
physical piece of paper that was in the room with the Apostle, does not, to anyone’s
knowledge, still exist. And the same is
true for every epistle, every gospel, for every single book of the Bible. Precisely zero pieces of the original
documents are available to contemporary scholars. It has been thousands of years since any of
them have been available. We have copied
copies of copied copies several times removed.
Jon suggests that this
does not represent a lengthy game of telephone, with changes at every step,
because the process is a written, rather than an oral tradition. And he’s right that the changes creep in more
slowly. He claims that the discrepancies
are extraordinarily rare, but does admit that, as an example, John 7:53 – 8:11
is probably apocryphal. Written, after
the fact, by another author, and not authoritative. And these discrepancies are much more
common than he suggests. For instance, Matthew chapter 1 contains 4 of
them. Matthew 2 doesn’t contain any
discrepancies that have been discovered yet, but Matthew chapter 3 contains two
of them. The New Testament is full of
these things[12].
The discovery of the Dead
Sea Scrolls has given us an excellent insight into quality of the copying
process. In the mid-20th
Century, a cache of ancient scrolls were discovered in caves on the northwest
shore of the Dead Sea. These scrolls include the oldest surviving
physical copies of many of the books of the Old Testament[13]. Before this discovery, the oldest
extant copies of these books were Masoretic[14] texts from the 800s. The Dead Sea Scrolls
include multiple copies of the various Old Testament books. And the
various copies of some of the books (particularly Exodus and Samuel) have
wildly disparate content and language. The King James Version of the Old
Testament was translated from the Masoretic texts. Which are a thousand
years younger than the oldest surviving copies of the source material (which
are, themselves still copied copies of copied copies, several times removed).
And which differ wildly from the content of many of those older copies.
There exists no objective mechanism by which to claim any of these versions is
the ‘real’ version. But the copies written closest in time to the events
described are not the copies translated for inclusion in our Bibles. In no case, not for a single verse of the
Bible, can we say with certainty that the contemporary text of the Bible is the
same as the original text. And in some
cases we can demonstrate that the oldest available copies, oldest by hundreds
upon hundreds of years, contain text that is profoundly different from the text
that our Bibles were translated from.
CLOSING
Jon closes the sermon with
a dizzying barrage of broken logic. He
says "Even if the bible is not true, if Jesus rose from the dead,
Christianity is true. If someone rose
from the dead, that qualifies that person to be God". The flaws here are clear. From a Christian perspective, obviously
Lazarus, for example, both rose from the dead and is not God. Contemporary medical science occasionally
revives people from death, and neither the raisers nor the resurrected are
God. Jon continues “If there is a God, there is absolute
truth”. While I see no reason to doubt
the existence of absolute truth (though I’d have called it “objective
reality”), the causal link he’s pointing to here is weak. I don’t see that the question of the
fictional vs. nonfictional nature of Jehovah has any bearing on the fictional
vs. nonfictional nature of absolute truth… still, I’m ready to join Jon in the
assumption that objective reality does exist.
But then he says “If there is absolute truth, then there is a standard
for living that every person on the planet has to measure their life by.” By which he means one right way for everyone,
and all the other possible ways are wrong.
And I think he’s wrong about that.
And I think he’s wrong to suggest that that means trying to convince gay
people to pretend to be straight or to remain celibate for life. And I think he’s wrong to claim that the
Bible presents a unified, non-contradictory depiction of that One True Way.
Jon says he’s not worried
about offending people. And I agree that
he shouldn’t be. There was no sermon he
could present on these topics that wouldn’t offend someone. All he can do is present the best message he
knows how, knowing that, no matter what, it will displease some people. In this he has my full support. But then he goes on:
“I just
understand the nature of Truth. Truth,
by its nature offends people. And here’s
why: it’s the only thing that sets people free.
And nothing breaks my heart more than knowing that there are people who
would rather willfully live in the bondage of sin than in the freedom of
salvation, so what keeps me up at night is not the prospect of offending you,
but the prospect of offending God. And I
take that very seriously, and I hope you do as well.”
And I agree that truth can
offend people. But so can propagating
bigotry and ignorance. And the danger
here is that, in light of verses like 2 Corinthians 12:10, where The Apostle
says “I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions,
in distresses, for Christ’s sake” (NKJV), Christians may take human criticism
as a sign that they are behaving righteously. But they will be criticized for their immoral
behavior too; the criticism is no indicator of the righteousness or the truth
of their position. And I agree that
truth can be liberating. And it saddens
me to know that there are people who would rather willfully live in the bondage
of ignorant superstition than in the freedom of an ideology based on evidence
and compassion.
In his closing prayer, Jon
says, ostensibly to Jehovah, that “few things grieve my heart more than to know
that you have been portrayed as an angry, vindictive, sadistic being, when at
your core is a sacrificial nature.” The
implication here is that those bad guys out there, those non-Christians are
telling lies about Jehovah, casting him falsely and unfairly as angry,
vindictive, and sadistic. But this image
of Jehovah comes straight from the Bible itself. The Bible explicitly characterizes Jehovah as
vindictive, angry, and sadistic. For
instance:
“God is jealous, and the Lord avenges; The Lord
avenges and is furious. The Lord
will take vengeance on His adversaries”
-Nahum 1:2
Jehovah Himself says:
“My wrath will become hot, and I will kill you with
the sword; your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.”
-Exodus 22:24
And He says:
“I have cut off nations,
Their fortresses are devastated;
I have made their streets desolate,
With none passing by.
Their cities are destroyed;
There is no one, no inhabitant.”
Their fortresses are devastated;
I have made their streets desolate,
With none passing by.
Their cities are destroyed;
There is no one, no inhabitant.”
-Zephaniah 3:6
And then, in Numbers 31:18 Moses, acting under the direct
command of Jehovah, actively endorses child rape. These are not the acts and attitudes of an
almighty, all-knowing embodiment of infinite Love. They are the acts and attitudes of a fictional
character, invented by flawed people, who sometimes use him to justify their
own monstrous behavior.
Tune in next week for my response to a half-sermon on Being Single paired with a half-sermon on Abortion. 15 minutes will undoubtedly be plenty of time for Jon to present enough relevant content on each of these subjects.
[1]
See, for instance, Deut 21:15-17.
[2]
One bit against second marriages is in Matt 19:9; a passage against marrying
non-Christians is in 2:Cor 6:14.
[3]
Lev 18:22 (NKJV)
[4]
Lev 11:10 (NKJV)
[5]
Matthew 20:30
[6]
Luke 18:35
[7]
Here’s a brief article arguing this exact position: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/05/25/contradictions-how-did-judas-die
[8]
The opening graphic of the sermon suggested that Dinosaurs would likely be a
future topic in this sermon series. In
the interests of space and time, I’ll postpone any in-depth discussions of the
direct contradictions between the Biblical origin stories and observable
scientific fact until I’m responding to that sermon.
[9] Nice
imagery, though. It’s a lovely sentence.
[10]
Christopher Hitchens uses this as evidence to support the claim that Jesus of
Nazareth really was an actual historical figure, whose life the gospels
fictionalize. There’s an Old Testament
prophecy that the Jewish Messiah will be from Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). If, according to Hitchens’s logic, the
writers of the New Testament were simply inventing the character of Jesus
Christ out of whole cloth, they could easily have made him up to have come from
Bethlehem. On the other hand, if they
were trying to paint an actual early first century figure as the Messiah, and
that figure was from Nazareth, they’d have to come up with some story to
retroactively fit the Old Testament prophecy.
A story like, for instance, a bizarre sort of census that required
people to return to their ancestral homes.
[11] See
all of Matthew 2.
[12]
Here’s a link to the Bible Gateway’s entry on Matthew 1:
scroll down to the footnotes to see the 4
discrepancies. If you want to see more,
just keep hitting the “next chapter” button on each page. Not all chapters have them, but many, many chapters
do.
[13] Also
of bits of Apocrypha. The scrolls were stashed in 350 BCE, give or take
half a century, which was before the time (very roughly) around 200 BCE when
the Jewish religious leaders decided which bits of their Bible to deem
authoritative.
[14] ‘Masoretic’
after the Masoretes, the group of Jewish scholars who copied and edited the
texts.
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